Words are not sufficient for the immense and unimaginable loss of perhaps 100,000 lives during the recent earthquake in Haiti. The immediate question is what can be done to help. I wrote recently in “Guns or Health Care?” that it wasClara Barton and a group of fellow Americans who founded the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and not the federal government. The Red Cross has already begunoperations by contributing $1 million from their International Response Fund and sending stocks of tarps, mosquito nets, and cooking sets to Haiti. I myself made a donation today to the International Response Fund, which can be done here or from the home page, redcross.org. There are other charities working as well.
The federal government has also pledged assistance with our military. While I certainly hope this assistance helps saves lives, Americans should not forget the Hurricane Katrina fiasco so quickly. Our own country was wracked by a serious disaster, though smaller than Haiti’s, and the federal response of FEMA was famously ineffective. Now, I will not question the government’s benevolent intentions to help, but we must recognize that they are incapable of even balancing their own budget, and was within 72 hours of a technical default last month. They have failed for 8+ years, spending billions and billions, to locate the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist group.
Members of Congress say they don’t have time to read the bills they pass, but my sample letter to Congress, below, shows otherwise. Please use what I wrote as guide to send your own letter to Congress asking them to pass DownsizeDC.org’s Read the Bills Act: https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/27
Here it is . . .
Members of Congress often say they don’t have time to read the bills you pass, but consider these facts . . .
* Over the past nine years an average of 215 bills became law per year, for a total of about 2,160 pages annually http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plaws/browse.html
* A random survey of Congressional Record Daily Digests suggests that the average legislative day is long — usually over nine hours
* The House was in session, on average, 133 days per year (the Senate’s average is more difficult to find, but it’s probably similar) http://thomas.loc.gov/home/ds/
* This means an average of 16 to 17 bill pages became law per session day.
The truth is that you could read three or four times that number of pages and still have plenty of time for debate, amendments, votes, and other business. Yet, few members of Congress ever read any bill that becomes law. This is just plain wrong. Consider . . . Read More »
As business owners undergo the yearly ritual of passing through eye-popping health insurance premium increases to their employees, it’s easy to understand why any attempt at health insurance reform would be met with some degree of hope. Unfortunately, President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are about to take a very bad system and make it unimaginably worse.
While ramming their new legislation through Congress, the Democrats have taken great pains to point out that they do not intend to “socialize medicine.” But make no mistake, that’s where we’re headed. Even if some naïve centrists believe that their efforts have denied the Left a total victory, the practical implications of the current legislation sow the seeds for complete capitulation.
This first round of reform could be labeled as the ‘neutron bomb’ of the insurance industry: it leaves some of the private apparatus standing, but it irradiates whatever remains of the industry’s market viability.
The bill’s centerpiece is a clause prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on a pre-existing medical condition. However noble and marketable an idea, this proscription removes the very basis upon which any insurance model operates profitably.
58 Democrats and 2 independents (Lieberman and Sanders) have voted to close debate on the cancerous health care bill. This clears the way to pass the bill in the Senate, perhaps by Christmas Eve.
Every member of Congress needs to hear your protest, including your House Rep., and all the Republicans too.
Please slam Congress with thousands of letters telling them that this bill does NOT have your consent! You can send your letter using our Educate the Powerful System: https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/114
If you have a Democratic Senator, please call them too. Deluge the Senate switchboard! Our system provides their phone numbers when you log-in to send your letter.
Here’s what I wrote in my letter . . . Read More »
Three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act will expire on December 31. Committees in both the House and Senate have approved renewal bills, but the House version includes much stronger civil liberties protections.
Let’s tell Congress to pass the House version, or pass nothing at all and let these provisions expire using our “I am not afraid” campaign. https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/77
Here are my personal comments which you may copy or borrow from . . .
Specifically, please allow the following provisions of the Patriot Act to sunset on December 31:
* The Records Provision
* The Roving Wiretaps Provision
* The Lone Wolf Provision
The evidence indicates that these provisions don’t even serve their supposed purpose:
* As Cato Research Fellow Julian Sanchez says, “the successful investigations since 9/11 — only a few of which actually involved ‘plots’ for attacks in the U.S. — appear to have depended a lot more on good human intelligence and informants in the community than broad new surveillance powers.” http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10705
Ron Paul’s HR1207 is one step closer to becoming law. The bill was attached to a horrible financial “reform” bill which calls for the creation of yet another government agency to regulate private industry. So of course Ron Paul voted against it on principle, despite the fact that it contains the “Audit the Fed” bill he’s worked so hard for.
By now we all know the story. Mel Watt introduced an amendment on the big financial regulatory reform bill that “gutted” Ron Paul’s HR.1207 Fed audit bill. Today, Ron Paul introduced a substitute amendment to that amendment that puts the “guts” back in to the audit. Effectively, Paul’s amendment is HR.1207 with a bit more detailed language regarding monetary policy oversight.
Paul’s amendment passed, first by voice vote, and then by roll call vote later in the day. The final tally was 43 for Paul’s bill and 26 against.
First up is Ron Paul arguing (yet again) why Fed transparency is not a call for injecting Congress into Fed policy decisions.
Next we have Barney Frank patting himself on the back again for bringing Ron Paul’s Fed audit legislation up in the committee. There’s a bit of humorous back and forth then Congressman Hensarling rips Frank for his comments a bit by calling them “irrelevant”.
Here are the leadup comments from Alan Grayson and co., then the voice vote on adopting Ron Paul’s substitute amendment.
And finally, the official roll call vote of Ron Paul’s substitute amendment. Ron Paul wins!
Congressional leaders routinely use your tax money to bribe other members of Congress, buying votes to enact legislation that couldn’t pass otherwise. The so-called healthcare bill is the latest example.
You can copy or borrow from my letter to Congress to write your own . . .
Please oppose the so-called healthcare reform bill. I especially object to the fact that my tax dollars are being used to bribe members of Congress to secure their votes, or to reward powerful Senators. For instance . . .
The Baucus bill has the federal government paying the entire cost for the mandated Medicaid expansion in the following states: Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island and Michigan. This is an attempt to bribe or reward the Senators and Representatives from those states using my tax money.
Other states aren’t getting this sweet deal. Citizens in the other 46 states will have to pay higher taxes to fund this scheme.
I’m sure the so-called heathcare bill is stuffed with other sweetheart deals, designed to win key votes. You guys call this logrolling. I call it bribery. The only reason Congressional leaders get away with it is because they’re using my tax money to do the bribing, but that makes it worse, not better.
Frankly, I think any Congressional leader who offers a tax-funded benefit for a state or district in order to secure a vote, and any member of Congress who negotiates to gain such a benefit, should be brought up on charges and go to jail for violating the anti-bribery law.
The “cap and trade” bill will supposedly limit CO2 emissions. But it’s really a giant tax increase, mostly on the middle class. This violates promises President Obama and the Democrats made to get elected. The President even wants to redefine the word “tax” in order to hide the fact that he’s breaking his promise (see my letter to Congress below).Please send Congress a letter opposing the “cap and trade” tax increase.
You can copy or borrow from my letter to write your own . . .
I’m tired of being lied to by scheming, busybody politicians. President Obama and the Democrats promised there would be NO new taxes on the middle class. But everywhere I look I see middle class tax increases.
The healthcare bill is full of them, and the cap-and-trade bill is NOTHING BUT a middle class tax increase. It will raise my gasoline and electric bills to accomplish a supposed public purpose (as defined by you guys). That’s a tax, by any definition (except a politician’s).
STEPHANOPOULOS: “I don’t think I’m making it up (that you’re going to raise taxes). Merriam Webster’s Dictionary: ‘Tax: a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.’”
OBAMA: “George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.”
This is evidence that moral rot has taken hold with the President.
Does he believe that words should be defined to suit his personal needs, instead of by common usage as reflected in an authoritative dictionary? Read More »
Liberty Maven
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