Category Archives: Economy

Economy, Media, Politics

Left-Wing Conspiracy Or S.O.P.?

Maybe not a conspiracy, just more of the same lies that the political Left has been engaged in for years, aided and abetted by the media.

The nexus of the left-leaning media and the most liberal senator in the Senate was instrumental in getting him elected. Their ignoring his radical past and relationships with anarchists like William Ayers and Saul Alinsky, and the media’s discounting anyone who would bring that up as right-wing tinfoil hatters is all that it took. Now the most liberal senator is America’s most liberal president. And his agenda is antithetical to the founding of this country. 2008 was the year that the media watchdog died.

An observer of politics who is old enough to remember sees that, just like his Democrat predecessor Bill Clinton, the campaign did not stop after the election. Governance in Democrat administrations includes attacking anyone, regular citizens (half the country) and elected officials, that disagree with them. The difference is that the Clinton administration didn’t lie to advance their agenda. They just lied to protect their butt from prosecution.

Today, despite audio/video of President Obama clearly articulating his intentions to labor union audiences regarding single-payer health care, and the end of private sector health care, the administration is claiming right-wing conspiracy again, that he was taken out of context. It was not out of context. It was the context.

Now, on The White House’s website, the President is asking for names of citizens who are voicing their objections to his policies. Paramount of those objections is his race to socialism via a single-payer health care system, with Cash for Clunkers a close second. If you don’t think that this is exactly his purpose of having ‘citizen soldiers,’ with as much or greater funding than our military, then you need to remove your blinders.

And it doesn’t stop there. Try this from the Democratic National Committee.

Home is where we’re strongest. We didn’t win last year’s election together at a committee hearing in D.C. We won it on the doorsteps and the phone lines, at the softball games and the town meetings, and in every part of this great country where people gather to talk about what matters most. And if you’re willing to step up once again, that’s exactly where we’re going to win this historic campaign for the guaranteed, affordable health insurance that every American deserves.

Oh sorry. That was President Obama’s words. The following is from the DNC. Those dang Swiftboaters again. . . {who btw were never challenged, only attacked}

  1. These disruptions are being funded and organized by out-of-district special-interest groups and insurance companies . . .
  2. People are scared because they are being fed frightening lies.
  3. Their actions are getting more extreme.
  4. Their goal is to disrupt and shut down legitimate conversation.
  5. Republican leadership is irresponsibly cheering on the thuggish crowds.

Five lies the left can believe in.

If you’ve been following this administration closely, and I don’t mean just from what the mainstream media is saying, then you can see that being active in voicing your opinions and objections and exercising your First Amendment rights seem to only be patriotic when done by those on the Left. When done on the right, they are unruly mobs, with imagined, phony, made-up (astroturf?) anger. Does this look like phony and made-up anger to you?  VIDEO LINK

My personal experience is far different than what CNN and pMSNBC will describe. I’ve been to Tea Parties in Pensacola and just yesterday in Fort Walton Beach. If there ever was a grass roots movement, not motivated by special interests, but motivated by citizens that love their country and don’t want it going down the socialist path that this administration has laid out, this is it.

link: NWF Daily News

Economy, Politics

Cash For Clunkers Isn't Dead Yet

As the failure and short-sightedness of the Cash For Clunkers program was already detailed here and here, Democrats in Washington are in panic mode to beg, borrow, and/or steal another $2 billion to continue this UAW payoff.

The first billion lasted 4 days.  So the robber barrons in control of Washington are looking to extend this for another week and a half.  Don’t let them do it. Not without voicing your objection.

Write your Senators TODAY, in your own words. Here’s a link to get you started, Congress.org.

I don’t believe in sending form letters. Please write your own thoughtful letter. Mine is below which you may get some ideas from, or not. Your mileage may vary.

Continue reading Cash For Clunkers Isn't Dead Yet →

Economy, Politics

It Would Be Funny If It Were Not So Serious

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If you have no history or no experience on the capability of the federal government, and especially the Obama administration, to run things, all you need to do is look at what is happening with the Cash for Clunkers program.

laurel-and-hardy

Keep in mind that these are the same people who are trying to usurp 20% of the private sector of the US economy and control your and your family’s health care before your next haircut. Or to put it another way, before you even know what hit you.

Consumers are happy to take government rebates to buy new cars. Other than that, confusion reigned Friday. The fate of the $1 billion trade-in program was up in the air over concerns that it may have already burned through its funds less than a week after it was officially launched.

On Friday, the Obama administration said it was working with Congress to try to get more money and that Clunkers deal certificates would be honored through the weekend. {emphasis added}

Brian Benstock, president of Paragon Honda in Woodside, N.Y., said  he had already purchased advertising in Friday’s newspapers and he had sent out 176,000 direct mail cards to owners of qualifying Clunkers in his area. “Can you imagine the position we were in last night? We had 176,000 missiles in the air and we’re hearing it’s cancelled.”

So the $1 billion dollar program that was supposed to go until November 1 has run out of money in the first week in July.  Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said that the Michigan, Ohio and Indiana congressional delegations are working on a $2 billion extension of Clunkers program. Right off of the money tree I suppose.

Are you beginning to feel like the American people are unwitting, if not unwilling, characters in a Laurel and Hardy cartoon?

link: Obama administration scrambles to avoid Cash for Clunkers suspension

Economy, Fair Tax, Organized Labor, Politics

Cash For Clunkers, A Teachable Moment

It didn’t take more than a few days of the ‘cash for clunkers’ program to illustrate a few things.

  • When people have money in their hands, they will spend it. And consumers spending money is what drives the economy. In this case, it stimulated the auto industry.
  • The program has already had its meltdown in red tape for car dealers, and has run out of money. And Democrats are looking for TWO BILLION more dollars from our grand children’s future to hand out.
  • That the Obama administration believes that they have a right to choose the winners and losers in our economy, instead of the people. They do that by choosing who they want to bail out (with money that hasn’t been printed yet), and ‘everyone’ is not among those that they want to bail out.
  • This cash for clunkers program could have been done BEFORE the administration fired auto executives, put their own people (who’ve never run a business) on the boards of directors, gave a majority ownership stake of the company to the United Auto Workers ahead of secured creditors, thereby nationalizing the auto industry.
  • That this whole scheme was done more as payback to the UAW than it was to improve the auto industry’s bottom line.

Returning to the first point. Once you realize that the money you earn belongs to you and not the government to selectively dole out, what mechanism puts money in the economy without committing inter-generational theft? The answer is tax cuts.

An even better answer to cutting taxes would be to let the people (there’s that ‘everyone’ concept again) keep all the money they earn and finance the government with a consumption tax as proscribed by the Fair Tax.

Economy, Immigration, Media, Politics

What's In The Health Care Bill?

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Here are some of the highlights of some of the change the President has in mind for our health care. Complete bill here.

{UPDATE 11/10/09: This is the old version, as of July 2009. The latest version is H.R. 3962. We’ll call it Obamacare v2.0. You’ve come here due to a net search. The latest incarnation of this is the one the House approved last Saturday night and is HERE.}

But first, the lead sentence of the bill H.R. 3200 .

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans

and reduce the growth in health care spending, and

for other purposes.

‘Pan American’ would be a truthful description. That this bill is intended to cover only Americans is a deception that Democrats and their willing accomplices, the mainstream media, continue to perpetuate.

Below is some of the highlights from the first 500 pages.

Continue reading What's In The Health Care Bill? →

Economy, Politics, War On Terror

Who's Passing Bills Without Reading Them?

Listen how Obama characterizes the Bush administration’s reaction to keep the terrorists from killing our people and our economy with their quick reaction to the 9/11 attacks with the Patriot Act. Compare that to what the Obama administration is doing to merely kill the economy. The hypocrisy is priceless.

Wait. On second thought. Under his proposed government-run health care called the ‘public option,’ the rationing of health care will be giving a death sentence to senior citizens as well. Odd that the AARP supports his plan. I guess they’re liberals first, then senior citizens.

The results are the same, only with Obama’s plan, way more than 3000 people will die before their time.  Whew, talk about an inconvenient truth. . .

h/t National Center Blog

Economy, Immigration, Media, Politics

Obama's Pan American Health Care

Last Friday, Democrats in Washington were forced to show their hand when it comes to providing taxpayer-funded health care to millions of Mexican citizens, PG 50 Section 152 of H.R.3200. The House Ways and Means Committee nixed a Republican-backed amendment that would insure that whatever health care legislation comes out of Washington will not include health care for citizens of Mexico or any other country.

On Friday, Democrats moved one step closer to giving free health insurance to the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal aliens when they successfully defeated a Republican-backed amendment, offered by Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., that would have prevented illegal aliens from receiving government-subsidized health care under the proposed plan backed by House Democrats and President Barack Obama.

The House Ways and Means Committee nixed the Heller amendment by a 26-to-15 vote along straight party lines, and followed this action by passing the 1,018-page bill early Friday morning by a 23-to-18 margin, with three Democrats voting against the plan.

Additionally, the Democrats are exempting illegals from paying the same penalty that would be assessed on US citizens for not participating in the government-run health care system. Short of amnesty, I can’t think of a better illegal alien magnet. Instead of removing incentives to illegals, they are supplying them.

Thanks to Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nev) for introducing the legislation that forced Democrats to show their hand when it comes to illegal aliens.

As usual, the media gives this action little attention, paying more attention instead to what Obama and his administration is saying rather than to what it is actually doing.

The fact that Mexicans, if and when they are allowed to vote in the US, would be a solid Democrat voting block has not been overlooked by the Obama administration. Doing that is not an unintended consequence of ‘health care reform.’ It is, by design, politics by the numbers.

link: Citizenship Verification Should be Used for Government-Run Health Plan

Economy, Politics

Obama, Republicans Just Don't Care

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There will always be people that just collapse at the mention of  Barack Obama, a few Democrats in Washington excepted. But tonight’s performance of President Obama’s fourth press conference to sell his health care plan was, thank you Dick Gebhardt, a dismal failure.  He rambled on to obfuscate answering questions to the point beyond which he came off as knowing what he was talking about. It was embarrassing to watch.

But he did make one thing clear. That if you don’t like his health care plan, then you’re not for improving health care. You know, when Bush told the world’s leaders that where the war on terror is concerned, you’re either with us or against us, that was laying out the line to defend us as well as the rest of the world. The Obama version of this is not directed at terrorists or world leaders, but rather right-wing extremists, otherwise known as Republicans. So much for all that ‘working together’ malarkey.

Don’t know why it didn’t occur to him that most Republicans and right-thinking Democrats can’t seem to swallow the whole socialized health-care idea that the President has in mind. Key word is ‘idea.’ This health care plan isn’t totally written yet, and Obama wants it voted on before Congress takes a vacation in two weeks.

Last I knew, lowering the cost of health care was a bi-partisan issue of serious concern. Normal Americans, as opposed to people like Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky, and Barack Obama, believe that lowering health care costs can be done within the private sector and without socializing the industry and twenty percent of the economy.

Economy, Fair Tax, Florida, Pensacola, Politics

Fair Tax Advocates At Tea Party

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Though not widely publicized, there was a ‘Tea Party’ at 9th Ave. & Creighton Road today. Lest there be any doubt, I am a supporter of the Fair Tax. It alone would begin a lasting economic recovery on into the future, without adding to or piling on the current national debt.

The crowd of somewhere between 300-400  people were all, at least the ones I saw and spoke to, well behaved and passionate about what they believe, that the country is going in the wrong direction, in so many ways. Trying to spend our way to prosperity and borrow our way out of debt, taking over private companies and industries all add up to economy killers. Markets pull back at the fear of being next on the hit list. Risk-taking and investment stop. Jobs end. Exactly what we are seeing happen right now.

That’s why most people were there, home-made signs and all. They sang patriotic songs along with a PA system that someone had set up. This is what grassroots looks like.

I, and a few other Fair Tax advocates were there to answer questions about the Fair Tax and to enlist Fair Tax supporters. I am happy to report that we picked up 41 new supporters in those two hours today.

Thanks to two of our newest members Mr. Brown and Mr. Doyel, and to Community Coordinator Jim Whatley, for their help and participation at our Fair Tax table. We handed out pamphlets and spoke to a lot of people. Everyone we spoke to that had questions or were just curious, liked the Fair Tax once they learned more about it.

Special thanks to Lee for the umbrella. We were offering FREE SHADE for people that signed up to join us.

Part of building our grassroots support includes recruiting Community Coordinators and County Coordinators. To learn more about the FFTEA and the above positions,  please check out our website.

I was interviewed by PNJ reporter Thyrie Bland for an article that will be in tomorrow’s paper.

Pictures will be posted here as well as on our FFTEA Panhandle website as soon as I get them.

Update 07/05/09: PNJ article, Protesters take aim at taxes, socialism

related links:

Economy, Politics

Nothing Left To Give

It wasn’t a slip of the tongue when candidate Obama said something like ‘the United States is the greatest country in the world, that’s why we need to change it.’

To a socialist, the very fact that America has become as great as it is in under 200 years, while Europe and Asia go back thousands of years, just gets under their skin. So as not to miss the obvious question, why do you suppose that is? Two words, freedom and liberty.

Because of our freedom and generosity, Americans have become the greatest producer and contributor of foreign aid in the world, and by a long shot. Not only in terms of money given but in terms of the ability of American farmers and industry to feed the world and for our military to provide aid after natural disasters wherever they may occur. Right, we need to change that.

Click to enlarge. And read what the grandfather of Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, Norman Mattoon Thomas, said about socialism and the Democrat Party.

A look at the numbers of where we are going is in an article by Alan Aronoff at American Thinker entitled Stimulating America’s Decline and begs your reading.

The fundamental change that the Obama administration has in mind will cripple the economy and suppress capitalism by suppressing risk taking and investment.  There is already a lengthy history of government involvement in private industry whether by ‘bailout’ (democrat-speak for ‘takeover’) or takeover, where this administration is concerned.

For years Democrats in Washington have been pre-occupied with our image in the world. I wonder what our image in the world will be when the ‘land of plenty’ has nothing left to give?