AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Foxfyre,
I corrected grammar errors in my post after you had already copied it.

It's Not An Option
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.[/b]

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised " with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether."

What wasn't known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.

The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.

With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left's expansion of the welfare state will be removed.

The public option won't be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.

Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn't be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans' lives.

It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It's scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we'll come across in the final 1,002.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=332548165656854

I saw that yesterday and posted it on the Obama thread. Very serious business, Foxfyre. Obama has to be stopped, fought, opposed, at every turn.

PHOENIX -- A Social Security Administration motivational management conference held at a high-end Valley resort last week cost $700,000, the SSA told the ABC15 Investigators.

Costs for the conference at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa included airfare, hotel entertainment, dancers, motivational speakers, and food, an administration official said.
http://www.abc15.com/content/news/investigators/story/Social-Security-spends-700-000-on-Phoenix/RrHYWi4IRka1mC7wJTm4uQ.cspx

Foxfyre wrote:

I an assure you that if you are applying for graduate school or certain professional positions, or want honors on your resume, your grade point becomes damned important. And your post strongly suggests that I probably know a lot more sh*t about taxes than you do, especially as they affect business. I have run a business and paid local, state, and federal taxes, payroll taxes, and various other taxes associated with that. Have you?

Does a tax consultant have to have paid personally all the taxes he consults people on before getting licensed for his job ?

Walter(who has given grade points for BAs and MAs)Hinteler

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/sbr071609dAPR20090716113417.jpg

Federal judge dismisses lawsuit questioning Obama's natural born citizen status
(By Lily Gordon, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, July 17, 2009)

A federal judge tossed out a controversial lawsuit Thursday brought here by a U.S. Army reservist seeking to avoid deployment to Afghanistan because he questions Barack Obama’s eligibility as president.

Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook filed the suit July 8 with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia seeking conscientious objector status and a temporary injunction.

U.S. District Judge Clay Land sided with the government, represented by Maj. Rebecca Ausprung, which claimed Cook’s suit was “moot” because the Army had already told him he doesn’t have to deploy, so the relief he is seeking has been granted.

“The same Constitution upon which Major Cook relies in support of his contention that President Barack Obama is not eligible to serve as President of the United States very clearly provides that federal courts shall only have the authority to hear actual ‘cases and controversies,’” Land stated in his written order. “By restricting the Judiciary’s power to actual ‘cases and controversies,’ our founders wisely established a separation of powers that would ensure the freedom of their fellow citizens. They concluded that the Judicial Branch, the unelected branch, should not inject itself into purely ‘political disputes,’ and that it should not entangle itself in hypothetical debates which had not ripened to an actual legal dispute.”

Land’s decision to dismiss the entire action came an hour and 15 minutes after the hearing began.

Cook arrived at the federal courthouse in uniform about an hour before his 9:30 a.m. hearing.

Outside, before the proceedings began, the officer defended his position and declared his devotion to the military.

“I love the Army, and I want to continue to serve in the Army,” Cook said. “If we can establish that he is in fact president of the United States legally, I’m on the airplane the next day over to Afghanistan … if they cut my deployment orders, so I can do the job that I want to do.”

During the proceedings, Land heard from Orly Taitz, Ausprung and Cook’s attorney.

Taitz argued that her client is not opposed to military service. Instead, Cook, who claims he has been the victim of retaliation to his suit, fears that if he executed Obama’s orders, he could be prosecuted as a war criminal for following the orders of an illegitimate commander-in-chief.

Land asked Taitz whether Cook requested to simply have his orders rescinded, instead of filing a lawsuit.

Taitz said she filed an Article 138 complaint with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen. An Article 138 complaint gives members of the armed forces under the Uniform Code of Military Justice the right to request redress if they believe they had been wronged by their commanding officer.

According to Ausprung, an Article 138 complaint has to go through the soldier’s chain of command. Cook did not go through his chain of command, Ausprung said.

Lt. Col. Maria Quon, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Army Human Resources Command-St. Louis, said Thursday that Cook could have requested revocation of his orders up until the day he was due to report for active duty. He did not make such a request, she said.

The government argued in court that Cook was using the issue of his deployment to address the constitutional and political issue of whether Obama is qualified to serve as president.

Land agreed, saying that Cook’s claim failed to meet the criteria for seeking federal jurisdiction.

According to Land’s order, Cook had not “experienced an ‘injury in fact’ that is concrete and particularized” because his orders have been revoked, he hasn’t received future orders and there’s no evidence that he is subject to future deployment.

“This Court has a duty to follow the United States Constitution,” Land wrote. “That Constitution limits jurisdiction to actual cases and controversies. To extend jurisdiction beyond its limits would be a violation of that very Constitution upon which Plaintiff relies in support of his claims. This the Court refuses to do.

“This entire action is dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,” Land continued in his order. “The parties shall bear their own costs.”

As to the retaliation issue, the revised suit states Cook lost his job at Simtech Inc. " a corporation based in Florida that does Department of Defense contracting in the field of information technology and systems integration " because of the suit. It also states that Cook has been subjected to “gossip” from people who believed Cook was “manipulating his deployment orders to create a platform for political purposes.”

Land said in court he was not going to decide on the issue of Cook’s dismissal from his job.

“There’s an appropriate forum in a court where there is jurisdiction over those parties,” Land said.

Following the hearing, Taitz said she would be filing a suit in a Florida court, asking for an injunction and damages. She also told the media gathered outside the courthouse that she was disappointed with Land’s ruling.

“It makes absolutely no sense, it’s totally illogical,” Taitz said. “It defies common sense. It defies any sense of decency. …

“We’re not a banana republic where el presidente decides. We are a nation of law and order,” she added. “We’re a nation of Constitution of the United States of America and the orders have to be lawful.”

Freshman Dems oppose Pelosi’s tax increase
By Mike Soraghan
Posted: 07/17/09 02:23 PM [ET]

Twenty-one freshman Democratic House members have signed a letter opposing their leadership's plan to raise taxes to finance a healthcare overhaul.

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) circulated the letter, saying that the income surtax on the wealthy would place an undue burden on small businesses, some of which pay taxes in the same way as an individual. The letter had 22 signers, all freshmen except for Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), who is in his second term.

“Especially in a recession, we need to make sure not to kill the goose that will lay the golden eggs of our recovery,” the letter said. “We are concerned that this will discourage entrepreneurial activity.”
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/freshman-dems-oppose-pelosis-tax-increase-2009-07-17.html

Senator quashes Treasury’s bid for humorist
By Alexander Bolton
Posted: 07/17/09 12:47 PM [ET]

The chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee quashed an effort by the Treasury Department to hire a cartoonist after the link to the job ad was posted on the Drudge Report.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) contacted the Treasury Department to complain after Matt Drudge’s website linked to a want ad for contractors with the “ability to create cartoons on the spot about [Bureau of the Public Debt] jobs.”

The cartoonist was sought to provide presentations for the bureau's management meetings, according to the ad.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/senator-quashes-treasurys-bid-for-humorist-2009-07-17.html

According to recent polls, I think probably by EVERY polling organization that has dealt with the matter, a majority of Americans now describe themselves as more conservative than liberal.

Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed.

Which way do Americans want to be led? While the new Gallup Poll finds the public reporting a heightened sense of conservatism in its political outlook, Americans' specific policy positions have not changed much since 2004. To the extent they have, about as many of these positions have become more liberal as more conservative.

Aside from the trends, Gallup's recent polling from 2008-2009 indicates that a majority of Americans concur with the Republican Party's general philosophy on the death penalty, defense spending, gay marriage, the role of government, environmental protection, and handgun legislation. Americans are about as likely to agree with the Republican Party's general philosophy as they are to agree with the Democratic Party's in terms of abortion, government activism, government promotion of "traditional" values, taxes, changing the power of labor unions, and certain aspects of the need for healthcare reform. They are more likely to agree with the Democratic Party's philosophy on other aspects of healthcare reform, embryonic stem-cell research, government regulation of business, the Iraq war, and immigration.

With such a mix of political leanings, then, it is understandable that Americans can approve of the job Obama is doing as president (his approval ratings remain near his term average of 63%), and simultaneously approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing (59% now approve, up from 48% a year ago).

And for those seeking to understand why the Republican Party suffered such major election losses, they may find that political ideology has very little to do with it.

The week judicial liberalism gave up

Sonia Sotomayor, all concede, will be confirmed. Since Democrats hold an unassailable majority in the Senate, the appointee of a popular Democratic president would ascend to the Supreme Court even if no Republicans were seized by senatorial courtesy or deference to the Latino vote. She will be confirmed.

So who cares that Sotomayor's sudden conversion away from any previous "progressive" views is so transparent? Republicans suspect she's not really past all that wise-Latina stuff, but does that matter?

Yes. Quite a bit, actually. . . .


. . . .She does not have to please Republicans. She could have answered them by standing and singing "The Internationale," and she'd still end up on the court.

Yet she went out of her way to spurn President Barack Obama's view about empathy: "Judges can't rely on what's in their heart," she said. She's disavowed that moral superiority is granted by being part of a minority. "I do not believe that foreign law should be used to determine the result under constitutional law or American law," she said Thursday, throwing overboard the progressive dream of correcting our bad habits in the court of world opinion. Asked whether the Constitution is a living, breathing document, she replied it is "immutable" but for amendments. "It doesn't live other than to be timeless," she said.

Antonin Scalia must have wept at the beauty of this statement.

Why such a thorough repudiation of all that progressives feel? Why must Sotomayor be portrayed as identical to a George W. Bush appointee before Democrats can vote for her?

Because, apparently, that's what Democrats suspect the public wants. On some level, the president and his congressional allies believe the public would not stand for a justice who thinks the Constitution must breathe modern air, that world opinion must inform our law, that abortion is a constitutional right if not a sacrament and that who you are should matter to how the law treats you.

The Democrats might be right. The Rasmussen poll Wednesday said that while 90% of respondents figured Sotomayor is going to be confirmed, only 37% favored it, while 43% were against. And 83% of them said the legal system "should apply the law equally to all Americans rather than using the law to help those who have less power and influence."

So much for the empathy gambit.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/50973502.html

The week judicial liberalism gave up