health care

The first year of Obama is looking like the first year of Clinton.  Now the issue is health care.  Then it was raising taxes.  Here’s how it was then.  Reagan tax cuts and spending increases had given us an unsustainable budget deficit that was smothering the economy.  Clinton knew that he had to raise taxes to avoid a meltdown.  Republicans then as now were unanimous in irresponsible opposition. 

Blue dog Democrats knew that their careers were on the line – that a vote for higher taxes would get them voted out in 1994.  Still, lots of them found the courage to do the right thing. They paid for this piece of patriotism with their careers, but America prospered.

Now we have expensive health care choking our economy.  Unsustainable employer health insurance premium growth is holding down wages and making American goods more expensive than European. 

Now Democrats are asking Blanche Lincoln to sacrifice her career for the good of the country.  Let’s hope she has the same courage that congressional Democrats had in 1993.

How does this impact Republicans?  In the short run, they could pick up a Senate seat.  In the long run, Americans will get another demonstration of what the party of Gingrich and Bush is like -- don't trust it to run the country. 

This is going to be short and sweet today. The four Senators names you see above are the ‘moderates’ that Dingy Harry Reid has to have to pass the Senate version of the health care monstrosity, waiting out there to enslave you and ALL your antecedents, all 2074 pages of it.

Republican Senators intend to force a reading of every word of it in prime time. It’s all according to Senate rules so it doesn’t look like the DeMarxists can stop it. It will take between 34 and 54 hours to accomplish, by which time there will undoubtedly be some squirming going on while various Senators reach for their hemorrhoid pads. Whatever Americans that are out there who are not tar-and-feathers angry about this fraud, WILL BE  by the end of this reading. Either that or they are brain dead. In point of fact, Senate rules call for THREE readings of each new piece of legislation. Look for Republican Senators to insist on it.

This legislation is NOT health reform, it is a criminal enterprise reinforced by the full force of the the US Government. It will lower the living standard of every American and will condemn many to an impossible state of poverty. It will impoverish our children and their children. It will not cost any 849 billion dollars either. According to the Heritage Foundation the ACTUAL cost will be 2.44 TRILLION dollars. Let’s see, between Dingy Harry and the Heritage Foundation…I’ll take the Foundation.

The DeMarxists don’t want you to know about that. In fact, there’s very little in that legislation that they DO want you to know about. This is likely to come up for a vote within the next week. We can influence this thing and possibly stop it by contacting your own Senator and the four Senators shown above. Call and email them and let them know that we will hold them responsible for their vote. Their own constituents are against this bill but there is HUGE pressure on them to vote for it.

Dingy Harry wrote a couple of pages in there especially to entrap Mary Landrieu…about 100 million in pork if I recall correctly. The White House, Rahm Emanuel and the Democrat leadership are in full court press to get these Senators to ignore principle and betray their constituents and YOU, the American people.

So much for short and sweet. Call and email the Senators listed below and let them know we stand WITH them as long as THEY stand on principle. Let them know also that we WILL work to hound them from office if they vote for this travesty.

Senator Evan Bayh, Indiana, 202-224-5623 Senator Mary Landrieu, Louisiana, 202-224-5824 Senator Bill Nelson, Florida, 202-224-5274 Senator Blanche Lincoln, Arkansas, 202-224-4843

Stand up for America!  Encourage them to be strong, to fight for the rights of all Americans and vote NO on this monstrosity.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

Stories and reports continue to break about the stimulus bill that was rushed through congress earlier this year and the fact that it has not succeeded in creating more jobs for Americans.

Still, there doesn't appear to be any leadership or a unified voice raising the tenor of outrage about this massive failure by the Democratic leaders in Congress and the Administration.  The more people scratch the surface of the stimulus reports, the more they discover a government boondoggle - with non-existent congressional districts, counting jobs that were created without stimulus funding, double-counting of jobs, and unclear entities that have been credited with creating new jobs. 

All the while, unemployment has reached an unbelievable 10.2%

This upcoming election cycle is about jobs and the economy - plain and simple. Every poll since September 2008 has shown that the number one concern of voters is jobs and the economy. 

Voters are watching family members, neighbors and friends cope with layoffs, and many have lost their own jobs.  People are surviving on smaller paychecks.  Many Americans know someone who has lost their home to a foreclosure and ever increasing numbers believe the stimulus is having no effect on the economy.  There is a sweeping sentiment among voters that the government is getting too large and is not responsive to the people.

Without mincing words, the trillion dollar stimulus the Washington Democrats shoved down America's throat is a debacle and is the clearest example of how they are fundamentally failing the American people in regards to jobs and the economy. 

In fact, David Obey, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee and father of the stimulus bill, is now placing blame on the Administration for lack of oversight of his own bill. Even he is running scared from the mess that is the stimulus bill.

This can not be emphasized enough.

Health care reform is important and must debated and a government-run plan should be fought aggressively. However, it appears that while we focus on that, the opposition is getting a free pass on this.  In reality, the healthcare legislation is a distraction to what is most important - the Democratic leadership's big government approach to jobs and the economy has failed...and this is the strongest reason why a big government approach to healthcare is wrong.

Republicans need to begin calling for accountability on this failed stimulus bill that is wrought with inconsistencies and bad numbers...and drumbeat the looming question, "Where are the jobs?"

I point you to a piece by Mike Flynn, editor of BigGovernment.com. Mike wrote a post today, Obama Stimulus Numbers: The Return of Enron-Style Accounting, comparing the reporting of the stimulus bill to Enron's reporting of it's financial reports. He's starting to see where this is heading.

Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, Dean of the Harvard Medical School, gives ObamaCare a big fat F for not doing anything the Progressives / Statists (i.e. Obama and Co.) claim it will do.

I encourage you to read the whole article here.  But here's one part that hits the nail on the head:

Worse, currently proposed federal legislation would undermine any potential for real innovation in insurance and the provision of care. It would do so by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies, hospitals, professional organizations and pharmaceutical companies, rather than the patients who should be our primary concern.

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

The bottom line is that getting the government more involved in the Health Care industry is going to do what government involvement always does: Lower quality and increase costs.

Of course, Progressives don't care about that.  All they care about is government control.  Health Care is the lynchpin for Statist control of the populace.  There are some liberals who simply don't realize this.  When they do finally realize it, they usually become conservatives / libertarians.

A recent Gallup Poll showed that more people than ever before (since Gallup started tracking the question) are of the mindset that the Government doesn't belong in Health Care, so there's hope.  Let's hope that this enlightenment hasn't come too late to reverse all the damage that Progressives / Statists and the Progressive-lite Republicans have done over the last 100 years.

Cap and Trade is a lot like what we used to call Search and Destroy, with the emphasis on destroy because that is exactly the effect it would have on our already staggering economy.

Americans, having had a severe gut check behind His Imminence Barack the First’s proposed fiscal nightmares, are telegraphing Congress that it better have as much chance of passing as the proverbial snowball in hell…or else.

Representatives, that hung it all in the wind for Obama, Pelosi and Reid on the House’s bare passage of the health care bill, are having  buyers regret now that the steaming mad public whiplash is being felt. Serious challenges are being mounted in all marginal Democratic districts as we speak and in many that are not.

The triumvirate of the the Obama administration’s dream list is the health care theft of 1/6 of the US economy; the cap and tax bone crusher of American jobs, American industry, American families; and the AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS bill, which is even now being worked on by both Democrats and Republicans who, by the way, should be targeted to be voted out of office as well. That’s another story.

The Health Care issue is on life support over in the Senate and unlikely to emerge any time soon, if at all. Harry Reid may try for the ‘nuclear’ option on it by sending it to budget reconciliation, which would require only 51 votes. Democrats rightly fear that this measure would create a political backlash that most are unwilling to face in 2010.

Cap and Trade, the second pillar of the Obama drive to force socialization upon the American people, is ‘on the back burner’ for now for much the same reason. Lawmakers are beginning to understand that the STAGGERING cost to the economy and the American people is a price that cannot be born…hence another potential tidal wave of political mayhem. The surest indication of this is the announcement from the Copenhagen committee that there ‘will be no legally binding treaty’ at the ‘climate’ summit.

What that means, by the way, is that without the co-operation of the United States of America the economics of the whole thing just won’t work. It’s the same reason KYOTO didn’t work…no US to bleed dry. Without India and China and with the EU faltering,  it turns the upcoming Copenhagen conference into so much hot air and the chief source of that hot gas will be Barack Obama.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

More than a few people have accurately observed that politics invariably turns into a a protection racket.  Note: None have made the point more enjoyably than the brilliant Mary Katharine Ham in this video.

In the Washington Examiner, Dr. Paul Hsieh (of Geekpress) points out that, even if they only intend to give people lower costs and more access, government tends to make offers that you can't refuse.  We already see this happening in health care, and more intervention will only exacerbate it - especially as the budget crunch becomes more a more immediate problem.

Suppose the mafia came to your town and forced everyone to purchase all their meals at mob-approved restaurants. The mafia would also select the menu items. [...]

Under any system of mandatory insurance, the government must necessarily determine what constitutes an "acceptable" plan. Hence, this creates a magnet for special interests seeking to include their pet benefits on the required insurance menu.

Massachusetts residents must purchase numerous benefits that they may neither need nor want, such as in vitro fertilization, drug abuse therapy and chiropractor services. If you'd rather purchase low-cost catastrophic-only insurance without those options, tough luck. Mandatory insurance thus violates the individual's right to spend his own money for his benefit according to his best judgment. [...]

Like the mafia, Congress wants to make you an offer you can't refuse. At least the mafia doesn't pretend that it's acting for your own good.

There is no doubt that our current health care system is deeply flawed, and I accept that health care presents a genuinely wicked problem for both markets and democracies.  However, the more complex the attempted "solution", the more room there is for errors, unintended consequences, protectionism and rent-seeking. We have already seen the administration try to buy off doctors, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and hospitals with legislative favors and protection. That's not an unusual error. That is how legislation works.

Current legislation may be a problem, but the biggest problems lay over the horizon where deficits and debt will force compromises and mandates driven more by public choice theory than public interest.

Liberals and Marxists everywhere are quick to point to Fidel Castro’s Cuba as the ideal socialist society. Insipid pandering celebs such as Michael Moore, Sean Penn and Harry Belafonte are all over themselves lauding the place to the skies. Understand…they wouldn’t want to LIVE there. Not as ordinary citizens anyhow, much like our Congress won’t LIVE under the health care that they are proposing for us.

I’m forever astounded at the consistency of liberal thought versus action. It’s always for someone ELSE to do or say, or think or live by. Never themselves. Wherefore the disconnect? I’ll stick with my brain lesion theory.

Not too long ago, we had a massive state of emergency in the Gulag of Cuba when it was announced that there was a critical shortage of toilet paper. See, if they’d just listened to Sheryl Crowe… they don’t grow corn in Cuba so no corn cob… and sugar cane don’t work so well…how about tobacco leaf? Gee, they can always carry a bottle of water and emulate the middle eastern example…wonder how long that would take to catch on with the trendy lefty crowd? Now we have a severe shortage of power and clean water. What a surprise…shortages in this worker’s paradise?

Handsome UGO Chavez has announced severe shortages as well, as has Brazil which just had a power outage affecting 60,000,000 people (that’s sixty MILLION people for you math challenged libs out there), due to nothing more than very poorly maintained power transmission lines.

Our own flu vaccine production has become a rancid joke under “GOVERNMENT” supervision. People all over the country are unable to access a vaccine that we have had ample time and warning to prepare. It’s so embarrassing that the Obama administration has stopped ginning up the pandemic hysteria because of their obvious ineptitude in managing a largely manufactured crises. This is BEFORE ‘healthcare’ is even passed.

By way of example and a harbinger of our own future if we don’t STAND UP and stop these Marxist dilettantes, the socialist health care system in the UK is on the verge of imploding. They can’t pump enough money into it to make it work. It produces nothing but bureaucracy and mismanagement, to say nothing of very poor and inadequate patient care…almost indifferent. I personally know of one lady in Wales who has waited well over a year to see a specialist over a rotator cuff problem. She has told me of a friend of hers who waited EIGHTEEN MONTHS for an eye operation that I obtained here in two weeks.

Insane levels of taxation and regulation are causing a massive exodus of business and manufacturing overseas, while all the DeMarxists and the wannabe Dictatorate in the White House do is grope for more money, while planting ever more burden on the backs of the citizenry. Socialized health care…hell’s bells…SOCIALIZED ANYTHING has failed miserably wherever it has been tried. A quick look at any unrevised history will tell the tale very quickly.

It’s time we told the Obama bunch just exactly that and we will not have any part of it. Elections are coming in 2010 and we need to sweep the boards clean!

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

While millions of Americans grieve over the MURDER of 13 US servicemen and women by a turncoat Muslim home-made Jihadist, and the PC spin doctors race to tell us not to sit in judgment, our country’s leadership, in the persons of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, are celebrating the passage of the most heinous piece of legislation ever to darken the halls of our Capitol by FIVE VOTES. Certainly NO MANDATE…and absolutely certain to doom the careers of many politicians who, despite the tens of thousands of emails, telephone calls, letters and personal visits from their constituents, felt insulated enough to vote for the health care bill in direct contravention of the wishes of the people.

I spoke about a quote attributed to Japanese Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto after the attack on Pearl Harbor which brought the US into World War Two in which he said, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”. That terrible resolve is the US TAXPAYER/CITIZEN/VOTER and this ‘Government’, if that’s what it can be called, is going to hear more and more from us, as are the ‘lawmakers’ of this country who feel that they can abrogate the oaths that they took to serve the public good and the Constitution of the United States of America. In truth, there is very little in this bill that would pass Constitutional muster. Obama, Pelosi and the Demarxists know this full well. Which is why they had to make sure NO ONE was able to scrutinize that 2000+ page monstrosity.

My own kid’s applications to Little League got more oversight than that. To say nothing of having to produce a VALID birth certificate. We are going to name and highlight every ‘Representative’ who voted in favor of this bill as we will highlight every Senator who votes for it. We will ‘name them and shame them’, to borrow a phrase from syndicated radio talk show host Michael Savage.

They had better not get too comfortable in the beltway because next year is almost here and there will be the ultimate political price to pay…we are going to vote them out of office. Even some of the Representatives who feel that they are in heretofore unassailable districts will be shaken out of their comfy little sinecures. The clock is ticking…

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

The American Medical Association supports only its own political agenda and not its member doctors, according to some physicians. Many will not even join this once prestigious organization, citing concerns that it no longer reflects their opinions or their concerns for their patients. The AMA came out in favor of the 1.8 TRILLION dollar health care debacle. Putting the LIE to that is the report that 45% of physicians would consider quitting the profession if the bill passes. 65% of practicing doctors are fully opposed to government controlled health care. Only about 18% of physicians are represented by the AMA. That other GREAT SELLOUT is the AARP, another politically motivated Kool-Aid outfit interested ONLY in its own profit margin, who stopped speaking for the vast numbers of seniors a long time ago. Many seniors, always conscious of dollar concerns, have signed up for the AARP to take advantage of supplemental insurance discounts and until recently were largely unaware of the AARP’s extreme liberal proclivities. This all changed with the Obama administration’s drive for for a single payer health care system, which even the thickest senior could tell was BAD news for senior health care and in fact they were about to be thrown under the proverbial Obama Bus…sort of like he did to his Granny? I witnessed an AARP meeting in Fremont, California, where the AARP, attempting to answer the tens of thousands of angry calls and letters directed at them by members who objected to the AARP’s stated intent to support the massive government takeover, asked some very pointed questions of the AARP spinette, whereupon she promptly snitted up and abruptly walked out of the meeting. The AARP subsequently came out with a statement saying they were ‘rethinking’ their support…Well girls and boys, we can see how they rethunk it. Meanwhile in Washington, a little group of  FIFTY THOUSAND of our friends and neighbors gathered on the capitol steps in response to Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s call to action on Friday last. They then proceeded to the Capitol office buildings to have a little tête à tête with their Representatives about just who the hell they work for and just exactly what was expected of them. All very respectfully you understand..though some of our most liberal Congress Critters didn’t reciprocate and either hid or actually abused some constituents. I guess they didn’t care to be confronted with the truth of the fact that they have been exposed for what and who they are. There will be a HUGE reckoning in 2010. The whole country is steaming and they are so insular and so blinded by their own ambition they can’t see it. Nancy with the Flash Frozen Smile lied again and then reneged on her pledge to allow members of Congress and the public 72 hours to examine the final version of the bill. What a surprise! I’m shocked. Speaker Pelosi intends to go ahead with a sneak vote on Saturday despite sharply deteriorating support in her own party. Many Conservative patriots are staying in Washington to keep up the pressure on members of Congress. Another call was put out by Rep. Bachmann on Mark Levin’s radio show on Thursday, for anyone who is in range and can possibly reach DC in time to come to the Capitol to support this totally grass roots Conservative Patriotic effort. Mark Levin was at the rally in person and his presence was HUGE. God bless America…

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

More words than the New Testament of the Bible…precisely 2.2 million dollars per word. One thing is for certain, there was not one word that came out of the Speaker’s mouth at the CLOSED INVITATION ONLY unveiling  that was the truth. Just as they did every thing else with this gargantuan power grab, behind closed doors and in the dark of night, this bill has been read by very few. Hillary Clinton’s failed attempt only had 1300 pages. What we do know of it stinks to high heaven. The 1.44 trillion projected by the CBO will become FOURTEEN times that, using the Medicare experience and everything else the government does as a gauge. The Senate Republicans have demanded that Harry Reid submit the bill to them for detailed scrutiny. This bill, like everything else this Congress and Administration has done, is a sham and a failure. Just as the much vaunted stimulus has resulted in barely over 1000 jobs and the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program ended costing US taxpayers 24,000.00 dollars per vehicle, pulling 125,000 mostly desirable used cars away from  the market place, the sale of which would normally benefit lower income purchasers. The claim is that it is budget neutral. That’s an out and out lie. It includes the public option, which Pelosi and Reid were forced by the extreme left of the party and allies to include, though it bodes ill for the passage of the bill. It also includes funding for abortions which the Republicans and 40 or more Democrats have said they will not vote for. This bill has coverage for ILLEGAL ALIENS. The Bluedog Democrats have stated they want more information. This also does not bode well for the passage of this bill. This is a HUGELY regressive power grab with thousands of SHALLS in it, each with its threat of punitive fines or imprisonment and back-breaking taxation, which is a huge gun pointed directly at the freedom of every United States citizen. It is for this precise reason that our forefathers chose to throw off the yoke of tyranny to become a free people. Americans  are rightfully incensed. The American people are about to speak in Virginia, New Jersey and New York. It’s a harbinger of things to come. Nancy…Keep your historic moment! We don’t want your European Socialist Healthcare!

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009