Pasadena Politics

The story from Allentown, Pennsylvania, is that volunteer work can get a city sued.   The SEIU is already noted as a bully and the percentage of Union membership in general may soon be surpassed by the unemployment number.   Oh course, Unions are hard at work to ensure they can use a few bad apples to spoil the entire barrel via Card Check, but there is currently enough attention fixed on Health Care reform that it has not come up again as of late.

Unions, as a whole, are much akin to Tape Worm.   It gets inside, absorbs nutrients from host, and in some cases released eggs can get into the blood stream and then into the brain.    While there are good uses for Unions, they are not well realized today and best represent where the employee is at the weakest: seasonal and short-term work.   In those cases, Musicians, Metal Workers, Farm Labor, etc. they can benefit the employee best by supplying the employee with benefits that would often not be realized due to the short term nature of much of their work.   Of course, Real, Genuine Health Care reform would take care of that last excuse to hold onto Unions beyond the occaisional need for an employee revolt against an oppressive employer.    Of course, then the Union is only necessary for a short period, not longer than the immediate need for employees to work together.

So… back to the point: Boy Scout helps a city by clearing a path.  The local SEIU threatens the City with a lawsuit for allowing someone to work for free when people in the Union could be employeed.  In a sane world, the good People of Allentown would give their City Council and Mayor another term for using their tax dollars wisely.  Somewhat to the SEIU’s credit, they did say the President of the SEIU chapter in Allentown was speaking out of place.  Still, perhaps they should think about unionizing the Boy Scouts?   Imagine the classic image of the Boy Scout helping the elderly lady accross the street then asking for his madatory tip?

Besides, wasn’t it Obama who said Volunteerism was a good thing?

Complete list of the House members who voted for Health Care and it’s subsequent and logical tethering of freedoms.   Will update in the future with information concerning their districts and those running against them.

Obama is sure to sign it if it makes it through the Senate.

Prepare for a rapid erosion of your rights.

They really need to take it back.  A Third Party will be useless.  Moderates will not save the Republican Party but Conservatives will.  The principles of Limited Government are what this Nation needs, not an expansive Government as the larger a Government is, the fewer rights and freedoms you have.

This last week with the Owens-Hoffman-Scozzafava race in New York’s 23rd we see a prime example of why Obama is in the White House.   Hoffman did not lose because he was a conservative.   He lost because the Republican leadership chose a Liberal (who then dropped from the race a few days before the election and endorsed the Democrat opponent).   One has to ask the only logical question possible: Why does the Republican Leadership insist on shooting itself in the foot with people like Scozzafava?   Did they learn nothing from the McCain campaign?

Perhaps instead of blaming Palin they should have done some soul searching and really looked at why McCain lost to Obama.    It is quite simple actually: why vote for the wannabe Democrat when you can vote for the real one?   The past 10 years Republicans have been morphing into Liberals and giving it the quaint name: Moderate.    I honestly cannot blame people for voting for Obama when the choice is rewarding Republican leadership for choosing a path of Liberalism.   Sure, if they really thought about it, they would have seen Obama as an extreme Liberal and either voted for McCain or sat it out.  But it never hurts to have the majority of the Media sharing your same ideology of anti-Americanism, liberalism, and a disdain for limited government to obscure the details of a Candidate so that all people really know about you is “Hope and Change”.

Yeah… What’s the hope?  What kind of change?

So what the Republican Party needs is a Conservative leadership and a very clear platform that extols limited government and why it promotes freedom over liberalism.

One of the methods government uses to restrict monopolies, apart from breaking them apart (think AT&T decades ago), is regulation.  Monopolies are dangerous – not because they are inherently bad, but because they can be abusive with the right leadership.   So how is Government, a monopoly by nature, managed?
“Government a Monopoly?” you might ask.  Yes, government is a monopoly.   Does it suffer any other governments to compete with it within it’s boarders?  The Founders of this great Nation knew Government abuse.   They knew that Government, without check, would micromanage the citizens under it to the point of despair – civilian despair mind you.   You can find a list of direct grievances iterated  in the Declaration of Independence by the Founders against the King of England.    As a result of careful reflection and knowing that corrupt and power seeking men would eventually attempt to take over a nation if given the opportunity, the Founders decided to restrict government with a form of regulation.  They called this the Bill of Rights.
Yes, that very same Bill of Rights and Constitution which Obama refers to as Negative Liberties and as flawed:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

I’ve never seen the connection between Civil Rights, which are based on the Declaration of Independence’s Inalienable Rights, and redistribution of wealth nor “political and economic justice”.  We have certain inalienable rights such as Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of (but not guarantee of) Happiness.   Too many people today seek out guarantees of happiness from the government.

The point is that the Bill of Rights and Constitution were to limit the power of government in order to protect the people it served from individuals or groups who would abuse the power the government can wield.   Incidentally, that is the point of Negative Liberties: the limitation in exercise of powers over others.    From my brief research on the subject, Liberals love Positive Liberties because it opens the door to government intrusion into the daily life of citizens.

Given all that, I can understand why Liberals such as Obama, Pelosi, and Reid love the majority power they currently wield.   They believe they can foist one over the American people and ‘get around’ the Negative Liberties of the Constitution.  They more than likely would have succeeded with Health Care “Reform” if it were not for the few major news sources that do not reflexively turn a blind eye to the administration’s goals and actions due to similarities of world view and to the “alternative” media thriving on the Internet and Talk Radio.    They would like to introduce a Second Bill of Rights, a one full of Positive Liberties, allowing them to take care of you the way they think you should be taken care of.

Regardless of your political affiliation, Government managing your life should concern and trouble you.   Unless you presume that the people in Government will always be interested in your best – the best you think of, you should worry and be greatly concerned whenever someone says, as Reagan famously said: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”   Government is a Monopoly and bad people; even ‘good’ people with good intentions, are drawn to the power government has.    But when they wield that power over you, what can you do?   What can you do when government controls your access to self-defence – ala Gun Control or to Health Care – ala Health Care “Reform”?  What can you do?  Who can you turn to?

Monopolies drive competitors out of business or buy them up.   Microsoft was greatly criticized for it’s business practices and has barely escaped a few episodes of being broken up by the Federal Government in the name of free enterprise and capitalism.    But what is to be done when Government itself, the ultimate monopoly, gets into your business?   It can regulate it’s competitors – something Microsoft could never do.  It can undersell it’s competitors to the point that the competitors go out of business for a lack of customers.  Certainly the Health Care “Reform” bills don’t outright eliminate the insurance industry, but the government is never a legitimate or honest player.  It can subsidize itself in a way no other insurance company can with money it never earned  and in so doing, drive customers to it’s door.

And what better climate to drive customers to your door than when they have limited incomes such as in a recession or in a depression?   What a better way to capture a Nation than to prey on and exploit their weakness?    The difference between self-governing and being governed can often mean little to people in seemingly desperate situations.  Socialism, as governed by the Government, dictates to you what you can do with your money and, in the end, your very life span.   You can already see the operation of Socialistic control being exercised by the Administration via Kenneth Feinberg.  Your worth is determined by a government bureaucrat: unelected and thus unaccountable to the people they are supposed to be serving.

Is this Freedom?  Is this what men and women have fought to preserve?   Was blood shed in the purchase of the Constitution and the form of government we have all in order for it to be thrown away because we are too lazy to take care of ourselves?  Too lazy to elect people to government who will serve the public and not their own re-election campaign or power hunger?  Too lazy to demand that their representatives change the laws and eliminate the bureaucracy that restricts and prevents them from having decent paying jobs, affordable health care, and freedom from government intervention in their lives?   Do we really want to throw that sacrifice away?
We need to elect people into power who will tear down the ever increasing edifice of Federal and State government before it falls under it’s own weight and crushes us.  We need to be wary of any hand that dangles a pretty thing before us because there is always a price to pay.  Nothing is ever truly free, not even Freedom which has to be purchased in blood.  The cost is always paid and eventually the people who think they would benefit the most will be harmed the most by a government that says it will take care of their needs.

Is “free” health care that important that we would give up our right to privacy, to keeping government out of our homes, to keeping our rights to teach our children, to keeping our rights to live long lives or to live at all; that we would give it all up to the Government to manage and oversee?  Do you trust government to always be benevolent when it has such power?    The Monopoly of Government must be regulated and we as stakeholders best exercise our vote to keep it limited in size, scope, and power.

A note about Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize: he won it based off of his ‘Good Intentions”.  Let us not forget what the road to Hell is paved with.

I recently read an article from the Economist that mentioned Homeschooling.   As a Home-schooling parent, I obviously found the article of interest.   It assumed that conservatives will pull their kids from school to teach them at home because of Obama’s liberalism.   While it is certainly true that some will, to say that it is simply conservatives and people who are religious who home-school does not represent the actuality: many people don’t think public schools do the job their tax dollars are put towards.

Most people who have looked at home-schooling have already started.   For others, the financial aspect will be prohibitive.   Either they are single parents who have little choice but to have their children in a school apart from home, or they are so financially bound to working that they cannot (or think they cannot) afford to home-school.  Secondly, it asserts that active parents would have as equal impact on their children in home or non-home-schooled environments.   There is certainly much to be said for being involved at one’s child’s school,  but it is not equal to the direct one on one attention a Home-schooler  receives.   Think about the Education establishment’s and Teacher’s Unions complaints (legitimate ones at that) that bigger class sizes deprive students of a teacher’s attention.   Certainly what is good for the Gander is good for the Goose?
Many parents no longer trust the Public School system because many see a great encroachment on their rights as parents when a school can medicate a child without parental permission or decide to take or teach them to special  lessons without prior notification.   Many parents also would prefer to have their children among like minded individuals (such as themselves) than those would influence them to behave contrary to their morals and beliefs.

Anyways, I thought the article was interesting, but not on target.  Well, after today’s news, I rethink that thought.   People are more likely to consider home schooling, and it won’t just be religious or conservatives parents.   See it here.

How about this song:

Mm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said we must be fair today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said red, yellow, black or white
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

Yes!
Mmm, mmm, mm
Barack Hussein Obama

And then this song:

Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say “hooray!”

Hooray, Mr. President! You’re number one!
The first black American to lead this great nation!

Hooray, Mr. President we honor your great plans
To make this country’s economy number one again!

Hooray Mr. President, we’re really proud of you!
And we stand for all Americans under the great Red, White, and Blue!

So continue —- Mr. President we know you’ll do the trick
So here’s a hearty hip-hooray —-

Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!

Well, at least they are being taught about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution which sets our Nation apart from so many others?  I hope?

You gotta love this exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it’s still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase.

People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I’m not covering all the costs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy…

OBAMA: No, but — but, George, you — you can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase. Any…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Here’s the…

OBAMA: What — what — if I — if I say that right now your premiums are going to be going up by 5 or 8 or 10 percent next year and you say well, that’s not a tax increase; but, on the other hand, if I say that I don’t want to have to pay for you not carrying coverage even after I give you tax credits that make it affordable, then…

STEPHANOPOULOS: I — I don’t think I’m making it up. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary: Tax — “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.”

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but…

OBAMA: …what you’re saying is…

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.

You can watch the exchange here.

Sure, everybody in California, for instance, is required to have Auto Insurance.  However, California does not issue auto insurance.  If it did, there would be a significant conflict of interest because it not only would have the regulatory power over auto insurance, but it can subsidize itself and drive competitors out of the market.   Where Government is concerned, it competes unfairly as it does not have to make a profit while individuals and corporations must in order to sustain themselves.

The exchange is Orwellian because Obama rejects the common and accepted definition for one he finds convenient to his own agenda.

Very much like O’Brien as he tortures Winston Smith: “Two plus two equals five.”   One should ask about the direction our elected leadership is taking us; is the next to follow:  “Always, Winston, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

Jimmy Carter,  born in the early part of 1900,  has a peculiar perspective.   He lived during the Jim Crow era.  He lived through the the Civil Rights era.  He lived to be President for one term and he continues to make interesting comments following that term.   So he comes on national TV and in essence states that the Tea Parties and protest to Health Care Reform were rooted in racism.   Basically: protest to Obama contains racism.
Forget the arguments for or against Health Care Reform, Fairness Doctrine revival, Internet Control Emergency Powers, Bail Outs, Buy Outs, and further expansion of Government.   No, there is no pro-argument to support these expansions than saying your opponents are racist.

How nice.  How deep.  How truly knowledgeable that statement is.  Not really.

Carter is projecting himself on all of America.

A good portion of the American Populace today were raised in integrated communities.  Their parents may not have liked it, but in the end, they grew up with people not of their own ethnic background (sorry, there is only human race as far as I am concerned).  They did not grow up being told that the color of ones skin made them of more or less value.   Actually, they were, they were told white people were bad and everyone else was oppressed by the white people and that the color of your skin entitled you to privileges if you were not white because of what some white people you never knew or were related to did to non-white people.   Ok… there is a lot of the racism of White guilt.

Of course, one has to ask: what is racism?   Is racism the observation of one’s skin tone?  One’s nose, hair, or other physical features?  If so, is it possible for a blind and deaf person to be racist?  Or is racism an observation about someone and deciding that because of that observation they are inferior?

Don’t hire him, he is black.
Don’t hire her, she is female.
Don’t fire him, he is latino.
Don’t give him a raise, he has red hair.

That, plainly, is racism.   Is it?   If a black man said: don’t hire him, he is black, is it in the same caliber as if a white man said it? Can a person be racist against their own “race”?

How about this:

Don’t hire him, he didn’t go to Yale.
Don’t hire her, her family is poor.
Don’t fire him, he’s in the same club.
Don’t give him a raise, he is Catholic.

That is not racism.  But it stems from the same source as racism: elitism.    Racism is simply a sub-category of elitism.   I can’t think of many people who are happy about Elitism, let alone racism.   People don’t like being told they were not hired because they went to one school and not another.   The elitism of Education.  People don’t like being told that they were fired because of the color of their skin.    The elitism of ethnicity.

So why Carter?  Why bring up the elitism of ethnicity?

Well, if you have been paying attention to the pro-health care arguments they are often prefaced by ad homonym attacks such as stating the protesters are using Nazi symbols, or are white, or have threatening signs.    Forget the context.  Forget the argument.   It is all about slandering people with the most divisive slur possible: the elitism of ethnicity.    For months the pro-change-your-relationship-with-government supporters have been trying to shift the argument to one about elitism (racism).   Joe Wilson makes his true statement that Obama is Lying and so another man of the South is brought out of the dusty cupboard to comment on it with authority.   Well, regardless of what anyone says, if the argument is not about the actual substance of the Bills or Legislation, then the argument is merely a distraction.

So… why the Thought Police comment in the title?

Hate Speech.   Hate Crimes.  All revolve around assuming an act was committed because of an emotional thought.   A whole new way to try someone with criminal charges and not need to offer any other proof than the difference in their appearance or thinking.   That is un-American.   The very fact someone committed a crime against another is not because they love that person.    So adding an extra layer of Hate is redundant and a path to more lessening of Constitutional rights if left unchecked and a less scrupulous administration comes into power.

Forget what you say, that is protected speech.  It’s what you think they will come after.

The President gave a nice speech tonight.   It was the normal pattern he used during the campaign and for the inauguration: Sound Conservative without promising to be one; sound Constitutional without meaning it.   Frankly, you take every word he said, package it up and toss it in a drawer because nothing he said means anything until there is an actual Bill to read.
Certainly we will hear and read plenty of clips from tonight’s speech, but it is necessary to pay them any heed other than to compare them to the text of the Bill itself and see with clarity the great expansive desire he and others in power have to gain and retain power beyond the bounds of the Constitution.
He is certainly not the only President and Congress to seek more power beyond the Constitution.   But this act will seal the deal.   Once Government so closely regulates and through that regulation controls your health (come now, if a Government plan is so affordable, why should anyone chose any other insurance?   Oh, wait, we already have government insurance plans as it is: Medicare and Medicaid – see how well they are managed) you will find yourself more and more dependent on Government’s largess.

- – -

A while back I wrote about Obama and wondered if he supports freedom.   Well, given the pressure Washington has been putting on Honduras to take Zelaya back and thus violate it’s own Constitution; given his odd support for a bill which would place government into more direct control of the lives of it’s citizens; given his eagerness to be able to ‘turn off the Net in an “Emergency”‘; given his increasing use of “Czars” who are no where permitted by the Constitution; given the overall makeup of those he chooses to lead with him; it does indeed appear that the President is not a friend of Freedom nor the Constitution.

At least, not a friend of Freedom as the framers of the Constitution viewed it.

He is a friend to totalitarian leaders.

He sees the government’s role in the daily life of Americans as an urgent need.

He does not think Americans as individuals capable of managing their own affairs.

He sees himself among an enlightened elite who know best how you should live.

He likes power but not the responsibility (voting “present” so very often and making grand but very vague demands).

The Citizens need to say clearly and loudly that the Constitution of Negative rights is what they want from Obama.   The Negative rights which limit government and it’s role in society.  The Negative rights of government which mean positive rights for the citizens of this country to go about their daily lives unmolested and free from busy bodies and do-gooders who would intrude thinking that they knew better how the citizen should live than the citizen living their own life.

Sometimes you run across something in which you realize you would do a disservice to put it in your own words, so here is a link to the 1930’s Germany Stimulus plan compared to our own.