ASSOCIATED PRESS Sculptor Istvan Mate puts some finishing touches on his statue of former President Ronald Reagan, which will be unveiled in Budapest on Wednesday. The bronze statue will stand in the city’s Freedom Square.
By Gary P Jackson
As we continue to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth, and remember the positive impact we have world wide, her's yet another tribute to one of the most monumental accomplishments of Reagan's, the fall of the Soviet Union, and communism. as a major force.
BUDAPEST — A larger-than-life (7 feet, 2 inches tall) bronze likeness of former President Ronald Reagan will stand in Freedom Square in this historic city - which he never visited, but which is the first in the former Eastern bloc to erect a statue in recognition of his role in dismantling the Soviet empire.
It will be unveiled by Prime Minister Victor Orban, leader of Hungary’s conservative government. The Hungarians, according to a recent government statement, "will always remember with gratitude the unchallengeable role played by the United States and President Reagan in bringing the Cold War to a conclusion, and for the fact that Hungary regained its sovereignty in the process."
The powerful work by Hungarian sculptor Istvan Mate captures the president in mid-stride, as though walking across Szabadsag (Freedom Square) to the Hungarian parliament a couple blocks away. Along with the issuance of Reagan commemorative stamps by the Hungarian post office, the statue marks the centennial of the 40th president’s birth. In Prague, the Czechs are naming a downtown street after him, but no statue.
Mr. Mate never met Reagan but he based his likeness on photos. The artist recently told the Associated Press that he had to work quickly to finish the statue in time. The commission came from the Orban government (with support from the California-based Reagan Foundation) after the center-right Fidesz party’s victory in the April 2010 election. The socialist government that had been in power for the previous eight years was hardly likely to have ordered such a tribute - particularly since there already is a bust of Reagan in Budapest, unveiled less than five years ago.
A large screen has been set up to show scenes from Reagan’s life during Wednesday’s unveiling, at which former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Edwin Meese, Reagan’s attorney general, were due to speak.
But some noted that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who famously hailed the former communist satrapies as "the New Europe" for supporting the Iraq War (as opposed to "the Old Europe," which did not), was not on the list of U.S. guests.
A statue to Reagan in Budapest is likely to irritate the Russians, but there has been no comment out of Moscow. The Hungarians have a history of angering the Russians. There was the abortive uprising in 1956, of course, and after the Cold War the Hungarians and other East Europeans angered the Russians by the alacrity with which they joined NATO, the old enemy.
It is not lost on ordinary Hungarians that the Reagan statue will have a far less popular neighbor in the shape of a 40-foot-high obelisk commemorating Soviet troops who died in Hungary fighting the Nazis during World War II. The Hungarians would like it moved to a less prominent location, but that would deeply offend Russia.
The week’s schedule of events in Budapest requires a delicate choreography of U.S. high-level visitors because the day following the unveiling Ms. Rice’s successor will also be in town. In Budapest for talks with Mr. Orban, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is also expected to attend the opening Thursday of an institute of human rights named after the late Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who was born in Hungary.
More like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with this bunch!
At what should be the happiest, most wonderfully magical time of the year, a great evil has gripped the nation. The most corrupt Congress in our nation’s history in lockstep with the most corrupt and evil man to ever step foot in the Oval Office are committing acts that amount to no less than treason.
As we wrote earlier, in a piece entitled Death of the Republic, some serious maneuvering by Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid slipped some language into the already grossly unconstitutional Obamacare fiasco that would prohibit future Congresses from making changes or repealing key measures of this legislation.
As you can imagine, the outrage over this is through the roof nationwide.
Ironically, and well...even laughably, this provision that Reid and the other communists want to make sure is never, ever modified, or repealed, is the very death panel that the communists and their lap dogs in the corrupt, Obamacentric media have been working night and day, with almost superhuman effort, to convince the public that it never existed!!
It was even deemed "lie of the year" by the radical left wing media!
Sarah has now weighed in on the subject:
Midnight Votes, Backroom Deals, and a Death Panel
Last weekend while you were preparing for the holidays with your family, Harry Reid’s Senate was making shady backroom deals to ram through the Democrat health care take-over. The Senate ended debate on this bill without even reading it. That and midnight weekend votes seem to be standard operating procedures in D.C. No one is certain of what’s in the bill, but Senator Jim DeMint spotted one shocking revelation regarding the section in the bill describing the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (now called the Independent Payment Advisory Board), which is a panel of bureaucrats charged with cutting health care costs on the backs of patients – also known as rationing. Apparently Reid and friends have changed the rules of the Senate so that the section of the bill dealing with this board can’t be repealed or amended without a 2/3 supermajority vote. Senator DeMint said:
"This is a rule change. It’s a pretty big deal. We will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law. I’m not even sure that it’s constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a senate rule. I don’t see why the majority party wouldn’t put this in every bill. If you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force for future senates. I mean, we want to bind future congresses. This goes to the fundamental purpose of senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future congresses."
In other words, Democrats are protecting this rationing "death panel" from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to "bend the cost curve" and keep health care spending down?
The Congressional Budget Office seems to think that such rationing has something to do with cost. In a letter to Harry Reid last week, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf noted (with a number of caveats) that the bill’s calculations call for a reduction in Medicare’s spending rate by about 2 percent in the next two decades, but then he writes the kicker:
"It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care."
Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call "death panels" the "lie of the year," this type of rationing – what the CBO calls "reduc[ed] access to care" and "diminish[ed] quality of care" – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.
This health care bill is one of the most far-reaching and expensive expansions of the role of government into our lives. We’re talking about putting one-seventh of our economy under the government’s thumb. We’re also talking about something as intimate to our personal well-being as medical care.
This bill is so unpopular that people on the right and the left hate it. So why go through with it? The Senate is planning to vote on this on Christmas Eve. Why the rush? Though we will begin paying for this bill immediately, we will see no benefits for years. (That’s the trick that allowed the CBO to state that the bill won’t grow the deficit for the next ten years.)
The administration’s promises of transparency and bipartisanship have been broken one by one. This entire process has been defined by midnight votes on weekends, closed-door meetings with industry lobbyists, and payoffs to politicians willing to sell their principles for sweetheart deals. Is it any wonder that Americans are so disillusioned with their leaders in Washington?
This is about politics, not health care. Americans don’t want this bill. Americans don’t like this bill. Washington has stopped listening to us. But we’re paying attention, and 2010 is coming.
I love this woman! The radical communist scumbags in the media, Congress, and the White House keep saying she's crazy with the death panel talk, trying to intimidate her, and she comes right back and shoves it up their asses!
BOOM, taste my nightstick!
Sarah, of course, is correct here. This is all about politics and nothing about health care. This is an evil, wicked thing that is being visited on the American people as we get ready to celebrate the birth of Christ, our Lord and Savior.
At the end of her note, Sarah references an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal that must be read:
Change Nobody Believes In
A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve. And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.
Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.
Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce.
The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that "reform" has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.
***
• Health costs. From the outset, the White House's core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they're sticking to that story. "Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills," Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.
The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.
These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like "community rating" because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.
As for the White House's line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed "waste," even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. "The oft-heard promise 'we will find out what works and what does not' scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice," the Stanford professor wrote.
• Steep declines in choice and quality. This is all of a piece with the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go.
This centralized system means above all fewer choices; what works for the political class must work for everyone. With formerly private insurers converted into public utilities, for instance, they'll inevitably be banned from selling products like health savings accounts that encourage more cost-conscious decisions.
Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so "substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance" that companies like WellPoint might need to "be considered part of the federal budget."
With so large a chunk of the economy and medical practice itself in Washington's hands, quality will decline. Ultimately, "our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all," as Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier recently wrote in our pages. Take the $2 billion annual tax—rising to $3 billion in 2018—that will be leveled against medical device makers, among the most innovative U.S. industries. Democrats believe that more advanced health technologies like MRI machines and drug-coated stents are driving costs too high, though patients and their physicians might disagree.
"The Senate isn't hearing those of us who are closest to the patient and work in the system every day," Brent Eastman, the chairman of the American College of Surgeons, said in a statement for his organization and 18 other speciality societies opposing ObamaCare. For no other reason than ideological animus, doctor-owned hospitals will face harsh new limits on their growth and who they're allowed to treat. Physician Hospitals of America says that ObamaCare will "destroy over 200 of America's best and safest hospitals."
• Blowing up the federal fisc. Even though Medicare's unfunded liabilities are already about 2.6 times larger than the entire U.S. economy in 2008, Democrats are crowing that ObamaCare will cost "only" $871 billion over the next decade while fantastically reducing the deficit by $132 billion, according to CBO.
Yet some 98% of the total cost comes after 2014—remind us why there must absolutely be a vote this week—and most of the taxes start in 2010. That includes the payroll tax increase for individuals earning more than $200,000 that rose to 0.9 from 0.5 percentage points in Mr. Reid's final machinations. Job creation, here we come.
Other deceptions include a new entitlement for long-term care that starts collecting premiums tomorrow but doesn't start paying benefits until late in the decade. But the worst is not accounting for a formula that automatically slashes Medicare payments to doctors by 21.5% next year and deeper after that. Everyone knows the payment cuts won't happen but they remain in the bill to make the cost look lower. The American Medical Association's priority was eliminating this "sustainable growth rate" but all they got in return for their year of ObamaCare cheerleading was a two-month patch snuck into the defense bill that passed over the weekend.
The truth is that no one really knows how much ObamaCare will cost because its assumptions on paper are so unrealistic. To hide the cost increases created by other parts of the bill and transfer them onto the federal balance sheet, the Senate sets up government-run "exchanges" that will subsidize insurance for those earning up to 400% of the poverty level, or $96,000 for a family of four in 2016. Supposedly they would only be offered to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses.
As Eugene Steuerle of the left-leaning Urban Institute points out, this system would treat two workers with the same total compensation—whatever the mix of cash wages and benefits—very differently. Under the Senate bill, someone who earned $42,000 would get $5,749 from the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage but $12,750 in the exchange. A worker making $60,000 would get $8,310 in the exchanges but only $3,758 in the current system.
For this reason Mr. Steuerle concludes that the Senate bill is not just a new health system but also "a new welfare and tax system" that will warp the labor market. Given the incentives of these two-tier subsidies, employers with large numbers of lower-wage workers like Wal-Mart may well convert them into "contractors" or do more outsourcing. As more and more people flood into "free" health care, taxpayer costs will explode.
• Political intimidation. The experts who have pointed out such complications have been ignored or dismissed as "ideologues" by the White House. Those parts of the health-care industry that couldn't be bribed outright, like Big Pharma, were coerced into acceding to this agenda. The White House was able to, er, persuade the likes of the AMA and the hospital lobbies because the federal government will control 55% of total U.S. health spending under ObamaCare, according to the Administration's own Medicare actuaries.
Others got hush money, namely Nebraska's Ben Nelson. Even liberal Governors have been howling for months about ObamaCare's unfunded spending mandates: Other budget priorities like education will be crowded out when about 21% of the U.S. population is on Medicaid, the joint state-federal program intended for the poor. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman calculates that ObamaCare will result in $2.5 billion in new costs for his state that "will be passed on to citizens through direct or indirect taxes and fees," as he put it in a letter to his state's junior Senator.
So in addition to abortion restrictions, Mr. Nelson won the concession that Congress will pay for 100% of Nebraska Medicaid expansions into perpetuity. His capitulation ought to cost him his political career, but more to the point, what about the other states that don't have a Senator who's the 60th vote for ObamaCare?
***
"After a nearly century-long struggle we are on the cusp of making health-care reform a reality in the United States of America," Mr. Obama said on Saturday. He's forced to claim the mandate of "history" because he can't claim the mandate of voters. Some 51% of the public is now opposed, according to National Journal's composite of all health polling. The more people know about ObamaCare, the more unpopular it becomes.
The tragedy is that Mr. Obama inherited a consensus that the health-care status quo needs serious reform, and a popular President might have crafted a durable compromise that blended the best ideas from both parties. A more honest and more thoughtful approach might have even done some good. But as Mr. Obama suggested, the Democratic old guard sees this plan as the culmination of 20th-century liberalism.
So instead we have this vast expansion of federal control. Never in our memory has so unpopular a bill been on the verge of passing Congress, never has social and economic legislation of this magnitude been forced through on a purely partisan vote, and never has a party exhibited more sheer political willfulness that is reckless even for Washington or had more warning about the consequences of its actions.
These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command-and-control regulation, in which bureaucracy trumps innovation and transfer payments are more important than private investment and individual decisions. In short, the Obama Democrats have chosen change nobody believes in—outside of themselves—and when it passes America will be paying for it for decades to come.
This health care bill is a complete and total disaster for the nation. It destroys the Republic forever. In this writer’s opinion, anyone who puts their name to this legislation is guilty of treason and deserves the harshest penalties allowed by law.
One last thing, as both Sarah and myself mentioned death panels here, I just got an e-mail linking to a nice piece from the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, that backs up what we’ve been writing about here, and Sarah has been saying from the start:
Death Panels? Sarah Palin Was Right
Posted by Alan Reynolds
PolitiFact.com gave Sarah Palin their "Lie of the Year" award for warning on August 7 that the Democrat’s idea of "cost containment" implied rationing by "death panels."
The self-described fact-checking web site of the St. Petersburg Times claimed Palin was criticizing a provision in the House bill under which "Medicare would pay for doctors’ appointments for patients to discuss living wills, health care directives and other end-of-life issues."
The claim that Governor Palin confused one-on-one counseling between doctors and patients with any sort of "panel" was always ridiculous on its face. Indeed, that claim should itself have been a leading candidate for "Lie of the Year." Yet Palin’s critics kept on equating death panels with counseling throughout the year, as though they could not even begin to understand plain English.
In a column called "Reporting the Lies," Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein wrote, "Before Sarah Palin talked about death panels, no one knew about Sen. Johnny Isakson’s quiet crusade to persuade Medicare beneficiaries to adopt living wills."
Adopting a living will requires a lawyer, not a doctor, so there must have been more to the crusade than just that. There is some reason to wonder if the crusaders intended to promote penny-pinching advice like President Obama’s famous suggestion that perhaps grandma should skip the expensive operation and take a cheap pain pill instead (generic, of course).
In any case, no single physician’s advice involves any panel, deathly or otherwise. Palin was clearly worried about rationing by some government-appointed group, panel or board of experts — such the (currently) powerless panel that recently suggested fewer and later breast exams, or the Senate bill’s potentially more lethal Independent Payment Advisory Board
The shameless hoax that Palin had confused individual consulting with rationing by a panel was repeated endlessly. By November, the Washington Post was treating this obvious canard as an established fact: "Proposed health-care reform legislation includes a provision that allows Medicare to pay for "end-of-life" counseling for seniors and their families who request it. The provision — which Sarah Palin erroneously described as "death panels" for seniors — nearly derailed President Obama’s health-care initiative."
How could anyone believe Palin’s sensible comment about rationing was, in reality, a senseless fear of counseling? To say so was no mistake; it was an oft-repeated big lie.
Rather than even mentioning the House bill, Palin linked to an interesting speech by "Rep. Michele Bachmann [which] highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff."
Dr. Emmanuel’s varied and murky remarks about using panels of experts (like himself) to ration health care are less clear or less candid than those of another bioethicist, Peter Singer of Princeton. Singer’s article, "Why We Must Ration Health Care," was a cover feature in The New York Times Magazine on July 15 — shortly before Palin took the opposing side of this issue.
Singer’s argument (about an expensive anti-cancer drug) is that, "If there is any point at which you say, ‘No, an extra six months [of life] isn’t worth that much,’ then you think that health care should be rationed." But the question itself is rhetorical trickery, sophistry. Even if there was certain knowledge about life expectancy with or without some treatment (which is never true), Singer has no right to any opinion about how much an extra six months of my life is worth (and vice-versa) unless he’s paying the bills.
But that, of course, is what makes the proposed expansion of insurance subsidies and Medicaid so ominous. Just as federal politicians imagine that a small minority stake in some bank entitles them to override all other stockholders when it comes to executive pay, federal politicians would surely claim that even small subsidies for anyone’s health insurance entitle them to, as Singer put it, set "limits on which treatments should be paid for." And those politicians would surely appoint panels of experts as cover when some life-saving procedure, device or drug was ruled-out for those with insufficient quality-adjusted years left to live.
Singer wrote, quite correctly, that in "Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits. . . [and] low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients." [emphasis added]
Pending health care bills would make such government-mandated scarcity of health care much worse. There would be massive shifting of money away from Medicare toward Medicaid. But the extra Medicaid money would be spread around more thinly. States would cut benefits to the poor in order to accommodate millions of new, less-poor people lured into Medicaid, at least half of whom (7 or 8 million by my estimate) currently have employer-provided health insurance.
The Senate health bill supposedly intends to slash Medicare payment rates for physicians by 21% next year and more in future years, with permanent reductions in payments to other medical services too. It would also establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board which would be empowered to make deeper cuts which Congress could reject only with considerable difficulty. If that’s not quite a "death panel" it would surely not be pro-life in its impact.
Actually, it’s clear enough that the proposed Medicare cuts won’t be achieved, but that efforts in that direction will nonetheless reduce access to care and diminish its quality. The government can’t boost demand and cut prices without creating excess demand. And that, in turn, means rationing by longer waiting lines and by panels (rationing boards) making life-or death decisions for other people.
As Sarah Palin predicted, "Government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course."
As the CATO Institute points out so well, Sarah is right, as usual. The chronically ill, old folks, and, of course, the disabled are royally screwed here. Evil men like Dr Ezekiel Emanuel have already written the book on these death panels, and it's all based on who is deemed "productive to society." This is as evil as it gets. This is a few psychopaths playing God with Americans' lives.
Below is the original poster the modified one above came from. In Nazi Germany, the government worked overtime to convince it's people that some lives just weren't worth living and should be extinguished. They even went so far as to point out how much keeping what they termed "useless eaters" alive cost each and every German. They got this thinking from the American "progressive" movement, by the way.
Sarah Palin brings this home to me, through her beautiful son Trig. Thanks to the American "progressive" (liberal) movement and immoral groups like Planned Parenthood, a group started by Klu Klux Klanner Margaret Sanger, as a way of Negro population control...she called blacks "human weeds"...,we now abort fully 90 percent of all Downs Syndrome babies.
As our friend Adrienne Ross points out: "Trig is a testimony to the beauty and value of all God's children." There is simply no way you can look at this beautiful boy and not see that he is a blessing and a true gift. He brings much joy to his family, and inspiration to other families with Downs Syndrome children.
It breaks one's heart that so many children like Trig never are allowed to experience life because the "progressives" are carrying out a jihad against all children with disabilities. They are attempting to desensitize and dehumanize all of mankind.
Sorry to be so long winded here, but lets face it, this is the most sweeping, and the most dangerous legislation ever proposed by Congress and a President. This is pure and absolute evil. Nothing less. The men and women who have signed on to this destruction of America, and her peoples need to be dealt with in the harshest manner humanly possible. They are all traitors.
There was one bit of sanity in Congress though as freshman Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith did something very rare, he switched parties. From Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air:
Usually one does not see Congressmen or Senators flipping parties to join the minority. However, Politico’s Josh Kraushaar has a scoop that Blue Dog Democrat Parker Griffith of Alabama, a freshman in Congress, has seen enough of Nancy Pelosi’s leadership. He will join Republicans in a move that has far more symbolic than substantive impact — for now.
This is a fascinating story. It is rare to see folks switch parties, and switching to the minority party is virtually unheard of. This is a very strong statement about the state of the democrat/communist party.
Congressman Griffith is a doctor BTW. I imagine that had a lot to do with his switching parties and fighting so hard against all of this. I know from speaking with my doctors and their staff, that this pending evil is not wanted in any way, shape, or form.
Sarah was quick to welcome Congressman Griffith aboard via Twitter:
Congratulations Alabama!And all Americans concerned about Capitol Hill's current agenda;Rep Parker Griffith just did the right thing.Welcome
We are proud to welcome him to the fight as well.
I want to leave everyone with this reminder from the Great Ronald Reagan on the dangers of allowing government to take over health care and what their real end game is:
Our nation is no longer a Representative Republic, it has officially become a communist dictatorship. Our United States Constitution has been rendered null and void. After 233 years of being the shining city on a hill, the bright beacon of liberty and freedom to all of the world, the lights have been extinguished.
Great evil has gripped our nation in the form of the most corrupt President and the most corrupt Congress in our nation’s history. The democrat/communist party has succeeded where the British (twice) The French, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union failed. They have destroyed the United States.
This didn’t happen overnight. This has been over 100 years in the making. With the advent of the progressive movement, what many label as liberalism, there has been an incredible effort to fundamentally change our nation from a Representative Republic, a Constitutional form of government, to a centrally planned, command and control type of communist dictatorship.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did more to destroy the fabric of this society than any other President in history, that is until Barack Obama came along. Roosevelt, like Obama today, took office during an economic recession. And like Obama, Roosevelt used this opportunity as an excuse to greatly remake government.
Roosevelt, like Obama, bullied corporations, took over banks, business concerns, tried to dictate salaries, replace CEOs and many other unconstitutional activities. So rabid was the lust to change America from a free nation to his vison of a command and control form of government, that FDR even threatened the Supreme Court with the notion of adding to it’s size a number of justices so as to delude any attempt to overrule his authority. Something a President is allowed to do, with the advice and consent of Congress.
The major concern of the day, as it is now, was joblessness. We were in a deep recession, much worse than now. Roosevelt’s solution, predictably, was all sorts of government control, regulation, and over all heavy handed meddling. In other words, the free market system was all but abandoned. The result? A serious recession, one that could have been turned around, became what is now known as The Great Depression.
How do I know that recession could have been turned around? Well, it was no worse than the recession America faced in the 1970's under both Ford and Carter. Ronald Reagan was able to come in and through common sense, and Conservative principles, turn it all around. It took some time, and most of Reagan’s first term still saw rough economic waters, but he ended up creating the greatest peace time economic growth in our nation’s history.
Now this not to say that all of Roosevelt’s programs were bad. We got things like government backing for our banking system: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC, was born as a result of the economic collapse, for example. However, most of Roosevelt’s plans were rooted in the ideology of socialism and communism. (Basically the same thing)
Roosevelt instituted massive federal work programs, CCC camps for youth, and so on. Yes, it got people back to work, and many landmark buildings, bridges, dams, and other outstanding projects came about, but in the process, the free market system was all but abandoned. This ended up delaying economic recovery for a decade.
Economists will argue about this until the end of time, but many feel that it was only because of World War II that the American economy eventually recovered. It was most certainly afterward when things got back to where they should be.
One of the other things to come out of the Imperial Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt is the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. Before Roosevelt, Presidents lived by the example set by our first President George Washington.
As you may, or may not know, after the Revolution, Congress, and the people, were quite ready to make Washington king. He refused. In fact, it is said that King George III, ruler of England asked American artist Benjamin West what would Washington do after Great Britain acknowledged the nation’s independence. Would he take his Army and create a government? West reportedly told King George no, that Washington would probably go back to his farm. The king scoffed, then went on to say that if he did that, he would be the greatest man alive.
Presidents ever since had respected that tradition, until Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt, who like Obama, controlled the media, the information, was elected to two terms, then an unprecedented third term, and an alarming fourth term. Only death ended what had become a defacto dictatorship.
Even though Roosevelt's policies were dangerous to the Republic and many did far more harm than good, through manipulation of the media, and strong propaganda campaigns, voters willingly kept voting for him.
Ever since the ratification of the 22nd Amendment, democrat/communists have been scheming for ways to take control through other means. Since they can’t just install a dictator for life in the oval office, they have sought to make Americans so dependent on government, rather than themselves, that the would always vote for those who would pledge to create and maintain this type of arrangement.
One of the most horrific notions created by Roosevelt is something straight out of Karl Marx’s play book of communist ideology. Roosevelt proposed a "Second Bill Of Rights." While I admit many of these things seem to be quite OK, on the surface, each and everyone requires you to totally and completely give away every single right and freedom that God gave you, and the Constitution guarantees you. They require you to submit every facet of your life to the command and control of the dictator.
Let’s take a listen to FDR’s propostion:
Now let’s take a look at some of these:
* The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation. OK, so the government is going to guarantee you a job. What if you want to work in one sort of field, but the government has a different idea for you? By the way, France "guarantees" jobs through legislation that makes it almost impossible to fire someone once you hire them. The results?
For one thing, unemployment is permanently in the double digits. It is incredibly high among the youth of the nation. Employers are incredibly reluctant to hire them. What if they turn out to be worthless? They’re stuck. Currently, President Sarkozy is struggling with new laws that allow for a probation period where younger workers can be hired, then fired, if things don’t work out. As expected, this is unpopular, and riots have been common.
Another issue is the fact that if you can’t fire someone, in keeping with human nature, those employees will tend to be less productive, less competent, because no matter what, they have a job for life. We see that in this country in union shops, and most especially in education, where teachers unions constructed a scheme where it is almost impossible to fire a lousy teacher.
The entire nation suffers under these type of systems.
Roosevelt mentions adequate food, clothes, and recreation. Who decides this? Who controls the "adequate" supply of food, clothes, and recreation?
I’m a bit of a gourmand eater. I like fine foods, right along side with my cheeseburgers, pizza, and burritos. There are many, especially in government, that bombard me, and 100's of millions of other Americans, daily, with propaganda that tells me all of this is bad. Will I be forced to exist on a diet of tofu and sprouts? Or just watery soup and day old bread, when they have it?
Every communist nation that guarantees food, has massive shortages, and starving citizens.
And what about clothes? Americans are rather fashion conscious. We like our blue jeans as well as our Armani suits. For me, a pair of shorts and a comfortable tee shirt is the uniform of the day, 365 days a year, unless there is an occasion. For others, they simply "must" be dressed in the finest bespoke attire, as nothing else would be "adequate" to their needs, wants, and desires. How do you think that would work out?
And what about recreation? Is that a day off? Is it free ticket to the movies? The baseball game? Or is it a certain amount of allotted TV or computer time? All of these can be considered recreation. Who decides?
I grew up at the drag strip. Drag raced motorcycles, and was blessed to be able to race nationwide because of the fruits of my labor, and a bit of help from sponsors. This has been and always will be my favorite form of recreation. I would love nothing more than to own a professional drag racing team, but alas, the yearly budget for a top NHRA team is north of $3 million. To me, "adequate" recreation would be owning one of these teams. For the millions who participate in drag racing, from the sportsman level to professional ranks, to the fans, this is their "adequate" recreation. Will Uncle Sugar by me a Top Fuel dragster? And if not, why not?
One of the things that makes the United States of America the greatest nation the world has ever known is freedom. In this country anyone can be anything they wish to be. Our history is filled with stories of men and women who have beat all the odds against them, poor education, physical and mental handicaps, poverty, even horrible prejudices, to became successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. This is because of freedom and liberty, a concept that was only a dream, and virtually unknown to mankind before America was founded. It was certainly something no government had ever embraced.
Of course, along with the freedom to succeed beyond all dreams, comes the possibility to fail spectacularly, and that’s as it should be. In fact, it’s necessary. It’s obvious that we learn from failure, it’s the necessary process mankind has used to develop since the beginning of time.
Since the beginning, man has sought to improve his life. He has invented all sorts of gadgets, schemes, tools, and so forth. Some have been lucky and just had their ideas work the first time. But generally all great inventions are birthed through a painful process of failure, before the success. More profound is the fact that often, through the process of learning what doesn’t work, completely new things are discovered, and new inventions come into being.
This is the same in business. Some businesses fail, some succeed. Our history is filled with great businessmen, captains of industry, who failed spectacularly, many times on multiple occasions, before becoming household names and fabulously successful. This didn't happen because they somehow blindly stumbled into success. No, this happened because through failure, for any number of reasons, these great men, and women, learned what worked, and most importantly, what didn’t work. This is vital.
Now under the communist system, and the current thinking of the democrat/communist party, certain businesses are deemed "too big to fail." This sets our entire system on it’s ear. It causes failures to be put on life support, sometimes indefinitely.
Several things happen when something becomes "too big to fail." The biggest change, when government comes along, is control. These once independent businesses now become micro-managed by government, usually by people who know absolutely nothing about business. These businesses are subject to the every whim of politicians. Sound and proven business practices go out the window.
With failure no longer an option, productivity, creativity, and profitability suffer, and ofttimes disappear. Worse, competitors who didn’t make the mistakes that caused the business to fail, are now at a disadvantage, because those propped up by government have the advantage.
As government has deemed something "too big to fail", all sound business practices disappear.
Government will operate at incredible loses, into infinity, to keep their pet industry on life support. Look at AMTRAK or pretty much any other mass transit system. They are incredible money losers. But politicians have deemed them "too big to fail". So billions annually are poured down that bottomless pit.
So what does this have to do with you? Well....under communism, government deems you "too big to fail." That of course is quite alluring and comforting to many who don’t understand the ramifications of this. I mean gee, no matter what happens, Uncle Sugar is going to take care of you:
Of course, for Uncle Sugar to be able to take care of your every need, he must take from those that produce, and give to those that don’t. One could think of Uncle Sugar as "Robin Hood" or a thief in the night.
The end result though is a poorer quality of life for everyone. You hear the communists talk constantly about "economic justice." It’s the same tired old class warfare the democrat/communist party has waged on success for a century. Their entire existence is based on making you hate people with money and success, rather than celebrate them. Their entire spiel is that somehow, by simply being successful, those "evil rich" have stolen YOUR future!
Of course, it doesn’t work that way, it’s not a zero-sum gain. There is no limit to economic growth. In other words, if I make a dollar, it doesn’t prevent someone else from also making a dollar. In fact, under capitalism, I must make a dollar, so I can spend it, for others to gain a dollar.
The communists infiltrated our schools decades ago, so the concept of all of this has been lost over time, only to be replaced with an inherent hatred for those more successful than others. We see it at every level.
We’ve seen a disturbing trend where games are played but no one keeps an official score, where there are no winners or losers, and everyone gets a trophy, just for showing up. This is counterintuitive to human nature, as man is instinctively competitive. But for the communist system to work, that must be dampened. It must be stifled.
Common sense tells us that competition is good. It breeds higher quality. Not only in business, with superior goods and services, but in life. It is that competitive spirit that founded this nation. It’s that competitive spirit that made man get off the couch and exercise so he could meet hot chicks!
Unfortunately, for the communist, the competitive spirit also thwarts their plans of domination over mankind. It’s that competitive spirit that will not allow man to have his freedom and liberty, once gained, to be stolen from him, without a fight.
This is why the communists seek to condition children to be less competitive. It just more of the charming evils they bring to the table with them.
Here are some more "rights" FDR proposed:
* The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.
Who determines what a "decent living" is? And what is a "decent living?" This discussion alone could last into eternity. For some, "decent" would be "three hots and a cot" for others nothing short of the "rock star" lifestyle will do. Fortunately, in America, you have the opportunity to have either one. Not the right, but the opportunity.
*The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad. Sounds good, where do I sign up!
How do we stop nations abroad from unfair practices? I can hear the anti-war protesters now! Instead of shouting "no war for oil" it’ll be "no war for unfair business practices!" Just doesn’t have that same ring, does it?
But just as it IS our nation’s policy to go to war over oil, it would necessarily be policy to go to war against nations that trade or compete unfairly on the open market.
Let me know how that turns out, I’ll wait here.
*The right of every family to a decent home.
Who decides what a "decent" home is. And what is "decent?" Is it a shotgun shack, a FEMA trailer, forty acres and a mule, or one of the McMansions that are popular among new home buyers in Texas? What if they run out of mules?
*The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. *The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.
That’s right, you too can become "too big to fail", and even too big to get sick!
*The right to a good education.
This is already an epic failure. We had good schools, led the world. Then Jimmy Carter came up with a central command and control system through the creation of the Department of Education during his presidency. The march to mediocrity thus began!
The bottom line on all of this is simple. In order for this Utopian system to come to pass, you must surrender all of your rights to the state. You must give up every semblance of freedom and liberty. You submit your life to the will of nameless, faceless bureaucrats who answer to no one.
Capitalism seeks to bring everyone up, to allow everyone the potential to experience unlimited growth and success, so long as they work for it. Under capitalism, there are no guarantees whatsoever, except the right to either spectacularly succeed, or fail, based on your own talent, and ambition.
Under communism, "economic justice" is sought. Those that produce are actually punished, sometimes greatly, for personal achievement. In an effort to "spread the wealth," those who have the drive, the spirit to excel are punished through confiscatory taxes, and other penalties for exceeding an artificial "limit to success" placed on them by government.
So unlike capitalism, where the goal is to allow success for all, in effect raising the standard of living for all people, communism, socialism, Marxism, whatever ism you want to call it, in effect, reduces the standard of living, the quality of life, for all.
Quite simply, where capitalism seeks to build up, communism seeks to tear down.
Communism is the ideology of destruction.
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
_____Winston Churchill
Just so you know, Roosevelt’s "Second Bill of Rights" the notion of them, have never went away. They are deeply rooted in communism, and all of the cool communists, like Barack Obama and his corrupt Congress, are embracing these ideas with gusto.
We are on the precipice of disaster in this nation. Our Constitution has been rendered null and void by the actions of this corrupt Congress. This isn’t the first America has faced destruction through communism. It’s just the first time it has seemingly succeeded.
In 1948 John Southerland, through his animated series Fun Facts About America, created a short film Make Mine Freedom. This film is just as prudent now, as it was then.
A bit of a side note, our friends over at Hillbuzz.org use the name "Dr Utopia," exclusively, when referring to Barack Obama. After watching the film, you’ll understand why!
So what the hell does this have to do with Jim DeMint?
Well....... it’s quite well known that the nation is solidly against the so-called "health care bill" that is on the eve of becoming the law of the land. Only one third of the nation supports this travesty. Obama and his corrupt democrat/communist Congress don’t care.
In fact, it looks like the 2010 elections are going to see the absolute destruction of the democrat/communist party at the ballot box. It’s going to be a disaster for them. They will lose both Houses of Congress, and their President may, if the right people are elected, face impeachment. They don’t care. This bill so destroys America as it is, so tears down the Republic, they feel it’s all worth it.
Oh, I know, some think that’s crazy talk. But what this health care legislation does is enslave the nation, and in their calculations will set up a system where they can gain permanent control.
Now I know that may not make sense. But look at programs like Social Security and Medicare Over time, they have become sacred. Democrat/communists have scared old people to death for decades by telling them "evil" Republicans were going to take away their goodies.
Ironically, this very legislation does just that! It cuts programs by a half trillion dollars. It will severely limit access to health care to those on Medicare.
The democrat/communists feel their way to permanent rule, and they want to rule, not govern, is by getting everyone used to depending on the government, not themselves, for their most basic needs.
So...in the short term, they are willing to lose it all, to gain their long term dream of total domination of America, their total domination of mankind.
Now, the Republicans, for their part, have done an incredibly poor job of stopping the destruction of the Republic, pretty much useless, in fact, but that’s a whole entire column unto itself.
Here’s the thing.... the communists know the jig is up come November 2010. They fully expect to lose it all. One of the litmus tests for anyone running to replace these evil men and women in Congress will be their promise to repeal this legislation. In fact, due to ineptness on their part, the GOP is basically reduced to using this as their only option. Not much of a strategy.
As you know, this entire process has taken place behind closed doors, with no Republicans allowed. The Senate bill is 2700 pages long. It took less than 20 to write the entire Constitution!
Knowing that Republicans are already promising to repeal this unconstitutional monstrosity once they take back Congress, Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, a certain casualty in 2010, has added wording that makes this virtually impossible to repeal. This, of course is unconstitutional, in and of itself, and violates Senate rules.
This provision seeks to illegally bind future Congresses to this incredibly bad legislation forever.
From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
At first, Senator Jim DeMint starts off with a few points of parliamentary inquiry which seem rather dull, but like any good prosecutor, DeMint is carefully building a case — and his target is a particularly noxious clause in Harry Reid’s ObamaCare bill. On page 1020 of the text, DeMint discovers that Reid has created a rule binding future sessions of Congress to a supermajority requirement to overrule the bill’s rationing board, the Independent Medical Advisory Board, whose purpose (stated on page 1001) is to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending." DeMint demands an explanation of how the Majority Leader can allow legislation to alter the rules of the Senate, both on the floor and in committee. The Weekly Standard has the key portion of the transcript:
There ’s one provision that I found particularly troubling and it’s under section C, titled "Limitations on changes to this subsection."
And I quote — "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."
This is not legislation. It’s not law. This is a rule change. It’s a pretty big deal. We will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a Senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law.
I’m not even sure that it’s constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a Senate rule. I don’t see why the majority party wouldn’t put this in every bill. If you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force for future Senates.
I mean, we want to bind future Congresses. This goes to the fundamental purpose of Senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future Congresses.
Morrissey goes on to add:
As I recall, Congress is not allowed to pass rules that bind future Congresses. In the House, the rules have to be offered and approved at the beginning of each session. The Senate has standing rules, but they are not in the form of law that requires further legislation to alter — legislation that would be, under this bill, out of order even to introduce. It basically makes Harry Reid the dictator of the Senate, not just now, but in perpetuity.
Is it unconstitutional? The ability of each Congress to govern itself is certainly strongly implied in Article I, Section 5:
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.
Clearly the founders did not intend that to mean that the first Congress could set the rules in perpetuity, and indeed as DeMint points out, rule changes have been made consistently without resorting to legislation to accomplish them because of the orders of a prior Congress. Put another way, the elected representatives of today should not have greater authority than those who will follow them. Any attempt to pass this into legislation aggrandizes the power of this Congress at the expense of those that follow.
And as DeMint points out, it sets a very dangerous precedent regardless of which party is in power. What will be next — a Republican Congress declaring any future bill that increases taxes out of order? Would Democrats sit still for that, too?
Update: Gabriel Malor says the issue isn’t constitutionality, but the substance of what it protects. Be sure to read it all.
So this is where we are at. Communist thugs, disguised as legislators, have killed the United States of America. They have voided the Constitution. They have rendered the 222 years of precedence since the ratification of our Constitution, irrelevant.
The rule of law no longer exits in the United States of America.
We no longer live in a Representative Republic. We now reside in a communist dictatorship where the will of the people no longer matters and the will of the government will be forced upon the people with an iron fist.
Can this be stopped? Not by anyone in Washington, that’s for sure.
So what now?
Many are making their way to Washington as I write this. The chat rooms, twitter tweets, and Facebook posts are filled with those who are going and imploring others to "just show up" in DC on Christmas Eve, presumable to stage a large protest, and possibly some civil disobedience of some kind.
Here’s what I know for sure: The time for reasonable negotiation with the radicals in this nation is over. Conservatives outnumber the evil liberal/progressive/communist element in this country three to one. We can defeat them by sheer numbers alone. But we must be willing to fight. We must be willing to risk it all to save the nation.
We must all come together and stand up against the most tyrannical and corrupt government out people have ever known. The old Revolutionary cry of "Unite or die" has never been more poignant, more appropriate than now.
The price of doing this will be high, almost unbearable to some, but the price of doing nothing will be eternal slavery for us, our children, and their children. The price of doing nothing will be allowing the greatest nation mankind has ever known to vanish from the face of the earth. To see the beacon of liberty and freedom to go dark forever.
The price for either course of action is high. It’s up to the good people of America to decide if they want that price to be paid in the service of liberty and freedom, or of tyranny and evil.
