... the right of the people peaceably to assemble...

I don’t have anything profound to say about today's rally at the Capitol. It was a simple exercise of some of the rights guaranteed by the first amendment, which happens to begin with the words. “Congress shall make no law…”

It was only a week ago that Nancy Pelosi announced that she was going to bring HR 3962, the $1.2 trillion, 1990 page “healthcare” bill, to a vote by the end of this week, believing she had the votes to pass it The very next day, Representatives Michelle Bachman (R-Minnesota) and Steven King (R-Iowa) took to the airwaves with a simple appeal for people to convene on the West side of the Capitol on Thursday at noon for a rally, to be followed by visits to Congressional offices to urge their lawmakers to vote “no” on the bill.

Here's an idea

House Democrats announced their latest version of a healthcare “reform” bill last Thursday at a rather exclusive unveiling ceremony. According to the Washington Times and many other press outlets, “The West Front of the Capitol -- where President Obama was inaugurated -- is traditionally open to the public. But the entrances were blocked off Thursday morning by metal fences, with Capitol Police officers standing next to staff members holding clipboards with lists of approved attendees.” That is, only their handpicked, trusted invitees could attend.

The Unconstitutional Congress

Lost amidst the headlines about healthcare, Afghanistan, the Administration's war on Fox News, etc., I found the following article in today's Washington Times:

Rental industry hopes to buy influence on Hill

Choosing to put a tiger in my tank

Economic behavior is for the most part driven by free choice and self interest, which usually means looking for the best product at the best price. Every once in a while, our economic behavior is modified by a positive or negative political, social or moral cause, which influences us to boycott product A or patronize product B based on a personal value judgment.

An example in history was the tea boycott staged by American colonists, given the onerous taxes on tea imposed by the British crown. I don’t know how effective it was, but it was at least a symbolic gesture that helped rally the cause that inspired the American Revolution.

Other cause driven economic behavior fails to gain traction, such as when Hillary Clinton said: “I turn off a light and say, ‘Take that, Iran,’ and “Take that, Venezuela.’ We should not be sending our money to people who are not going to support our values,”

Behemoth

In case you have hours to waste or nothing better to do, you can now see a copy of one of the proposed healthcare “reform” bills on line at

http://finance.senate.gov/press/Bpress/2009press/prb101909.pdf

I certainly don’t have the time or inclination to pore over all 1502 pages, but be my guest if you like. The Congressional Budget Office has yet to score the bill. I will also leave it to others to come up with a summary of what this behemoth actually entails, but I did a few word searches to get some idea:

• A search for “malpractice”, “tort”, “tort reform” yielded zero hits. Why am I not surprised?
  
• “Abortion” resulted in over 20 hits, the most telling of which is on page 141, which describes the abortion services for which public funding is permitted and prohibited: “The services described in this subparagraph are abortions for which the expenditure of Federal funds appropriated for the Department of Health and Human Services is permitted, based on the law as in effect as of the date that is 6 months before the beginning of the plan year involved.” I see quite a wide berth for a Mack truck.
  
• “Medicare” also yielded multiple hits, a substantial number of them under the Title V Section entitled “Fraud, Waste and Abuse”, Subsection A, “Medicare and Medicaid”. I am all for eliminating fraud, waste and abuse, but why am I suspicious? How long have Medicaid and Medicare been in existence? If they can save so much money by cutting waste, fraud and abuse, why haven’t they done so already?
  

There are numerous other references to penalties, fines and taxes, as well as federal requirements levied on states. It is enough to make anyone’s head spin. I am convinced that the length and the complexity of the bill are by design.

I could have done better

I just had a very unsatisfying exchange with a Jehovah’s Witness in a Safeway parking lot.

The young lady was smiling and soft spoken as she handed me a tract. I immediately accepted it and quickly turned to the back to see if it said “Watchtower Society” somewhere in the fine print. But it was already getting dark and my eyesight isn’t the best, so I just confronted the issue head on.

“Thank you very much,” I said. "What church do you go to?"

“I’m a Jehovah’s Witness.”

I wasn’t sure what to say next, so I blurted out, “I’m afraid I don’t subscribe to Arian theology.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m afraid you don’t have an adequate understanding of who Jesus is.”

“Oh we believe He is the Son of God.”

“Well, good. Do you believe that He died for your sins?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, meditate on that.”

Breathtaking Double Standards, Part III

Parts 1 and 2 of this series are from a previous blog I used to contribute to:

Breathtaking Double Standards

Breathtaking Double Standards (Part II)

I could have easily turned it into a weekly series, but it would get old real fast to keep repeating the painfully obvious, so I have stayed away from the theme.

I was inspired to take it up again by an email that a good friend recently forwarded to me. It basically lists an assortment of the missteps, gaffes and boneheaded policy decisions that have occurred in the first months of the Obama administration (most of which have been excused or glossed over by the media) and rhetorically asks the reader if they would have received similar treatment if George W. Bush were still president.

It's not too late.

If the Obama Administration and Congress really wanted to to turn the economy around, they could do it right away, but it would require a major change in course. I'm not holding my breath.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/21/unemployment-capital-gains-payroll-tax-opinions-contributors-gingrich-varroney.html

Here we go again!

You have heard it all before, or maybe not, because the media has done a wonderful job of de-emphasizing it. The economic crisis we are in was not caused by “free-market capitalism” or “greed on Wall Street” or (that favorite bogey-man) “eight years of deregulation under George W. Bush”. I wrote about this ad nauseum in previous posts such as Despair and others referred to therein:

We are suffering from the domino effect of a credit crunch created by the government, which encouraged and even coerced banks into irresponsible lending practices to non-credit worthy individuals. And to add insult to injury, the inmates who caused this mess, who brushed off Bush Administration warnings about the impending insolvency of Fannie and Freddie and the toxic assets they were spreading around the financial community, have been put in charge of the asylum.

But even if the perpetrators and perpetuators got away with their irresponsible behavior, you would have thought that the one bright side in this fiasco is that the irresponsible lending to non-credit worthy individuals has finally ended. Well, think again.

Grazie, Cristoforo!

Thank you, Chris, for your amazing achievement.

So what if you really weren’t the first European to make it to the Americas, having been preceded 500 years earlier by Leif Ericson, et al? Your discovery is the only one that mattered.

So what if you grossly underestimated the circumference of the earth in thinking that it would be a shorter route to India by going west? And so what if you thought you were in India when you were actually in the Bahamas?

So what if a bunch of historical revisionists who have nothing better to do try to paint you and your achievement in the worst light, blaming you for introducing all the evils of European civilization on the supposedly peace loving and innocent indigenous peoples of the Americas?

There are still plenty of us who celebrate your courage to try something new and daring. And even if there is a grain of truth to the revisionist rants, there are those of us who maintain that the Americas are still a better place because you stumbled into them.

So thank you for your amazing feat. Thanks for joining the long line of Italian achievers, and particularly for putting your birthplace of Genoa on the map. And, last but not least, thanks for providing federal workers an extra day off in October!

Birthplace of Christopher Columbus, Genoa, Italy