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"Just the facts M'am, Just the facts." -- Sgt. Joe Friday

government at the people

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Dems Go Nuclear

Posted 10/16/2009 07:54 PM ET

Health Care: Democrats seem set to use the “nuclear option” to ram their government health takeover into law. Bipartisanship already looked dead; now it looks extinct.

The health care revolution the Democratic Congress has planned — with its inevitable medical rationing, thousands of dollars in increased insurance premiums, and coverage of illegal aliens — may get placed on the familiar fast track used to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars this year.

Instead of the 60 votes needed in the Senate if proper parliamentary rules were followed, passing this reshaping of the medical system as a “budget reconciliation” measure would mean only a simple majority was needed.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., accused of cheating on his taxes, last week held a hearing to let the House version of the health reform bill be passed this way. As the Washington weekly Human Events reports, Democratic leaders “have apparently invoked the ‘nuclear option’ to shut out Republicans and ensure the bill is passed before the end of the year.”

So all those “town hells” during the summer, where senators and congressmen were given an earful about passing secretly written thousand-page bills without reading them, will be ignored. [Read more…]

cpt needs citizen oversight

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Child Protection Team [CPT] really needs citizen oversight.  I’m not doing it anymore because I ended up getting poached on by the sheriffs department for revenue and the only way I could send a message to the powers that be that poaching on citizens is wrong was to withdraw my services as that citizen.  It wasn’t a great solution but you don’t always get to make perfect choices.

Anyway, my problem has nothing to do with the necessity of having a citizen sit on that weekly committee.  The CPT committee must have a citizen representative who is personally outside of the system.  That means one who is not in any law enforcement agency, not in the provision of mental health services, not in the department of social services, not in the child advocacy program, not in the district attorney’s office, not a school counselor, and not a local physician.  CPT is the nexus where all of those powers cooperate, and taken together, they can bring a tremendous amount of power–force–to bear in citizens’ lives. [Read more…]

DC and Pittsburgh

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I’m sure everyone who reads this blog is familiar with the “Tea Party” protest in Washington DC last month.  It was an adult response to overbearing government, expressed within constitutional parameters by people strongly vested in the American dream.  On the surface it stands in stark contrast to the anarchist G20 protest in Pittsburgh a couple weeks later where all hell broke loose and riot police acted to disburse demonstrators.

The DC protest was a perfect picture of order, and the Pittsburgh protest was extreme disorder.  While DC was a mature and law-abiding exercise in civil dissent and Pittsburgh was an adolescent riot that provoked a violent response, both events constituted dissent from current governance and power structures. [Read more…]

Murphy against term limits

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Susan Murphy Against Elbert County Term Limits

Murphy thinks you should “give them a chance to campaign on to the ballot.”  Oh, those poor elected officials who deserve more time governing us.  My heart just bleeds for these victims of electoral cruelty.  Won’t you save them from a future of obscurity as one of the merely governed?  If you save them, you save us all.  Please!  Save us!

de-programming a death cult

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“What can be done about [suicide bombers]? For most Western countries, the Israeli option, to build a defensive barrier between us and the homes of the bombers, will not work. We can profile; we can infiltrate; we can discover and share intelligence; we can carry out targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders, trainers, and motivators; we can pinpoint and destroy terrorist training camps. Like the Israeli fence, constant vigilance will reduce the numbers of bombers, sometimes dramatically. But engaging the problem at the grassroots level is clearly more difficult because the phenomenon is so deeply entrenched in the cultures that produce the bombers, in the religious values, the sexual practices, and the shame and honor systems they inculcate. If we are to modify those cultures in a positive way, perhaps we have to introduce sanctions that punish countries dependent on Western aid every time a terrorist or suicide bomber from that country is identified. We have to make suicide bombing an affront to religion and a matter of great dishonor. Set beside a system of rewards for identifiable counterterrorism initiatives, above all, education programs designed to reject religious and social propaganda, this may set in motion new ways of altering the suicide mindset. But until such measures begin to bite and societies prone to this malaise start to shift toward moderation across the board, it is the intelligence and security services who will have to shoulder the burden of defense. There are no quick fixes, but there are long-term goals that we need to plan for now.”

From: Suicide Bombing as Worship

Denis MacEoin is editor of the Middle East Quarterly.

the corruption of power

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In the president’s revised version of history, he has not had a long and close association with Acorn. He did not nationalize General Motors and reward his supporters at the United Auto Workers with a chunk of the stock. He is not in thrall to the big labor bosses at Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. And the Democratic Party has not sold its political soul to trial lawyers who hound doctors and hospitals and increase medical costs by billions of dollars each year.
The president has also written a “let’s pretend” storybook of the naive genre.
• Not all taxes are taxes; government spending is free and debt never has to be repaid.
• He and Congress have our best interests at heart and are smarter than we are. They should run everything.
• Too much high-quality medical care is bad for us. We must switch to the government brand. It’s almost the real thing. It’s also “free.” Just take a ticket and be patient.
• Energy must be made scarce and more expensive. Never mind the job losses (more than a million per year from “cap-and-trade” alone). Forget about the economic destruction (at least $2 trillion over a decade).
• After America’s factories are shut, the Chinese will give us jobs in theirs.
Oh, and don’t forget: The president also says that we should not worry about the mullahs in Iran and their nukes. He will “friend” them.

From: Denying Truth and Rewriting The Dictionary

It is tempting to brush the Constitution aside to pursue political objectives, to let the ends justify the means. But if politics trumps the Constitution, the Constitution cannot limit government and, therefore, cannot protect liberty.

From: Politics of Health Care Legislation Endanger Constitutional Liberties

public option & competition

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A “public option” for health insurance would promote competition, proponents claim.

On what planet?  If that were true on planet Earth there would be a thriving market of low-cost health insurance alternatives to compete with Medicare for senior citizens.  There would be a thriving market of low-cost health insurance alternatives to compete with Medicaid and SChip.  All of these “public options” have destroyed competition, not fostered it.

Democrats aren’t stupid and they can understand these facts as well as anyone, which leaves only one conclusion: the “public option” is neither about health care nor competition.  It’s about power, control, and growing government.

county term limits

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We will receive our ballots for the November election in the mail soon.  The election is not in November, it is virtually upon us.  NOTE, the absence of discussion in the local fishwraps about the removal of county term limits is no accident.  To get it passed, our local liberal editors know they must pretend the issue doesn’t exist–a stealth promotion of their political position through omission–because totalitarian initiatives don’t stand up very well under much scrutiny.

You didn’t expect them to play fair now did you?

Beware the Stalin in progressive hearts

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By: Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com.
September 24, 2009

If nothing else, the Obama eruption in American politics is steadily revealing the stark reality behind the progressive movement – the totalitarian temptation is always there and, for more than a few, possessing the official power to compel sooner or later becomes irresistible.

Not everybody on the left, of course. Some of the folks I most admire in this town are liberals whose work on behalf of values like transparency in government and protecting civil liberties is remarkable and essential.

Still, that this danger is real and growing becomes more obvious as public opposition grows to the president’s across-the-board campaign to turn Washington into the all-powerful, centralized behemoth that Woodrow Wilson and FDR could only dream about. [Read more…]

the best of intentions…

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…are easy.  “Have a nice day.”  Costs nothing.  Makes someone feel good.  “I wish you well.”  Who would look at that sentiment too closely?  It’s simply wonderful.  Surely anyone who says those words must be good.  Likewise for all the good intentions espoused by the left such as, “Everyone should have health insurance, a college education, a job, a car, American citizenship, a home, unconditional respect from other people, a pure life in a pristine state of nature” and many other good things.  Who could seriously question any of those good intentions?

So, how did the left succeed in owning the image that they are the only group in society who hold good intentions for other people?  More importantly, how did they do so while maintaining allegiance to social, economic and political methods that fail so completely to actually bring about the intended results of their good intentions?

How does the left live with the dissonance between the intentions they continually express, and the poor results their systems actually produce?  Doesn’t it keep them awake at night?  Doesn’t it worry them that leftist methods have not produced a single successful society?  Ever.  In all of recorded history.  Wouldn’t that give a reasonable person second thoughts?

And woe unto the heretics who mention the taboo of this inconvenient fact.  The left heaps abuse onto them, doubles down on the chanting, and shouts down the dissenters.

Political and economic systems are always a choice between least-bad alternatives.  So how does one get away with choosing the worst of the least-bad alternatives, and come away with people thinking they’ve chosen the best?

Is it just good marketing?  They’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.

The Roots Of American Order

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Origin of the Bill of Rights and the Common LawOrigin of the Bill of Rights and the Common LawOrigin of the Bill of Rights and the Common Law

Russell Kirk, “The Roots Of American Order,” pp. 187-189.

No question that the “enumeration of civil liberties in the Constitution” has “endangered” many civil rights belonging to many un-anticipated parties not specified in the Constitution.  Hence the ever-accelerating expansion of civil rights litigation.

And no question that “political power decree of positive laws without reference to general consent has led to the evasion, defiance, and diminished respect” for statutory law resulting in the “substitution of force for justice,” –another trend in law and enforcement that continues to accelerate.

These trends do not lead to more or better justice, equity or fairness.  They substitute the rule of men for the rule of law by shrinking the domain of liberty in human action, and eliminating opportunities for moral choices.  While it’s all done in the name of the “public good,” ironically, people who act without making a moral choice cannot be good.  Coercion and force nullify morality.  Morality requires free choice.  Without a moral choice, people cannot choose the good over the bad or evil.  The best they can do is obey–the moral stature of a “good doggy.”
Good Dog
Perhaps the left tolerates Islamic submission so well because they’re both systems of obedience.

Each day the news is full of reports of what people liberated from their moral responsibility have done to other people, to the world and to themselves.  People who do not experience morality are disconnected from justice or concern for mankind.  All the totalitarian systems – Marxism, Islam, Fascism, Socialism, Communism, Progressivism, Gaia, and their numerous combinations and derivatives – take us toward amorality in the name of their concepts of the public good.  All of them are self-defeating as they collaterally damage innocents and non-believers.  All of them institutionalize corruption.

Freedom, voluntary choice, limited government, judicial equity, all of these traditions preserve moral choice and enforce moral responsibility.  There will always be bad men and women.  Inflexible totalitarian systems do not contain self-correction mechanisms.  They insulate bad people and bad policies from their negative consequences.

Liberty is messy, but it’s still better than everything else because it allows us to evolve.  The left only want evolution they can control.  The right recognizes the fact that individuals know best how to direct their own evolution.

Radicals Wrote Failed Stimulus

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Investors Business Daily House Editorial 09/21/2009 07:05 PM ET

Policymaking: If the stimulus isn’t working, perhaps it’s because it was largely written by a collection of leftist interest groups called the Apollo Alliance that counts among its directors a co-founder of the Weather Underground.

The Labor Department reported Friday that 42 states lost more jobs than they gained in August, and that 14 plus Washington, D.C., reported unemployment rates of 10% or more. Michigan’s rate rose to 15.2%, highest in the nation. Nevada, represented by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is second with 13.2%. California, home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is tied for fourth with Oregon at 12.2%.

Clearly, the stimulus bill that no congressman read is not working. As it turns out, no congressman may have written it either. It’s largely the creation of a coalition of leftist organizations called the Apollo Alliance, whose primary interests are saving the Earth, environmental justice and redistributing wealth. They are not friends of job-creating capitalism.

On Apollo’s Web site, Sen. Reid, whose state also leads in foreclosures, is quoted praising the group of which former green czar Van Jones was a board member. “We’ve talked about moving forward on these ideas for decades,” Reid is quoted as saying. “The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them.” Jones, the former Oakland, Calif., community organizer and self-avowed communist, was on the board of the Apollo Alliance when he accepted the position in the Obama administration as green jobs czar. As Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity told Glenn Beck, Jones has “described the Apollo Alliance mission as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes” that would tie elements of organized labor with community organizers and environmental groups into an outfit that would restructure American society. Wade Rathke, founder of Acorn, was also on the Apollo board, as is Gerald Hudson, vice president of the Service Employees International Union, which provides the shock troops in the movement to pass government-run health care. John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton and now president of the leftist Center for American Progress, also sits on the Apollo board. Each day his group sends out talking points to the left side of the blogosphere. Mark Lloyd, diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission, was a senior fellow at CAP.

According to Kerpen, the Apollo Alliance put together a draft stimulus bill in 2008 that included almost everything in the final $787 billion package. Little did the voters know that the congressmen and senators they would elect would pass a bill written by activist outsiders.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of all this is that an even more radical Jones (no relation) has a relationship with the Apollo Alliance. Jeff Jones was a domestic terrorist in the ’60s and a fugitive from justice throughout the ’70s who, with Bill Ayers, helped found the Weather Underground in 1969. Ayers, Jones and the Weathermen participated in the violent Days of Rage riots in Chicago and a nationwide anti-government bombing campaign. Like Ayers, Jeff Jones has no regrets, saying: “To this day, we still, lots of us, including me, still think it was the right thing to do.”

Today, Jones finds himself director of the Apollo Alliance’s New York affiliate and a consultant to the national group. One of his clients is the Workforce Development Institute, a union-controlled organization. As a consultant to WDI, Jones helps write the grant proposals for federal stimulus dollars — funds authorized in the bill that Apollo helped write — all to ensure that taxpayer dollars end up in the hands of groups that share Apollo’s political agenda.

Welcome to government of the activist, by the activist and for the activist.

It’s All About The Money Boys

Thomas Jefferson

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

Aristotle

"Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved."

Karl Popper

“A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.”