OrlandoSentinel.com

Orlando 'Tea Party' rally draws more than 4,000

By Helen Eckinger

Sentinel Staff Writer

March 22, 2009

Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel

What would you say if Congress was about to pass just ONE LAW that would PERMANENTLY force YOU to fund the radical left-wing Obama-Pelosi agenda?

And, what if we told you that the same law would force the rationing of your paycheck to fund such an agenda?

Well, such a proposal exists and is being debated in Congress at this very moment. It is deceptively being called the Employee Free Choice Act - more commonly known as "Card Check."

If you thought "Card Check" was simply a liberal payoff to Big Labor, think again.

In actuality, "Card Check" represents a greater threat to your freedoms than even the so-called Fairness Doctrine (which would silence Rush and conservative thoughts and opinions on the airwaves)!

If you want to know the details... if you want to know HOW "Card Check" is a threat to YOUR bottom line and your family's way of life... then READ ON.

If you want to know EXACTLY how "Card Check" WILL FORCE YOU TO FUND THE RADICAL FAR-LEFT OBAMA-PELOSI AGENDA... then READ ON!

But for now, know that it is imperative that we STOP this freedom-crushing, job-killing legislation dead in its tracks. We must STOP it NOW!

Use the hyperlink below and send your personalized Blast Fax messages to President Barack Obama and EACH AND EVERY ONE of the Republican Members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives!

Demand that they do whatever it takes to stop this direct assault on our freedoms and the freedoms of our children and grandchildren that is being deceptively titled the Employee Free Choice Act!

- Send My Blast Faxes -

How Will Card Check Force YOU To Fund The Agenda Of The Far-Left?

The Heritage Foundation explains how the system presently works and how "Card Check" will tip the balance.

"For more than 60 years, American workers have decided whether to form a union with a private vote... neither management nor union organizers know how each individual worker voted. The secret ballot lets workers vote their conscience without risking job loss or physical assault for making the 'wrong' choice... . The EFCA would make it easier for union officials to pressure workers. Under the card-check process, union organizers would publicly solicit signatures on union authorization cards... Without secret ballots, union organizers know exactly who has signed union cards and who has not. In the past, union organizers have repeatedly approached and pressured-and, in some cases, threatened-reluctant workers. They have also used pro-union co-workers to solicit signatures, putting peer pressure on 'holdouts' to change their minds."

So what's the big deal?

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich explains just why such a change is a radical threat to your bottom line:

"Under Card Check, union organizers and their enforcers will be able to go into any small business, hospital or construction site and coerce workers into signing cards. If they get 50 percent plus one, the deal's done, and the workers are forced into a union. And if management and the new union fail to reach a negotiated contract, the federal government will just impose one. Coerced unionization allows for what is effectively a new, unaccountable form of forced taxation. Workers will have a portion of their paycheck going to the union to be spent as the bosses see fit, including political donations to parties and candidates that the workers may not even support."

Let's put that in more personal terms.

Let's say that union organizers come into YOUR workplace and through coercion or peer-pressure - or even physical intimidation - "convince" a simple majority of your co-workers to form a union.

At that point you only have two choices. You either join the union or face job termination. You can't opt-out!

And once you "join" the union, you are FORCED to pay union dues. Again, you cannot opt-out. You have no choice in the matter, and the union dues will come directly out of each and every paycheck you receive!

Not only will you have no choice but to have those union dues taken out of your paycheck every week, you will have little or no say in how those dues are spent!

How your hard-earned money gets spent will be up to the whims of union bosses. And make no mistake, your hard-earned money -- this new-found windfall that the union will ration from your paychecks -- will go, in large part, to fund advocacy for the very left-wing causes that you find repugnant.

But that's not all. When the union tells you to strike... you strike... no unemployment benefits... just a meager strike fund that does not even come close to paying the bills...

.. during such a strike, you can't go to work until a union boss tells you it is okay -- NO IFS, ANDS OR BUTS!

Perhaps that's why, according to polls cited by Gingrich, "77 percent of Republicans, 82 percent of Democrats and 79 percent of independents" oppose doing away with the secret balloting provisions that "Card Check" would ERADICATE!

But it gets worse. If the union bosses and the company management can't reach an agreement about your job, then bureaucrats in the Obama Administration would then FORCE an agreement on both parties.

In other words, government bureaucrats would be empowered to determine all aspects of your job -- even down to the compensation you make, regardless of any agreement you and your employer come to.

Heritage again:

"Section 3 of EFCA gives government officials the power to impose contracts on workers and firms. Government bureaucrats would set compensation and make most major business decisions at newly unionized companies. The bureaucrats writing these proposals would have no expertise in the company's operations or business model and would be unaccountable if their decisions drove the company into bankruptcy. Workers would lose all say over working conditions. EFCA would effectively create government-run workplaces."

To put it another way - and let's speak plainly here - if your boss doesn't knuckle-under to union demands, then some Obama appointee will simply step in and FORCE the union demands onto your employer!

That's essentially FASCISM!

Use the hyperlink below and send your personalized Blast Fax messages to President Barack Obama and EACH AND EVERY ONE of the Republican Members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives!

Demand that they do whatever it takes to stop this direct assault on our freedoms and the freedoms of our children and grandchildren that is being deceptively titled the Employee Free Choice Act!

- Send My Blast Faxes -

Will Unions Really Coerce You Into Joining The Union?

Heritage has a few things to say on the matter:

"During a card-check campaign at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, union organizers threatened that workers who did not sign union cards would lose their jobs when the union was recognized. In 2002, a long-time organizer for the United Steelworkers felt compelled to quit his job after 'a senior Steelworkers union official asked me to threaten migrant workers by telling them they would be reported to federal immigration officials if they refused to sign check-off cards.'"

And the above is not an isolated incident. Heritage cites yet another example:

"Hotel workers in Los Angeles, for example, had to seek an injunction against union organizers after groups of eight to ten of them harassed employees on their homes' porches late at night. A labor lawyer explained what happened to Trico Marine employees during another card-check drive... . Some employees, when solicited at their homes by union representatives, said, 'No,' to signing a card; yet, they reported repeated, frequent home visits by union representatives continuing to try to secure their signatures, and they complained to the company of this harassment. After 8 visits, one vessel officer in southern Louisiana had an arrest warrant issued against a union organizer.... Employees volunteered that they signed cards just to stop the pressure and harassment."

Of course, overt threats are not always necessary. Union officials are well-versed in psychological tactics that can be employed to deceive your co-workers into signing cards.

Heritage yet again:

"One former union organizer described the process in congressional testimony: They [organizers] are trained to perform a five-part house call strategy that includes: Introductions, Listening, Agitation, Union Solution, and Commitment. The goal of the organizer is to quickly establish a trust relationship with the worker, move from talking about what their job entails to what they would like to change about their job, agitate them by insisting that management won't fix their workplace problems without a union and finally convincing the worker to sign a card...."

"Typically, if a worker signed a card, it had nothing to do with whether a worker was satisfied with the job or felt they were treated fairly by his or her boss.... [I]f someone told me that she was perfectly contented at work, enjoyed her job and liked her boss, I would look around her house and ask questions based on what I noticed: 'wow, I bet on your salary, you'll never be able to get your house remodeled,' or, 'so does the company pay for day care?' These were questions to which I knew the answer and could use to make her feel that she was cheated by her boss. Five minutes earlier she had just told me that she was feeling good about her work situation.

"We rarely showed workers what an actual union contract looked like because we knew that it wouldn't necessarily reflect what a worker would want to see. We were trained to avoid topics such as dues increases, strike histories, etc. and to constantly move the worker back to what the organizer identified as his or her "issues" during the first part of the house call."

Use the hyperlink below and send your personalized Blast Fax messages to President Barack Obama and EACH AND EVERY ONE of the Republican Members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives!

Demand that they do whatever it takes to stop this direct assault on our freedoms and the freedoms of our children and grandchildren that is being deceptively titled the Employee Free Choice Act!

- Send My Blast Faxes -

And Yes, Card Check Is A Job-Killer... 600,000 Jobs (Or More) To Be Precise!

Senator John Thune had this to say:

"Not only does Card Check strip workers of their fundamental rights and allow government bureaucrats to dictate workplace wages and benefits, it will kill jobs as small businesses struggle to meet union demands. With the country in an economic crisis and working families struggling to pay their bills, Congress owes it to the American people to focus on creating jobs and growing the economy rather than paying back liberal special interests. Trading away the right and protection of a private vote in exchange for coercion is simply not the American way."

Thune goes on to say:

"A study recently released by Dr. Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist with the non-partisan LECG Consulting Group, concluded that the unionization of 1.5 million existing jobs in just the first year after enactment of Card Check (as predicted by union leaders) would lead to an initial loss of 600,000 American jobs."

Gingrich cites the same figure:

"That means that an estimated 600,000 jobs could be lost due to Card Check in the first year alone - and that's on top of the over four million jobs already lost to the flagging economy."

Yet, the Obama Administration - along with extreme liberals in Congress like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - want to fast-track "Card Check."

They'd love to pass it before you are any the wiser.

It's high time that people learn that the well-being of the American people means nothing to those who want power and the advancement of an extreme left-wing agenda. In fact, to them, it would appear that your misery is just sauce for the goose.

Vice President Joe Biden recently told a group of labor leaders:

"You all brought me to the dance a long time ago, and it's time we start dancing."

The stakes are high. We must move quickly!

Use the hyperlink below and send your personalized Blast Fax messages to President Barack Obama and EACH AND EVERY ONE of the Republican Members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives!

Demand that they do whatever it takes to stop this direct assault on our freedoms and the freedoms of our children and grandchildren that is being deceptively titled the Employee Free Choice Act!

- Send My Blast Faxes - 

Yours In Freedom,

Jeff Mazzella
President
www.cfif.org

P.S. Please help us reach as many concerned Americans as possible by forwarding this e-mail to at least 10 of your friends and family members.

Center for Individual Freedom
113 S. Columbus St., Suite 310
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-535-5836
Fax:703-535-5838

CFIF is a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit constitutional advocacy organization with
the mission to protect and defend individual freedoms and individual rights.

Contributions to CFIF are
not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
Contributions may be deductible as a business expense.

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Washington solutions of more money for more government, more power for politicians, more debt, and more bureaucrats will not lead to real growth in jobs and prosperity.

Payroll Tax Stimulus.

We need a clear and decisive alternative that creates jobs and rewards work, saving, and investment.

With a temporary new tax credit to offset 50% of the payroll tax, every small business would have more money, and all Americans would take home more of what they earn.

A tax credit that offsets 50% of the payroll tax would put close to $1,500 in the pocket of the typical worker making $50,000, with the same amount going to the employer.

This would mean an increase in take-home pay for every American worker, and it would put more money into the hands of small businesses.

Real Middle-Income Tax Relief.

Reduce the marginal tax rate of 25% down to 15%, in effect establishing a flat-rate tax of 15% for close to 9 out of 10 American workers.

Marginal tax rates for middle-income families in the 25% tax bracket are too high. Add in effective payroll tax rates of 15% and state income taxes, and these workers are laboring under marginal tax rates of close to 50%. No wonder middle-income wage growth has slowed sharply.

Reducing the marginal tax rates for these middle-income earners would lead to income increases for middle-income workers, just as reducing excessive marginal tax rates for higher-income workers did, going all the way back to the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s.

Reduce the Business Tax Rate.

Match Ireland’s rate of 12.5% to keep more jobs in America.

America has the second-highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world, with a federal rate of 35 percent--rising to 40 percent on average with income taxes. The average corporate tax rate in the European Union countries is 24 percent. Even India and China have lower corporate tax rates. Ireland adopted a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate 20 years ago. Since then per capita income has soared from the second-lowest in the EU to the second-highest.

Small businesses are responsible for the overwhelming majority of jobs created in America. A reduction in the corporate tax rate would allow them to keep more of their money and hire more employees.

Owning or operating a business is hard and expensive. Our government should not make it harder and more expensive. Lowering the business tax rate would create and keep more jobs in America, instead of exporting them to other countries.

Homeowner’s Assistance.

Provide tax credit incentives to responsible home buyers so they can keep their homes.

The housing crisis stems from the fact that there is an excess supply of housing. This abundance of houses on the market significantly decreased demand for housing and caused defaults to rise sharply.

Reducing the existing supply of housing by providing a tax credit to responsible home buyers, reduces defaults by slowing price decline.

As a result, increased housing demand will work to stabilize prices and brings nearer the time when home building increases.

Control Spending So We Can Move to a Balanced Budget.

This begins with eliminating Congressional earmarks and wasteful pork-barrel spending.

A government of the people, by the people, and for the people is one that is responsible with the people's money. The most effective way to allow American wealth to be harnessed for the benefit of society is to put it in the hands of the people who will put it back in the economy.

As the federal budget has only been balanced for four years out of the last twenty five, some of the critical building blocks to a successful and prosperous economy have been absent.

Restoring fiscal sanity and accountability to Washington also means eliminating wasteful pork-barrel spending. The budget process must be both honest and transparent, and spending should never be a result of insider connections in Washington.

No State Aid Without Protection From Fraud.

Require state governments to adopt anti-fraud and anti-theft policies before giving them more money.

The Government Accountability Office recently released a report that shows over 10 percent of Medicaid payments were improper in 2007, or $32.7 billion in one year. In just New York along, over $5 billion a year is wasted as a result of fraud.

Such fraud and abuse in our entitlement programs drives up costs, and it will only get worse as more Baby Boomers retire and enter the system.

When government decides to spend our tax-dollars, we must demand honesty, transparency and accountability. Therefore, states must be required to adopt best practices, such as moving to electronic records, if they are to receive any taxpayer money.

More American Energy Now.

Explore for more American oil and gas and invest in affordable energy for the future, including clean coal, ethanol, nuclear power and renewable fuels.

We have more energy resources than any country in the world, yet we are sending billions of dollars every year to foreign dictators to meet our energy needs. That is bad for both our economy and our national security.

We can begin to solve this problem by drilling for more of our own oil and gas.

By making the transition to clean coal technology, we can utilize our vast resources of coal (27 percent of the world’s reserves), dramatically reduce carbon emissions, and become a worldwide leader in green technology.

France currently gets the majority of its electrical power from nuclear plants. While it is essential that the government establish safety standards, we should work to reduce the barriers to nuclear investment so we can take advantage of this clean, reliable energy source.

We have the ability to replace a meaningful percentage of our gasoline consumption with ethanol if we aggressively develop the millions of tons of biomass in America.

A Manhattan project to stimulate advances in renewable fuels and alternative energies will allow us to eventually produce safe, clean, efficient and inexpensive fuels here at home.

Developing more American energy will translate into more money and jobs staying in America.

Abolish Taxes on Capital Gains.

Match China, Singapore and many other competitors. More investment in America means more jobs in America.

The current tax on capital gains constitutes double taxation, to which no American should be subjected. Already taxed on income, if an individual decides to save or invest his or her money then the government taxes it again.

Eliminating the tax on both personal and corporate capital gains would encourage saving and investment, boosting the economy by empowering the taxpayer rather than the Internal Revenue Service.

Protect the Rights of American Workers.

We must protect a worker’s right to decide by secret ballot whether to join a union, and the worker’s right to freely negotiate. Forced unionism will kill jobs in America at a time when we can’t afford to lose them.

Workers have had the right to a secret ballot since 1935, to ensure that they would have a vote free of coercive pressure.

The Employee Free Choice Act would replace the secret ballot with a card-check system that would make workers' votes public and subject to intimidation by union organizers.

Forced unionism will kill jobs and drive them out of America, at a time when we cannot afford to lose them.

Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley.

This failed law is crippling entrepreneurial startups.  Replace it with affordable rules that help create jobs, not destroy them.

It has been six years since Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act after the devastating accounting irregularities of Enron and WorldCom. While the intent of the law was to prevent corporate fraud, there is growing evidence that it has done more harm than good, and is undermining the venture-capital industry in Silicon Valley.

Economic growth in a sound market economy requires smart regulation, not destructive regulation that hurts economic growth.

Abolish the Death Tax.

Americans should work for their families, not for Washington.

The “Death Tax” is an unfair double taxation that hurts working families. The assets that working Americans earn or produce over their lifetime have already been taxed once.

Not only does the “Death Tax” undermine savings and investment needed for small business growth, these taxes undermine the promise that hard, honest work will be rewarded.

Invest in Energy and Transportation Infrastructure.

This includes a new, expanded electric power grid and a 21st century air traffic control system that will reduce delays in air travel and save passengers, employees and airlines billions of dollars per year.

Though we often take modern transportation systems for granted, the development of effective transportation technology and infrastructure is one of the prime factors behind our individual and national prosperity.

Transportation systems have dramatically reduced economic transactions costs, increased the speed and reliability of trade and communication, and brought enhanced quality and convenience to the lives of individuals across the country.

The future of American prosperity will at least partially depend on our ability to meet modern transportation demands with innovation and effectiveness.

This is taken from a debate between myself and a friend.  Facebook isn't conducive to long winded responses, so I posted it here. 

You’d be surprised to learn that your last post contained many elements that show you do understand some things in the correct light, but I believe a loyalty and comfort found in the rhetoric of your side is preventing you from seeing your own points through to their logical conclusion.  There’s also some error in the way you are assigning cause and effect relationships to things that are in reality unrelated to each other.  Let’s dive in!

First, I’d like to retouch the primary point I was trying to make in my last note to you that was addressed incorrectly by your response.  I’ll repeat.  Keynesian economics, the belief that government spending is more effective at stimulating an economy than the private sector, is flawed for multiple reasons.  You have to understand that the government has no money that it hasn’t first taxed out of the economy.  That’s reality, that’s common sense.

What’s worse is that it’s the government that then decides what to do with that money rather than the people who gave up a portion of their lives in order to earn it.  Time is money.  If you take my money, it’s the equivalent of stealing my time.  I have worked for you instead of for myself, and have essentially become your slave.

Let’s take a husband and a wife.  If I take $50 dollars out of the husband’s pocket and use it to buy the wife a toaster oven, are they any better off than they were previously? Of course not!  Now, perhaps if they needed a toaster oven we could say at least they haven’t been harmed.  Problem is, perhaps there were other things they needed more.  I have denied them the ability to do what is best for themselves by forcing them into what it is I thought they needed.  Oh, and by the way, since I got hungry I used $10 dollars to buy my lunch first and the toaster I gave them is only worth $40.  That’s the government mentality.  Take your money, waste a sizable percentage of it, then give you the leftovers back in terms of services that you may or may not need, use, or desire.   Multiply this out by billions of dollars and it starts to make less and less sense.  

Our economy can thrive when the people themselves, through billions of voluntary transactions, decide what is desirous and what is not.  Placing that power in the hands of a few bureaucrats who run a government agency is not only bad policy, but the height of arrogance.  If we are all supposedly too stupid to take care of ourselves, how then can any one of us be responsible for everyone else?!  Our new treasury secretary couldn’t even figure out his own taxes!

The only other way, besides taxing, that government can have money to spend is simply to arbitrarily print it.  This, of course, causes inflation, a hidden tax.  Now, you’d have liberal economics “experts” try to use the Phillips Curve to justify Keynesian thinking and show that a little bit of inflation is worth the government spending if unemployment is lowered as a result.  Once again, however, reality has shown otherwise.  The stagflation of the 1970’s wasn’t supposed to be possible.  Inflation and unemployment going up simultaneously?  Unthinkable!  It did of course happen.  Nobel prize winner Robert Lucas presented an amazing breakdown of the Phillips Curve which, along with work by Milton Friedman and Edmond Phelps, pretty much killed Keynesian thinking for awhile and made room for the tax cutting and resultant growth of the 1980’s.
Anyway, now back to some of your specific points….

While we disagree on the current scope of the economic situation, I will agree that circumstances this time are different than in the past.  While I don’t believe we are there yet, I think that if we continue down the path we are on, a true depression will be a possibility.  The pork ridden spending bill that Obama has been hysterically frightening people to support, and finally won enough from Congress to pass, (though they admit to not even having read the thing and no time was given for public research into it…so much for the much talked about transparency!) is a simple continuance and exaggeration of the very problem you rightfully point out in your paper…the overspending and borrowing of the last several administrations!

Over spending got us into this situation and by God it will get us out!??? It’s like a gambler who loses $10,000 in Las Vegas and his solution to fix the situation is to gamble another $20,000!

I am also excited to see that you realize this is a global situation.  I hope that you put two and two together to understand that closing off trade to the rest of the world right now would be disastrous.  You might want to share that with your fellow democrats who lead the charge in Congress for protectionist trade policies at the behest of their union constituents.

Now, on to bailouts!

GW Bush was an idiot and he set the stage for one of the worst policy decisions I have experienced in my lifetime.  These bailouts of companies declared “too big to fail” are beyond bad policy.  Companies need to be allowed to fail!  That’s what keeps the market system honest and effective.  Should we have bailed out the 8 track tape companies?  How about the horse and buggy manufacturers?  Of course not.  When technology changes, market desires change, etc, it naturally creates an ebb and flow.  A free market system encourages the development of new products and ideas while simultaneously weaning out those products and ideas that are no longer desirable or viable.  It also teaches best practices in terms of management for companies within the same industry.  The poorly run companies should fail and be replaced by others who would learn the lessons of the failed company.  If they don’t, then they fail as well.  This is good! 

The government subsidizing an industry whose time has come or whose management is poor only serves to reward bad behavior and makes the next generation less likely to materialize.  It stunts growth by rewarding mediocrity.  How would a new company compete when the seemingly unlimited resources of the government are backing the competition?  Why bother even try to compete?  Everyone can simply enjoy the consistent mediocrity rather than take a risk to better themselves.  When government makes risk taking less desirable and punishes productivity, everyone loses. 

I see you rightfully criticize what the banks have done with the money…so far as they have let us know.  There is such a lack of transparency here it’s insulting.  We have a right to know the use of every penny of our tax dollars.  This is, however, an example not of evil corporations, but rather of how government “charity” often goes wrong.  I think you’ve made my point here.  The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

To also further clarify a point regarding the banking industry, I hope you realize that it was actually government policy that led to much of the recent breakdown…especially in the housing sector.  When the government started mandating that banks make loans based not on ability to pay, but rather demographic and social makeup, that was bad enough.  To top it off, guaranteeing those loans through Fannie and Freddie set the stage for what we ended up with.  It was like sending someone to Las Vegas and saying that they could keep any winnings they won, but any losses would be covered by the government.  Of course many bad decisions where made, but essentially it was at the behest of the government meddling where it should not have been.  Government encouraged greed, and people took advantage.  Both were wrong.

I’ll take strong exception to one statement you make: Democrats and liberals don’t believe in getting everyone up on their feet, at least not the liberal elitists that control much of that party.  I think you, as an individual, may have that desire (and rightfully so!), but the party itself certainly doesn’t as is made evident in its policy making.  They believe in punishing success and tearing down those in one economic spectrum for the supposed benefit of those at the other end. Truth is, you can’t help one person by hurting another.  

It is Conservative policy (notice I don’t say GOP policy) that actually believes that all people are capable of making something out of themselves.  What you can’t do is punish productivity and discourage people from risk taking.  That is what government policy does.  It encourages laziness and ineptitude by crushing the human desire for self-betterment.  Government makes success harder.  As a business owner, I know that first hand.  And I’ll be honest with you with a specific example.  I am barely holding things together right now as it is.  If my taxes go up even slightly under the Obama administration, the first place I am going to cut expenses is by letting go my part time employee.  Liberal tax policy never takes into consideration the economic slowdown the policies create; they simply think “Yea more money to spend!”  Truth be told, most of the problems government feels obliged to try to “fix” have often been caused by other policies designed to “fix” something else.  It’s a never ending cycle.  The government is a roadblock to prosperity.     

I also hope you were joking when you suggest that “very, very, very, little makes it to the bottom” and started to compare the US to some third world country.   The poor in this country would live like kings in the rest of the world and have continually been improving themselves for decades in this country.  “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is just a flat out lie.  Truth is, in a growing economy, both rich and poor get richer.  It’s the numbers, I can’t help what reality is.
Furthermore, check out this article. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005242
It’s the first I grabbed out of a seemingly endless supply that say the same thing.  Here’s a brief snippet, “In other words poverty is relative, and in the U.S. a large 45.9% of the "poor" own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, which remains a luxury in most of Western Europe. The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.”

I lived in Europe and can attest to the fact that what they consider middle class over there would almost be considered poverty in this country.  For heaven’s sake, a microwave was considered a luxury good!

On a philosophical level I want to ask you a question.  You seem to imply that all business is evil and greed.  You point to some of the examples that hit the news right now, but are you really serious about not trusting the private sector!?  First of all, your blanket statement would be like someone saying that all Muslims are terrorists.  It’s just not true, but all you hear about is the bad side and so it seeps into the cultural mindset.  Is there greed and corruption in the private sector?  YES!  And these are the very businesses that you want our government to save?  Wrong solution.  This is a test of our will to be a free market economy.  These companies have failed in many cases because of their greed and corruption.  Allowing them to fail is the message that needs to be sent.  It won’t be totally disastrous because others will quickly come to fill the void.  But here’s my question.  If you don’t trust the people in business to take care of this economy because of greed and corruption, are you suggesting that the government itself is made up of people who have a spotless record in terms of their own greed and corruption?  It seems you are trying to replace one demon with another.  At least Coke can’t mandate me to buy their product, or put me in jail if I refuse to buy one.  Government corruption, rewarding certain people through policy because they gave a lot of support to a powerful congressman, is a much deeper threat to the future of this country if you ask me.  Furthermore, government is the one entity that simply won’t “fail” as any business running by the same inefficient practices would.  Until you have fought the government bureaucracy, you just really have no idea what you’re messing with.       

Ok, I’m beyond long winded now.  I’ll sum by saying both the Republican and Democratic Parties are pushing this once great nation in the wrong direction.  We haven’t had Conservative philosophy in action for decades…and even then we only got half.  1980’s tax policy pushed up revenues by huge numbers, but spending continued at record paces.  And your tribute to Roosevelt is strongly misguided.  The government programs he started which are still in place, like the ponzi scheme of social security, aren’t helping anyone…they are responsible for the ridiculous entitlement spending we can no longer afford and are going to bankrupt a generation.  Obama talks about cutting entitlements, too bad his actions don’t match his rhetoric.  This bill we’re getting is only going to increase the growth of government into unsustainable levels and our collapse becomes all the more imminent.

WASHINGTON - In a major victory for President Barack Obama, Democrats muscled a huge, $787 billion stimulus bill through Congress late Friday night in hopes of combating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Republican opposition was nearly unanimous.

Originally posted at:

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29179041/

After lobbying energetically for the bill, Obama is expected to sign it within a few days, less than a month after taking office.

Supporters said the legislation would save or create 3.5 million jobs. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., conceded there was no guarantee, but he said that "millions and millions and millions of people will be helped, as they have lost their jobs and can't put food on the table of their families."

Staunch GOP opposition
Vigorously disagreeing, House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio dumped a copy of the 1,071-page bill to the floor in a gesture of contempt. "The bill that was about jobs, jobs, jobs has turned into a bill that's about spending, spending, spending," he said.

The Senate approved the measure 60-38 with three GOP moderates providing crucial support — the only members of their party to back it. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio cast the decisive vote after flying aboard a government plane from Ohio, where he was mourning his mother's death.

Hours earlier, the House vote was 246-183, with all Republicans opposed to the package of tax cuts and federal spending that Obama has made the centerpiece of his plan for economic recovery.

The legislation, among the costliest ever considered in Congress, provides billions of dollars to aid victims of the recession through unemployment benefits, food stamps, medical care, job retraining and more. Tens of billions are ticketed for the states to offset cuts they might otherwise have to make in aid to schools and local governments, and there is more than $48 billion for transportation projects such as road and bridge construction, mass transit and high-speed rail.

Democrats said the bill's tax cuts would help 95 percent of all Americans, much of the relief in the form of a break of $400 for individuals and $800 for couples. At the insistence of the White House, people who do not earn enough money to owe income taxes are eligible, an attempt to offset the payroll taxes they pay.

In a bow to political reality, lawmakers included $70 billion to shelter upper middle-class and wealthier taxpayers from an income tax increase that would otherwise hit them, a provision that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said would do relatively little to create jobs.

Also included were funds for two of Obama's initiatives, the expansion of computerized information technology in the health care industry and billions to create so-called green jobs the administration says will begin reducing the country's dependence on foreign oil.

'Thumbs up' from Obama
Asked for his reaction to House passage of the bill, Obama said "thumbs up" and indeed gave a thumbs-up sign as he left the White House with his family for a long weekend in Chicago.

There was little or no suspense about the outcome, although the final act played out over hours and extended late into the night.

That was to allow time for Brown to fly back. He cast his vote more than five hours after most senators had left the Capitol for a 10-day vacation, one of the longest roll calls in Senate history.

Congress cast its votes as federal regulators announced the closing of the Sherman County Bank in Loup City, Neb.; Riverside Bank of the Gulf Coast in Florida, based in Cape Coral; Corn Belt Bank and Trust Co. of Pittsfield, Ill.; and Pinnacle Bank of Beaverton, Ore. They raised to 13 the number of failures this year of federally insured banking companies and were the latest reminders of the toll taken by recession and frozen credit markets.

The day's events at the Capitol were scripted to allow Democratic leaders to fulfill their pledge to send Obama legislation by mid-February.

"Barack Obama, in just a few short weeks as president, has passed one of the biggest packages for economic recovery in our nation's history," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, anticipating final Senate passage.

The approval also capped an early period of accomplishment for the Democrats, who won control of the White House and expanded their majorities in Congress in last fall's elections.

Since taking office on Jan. 20, the president has signed legislation extending government-financed health care to millions of lower-income children who lack it, a bill that President George W. Bush twice vetoed. He also has placed his signature on a measure making it easier for workers to sue their employers for alleged job discrimination, effectively overturning a ruling by the Supreme Court's conservative majority.

Republicans complained they had been locked out of the early decisions, and Democrats countered that Boehner had tried to rally opposition even before the president met privately with the GOP rank and file. In retrospect, said White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, the White House wasn't "sharp enough" in emphasizing the benefits of the bill as Republicans began to criticize spending on items such as family planning services, anti-smoking programs and reseeding the National Mall.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faced a different task — finding enough GOP moderates to give him the 60 votes needed to surmount a variety of procedural hurdles. To do that, he and the White House agreed to trim billions in spending from the original $820 billion House-passed bill, enough to obtain the backing of GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Frenzied bargaining
As the final compromise took shape in a frenzied round of bargaining earlier this week, it was trimmed again to hold the support of the moderates, whose opposition to a new program for federal school construction caused anger among House Democrats.

In the end, a compromise was reached that allows states to use funds for modernizing schools. But in a display of displeasure, Pelosi decided to skip the news conference last Wednesday where Reid announced a final agreement.

In addition to tax relief for individuals and businesses who purchase new equipment, lawmakers inserted breaks for first-time homebuyers and consumers purchasing new cars in an attempt to aid two industries particularly hard-hit by the recession. In response to pressure from lawmakers from Pennsylvania, Indiana and elsewhere, the bill was altered at the last minute to permit the buyers of recreational vehicles and motorcycles to claim the same break as those buying cars and light trucks.

In the House, all 246 votes in favor were cast by Democrats. Seven Democrats joined 176 Republicans in opposition.

In response to a friend's assertion that the "stimulus" package is a good idea.

Let us falsely assume for a moment that government spending and debt are "stimulative". Let us also believe the fear mongering and flat out lie committed by our President yesterday saying that this is the worst economy since the great depression. (I guess he forgot the early 80’s where inflation and unemployment were both in double digits, the oil embargo of the 70’s, etc, etc)

If that is all true, then why is a sizable portion of this “stimulus” package not even slated to be spent until after October of 2010 according to the CBO? That won’t have an affect on our currently “dire” situation, but it will be a nice boon for Congressmen seeking reelection the next month.

Back to government spending as stimulus... That’s Keynesian theory and has been rebuked and proven false more times and in more countries than I can name. Use logic for a moment. For every billion dollars that the government spends on a project determined worthy by some bureaucrat whose job depends on coming up with these things, there is a billion dollars that must first be taxed out of the economy. (Unless the government simply prints it, devaluing currency, and leading to inflation…the hidden tax) For every ditch the government wants dug, there exists an infinite opportunity cost of what could have been done with the money if left in the private sector to begin with.

When the ditch is dug, and the government trough is again empty, that person is back out of a job and the total economy hasn’t been improved or changed in any meaningful way. If anything, it’s been made worse by the new debt obligations of the government.

For this economy to improve; the ability, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and incentive of the American people to achieve their own ambitions needs to be reawakened. A business creating a job has a tremendously greater long term impact than the government doing so. Growth is only sustained via free people participating in open commerce determined by their own thoughts and wishes…not those of the government.
By stripping away freedom in favor of macro and micro-economic manipulation by some lone government official who wants millions of dollars to install doorbells in Mississippi (true part of the stimulus), we are shortchanging ourselves and stripping out the vast potential this country, as a free country, has to offer the world. Oh, we’ll grow alright, with or without this “stimulus” plan, but with it the growth will be slower and the ceiling of economic prosperity will be lower.

Ronald Reagan shared some prophecy for the moment in his 1981 inaugural address.  Here are some clips:

"You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation?"

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price."