Call and Write Your Senators About Harry Reid’s Health Care Plan

Letters to my Senators regarding Harry Reid’s “health care plan.”

Dear Senator Nelson,

I implore you to respect the wishes of your constituency and vote against the pending health care legislation before the Senate. While the intentions of some may be good, the end result will be long term massive costs, increases in taxes and health care costs, and loss of services as budget restrictions force rationing of services.

The American people are far better at determining their own personal health care needs than 100 Senators and 435 Congresspersons who have little regard for the well being of their constituency.

To foist these overbearing measures on the 80% in order to supposedly provide for the 20%, a dubious justification at best, is not only wrongheaded, but indicative of the need for term limits to return elected officials to the states they hail from and limit political inbreeding in Washington.

We do not need the kind of health care reform Washington politicians are proposing, we need new representative who are more interested in statesmanship and the will of the people. Not a group of lemmings who blindly follow the party leadership.

Vote no on the Harry Reid led charge to decimate our health care system.

Dear Senator LeMieux,

Thank you for remaining steadfast in opposing the wrong headed and dangerous health care legislation pending before the Senate.

If our economy has even a possibility of recovery, this legislation will at best delay it, at worst, plummet us into a miserable decline.

The damage this legislation will inflict on the delivery of health care, on the health of individuals, and the economic health of families has been sorely underestimated.

Medicare currently costs many multiples of the originally stated cost. Senate Democrats have had to, in similar fashion to the University of East Anglia Climate “researcher”, fudge the numbers and creatively skew them to show a “balanced” bill.

The truth is the ever increasing costs will result in massive deficits and/or unbearable taxation of American families that will be required after the stated 10 year “balanced” projections.

Thank you again for your stalwart opposition to this attempt to destroy our health care system, our economy and our nation.

I you haven’t written and called your Senators, do so now, the time is short and the future of our nation and our economic well being is at stake.

Senate Directory: Look up your Senator and email him or her via the web mail application on their Senate website. Also check their Senate website for phone numbers or use the directory at TheOrator.com to call them. TheOrator weblinks to email your representatives may be broken. Try it before using the multistep process on the US Senate website.

“We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” – G. K. Chesterson

Time to come down off the "high"

With the election over, journalists, pundits, commentators, most politicians and most importantly, the President-Elect, Barack Obama, have all begun to scale back the rhetoric. These professionals, for the most part, understand there is an important distinction between campaigning for political office and holding that office.

The words, thoughts and ideas expressed in a campaign are idealistic, crafted to appeal to a candidate’s constituency’s hope and dreams. A political candidate also knows the rhetoric of campaigning will rarely become policy. Therefore he or she must scale back the expectations of their constituencies otherwise those who carried them to office will turn on them when they realize their idealized hopes will not be attained, or at least to the degree they were led to believe during the campaign.

To his credit, President elect Obama began lowering expectations in the final week of his campaign when it became clear that barring unforeseen and hugely inaccurate polling, he would most likely become this nation’s 44th President. The difficulty for Obama is that most of the constituency he has courted, the youth vote and the wealth envy vote, do not understand the difference between campaigning and governing.

Political candidates have since the beginning of politics promised far more than they can deliver. In the form of government in this nation, that fact is inherent in our Constitutional Republic. You see, this is not a democracy, despite the misguided belief perpetuated by the educational system and the media.

Sadly, the constituencies of President-Elect Obama have drunk the “Kool-aid” of “Change” and truly believe that their candidate and our soon to be President will enact all that he has promised. Many remain in “campaign mode” ravenously attacking anyone expressing ideas and opinions even slightly different from their own. They look for attack and disparagement in even the most benign of comment.

Their youthful idealism and expectations, their lack of understanding of the American political process, will lead them to disillusion and disappointment. At the same time, their inability to tone down their rhetoric and attacks will serve only to alienate them from both those who may agree with them as well as those who don’t.

Their friends, families and fellow employees will all soon tire of the constant argumentative attitude and newly empowered political groupies will soon find themselves not only disappointed in their expectations, but distanced from those who would have otherwise been there for them when they finally realize their candidate cannot fulfill the all promises made and their government has failed them despite their hope for change.

“We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” – G. K. Chesterson

An open letter to Sen. Bob Martinez (R-FL)

I am very concerned by your vote in the affirmative for H.R. 1424. This bill was rushed through the legislature and little time was given to investigate alternative solutions that would be more effective and less costly to the American taxpayer.

Even now our President and other leaders are backing off their urgent pleadings, telling us now that this bill will not be implemented for several months and will have little effect on our economic crisis.

I am very disturbed by the legislation provided in Section 110. It appears to me that this Congress has created provisions that, even more than Section 101, will advance socialism in the United States and the federalization of our financial markets.

I am surprised that your college, Mr. Nelson (D-FL), voted against this bill despite on its language that socializes the US financial markets and our banks via:

1) Government ownership of financial institutions, and
2) Unwarranted government intervention into private mortgage contracts.

This slippery slope will only become steeper if Democrats, now encouraged in their agenda, retain their majority.

I plead with you to set aside political considerations and make a stand for the future of our Republic.

Alexis de Tocqueville said, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”

Our legislators discovered this long ago, the people are swallowing this hook into their collective gut that will eventually rip them inside out.

Write your Representative: How did they vote?
Write your Senators: How did they vote?

“We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” – G. K. Chesterson

An open letter to Congress…

I am very concerned about the legislation currently being drafted to socialize the US financial markets. The primary reason for the current financial crisis is the manipulation of the financial system by Congress through entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

An additional primary factor is the decade old legislation such as HOPE IV promoting home ownership by all that provided stiff penalties to “unfair” practices in mortgage lending. Those unfair practices were left ambiguous enough to force banks and institutions to make unsound loans to unqualified applicants in a bid to protect themselves from lawsuits.

Secondarily, giving taxpayer funds to activist agencies such as A.C.O.R.N. is a travesty. A.C.O.R.N. has been a major player in creating this crisis taking advantage of the aforementioned legislation. Included in recent drafts of the bail out legislation is language giving them 20% of any profits. This is like allowing a convicted murderer to profit from books written about his crime.

A major initial concern of my was what Congress would do with any “profits” from this supposed “investment.” I had no faith they would actually return it to the people from whom they took it. There is no precedence for that. Now we know what their intent is.

Ayn Rand said, “One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.”

The Congress has done that to our financial systems through demands for housing loans to many who cannot afford it, in the process encouraging the “cooking of the books” and fraudulent application and approval process that Congress now rails against.

The creation of GSEs Freddie and Fannie, then failing to provide strong rules to prevent them from buying up weak mortgage packages while allowing them to enrich members of Congress through lobbying and contributions has only created an incestuous and disastrous relationship.

Instead of a rush to create another monster that may address the short term “crisis” but in the process create unintended consequences that will irreparably damage our financial systems for decades to come and take us dramatically into socialism, the Congress needs to step back and breath deeply.

The American people in their intuitive grasp of this problem has said, “slow down and back off!” Congress needs to do just that. The major players in the financial system are sitting back to see what Congress is going to do.

If Congress stands down, the financial players will step up to the plate. But why should they if there is a socialist Congress willing to commit the wealth and treasure of ordinary Americans to the task.

I’ll do my own investing; I don’t need Congress to do it for me.

“We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” – G. K. Chesterson

We need term limits, now!

The following is an excerpt from an article I came across on Gas Buddy:

“SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California lawmakers enjoy a perk not available to their colleagues in any other state: unchecked use of gasoline charge cards that stick taxpayers with the bill.

Through the first seven months of the year, California taxpayers have spent $220,000 to pay for lawmakers’ gasoline, according to a review of records requested by The Associated Press. That includes July, when lawmakers already were past their deadline to approve a budget and the state faced a $15.2 billion deficit.”

Makes term limits look more inviting. I used to believe the ultimate term limit was the best way, vote ‘em out. After all, are we not as a nation of voters supposed to understand that the politicians work for us and we hold the ultimate authority?

Now it seems the voter is more interested in the promises politicians make to them but cannot or will not fulfill. You know, tax the evil business that employ us or the evil rich who own the evil business that employ us. Promise to send our kids to college or preschool, pay for our health care with no cost to us, oh, and put a chicken in every pot and free cable with HBO.

We know they cannot or will not do what is promised, but continue to fool ourselves into believing it. When will we wake up and realize that the politicians, with few exceptions, are in it for only one thing, the power to control our lives.

You may say, “but that’s California, not my state.” Well, you better wake up, historically what happens in California will sooner or later spread to the rest of the nation. Do you want to wait until its too late, or act now while we still have a chance to stop it before it starts?

Once a politician gets a taste of power, unless he is exempt from the human condition, he will crave more and more until his primary interest is maintaining power, not the betterment of the nation.

“We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” – G. K. Chesterson

POM, PCP and DRS, dangerous mental diseases

In a recent interview by Sean Hannity, Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin referred to an addiction to OPM (say opium) when asked about the causes of the meltdown of Wall Street and the financial markets. She was referring to Other Peoples Money.

I think she also should have mentioned another addiction, that of the Washington politicians to PCP. So many of our politicians are controlled by this addiction as evidenced by their inability to separate themselves from the Washington power structure.

They keep returning year after year, election after election. Each time they complain about the corruption of Washington and vow to clean it up, but in the end they, year by year, election by election, become increasingly tainted by their addiction.

That addiction? PCP, also known as Personal Consolidation of Power. Except for the very strong and disciplined, they all fall into its grasp. The grasp of its tentacles and the tantalizing purr of its disarming voice more often than not overwhelm the good intentions of freshmen politicians.

Its most prominent symptom is the complete lack of acknowledgement of their addiction. As we all know, especially those whose life work is in addiction counseling, until an addict acknowledges his addiction, there’s no hope for him/her.

For those who are in the grasp of this addiction, usually their only hope is the good will of their constituents who, though not an easy task, must force themselves to think of their representative over themselves, and issue a massive dose of anti-incumbentadosis.

On November 4 of this year, voters across this nation have the solemn obligation, as they go to their polls, to vote for a candidate other than the incumbent.

I know, in some cases, this may be a very difficult task. It’s hard to think about what you are doing and consider your vote intellectually rather than by rote. But for the health of your representative, you must do so.

If you find you cannot, it may be a strong symptom that you are infected with an incurable case of DRS or Disassociative Responsibility Syndrome. Other symptoms are an insane belief that your politicians are actually telling you the truth as they campaign, that you want to get your fair share of the money the candidate is promising to dole out, and you think you must punish the greedy rich and big business by increasing taxes on them to transfer their money to your bank account.

If you exhibit any of the symptoms of DRS, it is vital that you isolate yourself immediately. Do not go out of your house until after November 4th. It is especially important that you stay away from your polling place and avoid at all costs absentee balloting.

Extracting yourself from the political process is the only hope for you to regain your sense of self responsibility and for your country to regain it’s equilibrium and return to the greatness for which it is known.

“We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” – G. K. Chesterson