Archive for the ‘Federal’ Category

FoxNews, via youtube, 2:17

“Deem & Pass”, more like Demon Pass, more like unconstitutional !

Kudos to NBC, finally some tough questions are being asked!

Democracy Denied: Changing How Washington Works, for the Worse

From patriotpost.us, 3/18/2010, via AFP, http://www.americansforprosperity.org

By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN & MANU RAJU, Politico.com, March 18, 2010

Democrats might like to think that health care reform is all but a done deal if it clears the House, but the Senate is where Republicans have been plotting for months to sentence it to a painful procedural death.

Republican aides have been mining the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules for an attack that aims at striking elements both broad and narrow from the bill, weakening the measure and ultimately defeating it. Their goal is to force changes that leave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) without 51 votes to pass it, or at the very least, that drive it back to the House for a second vote that drags out the process and saps Democratic resolve.

Read more at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34605.html#ixzz0iY8U2Rc9

Comment by LouD, 3/18/2010 at http://www.lucianne.com/thread/?artnum=529386

Why can’t a republican stand up and say, “We deem this bill. We have a majority of the American people who don’t want this bill. Therefore, this bill is dead.” Just beat the dems to it. Hey, if they can deem it passed, we can deem it rejected.

By JOHN MILLER, AZ Daily Sun, Thursday, March 18, 2010

Idaho is leading the charge in a states-rights push to defeat a proposal in Congress that would require people to buy health insurance, a key piece of reforms being pushed by President Barack Obama.

Republican Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter used a ceremony Wednesday afternoon to become the first governor to sign into law a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government over any such insurance mandates.

There’s similar legislation pending in 37 other states, a point Otter stressed when asked if the bill he signed can succeed, given constitutional law experts are already saying federal laws would supersede those of states in a U.S. District Court fight.

“The ivory tower folks will tell you, ‘No, they’re not going anywhere,’” he told reporters. “But I’ll tell you what, you get 36 states, that’s a critical mass. That’s a constitutional mass.”

The state measures working their ways through statehouses from Missouri to South Carolina reflect a growing frustration with President Obama’s health care overhaul, especially in Republican-dominated regions.

Read more at  http://www.azdailysun.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/article_1742b9b9-082d-5c50-be1e-54b50543ae7a.html

By Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, March 18, 2010

Even as House Democrats search for the votes to send a health-care reform bill to President Obama, dozens of Republican lawmakers and candidates have signed a pledge to back an effort to repeal the measure, should the GOP take control of either chamber of Congress after this fall’s elections.

Sparked by the conservative activist group Club for Growth, the “Repeal It” movement first won the backing of some of the most conservative Republicans in Congress, including Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.), and has expanded to include some of the party’s Senate candidates in liberal-leaning states such as New Hampshire and Illinois. In all, 37 House and Senate members and 163 congressional candidates have signed the pledge.

As congressional Republicans battle Democrats over the House procedures that could be used to pass the bill, they are promising to carry the debate over its substance into the November elections, even though both parties acknowledge repeal would be highly unlikely as long as Obama remains in office.

While the GOP awaits the outcome of competitive primaries in many states, all of its major Senate hopefuls in Kentucky, Nevada, Kansas and Missouri have pledged to “sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health-care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health-care costs without growing government.”

Read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/17/AR2010031704028.html

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, AP, March 14, 2010

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.

It’s time to start cashing them in.

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.

Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.

Read more at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jWbISwIapd30hnID5R3gGD7VFZ3QD9EED7CO0

By Jeffrey Lord, American Spectator, March 16, 2010

“There’s a crime called misprision of a felony. Misprision of a felony is when you don’t report a crime. So you’re getting into pretty deep areas here in these considerations.” – U.S. Senator Arlen Specter on March 12, 2010

“Right now, they’re doing the ‘I won’t confirm or deny,’ and for us, it leaves two possibilities. One is the promise of transparency in this administration is just shot. The second one is even worse, which is either Sestak is lying or the administration has done something wrong and is covering it up…” — U.S. Congressman Darryl Issa on Friday on March 12, 2010

“The ’stonewall strategy’ functioned from the very first episodes of the cover-up. It was instinctive, from the very top of the Administration to the bottom. It was also ad hoc, developed in small reactions to the flurry of each day’s events…we found ourselves trying to hold a line where we could.” — Nixon White House Counsel John Dean in his Watergate book Blind Ambition

Here we go again.

Even as the drama of health care carries the headlines, beneath the surface, visible now, the iceberg of scandal ripples.

First, the timeline on the blossoming scandal upon which we will now officially fix the dreaded “gate” descriptive. Jobsgate.

Read more at http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/16/specter-opens-door-on-white-ho

By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane, Washington Post Staff Writers, Tuesday, March 16, 2010

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic — known as a “self-executing rule” or a “deem and pass” — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

“It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know,” the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. “But I like it,” she said, “because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”

Republicans quickly condemned the strategy, framing it as an effort to avoid responsibility for passing the legislation, and some suggested that Pelosi’s plan would be unconstitutional.

Read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/15/AR2010031503742_pf.html

By JONATHAN R. LAING, Barron’s, March 15, 2010

Promised pensions benefits for public-sector employees represent a massive overhang that threatens the financial future of many cities and states.

LIKE A CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE, populist rage burns over bloated executive compensation and unrepentant avarice on Wall Street.

Deserving as these targets may or may not be, most Americans have ignored at their own peril a far bigger pocket of privilege — the lush pensions that the 23 million active and retired state and local public employees, from cops and garbage collectors to city managers and teachers, have wangled from taxpayers.

Some 80% of these public employees are beneficiaries of defined-benefit plans under which monthly pension payments are guaranteed, no matter how stocks and other volatile assets backing the retirement plans perform. In contrast, most of the taxpayers footing the bill for these public-employee benefits (participants’ contributions to these plans are typically modest) have been pushed by their employers into far less munificent defined-contribution plans and suffered the additional indignity of seeing their 401(k) accounts shrivel in the recent bear market in stocks.

And defined-contribution plans, unlike public pensions, have no protection against inflation. It’s just too bad: Maybe some seniors will have to switch from filet mignon to dog food.

Most public employees, if they hang around to retirement, can count on pensions equal to 75% to 90% of their pay in their highest-earning years. And many public employees earn even more in retirement than their best year’s base compensation as a result of “spiking” their last year’s income by working ferocious amounts of overtime and rolling in years of unused sick and vacation days into their final-year pay computation.

Read more at http://online.barrons.com/article/SB126843815871861303.html

By Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily, March 10, 2010

Local governments in massive revolt against rules ordered by Washington

Utah has become the third state to adopt a law exempting guns and ammunition made, sold and used in the state from massive federal regulations under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and supporters say about 30 more states have some sort of plan for their own exemptions in the works.

Officials in Utah say they expect a lawsuit over their direct challenge to Washington if the federal government succeeds in its current case against Montana’s law.

Gary Marbut of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, who has spearheaded the Montana law, now describes himself as a sort of “godfather” to the national campaign. He confirmed Montana, Tennessee and Utah have enacted such laws.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=127490

By David Kravets, Wired.com, March 10, 2010

Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties knight in shining armor many were expecting.

Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.

Read more at http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/obama-supports-dna-sampling-upon-arrest

IBD Editorials, Posted 03/12/2010

Health Reform: So it’s come down to this — desperate Democratic leaders strong-arming members on the worst bill ever before they go home to explain to constituents why they decided to commit political suicide.

We’ve said just about all we’ve had to say on this issue — actually dating back to 1993-94, when we wrote nearly 100 editorials in opposition to HillaryCare. Since January of last year, we’ve weighed in 150 more times against the latest version of socialized medicine.

But to review, here are just 15 reasons why a government takeover of the finest medical system in the world makes no sense at all:

1. The people don’t want it! This, we would think, should have some bearing on decision-making. Yet the Democrats forge ahead without consent of the governed. In the latest Rasmussen poll, 53% opposed the Democrats’ reform while 42% were in favor. More than four in 10 “strongly” opposed; just two in 10 “strongly” favored. This jibes with other surveys, including our own IBD/TIPP Poll, taken since last year.

2. Doctors don’t want it! . . .

Read more at http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=527217

Editorial by the Washington Times, 3/12/2010

Nationalized health care is the progressives’ Golden Fleece. It is their obsession, the ultimate prize that was denied to previous administrations but is closer than it ever has been. As the ability of government to take over the health care system draws tantalizingly near, the president and leaders of the majority party have become infected with a kind of mania. President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders seem determined to ram through a severely flawed piece of legislation by any means necessary, heedless of the desires of the American people or the negative impact on the system they mistakenly say needs to be saved.

A large majority of Americans are satisfied with their current health care plans, though most also think the system could be improved. Yet proponents of the Democrats’ radical health care overhaul brazenly claim the system is irretrievably broken and only radical surgery will save it. According to the latest Gallup poll numbers, less than a fifth of even those who favor health reform agree with that position. The majority of Americans are divided between those who want a scaled-back health care measure and those who want the current project dropped entirely. If any system is broken, it is the legislative process.

–SNIP–  Disaffected voters, however, will recognize cowardice for what it is. Add to this the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, the backroom dealing, special-interest loopholes and fundamental unsoundness of placing government at the center of the health care system, and November will be a slaughter indeed.

Read more at  http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/13/obamas-sick-obsession/

by Victor Davis Hanson, 3/12/2010

Have we not seen, then, in our lifetime the end of the Western way of war?” Two decades ago, I concluded The Western Way of War with that question. Since Western warfare had become so lethal and included the specter of nuclear escalation, I thought it doubtful that two Western states could any longer wage large head-to-head conventional battles. A decade earlier, John Keegan, in his classic The Face of Battle, had similarly suggested that it would be hard for modern European states to engage in infantry slugfests like the Battle of the Somme. “The suspicion grows,” Keegan argued of a new cohort of affluent and leisured European youth—rebellious in spirit and reluctant to give over the good life to mass conscription—“that battle has already abolished itself.”

Events of the last half-century seem to have confirmed the notion that decisive battles between two large, highly trained, sophisticated Westernized armies, whether on land or on sea, have become increasingly rare. Pentagon war planners now talk more about counterinsurgency training, winning the hearts and minds of civilian populations, and “smart” interrogation techniques—and less about old-fashioned, “blow-’em-up” hardware (like, say, the F-22 Raptor) that proves so advantageous in fighting conventional set battles. But does this mean that the big battle is indeed on its way to extinction?

Read more at  http://www.city-journal.com/2010/20_1_decisive-battles.html

by Patrick McIlheran, JS Online, March 10, 2010

John Meier, who knows something about hauling people to Madison, doesn’t know where the state’s   going to come up with a third of a million people for its almost-there train.

Mind you, Meier, third generation in his family to run Badger Coaches, says his company will work with whatever rail service the Doyle administration installs. At the moment, the $810 million plan is for trains that top out at 110 mph between three stops on the way to a station at Madison’s airport. Or maybe, for a slight additional fortune, a new station on an undistinguished corner of Madison’s east side two miles from downtown.

This will carry, the state reckons, 372,000 people a year at $44 to $66 per round trip. The ridership’s important because the more paying passengers, the better the chance we can hold the taxpayer subsidy merely to the $26 per ride we now contribute to Amtrak service from Milwaukee to Chicago.

Read more at  http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/87280437.html

Why not just have the state BUY Badger Coaches. It will be cheaper!

‘They Just Want This Over’ by Robert Costa, The Corner at National Review, Friday, March 12, 2010

–SNIP– Stupak notes that his negotiations with House Democratic leaders in recent days have been revealing. “I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance,” he says. “Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered.” The arguments they have made to him in recent deliberations, he adds, “are a pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party.”

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”

–SNIP–

UPDATE:

Congressman Stupak called NRO to clarify his comments. In recent conversations, he says that some Democratic members, not Democratic leaders, have been citing a Congressional Budget Office report that says his amendment will cost $500 million to implement over ten years. “I did not mean to infer that the leaders are using financial arguments to deny my amendment,” he says. “We have spoken about the CBO and my amendment’s costs, but the leadership has not said that it costs too much money. My point here was that if cost is becoming a concern about my amendment, then that should be addressed, since this is the sanctity of life we’re talking about. We can address those costs. Cost should not be a reason to deny my amendment.”

Read more at  http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzU0MDYxMWEyOTdiNGU1OGU3ZjYzYmE3Y2ZlZDQ5NTY=

By Barbara Hollingsworth, Washington Examiner, March 10, 2010

The Obama administration’s six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday. Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama’s term even though two -thirds of the American public supports such activity, according to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll.

Sixty percent also believe that gas and oil prices will drop if the government allows offshore drilling, opening up an estimate 14 billion barrels of oil and 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas

On July 14, 2008 President George W. Bush lifted an executive ban on Outer Continental Shelf leasing. On October 1, 2008, in a bipartisan agreement, Congress lifted another longstanding ban on new oil and gas leasing in the OCS.

Drilling was supposed to begin this July. But Salazar said he intends to discard the 2010-2015 lease plan developed by the Bush administration in favor of a new plan that won’t even go into effect until 2012.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/The-Obama-Moratorium-No-offshore-drilling-while-hes-in-office-87246077.html

WASHINGTON, March 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Today Virginia became the first state in the nation to enact legislation to protect their citizens from being forced to purchase health insurance or participate in any health care system against their will. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has identified 37 other states that have similar bills pending or have announced that they will introduce this legislation. Already, at least one house of the legislatures in Idaho, Missouri, and Tennessee have also passed such legislation.

These legislative initiatives are based on ALEC’s model Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act. Under the legislation, any state attempt to require an individual to purchase health insurance-or forbid an individual from purchasing services outside of the required health care system-would be rendered unconstitutional. The measure may also cause a federalism clash if Congress passes a law with either of these provisions.

Read more at  http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/virginia-first-state-to-pass-health-care-freedom-act-38-states-lining-up-against-obamacare-86418607.html

by Ryan Jaroncyk, Mar 1, 2010

Like him or hate him, Dr. Ron Paul doesn’t just talk a big game about fiscal conservatism, he lives it. In 2008, his congressional office returned $58,000 to the Treasury. In 2009, his office returned $90,000. Now, according to an official press release, Dr. Ron Paul’s congressional office has just paid back $100,000.

At a time when Wall St is running wild, the national debt is $14 trillion, and the federal government is running $1.4 trillion deficits, Dr. Ron Paul’s congressional office is running a surplus and paying back the American people. At a time when the federal government is paying record salaries and hiring record numbers as the rest of America suffers punishing unemployment, Dr. Ron Paul is operating his congressional office with a frugality that recognizes the current economic climate and respects the suffering of the American people.

Whether you like him or not, you have to respect the anti-war, fiscally conservative Republican Congressman.

Read more at http://caivn.org/article/2010/03/01/congressman-ron-paul-returns-whopping-100000-his-office-budget-us-treasury

By ALEX ISENSTADT & JAMES HOHMANN, politico.com, March 11, 2010

At least one part of former Rep. Eric Massa’s hourlong, train-wreck interview with cable-television host Glenn Beck rang true to his fellow House freshmen Tuesday: the grim description of the intense and time-consuming fundraising pressures that dominate the lives of junior members.

“Congressmen spend between five and seven hours a day on the phone, begging for money,” Massa (D-N.Y.) told Beck, before launching into a detailed account of the arduous fundraising routine - a demeaning process, Massa said - that includes filling out call sheets, detailing the amount of money raised per hour and conferring with fundraising coaches who advise them on how to wring even more money out of donor calls.

“I don’t have the life’s energy to get up at 5 in the morning and work until midnight [and] spend five hours on the phone begging for money,” said Massa, estimating that he worked 120 hours a week as a congressman. “I have completely abandoned my family for five years.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34244.html