Is Senate Prostitution Constitutional?

Now that we have had the opportunity to digest the magnitude of the Senate vote on Healthcare Reform taken in the early morning of December 24th, the television has been ablaze with heated debates between factions of both pro and con camps. I couldn’t help but notice how many Democratic Strategists appear on these programs and some shows have a new one every week. The problem with strategists is that their job is to advance an agenda; in essence, to create a winning strategy and not necessarily to tell the truth.

Of course winning is everything to a strategist and the truth tends to get lost if it is not complimentary to the strategy. Despite the authoritative assurances of the strategists, every independent review of the bill says the costs have been understated and that it will add to the deficit and the debt. Recently, even the CBO accused the Congress of showing the savings achieved from the cuts in Medicare twice; once to reduce the general cost of Medicare and then a second time, as a revenue source for a new entitlement to subsidize the purchase of health insurance for low income individuals and families.

When an average citizen writes two checks using the same money that is called check fraud and eventually, there are criminal charges levied for that. When the Congress does it, the strategists hit the news channels and tell us it is a misrepresentation of the facts by zealot Republicans. Well, the CBO is neither Republican nor Democrat; it is supposed to be a non-partisan arm of Congress. When the CBO showed the deficit reduction in the healthcare bill, the White House used that as proof positive of the financial benefit of the bill. When the CBO unveiled this corrupt scam of using the same money twice, the very same people in the administration said that was just ridiculous and unworthy of comment. Either the CBO is impartial and honest or not, they are going to have to pick one or the other.

Curiously, the main debate has now shifted to the means by which Congressional leadership secured the sixty votes they needed to move this bill forward. In a move now called “Cash for Cloture”, the leadership used your money to bribe Senate members into voting for a bill that 61% of Americans do not want. The out and out prostitution witnessed by America as one member after another sold their votes (Hi Mary!) to Harry Reid in exchange for some sizeable payoffs is just another example of the culture of corruption in Washington.

No less that ten States have their Attorney Generals looking into the legality of certain States being exempted from damaging increases in Medicaid liability promised by this bill, leaving the rest of the States to cover the full impact of the increases of not only their own state, but of the exempted states. The Constitutionality of which is brought into question by both Section eight of the Constitution as well as the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Section 8 - Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;


Amendment 14 - Citizenship Rights.

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

It is clear that Section Eight, which grants Congress the authority to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, also states quite clearly that those Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. But how can there be Constitutional required uniformity if certain States are exempt leaving the non-exempt States to carry the full burden?

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the people equal protection under the law but there is nothing equal about a Federal tax on one segment of the population that residents of a neighboring State do not bear. Additionally, the Fourteenth Amendment not only prevents the States from passing any legislation that would abridge the Constitutional rights of its citizens, but prevents them from enforcing Federal law if that law would abridge those same rights.

There are clear Constitutional issues with the deals that were cut to obtain passage of this bill. Perhaps some of our brilliant Constitutional lawyers in Congress would have realized this if they weren’t so insanely intent on achieving cloture before the Holiday break but Harry Reid was not going to risk giving the general public access to their Senators and upset the process. After all, if one of these sequestered Congressmen found out just how unpopular this bill is at home they might not have voted for it.

Unfortunately, there are many members of Congress that have seen the poll numbers on healthcare reform and thanks to our friends, the Democratic Strategists, they have dismissed the unpopularity of this bill as a result of the massive amounts of “disinformation” that has been distributed to the public by the opposition. It is not disinformation that has caused the loss of support for this bill; it is the actions of a Congress that seems determined to pass it at any cost that has given the public good cause to reject it.

The idea that the final Senate version was crafted behind closed doors with no Republican and very few Democrat Congressmen present is a point of concern. That Harry Reid negotiated with Senators to obtain a commitment on their vote before they were even allowed to read the final version sounds off alarms to any thinking person. Most disturbing is the disparity of claims among the supporters of the bill. This proves that the Senators that just voted for it have no idea what it says in its entirety.

What a difference a week makes. Now that they have concluded the vote in the Senate, the music has changed quite a bit. Just last week supporters of the bill said that it would reduce the cost of healthcare insurance by bringing much needed competition into the system. This week the “strategists” are saying that health insurance would climb even higher without the reforms in this bill. Last week they said that this bill will not destroy the private healthcare insurance system, this week they say that without reform your employers wouldn’t be able to afford the increases in cost and you would lose that insurance anyway. Last week anyone that said there would be care rationing and death panels was just plain crazy but this week they say that insurance companies have been making those life and death decisions for decades.

So what are they saying? Yes you will pay more but less than it would have been? Yes this bill will bring about the loss of your private coverage but at least it will provide you with an alternative? Yes there will be bureaucratic panels deciding what care you will and will not receive but at least it’s the government and not the evil insurance company making that choice?

Since this change in heart is only one week after the Senate vote, what will we find out in two or three or four weeks? This was the argument on the part of those that wanted the pace slowed so that everyone had a chance to read and understand what we were actually doing with one sixth of the United States economy. When you see the difference between what the proponents said last week compared to what they are saying this week, it is clear there was a lot of misinformation given to the public about healthcare reform. Unfortunately for the Democratic Strategists, it appears that the misinformation came from the President, his advisors, Democratic members of Congress and the cadre of special interests that stand to make billions after the passage of this national lie.

Paul

Obama's job summit - Maybe we should wear ribbons to show we care?

Now that we’ve gotten a peek into Obama’s ideas for job growth I am more convinced than ever that he is more than inexperienced, he is clueless. There are so many things about the so-called “job summit” that prove this administration focus is on paving a single lane highway to socialism and their sudden attention to the plight of unemployed Americans is nothing more than political window dressing to quiet the murmuring peasants so his circle of brilliant advisors can continue with the work that is truly important to the “Hammer and Sickle Gang”.

The list of those that were invited to Obama’s job summit should say more about the President’s focus than anything else. While everyone knows that small business is responsible for 80% of the jobs that exist in the country; the true essence of small business was not represented in Thursday’s job summit. There were representatives for three companies invited by the Obama administration as “small businesses” but when you look at who they are, they were hardly representative of companies that create the types of jobs that this summit was reportedly focused on.

The first, Air Tractor, is a manufacturer of small specialty aircraft. While I am sure they make a positive contribution to the economy, their employees require special skills and their product line serves a niche market; neither of which describes a company that has the potential to expand very much beyond where they already are.

Next is Diversapack. Diversapack is a manufacturer of flexible packaging for a myriad of products such as paper towels. While Diversapack is a manufacturer that is certainly qualified to speak on job creation within small business, one of the members of the owner’s group may have had more to do with their invitation than what they produce and how many people they hire; that member is Andrew Young. Most of Mr. Young’s experience lies in politics within the Democratic Party. How convenient that Mr. Obama found a willing ally right there in the halls of small business!

Andrew Young served in Congress for Georgia’s 5th Congressional district for just over four years until 1977 when he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter as the Ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Young was replaced as the Ambassador to the UN by Donald McHenry after the election of Ronald Reagan but did not leave politics. He was elected Mayor of Atlanta Georgia and held that office from 1982 until 1990 when he ran an unsuccessful race for Governor of Georgia.

Even though Diversapack is a company that would be deeply harmed if the Climate Bill were passed into law, Andrew Young and Barack Obama are kindred spirits where political ideology is concerned. After Mr. Young left public office, his work in community development and education was his principal vehicle to promote and advance an almost religious belief in what he considers social and economic justice. He firmly believes in the globalization of government and in international policies to create “socially responsible for-profit corporations”. For those that have never heard that term before, socially responsible for-profit corporations is radical leftist speak for the nationalization of industry. Chavez’s Venezuela has a lot of “socially responsible for-profit corporations” these days and will have a lot more of them before he’s done. In other words, Young is just another Democrat that feels it is his duty to improve world conditions with generous amounts of your money and is part of the problem, not the solution.

Oddly enough, none of Young’s core principals create jobs. In fact, his core beliefs call for the destruction of the American economy and the redistribution of our wealth and industry to poorer nations. Much as Japan’s idea of a perfect baseball game is one that ends in a tie, the globalists idea of a perfect world is one were everyone has the same amounts of wealth and opportunity even if that wealth and opportunity is considered poverty by our current standard of living.

The last so-called small business invited to the job summit was the Binary Group. Binary Group is an IT or Information Technologies company headed by Rose Wang. Ms. Wang has personally consulted or worked as principal technologist on Binary Group strategies for MCI, Fannie Mae, Sprint, Cable & Wireless, the Army, the Federal Railroad Administration, and the Department of Energy. While the company has seen expansive growth under her leadership, there is no doubt that much of that growth is linked to government projects and I suspect it is her knowledge of government based spending that earned her company a seat at the table this past Thursday. It’s just too bad that government based spending does not create lasting jobs with living wages which was proven to be an abysmal failure by the hundreds of billions already spent in stimulus money.

The balance of the attendees were representatives of enormous multi-national corporations which have proven interests in creating jobs in whatever country will give them the lowest possible cost for labor, representatives of Princeton and Columbia Universities which are metaphorical kitchens that specialize in cooking up global Socialist cuisine, labor unions which are quite possibly the only entity in this nation responsible for killing more jobs and destroying more companies than the Federal Government has and last but not least, environmental groups that are only interested in shifting the US into a “green economy”. Unfortunately, thanks to Cass Sunstein and Van Jones we already know that green initiatives are really tools for redistribution that will cost more American jobs and cripple our economy without one measurable benefit for Earth’s climate or biosphere.

In the end, the job summit was nothing more than a lame attempt to show the unemployed that he (Obama) really cares. If the subject were jobs and the mission was to rescue the economy there would have been more notepads and fewer news cameras there. Obama already knows that the job market will not improve as long as business cannot predict their short term liabilities from taxes and government mandates. It is the President’s own policies that are preventing business from committing to expanding the work force. Healthcare, Cap and Trade, Card Check…there is nothing in any of those goals that does not spell doom for business and they frankly, business is refusing to play the game until they know what the rules will be.

Of course it doesn’t help when the Senate policy has shifted from consent of the governed to the buying and selling of votes because they have become so blatantly partisan. Oh Mary! I bet you thought I forgot you! Nope, it’s Monday so it’s time to remind everyone about the spotlight that Harry Reid has shown squarely upon our favorite political prostitute, Mary Landrieu. Remember Mary? She sat on the fence during the healthcare debate until Harry-the Senate Pimp-Reid offered her $300 million dollars for her vote. To give her credit, $300 million is an awful lot of money…after all, it’s not like he waved a twenty dollar bill at her in some dark hallway of the Capitol Building.

Yes, $300 million is a lot of money. In fact, since it is linked to a cut in Medicaid reimbursements that Louisiana will be exempted from in the healthcare bill, it is representative of what this will cost other states that don’t have someone “hooking” for them in Congress. It’s a shame for other states that are already in financial trouble that these cuts in Medicaid reimbursements will only deepen their budgetary problems. But hey, this is healthcare we are talking about!

We must, as a compassionate nation, make sure that illegal immigrants and all of those products of the welfare state that have never even held a job before have access to affordable healthcare insurance and to provide it for them, if need be. So what if states like California, New York, Florida or Arizona to name just a few, have to lay off hundreds of teachers and police officers; it is all for the common good. So what if our infrastructure collapses and our mass transportation network screeches to a halt; if we can pass the healthcare bill, millions will lose their jobs so less people will need those things anyway. So what if the CBO score is a lie because the bill takes in ten years worth of income but only pays out six years of benefits to give the illusion of breaking even; if we start to add too much to the national debt after the first ten years we can always raise taxes again.

Oh Mary, you are going to be an awfully popular person. Of course Harry told you that the exemption will expire right? I believe the exempted states would have to have been able to qualify for Federal Disaster aid for seven of the last ten years. Katrina struck in 2005 so you still have a couple of years before your State will be absorbing those funding cuts just like everyone else. Then you will be even more popular! Even if your constituents can’t understand the wonderful thing you did for them and wind up voting you out of office; fear not! We will never forget you here at the Vigilance Project where every Monday is Mary Landrieu Day!

Paul

Mary Landrieu - Political Prostitute

Prostitute
Pronunciation [pros-ti-toot, -tyoot] verb, -tut⋅ed, -tut⋅ing.

–noun
1- A woman who engages in sexual intercourse for money; whore; harlot.
2- A man who engages in sexual acts for money.
3- A person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base and unworthy way, usually for money.

In another Saturday night, special session of Congress (there seems to be a lot of those these days), the Senate voted to allow Harry Reid’s version of the healthcare bill to proceed to debate. For a President and Congress that promised unparalleled “transparency” in government, there have been far more closed door meetings and midnight votes than during any previous administration; essential requisites for “ladies and gentlemen of the evening”. That coupled with the fact that the healthcare bill is a staggering 2000 page document that the senate was given a mere 72 hours to digest before a vote was taken spells a total disconnect between the actions of government and the expectations of the governed.

By comparison, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is a mere 1275 pages, in hardcover, containing a total of more than 560,000 words. We are now being asked to believe that every one of our elected Congressmen possess the unique ability to be able to read the equivalent of “War and Peace” twice in a 72 hour period. In Senator Mary Landrieu’s speech, she made mention of the time she was granted to do just that. She applauded the work of Senator Blanche Lincoln in assuring that the Senate received the time required to read the legislation and to “attend the necessary meetings”.

We can now surmise that at least one of those meetings was with Harry Reid and the subject of that meeting was just how much taxpayer money it was going to take to purchase her vote to proceed. On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.” The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding seven fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”

This section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill. In other words, the bill spends two pages describing what could be written with a single phrase: In exchange for Mary Landrieu’s vote, Louisiana will receive the equivalent of one-hundred million dollars in increased Medicaid subsidies. While she will claim this settlement is “doing the good work” for her home state, it is clear to us that this is only intended to strengthen her position in the 2010 election. Since hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana in 2005, the payoff will expire in five years leaving her state, by 2015, to contend with the same increased financial mandates that the healthcare bill will impose on all other states.

There is no doubt that Mary Landrieu will deny that she personally gains from this “provision” and since the bribe was crafted in general language that provides relief to any state that has been declared a major disaster area, Harry Reid can and will deny that it had anything to do with Louisiana specifically, but words are words and deeds are deeds. The facts are that Mary Landrieu withheld her support of the healthcare bill knowing that her bid for re-election would be in jeopardy if she voted for the bill. The estimated one-hundred million dollars Louisiana will receive from the bill will go along way in mitigating the negative effects the rest of the states will suffer if this monstrosity passes, in effect, anesthetizing the voters in her state from the pain of the full effects of this bill until the elections are well over.

Mark my words; knowing the way that politics works in Washington, she will distance herself from this bill later. Reid needed 60 votes to bring the bill to the floor for debate but if he uses reconciliation, as has been threatened; he will only need 51 votes to pass the final version. All the Democratic Senators that are facing election difficulties in 2010 including Mary Landrieu, will be allowed to vote no on the final vote and it will squeak by with the minimum number of required votes just as it did in the House of Representatives.

John Kerry looked ridiculous when he made his famous “I voted for it before I voted against it” statement referencing the $87 billion dollar appropriation for the Iraq war. No one believed John Kerry and no one will believe Mary Landrieu either. It is obvious that the Democrats need some new strategists because they keep using the same idiotic plays over and over. We’ve seen this before and no one is buying it. Congress is at its lowest approval rating in decades and these deceitful tricks only serve to deepen our distrust and distain for career politicians. Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, George Voinovich, etc. can try the “Kerry Play” but who will believe them now?

What Mary Landrieu failed to anticipate was the degree of attention this “bribe” for her vote would receive. I’m sure she was aghast after she finally left the chamber and saw her name plastered all over the news. To the American people and to her constituency, she has been singled out in the press as the one Senator who prostituted herself by placing her vote on the auction block. That tells anyone that follows politics that she has no foundation; no fundamental beliefs. Even though I oppose this hideous government takeover of the American healthcare system, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she voted her conscience, stood proud of what she had done and could tell us why. The fact is you cannot publically place your vote up for sale and not be accused of being a political whore.

The funny part is that she believed the Senate “pimp” (Harry Reid) and signed her soul away for something that will probably not make it into the final bill anyway. If the Medicaid savings for Louisiana represents $100 million over the next five years, what costs will be forced on more populace states as this bill shifts more of the burden for Medicaid to them? Does Mary Landrieu not realize that her “spiff” will probably disappear in the final version as other Senators demand similar provisions because of the equally catastrophic fiscal disasters in their own states? Since the government cannot provide that relief for all states, it is doubtful they can honor the agreement to do it for only one.

Not possible? Well the House version only passed the vote because of the last minute passage of the Stupak amendment, eliminating any possible use of public funding for abortion. Nancy Pelosi agreed to allow that amendment to come to a vote to gain the support of pro-life Democrats. As a resolute pro-choice advocate, she only agreed to the Stupak Amendment because she knew the Reid bill would strip that protection and the final version will invariably not provide the iron clad prohibitions that the pro-life Democrats sought. In their haste to pass “something”, they missed the one opportunity they would get to stop this lousy bill in favor of legislation that guaranteed the prohibitions against public funding for abortion could not be removed at a later date.

I am making the prediction now that if the healthcare bill fails, Mary Landrieu only has a 50/50 chance of being re-elected in 2010 because of the publicity associated with selling her vote. Let’s face it. If she were actually representing the will of her constituents, their voices would have guided her vote and not what her pimp promised her. If the healthcare bill passes, her political career will go down in flames and she can spend the next couple of years trying to rebuild her law career in a nation that won’t have the money to hire her services. I intend to use this forum regularly so that we do not forget those members of Congress that are so blatantly corrupt that they would sell their vote for another shot at being reelected. On the bright side, Mary won’t be homeless…ACORN still offers some fantastic housing options for “Ladies of the Evening”.

Paul