With the economy in shambles and his campaign sound bites and early interviews as president coming back to haunt him, President Obama has ramped up the class warfare rhetoric. Let’s put the lie to these strategies.
Department of Justice
President Obama Speaking at Solyndra
Congressman Tim Bishop has not been able to keep from spending, no matter what. The Postal Service has an $8.5 billion deficit, and Tim Bishop is out there fighting to keep an unneeded post office open. We are trillions of dollars in debt and he comes out blasting the Tea Party, because they want Congress to not waste anymore money on green boondoggles like Solyndra.
Progressives are a funny group when it comes to investing, and I mean real investing, not the phony code word for spending. If they’re the ones controlling the money and especially if the money is not theirs, then investing is fine. If it will compete with one of their sacred social programs and you will directly benefit from it, then bar the door it’s an out of control casino.
The above question could and should be applied to a number of individuals including Attorney General Eric Holder and even President Barack Obama. The subject is a program, run out of the Justice Department, called “Fast and Furious.”
With a week left in the election, Kirsten Gillibrand holds a substantial lead in the polls to be elected to the seat to which she was appointed after Hillary Clinton moved on to the State Department. Liberty’s Lifeline finds this a remarkable situation considering that for most of the past year polls have shown the Gillibrand trailed a generic “someone else”. It would seem that in this year of an anti-incumbent uprising, she would be among the easiest senators to unseat, and yet her race is considered “solidly Democratic”, in other words, in the bag.
If you watched the video of her debates with Joe DioGuardi she seemed overly scripted, delivering pattern Democratic talking points to questions even to the point of ignoring the question to parrot the memorized response. In a “lightening round” that required a yes or no answer, she seemed to struggle to give an answer to some questions that required thought before answering. It almost looked like a game show where she seemed delighted to get an answer right rather than giving answers she actually believed in.
In New York we have the unusual situation of voting for two senators in the same year. Chuck Schumer is the incumbent running for reelection and Kirsten Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacant seat when the latter became Secretary of State in the Obama administration. So in some respects, Ms. Gillibrand is running for the Senate for the first time rather than as an incumbent.
As a Congresswoman in 2007 she was a member of the “Blue Dog” coalition of conservative Democrats. In the Senate Ms. Gillibrand has been quiet as a church mouse. Perhaps that is because she doesn’t want people to notice her metamorphosis from a moderate Democrat from upstate New York with a 100% approval rating from the National Rifle Association to another far left Harry Reid “pet”, voting with the Democratic leadership 97% of the time. Now that she is in the Senate she has been endorsed for election by a leading gun control group which the NRA strongly opposes which prompted this response from the NRA
“She was either being dishonest with her voters in the congressional district or she’s being dishonest to the voters in New York state,” said the NRA’s chief lobbyist, Chris W. Cox. “Either way, the key word is dishonest.”
Gillibrand’s spokesman had no comment.
Ms. Gillibrand voted in favor of giving stockholders a vote on executive compensation in corporations. Does she favor giving Americans a vote on her and her colleagues’ compensation? In July 2009, she voted yes on a Congressional pay raise. So we need to keep those greedy corporate types in check, but she gets to vote herself a raise? But that’s not all; when as an attorney she represented corporations she had a very different role. As an attorney representing Philip Morris her job was to keep the Department of Justice from finding out that Philip Morris’ own research showed that tobacco was harmful.
“So when the Justice Department tried to get its hands on that research in 1996 to prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking, the company moved to fend off the effort with the help of a highly regarded young lawyer named Kirsten Rutnik [now Gillibrand].” – New York Times, March 26, 2009
Call it inconsistent, but whatever you call it, Ms. Gillibrand doesn’t like to talk about it.
The NAACP was once a proud organization with a noble cause, to advance the lot of people of color. Today it has abandoned those principles to become just another attack arm of the Democratic Party. This week they released a resolution condemning racism within the Tea Party movement.
I have been to a number of Tea Party events with hundreds of thousands of peaceful orderly participants and racism was not evident, surprisingly so. I say surprisingly because with any gathering of that magnitude to have a few fringe elements at either end of the spectrum would almost be expected. So is it possible there are racist elements at any given event? Sure. It is routine in the Tea Party? It is so rare, you have to aggressively search to find it and when you do, what proof is there that they are really Tea Party members or supporters or just some wacko who walked into the crowd with a sign?
Let’s look at the Strategy
The left has tried vainly to paint the Tea Party as racist because that is the most toxic label that they have. The racist label brings out the black electorate, polarizes the progressives, mortifies the moderates, and makes conservatives cringe. If they can make it stick it is very effective. It is also overused and as such, it is losing its sting. So how do you make it stick?
One way is to follow what the NAACP is doing. Pass a resolution condemning racism and demand the Tea Party repudiate racism in their ranks, which by the way is virtually non-existent. If you can cow the Tea Party members to take the pledge, then the liberal/progressives can plant racists at each rally with nasty signs, videotape them and then blame the Tea Party for failing to honor their pledge and thus “proving” racism is in the ranks of the Tea Party and it cannot be eradicated. This is straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
Let’s Look at the Facts
This is from the NAACP web site:
“Today, NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.”
I was a marshal at the Tea Party rally in New York on April 15th this year. We were concerned about reports on the street that infiltrators with racist signs might show up to garner media attention, which to that point had been rather thin. What were we to do? We couldn’t take their signs away, we couldn’t touch them as they had as much of a right to be there as we did. We came up with the idea that we would carry signs repudiating the person that our signs pointed to. We would approach the person, politely, tell them that their sign did not comport with the values of the Tea Party and ask them to put the sign away or leave. If they did not comply, we would surround them with our signs that said those views of that individual were not consistent with the Tea Party so that any media picking up their sign would see ours as well. If things got aggressive we would call in the police that were on hand. To my knowledge we never had to use our tactic as there were no racially offensive signs at the rally. We did not need a resolution by the NAACP to develop our counter strategy. It was part of our core beliefs, which puts the big lie to the NAACP’s resolution.
More from the NAACP web site:
“The resolution came after a year of high-profile media coverage of attendees of Tea Party marches using vial, antagonistic racial slurs & images. In March, respected members of the Congressional Black Caucus reported that racial epithets were hurled at them as they passed by a Washington, DC health care protest. Civil rights legend John Lewis was called the “n-word” in the incident while others in the crowd used ugly anti-gay slurs to describe Congressman Barney Frank, a long-time NAACP supporter and the nation’s first openly gay member of Congress.”
The first part of this passage was almost laughable. High profile media coverage? The lame stream media has been trying to bury the Tea Party by not covering them. What main stream media coverage was there in Washington in September of 2009 where several hundred thousand Tea Partiers rallied? It was dismissed as a couple of thousand.
Nancy Pelosi’s stunt to march through a crowd of Tea Party members to pass the Obamacare bill, did draw a lot of media attention and controversy. Show us the money! Andrew Breitbart put up $100,000 to anyone who could produce any video evidence that the things claimed in the above quote from the NAACP actually happened. There were media cameras and microphones all over the place, hundreds if not thousands of people with cell phone cameras and miraculously not one of them captured what the NAACP claims happened as fact. John Lewis was invited on several news programs to give his side of the story and he declined. Mr. Breitbart is still waiting to write that check. As Groucho Marx famously said, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?”
NAACP President Ben Jealous had this comment. “I give a 42-page speech. Half a page is focused on the tea party,” Jealous said. “We need the media to pay attention to the issues that are most important to this country” such as jobs, education, and crime. Uh, what did you expect sir? If you wanted the media to pay attention to the other 41 ½ pages of your speech, perhaps you should have dropped to bogus charge against the Tea Party.
I scoured the NAACP web site for any mention of the New Black Panther party and the case against them that was dropped by the Obama Justice Department. The site lacks a search feature so it made it more of a challenge but I looked through the site’s blog and found nothing. Now here is a case that is plainly caught on video tape and other video tape is found of King Samir Shabazz, spewing racial epithets and advocating murder of whites or “crackers” and their babies, but we hear nothing about this from the NAACP.
So, we have the NAACP issuing a resolution about alleged racism in the Tea Party for which they have no proof (there are some still pictures on their websites of people holding signs, but no reference to where the pictures were taken or who the sign holders were. They could have just as easily been a plant to smear the Tea Party). They ask the Tea Party to pledge to oppose racism, which I have demonstrated that opposing racist messages is standard operating procedure among the Tea Party, but they make no mention of the overt racism among their followers, where that racism is clearly on full display in living color with sound and includes not only racist sentiments but a call to actually murder whites. This apparently is considered worthy discourse to the NAACP leadership.
I call upon all members of the NAACP who really believe there is no place for racism in America to cancel your membership in the NAACP and join the Tea Party. We do not tolerate racist messages among our members. We have many African Americans in prominent positions in the Tea Party and we would have more if you join us. Our positions to end wasteful government spending and free up our economy will probably do more to advance you and your fellow NAACP members than fighting for the next government program. The NAACP has run aground on the shoals of petty squabbles to help the Democratic Party. It’s time to abandon ship and swim for shore.
The above opinions are my own. I do not speak in an official capacity for the Tea Party.
As President Obama said while campaigning to be President of the United States, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig!” How true. Yesterday President Obama reached for the lipstick to dab on four proposals suggested by the Republicans to the massive pig of a health care proposal clinging to life. The four proposals are:
- Use undercover medical professionals to conduct investigations to fight waste and fraud in Medicare, Medicaid and other Federal programs.
- “Demonstrations of Alternatives” to the current malpractice mess.
- Increasing doctor reimbursement for Medicare.
- Expanding Heath Savings Accounts (HSA).
The pig smiled. She thought she looked beautiful. Just don’t try to put a bikini on her because, as President Obama famously said, she’s still a pig. Let’s look at the President’s magnanimous attempt at bipartisanship in detail.
1) Undercover Medical Professionals to Uncover Fraud
It is estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion is lost or stolen each year from Medicare and Medicaid. This program has been in place for 40 years. If those numbers are consistent over that period, that’s $4 TRILLION. Gone. Stolen from you and me. How much better shape would we be in if we had that money back? That’s government efficiency for you.
The President of the United States is the chief law enforcement officer in the country. The amount of Medicaid and Medicare losses each year are four times the entire budget of the Department of Justice. How’s this for a proposal? Create a Medicare/Medicaid fraud unit within the FBI and fund it so that we can stop these losses. If you stop the fraud, it’s free money. What you save in fraud should more than pay for the FBI funding. Why take medical professionals and give them law enforcement duties. Are you going to ask police to operate on you? Mr. President it’s your job to enforce the laws and prevent this widespread fraud. You don’t need a new act of Congress. Just Do It!
2) Tort Reform –No; “Demonstrations of Alternatives” — Yes
Trial lawyers are one of the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party. Do you think such “Demonstrations of Alternatives” will amount to anything other than hush money? “Shut up , we’re looking into tort reform.” The counter argument is that Americans have a right to their day in court when they have been injured. True enough, and I am reluctant to arbitrarily limit their awards through a fixed dollar limit. I would take aim squarely at the lawyers.
John Edwards, one-time Senator and presidential candidate, was involved in about 63 cases as a personal injury attorney and amassed a fortune of about $70 million. In one particular case, he stood before the jury and took on the persona of a child in the womb crying out for oxygen to appeal to the emotions of the jury and win the case. Oddly enough he voted against a ban on partial birth abortion. Gee, in the once case it’s a child who can actually speak while still in the womb! But on the other hand it is just a mass of tissue at birth that can be disposed of with the trash. We have learned a lot about the moral character of John Edwards. He is the poster boy for the old joke, “How do you know a lawyer is lying? His lips are moving.”
Here is a simple solution to tort reform. Fixed fees for attorneys and loser pays. The lawyers should set their hourly rate and bill according to hours worked, not how much they can squeeze out of the jury. The award should be for the benefit of the injured party, not the lawyer. The second part is to prevent frivolous lawsuits. The loser pays the legal fees of the winner. The argument here will be that the tables will be turned and no one will sue corporations for damages because of the risk of paying their legal fees. Right now lawyers are running a lottery fishing for lawsuits of any kind because they know that most corporations will settle for less than it would cost to defend the suit, even if they know they are right. All customers of that corporation pay more for their products (e.g., drugs, medical devices) and the lawyer gets rich. I am sure that if such a proposal as this gets passed a new market for “legal fee insurance” will open up where a plaintiff with a strong case can buy insurance to cover the cost of the other sides legal fees if they do lose.
3) Increasing Doctor Reimbursement for Medicare
So much for bending the cost curve down. The real way to curtail spending on health care is to eliminate 3rd party payers. (see It can be done).
4) Increase Health Savings Accounts
These plans exist today, however, they are not all available across state lines (see It can be done). I had such a plan in New York while employed by a company, but when I went out on my own I could not buy the same plan in New York State. We don’t need ObamaCare, we just need states to allow these plans to exist within their borders or allow individuals to buy across state lines.
The Pig Lives!
Three of the four Republican proposals that President Obama likes don’t cost anything. But he $1 trillion to $2 trillion health care catastrophe is still alive and until we slay that beast and start over we will go from a serious health care problem to a fiscal crisis and end up with both. If you don’t believe me, read how the model for ObamaCare is working in Massachusetts.
