AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

• Sec. 202 (p. 91-92) of the bill requires you to enroll in a "qualified plan." If you get your insurance at work, your employer will have a "grace period" to switch you to a "qualified plan," meaning a plan designed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you buy your own insurance, there's no grace period. You'll have to enroll in a qualified plan as soon as any term in your contract changes, such as the co-pay, deductible or benefit.

"If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
- Samuel Adams, 1776

We encourage you to read the provisions of the Cap and Trade Bill that has passed the House of Representatives and being considered by the Senate. We are ready to join the next march on Washington ! This Congress and whoever on their staffs that write this junk are truly out to destroy the middle class of the USA ....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=A+License+required+for+your+home-+Cap+and+Trade&btnG=Google+Search

A License required for your house...no longer just for cars and mobile homes....

Thinking about selling your house - A look at H.R. 2454 (Cap and trade bill) This is unbelievable!

Only the beginning from this administration! Home owners take note & tell your friends and relatives who are home owners!

Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the "Cap & Trade" bill passed by the House of Representatives, if also passed by the Senate, will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced. The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan) estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one is excluded.

However, once the lower classes feel the pinch in their wallets, you can be sure these voters get a tax refund (even if they pay no taxes at all) to offset this new cost. Thus, you Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class America will have to pay even more since additional tax dollars will be needed to bail out everyone else.

But wait. This awful bill (that no one in Congress has actually read) has many more surprises in it. Probably the worst one is this: A year from now you won't be able to sell your house. Yes, you read that right. The caveat is (there always is a caveat) that if you have enough money to make required major upgrades to your home, then you can sell it. But, if not, then forget it. Even pre-fabricated homes ("mobile homes") are included. In effect, this bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator. To get this permission, you will have to have the energy efficiency of your home measured. Then the government will tell you what your new energy efficiency requirement is and you will be forced to make modifications to your home under the retrofit provisions of this Act to comply with the new energy and water efficiency requirements. Then you will have to get your home measured again and get a license (called a "label" in the Act) that must be posted on your property to show what your efficiency rating is; sort of like the Energy Star efficiency rating label on your refrigerator or air conditioner. If you don't get a high enough rating, you can't sell. And, the EPA administrator is authorized to raise the standards every year, even above the automatic energy efficiency increases built into the Act. The EPA administrator, appointed by the President, will run the Cap & Trade program (AKA the "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009") and is authorized to make any future changes to the regulations and standards he alone determines to be in the government's best interest.

Requirements are set low initially so the bill will pass Congress; then the Administrator can set much tougher new standards every year.

The Act itself contains annual required increases in energy efficiency for private and commercial residences and buildings. However, the EPA administrator can set higher standards at any time. Sect. 202 Building Retrofit Program mandates a national retrofit program to increase the energy efficiency of all existing homes across America . Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. You had better sell soon, because the standards will be raised each year and will be really hard (i.e., ex$pen$ive) to meet in a few years.

Oh, goody! The Act allows the government to give you a grant of several thousand dollars to comply with the retrofit program requirements IF you meet certain energy efficiency levels. But, wait, the State can set additional requirements on who qualifies to receive the grants. You should expect requirements such as "can't have an income of more than $50K per year", "home selling price can't be more than $125K", or anything else to target the upper middle class (and that's YOU) and prevent them from qualifying for the grants. Most of us won't get a dime and will have to pay the entire cost of the retrofit out of our own pockets. More transfer of wealth, more "change you can believe in."

Sect. 204 Building Energy Performance Labeling Program establishes a labeling program that for each individual residence will identify the achieved energy efficiency performance for "at least 90 percent of the residential market within 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act."

This means that within 5 years 90% of all residential homes in the U.S. must be measured and labeled. The EPA administrator will get $50M each year to enforce the labeling program. The Secretary of the Department of Energy will get an additional $20M each year to help enforce the labeling program. Some of this money will, of course, be spent on coming up with tougher standards each year.

Oh, the label will be like a license for your car. You will be required to post the label in a conspicuous location in your home and will not be allowed to sell your home without having this label. And, just like your car license, you will probably be required to get a new label every so often - maybe every year. But, the government estimates the cost of measuring the energy efficiency of your home should only cost about $200 each time. Remember what they said about the auto smog inspections when they first started: that in California it would only cost $15. That was when the program started. Now the cost is about $50 for the inspection and certificate; a 333% increase.

Expect the same from the home labeling program. Sect. 304 Greater Energy Efficiency in Building Codes establishes new energy efficiency guidelines for the National Building Code and mandates at 304(d) that 1 year after enactment of this Act, all state and local jurisdictions must adopt the National Building Code energy efficiency provisions or must obtain a certification from the federal government that their state and/or local codes have been brought into full compliance with the National Building Code energy efficiency standards.

The Ten Commandments, Exodus 20:1 " 20:14

And God spoke all these words, saying:
I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

...

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house; thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his man servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.

I think a more accurate title would have been Twenty Eighty-Four.

November 13, 2009
FACT CHECK: Palin's Book Goes Rogue on Some Facts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:10 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sarah Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time.

Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.

Palin goes adrift, at times, on more contemporary issues, too. She criticizes President Barack Obama for pushing through a bailout package that actually was achieved by his Republican predecessor George W. Bush -- a package she seemed to support at the time.

A look at some of her statements in ''Going Rogue,'' obtained by The Associated Press in advance of its release Tuesday:

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PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking ''only'' for reasonably priced rooms and not ''often'' going for the ''high-end, robe-and-slippers'' hotels.

THE FACTS: Although travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City's Central Park for a five-hour women's leadership conference in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000. Event organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter. The governor billed her state more than $20,000 for her children's travel, including to events where they had not been invited, and in some cases later amended expense reports to specify that they had been on official business.

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PALIN: Boasts that she ran her campaign for governor on small donations, mostly from first-time givers, and turned back large checks from big donors if her campaign perceived a conflict of interest.

THE FACTS: Of the roughly $1.3 million she raised for her primary and general election campaigns for governor, more than half came from people and political action committees giving at least $500, according to an AP analysis of her campaign finance reports. The maximum that individual donors could give was $1,000; $2,000 for a PAC.

Of the rest, about $76,000 came from Republican Party committees.

She accepted $1,000 each from a state senator and his wife in the weeks after the two Republican lawmakers' offices were raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into a powerful Alaska oilfield services company. After AP reported those donations during the presidential campaign, she said she would give a comparative sum to charity after the general election in 2010, a date set by state election laws.

PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, ''you'll have to be brave enough to fail.''

THE FACTS: Palin is blurring the lines between Obama's stimulus plan -- a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts -- and the federal bailout that Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted for and President George W. Bush signed.

Palin's views on bailouts appeared to evolve as McCain's vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said ''taxpayers cannot be looked to as the bailout, as the solution, to the problems on Wall Street.'' A week later, she said ''ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy.''

During the vice presidential debate in October, Palin praised McCain for being ''instrumental in bringing folks together'' to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said ''it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in.''

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PALIN: Says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and ''showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all.''

THE FACTS: The estate tax, which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president.

Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb.

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PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.

THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp. Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders during the process, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

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PALIN: Criticizes an aide to her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, for a conflict of interest because the aide represented the state in negotiations over a gas pipeline and then left to work as a handsomely paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil. Palin asserts her administration ended all such arrangements, shoving a wedge in the revolving door between special interests and the state capital.

THE FACTS: Palin ignores her own ''revolving door'' issue in office; the leader of her own pipeline team was a former lobbyist for a subsidiary of TransCanada, the company that ended up winning the rights to build the pipeline.

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PALIN: Writes about a city councilman in Wasilla, Alaska, who owned a garbage truck company and tried to push through an ordinance requiring residents of new subdivisions to pay for trash removal instead of taking it to the dump for free -- this to illustrate conflicts of interest she stood against as a public servant.

THE FACTS: As Wasilla mayor, Palin pressed for a special zoning exception so she could sell her family's $327,000 house, then did not keep a promise to remove a potential fire hazard on the property.

She asked the city council to loosen rules for snow machine races when she and her husband owned a snow machine store, and cast a tie-breaking vote to exempt taxes on aircraft when her father-in-law owned one. But she stepped away from the table in 1997 when the council considered a grant for the Iron Dog snow machine race in which her husband competes.

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PALIN: Says Obama has admitted that the climate change policy he seeks will cause people's electricity bills to ''skyrocket.''

THE FACTS: She correctly quotes a comment attributed to Obama in January 2008, when he told San Francisco Chronicle editors that under his cap-and-trade climate proposal, ''electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket'' as utilities are forced to retrofit coal burning power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Obama has argued since then that climate legislation can blunt the cost to consumers. Democratic legislation now before Congress calls for a variety of measures aimed at mitigating consumer costs. Several studies predict average household costs probably would be $100 to $145 a year.

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PALIN: Welcomes last year's Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation's largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she'd had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court's ruling went ''in favor of the people.'' Finally, she writes, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.

THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the long-running case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Environmentalists and plaintiffs' lawyers decried the ruling as a slap at the victims and Palin herself said she was ''extremely disappointed.'' She said the justices had gutted a jury decision favoring higher damage awards, the Anchorage Daily News reported. ''It's tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision,'' she said, noting many had died ''while waiting for justice.''

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PALIN: Describing her resistance to federal stimulus money, Palin describes Alaska as a practical, libertarian haven of independent Americans who don't want ''help'' from government busybodies.

THE FACTS: Alaska is also one of the states most dependent on federal subsidies, receiving much more assistance from Washington than it pays in federal taxes. A study for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that in 2005, the state received $1.84 for every dollar it sent to Washington.

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PALIN: Says she tried to talk about national security and energy independence in her interview with Vogue magazine but the interviewer wanted her to pivot from hydropower to high fashion.

THE FACTS are somewhat in dispute. Vogue contributing editor Rebecca Johnson said Palin did not go on about hydropower. ''She just kept talking about drilling for oil.''

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PALIN: ''Was it ambition? I didn't think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons.'' Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But ''Going Rogue'' has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.

It would seem to me to be a good idea, at some point, to have folks start hurling insults via e-mails/pm's so others don't have to scroll through them.

Anyway, Governor Palin's book officially hit the market today. Rasmussen did a poll on her amongst folks who describe themselves as "GOP voters." It was reported on Monday.
^ 59% say Sarah Palin shares the values of most GOP voters. 21% disagree and 20% are undecided.
^ 74% think GOP members of Congress have lost touch with GOP voters. 18% say their elected GOP officials have done a good job.
^ Party leaders in D.C. worry Palin is pushing the party to far to the right, but just 18% of Repubs see here as a divisive force.

If there are any bookies taking bets (I am sure there are) I would see Romney

*Foxfyre started this thread but gave up on it.

My objections are based on Amendment X to the Constitution:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

As you know, Okie, I consider myself to be a liberal Democrat. My friend, Foxfyre, a conservative, tells me I am not as liberal as I think. She, by the way, is one of the contributors who has drifted away from these threads because of the way they have degenerated into gratuitous insults that contribute nothing to the dialogue originally intended.*

I digress.
What I find interesting is how the GOP is in what I would call a "power struggle." Perhaps that is too strong a phrase. It has, of course, happened before in both parties.
Perhaps the GOP can see how it resolves itself in next year's mid-term elections and that will give guidance for 2012.
If there are any bookies taking bets (I am sure there are) I would see Romney

*Foxfyre started this thread but gave up on it.

Romney as well from me. The GOP takes turns, it was McCain's turn in 08, it's Romney's turn in 2012. I love that, because I highly doubt he can win.
Cycloptichorn

Mitt Romney's Magic Underwear will Propel him to Victory! watch!

youtube.com " If Mitt is a real Mormon he wears his magic underwear at all times. If nothing else, it will protect his privates from a fiery plane crash death. All Mormons please Digg!!! If more people know about magic underwear they can be saved by its amazing powers. Please watch the video and get your own magic underwear!

But in spite of your objections you are more than happy to take money from the government, aren't you ican?

You just justify it by saying "I paid taxes so I earned it." Your hypocrisy knows no bounds. (I don't believe anyone is so stupid as to think others don't pay taxes no matter how many times you make that specious claim.)