Purpose: Vote $26 billion to prevent layoffs of state, municipal and county employees whose [...]]]> Pat Buchanan, who we don’t always agree with, wrote an excellent piece  in Human Events that sheds the right kind of light on why the government voted yet more money to “save teachers’ jobs.”  Here’s the main point, but please read it all.

Purpose: Vote $26 billion to prevent layoffs of state, municipal and county employees whose own governments had decided they had to be let go if they were to meet their constitutional duty to balance their books.

Workers their own governments thought expendable, Congress decided were so essential, it borrowed another 26 thousand million dollars from China to keep them on state and local payrolls.

And anyone who thinks this Obama party is ever going to cull the armies of tens of millions of government workers or scores of millions of government beneficiaries to put America’s house in order is deluding himself.

There’s more, particularly about the real reasons for this “emergency” legislation, but the article makes it plain why this current bunch in Washington MUST be removed in November.

By the way, the bill in question is  HR 1586. One proposed method of covering the $26 billion is to take money from food stamp programs and some scientific research.  This might slow the bill up, but it’s likely to pass.   We have a hope, irrational though it may be, that Joe Donnelly will vote no this time.

The problem with this bill and others like it is that it carries a requirement that the states maintain their level of spending after the money runs out.  Which they may or may not be able to do under their own constitutions — not to mention the fact that the states can’t just print money.  They’re set up for failure in the future, when layoffs now would be far less painful.  The Federal government is simply prolonging the pain by continuing to prop up both private and public sector institutions that should be allowed to fail, or at least, shrink.  The way they’re doing it now, just when we see the light at the end of the tunnel, the federal government makes the tunnel longer.

This is the first Elkhart Review Podcast in over a year.  Short sweet unadorned, it’s more of an experiment.  We’re calling this, for lack of better phrase, a “Davecast.” Where our previous episodes were highly produced, the Davecast is intended to be barebones.  Maybe we’ll pretty it up later.  Maybe [...]]]>

You can damn well trust Dave!

This is the first Elkhart Review Podcast in over a year.  Short sweet unadorned, it’s more of an experiment.  We’re calling this, for lack of better phrase, a “Davecast.” Where our previous episodes were highly produced, the Davecast is intended to be barebones.  Maybe we’ll pretty it up later.  Maybe we won’t.

This episode, Dave reviews the healthcare vote.  More to come on this, but you already know where Dave stands.

E-truth carried this picture today.  It shows Senators Reid and Durbin arriving at a press conference with Gina Owens, whose daughter died after losing her job and health care.

Ms. Owens’ story is sad, but I am [...]]]>

Senators Reid and Durbin with their victim Gina Owens. Scurrying in to camera view is the hairline of Chuck Schumer.

E-truth carried this picture today.  It shows Senators Reid and Durbin arriving at a press conference with Gina Owens, whose daughter died after losing her job and health care.

Ms. Owens’ story is sad, but I am not convinced it is typical in any sense.  And the outcome was probably unnecessary.  There is help for people in desperate circumstances.

What is equally troublesome is that this picture illustrates the gap between the left and the right in this country.  It is the gap between irrationality and rationality.  It is the gap between emotion and reality.  And it is a gap between a party that habitually parades the sick and indigent around for political purposes and one that is aware that the real abusers are the people who create these sickening and insincere displays. Obamacare will not change things for people like Ms. Owens.  Reid knows it, Durbin knows it.  Yet they lie to poor souls like Gina Owens in order to use them.  To make them a star for a half hour or so, in order to advance a dictatorial bill that ultimately has very little to do with health.

Ms. Owens’ moment in the sunlight will be over when she no longer serves the Senators’ purpose.  We wish more who have had trouble with the health care system would realize it is the very Senators  they turn to for help who have brought them to this point.

Democrat House Health Plan, as charted by the GOP.

Roll Call Reports that Democrats are preventing Republican House Members from sending their constituents a mailing that features the chart at right, which illustrates the complexity of the House Dems’ health care plan. Democrats claim it is inaccurate.

Roll Call says, “House Republicans are crying foul and [...]]]>

Democrat House Health Plan, as charted by the GOP.

Roll Call Reports that Democrats are preventing Republican House Members from sending their constituents a mailing that features the chart at right, which illustrates the complexity of the House Dems’ health care plan. Democrats claim it is inaccurate.

Roll Call says, “House Republicans are crying foul and claiming that the Democrats are using their majority to prevent GOP Members from communicating with their constituents.”

Democrats are apparently invoking some franking privilege rules that prevent members from franking mail that is partisan in nature.

Our question is, if the House bill is so huge and isn’t even finished and members haven’t read it yet, how can either side make any claims about accuracy? Our suspicion is that the answer may be somewhere in the middle, and that, yes, this is pretty accurate, but not totally.  And that Democrats really don’t want the public to know what they’re in for with the plan (which also explains the President’s rush to get it through in less than two weeks.)

When Hillarycare reared its ugly head back in the Clinton years, one of the things that killed it, in our opinion, was a very similar chart that appeared in the Wall Street Journal initially and was widely distributed.  Without discussing the rightness or wrongness of the concept, it simply laid out, in horrifying detail, the morass of government agencies that would have something to say about individuals’ health care.

So naturally, the GOP wants to use the same technique again. Bureacracy is not only scary, it’s inefficient and well, stupid.   Americans don’t respond well to stupidity, especially when their lives are in the balance.  This chart also makes the case that Obamacare is not about health care as much as it is about putting as much government around our necks as possible.  Not something we’d want to shout from the rooftops either, if it were our idea.

Congressman Henry Waxman is, in our book, the funniest looking man in Congress, which probably accounts for why he’s such a bully. The Beverly Hills Democrat never misses a chance to hold a hearing where he can haul the unsuspecting in for a personal [...]]]>

Rep. Henry Waxman of California (left) and his possible twin, Batboy.

Congressman Henry Waxman is, in our book, the funniest looking man in Congress, which probably accounts for why he’s such a bully. The Beverly Hills Democrat never misses a chance to hold a hearing where he can haul the unsuspecting in for a personal inquisition and tongue-lashing.

But recently, we noticed a distinct family resemblance between Waxman and Batboy, the strange creature discovered by the late-great publication Weekly World News. Tell us what YOU think? Separated at birth or just a strange unexplained coincidence?