Swine Flu: All Your Fault

I thought I would share this interesting bit from Michelle Malkin's blog. Apparently the outbreak of the flu is actually the result of House Republicans opposing the $1T pork stimulus, which included $900M of funding for pandemic preparations.

The man who added this money into the Stimulus bill was David Obey, House Appropriations Committee Chairman. He argued that a pandemic breakout in the midst of a steep economic downturn would throw us into a depression. Now he and other key Democrats are saying that, because of the resistance the GOP gave this line item in the package, they're to blame for the Flu Pandemic!!!

More from the article:

"So any natural disaster or bio-catastrophe that comes along, for which fiscal conservatives refused to support funding for in an economic recovery package, will now be all. Our. Fault. And President Obama can once again invoke his time-tested alibi: He "inherited" the problem."

By the way, Here's something that Chuck Schumer said a couple of months ago: “All those little porky things that the House put in, the money for the [National] Mall or the sexually transmitted diseases or the flu pandemic, they’re all out,”

That's right! Senator Chuck Schumer opposed the Pandemic Pork as well - and he's a Democrat! You can read more on that here.

And, just in case you were wondering, back in 2005, when President Bush and then Health and Human Services secretary Mike Leavitt worked to push through their Flu Pandemic plan that cost $7.1BILLION. It was a sweeping plan that opened up several stages of Government, ranging from local to federal, to work together to stockpile vaccines, and also worked with vaccine companies and made it much more easy for them to research, develop, and release vaccines in a speedy time frame to counteract any pandemics. Read more here.

This bill has made it much more easy for President Obama, who's insisted on taking a much more active roll in managing this health scare.

I bet we won't hear much about how Obama "inherited" that, will we?

Here's a bonus item:

Unity and Debate

Last week, former Vice President Al Gore and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich both testified before a legislative committee concerning their views on Man-Made Global Warming, as they pertain to a new bill that is being debated in committee which will create a Cap and Trade energy plan.

"Cap and Trade" refers to a system in which the Federal Government sets a limit on the amount of pollutants that a company can emit into the environment, but also issues certain credits or permits that can be saved up, sold to, and/or traded with other companies and industries so that the "Cap" can be more flexible. See illustration below for a better idea of how this works.



There are some things about this "plan" that intrigue me, but they are few and far between when I look at the system in theory, and especially when I add into the equation how our beautiful Government is going about implementing it into our society, and the inevitable effect it will have on our Economy.

When I take it all into account, a "Cap and Trade" program sounds an awful lot like a corrupt plan that will push us closer to full scale Economic Planning. "Economic Planning" pretty much describes Communism, some forms of Fascism, and Socialism - all are very similar, one way being that they all take away an individual's freedom to choose for himself what sort of life to lead and how to lead it.

Getting back to the testimonies, I wanted to point out something I found rather interesting. Al Gore was, as always, adamant about the "Fact" that Global Warming is Man-Made. When a handful of lawmakers point out that there are some very real issues that are still up for debate, and that there is no certain consensus in the scientific community, Mr. Gore compares challengers of his theories to those who think the Moon landing was staged on a studio lot in Arizona. I thought you might like to see a video of that encounter here.



Going forward with his arguments, Mr. Gore then calls for the end of division and partisanship in this crisis of Man-Made Global Warming. He pleads for us to let our differences of opinion not get in the way of saving our planet. He pleads for Unity!

Unity? What does that really mean? In this situation, it means nothing. What does Al mean when he pleads with us all to unite? He means that he wants those of us that don't want a Cap and Trade system forced on us, who don't believe that there's a crisis, to just forget all about that and accept the snake oil she's peddling.

Does Mr. Gore really want unity? No, or he'd be willing to change his position.

Is unity even possible when two or more people are at odds with their values or beliefs? It's a question I've heard asked before. I don't really think that unity, in these sort of situations, can really exist. Can Compromise occur? You bet! But unity means so much more than compromise. It's truly when our hearts and minds are on the same page with one another.

My wife and I are united, we don't really have opposing views on things. Al Gore and I...not so much. But we can be united! I mean, I really think it's possible to for Al Gore and I to see eye to eye...but only if he changes his mind and calls for an end to the Cap and Trade program!

Unity!

PS - Here's Newt!

Don't Tread On Me!

We here at Sons of Liberty United would like to wish you a happy weekend.  If you are lacking in motivation this should help you!  Remember, don't tread on me. :)

Scotts march to pipes...freedom loving Americans march to Uncle Ted on guitar (I know you are thinking of buying a guitar now...its natural):

A Letter From the Boss:

Since this is Tax Day Eve, and seeing as how my colleague Dransfield has written such a great post about taxes, I this would be appropriate to share with you. By way of disclaimers, this is not a real letter.

As the VP of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama is our President, and that our taxes, and government fees will increase in a BIG way. To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%. Since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off six of our employees instead. This has really been bothering me, since I believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who would have to go. So, this is what I did. I walked through our parking lot and found six 'Obama' bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They voted for change; I gave it to them. I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.

This made me laugh...a lot. Here's some pics that I think do this letter justice:






Happy Tax Day to one and all!

Biden isn't the only Liar

During the Presidential Election this past Fall, Obama made many promises to the American people.  One such promise was directed mainly towards calming the "middle class" and the poor.  Curious to what the promise could be?  Watch Obama give the promise himself: 

So, there you have it! No taxes will be raised on the poor or "middle class." (We will get into 

the "middle class" next) But just this last month taxes were raised on Cigarettes. Wait, poor 

Americans are more likely to be smokers. Wait, that means that this tax does affect the poor.

That is right... its a regressive tax...and it allows Obama to do what he accused Republicans 

of saying he would do during the Presidential campaign, i.e.-that he would be a tax and spend 

liberal democrat. Well, yep, that seems spot on!!

 

I know that if pressed, Obama would probably say that the tax is going to pay for children who 

do not have health coverage...but that does not discount the fact that it is a tax that affects the 

very group he promised not to tax. Either Obama is naive and mistakenly made too many 

promises...or he is a liar. I think that his failure to admit naiveness leaves us with one 

conclusion: YOU LIED TO ME!!!!

And how does that make you feel? AAANGRY!!!!!

So, there you have it...Obama makes a promise...breaks his promise under the guise of a higher

end...and gets away with it because the media isn't doing too much fact checking on Obama.

Question: What incentive does this give the federal government to really attack smoking? Well,

now there is a huge disincentive...the government doesn't want smokers to quit...then this

nicotine addicted source of revenue would dry up! Now that is totally ethical.

If Obama really wanted to make a difference in the health of the nation he would repeat what Yule

said:

Maybe Obama doesn't want to do that because he is still smoking himself. Well, saying one 

thing and doing another never stopped him before...

Interesting Facts

Here's a video I came across about taxes. I thought it was particularly important and timely this weekend, as it's the last chance you really have to get those taxes done! So, while you're enjoying Easter, think about this:

Capitalism Vs. Socialism

Rasmussen Reports has reported the following:

"Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism."

What is happening? What kind of Country are we becoming? Have the near majority of us not ever thought about what freedom is?

Now, granted, the poll doesn't say that 47% of Americans believe that Socialism is better, actually, what is says is "20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better." Yikes!

Although this is just a poll, it's not very heartening. I refuse to believe that the body of the American people, once they really understand what Socialism means in practice to them personally, and to our country collectively, will embrace it, or even tolerate it.

That's just me though.

Barney Frank, Jolly Good Fellow

Here's something I thought was pretty funny/sad. A student at Harvard attended a forum where Barney Frank was speaking. He went up to the Microphone and asked "How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?"

This is the response:



Note how awesome this is.

After watching this clip, I can't help but think of this:

Capitalism, I hardly knew ye...

This is stuff from last week, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

These articles, linked here, here, and here.detail a meeting that President Obama held two weeks ago with some of the major CEOs from the companies that received the lion's share of the TARP money. The quick and dirty of the two articles is that the CEOs gathered in the White House, and President Obama and a group of his cabinet members, including Geithner, sat down and discussed salaries of executives as well as CEO compensation. As the CEOs took turns relating how they all have very complicated companies that require very specialized skills, and how they couldn't just cut paychecks because there aren't very many people qualified to replace them that would accept lower pay, the President cut them off, and said, “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

I can't speak for the public, but it would seem to make sense, plus I don't like the idea of the Government limiting the paychecks and all of that.

Apparently the President then told the CEOs that his administration was the only thing between them and the pitchforks. Interesting.

The CEO of JP MorganChase asked the President to work with the banks in streamlining the process of paying back the funds received as soon as possible. The President answered by saying "This is like a patient who’s on antibiotics...maybe the patient starts feeling better after a couple of days, but you don’t stop taking the medicine until you’ve finished the bottle.” His main point was that returning the money too early could send a bad signal.

This isn't good. He's telling the banks they can't pay the money back yet? What is this?

Here's a quote from the WSJ article linked above:

Under the Bush team a prominent and profitable bank, under threat of a damaging public audit, was forced to accept less than $1 billion of TARP money. The government insisted on buying a new class of preferred stock which gave it a tiny, minority position. The money flowed to the bank. Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons. It wanted to recapitalize the banks to halt a financial panic.

Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He's been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with "adverse" consequences if its chairman persists. That's politics talking, not economics.

So, there you have it. Read the articles, they're really interesting. This sort of reminds me of anything but America.

I guess the only bright spot could be that if this really goes on, this seizure of power, then perhaps it will be a disaster, and we can get someone in to clean up the mess in four years.

That's sort of not comforting though.

The Freedom to Choose

By Spring

George Washington and John Adams founded this country because they were living under tyranny of England. They were being denied many freedoms, such as the freedom to worship how and where they chose. The current public school system and the push to make public schools the dominating choice takes away similar freedoms to choose, as parents, what’s best for our children. Not everyone in this nation has access to thriving, successful charter or public schools or can afford the tuition of private schools.

Think about how we are handling education and how the same concept applied to any other system in our society would be dictatorial. For example, what if instead of paying for food directly you were taxed and then given a dollar amount by the government to buy groceries. But, you can only buy groceries from a certain store depending on where you live. The food at your store is old, over processed, full of trans fats and sugars, and the store has no produce. The children eating this food are weak and sick. This would be appalling; the government would be oppressing these people and taking away their freedom to choose! This is not how it works in regards to food even when we are talking about government subsidized food stamps. With food stamps a family is given a dollar amount and they can take that money to whichever store they chose and buy the food they want for their family. But this oppressive scenario IS exactly how it works with education. In most cases, if you want your tax dollars to pay for your child’s education, you have no choice but to send her to the school dictated by the government.

There is enormous room for improvement in our educational system. Hardly any system in the United States is more backward. There is no other aspect where people who live in low-income neighborhoods are so disadvantaged as in the kind of schooling they can get for their children.(1)

About 90% of children in the US go to public schools but parents are increasingly seeing schools become an area of governmental control and are concerned about the political agendas that are being taught to their young children. The problem is that, as the system has become more centralized, power has moved from the local community (families) to the school district, to the state, and then to the federal government.

We’ve all seen the dismal result of centralized public schools controlled by bureaucrats: some relatively good government schools in high-income suburbs and communities; very poor government schools in our inner cities with high dropout rates, increasing violence, lower performance and demoralized students and teachers.

Supporters of a public education system focus on the plight of the poor. How is the education, or lack thereof, for those youth in the poorest inner cities going to help them live the “American dream”, when the quality of the education they are receiving is keeping them down.

One of the most promising way to fix this serious problem is school vouchers. A school voucher is a certificate issued by the government by which parents can pay for the education of their children at a school of their choice, rather than the public school to which they are assigned because of their address.(2) Parents take the tax money that is to be spent on their child’s education and use it to pay for the school of their choice. The money follows the child. Every child in America receives a voucher, every child receives an education, and every parent is given the freedom to choose.

What would happen if this sort of system were to be put into place nation wide? It would promote free market competition among schools of all types, which would provide schools incentive to improve. Successful schools would attract students, while bad schools would be forced to reform or close. The goal of this system is to localize accountability as opposed to relying on government standards. You would no longer have to be forced, whether you like it or not, to accept the service of the public schools, functioning as a monopoly; and public schools in many areas of this country are by definition monopolies.

The business community has a major interest in expanding the pool of well-schooled potential employees and in maintaining a free society with open trade and expanding markets around the world. Both objectives would be promoted by the right kind of voucher system.

Finally, as in every other area in which there has been a transfer from government to public control, the privatization of schooling would produce a new, highly active and profitable private industry that would provide a real opportunity for many talented people who are currently deterred from entering the teaching profession by the dreadful state of so many of our schools. This means, in general, better, more qualified teachers.

Just imagine if you had the FREEDOM to choose from several different, well functioning schools that were teaching in a way that you felt your child would thrive. You could choose a school where morals were taught and it would be paid for by your tax dollars.

Vouchers would reduce division of society according to class, they would build competition, and they would restore control to the people most competent to decide on children’s education: their parents!(3)

Among the strongest critics of the voucher program are public school teachers’ unions, most notably the National Education Association (the largest labor union in the USA) which has spent millions litigating and lobbying against vouchers. Simple reasoning tells you these unions are working for teachers—not kids and not YOUR kids. Teachers' unions are bitterly opposed to any reform that lessens their own power, and they have acquired enormous political and financial strength that they are prepared to devote to defeating any attempt to adopt a voucher system. It would result in a loss of their control. Public schools are NOT free and are not paid for by the government! It is paid for with taxpayers money; our money. We are paying for the education our children receive through the public school system and on top of that, subsidizing the education of children whose parents don’t pay taxes. We happily do so to ensure that every child in this great nation receives the blessing of an education. We have the right to choose how OUR money is being spent on the education of OUR children.

There are many places in the US where the voucher system is being used. The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin led the way in 1990 and now has nearly 15,000 students using vouchers. The 2006-2007 school year will mark the first time in Milwaukee that more than $100 million will be paid in vouchers. Twenty-six percent of Milwaukee students will receive public funding to attend schools outside the traditional Milwaukee Public School system.

Utah voted on a state-wide universal school voucher system providing a maximum tuition subsidy of $3000 which was passed in 2007, but voters repealed it in a statewide referendum before it took effect. Education advocacy groups from all over the country poured campaign funds into Utah, where voters were to cast ballots in a referendum to repeal school vouchers. It's sickening to sick to think that Utah was so close to doing something so revolutionary that would lead our nation in a movement that would change so many children’s lives for good and finally brake the poverty cycle: so close. The teachers’ unions fought hard for the referendum; they do not want to lose their power and control. If Utah passed this other states would see its success and want to adopt a similar program. The union also fought hard to shoot down similar attempts in California and Florida as well as many other places. As soon as there is a desire from parents for better education, through school vouchers, like an iron fist, with all its strength, the teachers’ unions pound out any threat to weaken their monopoly.

Every child in this country has a right to receive an education; it is one of the things that makes America the greatest nation on this earth. We don’t have to blindly send our children to public schools as the only option to supporting education for all children. This country was founded on government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We cannot let groups that don’t have any children’s best interest at heart strong arm those who do. We can and must let our voices be heard on this nonpartisan issue and make the education system in America better for all children… our children.

As resourceful parents we can make the most of our educational system. We can volunteer in the schools; we can supplement our children’s public education at home. If you live in places like Utah or Arizona you may have access to good charter and public schools. If you feel like you don’t want your child in the public school you can homeschool. But, what about the truly impoverished families and children in America? They don’t have thriving charter schools in their inner cities, they can’t afford private schools. What about the parents who are working two jobs and can’t volunteer at school or the single mom who is working to make ends meet and doesn’t have any other options? The only choice they have is to send their precious child to a failing school full of drugs, sex, and violence. They are helpless, these children are helpless. What about them? There is a better way. We can stand up for these children and we must. That is the American dream!

Notes:

1. Public Schools: Make Them Private CATO Briefing Paper

2. School Voucher Wikipedia

3. School Vouchers-The Next Great Leap Forward WSJ, July 9 1998

Where's Milton Friedman when you need him?

The other day, as I was reading through some online articles, I stumbled upon a short clip of Milton Friedman on the Donahue show back in what looked like the early '80s. As I watched Dr. Friedman explain his point to Mr. Donahue, something happened inside of me. I was absolutely fascinated by what I was listening to. I'd never heard a public figure make so much sense. That night, I watched over 2 hours of YouTube videos on Milton Friedman. I know, that's absolutely ridiculous, but what can I say? I've shared this find with a few of my friends, but thought it would serve us all well to place it in this venue. I have embedded the first clip I saw here, and if you are so moved, as I was, you can follow that link to find more Milton goodness.

The subject that they discuss in the video is Greed. It's very timely right now, as the majority of public leaders are discussing the failings of Capitalism and how we must move toward a more "fair" society (see Socialism). I hope that you enjoy this.



I truly wish I could be like this man, so articulate in common sense. I hope we all will try and stand up for our values with a similarly calm and confident manner as Dr. Friedman did.