Is there too much government in your life?
View Results
WELCOME TO EUROPE! America has changed its course, perhaps forever. By PETE DU PONT
Late Sunday night America made its largest public-policy course change since the 1930s: Congress moved 17% of our national economy from the market place to full regulation and control by the federal government. The vote in the House was close, 219-212, but our country’s health care system will now be organized, operated and regulated by the federal government.
Tens of thousands of new employees, supervisors and investigators will be in charge of our health-care system’s day-to-day operations. And the Heritage Foundation estimates the original Senate bill will retard economic growth to the tune of 620,000 lost jobs.
Add to that the new income-tax increases that will soon be with us. The Bush tax-rate reductions expire at the end of this year, so that the top personal income tax rate will go from 35% to 39.6% and the dividend and capital gains tax rates will rise from 15% to 20%.
Then will come the ObamaCare tax increases. There will be a new 3.8% Medicare tax increase on investment incomes–interest, dividends, capital gains, annuities, royalties and rents–for individuals with annual adjusted gross incomes over $200,000. Those increased rates are estimated to reduce disposable income by $17.3 billion a year. A second Medicare tax increase will take 0.9% of upper-income workers’ earnings.
Soon the government will fully regulate health care. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out last weekend, “ObamaCare is really about who commands the country’s medical resources. It vastly accelerates the march towards a totally state driven system . . . [and] government rationing will become inevitable [while] . . . doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies will over time become public utilities.” Even worse, the government will begin to decide “what kind of treatment options patients are allowed to receive.”
And a Republican House Ways and Means Committee report estimated that 16,500 IRS agents will be employed to make sure that people sign up–and pay for–the health insurance they will be forced to purchase.
Consider the impact these policies will have on our country and all of us.
First, tax rates will continue to increase for most everyone as the federal government needs more revenue to cover ever-expanding expenditures. Economist Stephen Entin estimates that the investment taxes discussed above would depress gross domestic product by some 1.3%, reduce capital formation by 3.4%, and thus reduce the after-tax incomes of everyone not paying these taxes by perhaps 1.2%. In other words, federal taxes will rise and personal incomes will fall.
Second, our national debt will continue to mount. From about 1970 to 2008, the U.S. government debt was between 33% and 69% of GDP. The Obama administration projects the national debt will increase to 100% by 2012 and to over $25 trillion by 2020. This will result in fewer jobs and less income for many years as it suppresses our economy.
Third, the federal government’s massive interventions, from the General Motors bailout to a prospective cap-and-trade policy, command and control of national health care, and the large increases in the size and scope of government, will slow our growth and depress our economy even more.
Finally there comes the growing loss of trust in America’s government. We have seen the national disbelief in the huge government expansions, spending and control over our society. In the health-care debate people figured that the whole bill was some sort of scam to help senators and congressmen in their home districts. There was the Cornhusker Kickback for Nebraska, special dollars for Tennessee, North Dakota, Louisiana, Connecticut, and other states and districts.
As a result of last Sunday’s vote, the Europeanization of America is coming to pass, for individual choice and opportunity are being replaced by statism.
Contrast this new American policy direction with our country’s history, and it leads to an even worse conclusion. We held our country together in the Civil War, fought two wars in Europe to keep its nations free, won the Cold War, survived the social upheavals of the 1960s and the economic challenges of the ’70s, and built a greatly expanded American economy and opportunities in the 1980s.
But now, for the first time in our history, we are becoming just another European nation, with bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation of almost everything, and the basic public-policy preference that the government, not we the people, should be in charge of the nation’s choices.
So America has indeed changed, perhaps forever, as the White House and brazen congressional leadership nationalized 17% of our economy, replacing individual choices with governmental regulation. The sunset of the American belief in economic growth and individual choice and responsibility is now with us. If we do not change our course, that will be a shame.
That, thanks to Mr. Du Pont, is my Reetzality for the day.
Thanks for the read.
Brett Reetz
Is our President a Communist? He’s certainly been accused of being one. I thought I should check it out. So I, Reetzality, went to work. So, let’s check it out, but first, let’s get a definition of communism. Here it is:
“Communism is a social structure in which classes are abolished and property is commonly controlled, as well as a political philosophy and social movement that advocates and aims to create such a society.” (See Wikepdia)
REETZALITY! O.K. Now we know what a communism is. Let’s see what President Obama has to say on the subject. Here are some excerpts from Obama’s speech to Berlin in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Thank you http://thebobofiles.com/?p=211. Check it out.
“Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more – not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.”
“The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand.” “This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.”
REETZALITY! So let me get this straight. We’re in bed with other nations? We should share our wealth with other nations? We are no longer Americans, we are world citizens? Sounds pretty communal to me. Another question, what about our Constitution, you know the fundamental principles of our great nation? Does that cooperation he’s speaking of require us to blend our Constitution with other nations without a Bill of Rights? It appears President Obama is not really concerned with the principles of nations but only the wealth of nations. And he wants to share it. How do I know? He said so, that’s how. Don’t believe me? Go back to the beginning of this blog and re-read.
Here are some more Obama quotes:
“I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”
“It’s not that I want to punish your success; I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you that they’ve got a chance to success, too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” (Said to Joe the Plumber)
“If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK .
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.
And that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.” (Emphasis added) (Said by President Obama, before he was President, on National Public Radio)
REETZALITY! O.K. He’s said some significantly communist-like things in his career. Who hasn’t? Well, me, and I suspect about 99.9999% of Americans, but who am I to judge? Let’s keep investigating. Let’s check out some of his friends.
HERE ARE SOME OF HIS FRIENDS, care of: http://theobamafile.com/_associates/ObamaAssociates.htm:
William Charles Ayers (born December 26, 1944) is an American elementary education theorist and former leader in the anti-war movement that opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for the radical nature of his activism, which began within the anti-war movement of the 1960s. In 1969 he co-founded the violent radical left organization the Weather Underground, which conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings during the 1960s and 1970s. He is now a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar.
Bernardine Rae Dohrn (née Ohrnstein, born January 12, 1942) is an American former leader of the Anti-Vietnam War radical organization Weather Underground. She is an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and the Director of Northwestern’s Children and Family Justice Center.
David Axelrod also has connections that that stretch back to post-War Chicago communism. While a New Yorker by birth, David Axelrod studied political science at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s. Later, while a start-out journalist with the Hyde-Park Herald, Axelrod was mentored by two older journalists cum political activists, Don Rose and David S. Canter.
Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, “Dreams From My Father,” refers to him repeatedly as just “Frank.”
Graham-Felsen ran the Obama campaign’s blog. He spent time in France taking part in labor riots, has written for a socialist magazine, hung a communist flag in his home, and was a fan of Marx while at Harvard.
Obama administration Communications Director Anita Dunn commended the wisdom of mass murdering Communist Chairman Mao in her address to high school students this past June. Dunn cited Mao as one of her two favorite political philosophers.
A former Jesuit priest and executive director of the Gamaliel Foundation, Galluzzo was interview by New Republic’s Ryan Lizza and showed him the training manual he uses with new organizers. Galluzzo told Lizza that many new trainees have an aversion to Saul Alinsky’s gritty approach because they come to organizing as idealists rather than realists. Galluzzo, along with fellow trainer Mike Kruglik, schooled Obama in Alinsky tactics. The Developing Communities Project, Obama’s first employer in Chicago, was part of the Gamaliel network of organizations.
In June 2009 Patrick Gaspard, a Brooklyn-based, 41-year-old Democratic operative, became White House director of the Office of Political Affairs. Gaspard’s ties to the groups behind ACORN-the groups that helped President Obama during his Chicago days-Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Like Obama, Patrick Gaspard wrote poetry. Like Obama , Patrick Gaspard grew up admiring third world leftists and revolutionaries. He reportedly idolized Aime Cesaire, a radical poet/politician from the French colony of Martinique.
Jeff Jones is a co-author of Obama’s Stimulus Bill. He used to be a terrorist. Jones was a national officer in Students for a Democratic Society, a founding member of Weatherman, and a leader of the Weather Underground. Jones is part of the Apollo Group, which was founded by Van Jones — Obama’s former “Green Czar.” The Apollo Group, under Jeff and Van Jones’ direction, basically wrote Barack Obama’s stimulus bill. During World War II, Jones’ father was a pacifist and conscientious objector who was assigned for the duration of the war, to a civilian work camp in the Sierra Mountains of California. Ironic, a pacifist breading a terrorist.
Jones was the leader and founder of a radical group, the communist revolutionary organization Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM. STORM worked with known communist leaders. It led the charge in black protests against various issues, including a local attempt to pass Proposition 21, a ballot initiative that sought to increase the penalties for violent crimes and require more juvenile offenders to be tried as adults.Speaking to the East Bay Express, Jones said he first became radicalized in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots, during which time he was arrested. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. “By August, I was a communist.” “I met all these young radical people of color — I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’ I spent the next 10 years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary,” he said.
Marilyn Katz is a Chicago public relations consultant and political operative, who has known David Axelrod for 30 years. Katz claims it was she who introduced Obama to the “activist network” in Chicago.
Rashid Khalidi, an apologist and spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and Director of the Middle East Institute (MEI) at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. In his role as MEI Director, Khalidi presides over a $300,000 annual grant from the federal government. He ranks among the most prominent members of the Middle Eastern studies community in the United States. His books are among the most frequently assigned works on the Middle East in American college syllabi. Arab and American media outlets alike seek him out regularly as a leading authority on the Middle East. In the 1990s, Obama and his wife were regular dinner guests at Khalidi’s Chicago home. During the 2000 election cycle, Mr. and Mrs. Khalidi organized a fundraiser for Barack Obama’s unsuccessful congressional bid.
Klonsky is an unabashed communist whose current mission is to spread Marxist ideology in the American classroom. Obama funded him to the tune of nearly $2 million. Obama, moreover, gave Klonsky a broad platform to broadcast his ideas: a “social justice” blog on the official Obama campaign website.
State Senator Barack Obama probably knew Saul Mendelson through their mutual activism in Independent Voters of Illinois, an organization investigated for communist infiltration as far back as the 1940s. On March 13th 1998, Saul Mendelson, a lifelong socialist activist died in Chicago. Mendelson had been a member of various Trotskyist factions in the 1930s and ’40s before joining the US Socialist Party and later DSA. In 1983 Saul Mendelson played a significant role in the election of Harold Washington. The Saul Mendelson Memorial Service was held on Sunday, March 29, 1998, at the First Unitarian Church, Chicago.
According to Chicago DSA leader, the late Carl Marx Shier (who addressed the gathering);
At the memorial service held at the 1st Unitarian Church on South Woodlawn, speaker after speaker recounted Saul’s contributions…speakers included Deborah Meier…Senator Carol Moseley Braun, Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, State Senator Barak Obama, Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie and a good friend from New York, Myra Russell.
The concluding remarks were made by an old friend, Harriet Lefley, who is now Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami Medical School. Alderman Toni Preckwinkle and Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, are both leftist Democrats with ties to Chicago’s socialist community. Both endorsed Barack Obama in his successful 2004 bid for the US Senate.
Eulogies also came from Quinn Brisben, (Socialist Party presidential candidate 1976, 1992) and David McReynolds (Socialist Party presidential candidate 1980, 2000).
Deborah Meier was a former Trotskyist and Socialist Party comrade of Saul Mendelson’s and a leader of Chicago and Boston DSA.
Taught Barack Obama in the Alinsky method.
Linda Rae Murray left the Communist Party in 1992 and has since worked closely with Committees of Correspondence and Democratic Socialists of America. She is a prominent Chicago health professional and the the immediate past president of Quentin Young’s Health and Medicine Policy Research Group. Murray is a leading and very active advocate for “single payer” and has just been elected president of the American Public Health Association — a post Quentin Young held in 1988. There is a picture of her with President Obama and his wife.
In 1995, Alice Palmer represented the state’s 13th District, and decided to run for the United States Congress. She hand-picked Barack Obama to run to replace her. She was an executive board member of the U.S. Peace Council, which the FBI identified as a communist front group, an affiliate of the World Peace Council, a Soviet front group. She participated in the World Peace Council’s 1983 Prague Assembly, part of the Soviet launch of the nuclear-freeze movement. In June 1986, while editor of the Black Press Review, she wrote an article for the Communist Party USA’s newspaper, the People’s Daily World, now the People’s Weekly World. It detailed her experience attending the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and how impressed she was by the Soviet system. Palmer gushed at the “Soviet plan to provide people with higher wages and better education” and spoke of the efficiency of the Soviets’ most recent five-year plan, attributing its success to “central planning.” She praised their “comprehensive affirmative action program, which they have stuck to religiously — if I can use the word — since 1917.”
New evidence has emerged that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was closely associated as early as age 25 to a key adviser to a Saudi billionaire who had mentored the founding members of the Black Panthers.
DSA member, former communist and long time Obama friend. The New Zeal blog is reporting that Dr. Quentin Young has been a close friend, personal physician and political mentor to Barack Obama for more than 20 years. He is the father of the US socialized healthcare movement and proudly admits to having tutored his friend Barack Obama in the subject. Young, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, was a member of the Young Communist League in his teens. He was also accused of membership of the Bethune Club of the Communist Party ( a party doctor’s group) by a government commission investigating the 1968 Democratic Party Convention riots in Chicago. Young has been the US’s most active proponent of “single payer” or socialzed healthcare for decades — firstly through his medical committee for Human Rights, then his Physicians for a National Health Program and his Health and Medicine Policy Research Group.
Leftist black nationalist preacher, who preached African-American unity through antipathy toward whites. The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, who acted as Obama’s personal spiritual adviser, is militantly Afrocentric. His website proudly claimed, “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.” On March 21st, 2010, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, said that people voted for socialism when they voted for Obama. He said it to Geraldo Rivera.
Former Weatherman, Zach Pollet, became ACORN’s political director and the head of ACORN’s Project Vote, now embroiled in voter fraud investigations in several states.
REETZALITY! So he’s got some unsavory and close friends. By the way, these “friends” are each one degree of separation away from President Obama. That means he knows them personally. Heck, who doesn’t have some unsavory friends? I do, but then, I’m a criminal defense lawyer. I’m not judging Mr. President. To use a phrase I find humorous, “I’m just saying . . .” Actually, I’m just “posting.” . . . things I found on the Web.
O.K. Let’s do an interim run down. I gave you a definition of communism. I listed some communistic quotes of President Obama. I listed some communistic friends of President Obama. Let’s try to bring it together. Let’s use Obama-Care to assess whether his policies are communistic.
Here we go. Here are some of our loss of freedoms, thank you Obama-care and thank you, Dr. Jamie Mitchell and David Hogberg at: http://walkinginwisdom.com/archive/2010/03/24/loss-of-freedom-thru-health-care.aspx
1. You are young and don’t want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the “privilege.” (Section 1501) 2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701). 3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711). 4. Think you’d like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that’s what the customer wants. (Section 2712). 5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn’t allow your employees’ slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714). 6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care. You’re a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You’re a woman who can’t have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You’re a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302). 7. Do you want a plan with lots of cost-sharing and low premiums? Well, the best you can do is a “Bronze plan,” which has benefits that provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to 60% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the plan. Anything lower than that, tough. (Section 1302 (d)(1)(A)) 8. You are an employer in the small-group insurance market and you’d like to offer policies with deductibles higher than $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families? Tough. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A). 9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 101 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513). 10. You are an employer who offers health flexible spending arrangements and your employees want to deduct more than $2,500 from their salaries for it? Sorry, can’t do that. (Section 9005 (i)). 11. If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i)) 12. If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a “Medicare provider agreement” by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn’t have those by then, you are out of luck. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A)). 13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a country where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)). 14. You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed “unreasonable” by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003) 15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)). 16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)). The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405). 17. The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).) 18. If an insurance company board or its stockholders think the CEO is worth more than $500,000 in deferred compensation? Tough.(Section 9014). 19. You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015). That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402). 20. If you go for cosmetic surgery, you will pay an additional 5% tax on the cost of the procedure. Think you know how to spend that money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9017).
REETZALITY! OUCH! Let’s revisit the definition of communism to begin to close this discussion. Here it is, again:
So, where are we? Let’s break it down and see if the pegs fit in the holes. Here we go:
1. Communism is a social structure in which classes are abolished. . . Certainly, under Obama-care, everybody has health care, supposedly, and because the “secretary” controls it all, everybody has the same health care. Under Obama-care we are all in the same social class when it comes to health care. So do you mean that no matter how much and how hard I work, a person who smokes, drinks, and doesn’t work is “entitled” to the same health care? Yes, class has been abolished. Damn! The first prong of the communist analysis went, well, communism. Damn again! (However, this may not be entirely true. Due to the Physicians leaving the field, running from Obama-care, and the impending shortages of physicians, there may still be classes. Unfortunately, I think upper class will mean that you are first in line and lower class means that you are last in line.) 2. . . . and property is commonly controlled . . . O.K , I’m going to fall back on my B.S. degree in Economics to explain and question this one. “Commonly controlled” means that control is not vested in the individual, it is “commonly controlled” by a government for all. Under Obama-care, the property, being the money, services, and the actual physical structures, are not controlled by the individual. Under Obama-care they are “commonly controlled” by the government. The individual’s property is taken and redistributed so that all class status in the access to health care is abolished. Damn, for a third time. The second prong of the communist analysis went communist too. 3. . . . as well as a political philosophy and social movement that advocates and aims to create such a society. Uh Oh! President Obama’s philosophy, if consistent with his statements, propounds a social movement. That’s for sure. More Uh Oh! If his philosophies are consistent with his policies, see Obama-care, he “aims to create such a society.” Damn, for a fourth time. It appears President’s health care plan, now law, passes the communist test. IT’S IN! But I’m just saying. . .
But how can this be? This is America. It is of the greatest contradictions to impose communism on America. This cannot be true! It cannot be reconciled with the Constitution, you know, the one that President Obama said the Warren Court “didn’t break free from . . . ,” that one. He also said, he wants to fundamentally change America. I know I’m repeating myself from past blogs, but this is important: Fundamental is defined by Webster’s College Dictionary as “the origin of existence.” So again, given that the constitution is the origin of our Nation’s existence and President Obama wants to “fundamentally” change our Nation, is it a great a leap of faith to surmise that Obama isn’t a fan of the Constitution? I’m just asking . . .
But who am I to question the President? Of course he’s a fan of the Constitution, the origin of our existence. He’s just says things that inherently contradict its principles, has numerous acquaintances who are un-American, and passes law that fit eerily into the definition of communism and cannot co-exist (I love those bumper stickers-sarcasm) with constitutional principles. But I’m just saying. . .
But really? Is it possible that he does love the Constitution because it provides him the freedom and liberty to destroy it? Is it possible he has a love-hate relationship with it? No, no, no! It’s oxymoronic to love something (the Constitution) because the thing (the Constitution) gives you the freedom to destroy it. He wouldn’t think that way, would he? He’s a progressive after all. Again, I’m just asking. Just posing questions President Obama, that’s all. Utilizing the Socratic method of inquiry like you probably used when you taught Constitutional law, that’s all I’m doing. Like we all should be doing.
And that’s my longest Reetzality for the Day.
Thank you so much for the long, long, read.
Note 1: Mind you, I never called him a communist, not once. I posted information I found on the web with links so you can check it out. I then did some rudimentary analysis. So keep me off the no-fly list, if you don’t, it will screw up my skiing and my family’s skiing too. Because, Mr. President, I’m just saying . . . I’m just asking . . .
Note 2: Why is there a hint of fear in my heart as I write this? I mean, even if it is concluded that President Obama has communist’ tendencies, how bad can a communist be? See Castro, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Chavez for the answer.
Note 3: We need to speak out, loud and clear, and consistent with American principles, that’s why I write this stuff. We need to do so to prevent our nation from being fundamentally changed and we no longer can.
Note 4: Enough already. Well, for now anyway.
With the impending passage of Obama-care, we as a nation, through our incompetent non-representative elected officials, have castrated ourselves. “Castrate,” as defined by Webster’s, means “to render impotent by psychological means, as disparagement. To deprive of strength, power or efficiency; weaken.” And that, my readers, is what we are about to do to ourselves. Make no mistake, today will just be the surgery. This operation has been planned for a century. Our government and its cancerous growth, fueled by control and power hungry politicians with little ability to function in any environment other than government, have progressively weakened Americans. How have they accomplished this? By perpetually creating new government programs that addict folks to them, folks who vote by the way. And when these folks get addicted, their wet nurse becomes the government. The government becomes their salvation, their wet nurse. Those of us, the remaining Americans, call our wet nurse Principle, not government.
Government has now become indigenous to every aspect of our lives. Think about this; Congress and the President are now considering changing the way the NCAA basketball tournament is operated! I have reviewed the Constitution and find nothing in it which empowers the government to do it. Unfortunately, I have reviewed Supreme Court Case law and have found absolute support for the government intervening in “March Madness.” Now why is that? Here’s why. Judges work for the government and notwithstanding their oath to the Constitution, they go native. Not all Judges. There are some great fundamental American Judges, and a few fundamentally American Politicians too, see Paul Ryan, but more often than not, Judges and politicians, see Bart Stupak, John McCain, George Bush, etc., etc., etc., go native. They work for the government. They fraternize with government employees. They go to a government building every work day. And in the end, most go native. They are co-conspirators in government’s desire to create need. Need equals votes. So, we have the Commerce Clause in the Constitution which allows Congress to regulate anything that affects inter-state commerce. The Courts have decided that just about everything is related to inter-state commerce, thus everything is within the government’s control. “March Madness” will be “reformed.”
And today, the government is taking over one-sixth of our economy. Mind you, this is a government that with the exception of World War II and NASA, always fails.
Back to the castration. Obama-care makes clear that Washington does not view Americans as self-reliant and independent. Washington views Americans as serfs who should go to work, pay most of their productivity to the tax man, defer to government for their health care choices, and basically, just too plain stupid to take care of themselves.
But Washington is missing something here. They are ignoring the invisible hand. The invisible hand was a term Adam Smith used. Adam Smith was a Scotsman and a famous intellectual who died in 1790. He wrote two books, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and On The Wealth of Nations. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith first referred to the “invisible hand” to describe the apparent benefits to society of people behaving in their own interests. Smith opposed any form of economic concentration because it distorts the market’s natural ability to establish a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital. He advanced the idea that a market economy would produce a satisfactory outcome for both buyers and sellers, and would optimally allocate society’s resources. The image of the invisible hand was previously employed by Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, but it has its original use in his essay, “The History of Astronomy”. Smith believed that when an individual pursues his self-interest, he indirectly promotes the good of society: “by pursuing his own interest, the individual frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he intends to promote it.” Self-interested competition in the free market, he argued, would tend to benefit society as a whole by keeping prices low, while still building in an incentive for a wide variety of goods and services. Nevertheless, he was wary of businessmen and argued against the formation of monopolies.
Here’s the quote I adore: “by pursuing his own interest, the individual frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he intends to promote it.” Wow. Right on Smith.
Now back to the present, and back to the future too. Our government’s long term castration, defended by “intending to promote” a better society, has wreaked havoc on our society. And today they have begun the actual surgery. The prep work was completed over the last century, but today, this day, our government has hi-jacked our rights to pursue our own self interest and replaced it with its agenda shrouded in a claimed intent to promote good. Have they checked out all the other nations’ with their socialized medicine? Sure they have. It doesn’t phase them because they don’t believe in self interest, they believe they know better, and although all other socialized health care is terrible, they think they can do it better. They are ignoring the power of the invisible hand.
And they’re ignoring it in another way. The invisible hand can be corrupted. Humans are self interested, that is a fact of nature. Why? Here’s why. Self interest allows us to survive and prosper. But, and here’s a big “but,” self interest plays differently in a country of entitlements and absent foregone freedoms than it does in a country of principles, freedom and liberty. I said they’re ignoring “it.” I didn’t say that they weren’t aware of it. They are. They understand that if a person is undereducated, un-principled, and just plain disgusted with how their life has turned out, that person’s invisible hand will lead them to do what works for them. And how convenient that the government that caused them to be under-educated, unprincipled and just plain disgusted with the way their life, is there with the answer, the salvation. Is it a mystery that Obama had a phalanx of hysterionic supporters at his rallies? Of course not. These were self interested folks in great need because their lives hadn’t turned out the way they expected. So their invisible hand led them to Obama, to government. THAT WAS THE GOVERNMENT’S PLAN.
But here’s the problem with our current government. They truly do not care that when you castrate liberty and freedom, when you castrate us, when more and more folks’ invisible hand leads them to government rather than principles of self-reliance, independence and individual responsibility, you kill the host. And those remaining Americans, the one who are still principled, self-reliant, independent and responsible, pay the bills. Take them away, castrate them, and everything fails. Don’t believe me? Try this exercise: Let’s divide the country into three categories.
1. Americans who are independent, self-reliant and responsible for themselves.
2. Americans who are dependent on the government, include the pharmaceutical industry after tonight’s vote.
3. Government.
Now think of our country as a patient in a hospital and you want to kill the patient. Here’s the catch. You can only surgically remove one of the above three. See my point. If you remove number one, the patient dies. Want more proof. Take out number two or three, pick, and, unless we’re invaded, number one would figure it out. Our country would survive.
Here’s the scariest truth. Obama and his minions want us to fail. Now I’m not saying that he wants a world without the United States. But the United States is just a name. What it really is, or at least what it’s supposed to be, is a series of principles set forth by our Founding Fathers. That’s the patient that is in critical condition. That’s the patient that our government is trying to euthanize. That’s the patient that got castrated today.
There is a recording of the last castrato. Way back, there were not only sopranos and tenors in operas, there were castratos. These were men who were castrated as boys to preserve their young boyish voice but gaining the strength of an adult voice. One actually existed when a recording could be made and there is such a recording. I’ve heard it on NPR. See, I’m not all Fox News. Mostly, but not all. Here’s the poignant metaphor. Castratos never had kids, of course they didn’t. Castratos didn’t have what it took to continue their genetics. And that my Readers is what our government did today, at least in their minds. They castrated us with a huge shroud of government control laid over everything America, everything us.
Don’t get worried. It is only a metaphor. We have not actually been castrated. But, and another big, “BUT,” we’re close. Even with a sixth of our economy being taken over, even with the explosion of entitlements, we have to fight like hell to reinstall our principles. We have to take back America. We can do it. And since it is only a metaphor, even those who are dependent upon government can be given the medication of freedom, liberty and opportunity and once again pursue and obtain a life of triumph which I am fairly certain is impossible when suckling up to the harpy wet nurse named government.
I have faith that we will. But for tonight, we should all be sad, maybe even cry. If you do cry, cry like a baby with undeveloped genitalia. Washington loves that. And remember this, today there was a set back to what made this country great. The principles are still alive and well and we can and will use them to save the United States.
That’s my Reetzality for this sad un-American day.
Note: Thank you Wikipedia for your information on Adam Smith.
Nancy Pelosi, without protest from Harry Reid, threatened to use the “Deeming Rule” to pass the Obama-Care bill which is, in and of itself, an oxymoron because the Deeming Rule actually side steps actual passage of a bill. The Deeming rule “deems” the House of Representatives to have voted for the Senate version of the Bill even though no such recorded vote was actually taken. It is currently being referred to as the “Slaughter Solution” because the House Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter of New York suggested its use. It is also referred to as the “Self-Executing Rule” and the “Deem and Pass Rule.” The Rule, pick a title, sidesteps Article I of the United States Constitution.
Article I of the United States Constitution requires that before proposed legislation may “become[] a Law,” U.S. CONST. art. I, § 7, cl. 2, “(1) a bill containing its exact text [must be] approved by a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives; (2) the Senate [must] approve[] precisely the same text; and (3) that text [must be] signed into law by the President,” Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 448, 118 S.Ct. 2091, 141 L.Ed.2d 393 (1998). (This is legal citation referencing the Supreme Court Case of Clinton v. City of New York).
In Public Citizen v. United States District Court For The District Of Columbia, 486 F3rd 1342, Public Citizen, a not-for-profit consumer advocacy organization, filed suit in District Court claiming that the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Pub.L. No. 109-171, 120 Stat. 4 (2006) (“DRA” or “Act”), is invalid because the bill that was presented to the President did not first pass both chambers of Congress in the exact same form. (SOUND FAMILIAR?) In particular, Public Citizen contends that the statute’s enactment did not comport with the bicameral passage requirement of Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, because the version of the legislation that was presented to the House contained a clerk’s error with respect to one term, so the House and Senate voted on slightly different versions of the bill and the President signed the version passed by the Senate.
This is what Slaughter and Pelosi have threatened to do using the “Deeming Rule.” They have threatened to “Deem” passed a bill which wasn’t passed. The argument against it’s use is that it denies bicameralism which means it denies the requirement that both the House and Senate pass the same bill as set forth in Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution. Please know, in Public Citizens the distinction between the two bills was a clerical error with respect to a single term, thus the House and Senate voted on slightly different versions of the bill.
The District Court held that Public Citizen’s bicameralism claim is foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Marshall Field & Co. v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 12 S.Ct. 495, 36 L.Ed. 294 (1892). The Court held that the judiciary must treat the attestations of “the two houses, through their presiding officers” as “conclusive evidence that [a bill] was passed by Congress.” Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 672-73, 12 S.Ct. 495. Under Marshall Field, a bill signed by the leaders of the House and Senate—an attested “enrolled bill”—establishes that Congress passed the text included therein “according to the forms of the Constitution,” and it “should be deemed complete and unimpeachable.” Id. at 672-73, 12 S.Ct. 495.
What does this mean? It means that the court held that “enrolled bill rule” prohibited it from questioning the congressional pedigree of the bill signed by the Speaker and President pro tempore. A bill is enrolled when it is entered in the Congressional Journals. Here’s some more legal jargon for you:
“Engrossed Bills” and “Enrolled Bills” in the House and Senate:
Every bill . . . in each House of Congress shall, when such bill . . . passes either House, be printed, and such printed copy shall be called the ENGROSSED BILL. Said ENGROSSED BILL . . . shall be signed by the Clerk of the House or the Secretary of the Senate, and shall be sent to the other House, and in that form shall be dealt with by that House and its officers, and, if passed, returned signed by said Clerk or Secretary.
When such bill . . . shall have passed both Houses, it shall be printed and shall then be called the ENROLLED BILL, . . . signed by the presiding officers of both Houses and sent to the President of the United States
Thus, an “engrossed bill” is a bill passed by either house. An “enrolled bill” has passed both Houses, it is an “enrolled bill.” Here’s some more law: U.S.C. § 106. An “engrossed bill” is thus one that has passed one chamber of Congress, while an “enrolled bill” has passed both the House and the Senate.
The Deeming Rule by-passes the Constitutional requirement that the same bill passes both Houses.
So what happens when the “Deeming Rule” is invoked? Here’s some more law: “Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.”), enshrines congressional journals—not the enrolled bill—as “the best, if not conclusive, evidence upon the issue as to whether a bill was, in fact, passed by the two houses of Congress.” Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 670, 12 S.Ct. 495.
What does this mean? Here’s what it means: even though the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate have endorsed the bill as having passed the bodies over which they presided, if shown by the Congressional record of proceedings, reports of committees of each house, reports of committees of conference, and other papers printed by authority of Congress” that part of the bill passed was missing in the version enrolled, it is still “deemed” as passed.
In lay terms please: Even though the actual enrolled bills don’t match up, and in the present House and Senate bills they definitely don’t match, the journal entry rules and it only takes one fifth of those present to enter it in the Journal. Wala! We have an “engrossed bill,” ready for Presidential signing. Let’s be more on point. Wala! The Senate Obama-Caere bill is up for signing notwithstanding the fact that it wasn’t passed by the House, notwithstanding that the House bill is different.
Here are some problems with the Slaughter Rule’s application.
1. The object of the Journal Clause is to ensure transparency in legislative activities. Wait, we don’t have transparency going on here. We’ve got back room politics. Thus, Pelosi and Slaughter are contravening the spirit of the law.
2. Congress had long chosen signing of the enrolled bill by the presiding members of both houses as its method of authentication. The problem? There is an inherent trust in the Journal Clause that the “authentication” is actually that, an honest “authentication.” But the fact is, the House and Senate Bills aren’t even close, they’re barely “Dutch Uncles” of each other. And still, the Presiding members of the House and Senate are going to “authenticate” that they are the same. Again, contrary to Constitutional Law. (Note: In the Public Citizens Case, the difference between the two bills was a Medicare provision for duration of payments. One bill had thirteen (13) months, one bill had twenty-six (26) months. That’s it.)
Here’s the good news. In Public Citizens, the court held, relying upon a prior case, Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 670, 12 S.Ct. 495. “Nothing in the Marshall Field opinion purports to limit application of the enrolled bill rule to journal-based challenges. And neither of the Court’s rationales applies solely to impeachment by journals. No less “uncertainty in the statute laws” upon which “depend public and private interests of vast magnitude, would result from allowing collateral attack of the enrolled bill by congressional documents other than journals. And “the spectacle of examination of journals by [the courts]” no more “subordinates the legislature,” than does inspection of other materials. Marshall Field’s plain language and justification cannot be read to create a rule of dismissal limited to the claims of plaintiffs who rely primarily upon journals to rebut an attested enrolled bill
In lay terms please. The Court isn’t limited to only the journals to decide whether there was a violation of Constitutional law. The Court can look at the actual two bills. The Court can look at at almost anything else they so chose. And in the case of health care, when the Court does look at the actual House and Senate Bills, they will recognize the violation of the Law and they will recognize the fraud in the authentication in the Journal. And, In accordance with Marshall Field, the Court can and should examine the evidence that the authentication in the journal was a travesty of dishonesty. Thus, not only will the Court look at both bills, the law says they should look which legally means “they must look.” And when they do, look out Pelosi!
So have faith. Pelosi and Slaughter are mis-reading the law. Ironically, Pelosi has filed a brief protesting the use of the Deeming rule, the very rule she is now threatening to use.
Here’s some more law: There is nothing that prohibits the Court from looking into a bicameral violation such as the one that Pelosi and Slaughter are proposing. In fact, the law specifically holds that the Journal Entry alone does not dictate the legal analysis. It is my position, and this is Reetzality, not Supreme Court law, but it is based upon Supreme Court law, that given the monstrosity of the differences between the House and Senate Bill, a bicameral challenge will succeed. More lay law: A bicameral challenge will reveal the abusive and unconstitutional use of the “deeming rule” and the fraud in Pelosi’s proposed journal authentication.
So Pelosi, go for it. Deem it passed. And then watch as the whole thing gets thrown out because I assure you, the Court is not going to spend the time figuring out what was passed and what wasn’t passed. They’ll simply find it un-Constitutional based upon your violation of Article I, throw it out, and tell you to start over. What the Court will affirm though is your and your minions’ tyrannical personalities.
Boy, you’d think they’d know this given Obama being a Constitutional Law Professor. But who am I to question.
Again, go for it Pelosi. Deem yourself, Obama, Reid, and the rest of you scoundrels the tyrants that you are.
And that is my long winded technical legal Reetzality for the Day.
Thanks for the Read. I hope I taught you something.
Note: Contact as many representatives as you can and tell them to vote no on Health Care. Tell them to leave America alone. On second thought, tell them just to leave.
Does Obama despise America? Now there’s a question worth asking. I didn’t vote for the guy but I had hope that he would prove me wrong and be a moderate, like Bill Clinton ended up being. He didn’t. Let’s do a run down on Obama’s policies and see if he likes this country or not.
1. Health Care. He is vigorously pushing health care reform which will embody the government controlling one sixth of our economy, taking away freedom and liberty. It will also embody the taking of one person’s productivity and giving it to another, the redistribution of wealth. It will, by rudimentary economics, impose rationing. It cripples the free market. Thus, health care reform, according to Obama, takes away freedom, liberty, choice, redistributes wealth, limits the freedom to take care of oneself by rationing, and cripples, retards, pick, the free market. The ruling? Obama Health care is un-American.
2. Taxation. Obama wants to raise taxes to further his agenda of redistributing wealth. The ruling? Again, un-American.
3. Immigration. Obama wants to legalize illegal aliens with no agenda to secure our borders. The ruling? Again, un-American.
4. Financial Industry. Obama wants to impose drastic regulatory regulation that will limit credit, impose costs on the industry that will not just trickle down, they will fall down on the regular Joe like a tidal wave, hurting the average American. The ruling? Un-American.
5. Privacy. Obama has continued the Bush doctrine of warrantless searches and is encouraging the government monitoring of the internet. The ruling? Un-American.
6. Foreign Affairs. He has spent more time apologizing for America than praising its excellence. The ruling? Un-American.
7. Economic Policy. Obama has used the “stimulus plan” to reward political allies. He has used the money, debt rather, to give back to those who supported him, meaning government employees, unions, and state bureaucracies (Government Universities). He has burdened our off spring with massive debt that, if they chose to stay and participate, will thwart our offspring’s freedom and prosperity. The ruling? Un-American.
8. Freedom of Speech. Obama favors the Fairness Doctrine which would mandate equal time for all views regardless of market forces and popularity. It would mandate that for every Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, there was an Al Franken on the air with equal time. The fairness doctrine would do this by taxing media and redistributing the resources to subsidize the contrary and opposite opinions. The ruling? Un-American.
9. Voting privacy. He favors “card check” which means that union votes would no longer be private. If you voted non-union, the union would know. His Attorney General dropped the suit against the Black Panthers for intimidating voters. The ruling? Un-American.
10. Free Market Principles. Obama has bailed out, taken over, GM and Chrysler. He has bailed out and taken over AIG. He is, through bail outs and regulation, attempting to take over the financial industry. He wants to publicize student loans, taking them out of the public sector. He believes that government is the only solution to our economic woes which were caused by government. He has expressed vitriolic contempt for the insurance industry which make less of a profit percentage than the top twenty-five industries. He loves Unions which fix prices and wrench power from the owners of businesses. The ruling? Un-American.
11. The Constitution. He himself said it was flawed in that it didn’t contemplate redistributive justice which, by the way, Mr. Constitutional Law professor, rocket scientist; redistributive justice contradicts the very core, the very fundamentals, of our constitution. The ruling? Un-American.
12. Fiscal Responsibility. Obama is making a drunken sailor look frugal. The ruling? Un-American.
13. The Second Amendment. Obama’s voting record and writings show that he is against the Second Amendment. The Ruling. Obama’s view on the Second Amendment is blatantly un-American. He fails.
Enough already. It took me all of five minutes to list the aforementioned un-American policies of Obama. Well, maybe eight minutes, but I can type as fast as I think which may be an indictment of my thinking rather than an accolade for my typing.
But let’s look at the core of an American and run Obama through this gauntlet. Here’s what I know Americans are: They are for independence. They are brave. They stand on their own. They are creative and innovative. They reject charity as a way of life. They are responsible. They are hard working. They are loyal to the Constitution. They are traditional. They are proud. O.K. Now to the second analysis of Obama:
1. Americans are for independence. Obama is against independence. He supports deference to other nations’ laws. He wants to join the world on cap and trade. He is for world solutions that depreciate our independence. The ruling? He is not independent. He fails.
2. Americans are brave. Obama does not speak from the heart, he speaks from the teleprompter. He’s never been in the military. He endlessly sheds responsibility and blames others. He is afraid to take responsibility for anything that shines poorly on him and his past. The ruling? He is not brave. He fails.
3. Americans stand on their own. Not Obama. Present was his most popular vote in the Illinois legislature. If things are going bad, he blames his predecessor. He defers to others, i.e. congress, to draft bills, i.e. health care. (His bill was nothing more than a collection of ideals with no meaningful merit.) He supports unions which contradict independence in the work place. The ruling. Obama does not stand on his own. He fails.
4. Americans are creative and innovative. Obama’s philosophies have been spoon fed to him by his mentors. His book was ghost written. He has not created a thing. The ruling. Obama is not creative. He fails.
5. Americans reject charity as a way of life. Obama was a community organizer where his passion was to shake down the system for the transfer of wealth. He is for the abject transfer of wealth, taking from a producer and giving to a non-producer. The ruling? Obama is in favor of charity as a way of life. He fails.
6. Americans are responsible. Obama blames his predecessor whenever in a pinch. He dodges questions, i.e. telling John McCain that “election is over.” He abhors any responsibility for the condition of our nation as caused by too much government. He spends like, I’ll use the term again but hype it a bit, a drunken sailor on crack cocaine. He is burdening our off spring with monumental debt, destroying our very fundamentals, and taking no responsibility. The ruling? Obama is not responsible. He fails.
7. Americans are hard working. Obama didn’t break from a golf game when the crotch bomber attempted to take down a jet. Obama hasn’t read a bill, maybe not even his own pseudo bill. Apparently he drinks too much and smokes too much. He has never held a private sector, bill paying job. He doesn’t respect one’s accomplishments for working hard. See redistributive justice opinion. The ruling? Obama is not hard working. He fails.
8. Americans are loyal to the Constitution. Obama says the Constitution is lacking in that it fails to address redistributive justice. Enough said. The ruling. Obama thinks he knows better than our founding fathers. He fails.
9. Americans are traditional. Obama said over and over again that he is going to change the fundamentals of our nations. Fundamental is defined as the origin of existence. Well if you are going to change the origin of one’s existence, you certainly are not traditional. The ruling? Obama is not traditional. He fails.
10. Americans are proud. Obama rejects American exceptionalism and continues to degrade our nation with his apologies. The ruling. Obama is not proud of America. He fails.
So face it folks, regardless of who you voted for, we’ve got us an un-American running the country. He’s not like us, nor does he even like us, assuming his policies are consistent with his likes and dislikes. So get your head out of the sand and speak out. Reject his policies. Call your congressman and let them know that you are independent, brave, that you can stand on your own, that you are creative and innovative, that you reject charity as a way of life, that you’re responsible for your own life, that you are hardworking, loyal to the Constitution, traditional, and damn proud of who you are.
Well unless you are with him in his anti-American Agenda, then I suggest you see a shrink. You need it. For a variety of reasons, to start: Self deprecation (destroying your nation), self loathing (despising your nation), child abuse (burdening your children with your debts), dependency (relying on government), anger management (control your loathe for our nation), sociopathy (ignoring the impact of your views upon others), and ultimately for depression (You won’t like your stated destination. See all socialist nations).
And that’s my Reetzality for the Day.
Lindsay Graham and Chuck Shomer want a national ID card with biometric information on it in order to prevent illegal aliens from working in the United States. It is a good goal making sure all workers are legal citizens or carry the proper working papers. Yet, it’s government we’re talking about here. So, as usual the plan is rife with ignorance, costs, suppression of freedom, and all the other bad stuff that comes with government. In my last blog I wrote about the control that would occur with the national I.D. card. Today, let’s study the cost. And then I’ll give you my idea. Read on.
Let’s look at the new bureaucracy that would be required to issue a national ID card. Let’s assume that there are three hundred million people in the United States. Let’s also assume that the government won’t stop themselves with only “registering” “workers.” Everybody, worker or non-worker, will be required to have one. It wouldn’t work otherwise. A person could claim not to be a worker, not get a card, work for cash like a ton of illegal aliens do, and dodge the system. I know, I know, who would have thunk it? Anyway back to the analysis. No let’s assume that it will take fifteen minutes of government bureaucracy to issue a card. That is probably an estimate lite but I’ll run with it. Fifteen minutes per application will take seventy-five million hours. Assuming a forty hour work week and a fifty week work year, that is two thousand hours per worker per year. Now assuming this, we divide two thousand into seventy five million and we get the number of additional government workers we need. The number is, drum roll, 37,500 new employees. Wait, these are the employees actually signing folks up. They need managers don’t they? Of course, it’s government. You can’t have a government without a good old fashioned inefficient, ineffective bureaucracy now can you? Let’s assume that each twenty five employees needs a manager. So we divide 37,500 by 25 and that will give us the first level of management. Drum roll, 1500 more employees added to 37,500 employees and we’re to 39,000 new employees. But the managers need managers so let’s divide 25 into 1500, again a mid-manager for every 25 low level managers. Answer please, 60. And the sixty mid-levels will need managers so we divide 25 into 60 and we get 2.4, so being government, we’ll round up and say three more. So now we’re up to 39,063 employees just for those who actually do the work. The end right? Nope. These folks are going to need personnel departments, health insurance departments, employee relations, purchasing departments, accounting departments, Information technology departments, payroll departments, public relations, enforcement, and more and more and more. Let’s add another 25,000 employees for support. Now we are up to 64,063 employees to get the national ID thing going.
What about cost? Well, the average federal salary is about $70,000.00. Let’s multiply this number by the number of employees. Here it is: $4,484,410,063. Almost 4.5 billion. Heck, that’s nothing in today’s world. Pocket change right?
So here’s the skinny. Once again we have a government program proposed that will cost billions of dollars and won’t work. Please understand, I didn’t take into consideration the cost of the technology, buildings, costs of bureaucracy imposed upon the private sector through company compliance and the time folks spend getting their national ID card. It will be more than 4.5 billion and again, it won’t work.
I’ve got a better idea. It will cost, let’s see, as they say on the beach in Mexico, “almost nothing.”
Pass the following laws:
1. No state shall issue a driver’s license or a state I.D. card to a non-citizen or somebody who doesn’t have proper working papers.
2. It shall be unlawful to hire anybody without a driver’s license or a valid state I.D. card.
I think that does it. No new bureaucracy. No new billions spent. It would work. But who am I to think I know better than government?
All right, I’m infringing on state’s rights here and I’m not fond of doing that as a matter of principle, but it’s Government we’re analyzing, and Government hates principles. If I had my druthers, there wouldn’t even be driver’s licenses.
They won’t try the Reetzality approach though because they aren’t really into immigration reform or keeping illegals from working. As usual, they’re goal is un-Constitutional control. They want every American to have a zip-strip federal I.D. so that the exploding regulation, control, and destruction of our freedom and liberties is easier for Government.
Email your congressman. Email the President. Don’t let them do it. No national I.D. card. Period! That’s my Reetzality for the Day.
Finally, do I get a fee for saving the government, wait, I meant us, billions? Just asking.
That’s my Reetzality for the Day.
Thanks for the Read.
Note: Think my numbers are wrong? Lets check out the census numbers. The State of Kansas, not the most populous of states, anticipates 4000 census workers will be needed. Let’s say we have fifty states the size of Kansas. (Note Mr. President, there are not fifty-seven states). 50 times 4000 is 200,000. So nationally, if all states were the size of Kansas, we will have 200,000 census workers. Are there more populous states than Kansas? Last time I checked, yes. So to just count the people, not even creating and processing identification cards, just to count the folks once, the federal government needs 200,000 census workers and that’s assuming, in the government defenders’ favor, that all states are the size of Kansas. Oh, here’s another fact. The census is anticipated to cost 14 billion dollars. So maybe I actually underestimated the cost of the national I.D. You think? Final note: Kansas is ranked thirty second in the population ranking. It is number 32 in the ranking of most populated to least populated.
Note: I love the truth of mathematics.
Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.
Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.
The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.
The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Senators Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.
“It’s the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. “If you say they can’t get a job when they come here, you’ll stop it.”
The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens. “It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.”
The above is from the Wall Street Journal online. Here’s the Reetzality. No way Washington. A national ID would be a huge invasion our privacy. The use of the national ID card would rapidly expand beyond its alleged “intended” purposes. I can think of hundreds of vile alternative abuses for the card. A person would have to be a fool to think the card will only be used to keep illegal aliens from working in the United States. The first thing government will do is make everybody have one whether your working or not. If they don’t is it the government’s position that they only want to regulate illegal alien workers? So let me get this straight. If I am an illegal alien drug dealer, I don’t need a national ID card? See my point?
Here are ten other applications the government will certainly employ:
1. Government will use it to track gun ownership, just to make sure, they will say, an illegal doesn’t buy a gun.
2. Government will will use it to track travel by requiring its presentation before you get on an airplane, probably buses and trains too.
3. Government will use it for taxation, by monitoring bank deposits and withdrawals.
4. Government will use it to monitor purchases so that it can influence the markets rather than the markets themselves influencing markets. A monitored market is not a free market.
5. Government will use it for statistical analysis to set policies rather than liberty and principles setting the policies.
6. Government will allow the data that is collected to be subject to subpoena so that law enforcement can track a person’s purchases. They’ll want to know what a suspect is spending his or her money on.
7. Government will use it to track an individual’s location. If you are a a suspect, they’ll want to see where you’ve used your card to see where you’ve been, where you are.
8. Government will use the data to identify folks they don’t like. Remember Homeland security put out a warning for those folks with anti-Obama bumper stickers, gun rights bumper stickers, etc. Government will use its computers to develop profiles of folks the government doesn’t particularly like.
9. Government will use it enforce consumption taxes by requiring the use of the card to identify purchases and to tax those folks who buy too much of, let’s see, maybe gasoline, guns, liquor, pick.
10. Government will use the card to track health care, monitoring a person’s consumption of health care and also monitoring a persons life style choices based upon the person’s purchases. The life style choices, computer inferred by a person’s purchases, will affect the person’s health care choices.
I’ve thought of more uses as I wrote the above ten, but ten is enough for now.
In total, the card represents an evil threat of abject control and diminished freedom. And what do you know, there’s a Democrat, Chuck Shumer, and a Republican, Lindsey Graham, pushing it. Come on folks, have you ever known government advances in it’s progressive assault on our liberties to retreat? The only thing I can come up with is a few court cases involving gun rights and tax cuts. The are the only notable shrinkage in government I have ever witnessed.
Once again, Washington is using a problem, illegal immigration and open borders, to execute its agenda of suppression of freedom and liberty. And, once again, they won’t solve the problem. If I’ve got a factory, and I break the law and don’t require a government ID, if I pay my employees in cash, how will they know I’m not following the rules? They won’t. Well unless the following scenario occurs. Check out this radical reetzality:
What if Washington passes the National ID card legislation as proposed with biometric idendification? (“Biometry” is defined by Webster’s as “the calculation of the probably duration of human life.” “Biometric” isn’t in my dictionary.) Now, what if the card has a magnetic strip like a credit card? It will. Of course it will. Now, what if currencies fail? They are predicted to do so, based upon that irritating (to politicians) science called math. Would it be such a stretch to think that governments, not just ours, would end the use of currencies and use the National I.D. as a universal debit card for everything? Oh, but the government wouldn’t take over the banks who provide credit cards would they? Too late, they already are dabbling in this. Think about this. If this scenario occurs, the government will be able to track your movement, your purchases, your life styles, and the payment of taxes would become a direct extraction from your national I.D-debit card. (Maybe there will be a new word Extaxion, meaning “the process by which governments extract your productivity from your nationally controlled and monitored value?”) It could get worse. How long would it be before nations enter treaties and start sharing the national ID information, maybe even globalizing the national ID concept? I would say a few years. Then, governments could, with the stroke a computer key, shift any amount of value from any person-people to any other person-people. Hard to argue or have a tax revolt when your only “money” is in your government National ID-debit card.
Bingo. We’ve got a one world government with a one world pseudo currency. I’m not sold on Bible prophecy, the mark of the devil and all that stuff, but it’s getting less unbelievable lately.
I pray not. Email Lindsey Graham by going to http://lgraham.senate.gov/public/. Email Charles Shumer at http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/contact.cfm. I tried to find their exact email addresses but failed. It seems you have to go through their propaganda to contact them. Do so.
Finally, don’t miss the Washington slight of hand going on here. Washington has us focused on health care with one hand while the other hand nationalizes are individual identity. We must stop them both.
That’s my Reetzality for the day.
This is a great objective article by Simon Heffer. Here it is:
It is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama’s regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.
Despite the efforts of some sections of opinion to talk the place up, America is mired in unhappiness, all the worse for the height from which Obamania has fallen. The economy remains troublesome. There is growth – a good last quarter suggested an annual rate of as high as six per cent, but that figure is probably not reliable – and the latest unemployment figures, last Friday, showed a levelling off. Yet 15 million Americans, or 9.7 per cent of the workforce, have no job. Many millions more are reduced to working part-time. Whole areas of the country, notably in the north and on the eastern seaboard, are industrial wastelands. The once mighty motor city of Detroit appears slowly to be being abandoned, becoming a Jurassic Park of the mid-20th century; unemployment among black people in Mr Obama’s own city of Chicago is estimated at between 20 and 25 per cent. One senior black politician – a Democrat and a supporter of the President – told me of the wrath in his community that a black president appeared to be unable to solve the economic problem among his own people. Cities in the east such as Newark and Baltimore now have drug-dealing as their principal commercial activity.
Last Thursday the House of Representatives passed a jobs Bill, costing $15 billion, which would give tax breaks to firms hiring new staff and, through state sponsorship of construction projects, create thousands of jobs too. The Senate is trying to approve a Bill that would provide a further $150 billion of tax incentives to employers. Yet there is a sense of desperation in the Administration, a sense that nothing can be as efficacious at the moment as a sticking plaster. Edward B Montgomery, deputy labour secretary in the Clinton administration, now spends his time on day trips to decaying towns that used to have a car industry, not so much advising them on how to do something else as facilitating those communities’ access to federal funds. For a land without a welfare state, America starts to do an effective impersonation of a country with one. This massive state spending gives rise to accusations by Republicans, and people too angry even to be Republicans, that America is now controlled by “Leftists” and being turned into a socialist state.
“Obama’s big problem,” a senior Democrat told me, “is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN.” The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from a country where a technical rule of impartiality is applied in the broadcast media. With little rest, it pours out rage 24 hours a day: its message is of the construction of the socialist state, the hijacking of America by “progressives” who now dominate institutions, the indoctrination of children, the undermining of religion and the expropriation of public money for these nefarious projects. The public loves it, and it is manifestly stirring up political activism against Mr Obama, and also against those in the Republican Party who are not deemed conservatives. However, it is arguable whether the now-reorganising Right is half as effective in its assault on the President as some of Mr Obama’s own party are.
Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism. The sound of the squealing of brakes is now audible all over the American press; but the attack is being directed not at the leader himself, but at those around him. There was much unconditional love a year or so ago of Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s Chief of Staff; oleaginous profiles of this Chicago political hack, a veteran of that unlovely team that polluted the Clinton White House, appeared in otherwise respectable journals, praising the combination of his religious devotion, his family-man image, his ruthless operating technique and his command of the vocabulary of profanity. Now, supporters of the President are blaming Mr Emanuel for the failure of the Obama project, not least for his inability to construct a deal on health care.
This went down badly with friends of Mr Emanuel, notably with Mr Emanuel himself. His partisans, apparently taking dictation from him, have filled newspaper columns and blogs with uplifting accounts of the Wonder of Rahm: as one of them put it, “Emanuel is the only person preventing Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter”. They attack other Obama “sycophants”, such as David Axelrod, his campaign guru, and Valerie Jarret, a long-time friend of Mrs Obama and a fixer from the office of Mayor Daley of Chicago who now manages – or tries to manage – the President’s image. These “sycophants” have, they argue, tried to keep the President above politics, letting Congress run away with the agenda, and gainsaying Mr Emanuel’s advice to Mr Obama to get tough with his internal opponents. This naïve act of manipulation has brought its own counter-counterattack, with an anti-Emanuel pundit drawing a comparison with our own Prime Minister and ridiculing the idea that Mr Obama should start bullying people too.
The root of the problem seems to be the management of expectations. The magnificent campaign created the notion that Mr Obama could walk on water. Oddly enough, he can’t. That was more Mr Axelrod’s fault than Mr Emanuel’s. And, to be fair to Mr Emanuel, any advice he has been giving the President to impose his will on Congress is probably well founded. The $783 billion stimulus package of a year ago was used to further the re-election prospects of many congressmen, not to do good for the country. America’s politics remain corrupt, populated by nonentities whose main concern once elected is to stay elected; it seems to be the same the whole world over. Even this self-interested use of the stimulus package appears to have failed, however. Every day, it seems, another Democrat congressman announces that he will not be fighting the mid-term elections scheduled for November 2. The health care Bill, apparently so humane in intent, is being “scrubbed” (to use the terminology of one Republican) by its opponents, to the joy of millions of middle Americans who see it as a means to waste more public money and entrench socialism. For the moment, this is a country vibrant with anger.
A thrashing of the Democrats in the mid-terms would not necessarily be the beginning of the end for Mr Obama: Bill Clinton was re-elected two years after the Republicans swept the House and the Senate in November 1994. But Mr Clinton was an operator in a way Mr Obama patently is not. His lack of experience, his dependence on rhetoric rather than action, his disconnection from the lives of many millions of Americans all handicap him heavily. It is not about whose advice he is taking: it is about him grasping what is wrong with America, and finding the will to put it right. That wasted first year, however, is another boulder hanging from his neck: what is wrong needs time to put right. The country’s multi-trillion dollar debt is barely being addressed; and a country engaged in costly foreign wars has a President who seems obsessed with anything but foreign policy – as a disregarded Britain is beginning to realise.
There are lessons from the stumbling of Mr Obama for our own country as we approach a general election. Vacuous promises of change are hostages to fortune if they cannot be delivered upon to improve the living conditions of a people. The slickness of campaigning that comes from a combination of heavy funding and public relations expertise does not inevitably translate into an ability to govern. There is no point a nation’s having the audacity of hope unless it also has the sophistication and the will to turn it into action. As things stand, Barack Obama and America under his leadership do not.
And that’s my easy “cut and paste” Reetzality for the Day.
President Obama, looking to recoup billions in expected losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, will announce a plan Thursday to impose fees on the country’s biggest financial institutions, a senior administration official told CNN. The fee on financial institutions would raise up to $120 billion to ensure that taxpayers who bailed out banks are paid back, the official said Tuesday. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, would not discuss on Monday how a possible bank fee would fit into Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget, but Gibbs said it is the president’s “goal” to ensure the “money that taxpayers put up will be paid back in full.” This information was reported by CNN.
Now here’s the tripe which is a Belgian’ dish that features cow stomachs as the main ingredient. Tripe is a synonym for Bologna or the other “B” term that means worthless untruth. Carry on.
As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world. The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.
The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the “2008 Financial Report of the United States Government” as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury.
The difference between the $455 billion “official” budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit cited by “2008 Financial Report of the United States Government” is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur. But the numbers in the 2008 report are calculated on a GAAP basis (“Generally Accepted Accounting Practices”) that include year-for-year changes in the net present value of unfunded liabilities in social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
Under cash accounting, the government makes no provision for future Social Security and Medicare benefits in the year in which those benefits accrue.
“As bad as 2008 was, the $455 billion budget deficit on a cash basis and the $5.1 trillion federal budget deficit on a GAAP accounting basis does not reflect any significant money [from] the financial bailout or Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which was approved after the close of the fiscal year,” economist John Williams, who publishes the Internet website Shadow Government Statistics, told WND. This is all according to those cited and Jerome R. Corsi for the WorldNetDaily.
Now to the Reetzality. President Obama is lying when he says he’s going to recoup the money for the taxpayers. What tells us this? Again, math and common sense. We are running a terrifying deficit and have built horrific debt numbers. Fatal numbers in Reetzality. Basic math and common sense reveal that nobody is getting paid back anything. Here’s the revealing analogy.
It is akin to lending your friend, maybe enemy is a better example, a thousand dollars. Then the friend goes and spends it all which concerns you, just like the American people are concerned about federal borrowing and spending. Then the friend goes and borrows more money from somebody else. Let’s say China or Japan or England is the “somebody else.” The friend spends all the money from the somebody else’s loan. Now the friend loans another somebody else (the banks) some of the money he got from the first somebody else (China, Japan, England) and actually gets some of it paid back, which your friend again spends. Then the friend decides to take some of the first somebody else’s (the banks’) money through extortion (the bank fees) and he gives it to a fourth somebody else (AIG, Chrysler and GM). Then you find out that the third somebody else, (the banks) which you work with, is going to raise your price because of the extortion (bank fees). Then your friend, (Obama) tells you that he’s getting some of your money back. Get it?
If you do, then you know your friend is definitely not getting some of your money back. What your friend is doing is slowing the rate at which he goes bankrupt and that, my readers, is not getting your money back. The audacity of this tripe is amazing.
Imagine a friend who is spiraling into bankruptcy, that you lent money to, telling you that he is getting some of your money back because he made a move which slows his descent into bankruptcy. That’s what Obama is doing. He’s lying. Blatantly. Or in the alternative, he’s entirely ignorant. Pick. And to make matters worse, he’s not even acknowledging that the bank fees are going to be passed on to the consumer and limit the availability of money which means tighter credit. So, going back to the analogy, the friend you lent money to is not only not paying you back, not only not getting in a better position to pay you back, but is also imposing additional costs on you, let’s call it a service fee for your loan. And I thought the borrower paid the service fees, not the lender? What do I know?
And he does this all with a straight face. I’ll give him this: The utter tripe is comical, down right laughable. Unfortunately, the consequences are terrifying and to make matters worse, more vile, because it’s not just us buffoons who have to pay the cost for our buffoonery, it’s our kids and their kids. And our kids aren’t buffoons, at least not yet. We’ll see if they, like us, pick folks who lead them to cliff and then over it. On the other hand, by the time our kids get their opportunity to pick an ignorant lemming to lead them, there may not be much downside, they’ll likely be starting from the bottom with no other cliffs to be led off of. I think we owe our children an apology. Obama owes us a resignation. Most of Washington does.
Post Script: I apologize for the meek output of late. I am working on a new format where I will be uploading my Reetzalities in video form. We’ll see how you like me in person.
