We all know that over the past year, one of the President’s major objectives dating back to his campaign was an overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system. An all inclusive, government run system was preached as the answer to all of our problems for the insured and uninsured alike (which is unfortunately coming to fruition). According to Obama, our healthcare “crisis” will come to an end when Washington dictates how people should be given care (because government knows best, right?).
Against the wishes of a majority of the American people, a vote was finally brought to the Senate floor this morning, passing the Reid version of Obamacare down party lines.
Now, the big hurdle for healthcare “reform” is about to begin.
The leadership in both chambers will begin to merge two very different bills that a majority of people haven’t even read and a majority of Republicans have been left in the dark about.
Many Republicans, Libertarians, Tea Partiers, conservatives and independent thinkers have said all along that if you really want to reform the healthcare industry, work on making insurance companies more competitive. Capitalism is a good thing and competition breeds lower costs. It’s a Laissez-faire model that our country was made to emulate. Making a government umbrella to guarantee coverage for most Americans takes the U.S. one step closer to a socialist banana republic, granting citizens social services countries can’t afford. However, if we keep government away from private industry (healthcare, banking, car industry . . .), the markets will always take care and correct themselves. It’s the nature of Capitalism.
This government spends too much, period. Over the decades, it has slowly been going down a path of expansion and intrusion. It was and is the catalyst that inspired the grassroots movement of today’s Tea Party. Even though this new incarnation of the original movement isn’t based on the ideals of the first, it is of the same principle and spirit. In a representative’s eyes on Capitol Hill, it’s easy to spend money when it’s not theirs. And what happens when they spend too much? They make up for these deficiencies in spending by auctioning off bonds to communist countries so our treasury can continue to fund government expansion and entitlement programs with foreign-backed debt.
When we start to depend on our government for handouts, we lose the ability to take initiative for ourselves. Socializing medicine and allowing the federal government to take more control of our lives will do nothing but encourage dependency.
All what is happening now in Washington may be the easy way out of a problem that without question needs to be addressed, but in my experience, taking the easy road is never the right road.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not a guarantee in any venture, healthcare included.
After posting my 4th of July blog, I wanted to write a follow-up, or an epilogue of sorts, to explain my thought process in writing it.
Believe it or not, the first words written for that entry started over a year ago in Florida. After watching the Dow begin its brutal freefall, taxes being placed on items such as soda in New York and Hurricane Katrina victims still living in FEMA run trailers, I felt that the mind set of this country had started to go down a path that contradicted everything we should believe as Americans.
After writing down the general ideas I wanted to convey, I sat on the outline for some time, waiting on the right moment to post a blog such as that. As a matter of fact, I never really looked at it again and almost forgot about it until the tea parties (TEA - Taxed Enough Already) of this past April.
Unlike the original Boston Tea Party, the protesters of this past April weren’t railing against taxation, but more about the taxing and oppressive nature of a government that is on the verge of running our lives. In the spirit of the original act, today’s tea parties showed a motivating sprit in the original fight for freedom.
While in my hotel room on vacation this past April 15th, I watched and was inspired to finish the original blog I started last year. The tea parties embodied what I wanted to share and pushed me to complete a blog on an emotional high. Seeing Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals protesting against not only taxes, but big government intrusion was inspiring. To me, it showed a grass-roots spirit that is hopefully only beginning.
In turn, I naturally held on to ‘What We Fought For’ till the 4th of July. It only seemed fitting to post a blog about our original fight for freedom on the anniversary of our day of Declaration.
If nothing else, I’m hopeful that we will eventually enter an era of common sense. With big government healthcare and other ultra-liberal projects around the corner, our government has the feel of a power hungry control freak rather than an instrument of promoting liberty.
After all, in Common Sense by Thomas Paine, he said, “Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
In a speech to the Second Continental Congress in 1776, then representative John Adams said, “While I live, let me have a country - a free country.”
Our founding fathers gave us a vision and a gift that has stood for over two centuries. Born from the chains of an oppressive British crown, the republic that our founders helped create is one that has allowed people to live free and pursue happiness through their own means. This novel idea is not only granted to us by the providence of God, but by a constitution many believe to be the crowning achievement of a free society.
Two hundred and thirty-three years later, what would those same founders say if they saw the District of Colombia today?
Today, we live in a United States that taxes almost everything we buy or create. Our government asks CEO’s of private businesses to resign. It thinks you should eat a soy burger rather than a hamburger. They spend our money as if it were their own. We have representatives that don’t listen to their constituency, but rather push through an agenda that benefits them.
Today, we have a president who relishes in the thought of spending billions in taxpayer dollars to achieve a “21st century healthcare system” that looks more like France and Canada than the United States; where workers can unite under one banner of socialistic hope and be catered to with government handouts and other various entitlements. The previous president signed earmark-laced spending bills into law like they were autographed baseballs from his Texas Rangers days. We have a Speaker of the House who values the life habits of a field mouse in California rather than the people she represents.
The oppressive and cavalier nature of our government has not reached an apogee yet, but if we do not stay vigilant in the cause of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, we only have ourselves to blame. An elected government can easily restrict one’s rights, but as a free people, we are charged as the stewards of that government which will achieve greater power only if we let it.
Slogans from the 1770’s are returning with renewed cause. “Join or Die” and “Don’t Tread on Me” represent the fervor and ideas of a revolution that resonates today. From the tea parties of that century to the tea parties of this past April, people are beginning to speak out in the cause of what we originally fought for.
But what was it that we fought for? A free country? A representative democracy? A government free from an oppressive monarchy?
What we fought for was - and still is - an idea that is one of the most noble and idealistic in all of humanity. To think that a free and open democracy with people of varying backgrounds, religions and beliefs could stand for two hundred and thirty-three years is at the very least an amazing feat. To think that this Union has withstood a civil war, two world wars, and a devastating depression is inspiring. And to think that these United States have achieved unimagined marvels that include flight, the internet and a walk by man on the moon is at the very least a testament to the innovation that springs forth in a free country.
What we fought for was not just for the birth of a country, but for the birth of an idea that has manifested into that “shining city on a hill” as Reagan so eloquently described us.
Today, we are charged with preserving that city and to hold true on the original ideas of that fight for freedom waged many years ago. We must spread and keep the values of our fathers and grandfathers by working hard and relying on our own achievements, not advancing in the graces of Uncle Sam. We must remind our representatives that they are in Washington, D.C. for us, not for their own personal gain. We must remind the executives in the White House that we are a republic founded on freedoms that encompass all aspects of life, including separation of “business and state” and “healthcare and state”.
The innovation and free-thinking that got us to where we are today will carry us into the 21st century, not government. As a people, we American’s have always aspired to be more than the sum or our parts. Without freedom, those dreams are nothing more than a thought lost in time.
On this 4th of July, honor the revolution that gave birth to a nation of freedom-loving people. Stand tall when you see the flag while cooking out. When reading an op-ed, give thanks that you can actually read it. And when enjoying the relative tranquility of these United States, realize that maintaining our cherished peace and freedom is the responsibility of we, the people.
Back in September of last year, Fox News aired a time line of the financial crisis on Special Report with Brit Hume. After it aired, I tried searching for the video, but it was no where to be found. But, thanks to an avid reader of this blog, that video has been found.
I don't know about all of you, but I've always thought that Barney Frank and Chuckie Schumer are idiots.
If you haven't been keeping up with Glenn Beck's '9 Principles' and '12 Values', feel free to catch up on Beck's website. The culmination of the 'We Surround Them' event will be presented on his show today on FoxNews at 4 p.m. CDT.
Many of you know how fascinated I am in the exploration of space and NASA. So, it’s no surprise that I would keep people up-to-date on a scheduled launch. If all goes well in prelaunch procedures, the space shuttle Discovery will lift-off tomorrow night at 8:20 p.m CDT. After tomorrow night, NASA only has seven more launches of the space shuttle before the program's last scheduled mission on May 31st, 2010.
Watch if you can!
ER
UPDATE: Launch moved to Sunday, March 15th at 6:34 p.m CDT.
To all my Democratic friends out there, please tell me how these items listed below help the economy come out of a recession? All this looks like a bunch of pork barrel pig crap to me.
You may not have deposits there, but taxpayer money will now be invested into CitiGroup giving the government a 36% interest in the company. Investors didn't seem to like this news considering Citi's stock was in the tank in early morning trading today. Can we say nationalization?
With nearly three years of blogging on Blogger.com, I thought it might be time to finally update the layout of Politology by Paco. There might be some tweaks to come here and there, but overall, welcome to the new look!
A trend is emerging in this country that I fear we will never be able to correct.
Ever since emerging from WWII, America has been at the apex of global society. We lead in economic ingenuity. We lead in scientific innovation. And as we always have, we lead in the freedom we provide.
Because of that, the post WWII era has never been equaled in promoting the American Dream. It’s a dream where everyone has the opportunity to be or do anything they want. Through hard work and time, any goal can be accomplished.
Over the past few decades however, the notion of living that dream has been twisted into the idea that since you are an American, you are entitled to that dream.
Through the words of Thomas Jefferson in The Declaration of Independence, we all know that Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is an unalienable right endowed to us by God, and in this country, we were given the freedom to pursue those endowments through the American Revolution.
But, gradually through time (especially the past half century), I feel that our government has perverted that freedom and those pursuits into an American Guarantee where no one can fail. In essence, the dream itself has become an entitlement program.
When did we go from a people that aspired to do and be something more through a dream to a people wanting the easy road through entitlements and handouts from the federal government? The more government grants and entitles to its people (socialism?), the further we get from what makes America great.
Today, we make excuses that GM and Bank of America are companies too large to fail, but isn’t that the nature of the free market? In GM’s case, their business plan is so warped by the unions that whatever excuses and escapes the federal government hands out, we prolong what inevitably needs to happen. Instead of perpetuating a broken business model, it needs to fail through the tools that are provided in a free market.
From the largest business to the struggling independent contractor, we learn from that failure. We learn to get back up, dust ourselves off and try again. Yes, millions may be out of work, but where there’s a will (or need), there’s a way. Where one door closes, another will open. We live in a country that allows us the freedom to pursue and do as we choose. We will always have successes and failures, neither of which is guaranteed. It’s up to us to make do with what we have and to achieve what we can, not your government.
In the words of Benjamin Franklin in reference to another great document enabling freedom: “The US Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.”
I was going to talk about the stimulus package and $9.7 trillion running total of what the government has paid out so far, but something more interesting has caught my eye.
In an obvious partisan move, this administration has decided to arbitrarily investigate taking away the counting of our population from the Commerce Department and give oversight directly to the White House. This would give direct control of how numbers are interpreted and how district lines are drawn to a branch of our government (executive) that is controlled by either party at any given time. In this particular case, the Democrats could interpret any data and align any district however they want in order to sway elections and stay in power. If this were truly to happen under Obama’s White House, the lead would be given to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a Chicago politician with questionable ethics.
So, in a quick review, we have a process currently set up that is independent of any partisan politics, but yet this White House is considering a “change” in how census numbers are reviewed?
Does any of that seem strange coming from a president who was elected by preaching he would be a bi-partisan force in Washington?
For the near month that President Obama has been in office, I find our president arrogant and forceful in setting an agenda that is politically driven and seems to be closed for debate. I also find it ironic that he is currently using the politics of fear with words like “catastrophe” if his stimulus package isn’t passed when his presidential campaign promised an era of “hope”.
Overall, what is currently happening in Washington is bad politics ushered in by a president who thinks he has a mandate from the people. I say, not even close, Mr. President. How dare you try to strong-arm and what impudence you have to think otherwise.
It was a busy year for the Paco (a.k.a. Pancho) in 2008. Over the past two years, I have either worked or lived in south Florida, but I am now permanently back in the great state of Texas. Many of you have noticed an eerie silence from this blog over the past two months, but rest assured, political clarity will begin to be written here once again.
A lot of things have been happening in Washington over the past two weeks that have people increasingly asking, “What the hell are they thinking?!” From the closing of Gitmo to the charges being dropped on USS Cole bombing suspects, this new administration is already raising some serious questions on national security.
On the domestic scene, the same disbelief and audacity of this White House holds true. Who does Obama think he is when capping compensation for Wall Street executives? [insert communist leader here]
And what about those senators complaining about people such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity when it comes to conservative radio? Because liberal media personalities can't keep an audience, they cry foul? Whatever happened to having winners and losers?! Oh, that's right . . . socialism doesn't allow for losers.
But most importantly, let’s not forget about that bloated stimulus package (over 700 pages now) being debated on Capitol Hill as we speak. The more government is in your lives, the more we pay (literally and figuratively) as the average American.
In short, keep a watchful eye on posts to come. We have a lot to discuss.
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