One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. – Plato
Do not disgrace the very ground our founders and our ancestors died for. Vote like your life depends on it, because it does.
(H/T KG)
Every once in a while, they slip up, and tell you what they are really thinking…and we should be worried.
I have been fretting since I realized some three months ago that the Republicans are going to take control of the Senate as well as the House, and Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are going to be ‘the leadership’ for the country. How scary is it to know that the two branches of the same party (Big Government) are sparring so as to appear to be enemies? How scary is it to know that we are moving from the whips and electric cattle prods of Nancy and Harry’s regime to the velvet gloved iron fist of McConnell and Boehner?
McConnell’s comment to National Journal and Boehner’s ‘compromise’ on tax cuts only highlights what we all know to be true about the District of Criminals; it’s all about retaining power and control – not taking care of the country whose wealth has been drained and capital sent overseas.
If Americans want real change in Washington, Sen. Jim DeMint and Rep. Ron Paul should be the leadership team to push the agenda that demands a rollback of 100 years of progressive nudge and stops the ‘global governance’ crowd from delivering a fatal blow to America’s sovereignty through debt.
A McConnell/Boehner team is not written in stone; it’s just more District of Criminals ‘business as usual’.
Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”
Writing in the September issue of Finance and Development, a journal of the International Monetary Fund, Prof. Kotlikoff says the IMF itself has quietly confirmed that the U.S. is in terrible fiscal trouble – far worse than the Washington-based lender of last resort has previously acknowledged. “The U.S. fiscal gap is huge,” the IMF asserted in a June report. “Closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 per cent of U.S. GDP.”
McConnell and Boehner are creatures of Congress who are not driven by any desire to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
McConnell frets, however, about controlling expectations among tea party activists likely to want—and quite possibly demand—that bigger GOP numbers in Congress produce big things: a swift repeal of the health care reform law; a massive U-turn on federal spending; and immediate action to reduce the national debt. Tea party darling and likely freshman mover-and-shaker Marco Rubio of Florida, for instance, summed up the movement’s ax-wielding gusto in July: “Every day we postpone acting decisively to rein in wasteful spending and cut the debt, we pile even more on the backs of millions of young Americans.”
In one sign of conditional unity, Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who backed many tea party candidates in open defiance of McConnell and other GOP leaders, says he isn’t spoiling for a leadership fight. But note the qualification. “I have no intention of challenging the leadership,” DeMint told National Journal. “What I have done over the last year has ruffled a lot of feathers in our conference. The chance of me getting the votes is not realistic at this point.” But DeMint says that Senate Republicans must change the way they approach spending and do it soon, or tea party activists will lose faith and rebel even more.
“We have to understand, this is not so much a Republican victory.… I see it more as a realignment of American politics,” DeMint said. “We’re going to have more Republicans, and the composition is going to be more of a limited-government idea. The biggest challenge we have is to change the idea that senators are here to do what is best for their states, to get all they can for their states and the interests operating in their states.”
And this is where DeMint is spoiling for a confrontation. He wants Republicans to cut spending no matter what effect those reductions have on their home-state constituents. He says this would be a “definitional” culture shift among Republicans, and he considers the pledge made by all the Senate GOP candidates—including relative moderates such as Mark Kirk of Illinois and Carly Fiorina of California—to adopt the no-earmarks policy the beginning of that change. DeMint sees earmarks as a symptom of a deeper problem: the structural bias for more discretionary spending and the clout that comes with it.
To reverse that trend, DeMint wants to upend generations of bipartisan logrolling. What’s his ask? That GOP leaders permanently exclude themselves from the Appropriations Committee, which allocates non-entitlement spending. If that rule had been in place during this Congress, three GOP leaders would have been kicked off Appropriations—McConnell, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. “If we are going to cut spending, we have to take the power away from those responsible for spending,” DeMint says. “We have to say no to a power base that can be corrupting over time, not in the sense of anything criminal, but in the sense that your focus is spending and not cutting.”
McConnell was icily noncommittal about DeMint’s idea: “We will debate any rule changes brought before the conference.” Kyl is downright opposed. “That suggests there’s something wrong with [the current system],” he said. DeMint’s point is that there is, in fact, something wrong with the current system. Thus, Senate Republicans may find themselves divided over their own rules even before they begin to grapple with Obama over spending, tax rates, or entitlements.
I’m worried…
UPDATE: I’m even more worried now. Chuck Schumer as the Senate Leader?
From Drudge, 10.28.2010
WARNING: AC/DC ‘THUNDERSTRUCK’ BACKGROUND MUSIC – EXPLICIT NATURE, EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
Keep telling yourself that Kathleen. We’ll see you in November!
There could be so many different titles for this post but I think sticking with congressional hearings for all is proper, since the only people that know this bill isn’t a done deal are the dems. They are racing around trying to make everyone believe that Obamacare is the ‘law of the land’. It may be for a short period of time, but Obamacare as the law of the land for any length of time is a fantasy. Why else would Chuck Schumer be telling people that anybody that voted against it is going to lose in November? That statement goes well beyond anything anybody smokin’ crack and living in ‘my little pony’ world would ever think to say.
“I predict that by November those who voted for healthcare will find it an asset and those who voted against it will find it a liability,” Schumer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” – Chuck Schumer
The corporate damage rolls in, and Democrats are shocked!
It’s been a banner week for Democrats: ObamaCare passed Congress in its final form on Thursday night, and the returns are already rolling in. Yesterday AT&T announced that it will be forced to make a $1 billion writedown due solely to the health bill, in what has become a wave of such corporate losses.
This wholesale destruction of wealth and capital came with more than ample warning. Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or “political.”
Perhaps that explains why the Administration is now so touchy. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke took to the White House blog to write that while ObamaCare is great for business, “In the last few days, though, we have seen a couple of companies imply that reform will raise costs for them.” In a Thursday interview on CNBC, Mr. Locke said “for them to come out, I think is premature and irresponsible.”
Meanwhile, Henry Waxman and House Democrats announced yesterday that they will haul these companies in for an April 21 hearing because their judgment “appears to conflict with independent analyses, which show that the new law will expand coverage and bring down costs.”
In other words, shoot the messenger. Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations immediately restate their earnings to reflect the present value of their long-term health liabilities, including a higher tax burden. Should these companies have played chicken with the Securities and Exchange Commission to avoid this politically inconvenient reality? Democrats don’t like what their bill is doing in the real world, so they now want to intimidate CEOs into keeping quiet.
On top of AT&T’s $1 billion, the writedown wave so far includes Deere & Co., $150 million; Caterpillar, $100 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; and Valero Energy, up to $20 million. Verizon has also warned its employees about its new higher health-care costs, and there will be many more in the coming days and weeks.
The original story from 3.25.2010:
Make sure to check the related links below.
Americans are such a flock of dumb farm animals that the Dems have to take the show on the road to sell us on what this healthcare bill is going to do ‘for us’ even though no one is going to see jacksh** except taxes and IRS agents for years. If dumb farm animals on the left want to keep believing that this bill is anything but a revenue stream put in place to keep the government afloat for a bit longer, please go right ahead. Tea Party Patriots will be flipping this Congress in 8 short months and repealing this POS bill ASAP.
A note to Bahana C. Obama: Puleeeezzze keep talking about healthcare right up until the midterms! Anything you have to continue to sell after it has been passed and signed into law MUST be mana from heaven.
WASHINGTON – President Obama starts a victory lap on health care Tuesday, signing it into law at a White House lawn party – and hitting the road to sell it to the American people.
That may be the tough part. A national CNN poll last night found Americans opposed the bill 59% to 39%. A majority fear it will cost them money while giving government too much power.
Sen. John McCain mocked “champagne toasting” at the White House and pledged a dragged-out fight. “Outside the Beltway, the American people are very angry” with the bill, McCain said. “They don’t like it, and we’re going to repeal this.”
Democrats professed not to fear voter backlash.
“When people see what the bill actually does, they will see that it helps them in more ways than they might have realized,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
All the House members who voted for the bill, and “even some that didn’t,” were invited to a signing ceremony this morning on the White House South Lawn, press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Even as Senate Republicans dug in to block a package of adjustments to the bill and bring down the whole effort, Obama will begin the big sell to families and small businesses in Iowa City, where he first outlined his health care reform vision in 2007.
Gibbs said the Iowa stop will be the first of many to build up health care as a shield against the GOP drive to target Dems who voted “yes” and take back Congress in the fall elections.
“I assume the President will talk about health care for a long time,” Gibbs said.
Here’s hoping that more of the Democratic Party Leadership continues on the path they have forged and back candidates that believe their message of Hope and Change.
Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) issued a statement on Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts and wants us to believe that the ocean hasn’t gone out before the tsunami. As chairman of the DSCC, one can hope that they really do believe that this election was an aberration, and all just wander down to the shoreline and stick their heads in the sand.
DSCC CHAIRMAN ROBERT MENENDEZ STATEMENT ON ELECTION RESULTS IN MASSACHUSETTS
U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, released the following statement on the results of the special election in Massachusetts:
“I have no interest in sugar coating what happened in Massachusetts. There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient. The truth is Democrats understand the economic anger voters feel, that’s in large part why we did well in 2006 and 2008.
Democrats understand the economic anger? Not likely; look at the amount of spending in the first year of Obama’s reign.
“In the days ahead, we will sort through the lessons of Massachusetts: the need to redouble our efforts on the economy, the need to show that our commitment to real change is as powerful as it was in 2008, and the reality that we cannot take a single thing for granted and cannot afford even a second of complacency.
Redouble their efforts? We are dead.
“We must be aggressive in defining our opponents and framing the choice voters face. We cannot be timid about staking out our ground and we must be strong in reminding voters the cost of what the Republicans did on their watch and that they remain on the side of Wall Street, and the special interests.
There it is; it’s Capitalism’s fault.
Here is the very best part of his statement. As always, emphasis is mine.
“But it is important to keep in mind that today’s special election in Massachusetts was just that: a special election, with a whole host of circumstances that are unique. I would caution against taking a single unique election and extrapolating what it means for the midterms ten months away.”
A reminder and a request:
