News for 08/28/2009- FCC Czar, Regulatory Czar, We the People Have the Power

Posted on August 27, 2009. Filed under: Enemies of The State, General Info, Soapbox | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

 Check Out This New Citizen Tool

Touted as “Transparency’s Sidekick”…. cool site! LegiStorm helps bring trans- parency to the U.S. Congress by disseminating public docu- ments and non-partisan infor- mation over the web.
 
How America Voices Their Democracy- FAX YOUR REPS FOR FREE– check out this site
  

 

Michael Badnarik On The Constitution: We The People Have the Power 5 min video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIggk2dFHMI

Another Story of Government Insulting Concerned Americans from American Liberty Alliance

http://americanlibertyalliance.com/blog/2009-08-27/taxpayer-dollars-used-to-call-american-patriots-tea-baggers/ We at the American Liberty Alliance, an organization that is deeply involved in the Tea Party Movement, find this incredibly offensive. Our group demands that the Rules Committee immediately apologize and ensure the person responsible for sending this message is reprimanded for insulting the hundreds of thousands of American Patriots who consider themselves “Tea Partiers.” Anyone wishing to contact the Rules Committee can call the number they provide in their email. Call (916) 319-2800 and tell them how you feel!

This would suggest that someone working on taxpayer time, in a taxpayer funded office, using taxpayer funded email servers to contact taxpayer employees, deliberately chose to use the phrase “tea baggers” instead of “Tea Partiers.” (“tea baggers” is an explicit sexual term whose definition can be found at wikipedia.com)

 
FCC Diversity Chief Asked Liberals to Copy FDR, Take on Limbaugh, Murdoch, Supreme Court
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/53136
Federal Communications Commission Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd called on fellow liberals to follow the model of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and challenge conservative media moguls and station owners, particularly figures such as Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, and “a pro-big business Supreme Court aligned” with them. Lloyd made the call in a 2007 article for the liberal Center for American Progress while he was a senior fellow there.  Entitled “Media Maneuvers: Why the Rush to Waive Cross-Ownership Bans,” the article ostensibly talks about the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to allow Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell to purchase the then-failing Chicago Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune newspaper.  Lloyd, however, uses the Zell case, in which Zell ultimately prevailed, to make a broader argument that liberals should look to the tactics employed by FDR to combat his conservative critics in the media, saying that liberals must challenge outspoken conservatives who own media outlets. “Progressives should take a page from FDR’s media diversity playbook,” Lloyd wrote. “[A]t the end of a second FDR administration [in 1940] when the New Dealers were still battling a conservative print media and a conservative Supreme Court to fix the great debacle of American capitalism – the Great Depression. “FDR’s fireside chats and his ready access to radio allowed him to speak directly to Americans and continue to push a progressive agenda,” said Lloyd. “But FDR was becoming increasingly concerned about the purchase of radio operations by the newspaper publishers.”
 

 

 

President Obama said: “If you want to know what my views are, look who I surround myself with”
 
Ok, that’s fair… so let’s look:
 
 
Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein
 
Sunstein was named head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration if confirmed – in other words, he will be the new Regulatory Czar.
 
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), within the Office of Management and Budget, was created by Congress with the enactment of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 (PRA). Under this and other authorities, OIRA develops and oversees several critical functions, including:
  • The implementation of government-wide policies and standards with respect to Federal regulations and guidance documents;
  • The quality, utility, and analytic rigor of information used to support public policy;
  • Dissemination of and access to government information;
  • Privacy and confidentiality;
  • Electronic records; and
  • Federal statistics.
OIRA reviews significant proposed and final rules as well as information collection requests prior to publication in the Federal Register. Coordinated review of agency rulemaking is necessary to ensure that regulatory actions do not conflict with the policies or actions taken or planned by another agency, are consistent with applicable law, the President’s priorities, and the principles set forth in Executive Order 12866. The office is headed by a Presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed Administrator.
 
 
noisyroom.com:
 
 Sunstein is a proponent of the ‘nudge’ philosophy – Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness:

By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front. We think that it’s time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gentling nudging them in directions that will make their lives better.

In other words, you institute change by constantly tweaking the law, etc. until it becomes what you want it to be. Fascist baby steps if you will. From Wikipedia:

Sunstein (along with his coauthor Richard Thaler) has elaborated the theory of libertarian paternalism. In arguing for this theory, he counsels thinkers/academics/politicians to embrace the findings of behavioral economics as applied to law, maintaining freedom of choice while also steering people’s decisions in directions that will make their lives go better. With Thaler, he coined the term “choice architect.”

He also has views on a ‘New Deal’ for speech and he seeks to tweak the Constitution so to speak (actually, more like rewriting it) in this area as well as others…

1st Amendment

In his book Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech Sunstein says there is a need to reformulate First Amendment law. He thinks that the current formulation, based on Justice Holmes’ conception of free speech as a marketplace “disserves the aspirations of those who wrote America’s founding document.” The purpose of this reformulation would be to “reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.” He is concerned by the present “situation in which like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another,” and thinks that in “light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals.” He proposes a “New Deal for speech [that] would draw on Justice Brandeis’ insistence on the role of free speech in promoting political deliberation and citizenship.”

newsrealblog.com:

Here are some Sunstein gems:

  • “Much of the time, the United States seems to have embraced a confused and pernicious form of individualism. This approach endorses rights of private property and freedom of contract, and respects political liberty, but claims to distrust ‘government intervention’ and insists that people must fend for themselves. This form of so-called individualism is incoherent, a tangle of confusions.”
    – Cass R. Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More Than Ever, Basic Books, New York, 2004, p. 3
  • “A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.”
    –Cass Sunstein, arguing for a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet in his book, Republic.com 2.0, p.137
  • “In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?… Without taxes there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public fisc. … There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day …”
    – Cass R. Sunstein, “Why We Should Celebrate Paying Taxes,” The Chicago Tribune, April 14, 1999 
Leftist False Flag Operation in Colorado? from Canada Free Press

Colorado Citizens’ Coalition, a 527 pressure group, may have been behind an attack on a Democratic Party office in Denver calculated to depict opponents of ObamaCare as violent. Maurice Schwenkler, reportedly an anarchist who goes by the name Ariel Attack and whose sex is a subject of debate, was arrested for vandalizing the Denver office. One available photograph shows a shattered window that bears two signs on the inside reading “Want Health Care Reform? Come Inside” and “Today 100 Coloradans will lose their health insurance.” The damage may cost $10,000 to repair. Colorado Democratic Party chairwoman Pat Waak blamed opponents of President Obama’s healthcare nationalization scheme for the vandalism. “Clearly there’s been an effort on the other side to stir up hate,” she said. “I think this is the consequence of it.” … {As it turns out, that was not the case.] Waak has not yet apologized.  Video: http://tinyurl.com/n3dw8s 

 
New “Lingo” in the news:
 
What’s black bloc activity

A black bloc is a group of protesters dressed in black, who often cooperate in small, autonomous affinity groups to resist police. There may be several black blocs within a particular protest, with different aims and tactics. Black blocs tend to be anarchist-themed, and may include members of union flying squads, anarchists, situationists, pagans, communists and other anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-fascist groups. What defines a black bloc is not ideology but action in self-defense of the larger group of protesters. They are named for the typical black garb they wear for uniformity. Many also wear masks and scarves over their faces, to avoid identification, to protect their faces against tear gas and pepper spray, and for symbolic purposes. Typical actions of a black bloc are distracting police, misleading police about protester motions, ‘unarresting’ people already arrested by police, administering first aid to persons affected by tear gas in areas where protestors are barred from entering, building barricades, attacking/disarming police, and unmasking police who pose as black blockers (easily identified as they attack protestors). Some black blockers also engage in vandalism and rioting. Although black blocking is usually connected with some form of direct action, black blocs also participate in wholly symbolic action, as well as action that falls entirely within traditional definitions of nonviolence. Property destruction carried out by black blocs tends to have symbolic significance: favorite targets include banks, institutional buildings, outlets for multinational corporations, pornography and sex shops, gasoline stations, and videosurveillance cameras. Groups such as the WOMBLES and Wild Greens advocate participating in black bloc activity, and have similar mandates. Groups that have engaged in similar forms of action include Radical Anti-Capitalist Blocs, Anti-Racist Action, and Anti-Fascist Action. 

 

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News for 08/17/2009- Special Edition- A NEW AND BREWING CRISIS

Posted on August 17, 2009. Filed under: Enemies of The State, General Info, Soapbox | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Let’s Take A Look At Mark Lloyd, FCC Diversity Officer (Czar), and Where He Stands On Issues  by Desiree Paquette

Last Friday news broke which suggested a new agenda for the Federal Communications Commission, the government entitiy which issues licenses to broadcasters and broadcasting companies throughout the US. Under the Obama Administration, there is a new position at the FCC called the Diversity Officer. The Diversity Officer has the ability to put into place new regulations. Our new Diversity Czar has an agenda all his own, formulated over several years. This agenda entails creating a new license fee for private broadcast compaines, EQUAL TO THE ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET OF THAT COMPANY, then redistributing those fees to public broadcast stations to hire, in effect, minority talent and minority owned broadcast entities. There is not one entity who could survive paying their entire annual budget as a new tax, thus as the vast majority of privately owned broadcast entities promote and give voice to middle America, this overwhelming majority of the public would be left with NO VOICE and certainly NO DISSENTING VOICE for the policies and programs put forth by the minority far left segment of the population.

Let’s take a closer look at our new “Diversity Czar”, shall we?

Mark Lloyd has a very distinctive pedigree which cerrtainly fits the bill for a Diversity Czar. His history shows him to have started in broadcasting at NBC and CNN, then moving on to degrees from U of M and Georgetown University. According to his bio posted online at http://www.netcaucus.org/biography/mark-lloyd.shtml 

Mark Lloyd is a senior fellow at the George Soros funded Center for American Progress focusing on communications policy issues, including universal service, advanced telecommunications deployment, media concentration and diversity. From the fall of 2002 until the summer of 2004, Mr. Lloyd was a Martin Luther King, Jr. visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught communications policy and wrote and conducted research on the relationship between communications policy and strong democratic communities. He also served as the executive director of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan project he co-founded in 1997 to bring civil rights principles and advocacy to the communications policy debate.

Let’s take a closer look at his past positions. According to Civil Rights.org The Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy, it deals with.. The rules that govern the National Information Infrastructure concern and impact us all. Communications policy will determine whether all citizens will be able to participate effectively in the political process, have access to the public airwaves, share in the fruits of publicly-funded research, or maintain their privacy. Communications policy is a civil rights issue. The Civil Rights Forum works to bring civil rights organizations and community groups into the current debate over the future of our media environment. The Forum is a project of the Tides Center, a national non-profit organization which manages hundreds of projects that promote change toward a healthy society — one which is founded on principles of social justice, broadly shared economic opportunity and a robust democratic process. The twin goals of the Forum are to introduce civil rights principles and advocacy to the implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and to reframe the discussion over the role of media in our society around the needs of communities and the rights of citizens.

 An article posted at zimbio.com at  http://www.zimbio.com/The+Searched/articles/H7FW6nnt-NU/Mark+Lloyd+New+Chief+Diversity+FCC+Draws+Fire shows the newly appointed assoiciate general counsel and chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, is having a rough time of it during his first days on the job. Lloyd has come under fire from some right-wing media sites, after two an article Lloyd authored in 2007 urging liberals to file complaints against conservative talk radio stations came to light.

 In “Forget the Fairness Doctrine,” Lloyd writes that conservative radio stations have abonded the bottom line as their primary motivator, and are purely ideological organs. He argues, however, that ressurecting the Fairness Doctrine, which forced radio and television stations to give equal time to opposing viewpoints, is not the answer. He does, however, suggest the private radio broadcasters, due to the fact that they use public airwaves, should be required to donate and support public radio.

 In 2009 Center for American Progress’s Progressive Media project emerged as a major communications war room on behalf of Obama’s domestic and foreign policy agenda and CAP became a strong advocate for escalation in Afghanistan. Progressive Media is run through the Center for American Project Action Fund, the more political 5014 arm of CAP. It coordindates closely with the Common Purpose Project, an effort to create message discipline among the pro-Obama organizations, with a direct tie to the White House. The Center for American Progress — which has emerged as perhaps Washington’s most influential idea factory in the age of Obama — is launching a major new war room, to be staffed by nearly a dozen people, that will focus on driving the White House’s message and agenda, I’m told. … The new war room – which is called Progressive Media – represents a serious ratcheting up of efforts to present a united liberal front in the coming policy wars. The goal of the war room will be to do hard-hitting research that boils down complex policy questions into usable talking points and narratives that play well in the media and build public support for the White House’s policy goals. … The war room – a joint project of CAP Action Fund and Media Matters Action Network — will be headed by well-known liberal operative Tara McGuinness, who worked on John Kerry’s presidential campaign and was a major player in the anti-war movement during the Bush years.” Jennifer Palmieri is the project’s communications director.

Mark Lloyd has served on the boards of directors of dozens of national and local organizations, including the Independent Television Service, OMB Watch, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund. He has also served as a consultant to the Clinton White House, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute and the Smithsonian Institution. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) is a 501(3) “non-profit public policy organization dedicated to promoting the democratic potential of today’s open, decentralized global Internet,” according to its website. CDT’s stated mission is “to conceptualize, develop, and implement public policies to preserve and enhance free expression, privacy, open access, and other democratic values in the new and increasingly integrated communications medium.” In 1994, Jonah Seiger “helped found and served as Communications Director for the Center for Democracy and Technology. “CDT pursues its mission through research and public policy development in a consensus-building process based on convening and operating broad-based working groups composed of public interest and commercial representatives of divergent views to explore solutions to critical policy issues. In addition, CDT promotes its own policy positions in the United States and globally through public policy advocacy, online grassroots organizing with the Internet user community and public education campaigns, and litigation, as well as through the development of technology standards and online information resources.”

 At an article from Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/10/pub-fccs-new-hire-previously-targeted-gop-radio-stations/ comes the following: The FCC’s new chief diversity officer laid out a battle plan two years ago for liberal activists to target conservative talk radio stations, and critics say they are concerned that he now will want to bring back the “Fairness Doctrine.” Mark Lloyd, who was named the associate general counsel and chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission last month, is under attack for authoring a June 2007 report entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” and a subsequent essay, “Forget the Fairness Doctrine”. “What he lays out is a battle plan to use the FCC to threaten stations’ licenses with whom they do not agree with politically, and now he’s at the FCC waiting to take their calls,” Motley told FOXNews.com. “This is not about serving the local interest, it’s about political opposition.” In February, a report in the American Spectator said aides to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., met with FCC staff to discuss ways to re-enact Fairness Doctrine policies and to apply them to the Internet as well. Both the FCC and Waxman’s office denied the report.

Bought and paid for “Community” organizations such as ACORN, far left wing organizations such as Apollo Alliance, Tides Center and Center for American Progress, and corruption in the form of SEIU, are quickly taking the place of the Constitution of The United States of America. Please take a few moments to watch this video, in which Glenn Beck explains the interconnectivity and undue influence these groups are having on the Obama Administration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Yc858QdXo&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Ftherealbarackobama%2Ewordpress%2Ecom%2F2009%2F07%2F29%2Fthe%2Dapollo%2Dalliance%2F&feature=player_embedded#t=29 The above video also details how the Apollo Alliance developed what became the Stimulus Bill.

Our government is turning into a Chicago style scam. Please, look for yourself and become aware. They would have you believe it’s Democrat vs Republican. IT IS NOT! It’s much different than that. Most democrats would not endorse the coruption that is gripping our government. Neither would Independents, Libertarians, Republicans.

Free speech is turning into free speech only if it agrees with the Administration’s view point. The majority of the population is being dismissed. Opportunities for citizens to speak out are being filled instead with paid operatives (see help wanted ads in column from 08/14/2009), SEIU and ACORN members, while the authentic public is locked out and left standing in the street.

There is no substitute for knowledge. Your country is being taken away from you on a daily basis. It is important that you realize what is going on. If you condone it, do nothing. If you DON’T, please do what you are able to do. Pass along informative emails, attend a local tea party. If you can afford to do so, JOIN US 09/12 for the march on Washington. details at http://912dc.org/

Single Payer from A Canadian Citizen’s View (video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Rf42zNl9U

 CITIZENS SURROUND ACORN BUS (thank you for standing up America) http://www.semiautorifles.com/forums/f10/people-surround-acorn-bus-1277.html

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News for 08/15 & 08/16/2009 -FCC Czar, More HC Discussion & Food Safety Act

Posted on August 14, 2009. Filed under: Enemies of The State, General Info, Soapbox | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Breaking News… FCC has Diversity Czar Aimed To Shut Down Conservative Radio

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/14/fairness-doctrine-raises-its-ugly-head-under-new-fcc-diversity-czar/

(CNSNews.com) – Mark Lloyd, newly appointed Chief Diversity Officer of the Federal Communications Commission, has called for making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs to allow public broadcasting outlets to spend the same on their operations as the private companies do. LINK

“Local public broadcasters and regional and national communications operations should be required to encourage and broadcast diverse views and programs,” wrote Lloyd. “These programs should include coverage of all local, state and federal government meetings, as well as daily news and public issues programming.  (see link above for complete story). See Also Link Below:

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/08/07/meet-the-fcc-diversity-czar/

Say Goodbye to the Family Farm

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2749/show

Congressman Dingell (D-MI) is the sponsor of this bill – CONTACT HIM AND YOUR REP TODAY TO STOP THIS BILL:

contact info for Dingell:

 http://www.house.gov/dingell/contact.shtml

This bill proposes greater FDA regulatory powers over the national food supply and food providers, namely granting it the authority to regulate how crops are raised and harvested, to quarantine a geographic area, to make warrantless searches of business records, and to establish a national food tracing system. Concurrently, the bill would impose annual registration fees of $500 on all facilities holding, processing, or manufacturing food and require that such facilities also engaged in the transport or packing of food maintain pedigrees of the origin and previous distribution history of the food. The bill is an enhancement to H.R.759, and to a lesser extent, H.R. 857, previously proposed food safety bills in the 111th Congress. It is also co-sponsored by the same Representatives as the latter two bills, although new to the line of support is Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the House Energy and Commerce committee.

  

Protect American Heathcare (30 sec video) by League of American Voters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdgeSw3QqYk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enewsmaxstore%2Ecom%2Fcontribute%2Flav%2Fvideo%2Ehtm&feature=player_embedded#t=32 

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If you are planning to travel to Washington, D.C. for the March on Washington, D.C. on 09/12, for which Glenn Beck is going to anchor the Fox News Channel’s coverage, please join this group: http://www.the912project.us/group/912DC

Also, please RSVP to this event: http://www.the912project.us/events/the-912-project-september/

If you’re planning to attend the March on DC, a local 9.12 Project Rally at your State Capitol, in your city, or even if you’re planning to watch this at home!

If you are planning a 9.12 Event in your area, please list your event here: http://www.the912project.us/events/event/new?cancelTarget=http://www.the912project.us/events

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Dems and drug companies team up against… the voters? at Washington Examiner
President Obama heads to Montana for a town hall Friday, with anther one in Colorado on Saturday. Including his stop in New Hampshire, the president has chosen three of the most libertarian states in which to make his argument for a big government plan. While his team would say it’s just another example of the president dealing with opponents head-on, one starts to wonder if there isn’t a hope that Obama will have the chance to face off with, as the DNC calls them, a “Deather.” New Hampshire produced none as the selected questioners were saccharine-sweet, but today might be the day that the White House gives the microphone to a Walter Sobchak-type. The risk is another “spread the wealth around” gaffe by Obama. The reward would be the chance to show the president suffering for his efforts, but still willing to engage with a country not-quite worthy of him. The worse things get for the president on health, the more willing the administration may be to take chances. Part of the problem with refusing to believe that the opposition to the plan is actually organic is that Democrats stop listening entirely and treat real concerns of senior citizens and small business owners as part of some crazy conspiracy.
IS Obamacare Consistent With Our First Principles? by Heritage Foundation

The proposed health care legislation is just as bad, if not worse, than TARP. Sec. 142 of HR 3200 grants the new Orwellian titled “Health Choices Commissioner” broad lawmaking authority including the power to set standards for every Americans health insurance plan, to determine which of your current insurance plans do or do not meet that standard, and then to punish plans that do not meet that standard. Even worse is what is not yet in the bill, but is desperately wanted by the Obama administration. A super-empowered Medicare Payment Advisory Commission that is specifically designed to “save money in an apolitical, technocratic way”. The entire purpose of this part of Obamacare would be to take medical decisions away from patients and vest it in a panel of experts specifically designed to be completely unaccountable to the American people. Is this what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind? When the Constitution was being ratified, James Madison, writing as Publius, sought to allay fears that the new national government would turn into a Leviathan. In the 45th Federalist Paper he emphasized that adoption of the Constitution would create a government of enumerated, and therefore strictly limited, powers. Madison said: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined… [and] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce….” Federal tax collectors, Madison assured everyone, “will be principally on the seacoast, and not very numerous.” Exactly six months after publication of this essay, New York became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution. Is turning over one-sixth of our nation’s economy over to Obama’s super-MedPAC panel in any way consistent with this vision?

The Daily Kos and the Shadows that Lurk Within by Common Sense From Common Man
…Government run Medicare with a staggering $37 TRILLION of unfunded debt.  Shadow wants to make it seem like 100% of Americans has a 50/50 chance of getting their health insurance canceled.  In fact, when you actually look at the numbers, it’s the top 1 percentile of people with high medical expenses, greater than $35,543 who have a chance of getting their health insurance canceled.  You can see for yourself right here. Let’s also discuss auto insurance as well.   Why should anyone have to pay higher auto insurance premiums because they have a higher incident of traffic accidents, right?  Let’s abolish all pre-existing records of accidents, traffic violations, and theft of cars too. Should we take a look and discuss reform on preexisting condition insurance? Yes it’s worth discussing it and further studying it before making inflated claims.  Let’s also discuss how allowing health insurance companies to sell plans across state lines can increase competition and reduce the risk pool (a favorite of the current Administration).  While we’re at it let’s address tort reform as well (a taboo of the current Administration as trial lawyers gave millions to them).  These will lead to lower costs for ALL Americans… See Fleckenstein Debunk all ten talking points at link above.
 
Obama, Bush and the Limits of Power at Campaign for Liberty
It should now be beyond dispute that the Obama administration represents a continuation, solidification and expansion of the Bush legacy, with some minor changes in some areas and a vast acceleration of government growth in others. And yet, as we can joyously witness, the president is running into problems.
The most conspicuous feature of the Bush years was the nearly invincible faith in government power in the realm of national security. So pronounced was this trust in the national security state, war on terror, and U.S. empire, that the opposing Democrats, many of whom dissented from the Iraq war and the worst excesses in executive spying, detention and torture, looked reasonable in comparison. Many conservatives and libertarians even favored the Democrats in the 2006 election in hopes of reining in the profligate and warmongering Republicans. Eventually, Bush and the neoconservatives ran into a wall. The Iraq war continued to consume American and Iraqi lives but the democracy and peace that were promised never came. After the administration’s incompetent handling of Katrina in 2005, the Republicans began losing support among moderates, who became increasingly frustrated with the mounting deficits, the erosion of their liberties and the prolonged war abroad. Then, in 2008, the financial sector collapsed, despite the Republican presidential candidate’s insistence that the “fundamentals of the economy” were sound. By November, the GOP had been marginalized. The economic crisis has breathed new life into the Democratic agenda of corporate socialism and expansive federal government at home, just as the national security crisis of 9/11 had tipped popular opinion toward the Republican agenda of preventive war and attacks on our civil liberties. But it had took years for Bush and his team to lose support among the political center, whereas we are witnessing support for Obama unravel much more quickly. This could all turn around, of course, but we have reasons to be hopeful. Obama’s health care plan, his most ambitious domestic policy program, is in peril. Although he has a solid Democratic majority in both Congressional houses, politicians are vulnerable to public opinion, and opinion is split. Some polls show a slight majority supportive of his plan. But in the last few weeks, polls have also shown a larger percentage opposed than in favor. Senior citizens, one of the demographics that was supposed to benefit the most from Obamacare, are the most skeptical group. In order to get his plan through, Obama has to court two groups of Democrats — those who are relatively fiscally conservative and are skeptical of socialized medicine, and those on the far left who do not want too many compromises with the insurance industry and desire a full-blown single-payer system. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office has undermined one of the administration’s central claims, that the health care proposal will cut costs. The CBO has detracted in other ways from Obama’s economic agenda, warning that Obama’s deficit may be four times as high as the already ridiculously large deficit from Bush’s last year in office. In February, the CBO determined that Obama’s stimulus program could be harmful to economic recovery in the long run. And the people are feeling the failure, so far, of Obama’s economic program. Much of the public remembers the warnings that without the bailouts the sky would fall and they recall the promises that the stimulus would give an immediate boost to the economy. As Goldman Sachs reports record earnings and yet unemployment continues to rise, many Americans are detecting a bait and switch and are altogether unimpressed with Obama’s handling of the economy. Here we see the two major limits on government power in play. One is public opinion. As political theorist Franz Oppenheimer and others have pointed out, government operates, in the end, with the tacit consent, or at least acquiescence, of the people. No matter what form of government, from a dictatorship to a pure democracy, the government requires social legitimacy in the eyes of enough of the public to do what it does. Public ideology is key. If a majority is strongly opposed to the government’s operations, eventually something has to give. It is the importance of public opinion that explains why governments, whether ostensible republics or autocracies, would ever utilize censorship, propaganda, or control of the public school system and media to shore up public support for their works. Constitutions alone cannot limit government. The overwhelming bulk of what the federal government is engaged in, from imperial wars to drug prohibition, from Social Security to Medicare, is unauthorized by the Constitution, and yet they persist. What matters ultimately is the Constitution in the hearts and minds of the people. So long as the American public supports unconstitutional actions, such actions will commence. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as Jefferson noted. The Constitution spells out great limits on the government, but without the support of the people, the document loses its teeth.
 
Just A Friendly Reminder…. If you have not yet turned in the President and others in Washington (both parties) for promoting and diseminating incorrect and self serving (aka “fishy”) information  via media and blog sites about the health care bill.. please take a moment and drop an email to flag@whitehouse.gov.  Thanks!
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