Nanny State
Roseville Galleria Mall’s Rules Deny Free Speech, State Appeals Court Says
Posted on August 14, 2010. Filed under: Culture, Nanny State, Socialism/Communism |
This is where we’re going in this country and if it doesn’t disturb people then we’re in even worse shape than I thought!! I posted an article previously that discussed the pastor mentioned in this article being arrested for sharing his faith with someone in the common area of the mall, so you can go back and check it out if you like. He was talking with someone who WANTED to talk with him and yet he was still arrested. This should be a national story and folks should be outraged!!! I will NEVER go to this mall again!!
Roseville Galleria’s Rules Deny Free Speech, State Appeals Court Says
Owners of the Westfield Galleria at Roseville didn’t want strangers talking to each other if they weren’t talking about the mall.
They even had rules to enforce that behavior, but a state appellate court has starkly declared that the mall’s attempt to regulate conversation is unconstitutional.
A three-judge panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeal said Wednesday in a 43-page opinion that the company’s rules of conduct “are unconstitutional on their face” under the California Constitution’s free speech guarantee.
The specific rule at issue prohibits a person in the center’s common areas from “approaching patrons with whom he or she was not previously acquainted for the purpose of communicating with them on a topic unrelated to the business interests” of the mall or its tenants.
The case arose out of the mall’s “citizen’s arrest” of a 27-year-old pastor, who had gone to the shopping center to talk to others about his faith.
The appellate court’s opinion dealt one way or another with possible conversations that the rules would prohibit:
Weather is a no-no, unless one is intuitive enough to observe how it may be affecting the size of the crowd at the mall. Teenagers who use the common areas for social gatherings, not necessarily limited to contemporaries they already know, are out of luck. Should someone stop you and ask directions to Sutter-Roseville Medical Center, you would be well advised to blow them off, lest your humanitarian instincts lead you astray.
Another rule requires written applications for permission to make such contacts “to be submitted to the mall’s security office four days in advance. Mall management will review the application to determine if the proposed activity is permissible.”
Writing on behalf of the unanimous appellate panel, Associate Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye concluded “the rules allow conversation between strangers on matters related to the Galleria … while prohibiting peaceful, consensual, spontaneous conversations between strangers in common areas of the mall on topics unrelated to the … mall.”
The rules also provide that an application may only be for proposed conversation between two persons, thus prohibiting altogether talk among more than two unacquainted persons on subjects other than the Galleria, she noted.
Westfield spokeswoman Katy Dickey said in a prepared statement: “We are disappointed that the court … determined that the rules in question did not satisfy the required legal standard for reasonable time, place and manner restrictions. We are reviewing the court’s decision and will consider our options … including appeal to the California Supreme Court.”
Matthew McReynolds, an attorney for Matthew Snatchko, the youth pastor who challenged the rules, hailed the decision as “a huge victory for free speech and common sense. The opinion is a great credit to Justice Cantil-Sakauye – very thorough, well thought-out.”
Acting Presiding Justice Ronald B. Robie and Associate Justice M. Kathleen Butz joined in the opinion.
The panel reversed Placer Superior Court Judge Larry D. Gaddis’ ruling in favor of Westfield LLC and sent the case back to him for further proceedings.
Hoping for opportunities to share his Christian faith, Snatchko, a Roseville resident, often went to the Galleria, the largest shopping mall in Northern California. While in a common area one evening, he approached three young women who agreed to talk with him on subjects that included principles of his faith.
A store employee called security and an officer responded and told Snatchko to stop talking to the women or leave the mall. When he refused, the officer called for backup and a senior security officer responded and ordered Snatchko out. He again refused, and found himself under “citizen’s arrest,” handcuffed and turned over to Roseville police.
He was booked and released, and when he appeared in court for arraignment, all charges were dropped. The Placer County District Attorney’s Office agreed that Snatchko was “factually innocent,” and a Superior Court judge took the unusual step of a formal finding of factual innocence.
Snatchko sued Westfield, Professional Security Consultants, the security firm employed at the Galleria, and Richard Flores, the officer who made the arrest. He seeks money damages in an unspecified amount for false imprisonment, assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, malicious prosecution, and a general violation of his rights under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.
Westfield defended the rules several ways, arguing that they:
• “Protect our tenants and the thousands of customers at the mall each day by ensuring a safe and secure shopping, dining and entertainment environment while recognizing the requirements of California law.”
• Promote safety “through the avoidance of fire code violations and the disruption and congestion that could result from unregulated expressive activities.”
• Promote “the convenience of mall patrons.”
But the justices didn’t buy any of those rationales.
The opinion quotes from the deposition of Gavin Farnam, the senior general manager of the Galleria.
“If you’re going to talk about any other subject (other than the mall) … then you’re prohibited from going up to strangers and speaking to them, is that correct?” he was asked by a Snatchko attorney.
“That’s not correct,” Farnam testified. “It doesn’t prohibit you. It just means you have to come in and fill out the application for third-party access for noncommercial” speech.
What if, the attorney postulated, he is excited about the Super Bowl and says to a stranger, “Hey, hope you’re supporting the Patriots,” or “Hope you’re supporting the Giants this week.” Would that violate the rules? he asked.
“You can go in and again fill out a third-party access, if that’s what a person chooses to do,” said Farnam.
LINK: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/14/2958400/roseville-gallerias-rules-deny.html#mi_rss=Our%20Region
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Jack Cafferty Rips the Bureaucratic ‘Obama-nation’ Created by ObamaCare
Posted on August 11, 2010. Filed under: Healthcare, Nanny State, Obama, Obama Corruption, Socialism/Communism |
Maybe some folks will finally start seeing what we’ve seen all along – Obama is a liar and his policies are bad for America.
Jack Cafferty Rips the Bureaucratic ‘Obama-nation’ Created by ObamaCare
newsbusters.org
By Matthew Balan
Tue, 08/03/2010 –
Excerpt:
On Tuesday’s Situation Room, CNN’s Jack Cafferty used the term “Obama-nation,” a pun on the word “abomination,” which is used on many conservative blogs, to slam the “sprawling bureaucratic giant…that seems to be the result of President Obama’s new health care law.” Cafferty admitted during his commentary that ObamaCare is “shaping up to be exactly what the critics were afraid it would be.”
The CNN commentator devoted his regular Cafferty File segment 12 minutes into the 6 pm Eastern hour to the recent report from the Congressional Research Service that, as Cafferty put it, “says it’s ‘impossible’ to estimate the number of agencies, boards, and commissions that will be created by this new law.” Cafferty explained that the report “points to many reasons for this. First off, the parts of the law that create these new bodies vary drastically. In some cases, the law gives a lot of details- in other cases, barely a mention.”
Later, the CNN personality cited one provision in the ObamaCare law which “requires six separate agencies- six- within Health and Human Services to each establish an Office of Minority Health- six!” After listing two delays in getting new bureaucracies set up, he continued that there were “questions about the ability of Congress to carry out oversight of this sprawling mess.”
At the end of the segment, Cafferty asked his usual “Question of the Hour” of his viewers: “How’s the government going to manage our health care if it’s impossible to know the number of agencies, boards, and commissions that are created by the new health care law?” He even got one minor dig at his nemesis on the right, Sarah Palin. He asked anchor Wolf Blitzer what he thought of his use of the “Obama-nation” term. When Blitzer replied he hadn’t heard of it before, Cafferty quipped, “Me and Sarah Palin- we make up these words.”
New Bill Gives Obama ‘Kill Switch’ To Shut Down the Internet
Posted on June 16, 2010. Filed under: Nanny State, Obama, Socialism/Communism |
Like Obama needs any more control…This is scary!
New Bill Gives Obama ‘Kill Switch’ To Shut Down The Internet
Government would have “absolute power” to seize control of the world wide web under Lieberman legislation
Prison Planet.com on June 16, 2010 by Paul Joseph Watson
<Excerpt>
The federal government would have “absolute power” to shut down the Internet under the terms of a new US Senate bill being pushed by Joe Lieberman, legislation which would hand President Obama a figurative “kill switch” to seize control of the world wide web in response to a Homeland Security directive.
Lieberman has been pushing for government regulation of the Internet for years under the guise of cybersecurity, but this new bill goes even further in handing emergency powers over to the feds which could be used to silence free speech under the pretext of a national emergency.
“The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects “shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined,” reports ZDNet’s Declan McCullagh.
The 197-page bill (PDF) is entitled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA.
Technology lobbying group TechAmerica warned that the legislation created “the potential for absolute power,” while the Center for Democracy and Technology worried that the bill’s emergency powers “include authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems.”
The bill has the vehement support of Senator Jay Rockefeller, who last year asked during a congressional hearing, “Would it had been better if we’d have never invented the Internet?” while fearmongering about cyber-terrorists preparing attacks.
The largest Internet-based corporations are seemingly happy with the bill, primarily because it contains language that will give them immunity from civil lawsuits and also reimburse them for any costs incurred if the Internet is shut down for a period of time.
“If there’s an “incident related to a cyber vulnerability” after the President has declared an emergency and the affected company has followed federal standards, plaintiffs’ lawyers cannot collect damages for economic harm. And if the harm is caused by an emergency order from the Feds, not only does the possibility of damages virtually disappear, but the US Treasury will even pick up the private company’s tab,” writes McCullagh.
LINK: http://www.prisonplanet.com/new-bill-gives-obama-kill-switch-to-shut-down-the-internet.html
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Obama Issues Executive Order Mandating “Lifestyle Behavior Modification”
Posted on June 13, 2010. Filed under: Nanny State, Obama, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
How far does this dictator have to go before people realize he is trying to take over our lives???? I want the gov’t, especially Obama’s administration, to BUTT OUT OF MY LIFE!!! We don’t need the gov’t telling us how to live every aspect of our lives. It starts with little things and grows to bigger things. We CANNOT let this happen in America!!!
Obama Issues Executive Order Mandating “Lifestyle Behavior Modification”
June 12, 2010
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is fond of saying, “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” Well, the Obama Administration certainly has not let the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil rig crisis go to waste, using it as a smokescreen to silently assault and further diminish American citizens’ personal freedom.
While the nation has its eyes and ears focused on the blame game ping-pong match between President Obama and BP top brass, President Obama on Thursday, June 10, quietly announced a new Executive Order establishing the “National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council.”
Claiming the “authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America,” President Obama has truly gone off the deep end this time in his most atrocious attempt to date to control every aspect of Americans’ lives.
According to the Executive Order that details the President’s “National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy,” the Council will be charged with carrying out ” lifestyle behavior modification” among American citizens that do not exhibit “healthy behavior.”
The President’s desired lifestyle behavior modifications detailed in Sec. 6 (c) focus on:
• smoking cessation;
• proper nutrition;
• appropriate exercise;
• mental health;
• behavioral health;
• sedentary behavior (see Sec. 3 [c]);
• substance-use disorder; and
• domestic violence screenings.
Making matters even worse, if that is even possible at this point, President Obama will create an “Advisory Group” composed of experts hand-picked from the public health field and various other areas of expertise “outside the Federal Government.”
Let’s consider who the President has sought advice and mentoring from in the past:
• Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who the Anti-Defamation League calls a “Messenger of Intolerance,” and
• Bill Ayers, leader of the 1960′s domestic terrorist group ”Weatherman” that was “responsible for 30 bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructures of the U.S.”
Now, President Obama is going to seek medical advisors who will be charged with modifying lifestyles and behaviors of those citizens he deems unhealthy? “Paging Dr. Kevorkian! You’re wanted in the White House STAT by President Obama!”
Whether you are a child, a parent, a worker, or retired, the President’s approximately 25-member “Advisory Group” will soon be present in every aspect of Americans’ lives, as the Executive Order prescribes in Sec. 4 (b). Specifically, our new so-called lifestyle behavior modification advisors will be actively carrying out the President’s orders in:
• worksite health promotion;
• community services, including community health centers;
• preventive medicine;
• health coaching;
• public health education;
• geriatrics; and
• rehabilitation medicine.
President Obama’s sweeping plan to enforce “lifestyle behavior modification” is chock full of open-ended target areas, especially when it comes to issues of “mental” and “behavioral” health, “proper nutrition,” “sedentary behavior,” and “appropriate exercise.” The President’s Executive Order is a blatant and forceful attempt to adjust the way Americans young and old think, behave, eat, drink and whatever else free will used to entitle our nation’s citizens to enjoy as prescribed by the Founding Fathers.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Barack Obama, America’s Selective Salary Policeman
Posted on May 3, 2010. Filed under: General, Nanny State, Obama, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
So Obama wants to be the one to decide WHO gets to make a lot of money, and apparently he and his staff get to be rich while everyone else has to be limited in what they can make.
Barack Obama, America’s Selective Salary Policeman
by Michelle Malkin
President Obama spoke the most revealing and clarifying 10 words of his control-freak administration this week: “I think at some point you have made enough money.” Peddling financial regulatory reform at a rally in Quincy, Ill., Obama then ad-libbed peculiar definitions of what he called the “American way” and the profit motive: “(Y)ou can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.”
Fundamental lesson of Capitalism 101: Governments and bureaucrats don’t make what people want and need. They only get in the way. It is individuals, cooperating peacefully and voluntarily, working together without mandate or central design, who produce the world’s goods and services. They make what people desire and demand for themselves, not what Obama and his imperial overlords ordain that the masses should have.
As usual, Obama’s populist demagoguery is telling in its omissions and selectivity. While he lectures on the morality of salary caps for everyone else, his own cabinet is filled with fabulously wealthy CEOs and statist creatures who have parlayed government employment (a “good” service) into private gain as lobbyists, consultants and advisers (“core responsibilities of the financial system”) and then back again to public stints. Revolving doors have always grown the Beltway economy.
To wit: Austan Goolsbee, head of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, is the 15th wealthiest member of the Obama administration, with assets valued at between $1,146,000 to $2,715,000. He also pulled in a University of Chicago salary of $465,000 and additional wages and honoraria worth $93,000, according to the Washingtonian magazine.
What “good” did he provide? The government research fellow and Obama campaign adviser was a champion of extending credit to the un-creditworthy. In a 2007 op-ed for The New York Times, he derided those who called subprime mortgages “irresponsible.” He preferred to describe them as “innovations in the mortgage market” to expand the pool of homebuyers. Now this wrong-headed academic who espoused government policies that fed the housing feeding frenzy is in charge of fixing the loose-credit mess he advocated. This is the “American way”?
After 16 years in Congress, four years in the Clinton administration as budget director and chief of staff, and a lifetime of schmoozing in the halls of power, Obama’s CIA director, Leon Panetta, cashed in big. He’s sitting on up to $4 million in assets. While he has zero experience in intelligence matters, he has extensive experience in parlaying his past political tours of duty into lucrative speaking gigs, consulting fees and stock options. Welcome to Obama-approved entrepreneurship. Continued…
By Obama’s definition, first lady Michelle Obama is a model capitalist. Remember: After serving with real estate mogul Valerie Jarrett in Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration, Mrs. Obama took a post at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Jarrett was serving as vice-chair of the medical center’s board of trustees. Mrs. Obama was promoted in 2005 after her husband won his U.S. Senate race with Jarrett’s invaluable aid. As “vice president for community and external affairs” and head of the “business diversity program,” her annual compensation nearly tripled from $122,000 in 2004 to $317,000 in 2005. Even after she went on leave in 2007 to help her husband on the presidential campaign trail, the hospital paid Mrs. Obama $62,709 in 2008, prompting one skeptic to ask: “We know this is Chicago, but isn’t $63,000 quite a lot for a no-show job?”
Jarrett, of course, is now White House senior adviser to the chief spender of other people’s money. And the first lady is now using her new taxpayer-funded position not only to tell folks how they should eat, but also which “good” restaurants and groceries should be built in their neighborhoods.
If there were any doubts left about the Obamas’ ideological commitment to wealth redistribution and a command-and-control economy, those doubts have been thoroughly removed. We have a commander-in-chief who presumes to know when you have earned “enough,” who believes that only those who provide what he deems “good” products and services should “keep on making it,” and who has determined that the role of American entrepreneurs is not to pursue their own self-interest, but to fulfill their “core” responsibility as dutiful growers of the collective economy.
That famous mock-up poster of Obama as the creepy socialist Joker never seemed more apt.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Happy Meal Insanity in the New Nanny State
Posted on May 3, 2010. Filed under: General, Nanny State, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
I am so fed up with gov’t interfering in our lives!!! I want them to leave us alone and let us make our own decisions. Now they’re making laws about the happy meals??? Give me a break!
Happy Meal Insanity in the New Nanny State
by Mike Gallagher
I never thought being called an “ass” on national TV could be so much fun.
It happened the other night on Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor.” I was a guest with substitute host Juan Williams, and I was brought on to debate some anti-obesity activist — who would ever think obesity could spawn activists? — named MeMe somebody. I think her name is MeMe Roth. Or maybe it’s Ross. It’s not important.
The “debate” was over a new ordinance passed by a local government in Santa Clara, California that bans toys being sold with Happy Meals at McDonald’s. Now why in the world would the local Board of Supervisors bother to ban toys being sold with Happy Meals, one might ask? Evidently, they have the peculiar belief there that allowing parents to buy their own children meals at fast food restaurants that include toys only encourages the little whippersnappers to become fat.
I’m not kidding.
So when the Fox News producer invited me to appear on the show to discuss this little slice of insanity, I didn’t expect there’d be much of a debate. What could possibly be the argument? Seemed perfectly clear to me that Santa Clara, California has a few numbskulls that masquerade as Board of Supervisors who have nothing better to do with their time than to tell adults what products they may or may not purchase from a private business like McDonald’s.
But there would be a debate!
MeMe whats-her-name was ready and loaded for bear.
She seemed to center on what she called “the nag factor.” She lectured me about how parents shouldn’t have to be subjected to their little bundles of joy nagging them into buying things that aren’t good for them, namely chicken strips or cheeseburgers that include little toy characters or plastic thing-a-ma-jigs, or whatever they’re putting in Happy Meals these days.
As the parent of four grown boys, I asked her if she was a parent, too. She sarcastically told me that she was quite capable of reproducing (this was not a very pleasant lady), and that yes, she did have two children.
At that point, I suggested that she might consider doing what my wife and I always did when our kids wanted something, and perhaps ponder the reaction of millions and millions of parents since the beginning of time — say no.
That prompted a most interesting reply on her part: “Oh, don’t be an ass, Mike.”
Which led to guest-host Juan Williams, to give a, “Whoa, whoa there, MeMe!”
Whoa there, MeMe, indeed.
I hate to continue to pick on the anti-obesity activist. I think I got under her skin enough already.
But she advocates a point of view that is becoming an increasingly pervasive aspect of life in these United States. The belief that government must be the ultimate nanny to our children is one of the fundamental philosophical disagreements between the right and left. And the ideology that dictates more government instead of less is what is driving people into the streets with tea party rallies and protests.
Liberals don’t think parents can be left to their own devices when it comes to raising our children. In fact, at one point during the Fox News debate, MeMe told me that while she and I might be able to say no to our whining, nagging children, many American parents cannot. And that’s why an ordinance like this makes sense, she said.
The arrogance of the left always fascinates me. I suppose MeMe thinks she’ll be nominated for mother-of-the-year but other Americans are too stupid to know how to tell their child they’re not getting french fries for dinner.
We’re watching the government tell us what kind of health care coverage we must have, what kind of light bulbs we have to buy, how much water we can use to flush our toilets, and how much power our big screen TV’s are allowed to use. None of this comes by way of education or recommendation. These are mandates.
And now, along comes a local government that has decided to make McDonald’s Happy Meal toys the same as crack cocaine.
The Santa Clara story is the perfect snapshot of the direction our country is headed, unless we take action and put this train back on the rails again.
November 2, 2010 cannot get here quickly enough.
LINK: http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeGallagher/2010/05/03/happy_meal_insanity_in_the_new_nanny_state
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )ObamaCare and the Constitution
Posted on April 8, 2010. Filed under: Healthcare, Nanny State, Obama, Socialism/Communism |
ObamaCare and the Constitution
By Daniel Henninger – WSJ
If Congress can force you to buy insurance, Article I limits on federal power are a dead letter.
The left-wing critics are right: The rage is not about health care. They are also right that similar complaints about big government were heard during the New Deal and the Great Society, and the sky didn’t fall.
But what if this time the sky is falling—on them.
What if after more than a century of growth in the national government, starting with the Progressive Era, the American people are starting to push back. Not just the tea partiers or the 13 state attorneys general seeking protection under the 10th Amendment and the Commerce Clause. But something bigger than that.
The Democratic left, its pundits and academics criticizing the legal challenges to ObamaCare seem to be arguing that their version of our political structure is too big to change.
That’s not true. The American people can and do change the nation’s collective mind on the ordering of our political system. The civil rights years of the 1960s is the most well-known modern example. (The idea that resistance to Mr. Obama’s health plan is rooted in racist resentment of equal rights is beyond the pale, even by current standards of political punditry.)
Powerful political forces suddenly seem to be in motion across the U.S. What they have in common is anxiety over what government has become in the first decade of the 21st century.
The tea party movement is getting the most attention because it is the most vulnerable to the standard tool kit of mockery and ridicule. It is more difficult to mock the legitimacy of Scott Brown’s overthrow of the Kennedy legacy, the election results in Virginia and New Jersey, an economic discomfort that is both generalized and specific to the disintegration of state and federal fiscs, and indeed the array of state attorneys general who filed a constitutional complaint against the new health-care law. What’s going on may be getting past the reach of mere mockery.
Constitutional professors quoted in the press and across the Web explain that much about the federal government’s modern authority is “settled” law. Even so, many of these legal commentators are quite close to arguing that the national government’s economic and political powers are now limitless and unfettered. I wonder if Justice Kennedy believes that.
Or as David Kopel asked on the Volokh Conspiracy blog: “Is the tax power infinite?”
In a country that holds elections, that question is both legal and political. The political issue rumbling toward both the Supreme Court and the electorate is whether Washington’s size and power has finally grown beyond the comfort zone of the American people. That is what lies beneath the chatter about federalism and the 10th Amendment.
Liberals will argue that government today is doing good. But government now is also unprecedentedly large and unprecedentedly expensive. Even if every challenge to ObamaCare loses in court, these anxieties will last and keep coming back to the same question: Does the Democratic left think the national government’s powers are infinite?
No one in the Obama White House, asked that in public on Sunday morning, would simply say yes, no matter that the evidence of this government’s actions the past year indicate they do. In his “Today Show” interview this week, Mr. Obama with his characteristic empathy acknowledged there are “folks who have legitimate concerns . . . that the federal government may be taking on too much.”
My reading of the American public is that they have moved past “concerns.” Somewhere inside the programmatic details of ObamaCare and the methods that the president, Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid used to pass it, something went terribly wrong. Just as something has gone terribly wrong inside the governments of states like California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts.
The 10th Amendment tumult does not mean anyone is going to secede. It doesn’t mean “nullification” is coming back. We are not going to refight the Civil War or the Voting Rights Act. Richard Russell isn’t rising from his Georgia grave.
It means that the current edition of the Democratic Party has disconnected itself from the average American’s sense of political modesty. The party’s members and theorists now defend expanding government authority with the same arrogance that brought Progressive Era reforms down upon untethered industrial interests.
In such times, this country has an honored tradition of changing direction. That time may be arriving.
Faced with corporate writedowns in response to the reality of Congress’s new health plan, an apoplectic Congressman Henry Waxman commanded his economic vassals to appear before him in Washington.
Faced with a challenge to his vision last week, President Obama laughingly replied to these people: “Go for it.”
They will.
As to the condescension and sniffing left-wing elitism this opposition seems to bring forth from Manhattan media castles, one must say it does recall another, earlier ancien regime.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )An Open Letter to the Evil Tyrants in Washington
Posted on March 28, 2010. Filed under: Healthcare, Nanny State, Obama, Obama Corruption, Politicians, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
I LOVE THIS LETTER AND I TOTALLY AGREE!!!
An Open Letter to the Evil Tyrants in Washington
By Gina Miller on March 28th, 2010
Gina Miller
To Mr. Obama, Mr. Reid, Mrs. Pelosi and your fellow travelers:
I write this for countless millions of Americans. We know who you are. We know what you are doing. We know your hatred for us–for America. You are traitors. You are the enemy within.
You and your ilk have been creeping into our institutions for much of the last century. You have crawled into our schools, polluted our colleges, and for most of the past thirty or more years have poisoned the minds of untold numbers of children and young adults, and you have deliberately lowered the educational standards to create a class of dumbed-down kids, while you continuously scream for “more money for education!” Now, you will use many young people of our country as unwitting tools to be your personal army, your Gestapo.
You have slithered onto our court benches, and you have nested in law offices all across our country. You have worked tirelessly to pervert and overthrow the laws of our land and our Constitution. You have fought for and gained public offices at all levels.
You hid your evil intentions, except among yourselves, and you took advantage of the trust of the American people who did not see the dangerous plans you had spawned for our great Republic. Over the decades of the last century, you positioned yourselves, quietly amassing your power.
Now, you see your wicked dreams of a century within your grasp. You took the Congress, and now you have taken the White House. Since January of 2009, you have set a wrecking ball to our nation. You have highjacked financial institutions, taken over private companies, and signed executive orders that fly in the face of the will of the people. You have determined that foreign, terrorist, enemy combatants of our country should have the same rights as American citizens and should be tried in our civilian courts. You have done things that previous administrations have not dared.
As for you, Mr. Obama, you have, to our utter disgust, shamefully treated our closest allies, but like a detestable serf, you have bowed to the enemies of America. Your treatment of Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu is despicable, and if nothing else does, that will certainly bring the curse of the Lord down upon your head. You are the enemy of America, Mr. Obama. You are drunk on the wine of Babylon–as are your fellow travelers in power–and your arrogance will be your downfall.
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who said after his attack on Pearl Harbor: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Now, you all have secured your most powerful victory to date–the takeover of our healthcare system. It is, so far, the most egregious decree you have enacted against our country, and against the will of the people. You intend to destroy our healthcare system, including the insurance companies. This is designed to “control the people,” as Mr. Dingell so honestly stated.
You are fully aware that the vast majority of Americans want nothing to do with this legislation. You don’t care, because yours is a dictatorship. You hold the will of the people in contempt, and your infernal media machine works night and day to demonize those of us who oppose you.
You are doing everything you can to outrage us and tear our country apart. You are ready to push amnesty for illegal aliens to dilute our vote. You are ready to ram through the lying, global warming, cap and trade legislation that will plunge us deeper into poverty, which is your goal. You want to destroy the prosperity of America, that is dwindling as it stands. You want to take away all of our freedom and make us slaves to you.
You are trying to set us up to give you an excuse to declare martial law and suspend elections. If you are unable to provoke us into committing rash acts against you, it is entirely possible that you, through your henchmen, will stage a Reichstag Fire, thereby giving you “cause” to shut us down and jail those of us who oppose you and your evil schemes.
Honest elections are your enemy, and you cannot allow them to happen. Your army of ACORN-type, useful idiots will still be there to cheat and steal all the votes they can, but we will not forget all that you’ve done, and we will fight you at the ballot box and in the realm of ideas.
Mr. Obama, we know that it will not be easy to defeat you. This week, Pastor James David Manning declared that you are the most powerful man in the history of the world. I believe he is right. The power that you have, which is a supernatural power, comes from your father the devil. As he is the father of lies, so too, there is no truth in you. You have no soul nor heart, and you are a man without a country.
You and your administration could be the ghouls from “Night of the Living Dead,” played out in the original black and white (No, you media mad hatters, that’s not a “racial” reference. It refers to Romero’s 1968 film). And, what a terrible picture you make, feeding on the lifeblood our our country!
Some have said this administration is incompetent or stupid; we know that is not the case. You are very cunning, and your ancient plans are firmly set. You may very well be the undoing of our nation. Nevertheless, we will resist you all the way. We will not surrender our country to your vile plans. You might conquer us in the end, but you will have the fight of your lives taking us down. Don’t doubt it for a minute.
In the meantime, we will stay wide awake–no more sleeping for this giant. We will continue talking to each other, making sure we’re all aware of your wicked moves. We will continue to organize and grow stronger. We will continue to fight your legislation.
In all of this, one thing separates us from you. We have hope–true hope. Our hope is in God. Our hope lies in eternity, and unless you trade your heart of stone for the heart of God, you will receive your reward in full here in this life, and an eternity of hell in the next. Your plans may ultimately succeed, and you will believe you have the victory, but it will be a false victory, temporal and short-lived. When you finally have the world under your cruel, iron fist, it will suddenly be snatched away from you in a single day, and your defeat will be absolute. You will not stand in the Day of the Lord. His fiery wrath will descend without warning and will consume you. Woe to you, kings of the earth.
LINK: http://www.dakotavoice.com/2010/03/an-open-letter-to-the-evil-tyrants-in-washington/
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 9 so far )Hope and Change…the Constitution
Posted on March 25, 2010. Filed under: Healthcare, Nanny State, Obama, Obama Corruption, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
Excellent article!! Obama, the Dems, and the liberal courts are ‘interpreting’ (twisting) the constitution to fit whatever they want, therefore we need to make sure the constitution is VERY CLEAR, so let’s call for a constitutional convention and set things in stone even more than they are!
Hope and Change … the Constitution
by Larry Elder
We live in a fundamentally different country from that which existed only days ago. The government now requires that every American purchase health insurance. The Constitution has been attacked, interpreted in a way beyond its original intent. Therefore, we must change it.
Ignoring the will of the majority of the American people, the discouraging experiences of countries with socialized medicine, and the already staggering amount of entitlement debt, President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats “reformed” health care. Once a nation under a Constitution that restricted government intrusion, we now want government to provide for our “needs” by calling them “rights.”
We now ask government to prop up failing businesses, make student loans, guarantee mortgages, build and maintain public housing, financially support state education from preschool though graduate school, fund private research, provide disaster relief and aid, pay “volunteers” and on and on.
Many in our nation happily submit to this bargain. They consider the Big Three entitlements — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — “rights,” their absence unimaginable in a modern “caring” society. It is out of the question to expect people, families and communities to plan for retirement. It is beyond reason to expect medical care, like any other commodity, to follow the laws of supply and demand — for prices and choices to allocate resources and for competition to drive down prices and improve quality. It is simply too much to expect the compassion, morality and spirituality of humankind to aid those unable to care for themselves.
We ignore history’s numerous examples of how good intentions produce bad results. Almost 50 years ago, another “transformative” president used government to launch a War on Poverty. But for many welfare recipients and their families, poverty became “structural.” People became dependent on government. After the government finally placed some restrictions on welfare, dependency declined. Much to the surprise of those who denounced welfare reform as cruel, people changed their behavior.
We ignore the experience of price controls. Government can dictate prices, but cannot dictate costs. Price controls result in rationing, drive producers out of business and cause lower quality and less innovation. America, because its citizens enjoyed greater economic freedom, built a superior health care system — which ObamaCare now threatens to dismantle.
Communism collapsed under the romantic but bankrupt notion of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive does damage to the incentive of both parties. European countries — “social justice” democracies — produce comparatively few private-sector jobs. Europe suffers from high taxes, choking union agreements that make it virtually impossible to fire unproductive or unneeded workers, and government policies that mandate paid vacations and other job-killing benefits.
Into this statist abyss we willingly jump.
Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern left the Senate after 18 years and bought a small business. It went under. He wrote:
“(I) wish I had known more firsthand about the concerns and problems of American businesspeople while I was a U.S. senator and later a presidential nominee. … Legislators and government regulators must more carefully consider the economic and management burdens we have been imposing on U.S. businesses. … Many businesses … simply can’t pass such costs on to their customers and remain competitive or profitable.”
President Obama, like many members of Congress, has little experience in or understanding of the private free-market economy. Obama never started a business, ran one or struggled to meet a payroll. He shows little respect for the hard, long hours people put in to build successful businesses that compete to provide goods and services to customers and that hire people. He believes that unequal outcomes are unjust and that government exists to right this wrong by “spreading the wealth.”
If this means telling doctors how to practice, so what? If this means that people will be less likely to improve themselves through education and training in order to get “good” jobs with benefits, so what? If this means we make employers less likely to hire for fear of fines should they fail to offer health insurance, so what? And if the “wealthy” invest less and create fewer jobs because of higher taxes and expensive regulations, so what?
Now what? As many as 39 state legislatures have taken or will take action to block the mandate. Thirteen state attorneys general immediately filed suit, arguing, among other things, that ObamaCare’s insurance mandate violates the Constitution’s commerce clause. Expect more states to sue. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court broadly interprets the commerce clause — wildly beyond the intent of the Founders — to allow just about anything.
So, the Constitution must be changed. It must be amended to make what was once clear absolutely, positively, unavoidably clear. Two-thirds of the states can call for a constitutional convention, where an amendment can be proposed to prohibit the forced purchase of health insurance. Three-fourths of the states could then ratify it.
Implausible? So was ObamaCare.
LINK: http://townhall.com/columnists/LarryElder/2010/03/25/hope_and_change__the_constitution
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )What Happens When Gov’t Takes Over – Politicians Smother Cities
Posted on March 17, 2010. Filed under: Nanny State, Obama, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
This is what happens when gov’t takes over!
Politicians Smother Cities
by John Stossel
I like my hometown, but I must admit that New York has problems: high taxes, noise, traffic. Forbes magazine just ranked my city the 16th most miserable in America. Ouch! Of course, that makes me wonder: What’s America’s most miserable city?
Cleveland, says Forbes. People call it “the Mistake by the Lake. ” Cleveland, once America’s sixth-largest city, has been going downhill for decades.
Why do some cities thrive while others decay? One reason is that some politicians smother their cities with the unintended consequences of their grand visions, while others have the good sense to limit government power.
In a state that already taxes its citizens heavily, Cleveland’s politicians drown businesses in taxes.
One result: Since 2000, 50,000 people have left the city. Half of Cleveland’s population has left since 1950.
But the politicians haven’t learned. They still think government is the key to revitalization. While Indianapolis privatized services, Cleveland prefers state capitalism. It owns and operates a big grocery store, the West Side Market. Typical of government, it’s open only four days a week, and two of those days it closes at 4 p.m. The city doesn’t maintain the market very well. Despite those cost savings, the city manages to lose money running the market. It also loses money running golf courses — $400,000 last year.
Another way that cities like Cleveland cause their own decline is through regulations that make building anything a long drawn-out affair. Cleveland has 22 different zoning designations and 673 pages of zoning guidelines.
By contrast, Houston has almost no zoning. This permits a mix of uses and styles that gives the city vitality. And the paperwork in Houston is so light that a business can get going in a single afternoon. In Cleveland, one politician bragged that he helped a business get though the red tape in “just 18 months.”
Randall O’Toole, author of “The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future”, says Houston does have rules, but they are more flexible and responsive to citizens’ needs because they are set by neighborhood associations based on protective covenants written by developers.
Politicians’ rules rarely change because the politicians don’t have their own money on the line. Cleveland’s managers thought that funding gleaming new sports stadiums (which subsidize wealthy team owners) and other prestigious attractions like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame would revitalize their city.
Urban policy expert Joel Kotkin says, “This whole tendency to put what are scarce public funds into conventions centers and … ephemeral projects is delusional.”
But politicians claim that stadiums increase the number of jobs.
Not so, says J.C. Bradbury, author of “The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed.” “There’s a huge consensus among economists that there is no economic development benefit to having these stadiums,” he says.
The stadiums do create jobs for construction workers and some vendors. But “it’s a case of the seen and the unseen,” Bradbury says, alluding to the 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat. “It’s very easy to see a new stadium going up. … But what you don’t see is that something else didn’t get built across town. … It’s just transferring from one place to the other.
“People don’t bury their entertainment dollars in a coffee can in their backyard and then dig it up when a baseball team comes to town. They switch it from something else.”
Stadiums are among the more foolish of politicians’ boondoggles. There are only 81 home baseball games a year and 41 basketball games. How does that sustain a neighborhood economy?
But the arrogance of city planners knows no end. Now Cleveland is spending taxpayers’ money on a medical convention center that they say will turn Cleveland into a “Disney World” for doctors. Well, Chicago’s $1 billion expansion of the country’s biggest convention center — McCormick Place — was unable to prevent an annual drop in conventions, and analysts say America already has 40 percent more convention space than it needs.
Politicians would be better stewards of their cities if they set simple rules and then just got out of the way. I won’t hold my breath.
LINK: http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2010/03/17/politicians_smother_cities
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