Category Archives: Big Government

A new push for Obamacare in Missouri

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The new push is medicaid expansion, a part of Obamacare. Missouri has been successful pushing back on this part of Obamacare but that hasn’t deterred the big-city progressives. Their newest tactic is to hire a former ‘Pub state senator, Charlie Shields, to be their front-man in their continued search for more money.

In Kansas City, the issue is the failing Truman medical system, two publicly funded hospitals with a track record of failure. Jackson County hopes their new man will succeed when their democrat puppet didn’t.

Hospital CEO Contends With Medicaid Conundrum

Former Lawmaker Needs to Prod Legislature Into Expanding Federal-State Health Plan or Face Losses

By Anna Wilde Mathews,
https://trumed.org/images/news/WSJ_Shields.jpg

Charlie Shields, CEO, Truman Medical Centers

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—The future of Truman Medical Centers, a two-hospital safety-net system here, depends on the state legislature—and no one understands that better than its new chief executive, Charlie Shields.

Mr. Shields, a genial 55-year-old, spent 20 years as a Republican lawmaker, ending up as the leader of the Missouri Senate before term limits forced him to step down. In 2010, he became chief operating officer of one of Truman’s hospitals, and in July he succeeded longtime Truman CEO John W. Bluford III.

Now Mr. Shields, whose office décor includes a collection of elephant statues, must press the legislature’s current Republican leaders to accept the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state insurance for low-income people. Expanded Medicaid would be a financial lifeline for Truman, which is losing money as it cares for a large population of uninsured patients.

Mr. Shields said he tells lawmakers he understands their situation: “I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve made these tough decisions.” Indeed, he voted for a major retrenchment of Missouri’s Medicaid program in 2005, when about 100,000 people were cut from the rolls. He said the move was difficult but necessary amid a budget crunch, and that he always aimed for it to be reversed when there was funding to do so.

Today, Mr. Shields argues, with federal money available because of the health law, the expansion makes sense. Under the law, the U.S. is supposed to pay the full cost of Medicaid expansion through 2016, and then a share that will phase down to 90% in 2020 and beyond.

Still, he acknowledged the political challenge for Republicans who don’t want to be seen as endorsing a law that is unpopular with many constituents. In polling performed by the Kaiser Family Foundation between January and October of this year, 34% of Missouri residents favored the law, while 52% viewed it unfavorably.

As a middle ground, Mr. Shields said, lawmakers could craft a “Missouri-specific solution” that could potentially occur under a federal waiver, and “there are a lot of things that would work” as a structure for expanding coverage.

You can read the rest of the column at the WSJ website.

Perhaps what Mr. Shields needs to do is to explore something different, something Jackson County progressives would never consider. He has a reasonably conservative history during his time in the Missouri Legislature. With that history, he may be open to something radical like—privatizing the Truman Medical System, privatize both hospitals.

If the county is unable to manage these two hospitals and keep them in the black, perhaps it is time to pass them on to an organization who can. There are numerous hospitals and hospital organizations across the country who are privately owned and not only stay in the black, but actually make a (horrors!) profit.

When a CEO in a business can’t make his company profitable, the stake-holders have two choices, get rid of the CEO and hire one who can succeed, or close the doors. That truism holds true for publicly owned institutions as well.

The progressive’s solution is more taxpayer money in the form of expanded medicaid included in Obamacare. Missouri has rejected both realizing that within a few years, if that, it would be the state would who be picking up the tab for the increased expenditures of medicaid—money the state does not have unless something else is cut equally. Stealing from Peter to pay Paul is not a viable solution for Missouri.

Government, like all of us, must learn that the public money-well is not bottomless.

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Different vision

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It’s amazing how the libs and conservatives can see the same thing and interpret that ‘thing’ so differently. Wishful thinking? Partially. Self-deception? That, too. What are we talking about? The Iowa Senate race.

Yesterday, an article appeared on Drudge. The headline read, POLL SHOCK: Dems now have 51% chance of holding Senate. According to the Washington Post, the Iowa Senate race 'leans' left towards democrat candidate Bruce Braley. The article states that two weeks ago, Joni Ernst led Braley.

The Washington Post says,

* Iowa: Two weeks ago, the model gave state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) a 72 percent chance of winning. Today she has a 59 percent chance.

The Washington Post’s own poll has Joni Ernst leading Braley 59% to 41% and they say the state is ‘leaning’ left to Braley. FOXNews ran an article about the same Iowa race using another poll. Their poll, too, had Ernst well out in front by 6 percentage points. The astounding item in all this is that the Washington Post poll has Ernst further ahead than the FOXNews/Quinnipiac University poll. Both sides see the same fact, Joni Ernst is well out in front, and both sides report that fact oppositely.

I believe the dems are grasping at straws. It is common knowledge that the closer we approach the election, the tighter the races appear. To the dems, Ernst dropping from 72% to 59%, according to their poll, means Ernst is losing.

FOX just reports that Ernst continues to poll higher than Braley by 6%. That, my friends, is the difference between FOX and the Main Stream Media. The MSM filters all news through their bias, FOX just reports the facts as they are.

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Have you heard about the new Form 4473? What is the Form 4473? It’s the form you must complete to buy a firearm through a federally licensed dealer. What has been changed? The new form requires the buyer to state his race and ethnicity. The Obama administration changed the form, quietly, without little fanfare—until it hit the dealers.

Obama administration forcing new gun buyers to declare race, ethnicity

ATF policy irks dealers, risks privacy intrusion, racial profiling: critics
By Kelly Riddell – The Washington Times – Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The Obama administration quietly has been forcing new gun buyers to declare their race and ethnicity, a policy change that critics say provides little law enforcement value while creating the risk of privacy intrusions and racial profiling.

With little fanfare, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2012 amended its Form 4473 — the transactional record the government requires gun purchasers and sellers to fill out when buying a firearm — to identify buyers as either Hispanic, Latino or not. Then a buyer must check his or her race: Indian, Asian, black, Pacific Islander or white.

The amendment is causing a headache for gun retailers, as each box needs to be checked off or else it’s an ATF violation — severe enough for the government to shut a business down. Many times people skip over the Hispanic/Latino box and only check their race, or vice versa — both of which are federal errors that can be held against the dealer.

Requiring the race and ethnic information of gun buyers is not required by federal law and provides little law enforcement value, legal experts say. And gun industry officials worry about how the information is being used and whether it constitutes an unnecessary intrusion on privacy.

“This issue concerns me deeply because, first, it’s offensive, and, secondly, there’s no need for it,” said Evan Nappen, a private practice firearms lawyer in New Jersey. “If there’s no need for an amendment, then there’s usually a political reason for the change. What this indicates is it was done for political reasons, not law enforcement reasons.”

ATF said the change came about because it needed to update its forms to comply with an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reporting standard put into effect during the Clinton administration. The ATF declined to comment on why race and ethnicity information are needed in the first place or what they are used for. On its prior 4473 forms, the bureau had been collecting race data.

The BATFE is blaming Bill Clinton for this change. It’s strange that for eight years of the Bush Administration and four years of the Obama Administration, the BATFE saw no need to change the Form 4473. I don’t believe their excuse.

“OMB’s race and ethnicity standards require agencies to ask both race and ethnicity in a specific manner (as done on [Form 4473]), and agencies may not ask for one without asking for the other,” wrote Elizabeth Gosselin, a spokeswoman for the ATF, in an emailed response to The Washington Times. She did not say why the agency suddenly made the change in response to a rule that was more than a decade old.

For ATF to ask for a purchaser’s race and ethnicity is not specifically authorized under federal statute, and since a government-issued photo ID — like a driver’s license — and a background check are already required by law to purchase a gun, the ethnicity/race boxes aren’t there for identification reasons, Mr. Nappen said.

“There is nothing [in ATF or OMB’s website links addressing the change in policy] that supports the requirement that ATF collect race-based information. The OMB guidance merely describes what categories of race should look like if information is collected,” Laura Murphy, the American Civil Liberties Union director for legislative affairs in Washington, said in an emailed statement.

In addition, Mrs. Murphy notes, the OMB guidance was supposed to be implemented by 2003; there’s no information given why ATF decided to make this change almost a decade later, she said.

“If there is a civil rights enforcement reason for the ATF to collect this data, I have not heard that explanation from ATF or any other federal agency,” said Mrs. Murphy.

Both the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza — the nation’s largest national Hispanic civil rights group — declined comment. — The Washington Times. 

The column continues at the Washington Times website. You can read the entire column here.

There is no justification, nor federal requirement for Obama to collect this information. Why are they? What purpose does it server? Perhaps, just to intimidate those who want to buy a weapon.

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If you like single-malt Scots whisky, you may see prices going up if Scotland votes to secede from the United Kingdom.

Scottish Secession a Sobering Prospect for Scotch Whiskey Drinkers

Sep 16, 2014, 1:41 PM ET, By

Scotch drinkers might want to brace themselves if Scots vote to secede from the United Kingdom and, consequently, the European Union Thursday.

Among the likely outcomes would be higher prices for Americans and others who import the brown elixir from secession saddled producers with rising costs.

Scotch whiskey, commonly referred to as Scotch and spelled without the “e” in Great Britain, is a tightly regulated spirit that can only come from oak casks that have matured for at least three years in Scotland. Exports are a giant piece of business for the Scotch industry, which says it ships 40 bottles overseas each second, while Scotch accounts for a quarter of U.K.’s food and drink exports.

The prospect of a Scotch trade interruption alone is enough to rattle the industry.

David Frost, the chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association in Edinburgh, said “any regulatory divergence between Scotland and the rest of the U.K. may increase costs to business,” according to his group’s annual review in May.

And Frost isn’t just bluffing. In the European Union, Scotch producers can export the stuff tariff-free to the region, and the geographical indication of “Scotch Whisky” is protected by E.U. law. Only 109 distilleries are licensed to produce Scotch, according to the association.

“But even a temporary interruption of E.U. membership involving exclusion from the single market or the customs union, if this were a consequence of independence, would be damaging and difficult to manage,” Frost wrote in the annual review.

I guess all you Scotch drinkers will have to switch to Bourbon.

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Truthy

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I was at a meeting of local county conservatives last night and one of the members started talking about how much personal information people, unthinkingly, release on the ‘net. Personally, especially on Facebook, my profile is sparse. I post my name, that I’m married and the company name I used to work for. I thought long and hard before I added that last bit and did so only at the request of a few former work buddies.

But all too many people post everything—all their personal information, phone numbers, personal details, family photos by the ton, oblivious just how much they release. We hear of the NSA spying on US citizens and no one really believes the NSA’s claims of innocence.

PRISM is one such spy program that examines all email traffic looking for specific pieces of information.

The Prism program collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to Internet companies such as Google Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms.[6] —  Wiki.

http://static.tumblr.com/k6l9ga7/1pRlvb0xk/big-brother-1984-cropped.jpgThe conversation from last night was still fresh in my mind this morning when I found the article below in my morning news basket from Ed Morrissey. He compared “Truthy” to George Orwell‘s Big Brother watching everyone.

Media curiously silent on “Truthy”

posted at 8:41 am on August 27, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

It’s been a couple of days since the Washington Free Beacon’s Elizabeth Harrington first reported on the three-year-old  federal grant from the National Science Foundation for the “Truthy” database, and … not much else has happened. Blogs have picked it up, including our own Mary Katharine, and Reason’s Bobby Soave did a good job of highlighting its inherent contradictions. Twitchy has collated a number of tongue-in-cheek attempts to kick-start Truthy. Other than that, the national media appears to have gone radio silent on this latest project; according to a Bing news search this morning, no national outlet has yet picked up the story from WFB.

That’s interesting, because one might have guessed that they would take notice of a million-dollar effort to encroach on their fact-checking turf. In my column for The Week today, I wonder why the federal government is spending a million dollars to create a mechanism that sounds like it could come straight out of Orwell when we have a perfectly good private-sector market for free speech:

The better question is this: Who makes these subjective judgments? At least at first, the answer would be the researchers who are building Truthy under a federal grant from the NSF. It’s not to hard to imagine a scenario in which the federal government would eventually find a use for Truthy, and would make the subjective judgments on how best to monitor political speech on social media.

Reason’s Bobby Soave points out the basic contradiction in claiming, as the abstract does, to support “the preservation of open debate” while attempting to apply labels to speech such as “suspicious memes,” “hate speech,” and “subversive propaganda,” as well as determining which arguments constitute an “organic meme” versus an “inorganic” one. “Those seem like conflicting goals,” Soave writes, “even if pursued in a totally apolitical way.”

Or an “inorganic” way, for that matter. Truthy is the very definition of a top-down determination of the legitimacy of public speech. In a free society, citizens make those determinations for themselves. That is the organic approach to political speech, stemming from those who wish to engage in — or become spectators to — the contest of ideas, arguments, analyses, and proposals. Instead of allowing people to reach their own conclusions about those ideas and arguments, Truthy and the NSF instead appear to want to delegitimize the people who engage in those debates, which would in any other circumstance become the very kind of political smear that Truthy is supposedly designed to protect against.

The fact-checking industry, for all its faults, at least uses a free-market approach to criticism and debate that “Truthy” would pervert. Citizens of a free nation who value political speech shouldn’t pay a dime for Truthy, let alone a million dollars. Its abstract describes an apparatus for state control of political thought, as though its proposers read George Orwell’s 1984 as a how-to rather than a cautionary tale.

The Inquisitr takes a look at the principals involved in this project, and wonders just how non-partisan this project really is:

The project website also says that while many memes are created in a “perfectly organic manner,” others are allegedly driven by the “shady machinery of high-profile congressional campaigns.” Free speech advocates say, “so what” to the organic vs. organized meme creation. If a political advocacy group makes a Barack Obama golf meme, will they wind up in the government-funded database? According to the description and focus of the Truthy database project, the answer would be a resounding “yes.”

But speaking of “the shady machinery of high-profile … campaigns,” we have this:

The Truthy database project is billed as a non-partisan effort, but the “lead investigator” on the project is reportedly involved with a multitude of progressive or liberal groups, Filippo Menczer has reportedly uttered support for Moveon.org, Amnesty International, and President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, among other groups. Filippo Menczer is also a computer science and informatics professor at Indiana University. Links to the political and activists groups the Truthy database leader supports are posted on his bio page at the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research. Menczer’s page also says that he is on sabbatical at Yahoo! Labs for the 2014-15 academic year. The $1 million grant funded by the taxpayers runs during the same year.

But don’t worry … you’ll love Big Brother! They promise not to make that a “suspicious meme,” too.

For most of us, bits and pieces of our history and personal details are already in some database—a piece here, a piece there, including our tax and income data, even our medical history. It’s too late for us but we should be ever vigilant to not allow more of our personal data to come into some one’s hands. Privacy is achieved only through constant vigilence.

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Sacrificial Scapegoat

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The ‘Court has been busy.  Very busy in fact. I’ve been asked to build a new website. It’s coming along nicely but it is eating into my blogging time. I expect that to continue for the next several weeks.

This is a heads-up. Blogging may be light until the new website, WMSA, is finished.

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Eric_Shinseki_official_Veterans_Affairs_portrait.jpg/220px-Eric_Shinseki_official_Veterans_Affairs_portrait.jpg

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki January 2009 – May 2014

Obama and the dems in jeopardy are blaming the situation in the VA on retired General Eric  Shinseki. He’s a relative newcomer as VA Secretary. As retired military, they’ve decided to make him the whipping boy for the institutional failings of the VA.

Obama wants someone to blame for his own failings in leadership. The dems in jeopardy want someone to blame and say, “See! We fired him. All is fixed,” and then proceed with business as usual. They want a scapegoat and Shinseki is the one they have picked. Shinseki has been VA Secretary since January, 2009 and is himself a wounded combat veteran having lost part of one foot to a landmine while in combat as a Forward Artillery Controller.

As I was writing the paragraph above, this news item dropped into my Inbox.

Eric Shinseki is out! Obama sacks Veterans Affairs secretary

By Dave Boyer and Jacqueline Klimas, The Washington Times

Updated: 11:33 a.m. on Friday, May 30, 2014

President Obama accepted the resignation Friday of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, amid a burgeoning scandal over delayed care for veterans at VA hospitals.

In a hastily arranged statement after meeting with Mr. Shinseki at the White House, the president said he accepted the resignation “with considerable regret.”

The president said VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson will take over on an interim basis.

Mr. Obama said Mr. Shinseki presented him with preliminary findings that showed the delayed care has affected veterans at “many” facilities across the country. The president said it was “totally unacceptable.”

The president also said Mr. Shinseki had begun to fire several VA officials deemed responsible for the problems.

Asked if he’s responsible for the problems, Mr. Obama said, “I always take responsibility for whatever happens” in his administration. But he also said the VA’s problem “predates my presidency.”

“The VA is a big organization that has had problems for a very long time,” he said.

The scandal began last month when a whistleblower revealed that veterans were being placed on a “secret wait list” at the Phoenix VA facility that almost guaranteed they would not receive timely care. The initial report caused a handful of GOP lawmakers to call for Mr. Shinseki to step down.

A preliminary investigator general report released Wednesday, however, substantiated many of the claims and opened the floodgates, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle demanding the retired four-star general step down immediately.

The report found that 1,700 veterans at the Phoenix facility had never been placed on the official electronic wait list, meaning their wait time couldn’t be tracked and they likely would not see a doctor. This delay in care and manipulation of data was systemic, stretching across the entire VA system, according to the report. More than 40 facilities across the country are under investigation, the report said.

Prior to his resignation, almost 120 lawmakers — 38 of whom were Democrats — had called for Mr. Shinseki to step down.

While the president was initially supportive of his Cabinet chief, Mr. Obama’s faith in Mr. Shinseki appeared to wane after the report was released. In a press conference Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Mr. Obama was anxiously awaiting results of an internal VA audit due early next month that will give a sense for how widespread the problems are at the embattled department.

“When he receives the internal audit, he’ll be able to evaluate those findings,” Mr. Carney told reporters at the White House, backing away from previous expressions of support. “I’m just not going to speculate more about personnel.”
Mr. Shinseki was sworn in as the secretary of veterans affairs in 2009. Prior to that, he served as the Army Chief of Staff and leader of the Army during Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, according to his VA bio. The West Point Graduate was awarded two Purple Hearts and three Bronze Stars with valor during his almost 40-year military career.

Military veterans have a proprietary view of the VA. VA Hospitals are THEIR hospitals. Wounded veterans were, until the VA was turned into a bureaucracy, guaranteed free healthcare for the rest of their lives. They earned that guarantee with their service and bodies.

Some politicians think privatizing would help restore confidence in the VA and return it to the level of service veterans want and expect. Many veterans also oppose this idea, believing privatization is a refutation of those guarantees. The VA is not, and has not delivered those guarantees for a long time.

I’m a veteran. I’ve been fortunate to not have needed the VA, except to guarantee the mortgage on my first home in the 1970s. I have no service related documented injuries that would require using the VA. I don’t have that proprietary view that so many veterans have. I believe privatization would help and help is desperately needed.

Perhaps, like so many needed changes in the FedGov, it is time to make one more change—not a new VA Secretary, but moving the VA out of the incompetent hands of the government.

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Acts of Defiance

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de·fi·ance
diˈfīəns/
noun
noun: defiance
1.
open resistance; bold disobedience.
“the demonstration was held in defiance of official warnings”

synonyms:

resistance, opposition, noncompliance, disobedience, insubordination, dissent, recalcitrance, subversion, rebellion

The country has been watching an act of defiance in Nevada for the last week. That confrontation between citizens and members of the federal government has subsided…for now. There was another act of defiance occurring in New York. That one received little attention from the media.

The state of New York requires gun owners to register certain firearms. Compliance to that law, known as the SAFE Act, has been low. Protesters to that law met outside the office of State Senator Mark Grisanti to protest the act.

Shredding SAFE Act Registration Forms In New York

By: Caleb Howe (Diary)  |  April 15th, 2014 at 05:10 PM

On Tuesday in upstate New York, outside the office of State Senator Mark Grisanti, gun owners gathered in protest. Together they shredded their SAFE Act registration cards to signify their non-compliance with the controversial new law. Grisanti is a Republican who helped to pass the SAFE Act, including by offering up changes to the bill to make it bipartisan.

Human Events wrote last week about a recent SAFE Act protest that had a huge turnout, and involved many of the same people and groups as the rally on Tuesday, where gun owners intend to shred their registration forms as a form of protest. One of the organizers, Rus Thompson of TEA New York, was recently interviewed about this event, and discussed in depth the reasoning behind the shredding.

Gun owners across the state have been speaking out and protesting the SAFE Act from the beginning. As Bearing Arms reported yesterday, as many as one million are refusing to register their weapons.

Non-compliance of the ban is expected to be between 90%-99%, but a provision in the NY SAFE Act prevents registration data from being shared with the public.

Non-compliance in the neighboring state of Connecticut is thought to be in excess of 85%, with an estimated 80,000-100,000 gun owners refusing to register their firearms. Connecticut State Police have made no move to enforce their law four months after their registration deadline, fearing possible armed resistance.

Conservative estimates are that at least 300,000 and as many as one million New Yorkers will likewise practice civil disobedience and refuse to comply with the registration requirement.

The Shredding Registration event has a Facebook page here, and was covered live by a local Buffalo talk radio station here.

The defiance in New York isn’t limited to gun owners. Some officials—county Sheriffs, have declared they won’t enforce the law, either.

Despite deadline, protesters ‘will not comply’ with SAFE Act

Registration deadline for law was Tuesday

By Lou Michel | News Staff Reporter , T.J. Pignataro | News Staff Reporter | @TJPignataro | Google+, on April 15, 2014 – 8:30 PM, updated April 16, 2014 at 2:04 AM

Rus Thompson, a tea party activist, shreds the state assault weapon registration form during a rally Tuesday outside the Mahoney State Building.

Rus Thompson, a tea party activist, shreds the state assault weapon registration form during a rally Tuesday outside the Mahoney State Building. Harry Scull Jr. /Buffalo News

Owners of assault-style weapons were supposed to have registered their guns by Tuesday.

But there is no way of knowing exactly how many of these weapons there are in the state and how many were registered under the NY SAFE Act.

The state refuses to say how many were registered, claiming it is confidential information protected by the law.

Gun-rights advocates estimate compliance will be less than 10 percent.

And in Erie County, the sheriff says he will not force his deputies to enforce registration.

“Theoretically, any law enforcement officer who encounters anyone with this type of gun at a minimum is supposed to record the serial number and the individual’s identity and report it to Albany,” Sheriff Timothy B. Howard said.

But will his deputies do that?

“I don’t know. I am not encouraging them to do it. At the same time, their own consciences should be their guide. I am not forcing my conscience on them. That is a decision they should make,” Howard said.

The sheriff’s opposition sits well with roughly 70 opponents of the law who gathered outside the Walter J. Mahoney State Office Building in downtown Buffalo late Tuesday afternoon to shred State Police registration forms for assault weapons.

It was seen as a form of civil disobedience to a law that opponents say was hastily drafted some 16 months ago in response to the December 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn., where 20 elementary school children and six adults were slain by a heavily armed gunman.

But rather than make the public safer, opponents contend the law’s main accomplishment has been to create a new classification of criminals – individuals who out of conscience refuse to register their assault weapons because they believe the law overstepped their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The column continues at the website. The Erie County Sheriff echoes the sentiments of many law enforcement officials across the country. “Will…shall I comply with a law that is clearly unenforceable and does nothing more than make criminals out of formerly law-abiding citizens?”

The New York Sheriffs Organization has examined the SAFE Act and has found a number of flaws and inconsistencies. They noted these flaws on their website and point out that a number of the Act’s provisions are unenforceable and produce undue burden of their offices and other agencies and institutions.

Three acts of defiance with days of one another: the Bundy Ranch vs. the BLM, gun owners of New York vs. the SAFE Act, and the NY Erie County Sheriff versus that same SAFE Act. When you add the defiance of many states against Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, the refusal of those same states to create state exchanges, a person could reasonably expect more acts of defiance to occur at any time, any where.

 

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The Weekend Review

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Do you know this man?http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2012/11/06/20121106-195938-pic-910164513_mugshot_four_by_three_s267x200.jpg?ec8f261d4936ae3433a61cef779c1dbc8a3728fb

No, it’s not a TV commercial. Richard Viguerie is a long-time conservative who has helped the campaigns of a number of conservatives. He is not among those who believe the GOP establishment should lead the GOP.

Viguerie has just released a book, titled, Takeover: The 100-Year War for the Soul of the GOP and How Conservatives Can Finally Win It, In it, he writes about the civil war that is taking place within the GOP. (Where have you heard that before, readers?)

The Daily Caller reviewed his book. According to the Daily Caller,  Viguerie said:

“Our true opponents are Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove, and George Bush. They’re the ones who have been engaged in a massive expansion of government and the American voters don’t like them,” “Whenever they are the face of the opposition to the Democrats, the Republicans almost always lose on the national level. It is the most important political battle in America and it’s not between Republicans and Democrats — it’s inside the Republican Party. And for the most part, conservatives have been losing.” — The Daily Caller.

You can read the column by following the link above. One statement Viguerie makes is that the ‘new’ conservatives, new to the political scene like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul, are loosely tethered to the GOP and more strongly to conservative principles. Viguerie views that as a positive trend within the GOP.

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Have you heard about this? It wasn’t a recent report, although the lawsuit is. It’s another example of unrestrained police abuse. I have to wonder why the majority of these cases occur in the larger metropolitan areas dominated by liberals?

The short report is that some ABC agents in Virginia terrorized two colleges students for buying—a case of water and some cookie ingredients.

UVA student was victim of malicious, spiteful cops, $40 million lawsuit claims

Robby Soave, Reporter, 12:11 AM 03/31/2014

A University of Virginia student is suing the Commonwealth of Virginia for $40 million after her harrowing run-in with the state police, who–acting out of “anger and personal spite”–drew their guns and arrested her on obviously false charges, according to the lawsuit.

The incident happened last June, after 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly and two of her friends purchased a case of water bottles and cookie-baking supplies at a local Harris Teeter.

Officers with Virginia’s Alcohol Beverage Control agency were staking out the grocery store, on the hunt for lawbreakers. Mistaking Daly’s water bottles for beer, they thought they had found one.

Three officers followed the students to Daly’s car. After Daly and her friends had already climbed inside, the officers began banging on their windows. They were wearing their badges around their necks, but Daly couldn’t see them clearly and were unsure whether they were actual cops, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Daly was instructed to roll down her window, but she couldn’t do so without turning the car on, which angered the officers. One drew a gun and attempted to bash in the window.

Daly called 911 and tried to drive to a police station. The emergency operator then told her that the assailants were indeed police officers, so she pulled over. Police then arrested her for assaulting two different officers and failing to stop when ordered. She spent a night in jail. (RELATED: UPDATED: UVA student jailed for possession of bottled water, ice cream)

The charges were eventually dropped, after ABC determined that the officers’s heavy-handed tactics violated official policy.

The ordeal terrified Daly and left her in a nervous state. Her lawsuit alleges that the officers “acted with actual malice, out of embarrassment and disgrace for their own intentional and grossly negligent acts and charged (Daly) with three felonies and did so out of anger and personal spite.”

According to the lawsuit, Daly, “does not and never has consumed alcohol or abused drugs, and/or her parents, on her behalf, have incurred significant legal, medical and other costs, and will continue to do so in the future due to the malicious, intentional, and/or grossly negligent actions of the (d)efendants.”

The lawsuit asks for $40 million in damages.

While that may seem like a lot of money, The Washington Post’s Radley Balko wrote that it “may be just what Virginia policymakers need to start taking these issues seriously. The militarization of regulatory agencies such as the ABC is a disturbing trend,” he wrote.

It is interesting that even the uber-liberal Washington Post viewed the actions of the ABC agents as, “disturbing.”

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In closing for today, here is another example of democrat deceit. Folks, never forget who are our real enemies.

Obamacare voter form pre-marked for Dems – Daily Caller: “A couple in La Mesa, California received a voter registration card from California’s Obamacare exchange already pre-marked for the Democratic Party… ‘I’m an old guy and I never would have noticed it, except I have an accountant that notices every dot and dash on a piece of paper as a wife,’ the man who received the card said… Covered California is in the midst of sending out voter registration cards to all of its sign-ups, due to pressure from left-wing groups threatening legal action if they don’t comply… Covered California denied responsibility for the violation.”

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Tax and Spend

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It’s Fall and two monstrous spending bills will be working their way through Congress. The first is the Continuing Resolution, the democrats spending solution that bypasses the budget process. The second will be the Debt Limit.

Depending on your viewpoint, there has been significant progress on the Continuing Resolution—removing funding for Obamacare. It’s a step but it doesn’t address the validity of Continuing Resolutions as a budget substitute.

Some House conservatives are going further—replacing Obamacare with another system. I haven’t read all the few details yet but I wonder about the wisdom of replacing one horrific government operation with another government operation. The rough outline presented so far retains government-sponsored insurance pool and federal subsidies to selected groups. So far, I have yet to find any substantive improvement in the new bill over Obamacare. Supposedly, the ‘new’ substitute would eliminate some taxes.

Big Whoop!

There’s more to Obamacare than taxes, it is an entire system of federal mandates that robs us of personal choice, selection and plans for our own future.  I would hope the ‘Pub alternative fulfills its hype. Given the leadership of Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, et. al., I have strong doubts.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Boehner has been forced to allow a version of the CR to go forward without Obamacare funding. That limited CR will go to the Senate where Harry Reid will stick Obamacare funding back into the CR. It will then return to the House where dems hope Boehner will cave and allow the funding to remain.

At best, the CR will ping-pong back and forth, from the House removing Obamacare funding, to the Senate that restores it until one side blinks. The dems hope, and I expect, that side will be the ‘Pubs. The way to end that cycle is to remove RINOs like Boehner, Cantor and McConnell from any leadership role in Congress and come the primaries, send them home—permanently.

The other spending bill is the increase of the nation’s debt limit. Obama wants us to believe, 'RAISING DEBT CEILING DOES NOT INCREASE OUR DEBT'. Yeah, and pull my other finger while you’re at it. We know now that we cannot believe anything from the pathological liar in the White House.

Obama and the dems both claim that failure to pass either bill, the CR or increase the debt limit, will shutdown the government. Many of us think that would be a good thing. We note that the government shuts down every weekend. We have sufficient income to pay the basic bills, pay for the entitlements of Social Security and Medicare, meet our debt and interest payments, and maintain the vital departments, such as Defense.

The dems disagree and if any spending cuts were made, they would target Defense and the vital programs of government instead of weaning the parasite class that keeps the dems in power.  Boehner and the GOP establishment are preparing to sell us out again by agreeing to a 1-year increase of the debt limit. John Boehner is morphing into Obama—you can’t believe a word that come out of his mouth.

In the end, if either bill passes both Houses of Congress with no funding for Obamacare, Obama will veto it. Next he’ll shutdown the government and blame the ‘Pubs. We know what happens next. The ‘Pubs get weak-kneed and give in.

Am I confident we’ll be able to defund Obamacare? No. The track record has been established in Washington beginning in the early Bush administration. Whenever a tough decision is required from the ‘Pubs, they will duck and weave and give in to the dems. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and other conservatives are fighting this record and practice. Unfortunately, they are outnumbered by the weak-willed and the ‘Pub democrat-lite members of Congress.

Yes, it is a pessimistic day.