Rep Lynn Woolsey sent me this canned carefully crafted & thoughtful response to my email re: her positions on national health care (emphasis added)

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on improving healthcare. I appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective with me on this important matter.

Like you, I am frustrated with the escalating cost and complications of healthcare in this country. We must find ways to make our healthcare system as high quality and affordable as possible for everyone. Also, we must reform the system so that the forty-eight million Americans who lack health insurance receive high quality coverage, which will bring down the overall costs of medical care.

Congress has begun holding hearings and listening to the suggestions of stakeholders, including doctors, patients, employers, and health insurance companies. These viewpoints and the suggestions of many others will be important voices as we consider health reform. I have supported various federal initiatives, such as H.R. 676, the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, which calls for a single payer national health insurance system. H.R. 676 will help control skyrocketing health costs while restoring choice of physician and the doctor-patient relationship. Many individuals prefer a single payer plan, but that may not be possible at this time. That’s why I have joined with other Members of Congress to advocate for a robust public plan option that can compete with private plans and will give patients the option to choose a public plan or a private plan. You can count on me to continue to be an outspoken voice for universal healthcare and for measures to improve healthcare for everyone.

Again, it’s good to hear from you. The people of Marin and Sonoma counties are the most important voices I listen to as I serve in Congress.

Feel so good to be listened to! Now I know I’m making a difference! My voice has been heard!

Oh wait, the opposite of all of that.

You have to love that in response to me writing this:

As long as the government competes with private companies in a given industry, that industry will suffer and appear “inefficient.”

she reassured me with the fact that she will try harder to “compete with private plans.”

I don’t want to diminish the loss of three beloved public figures this week by any means, but I’d be lying if I said I thought there was any chance the majority of the American public knows what their government is up to right now.  And that is, according to reports, preparing to vote on what could be a disastrous Cap and Trade bill, and could do so as early as tomorrow.  I’m no alarmist, but this bill combined with the seemingly inevitable “Obamacare” bill coming down the pike will have serious economic implications for many, many years.  I know everyone is sad about the celebrity deaths of the last few days, but in between newscasts, I would highly recommend the following news articles from today’s Wall Street Journal about the Cap and Trade bill:

The Cap and Trade Fiction

Cap and Trade Doesn’t Work

In response to Rep Lynn Woolsey’s  We Need a Real and Robust Public Option:

I do not support the idea of nationalized health care. It is an impossible undertaking and is an irresponsible pursuit in the midst of the current financial climate.

We need to decentralize and decrease the size of the Federal Government, not increase. We need to move more services to the private sector and stop providing services to illegal aliens.

As long as the government competes with private companies in a given industry, that industry will suffer and appear “inefficient.”

Please lower taxes, lower government spending, and put money back in the pockets of individual citizens who can identify and work on their local community’s problems instead of trying to make a one size fits all solution and push the square peg into a round whole.

Please stop wasting your time and taxpayer money.

I’ve never been a huge comic book reader.  I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and access to a store that had comic books was pretty rare for me.  But every once in a while my brother and I would be given a a few, from family members, friends, etc.

At some point in the eternal comic universe there was a reoccurring Superman storyline that revolved around his doppelganger, Bizzaro, and the planet he came from.  While the storyline is entirely too long (and nerdy) to get into here, the concept is that a parallel universe/planet exists, which is populated by opposite versions of people in Superman’s world, doing the exact opposite things as their Earthly counterparts do.  As I have spent the last few days reading and hearing about Obama and the infamous 100 Days landmark, I can’t help but think about how similarly and completely backwards the political situation in our country has become.  (Additionally, I have been reading 1984 and have found similar terrifying parallels).  We are living in a complete Bizzaro World, where things would have been embarrassing at best, and politically devastating at worst, have become common, accepted practice.  The media is invested in party lines, and not the truth.  The public is looking for what will quickly and easily solve their present problems, not what will stand the test of time. Our politicians are looking for ways to hold onto power as best they can, not serving the principles and ideals that put our country where it is in the first place.

In the last few days Obama’s staff has been simultaneously downplaying and propping up the 100 Days mark.  Naturally, the main idea from his people has been that it is a worthless marker that should be ignored, except for all the “good” things he has done that we should be praising.  An unnamed Obama advisor has put out the following list as the landmark 100 day issues:

• Passing the “largest” economic stimulus bill in American history.
• Ordering the closing of Guantanamo Bay military detention facility and abolishing “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
• Setting a fixed timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq.
• Ordering 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and enlisting, with modest new assistance, European allies in a new multi-layered strategy there and in Pakistan.
• “Returning science to its rightful place” by lifting the Bush restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research.
• Signing laws to expand children’s health insurance
• Signing a law meant to improve the ability of women who allege pay discrimination to sue their employer.
• Diminishing the role of lobbyists in the White House
• “Forge a meaningful statement from the United Nations” criticizing North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile.
• Lifting travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban Americans who seek to travel more frequently to the island and send more US currency to their immediate family.
• Engaging world leaders in Europe, Turkey, Latin American and the Caribbean with “strength and humility.”

We really are living in Bizzaro World if these are the standards being given as a successful 100 first days.  Nearly every one of these points is something negative that is being spun as a positive.  Who needs reality anyway, right?  Each can be easily and quickly re-written:

• Passed the “largest” Economic Stimulus Bill in American history.  With this, Obama has accumulated more debt in 100 days than every President previous to him, combined.  This bill was based on a long discredited Keynesian notion that spending is a good way to solve a debt problem.  While it may prove politically expedient in the extreme short run, common sense economics and history show otherwise.
• Ordered Gitmo closed, but has no set time to close it, and currently has no plan for taking care of the prisoners.
• Set a timetable for Iraq, aka, kept Bush’s timetable in place.
• Has sent additional troops to Afghanistan, but has no new strategy (ie the Surge) to win said conflict/quagmire.  Moveon.org is strangely silent.
• Lifted Bush restrictions on stem cells, but brought most of them back a few days later, naturally in a much more quiet fashion.
• Vastly expanded government provided child-health care, paid for by a massive increase in cigarette taxes (keeping in mind that the vast majority of smokers are poor).  Touted as a providing health care for the poor, but in actuality provides health care well into the middle class range- a successful attempt at increasing the likelihood of full national health care.
• Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act, (and did not place it on the White House website for multiple days for our viewing pleasure as promised), which changes the statute of limitations on pay discrimination cases.  It is a gross injustice to employers and a blatant payoff to trial lawyers.
• Talked big about cleaning up Washington’s lobbyist problem, but hired various lobbyists within the administration.
• Had the UN, in the words of Team America: World Police, send North Korea “a very angry letter,” which the entire world knows is backed up by nothing.
• Lifted travel embargoes on Cuba, which will end up benefiting the Cuban government and not the Cuban people.
• Engaged World Leaders by talking down America, and talking up himself.  Was so successful on his European Magical Mystery Tour that he was able to get virtually zero help whatsoever for his new campaign in Afghanistan.

Let’s not forget also that within his first 100 days he was also able to get 800+ grassroots organized protests in every state of the country.  Even Bush couldn’t do that.  Maybe Obama is Bizarro-Bush?  Now that’s a scary thought.  I’ll take neither please.

Sources:

100 Days: What Obama Wants You To Read

100 Days: How Obama Changed DC

Advisor: Obama’s First 100 Days Most Productive Since FDR

Happy Debt Day

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) told a crowed at a church in San Francisco that it was un-American to enforce our immigration laws.  She wishes to stop raids and deportations because she sees enforcing those laws as un-American?  Then why should I have to follow laws I don’t like?  We have already learned from several of President Obama’s cabinet picks that we may not have to pay taxes either.  What kind of system is this?  Is this the new era of responsibility that Obama and the Democrats talked about?  Ignore laws you don’t like?

I guess this was an important enough issue that Speaker Pelosi felt compelled to speak on.  You know, ensuring that people that have come into our country illegally have a way of getting jobs and using our tax-funded institutions such as health services and education while legal Americans are struggling to get jobs or hold onto them and trying to pay for healthcare.  Welcome to the Democrats’ America–where you may be better off if you’re here illegally.

For some reason, Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net, an ISP based in Northern California - @dane - enjoys slipping in occasional, and sometimes nonsensical, jabs at Christians, pro-lifers, and the Religious Right in his Twitter feed.

Why he thinks this is a good idea is for anyone to guess. He must either

1. presume that no one listening to him is a Christian, nor is anyone offended by the ridiculing thereof; or
2. think it’s good business to make fun of an entire culture in a way completely unrelated to his industry; or
3. think that Christians do not deserve the same respect as other cultures.

Is this a trend? A marketing strategy?

Most likely he assumes that any person in California intelligent enough to read his posts shares his views.

This is not the case, Mr. Jasper. Perhaps you could tone it down.

In the last 24 hours or so I have seen this story in various places, and honestly, I don’t get it.  I’ve been confused all week, from Obama’s big “not a State Of The Union,” State Of The Union address, to his $3.5 trillion budget, which comes with a pretty blue cover and the words “The era of responsibility” stamped on the front.  I really can’t say it better than how Powerline put it in response to Obma’s claim to be ready to fight lobbyists, when they said yesterday, “As Obama well knows, lobbyists all over Washington are lighting cigars with $50 bills at the prospect of having $3.7 trillion worth of spoils to divvy up. Obama must think the American people–his supporters, anyway–are complete idiots.”

In the context of the Tuesday’s speech and the budget, I really can’t decide how he actually views the American people.  I described the speech to a few friends as “a bunch of statements that sound inspiring and plausible to everyone except those who get their news from somewhere other than MTV.”  He keeps throwing this “era of responsibility” tag around, and yet in reality it’s more accurate to describe it as “the era of insurmountable deficits.”  (just look at the graph here) How is that responsible?  And as often as he can Obama throws in the “I inherited this deficit from Bush” line.  Right.  So the best response is to make it 10 times worse?  And don’t forget, he actually said in his speech that he was not a fan of big government.  With a straight face, no less.

Additionally, we are now on the cusp of subsidizing mortgages.  Just think about that one- some of our neighbors aren’t able to make adequate payments on their houses, and rather than letting them deal with the ramifications of making unwise decisions, we are going to take money out of people’s pockets who were responsible, in order to help those that aren’t.  Any citizen in the country would agree that stealing and slavery are morally wrong, but a high percentage are apparently willing to look the other way when it benefits themselves.

So I ask, how does Obama see the American people?  He clearly knows that talking about responsibility is something the public wants to hear.  And he apparently knows that the majority of Americans will turn a blind eye to the fact that his actions are not coming even close to lining up with his rhetoric, pre and post campaign.  So does he think we are, as Powerline sarcastically put it, idiots?  Does he know, as J. Norman and I often say to each other, that he is the MTV President for the MTV Generation?  Has he rightly identified that the vast majority of the public is completely ignorant of basic economics and history, and is then exploiting it?

He can’t have it both ways.  He can’t talk about responsibility and do the polar opposite, all while self proclaiming his own moral authority.  If he really believes what he is saying, his actions would at least be on the same planet as his words, which they’re not.  Is a little change from business as usual too much to ask?  Apparently so this time around.

With all due respect Mr. President…

Please write or call your Senator and encourage them to vote NO on the stimulus (porkulous) bill.  You can find contanct information here.  I sent this to mine:

Dear Senator,

You have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.  May I remind you of the words delivered by James Madison to Congress in 1794: “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”  The current stimulus package is nothing more than an exercise in government charity, passing out its citizen’s money to innumerable earmarked benefactors.  It is unconstitutional, not to mention immoral, to extend financial favors to one group and not another.  It is reprehensible to do so in the name of economic stimulus.  Spending billions on STD awareness, DC area landscaping, off-road vehicle courses, Amtrak, and digital TV coupons, will not by even the most lucid imagination, make the tiniest dent in the current recession.  Please consider the American people first and the free market principles on which our nation was founded above that of Democratic campaign contributors.  Set the business owner and the entrepreneur free from the economic shackles our bloated government has constrained them in.  Let us keep the money we have rightfully earned, and the economy will flourish, as history has shown.  If we are truly in an “era of responsibility,” as President Obama has deemed it, allow businesses and citizens to be held responsible for their own actions.  If we are truly a free society, then failure must be a possible result of risk.  Corporate and individual bailouts are not the answer, but a sad symptom of a society obsessed with entitlement, refusing to acknowledge personal responsibility.  Please do not saddle our grandchildren with the consequences of yet another in a series of never ending government mistakes.

Please vote NO on the stimulus package.

Thank you.

Today the House of Representatives passed their version of the stimulus bill. The vote was 244-188 and not one Republican voted for it.  Despite talk of reaching across the aisle, the Democrats in Congress and President Obama are pushing through a massive, special interest ridden, and debt deepening farce in the guise of economic stimulation.  Here are just some of the areas of wasteful spending that is contained in this bill.

$1 billion for Amtrak
$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
$400 million for global warming research
$2 billion for child-care subsidies
$2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects
$650 million for more digital TV conversion coupons
$7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities
$150 million for the Smithsonian
$81 billion for Medicaid
$36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits
$20 billion for food stamps
$83 billion for the earned income credit (for people who don’t pay income tax)
$66 billion for education

This bill is not about economic stimulation.  This bill is simply riddled with socialist pet-projects that the liberal Democrats in D.C. finally have the votes to push through.  Well, I guess President Obama is delivering early in his administration on his promise of change–he’s actually spending more than President Bush.

Sources

WAll Street Journal
Fox News