Obama Says It Is Not About Him
Jul 22, 2009 Political
It is always about him…
Barack Obama, responding to a statement that failure to pass health care reform could be his Waterloo, stated that this was not about him. Tonight he claimed (in his news conference) that the resistance he sees from Republicans is about politics and that he has not blamed them for things (a lie). He always discusses the obstruction of Republicans without discussing the FACT that it is his party that is causing the delay. The Democrats have enough votes in both chambers to pass anything without one Republican voting yes. If it is not going anywhere it is because of the Democrats.
Obama is playing this game as if he is the all knowing, all seeing, man with the plan who is trying so hard for our chirren while people are trying to take him down. It is not about me, he says. So one has to ask, if politics is not part of his game and he only has the best interests of the country in mind, why would he tell Democrats that if they fail on this it will destroy his presidency?
“Let’s just lay everything on the table,” Grassley said. “A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn’t going to pass if there weren’t some changes made … and the president says, ‘You’re going to destroy my presidency.’ ” National Journal Congress Daily
If this is not about him or politics, why would he make this claim?
The media and the Obama supporters have set high expectations for this guy and he helped with the whole mess. He set an aggressive agenda to take advantage of his popularity because he knew it would not last and that he needed to get it done before he lost his political capital.
Obama admitted he has not read and does not know what is in the bill. No matter what they come up with he will not read it and neither will any member of Congress. They will slip all kinds of things in there and screw us badly.
A few points:
Obama tonight stated that if we can make health care cheaper than it is now (even if it is just a few thousand dollars per person) that this would be money that could go back into the pockets of workers. This is wrong. In his opening he said that they were going to pay for this with the savings their plan produces. It will not produce savings but allowing it for the sake of argument, the entire saved amount will go back to the system to pay for it which means that we still spend the same amount of money and still not cover everyone.
It is claimed that 45 million people have no insurance. This is misleading. When those who can afford it and choose not to have it are subtracted along with those who are illegal aliens (who will be covered by Obama’s plan) then the actual number of uninsured who cannot get (or afford) insurance is about 12 million. Why are we restructuring the entire health care system for a very small portion of the population? Surely we can come up with something to take care of those who truly cannot afford health care (if for some unknown reason they are not eligible for programs already on board) without mandating that everyone get a government run program and without forcing business to provide health insurance. Surely we can do this better without spending another couple trillion dollars.
Part of Obama’s problem is that he has lost some credibility. When he said that we had to rush to pass the stimulus now or the world would end he told us that the plan would have immediate results. He specifically said that unemployment would not go above 8% with the stimulus but would go above 10% if we did not pass it. He actually said if we did nothing but this is a strawman argument. The Republicans were offering ideas that would produce jobs and help the economy but Obama and the Dems would not listen. Obama is now backtracking and saying that the stimulus is on track because it was supposed to be long term. This is different than when he said it would have an immediate impact. The unemployment numbers show that he was wrong. Joe Biden said they guessed wrong. No one understood the gravity of the situation.
We need to oppose this and we need to keep on the so called Blue Dogs. Members who vote for this need to have a target on their backs during the next election. We already have the traitors on the right who voted for the stimulus and they need to be gone. Next we target all the ones who vote for this power grab that is designed to give government more control and give Obama a legacy.
And remember this folks. When given the opportunity to make it legally binding for members of Congress, their families and their staff to enroll in this boondoggle only 3 Democrats voted for the idea. None of them want it and none of them will have it. They want to be able to go to hospitals where they have private suites reserved for them with private chefs who prepare their meals. This is what they have reserved at Walter Reed at a cost of nearly a million dollars a year. About 9 beds are there and they are hardly ever used but if a member of Congress gets sick that is where he will receive care. While we wait in line for our substandard, rationed government care, they will be getting treated like royalty.
It is time to take this country back. Screw the Canadian system, screw socialized medicine and screw any liberal who does not like it and that includes the jug eared Socialist at the top.
One day this country is going to have another revolution. That is a legacy that Obama will not be happy with.
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Tags: elitism, health care, mandates, Obama, waste
You Can’t, Unless You Are The Government
Jul 16, 2009 Political
In February of this year, during a speech. Barack Obama admonished companies by exclaiming:
“You can’t get corporate jets, you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer’s dime.”
This was a direct stab at the companies that had taken, or in many cases forced to take, bailout money. He wanted to make it clear that as long as the taxpayer was footing the bill there would be no trips to these kinds of places no matter what the reason.
Of course this idea did not stop Obama from attending a fundraiser for Harry Reid in, you guessed it, Las Vegas. And he did it on the taxpayer dime.
It would appear as if it is OK to take these kinds of trips if you are the government because now we have word that the Social Security Administration sent at least 675 employees to Phoenix Arizona for a conference at the Valley resort. The cost of the trip was $700,000. This is 700 thousand dollars spent by an organization that has been raped of all its money by the federal government and will be in the red by 2016. They spent close to three quarters of a million dollars on a conference with classes such as “Techniques to Empower You,” “Mentoring the Generations,” and “Emotional Intelligence.”
The article also states that the SSA did not mention the after hours activities though I am not sure any of them cost the taxpayer because I would assume they were not paid for with taxpayer money (though it would not surprise me if taxpayer money was used).
Considering how terrible Social Security is and how it only allows people to live at poverty level while it plummets toward insolvency, one has to wonder who thought this would be a good idea.
Social Security is a boondoggle to begin with and should be gradually moved over to the private sector where the money people pay in belongs to them and they can decide how to invest it. This would generate more wealth and allow people to retire in comfort (something Democrats oppose because self sufficient voters are harder to scare into voting Democrat). This incident just demonstrates the atmosphere in the SSA. Waste money, make poor decisions, and don’t worry about it. The taxpayer will foot the bill.
If accounts were private we would not need 675 managers to run things (not to mention the tens of thousands of employees) and they could not go to training conferences that cost a fortune. There would be no need for all these people who run a poor system that has a return of less than 1% on investment.
Maybe that was their share of the bailout money.
You can’t waste taxpayer money unless you are the government.
Gotcha.
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Tags: boondoggle, insolvency, social security, taxpayer, trip, waste
Just An Old Fashioned SNAFU
Jul 1, 2009 Political
Here, for your perusal, is another in a long list of “What were they thinking?” As a part of the climate bill- you know, the one that costs money and does nothing? Oh wait- that is EVERY BILL we see nowadays- I see I must be more specific.
This is the bill where there is 3.4 million dollars for the “turtle tunnel” on a less than one mile stretch of hiway 27 in Florida. Well, it turns out that this is not the only brain- dead piece of pork that was inserted into this Obamanation of a bill.
The latest is an attempt to revive the marshland that was lost during Hurricane Ike, on Galveston Island. Look- I know their heart is in the right place, but one has to ask- where are their brains? Allow me to explain my logic- In 1883, there was the town of Indianola, on the Texas coast, near Matagorda Bay. There was a rail line that ran through the town, and because of its position on the Bay, was poised to become a freight depot for stores and goods that had been transshipped from overseas. Then came the Hurricane, and it wiped everything out except the rail tracks. People clung in trees for 20 hours to avoid the flood surge.
When the storm diminished, the survivors climbed down, surveyed the damage, and decided to rebuild, based on the idea that this was a once in a lifetime storm- which was a possible scenario. Unfortunately, it was not the correct one.
They rebuilt, and got life back to normal, but the very next year, another, even deadlier Hurricane came along and completely wiped out the town, even the rail tracks were washed away this time.
My point is that this Wetlands restoration will not succeed- oh, it might be around for a couple of years, but sooner or later, there will come along another hurricane, and there goes all the work and money that went into this project.
More than $5 million in federal stimulus money will help in the restoration of West Galveston Bay’s rapidly dying marshes, officials said Tuesday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration selected the project as part of a $167 million effort to create jobs by rebuilding damaged wetlands, shellfish beds and coral reefs along the nation’s coasts and the Great Lakes.
The money for West Galveston Bay will be used to rebuild 328 acres of marshes with dredged sand. It will be the largest in a series of restoration projects for an area that has lost more than 5,200 acres of marsh since the 1950s because of erosion, sea-level rise and subsidence — the sinking of soft soils.
The intertidal wetlands are critical because they act as nature’s speed bumps against wind and waves. They also serve as a productive nursery for a variety of sea life, including white and brown shrimp, blue crab and red drum.
chron.com
Once again, I am reminded how illogical liberals can be- and inconsistent in their philosophies also. On the one hand, they rant that Darwin MUST be taught as “settled science” in our classrooms, but then they ignore his theories regarding survival of the fittest in their futile quests to “save” the snaildarter, or spotted owl, or animal du jour, rather than allowing nature to determine the species’ viability.
The hurricane destroyed these wetlands- and the next hurricane will destroy some other wetlands- look at Louisiana. There were plenty of wetlands destroyed there. This is what hurricanes do- they carve new shoreline out of old. To try and deny that is insanity at its worst, because this is insanity with our money, and it will, by the very definition of what hurricanes do, be wasted money.
Hurricanes carve out their own “wetlands”. and they do this naturally- it is the height of arrogance to think that we should even attempt to do this, especially in this time of no money. If we were flush with money, I would still feel this was a foolish project, but if we had the money to waste, (in other words, not tax money, but private money), then my objections would be less vocal.
Private money can do whatever it wants, however illogical it may appear to be.
Our money, however, should be targeted to what will immediately help us, not on “feel good” projects that will just get blown away with the next storm.
Idiocy of that scope is a province reserved for the liberals who feel they know best- an ingrained delusion they will probably never lose.
They should be playing in a rubber room, but certainly NOT with our money.
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Tags: arrogance, eco- nutjobs, futility, nature, waste
The Crisis Will Hatch Universal Health Care Next
Jun 8, 2009 Political
Never let a good crisis go to waste. So far the Obama administration has not let this sentiment go to waste because it has pushed a number of things through at break neck speed all under the blanket of the crisis. The stimulus, the omnibus, the bailout of auto companies (and subsequent loss of taxpayer money in bankruptcy) are all the result of the crisis, emergencies that cannot wait. The time is now.
We have not spent very much of the allocated stimulus and things are starting to improve though we will have a way to go. We should rescind the rest of the spending and let things work themselves out.
No, we will spend that money (unwisely) and the Obama folks will continue. Next up on the plate is universal health care. The Democrats want every person in the country covered and they have a number of ways of doing it. All of them will mean tax increases and those increases will affect everyone.
Obama wants to tax the wealthy. He is pushing for a cap on tax deductions (and an increase in the marginal tax rate) for the wealthiest of taxpayers so that they will pay more into the government. That money will be redistributed to pay for health care. The cost will be staggering, the quality of care will decrease and everyone will be affected by the tax on the wealthy. Plus, there is no guarantee they government will spend the money on health care. Look at how the government has raped Social Security.
One plan on the table is to require all employers to provide health care coverage or pay part of the costs. This will only result in an increase in the price of goods. Employers ALWAYS pass costs on to consumers so everyone will end up paying. The plan also mandates insurance. People will be required to get health care coverage. You can be a billionaire and able to afford health expenses out of pocket but you will be required to get coverage.
I want to know where in the Constitution it says I HAVE to have health care coverage. Where is that mandate located?
Universal health care is socialized medicine where bean counters get to decide what treatment is best or if you should receive it. Despite the claims, other countries that have socialized medicine are not in good shape. Would you want to get sick in Cuba? Would you want to wait for bypass surgery in England or Canada? Some people might like the system but those who do are the people who are not responsible enough to take care of themselves.
We have socialized medicine in this country. Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA (as well as military health system) are all government run. The VA and military are items provided as part of the work contract but they are overburdened with administrative red tape and administrators. The health care provided to our troops is top notch and many of the innovations are later used in the civilian world but the red tape is a nightmare.
Liberals went nuts over problems at Walter Reed (a political stunt to embarrass George Bush) but this is the same system they want to give to you.
We cannot afford the cost. If you think health care is expensive now just wait until it is free. We need to revamp the way things are done in the open market and make it a more competitive atmosphere. We need to remove some of the restrictions placed on companies and we need to allow individuals and small business to pool resources in order to get group rates.
What we do not need is government running health care. The federal government could not organize a child’s birthday party and if it did the cost would be three times required and taxes would be raised to pay for it.
The same government that wants all your records electronic and wants to administer health care is the one that published our nuclear secrets.
If we want well run health care perhaps we should have Wal Mart take it over. The Wal Mart people actually know how to run a business and keep costs down.
Related items:
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Heritage Foundation
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Tags: crisis, health care, taxes, waste, wealthy
Lawmakers Live High On Taxpayer Money
Jun 1, 2009 Political
The big scandal in Britain is the disclosure of the blatant waste of taxpayer money for things that have nothing to do with public service. Politicians submitted for reimbursement any number of things that have nothing to do with their jobs including pornographic movies. The uproar might well lead to politicians losing their positions and some were said to be so embarrassed that they considered suicide.
In America, the politicians have codified the waste of taxpayer money for their lavish lifestyles so they do not have to worry about expenses being illegal. Sure, taxpayers might be miffed about the expenses but politicians can woo enough voters who don’t pay taxes by promising them something for nothing and they will, in effect, buy the votes. As long as the non taxpaying voters are in on the rape of the taxpayers they really don’t mind too much what their politicians do.
Lawmakers in the US use taxpayer money for leased automobiles not only for themselves but for their employees back in the district. They use taxpayer money to buy digital cameras and 46 inch TVs. The report that is submitted quarterly for expenses is 3000 pages long and lists all the things politicians buy with taxpayer money. It is all legal so long as they returnt he property when they leave office.
So, they get to buy big screen TVs and use them until they leave office. They get to use a leased automobile that we pay for along with the fuel and insurance. They get to use digital cameras as long as they return them when they leave office. Isn’t it nice that they can use our money to buy these nice things and they can use them as long as they are in office? Isn’t it nice that they are so responsible with our money?
How many of you can buy items with your bosses money and use the stuff as long as you return it when you leave his employ? Maybe we can all get together and go visit the lawmaker with the big screen TVs and demand to watch the Superbowl on them. We paid for them. Maybe we can borrow the keys to the cars because we are paying for them.
The words “fat chance” come to mind when I think of these things.
It seems to me that Congress got upset with private businesses for going to Las Vegas or flying in private jets because this was not prudent use of taxpayer bailout money.
Looks like Congress is no better with our money. They are not responsible and they waste it.
Read this article and then vote them all out of office in the next election.
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Tags: autos, cameras, Congress, expenses, taxpayers, tvs, waste