Do They Dare...

Opinion 1.0

I was away this past weekend and didn't follow any news. Today, I hear a sound byte by Robert (Family Guy) Gibbs proclaiming that by next Sunday, the media will be talking a passed healthcare reform bill and not this administration's mere proposed policy. First, I don't believe anything from the administration of "smoke and mirrors." They lie so much, they can't keep up with them. Gibbs will come back on Thursday and say that isn't what he meant. The progressives are pulling out all the stops to pass this "Obamination." Last week, the shameless democrats had a young boy come and talk about how his mother was sick, lost her job and healthcare and eventually lost her life. However, the group that paid for the child's plane ticket was a George Soros group. How can the democrats consistantly exploit Americans to further their causes and not be called out on it? Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi said that "we must pass the healthcare bill so we can understand what is in it." That statement is ludicrous, if not insane. I thought we were suppose to be able to examine the proposed bill 72 hours before it is voted on? Is there really a bill? Not just a bunch of ideas written on a legal pad. Obama has the gall to attempt to pass a legal pad? I can hear him now, "let me be perfectly clear, it is legal if it is written on a legal pad, that is why it is called a legal pad." This is what happens when you elect a socialist and novice. I honestly believe Obama is a tyrant. The left side of our Government is addicted to power, They want to takeover everything. The student loan program (SallieMae) is now attached to the healthcare bill. So, in one quick vote, they take over healthcare and how your kids get college loans. They want to run all aspects of your life. Crap & Trade and Immigration reform is still on the table, this way they would own us and with legalizing the illegal immigrants, the democrats would have a whole new voting base to keep them in office forever. As I've said many times before, our beloved Constitution is under attack. The pregressives are called progressives because of the way they think the Constitution should be interpreted. They believe it is evolving and can be changed to fit their agenda. Conservatives believe just the opposite. Let's face it, the Constitution has worked for over 200 years. Let's discuss the democrats that are up for re-election in conservative districts. How is Pelosi twisting arms and threatening seats? Did she get Rahm "Twinkle Toes" Emanuel to intervene and threaten representatives while they are in the shower? How many special deals are in the works? I don't trust anything they do. I hope the republicans can flex a little muscle and fight this dog to it's death. This week, you must call and email your representatives numerous times and possibly peacefully visit your representatives. Let them know they are "walking the plank" if they vote for this bill. "Of the people, by the people, for the people." (thanks Paul)

http://budget.house.gov/doc-library/FY2010/03.15.2010_reconciliation2010.PDF

Clueless in Washington:


Pelosi vs. Fox:


Daft statement of the day:
Cocaine users 'making global warming worse'
British MP's (has the whole world gone crazy?)

A needed reform descends into farce


By Clive Crook

Published: March 14 2010 18:09
Last updated: March 14 2010 18:09

Are the defenders of the Democratic party’s approach to healthcare reform irrepressible optimists, or self-deluding fantasists? I declare a personal stake in the issue, as one such defender myself. In that capacity, I only wish I could be more confident of the answer.

As the search for votes to pass a bill continues, the line taken by defenders of comprehensive healthcare reform goes like this. Yes, the public opposes the Democrats’ proposals, but it is the process more than the product that voters question. And though nobody would say the product was perfect, it is basically good.

According to this argument, pieces of the reform – rules to force insurers to ignore pre-existing conditions, subsidies to help the less well-off, and so on – are popular. But the past year’s wrangling has sown confusion. Voters are bored and bewildered. Once a bill is passed, they will come around to liking it.

And the bill is a big advance, defenders insist. Broadening healthcare coverage and making it more secure are ethical imperatives. The measure takes tentative but useful steps towards better control of costs: not enough, but better than nothing. If the effort stalls, the likely result is no reform at all. Just as in the 1990s, a grand attempt at healthcare reform will have been crushed. It might be 20 years before anybody tries again.

These arguments are correct, but there is a problem. The process, not the product, has indeed caused the failure. The trouble is, the process just keeps getting worse.

Unlikely as this seems, confusion continues to deepen. Specialists – let alone ordinary voters – struggle to remember the differences between the Senate bill, the House bill, and the president’s unfinished merged proposal. In the last big push to get reform through, using whatever deals, scams, ruses and parliamentary evasions fall to hand, the public and their concerns are pushed ever more to the periphery of Washington’s vision.

The White House is supporting reconciliation – a procedure that allows the Senate to accept revisions to its bill by simple majority. This defeats the Republican filibuster. It also complicates the parliamentary process, since not all provisions are allowed under reconciliation.

Already beyond abstruse, now in the realm of surreal farce, the debate is thus becoming yet more inward-looking and unintelligible. Can language on abortion be included in a reconciliation measure? (Probably not.) Can the Senate parliamentarian be overruled? (What is the Senate parliamentarian?) All that is missing is a speech in favour of the plan by Groucho Marx. Recovering voters’ respect for the outcome, even assuming the outcome is good, looks an ever more distant prospect.

Under reconciliation, first the House must pass the Senate bill; then both chambers pass the reconciliation measure. Despite their big majority, House Democrats have not mustered the votes. They worry that if they pass the Senate bill, Senate Democrats will renege on their yet-to-be-obtained promise to pass the measure that modifies it.

So this plan, solidly opposed by Republicans, is struggling to command sufficient support even in the president’s own party, whose two Congressional branches do not trust each other to co-operate. This is the same plan, you recall, that the public will come around to in due course. Democrats facing tight elections are right to worry that “in due course” might be a long time. It is hard to see how the public will forget this mess between now and November.

What the Obama administration lacks in clarity of message it makes up for in sheer nerve. Mr Obama has doubled down on his healthcare gamble. He has delayed a planned trip to Asia this week, so that he can exert more influence as the House Democratic leaders try to corral the vote. If the effort fails, he will be fully implicated in the failure.

At the moment, the chances of passing the measure look less than 50-50 – an extraordinary fact, when you consider that House Democrats could pass reform without further ado simply by voting for the unamended Senate bill. (Why will they not do that? Hard to say, since the bills are not very different.)

Suppose that Mr Obama’s gamble pays off, however. Suppose Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Democrats, assembles her majority and sets the reconciliation wheels in motion. Suppose all then goes smoothly, and the reform is enacted. Under this best possible scenario, what then? The White House and most Democrats say they would be rewarded in November’s mid-term elections for at least getting something done. This is doubtful.

Conceivably, the economy could rescue them. Nothing would improve the Democrats’ prospects more than falling unemployment and a vigorous expansion. But passing an unpopular bill by questionable means is unlikely to prove an electoral tonic.

Last week two respected Democratic pollsters said that the administration’s drive for comprehensive healthcare reform was a “march of folly”. The battle for public opinion had been lost, they said, and if the Democrats insisted on passing this bill regardless, the country will kick them in the teeth in November.

Unfortunately, that sounds right. The US needs this effort to succeed. Even if it does, Democrats will be the losers.

clive.crook@gmail.com

Kill Bill Vol. III: Red Alert!



Opposition to Senate Healthcare Bill: Call your Senators!


"We the people" must stop the Obamacare Proposals: I am formally asking (pleading) with you to muster up the initiative and enthusiasm to fight the healthcare bill that will emerge in the end of the year. First, there are 2 bills (proposals) that will somehow be merged into one bill. Liberals are adamant about some form of "Public Option" (Government Run Option) and federally funded abortion. I think the democrats believe they can push this bill through while we are sleeping. The democrats have blocked many bills that would allow the final bill to be posted on the internet 72 hours prior to a vote. Why? you know why. We must oppose this more than we did over the summer. Let them know, we are not against healthcare reform, just not a total makeover. Call and email your representatives. I have emailed and called mine so many times, they are referring to me by my first name. Write an old fashioned letter, it has a lot of importance. Attend your local tea parties and townhalls to voice your opinions and make a overwhelming presence. Below, is a little list how you can get involved. It is our civic duty. "It is our Country."

http://www.congress.org/
http://www.joinpatientsfirst.com/
http://www.freedomworks.org/
http://www.resistnet.com/
http://www.teapartypatriots.com/
http://www.teaparty.org/
http://www.taxpayer.org/
http://www.taxpayer.net/
info@cmpi.org
http://www.fairtax.org/
http://www.conservativeamericansunited.org/

CALL YOUR SENATORS! EMAIL YOUR SENATORS! CALL YOUR SENATORS! EMAIL YOUR SENATORS!

2 Comico:

Green Piece:

Quote du jour:

"Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."

Bible, 1 Corinthians x. 12.

Writings of Our Founding Fathers

Federalist Papers

The Same Subject Continued: Concerning the General Power of Taxation

From the Daily Advertiser.


Thursday, January 3, 1788


Author: Alexander Hamilton


To the People of the State of New York:


THE residue of the argument against the provisions of the Constitution in respect to taxation is ingrafted upon the following clause. The last clause of the eighth section of the first article of the plan under consideration authorizes the national legislature "to make all laws which shall be NECESSARY and PROPER for carrying into execution THE POWERS by that Constitution vested in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof"; and the second clause of the sixth article declares, "that the Constitution and the laws of the United States made IN PURSUANCE THEREOF, and the treaties made by their authority shall be the SUPREME LAW of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."


These two clauses have been the source of much virulent invective and petulant declamation against the proposed Constitution. They have been held up to the people in all the exaggerated colors of misrepresentation as the pernicious engines by which their local governments were to be destroyed and their liberties exterminated; as the hideous monster whose devouring jaws would spare neither sex nor age, nor high nor low, nor sacred nor profane; and yet, strange as it may appear, after all this clamor, to those who may not have happened to contemplate them in the same light, it may be affirmed with perfect confidence that the constitutional operation of the intended government would be precisely the same, if these clauses were entirely obliterated, as if they were repeated in every article. They are only declaratory of a truth which would have resulted by necessary and unavoidable implication from the very act of constituting a federal government, and vesting it with certain specified powers. This is so clear a proposition, that moderation itself can scarcely listen to the railings which have been so copiously vented against this part of the plan, without emotions that disturb its equanimity.


That is a power, but the ability or faculty of doing a thing? What is the ability to do a thing, but the power of employing the MEANS necessary to its execution? What is a LEGISLATIVE power, but a power of making LAWS? What are the MEANS to execute a LEGISLATIVE power but LAWS? What is the power of laying and collecting taxes, but a LEGISLATIVE POWER, or a power of MAKING LAWS, to lay and collect taxes? What are the propermeans of executing such a power, but NECESSARY and PROPER laws?


This simple train of inquiry furnishes us at once with a test by which to judge of the true nature of the clause complained of. It conducts us to this palpable truth, that a power to lay and collect taxes must be a power to pass all laws NECESSARY and PROPER for the execution of that power; and what does the unfortunate and culumniated provision in question do more than declare the same truth, to wit, that the national legislature, to whom the power of laying and collecting taxes had been previously given, might, in the execution of that power, pass all laws NECESSARY and PROPER to carry it into effect? I have applied these observations thus particularly to the power of taxation, because it is the immediate subject under consideration, and because it is the most important of the authorities proposed to be conferred upon the Union. But the same process will lead to the same result, in relation to all other powers declared in the Constitution. And it is EXPRESSLY to execute these powers that the sweeping clause, as it has been affectedly called, authorizes the national legislature to pass all NECESSARY and PROPER laws. If there is any thing exceptionable, it must be sought for in the specific powers upon which this general declaration is predicated. The declaration itself, though it may be chargeable with tautology or redundancy, is at least perfectly harmless.


But SUSPICION may ask, Why then was it introduced? The answer is, that it could only have been done for greater caution, and to guard against all cavilling refinements in those who might hereafter feel a disposition to curtail and evade the legitimatb authorities of the Union. The Convention probably foresaw, what it has been a principal aim of these papers to inculcate, that the danger which most threatens our political welfare is that the State governments will finally sap the foundations of the Union; and might therefore think it necessary, in so cardinal a point, to leave nothing to construction. Whatever may have been the inducement to it, the wisdom of the precaution is evident from the cry which has been raised against it; as that very cry betrays a disposition to question the great and essential truth which it is manifestly the object of that provision to declare.


But it may be again asked, Who is to judge of the NECESSITY and PROPRIETY of the laws to be passed for executing the powers of the Union? I answer, first, that this question arises as well and as fully upon the simple grant of those powers as upon the declaratory clause; and I answer, in the second place, that the national government, like every other, must judge, in the first instance, of the proper exercise of its powers, and its constituents in the last. If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify. The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded. Suppose, by some forced constructions of its authority (which, indeed, cannot easily be imagined), the Federal legislature should attempt to vary the law of descent in any State, would it not be evident that, in making such an attempt, it had exceeded its jurisdiction, and infringed upon that of the State? Suppose, again, that upon the pretense of an interference with its revenues, it should undertake to abrogate a landtax imposed by the authority of a State; would it not be equally evident that this was an invasion of that concurrent jurisdiction in respect to this species of tax, which its Constitution plainly supposes to exist in the State governments? If there ever should be a doubt on this head, the credit of it will be entirely due to those reasoners who, in the imprudent zeal of their animosity to the plan of the convention, have labored to envelop it in a cloud calculated to obscure the plainest and simplest truths.


But it is said that the laws of the Union are to be the SUPREME LAW of the land. But what inference can be drawn from this, or what would they amount to, if they were not to be supreme? It is evident they would amount to nothing. A LAW, by the very meaning of the term, includes supremacy. It is a rule which those to whom it is prescribed are bound to observe. This results from every political association. If individuals enter into a state of society, the laws of that society must be the supreme regulator of their conduct. If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies, and the individuals of whom they are composed. It would otherwise be a mere treaty, dependent on the good faith of the parties, and not a goverment, which is only another word for POLITICAL POWER AND SUPREMACY. But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the large society which are NOT PURSUANT to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such. Hence we perceive that the clause which declares the supremacy of the laws of the Union, like the one we have just before considered, only declares a truth, which flows immediately and necessarily from the institution of a federal government. It will not, I presume, have escaped observation, that it EXPRESSLY confines this supremacy to laws made PURSUANT TO THE CONSTITUTION; which I mention merely as an instance of caution in the convention; since that limitation would have been to be understood, though it had not been expressed.


Though a law, therefore, laying a tax for the use of the United States would be supreme in its nature, and could not legally be opposed or controlled, yet a law for abrogating or preventing the collection of a tax laid by the authority of the State, (unless upon imports and exports), would not be the supreme law of the land, but a usurpation of power not granted by the Constitution. As far as an improper accumulation of taxes on the same object might tend to render the collection difficult or precarious, this would be a mutual inconvenience, not arising from a superiority or defect of power on either side, but from an injudicious exercise of power by one or the other, in a manner equally disadvantageous to both. It is to be hoped and presumed, however, that mutual interest would dictate a concert in this respect which would avoid any material inconvenience. The inference from the whole is, that the individual States would, under the proposed Constitution, retain an independent and uncontrollable authority to raise revenue to any extent of which they may stand in need, by every kind of taxation, except duties on imports and exports. It will be shown in the next paper that this CONCURRENT JURISDICTION in the article of taxation was the only admissible substitute for an entire subordination, in respect to this branch of power, of the State authority to that of the Union.


PUBLIUS.

References:
http://www.hotair.com/
Clive Crook
David Bromley
http://www.ft.com/
http://www.wnd.com/
http://www.thehill.com/
http://www.americanthinker.com/
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.quotationspage.com/
Library of Congress/Federalist Papers
http://www.foxnews.com/
JibJab