Kathleen Sebelius Gives Voice To Democrat Aims: They Want Single Payer
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009The Democrats are always shy about their socialist intentions. Sometimes they have moments of candor:
AIP Column: The Mind Of A Socialist, The Heart Of Compassion
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009If socialism is state-sponsored compassion, what is conservatism? In the binary political world, the default is that a small-government mindset is cruel. This political duality was turned on its ear by George W. Bush’s campaigning and governing as a “compassionate conservative.” A compassionate conservative, it turns out, buys into the liberal’s criticism. Compassion meant the government “helping”. Compassion meant giving the American taxpayer’s money to the needy all over the world. Compassion meant going into debt in order to feel good.
The premise stinks to high heaven.
There is much more, I hope you’ll go read it and come back and comment here. I think that compassion is misused and abused by the liberals. Conservatism is compassionate. By definition.
President Obama’s Report Your Neighbor Program: The Executive Branch Has Your Info Forever
Thursday, August 6th, 2009Byron York has an excellent piece up at The Examiner about the Flag.gov deal. Here’s the program:
On Monday, White House director of new media Macon Phillips posted a note on the White House web site complaining of “disinformation about health insurance reform.” “These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation,” Phillips wrote. “Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”
Well, that caused serious outcry and some amusing responses, too. Americans have fun with fascism! There is a serious side, though. This information, must, by law, be kept forever. York says:
In addition, the lawyers say the collected emails likely will be covered by the Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve and maintain its records for permanent storage in a government database. Phillips’ request suggests that whatever information the White House receives on health-care reform “disinformation” will be used to further the goal of passing a national health-care makeover, which is, of course, one of the president’s main policy initiatives. Such material, and whatever the White House does with it, would qualify as presidential records. Only after more than a decade would such records be publicly available.
“So the White House, whether by design or accident, has requested information from the public that will become ‘records’ under the Presidential Records Act, yet would be impermissible for any government to otherwise collect under the Privacy Act,” writes one Judiciary Committee source. “Where were the lawyers in all of this? What is their legal basis for authorizing the collection of these records?”
Read the whole thing. So, the White House, the President of the United States, is asking you to inform on a friend even in “casual conversation“.
And, it’s likely illegal. Says Erick Erickson:
According to 5 U.S.C. § 552a, United States agencies, including the Executive Office of the President shall, “maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity.”
The White House may take the position that certain of its offices aren’t subject to the Privacy Act (that is a longstanding Office of Legal Counsel position, see here), but most Presidents instruct their staffs to comply. This will be a the first significant time the White House has ignored the Privacy Act and may open President Obama up to litigation.
This is another example of the Obama administration ignoring long time precedent when it is no longer convenient for them. And ignoring this precedent lets them collect data on and potential harass individual American citizens.
The legality is troubling. The information is troubling. Perhaps the most distressing element is the knee-jerk reaction the President has to disagreement with his policies. He doesn’t view disagreement as legitimate. In fact, President Obama assumes that all disagreement is disinformation.
This seems like another revealing way that President Obama has statist tendencies.
Al Gore Is A Big Stinky Foot
Thursday, August 6th, 2009Where has Al Gore been? Like a bad penny he turned up on the news yesterday. So, the topic of the show covered environmentalist wackos, demands for Henry Waxman’s birth certificates, getting into the spirit of reporting your neighbor, or even better, your elderly mother, and the tactics the Palins will take against their enemies in the blogosphere and press. Hope you’ll download it!
Dan Riehl of RiehlWorldView.com and Stephen Kruiser of StephenKruiser.com were guests. And, of course, this is still Queen Week–so more Queen music.
If there’s a guest you’d like me to have on the show, or a topic you’d like covered, email me at drmelissa1@gmail.com.
Melissa’s show can also be found on RFC Radio every Monday and Wednesday night at 10:00 pm Eastern.
To subscribe on iTunes, just click here!
When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
How Far Behind Venezuela Is America?
Thursday, July 16th, 2009How far behind Venezuela does America lag in the populist, socialist, state-run “solution” to the perceived injustice and unfairness of our formerly great capitalistic state? In this podcast, I interview my brother who is in Venezuela doing business and how the people there perceive the changes. The subjects of Sotomayor’s intelligence, the NRSC Toomey endorsement, and Obama’s socialist health care and taxation policies make up the show.
Melissa’s show can also be found on RFC Radio every Monday and Wednesday night at 10:00 pm Eastern.
To subscribe on iTunes, just click here!
When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
Job Losses Mount And Cap-N-Trade Will Lose More Jobs
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009There has been something I’ve been wanting to show you guys. It is so cool: A United States map that morphs over the years to demonstrate where jobs have been gained and lost. Go look and then come back.
Disturbing, right? Informative, too. See how Katrina blew up the economy of New Orleans? See how it hasn’t really substantially returned and probably never will? Notice the financial sector disaster in New York, self-inflicted, mind you. Notice how high taxation states like California and New York suffer. Notice how Florida still bleeds from overbuilding and overvaluing property. Like a wrecking ball, the economy swings due to lack of foresight and government interference. See how the whole country suffers now?
Layer on more horrible government interference into the energy and technology sectors, as Cap-n-Trade does and what will happen? Alaska Governor Sarah Palin explains in her Washington Post Op-Ed today:
Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.
In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.
The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.
The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will “necessarily skyrocket.” So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.
Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, “poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity.”
So, the Health Care plan will hurt the working class because they’ll be stuck with government run health care. In addition, the same people will be paying more for energy costs. Worse, many of these same people, the guys who work in the energy industry will lose jobs.
If this seems outrageous to you, do something. Call your Senators. Call your Congressmen. The Trifecta of Doom(TM) is before them today. Right now, this instant, while everyone is diverted by Sotomayor, it’s health care. Time is short to stop this madness and the time to act is now. [More here.]
Canada’s Health Care Reveals What A “Public Option” Plan Really Looks Like
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009This Pajamas video by Steven Crowder is a must-see. It’s 20 minutes of human evidence about horrible health care. And remember, the rich will always be able to afford to pay for better care. The public plan forces middle and lower income people who have good medical care now, into a government-run abyss of waiting lists, rationing and outright denial of care.
And check out the facilities. No gleaming, beautiful waiting rooms. Cinder block, gray, socialist, misery.
President Obama Remaking America Into A Fair Socialist Nation
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
It’s self-evident that the President’s intention to remake America economically does not mean that he wants the market to be freer. In fact, the exact opposite is the case. Not only does President Obama want the government to centrally control the economy, he wants to control what industries make up the economy of the future. How is that not socialism?
In my American Issues Project column today, I write:
This new socialist America, then, will be a more pastoral, gauzy utopia where energy isn’t consumed, the environment is pristine, and people will all be equally drone-like and miserable. That may be over-simplifying it some, but that’s what I read from Summer’s commentary.
But best of all, the majority of the economy will be controlled by guys like Larry Summers, neither vetted, nor confirmed as a cabinet member–a Czar among Czars. When asked about his role by the FT, he says:
“It is certainly incredible, as intellectually challenging as anything I’ve ever done … What makes it so challenging and exciting, as well as exhausting, is the range of subjects.”
So, like Russia, or any other good socialist state, the country is to be run by intellectuals eager to try their, in this case, tested and failed theories out on the plebeian masses. The greatest capitalistic country in the world has become Professor Obama’s workshop for socialist fantasies, because socialism is all about implementation. It just hasn’t been done right yet.
In another column at American Issues, Thomas Sowell writes of “inequities” for inequities and the oft repeated unfairness is what President Obama hopes to cure with socialism:
The problem with trying to equalize is that you can usually only equalize downward. If the government were to spend some of its stimulus money trying to raise my basketball ability level to that of Michael Jordan, it would be an even bigger waste of money than most of the other things that Washington does.
So the only way to try to equalize that has any chance at all would be to try to bring Michael Jordan down to my level, whether by drastic rule changes or by making him play with one hand tied behind his back, or whatever.
The problem with this approach, as with many other attempts at equalization, is that it undermines the very activity involved. Basketball would be a much less interesting game if it was played under rules designed to produce equality of outcomes.
Attendance would fall off to the point where neither Michael Jordan nor anyone else could make a living playing the game.
The same principle applies elsewhere. If you are going to try to equalize the chances of women getting jobs as firefighters, for example, then you are going to have to lower the physical requirements of height, weight and upper body strength.
That means that you are going to have more firefighters who are not capable of carrying an unconscious person out of a burning building.
Besides lowering individual standards, certain industries of the government’s choosing will receive preferences. So, in a backward world, a government rooting for fairness will unfairly promote ideas and businesses that would otherwise fail. Enter Cap-n-Trade. Rick Moran, again at AIP, talks about how it failed in Europe and why:
It’s like the old medieval Catholic Church practice of selling indulgences. Energy companies, as well as any company that uses energy, will be able to buy their way out of carbon hell by purchasing carbon credits at auction. Presumably, these will be so expensive it will force innovation down the throats of business, and hence, reduce the amount of CO2 pouring into the atmosphere…in theory.
Also in theory, the government could have asked all 300 million of us to hold our breath for 5 years, which would have been cheaper and accomplished exactly same thing; which is to say, absolutely nothing. Actually, cap and trade will make some people quite wealthy as well as enrich the government at our expense, so you can’t really say “nothing” will be accomplished. It just won’t do what the government says it will do.
They have already discovered this in Europe where the European Union initiated a cap and trade scheme back in 2005. Ben Lieberman, who is Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, testified before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on July 8 where he gave our senators an earful on the total, unmitigated disaster experienced by EU economies as a result of cap and trade.
Lieberman began by highlighting the Heritage study on the probable costs of cap and trade here in America: a whopping $3,000 increase in energy bills for a family of 4, while sucking $9.4 trillion out of the economy by 2035. And in this deep recession, Heritage estimates a million jobs will go down the tubes.
So, in a socialist’s paradise, less talented people and losing ideas aren’t elevated, talented people and winning ideas are persecuted and sit out. That’s the only way for socialism to work. Because the ideas and people the government chooses to subsidize can’t make it on their own record of achievement.
Capitalism can be tough. Thomas Sowell was not born with the gifts to play basketball like Michael Jordan. Why? He was given other gifts. He chose to use them. With capitalism there was no guarantee of success, yet there were no limitations, either.
President Obama wants guarantees for people and those come, inherently, with limits. That’s socialism.
Latest American Issues Project Column: “It’s The Government’s Money, You Just Earn It”
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009Are we in a new America where the state runs the show and the citizens are bit players or are we still a government of, by and for the people? Judging by economic policy, I’d say we’re all servants of the state now. Here’s a snippet from my latest American Issues Project column where I elaborate:
Not to pick around the edges, but the most illustrative point of the Joe Biden interview, came for me when the subject of health care and paying for it came up. The Vice President crowed that the Medicare drug supplement only cost $40 Billion as opposed to the $72 Billion predicted.
Only?
That’s thinking like a politician, though. Taking money from the the taxpayer and feeling free to throw around terms like “only forty billion” is classic. It’s their money, you just earn it.
The last eight years reinforced one key point: politicians from both sides of the political sphere believe the government is a force for good. That is, both Democrats and Republicans are statists now. The question is how the government should be used not whether it should be involved at all.
Rather than setting up a right-left dichotomy, the real dichotomy is between those who value liberty, freedom and being left alone by the nanny state, and those within the government who like to nanny and the recipients of government largesse who like being cared for by the nannies. It’s this latter group that is concerning.
In a blog post before the election in November, I wondered how many people rely on the government for survival either as welfare recipients or as a government employee. And the next question is whether there can ever be a conservative, non-statist candidate win national election.
I’m not sure about the answer and that worries me.
Cross-posted at MelissaClouthier.com
Latest AIP Column: How Nice Is Too Nice?
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009If America is going to be Europe Lite and turn into a socialist country, soft, cushy, lacking innovation and miserably haughty, I think America needs to decide how “nice” is going to look. The idea is create a society free of hardship rather than a free society. So what will that mean?
Over at the American Issues Project, “niceness” is the topic:
Americans need to decide at what point the helping hand becomes the smothering death grip. What can start as a soft landing can end as a soft pillow affixed to the charity recipient’s gasping face.
Or put it another way. You know how when you’ve had a family illness or a new baby and some “helpful” relative visits. At first she (inevitably she’s a she) is cleaning and doing laundry. Then she’s rearranging all the shelves. Then, she is admonishing you about your toilet paper roll directional habits. Finally, you catch her rifling through your underwear drawer and hiding your bottle of prized scotch in her closet. You know it’s time for her to go, but you kinda feel obligated to keep her around because she did help a lot. Worse, when you finally tell her to go, that you no longer need the help, but that you’re grateful, she insists on staying. You’re stuck.
Kinda like the banks that took TARP money are stuck. Kinda like generations of welfare recipients are stuck.
Please go read the whole thing. Also, some other great writers, including Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft and Cassy Fiano have columns today. Check it out!
