My Very Racist Rant

Perhaps I should have just called this a very Politically Incorrect Rant, but then you likely wouldn’t have come here to read what I have to say. Frankly, this is about race in several definitions of the term, race in the sense of politics and race in the sense of the human condition.

Some time back, I am not sure exactly when… Americans began to be associated with their ethnic heritage and a hyphen… most predominantly the “African-American” and “Hispanic or Latino-American” are used to identify minority populations in the United States. Like window dressing the Italians, Arabs (secularly) and Muslim’s (religiously), the Greeks, Polish, and the very catch all European groups have been tossed into the lexicon mix. It is simply disgraceful to separate and segregate by term who or what someone is… unless of course you are a “Native American” which is a term summarily attached to American Indian, but is a more apt descriptor of anyone whose heritage by birth began their journey here. I am not sure where American Indians came from, some say they traveled up through South and Central America to settle here, others think some tribes were born from those crossing a thin land mass now occupied by the seaway dividing Russia and Alaska. Regardless, they were here for some time because Christopher Columbus so stated in 1492 or there about, but I digress.

The point here is that if you are a legal resident of the United States you can call yourself an American, and if you were born here or spend the time and effort required to become a legal United States Citizen then you can say you’re an American Citizen. The bottom line is neither being born on United States Soil or taking the oath of citizenship requires you to be anything but alive. Having a moniker hung around your net like a Scarlet Letter is nothing more than a tool to divide a society that is more fractured than it needs to be already. So, that’s all pretty “not racist” at this point unless it is considered racist not to call someone by their heritage-hyphenated designation. Who really knows or cares, even the courts have difficulties deciding.

 We are looking as American’s at an election that could well be one of the most significant in generations. Like the elections of Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan the time has come for America to do some serious soul searching. The news media was beside itself in 2008 when Barrack Hussein Obama was elected the 44^th President of the United States, the first African-American or Multi-Racial President ever elected. More than a million people filled the streets of Washington, D.C. and the National Mall to bear witness to his Inauguration. Today he would be lucky to gather a crowd of 10 thousand to hear his campaign speeches, and more often than not the huddled masses have more on their mind than listening to political speak from someone whose ideas and ideals only a few years ago made them feel good about the prospects of our country moving in a forward direction. What they got was a man who exhibited in every imaginable way the fact he had never run anything in his life. The President of the United States is after all the chief executive of a budget that is now in excess of 1 trillion (with a t) dollars, more than any company or country in the world. It takes a lot more than platitudes and feels good speeches to manage something as confounding and complex as the beast that’s head is Washington, D.C. Further, the President is responsible for setting the foreign policy of the United States and furthering the agenda of our country and our allies around the world. This is no small task for someone with a lifetime of experience dealing with huge personalities, much less that of countries capable of waging war in a way that could potentially be hugely destructive to the American way of life.

Put simply, the man who is now our President was and sadly still is in way over his head and has nary a clue as to what to do to fix the problems we face, and is unwilling to upset those who he is indebted to for his office. This is not to say he made this journey on his own… No without question he had plenty of help from large majorities in both houses of the Congress, and contrary to the line painted by the President and his party who lost the House of Representatives in the 2010 mid- term election for having displayed arrogance and incompetence in larger than life ways, he could have signed into law literally any bill he asked for or was given by the Congress because the minority party could do nothing to stop legislation from being passed or to override a veto if one had been offered. It was all Democrat (with a big “D”) all the time from January 2009 through December of 2010. What has the President done?

Given that the President who was at the time he ran for the office of President a sitting United States Senator from the State of Illinois and who was fully aware of the fact that a war was still raging in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as complete knowledge of the fiscal disaster that was brought about by the collapse of the real estate markets brought on by a complete lack of any discipline in trading insane derivative instruments on Wall Street among other things, persisted in his effort to attain the office and won the election. The former President, George W. Bush quite publicly invited Senator Obama and Senator McCain to the White House to discuss fully the financial condition of the country, where Senator McCain for a brief time suspended his campaign so he could devote his full attention to passing some sort of legislation to help rectify the matter. He received exactly what he knew to be true, not some surprise that only became evident at the time he took the oath of office. It is true that President Obama inherited a mess, but it wasn’t a mess he was not familiar with, nor was it one he was or is prepared to deal with managerially or otherwise. That would require leadership and experience, neither quality President possesses. So, the President and his friends Nancy Pelosi the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and Senator Harry Reid the Majority Leader of the United States Senate set out to right the ship of state and all that was wrong with her, but try as they did, they failed miserably because they were not capable of leading either as a team, or following the vision of the President who clearly had none.

They passed a stimulus spending package that was designed to create or save millions of jobs, and it cost nearly 800 billion dollars of borrowed money, but the jobs did not come and the economy sputtered in the face of high gasoline prices that robbed any tax benefits average American’s received through the stimulus. They fashioned a bail out from an ill conceived program called TARP left to them by the Bush Administration that took aim at Wall Street firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and forced them out of business while propping up AIG (the largest insurer of Wall Street inequities) and Goldman Sachs the boardroom home of the former and newly appointed Secretaries of the Treasury. They passed a health care reform bill commonly referred to as Obama Care, but put forth as The Affordable Health Care act, they wrote it largely behind closed and locked doors and passed it on the eve of Christmas very much like the stimulus bill with no votes from the opposing party. The Speaker of the House of Representatives proudly stated that members would have to vote for the bill so the American people could find out what was in it, sadly neither she nor anyone else in her august body had read all or even most of it before voting in the affirmative. The bill came over from the United States Senate as a gutted bill from the House of Representatives turned into what the Supreme Court has now dubbed a tax which is a bill that is supposed to originate in the House of Representatives, the Constitution of the United States, Article I notwithstanding, and found its way to the desk of the President who also had not read all or even part of the bill before he affixed his signature to it and forced it down the throats of the American people. Finally, near the last hour of their party together they realized that the economy could take no more and they extended for two years (until after the next quadrennial election) the tax cuts signed into law in 2001 and 2003 by former President George W. Bush, and by association his namesake to this day.

Now, it seems like I have spent less time or race and more time of politics, but the story had to be told to bring into context what is the main concern of the author and that is pandering to minorities for votes. American Blacks make up something between 12 and 14 percent of the population but something less than that of the voting population for reasons we will not get into here. American’s of Hispanic or Latin decent make up between 20 and 24 percent of the population and again less than that of the voting population. The two together pull in the neighborhood of one third of the vote nationwide. They are not a monolithic voting block and try as they might to maintain ignorance of the truth from them; an awaking has begun to take place. Unfortunately, it may not be fully developed before the November election. The President and his party are quite content to pander shamelessly to these populations, insisting that they cannot possibly get along without significant assistance from the government. In fact the President stated this past Saturday, July 14^th that no one in this country achieved success on their own, regardless of their ingenuity, their stictuitiveness, or their hard work and good sense. If not for the community and the government they would be sputtering aimlessly in a country with no infrastructure and no manner of social substance. What an insult to the generations of Americans who have laid the way through their hard work and the payment of tax dollars used to fund the so called “help” that previous generations have commonly referred to as the American Dream. They left place where the next generation necessarily does better than the current one, not because they built a better government, but because they built a better America. Today that dream is in jeopardy, and seems unreachable for many who have lost so much in the economic downturn.  But the least able to take full advantage are those in the minority who for their entire lives have been kept down by archaic laws that perpetuate and promote a welfare state and dependency where it need never have come to that. Laws that made it profitable for families to split up or never come together in the first place in order for the cars of the benefit train to become filled with booty from Uncle Sam. Now waivers are being issued to reinvigorate the welfare state as we once knew it before the reforms passed by a Democrat President and a Republican Congress while managing to balance a budget on the back of no American.

American Blacks are expected to support a President who has given them nothing, no fair deal, no good deal, just a raw deal. American Hispanics and Latinos expecting immigration reform when it could easily have been achieved in a fully empowered Democrat government were left holding the bag once again, even though comprehensive immigration reform failed in the previous administration by only a very few votes. As a token the President extended a non-deportation order for unlawful entrants into the US who met certain criteria, until they attain the age of 30. These populations are not what reasonable people consider liberal. They are very conservative in their core beliefs about spending and about social matters, but generationally they have been entrapped and corrupted into believing that they could not make it without the hand of the government in their lives. They have been bludgeoned into submission as voters for the Democrat Party when everything they have inside says they want have and live traditional American values unencumbered by the shackles of the government dole. The Democrat Party that holds so dear a “Separation of Church and State” freedom from religion rather than of it, panders in American Black churches at the very pulpits they would ban from a high school graduation. Truly it is Shame, shame, shame on them and a pox on their houses.

Americans get up every day and go to work, they attend a religious service, they believe in an American ethic, and not a hyphenated representation based their skin color. They don’t want their money used to kill babies, and they don’t want their babies to be gunned down on the streets. They don’t want their friends and neighbors to be lead astray by the glamour of crime. They want to be honest Americans who love their country. It is time to stop setting people aside, time to stop ignoring the cause of their problems, and time to stop putting band-aids on the errors of the past that perpetuated the conditions that bring forward nothing but pain and suffering. It is time to let people believe in themselves, in their families, in what they hear coming from their pulpits, and in their country. It is time to stop bickering about benefits and to start implementing solutions based on American values. It is time to give people a chance to become great because they are great and not because they show up. There are winners and losers in America and more often than not the losers eventually become winners because they believe that they have the opportunity to be just that, a winner, an American.

No President has been more divisive than President Obama, nor has any President done more damage to our way of life by trying to fundamentally change who we are. We were not a broken people, we were a broken economy. We were not deprived of healthcare; we were denied the ability to access affordable health care. The President of the United States is a leader and although for some President’s that has taken different paths, some in war, some in peace, some in difficult financial times, until now all of them have tried to make a difference and to lift the American people. Even Jimmy Carter whose economic record was a dismal disgrace tried to lead. This President has done nothing to lead, nothing to rally the American spirit, nothing to give the hope he so boldly spoke of in his campaign in 2008. He let the Congress run rough shot over him and he took credit for their bad choices by putting lipstick on a pig. It’s very sad. Now he claims a banner “Forward” which is quite appropriate since his past is one no American is willing to relive.

The American people may not like Mitt Romney, they may not like the fact he is a Mormon, or that he has achieved his American Dream and become wealthy through hard work. They may not like he is a family man with a large family and that he has evolved more than once on a number of issues near and dear to their heart. This election is not about liking the man, rather believing in him and trusting him to do the right thing. It is about expecting him to use his experience as a leader to truly right our ship of state and bring our economy into calm waters. This election is about a choice between a man who has been exposed to leadership and a man who has lived as a leader. This election is about giving America back to Americans and turning a deaf ear to anyone who disputes that they are not as ready to sacrifice as any generation before them. This election is about continuing to correct a grave mistake which started in 2010 when Americans stopped the free will of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid to experiment with their lives and their livelihoods. It is time for Americans to collect on President Obama’s belief that if he did not turn things around in three years it would be a one term proposition. How prophetic on his part to state what so many envisioned, and now how many now see. Thank you President Obama for nothing and please have a nice comfortable ride on Air Force One back to whence you came, Chicago is your kind of town, and Rahm Emanuel is keeping it ready for you.

GAS PRICES ARE CRIPPLING THE ECONOMY! WHAT CAN BE DONE?

It should come as no surprise to you that your wallet or purse is a lot lighter than it used to be, and that your credit or debit card has a lot more wear than it has had of late because of the amount of use it has had at the gas pump. Gasoline prices have taken a big bite out of everyone's budgets and we all have cut back on the other spending we normally do. We have stopped buying extra food items at the grocery store. We have stopped having auto repairs if they can possibly wait. We will wait for a movie to come to DVD or Netflix rather than spend the money to go to the theater. We have even made conscious decisions to make coffee at home instead of stopping at Starbucks.... what's the world coming to... the prices keep going up and up and there isn't a thing as consumers we can do to stop it.

Well, what is causing the constant increases in price. Is there a shortage of gas because of the trouble in the Middle East? No, there is no shortage of crude oil on the market. The is plenty of supply and inventory, that is not the problem. The problem is speculation in the commodities markets and that is not necessarily associated with any specific reality. Those markets are driven by emotions, feelings, and sometimes pure conjecture. People bet on what might happen based on what might be happening months and months from now assuming facts that do not yet exist. Is it ridiculous, yes. Should it be illegal, probably. Is there anything that can be done about it, NO!

We are our own worst enemy here. Our government has created the mess we are in by failing to have an energy policy that included building new modern refineries to increase capacity and provide security to our nations energy reserves. I'll say it again, like many others... We have not built a refinery in this country since the 1970's. Our current refineries are old, they are operating at less than their capacity because they are constantly being rebuilt and refurbished. Many are located in areas that are dangerously close to hurricane prone areas. We are days and hours away from a major energy disaster and no one is lifting a finger to do anything.

That said, the immediate problem is putting money back in your pocket so that you can get to work, and put money back into the economy. They guy at the Quickie Mart needs your money and so does them man at the Quickie Lube and the woman at the Dry Cleaner and all the other people you deal with in your day to day life. Truckers need lower cost fuel to help keep the cost of your groceries lower. How can this be done? The Federal Excise Tax on Gasoline (Gasohol) and Diesel can be suspended and this would drop prices 18 to 20 cents immediately. Congress and the President can work together to temporarily suspend these taxes. Second with the summer driving season comes the boutique blending of gasolines to reduce vehicle emissions. This drives the price of fuel up by at least 10 cents but by as much as 15 cents. The blending is an EPA regulation that can be suspended by the President. Both of these moves would help every American NOW.

You should take time to call your Member of Congress and Senators to demand that they work to suspend the Federal Excise taxes on Motor Fuels and call the White House to demand that the boutique blending on gasolines be suspended until gasoline prices fall as the result of market forces (not due to the suspension of the excise taxes) and not before. Congress and the President must hear from the American People. They must be pressured to take action NOW. They must be made to hear we are all fed up with this nonsense brought on by people playing on the Commodities Exchanges.

You should also demand that Congress legislate changes to allow for permitting of new refineries. We must have new refineries to protect our energy security and to achieve the amount of capacity we need to be able to meet the needs of the American people. We cannot depend on 40 year old facilities that could disappear at any time due to a natural or man made disaster. We have to know that our demands will be met. We have to know that when we pull up to the pump in our neighborhood or on the highway across the country that we are able to purchase low cost high quality fuels. We do not want to be forced to import refined gasoline into the United States.

Come on Congress! Come on Mr. President! You say you want to do something to save America's Energy Future... Put Up or Shut Up. We don't need or want Cap and Trade. We want Security and Low Cost Energy and we want it NOW!

It is time for the Republican Party to Take Charge!

The Republican Party controls the United States House of Representatives which is one half of the Congress of the United States. The Democratic Party controls the United States Senate the other half of the Congress and the Presidency. The President has Veto power and with a super majority in both the House of Representatives and Senate being required to override a Presidential Veto; the upper hand in terms of power in terms of the Government lies with the Democratic Party, or so one would think.

The Constitution provides that the spending and taxing authority begins in the House of Representatives. The government cannot perform it's day to day operations without the funding approved by appropriations from the House of Representatives. The Senate cannot act until it receives legislation from the House. The President cannot sign a bill into law or veto it, until it has been passed by both houses of Congress. So, if a political party is going to have control of one of the two bodies in Congress, the power certainly is in the House of Representatives. That is not to say that the Senate does not have exclusivity, but when it comes to spending money, nothing happens unless it happens in the House.

The Senate is a fickle place with lots of rules. The minority in the Senate has many protections. These have been developed over the years by all parties who have had control of the Senate because they knew at some point they would lose control and would be once again in the minority. The most effective tool in the arsenal of the minority, say of any one Senator is the Filibuster. A single Senator can stop all legislative business for as long as that Senator can hold the floor. There are some fairly significant records when Senators have spoken on and on and on to make their position clear and generally gain some sort of compromise from the Senate. Whether it is a concession for a Senator's state or for a Senator's party this tool can be very effective. However, it is rarely ever used in this manner. What is used in the modern day Senate is an implied Filibuster. The threat of a Filibuster is enough to get the attention of the majority. If the Minority decides not to participate, the Majority cannot move forward without them if the Minority has at least 41 votes. If the Majority has 60 votes or more, then it is impossible for an implied Filibuster to be used.

Currently the Republican Party has 47 seats in the US Senate. This is 6 seats more than is needed to use an implied Filibuster. If all 47 Senators stay together they can effectively stop all Senate business, or they can prevent particular Senate business from being considered. This provides a considerable position for negotiation. The Majority cannot run rough shot over the Minority. In effect The Democratic Party cannot do anything unless at least 7 Republicans go along with them.

With Control of the House of Representatives, and the ability to shut down business in the Senate, the Republican Party has much more power than it has been exercising and much more than they have been putting forth to President Obama. It is time to take off the gloves. It is time to stand up and take charge. The Democrats cannot beat the Republican's into submission with lies about starving children, elderly, and poor. The Republicans can force the President and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to tell the truth. They can force them to come clean about spending and about taxes. They can force the President to lead or get out of the way.

I call upon Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader McConnell to get on with it and pull out all the stops. Stop going along to get along. Make the hard choices and show the American people that THEIR government can function in a way that is responsible and responsive. Stand up to the Media and tell them that business as usual is over and that the days of rhetoric have passed. Give us a government that will deliver to us a future we might not like but that we know our country will be proud of, one that does not rob its citizens of a dime more than is necessary to accomplish that goal, and one that spends not a penny more than is required to do a proper job.

We don't need a political campaign. We need someone to get off their ass and do the job! Thank you!

What Congress Should Not Be!

I've had it with Congress, both Houses, and both Parties. I think it's time for a little REFORM we can all live with and here is a good start!

1. Congress Should Not Be Paid... any body that raises billions to be elected doesn't need millions of taxpayer dollars in salaries to survive for a term in office.

2. Congress Should Not Be the Recipient of a Benefits Package... whether a US Representative or a US Senator one term in office hardly qualifies someone for a healthy benefit package most folks have to earn over a long period of years to achieve and usually have to sacrifice a significant portion of their salary to obtain. No health care, retirement, or other benefits for being a public servant.

3. Congress Should Not Be In DC Longer Than 120 Days Per Year... Get with the program people, you have a job to do, pass the 13 appropriation bills and get the hell out of town. Don't we have enough laws? I mean really? If you need to declare a War, well sure come back for a "Special Session" but otherwise stay the hell in your district where you belong!

4. Congress Should Not Be Receiving Visits From Lobbyist While In Session... Do you get visits from sales people when you are at work, well maybe if you are a doctor, but hey maybe there are some really good drugs out there, and well maybe you will get a good box of pens and sticky notes. If Lobbyist wants to see you they can come to your District Office where your Constituents can see whose knocking at your door, not just wonder whose cozying up with you at the cloak room door where there aren't any cameras, or over at the lobby of the "Willard Hotel".

5. Congress Should Not Be Spending New Money if the Current Budget Is Not Balanced... Doesn't it just make sense that you can't spend more money you don't have if you are already spending money you don't have. Come on, how much deficit do you guys need. I don't know about you but I can't bring myself to push 2 for Spanish now and I sure as hell am not going to push 3 for Chinese...That's right and we don't even owe Mexico, South America, or Spain!

So, there you have it Congress... You Should Not Be Receiving Anything At All or Doing Anything but Your Job because YOU SUCK! YES I said it. Someone had to say it. People everywhere should be saying it. If we say it often enough and loud enough people will begin to believe it. People might even understand it and look to the Constitution for faith, guidance, and hope. At least they read the Constitution out loud in the well of the House, at least members there paid lip service to it. I don't know if the members of the Senate have a copy. Maybe they are still searching for theirs. Let's hope sooner or later the Speaker will send his copy over the Senate as a gesture of Good Will. Maybe then they will be on the same page, since it is really all on one page. Well there are some Amendments, but you get my point. It is not all that much to read. Congress needs to get it's act together and NOT BE A BUNCH OF WIMPS. DO YOUR JOB AND GO HOME!!!!

As the Gavel passes...a new beginning in Washington...

Today the fruit of the vine ripened in Washington, DC despite the winter temperatures and the bitterness just below the surface in the new minority in the United States House of Representatives as John A. Boehner of Ohio accepted the Speaker's Gavel from Nancy Pelosi of California. The first thing on the agenda was a sweeping change in House Rules. No longer will American's have to worry that legislation in their Congress will be passed before they have a chance to have a peek at it online. Members of Congress will also have to cite the authority in the US Constitution used as a basis to draft legislation. Further, the centralized power of the Speaker's office will trickle down to the leadership and committee chairman. While these changes may appear to be over-simplification, they represent a serious change in attitude and a move to a truly transparent government. What began with the Contract with America in 1994 which was followed by the squandering of budget dollars and congressional control ending in 2006, may finally find our Congress doing the job they were sent to Washington, DC to do...

I have high hopes for Speaker Boehner and his leadership team. I believe that even though they will be forced to raise the debt ceiling over 14 trillion dollars sometime in the coming months, that real progress will be made in reigning in the sprawling footprint of the US Government and in facing the grim reality of the debt and deficit, and reforming of the entitlement programs Social Security and Medicare. This will not be an easy job and the new Speaker will have to be constantly vigilant to insure his majority stays together and gets the job done.

While going it alone is a distinct possibility as the Democrats learned in the last Congress, Speaker Boehner has already gone the extra mile to include Democrats in the first legislative effort, reforming the House Rules. He will not however receive much support when HR-2 hits the floor of the House, it is the bill to repeal the Health Care legislation passed last Christmas Eve. While House Democrats may bawk and vote NO, a majority of the American people want the whole thing scrapped and want market based reforms to replace the massive nationalization of up to 1/6th of the US economy. It will be a long two years and compromises certainly lay ahead for the House with the US Senate. Hopefully we will all be proud of what happens under the leadership of the new Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

WHAT A MESS...

We've come a long way in the last 15 months since President Obama took office. He promised that he would transform our country and to that end he has not disappointed. While it is absolutely true that he inherited arguably the worst economy since the Great Depression, it is also true that he and Vice President Biden were prior to taking their current offices members of the world’s most deliberative body and America's most exclusive club, the United States Senate. As Senators the condition of the US economy should not have been lost, or at least not a secret. Candidate Obama was brought into the White House along with his opponent Senator John McCain by former President Bush for a sit down meeting about the very difficult economic issues caused primarily by the failure of housing market and really bad loans made by US banks and mortgage companies. At that time (September 2008) the stock market had found its way into the toilet and Trillions of dollars in US wealth disappeared with the Dow falling from it's more than $14,000 high to less than half it's value.

Since taking office in January 2009 we’ve received the following from the Obama Administration and the Democrat controlled Congress:

1. The Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2009
2. The Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009
3. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
4. America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009
5. The Jobs for Main Street Act of 2010

Let’s not forget that the take over of AIG, Chrysler, and General Motors all as a result of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of 2009, and the Cash for Clunkers program from funds made available in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

To date not one member of either body of Congress has made the claim they have read any of the extremely complex bills that they have passed and the White House has not made it clear that the President has done more than a cursory reading of any of the bills himself.

The President and the Congress are not done either because the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2009, and the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 are pending legislation that the Congress intends to push through for the President’s signature before the mid-term elections in November.

The legislation that has passed and been signed into law has put the United States into perhaps unrecoverable debt. The pending legislation shows no intent of providing any relief from that position; in fact, the evidence is quite to the contrary. It is unconscionable that our government could put our country in this position. It pains me to have to consider what future generations of Americans will have to contend with, especially when I recall the fall of the former Soviet Union who spent themselves into oblivion in the Cold War that ended with the fall of the Berlin wall in the George H.W. Bush Administration.

While the President has repeatedly resolved both as a candidate and since his inauguration in January 2009 not to increase taxes a single dime on individuals with incomes of less than $200,000 and married couples earning up to $250,000 there is talk of a Value Added Tax (VAT) to help get the country out of debt or provide additional revenues for not yet contemplated programs. The VAT would be in addition to the income tax which is slated to increase as tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 under the George W. Bush Administration expire. There is no pending legislation to exempt individuals and married couples under the President’s thresholds from feeling the bite of the sunsetting of the Bush tax cuts.

Our economy is extremely fragile. Unemployment is at higher levels than have been seen since the recession during the Ronald W. Reagan Administration’s first term. Fortunately massive inflation has not become reality just yet, but with the amount of money printed by the Federal Reserve it will be impossible to stave it off forever and maintain the low interest rates needed to insure a robust recovery. The housing market has begun to return in many areas, but the hardest hit places like California, Florida, and Nevada may not return for a decade or more. There is talk of another round of major repossessions in the near future when mortgages not converted from adjustable rates to fixed rates reset from below prime levels. While efforts have been made by the White House to urge lenders to work with home owners there is little hope that the majority of troubled mortgages and homes will be saved.

The Republicans in Congress with rare exception have voted unanimously “NO” on all of the legislation passed to date. Polls consistently show that the favorable ratings of the Congress are below 25% and recently the President’s own job approval rating has fallen below 50%. They show that the American people are angry because of the piles of debt that are continuing to grow, and the arrogance of the politicians voting in direct opposition to their will.

Washington, D.C. has become ground zero in the economic destruction of our country. There is no doubt that the Democrat majorities in Congress will be severely curtailed if not lost completely in the upcoming mid-term elections. Should they lose one or both houses of Congress the President will be powerless to accomplish any of his agenda because there will be a continual gridlock until his term ends in January 2013. Unfortunately the damage has been done, and reversing it may be impossible without the ability of the Congress to override a Presidential veto.

The American people must wake up and smell whatever turns them on, be it their coffee or roses in their gardens. We must learn to understand the reality of the issues and they must strive to stay informed about legislation before their elected officials. We must use whatever legal and peaceful means necessary to return our fiscal house to order, and to mandate that the Constitution be followed. Our country is too important and in our history we have never been quitters or been kept down. The tyrannical actions taken by our elected government can be stopped. We can recapture the constitutionally guaranteed rights given to us by our founding fathers. There cannot be a middle ground, we must persist and we must succeed. I know we can do it and accomplish many of the goals of the American people lost in the bizarre legislation brought to bear of late. We cannot lose faith and we must take action. Find out what you can do and get started today!

Before a Joint Session of Congress...

The President spoke last night for 45 minutes and outlined his plan for health care reform. What he said could have been drafted on one sheet of paper, and if that was all there was to it, most people would have been able to find common ground on enough of it to get something through congress this year. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details and if the details are all included in the 1,100 page catastrophe known as HR3200 then everything the President had to before the Joint Session of Congress was for naught. No one wants that bill. People have been telling their elected representatives for over a month back in their districts that they do not like the bill. National polling data has shown over and over again (it really doesn’t matter whose poll) that support for the House Bill as delivered was never there and quite frankly there were not enough votes in the Democrat controlled majority to pass the bill out before the public had a chance to take a look at it, and quite possibly now there may be less of a possibility of that happening. HR 3200 was scored (looked over for the purpose of determining the cost) by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and was found not to be “deficit neutral” in fact it created billions of dollars of deficits in the out years (more than 10 years out) that could not be controlled. In affect the bill could not pay for itself, certainly not with savings from Medicare and taxes on high dollar health care plans of executives. If it is going to be paid for it has to be through higher taxes.

The President is serious about getting a bill through Congress this year. Unfortunately, he won’t be able to bring the Republican votes he is going to need unless there are serious concessions made with regard to the ability of individuals and small businesses to buy insurance coverage across state lines, and allowing small businesses to band together to purchase insurance in larger groups to bring premium cost down. Republicans are also not going to support a “Public Option” plan. The President said that only 5 percent of insured would migrate to a Public Option if it were made available. It should be obvious more now than ever that the President has never run a business, certainly one that had to purchase health care for its employees. Employer’s will dump their policies in droves and send employees running to a Public Option plan and be happy to pay an 8 percent tax on their payroll not to have to deal with Insurance and all of the headaches that go with it. This is especially true for small businesses that are exempt from the President’s plan will flee from their plans. The government does not belong in any Health Care system outside of their own until they fix the one they have, just ask the VA.

I think the President needs to tell his leaders in Congress to scrap what they have and start over with the one page that was in his speech and keep it simple enough that an 8th grader can read it in a few hours. No legislation needs to be that complex. “Thou Shalt Not Kill” has been working pretty well since Moses came down from Mount Sinai. It has been translated into every language and found its way into every law book in the world. You don’t need a book to explain it. Congress doesn’t need to be involved with the number of tongue depressors that can be issued to a clinic or hospital in a single month or year. The Agency that has responsibility can write the details and Congress has oversight and can change anything it does not like. There is only one special interest group that needs to be considered and that is the American People. I would hope that Congress would remember that every time they cast a vote.

Remembering a Giant

The period of National Morning has begun, and US Flags on all Federal Buildings and Post Offices have been ordered flown at half staff by the President. The funeral plans have been announced by the family and Senator Edward M. Kennedy (d) Mass. will be buried with his brother's John and Robert at Arlington National Cemetery.

Regardless of your political leanings or what you believe happened that faithful night at Chappaquiddick one thing is certain, Senator Edward M. Kennedy was a Giant when it came to anything that happened in Washington for pretty much the last half century. He came from a family that arguably was the closest thing our country has come to Royalty since George Washington turned down the crown after accepting the surrender of the British. Like his brothers President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy who both fell to assassins bullets in the 1960's he has fought the good fight, and regardless of what anyone else thought. If he believed in something he went after it with every fiber of his being and over his career in politics accomplished many of his goals. His last battle was one he has been waging for many years; the right of all American's to have health care.

Listening to Mr. Rush Limbaugh this morning (Wednesday August 26, 2009) the generally pontificating conservative talk show host spoke with great reverence to Senator Kennedy saying something along these lines. Ironically he fell ill to a serious illness that caused him to have to use the best health care system available in the world, sparing no cost. Of course he would want no less for anyone else. The battle to win health care for all Americans carries on, and perhaps someday it will be won. Whatever we end up with should not be a disgrace to his memory. There is no doubt however his good name will be used for political gain to pass something. Mr. Limbaugh had predicted that upon the Senator's passing that the vulchers would circle and attempt to make political hay out of the misfortune of their fallen colleague. I can recall after the passing of Senator of Paul Wellstone Minnesota in October of 2002 a memorial service was held and it became so politicized that members of Senator Wellstone’s family were so offended they got up and left. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa led a roaring crowd in a chorus of "Let's do it for Paul" that included a list of everything but the kitchen sink. I was offended and I only saw a clip. I cannot even imagine the agony and embarrassment felt by the family.

The Senator's long bout with brain cancer has been no secret and this day has been coming for many months. Media outlets have had ample time to put together exposes about his life and have them at the ready. They started running some of them within minutes of the announcement that he had died. . Likely these tributes will go on for days, and no doubt television movies about his life will follow. While it is a good thing for us to remember our fallen leaders, it is also good to give some respect to their family and friends. Constant coverage, interviews, etc. can only victimize people who are going through the grieving process. Yes it is true they can turn off the television or not watch the news, but why should they have to be a part of it themselves? A 24 hour news cycle offers no real excuse here. People should be afforded the respect they deserve, and the American people really deserve the same.
I have no doubt that he was a good man. I believe whatever happened at Chappaquiddick forty years ago was not an intentional act; even though the Senator may well bear responsibility, he expressed great sorry and remorse for the loss. Mary Jo Kopechne's death cannot be undone and whatever judgment is to be found has now come to pass. Senator Kennedy’s life has been in no way perfect since that night, but he has unquestionably done a substantial amount of good. I sincerely hope that both families will find peace in due time.

While my political views are for the most part diametrically opposed to Senator Kennedy's having a voice on the other side who can present a passionate argument allows for reasonable people to find common ground that can be made acceptable for all people. No one can be right all of the time, and generally speaking no one is ever completely right any of the time. There is always a second or third approach to a problem that will achieve the same or a reasonable end. Usually the difference ends up being cost or time or both. People talk at each other and not too each other far too much. Little children don't like to share their toys and chairmen of committees rarely ever want to share their gavels. If one thing can be learned from Senator Kennedy it is that if you truly want to get something accomplished you must work with someone across the aisle not against them. He did that, not often, but when he did some important things happened. That is not that is happening right now with this Health Care debate. In his memory perhaps folks on both sides of the isle can come back from their break and be truly bi-partisan. Maybe that way something good might actually happen.

The American People Deserve An Apology Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer!

"These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades."

The quote above is taken from the joint Op Ed piece published in USA Today on Monday August 10, 2009 by Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Democrat from California and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer Democrat from Maryland.

"un-American" is a term that is shocking coming from two of the highest ranking members of the Democratic Party and especially from the person third in succession to the Presidency when referring to vigorous protest of citizen who disagree not only with particular aspects of proposed legislation, but with the process by which that legislation is being crafted and pushed through the Congress.

What did Members of Congress expect to find in their districts when they returned home? Did they expect to find welcoming arms and smiling faces from lemmings willing to walk off cliffs for any measure that Congress came up with and the President signed? How could they honestly do that when they were not given an opportunity to review any of the proposed legislation before it was voted on, and sent to the President for his signature? How could they even find out the particulars of a bill when their elected representatives had not bothered to take the time to read the bills themselves before voting on them? Now Congress is trying to change something that will without question change the lives of every living American citizen and future generations as far as the mind can comprehend. Bills from 3 separate committees in the House are floating around to be reconciled into HR 3200 America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. Several versions of a similar bill in the Senate are under consideration one of which is not even out of committee. The President claims that he has a health care plan and holds town hall meetings and prime time press conferences in order to discuss it, but has sent no detailed legislation of his on to the Congress and cannot be sure of what the final legislation will look like when it gets to his desk. All of this and it was push push push to have a piece of legislation for consideration before Congress went home for the August Break. People are reading from text provided by the Congress as HR 3200 that states one thing and are being told by members that the language they read will not be in the final bill, or that anything they have heard about it has been trumped up by lies. The American people are confused and upset, and some of them are damn mad.

While it may be true that reasonable discourse cannot take place when people are yelling and screaming at each other or at Members of Congress trying to give answers to questions from their constituents, it is also true that their frustration is real and should not be dismissed out of hand. Claiming that everyone that disagrees with the proposed legislation with a more than timid voice has been put up to being their by a right wing group or special interest is a pretty sad commentary on the understanding of what grass roots politics is all about. Perhaps Members of Congress have been away from their districts in a real way for too long to remember what it was like to go door to door to try to win votes. Neighbors still talk to neighbors and conversations continue unabashed at water fountains. Bingo is played and folks go to Church and at all these places the kinds of things that affect the lives of Americans are discussed. Like it or not, not everyone is affiliated with a hate group or a organization that can be a convenient whipping boy for political purposes. Were that true the labor unions and groups like ACORN would not be struggling for membership? They would not need to have lobbyist on K Street or need to be given preferential treatment in legislation in order that there very existence is preserved.

Protest happen in America all the time. When they happen during Republican administrations they are deemed necessary or vital to getting out the truth. Freedom of Speech is never questioned and community organizing is encouraged to that end. However, now that for the first time since Jimmy Carter was President the Democrats have complete control of the government, decent of any sort is suddenly "un-American" or questionable behavior from an ungrateful or uninformed minority. The polls are consistently running against the Congress and the President on Health Care Reform and it is not simply Republicans included in that majority because they do not make up the majority of Americans. The President promised the American people transparency and to have all of the bills posted on the internet so they could be read before Congress voted on them. Gee… The Auto Bail Out Bill, The Stimulus Bill, and still no posting that I can see… There’s a Cap and Trade Bill working its way through the Senate… and of course this mess with Health Care which is posted but is meaningless because it represents nothing.

If Congress and the President decide to ram some version of Health Care Reform through on a Party Line vote or with a few token Republican votes to call it Bi-Partisan, then the one poll that does count will be in November of 2010 and that one will find them packing their bags and going back to their districts. Maybe that's a good thing. Legislation can always be undone, that's the beauty of our system of Government, nothing in law has to stay permanent given the right steps are followed.

The Speaker of the House and Majority Leader both have grossly overstepped and owe the American people a sincere apology. How likely are they to receive one... Well ask the CIA... they've been waiting a while now for an apology from the Speaker... the jury is still out on the Majority Leader, let's all hope he comes to his senses.

This should be our next Amendment to the United States Constitution...

"Congress shall pass no law that each member of the House of Representatives has not fully read and attested in writing to having done so to the clerk of the House of Representatives, and each Senator has not fully read and attested in writing to having done so to the clerk of the United States Senate two days prior to the final passage of that law."

There is no reason that 3/4 of the states of our union would not ratify this amendment long before the 7 year (more like 7 months) time frame required in order for its passage in Congress to become part of the living and guiding document we call the United States Constitution.

Not one member of Congress, not even the President himself read all or even most of the bill that President Obama signed on February 17th in Denver, Colorado before it became law. I am ashamed of our government. I am appalled that they have no more respect for the people they represent and who pay their salaries than to rush through the largest dollar amount of spending in one piece of legislation in the history of our country with nary a clue for what they were casting their vote.

A budget has been sent from the White House to Capitol Hill by the President in excess of Three Trillion ($3,000,000,000,000.00) that includes an amount three quarters the size of the bill just passed as a down payment for national health care. If your member of Congress and Senators won't take the time to read the most important legislation since the great depression before casting their vote to stimulate the United States economy with projects like a magnetic high speed train from Disneyland in California to Las Vegas in Nevada (one might argue a train from heaven to hell) how much time will they give to making good decisions about how to manage life and death for our least fortunate citizens?

Congress will obviously not enforce its own rules or even follow the campaign promises of the newly elected President of their own party. It is critically important that you contact your Member of Congress and Senators and tell them you want them to co-sponsor a Constitution Amendment requiring all legislation be verifiably read two days prior to final passage. Send them a copy of this proposed language and demand action. Your rights must be preserved regardless of your party. Your Congress must work for you.

Don't wait... e-mail, fax, pick up the phone, or write to them today.

Chris Filby