Since they ignore us, after you call them, report their answer, or NONanswer, to your hometown newspaper as a letter to the editor. Maybe if we shame them publicly enough times, they will stop ignorting us somewhat.
Good idea!!! Except most all of our media outlets are liberals. The chances of getting them into print is about zero to none!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Good idea!!! Except most all of our media outlets are liberals. The chances of getting them into print is about zero to none!
There are lots of conservative letters to the editor. When I worked for a liberal newspaper in the capital district, they would pride themselves on showing both sides of issues. Give it a try. Short letters have the best chance of being published, so if you only have time for a couple of paragraphs, that'll do.
In fact, if a newspaper doesn't publish the letter, wait a week or so, and send it to another newspaper. That way your hard work won't be for nothing.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Democratic Leaders Plan Secret Health Reform Deliberations
By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Despite their claims to the contrary, the way that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have handled the healthcare bill has been anything but transparent. And, if the left-wing blogosphere is to be believed, the two congressional leaders intend to keep the deliberations secret as they try to merge the House and Senate versions of the legislation into something that will pass both chambers.
The Talking Points Memo website reported Monday that Democrats in both the House and Senate are saying the process will likely follow the path of the House taking up the Senate-passed legislation, amending it and sending it back to the Senate, which will have to pass it again. "This process cuts out the Republicans," a House Democratic aide told TPM, indicating the congressional majority intended to make sure the Republican minority would "not have a motion to recommit opportunity."
It also, say those who are following the issue, allows Pelosi to avoid having to cut deals with problematic House Democrats like Michigan's Bart Stupak, who has promised to do what he can to scuttle the final bill if it provides for federal funding of abortions.
Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is saying much the same thing, according to David Dayen at FireDogLake, another prominent left-wing website.
Dayen reported that the powerful California Democrat told constituents he would be coming back to Washington Tuesday to begin negotiations with Senate leaders and the White House about what a final healthcare bill will look like—even though the House doesn't come back into session until January 12.
According to Waxman, the process for moving will not include the standard House/Senate conference committee, because the motions to select and instruct conferees in the Senate "would need 60 votes all over again." Instead, whatever agreements made could be packaged in an amendment to the bills passed by the House and Senate.
By blocking out the Republicans—not to mention House Democrats who object to what the Senate passed—Pelosi and Reid are setting up a protracted game of "ping-pong," in which the legislation goes back and forth from the Senate to the House and back to the Senate again. They may be able to prevail as far as the legislation goes, ultimately, but at enormous cost to their majorities. And that may be the biggest secret of all as far as the healthcare debate is concerned, or at least the one Pelosi and Reid are most concerned about.
Our senators, [Charles] Schumer and [Kirsten] Gillibrand, did not protect New York citizens in the rush to pass the health care (Obamacare) bill. As a result we will be paying higher taxes to support the sweetheart deal given to Nebraska [Dec. 30 Gazette]. The Senate health care bill expands dramatically the Medicaid program. In the new bill, families of four with incomes of just over $29,000 can apply for Medicaid. Medicaid expenses are shared between the federal government and the states. Now consider the fact that the 60th vote for the health care bill by Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson was the result of a bribe by Sen. [Harry] Reid. He was given a special deal where his state will not have to pay for the expanded Medicaid costs. The federal government will pay Nebraska’s share, which means New York, and other states will have to pay. How could Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand vote for this bill without protecting New York citizens from this added tax? It is not fair. Please write to our senators and insist that when the final health care bill is resolved with the House bill, they add New York to get the Nebraska compromise as well.
Our elected officials swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States when taking office, which, in part, says:
Quoted Text
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It does not give them the right to provide for the welfare of one of our UNITED States, at the cost, risk and intrusion of the remaining people.
Taxation without representation? (We're being taxed additionally, without representation in that jurisdiction). IMNAL, but seems to me this hasn't been considered yet?
… By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 44 mins ago
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama signaled to House Democratic leaders Wednesday that they'll have to drop their opposition to taxing high-end health insurance plans to pay for health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.
In a meeting at the White House, Obama expressed his preference for the insurance tax contained in the Senate's health overhaul bill, but largely opposed by House Democrats and organized labor, Democratic aides said. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.
House Democrats want to raise income taxes on high-income individuals instead and are reluctant to abandon that approach, while recognizing that they will have to bend on that and other issues so that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can maintain his fragile 60-vote majority support for the bill.
Pelosi and four committee chairmen met with the president Wednesday as they scrambled to resolve differences between sweeping bills passed by the House and Senate. The aim is to finalize legislation revamping the nation's health care system in time for Obama's State of the Union address early last month.
Despite the dispute over the payment approach, Pelosi, D-Calif., emerged from the meeting expressing optimism.
"We've had a very intense couple of days," Pelosi said. "After our leadership meeting this morning, our staff engaged with the Senate and the administration staff to review the legislation, suggest legislative language. I think we're very close to reconciliation."
Congressional staff members stayed at the White House into the evening to continue work and a conference call of the full House Democratic caucus was scheduled for Thursday.
tax 'high-end' health insurance plans------force youth to pay fines for not having health insurance??? Hitler youth coming up or civil disobedience?
health insurance IS NOT A RIGHT health care is a right and IS A CHOICE
GET OFF MY BACK....DONT TREAD ON ME........our legislators/presidents/legal eagles etc are American gladiators of sorts who HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT US... they march right back to their compounds they were 'lucky' to obtain and they feel 'lucky' to live off of us.......
this is America...Pioneering America,,,
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has begun negotiations with Senate Democratic leaders to expand his special Medicaid funding deal to all states or to allow states to opt out of the Medicaid expansion in 2017, his spokesman told POLITICO Thursday.
“There are serious discussions,” Nelson spokesman Jake Thompson said.
The negotiations follow weeks of scathing Republican criticism of the deal, which critics have termed the “Cornhusker Kickback,” arranged by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in order to help secure Nelson’s support for the health care reform bill.
Senate Democrats have also begun to blast the deal, saying it should be removed before the final legislation is passed. Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), and Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) have been critical of the deal.
Thompson said Nelson had always intended to push for other states to receive the same arrangement, which involved the federal government forever picking up Nebraska's share of the Medicaid expansion.................>>>>..................>>>>...............................http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0110/Nelson_in_serious_discussions_to_extend_deal.html
House Dems mount health assault By: Patrick O'Connor and Kasie Hunt January 12, 2010 11:34 PM EST
Furious with the Senate and desperate to regain a foothold in the health care debate, a wave of rank-and-file House Democrats assailed the Senate's tax on high-end health care plans Tuesday night, on the eve of a critical White House meeting with the president.
"There's a big problem with the way the administration wants to pay for this," said Ways and Means Commmittee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), whose panel authors the tax code.
"It's got a problem," said Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney, who collected 190 signatures for a letter he authored opposing the plan.
Fresh off the holiday recess, Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee held a contentious session, where several members expressed their frustration with the direction of the debate, members present said.
In a Tuesday night caucus meeting, Michigan Rep. Sander Levin and Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle both earned loud ovations after decrying the levy in front of their colleagues, people present said. The plan is deeply unpopular with the Democrats’ labor-union backers.
But underlying the complaints is the perception that, despite all the tough talk, most of these lawmakers will back the final bill. And that sense undercuts the leverage liberal Democrats hope to muster for these final negotiations.
As evidence, just look at the public option fight; the issue didn’t come up during a closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday night in the Capitol Visitor Center, members present said, even though it was all they could push for over the summer and well into the fall.
The White House has expanded a Wednesday meeting on health care with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to include the full Democratic leadership and relevant committee chairs, an official said. Expected are: Senators Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray, Dick Durbin, Chris Dodd and Tom Harkin, along with Rangel, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Reps. James Clyburn, Henry Waxman and George Miller.
House Democrats tired of hearing about how the Senate’s 60-vote majority is sacrosanct are now pushing President Barack Obama - like the speaker did last week - to believe their threat, that the House’s majority for health reform is just as endangered. The bill passed the House in November by a margin of 220 to 215, with 39 Democrats voting no. ...............>>>>................>>>>.................http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31438.html
BOSTON (AP) - A panicky White House and Democratic allies scrambled Sunday for a plan to salvage their hard-fought health care package in case a Republican wins Tuesday's Senate race in Massachusetts, which would enable the GOP to block further Senate action.
The likeliest scenario would require persuading House Democrats to accept a bill the Senate passed last month, despite their objections to several parts.
Aides consulted Sunday amid fears that Republican Scott Brown will defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy's seat. A Brown win would give the GOP 41 Senate votes, enough to filibuster and block final passage of the House-Senate compromise on health care now being crafted.
House Democrats, especially liberals, viewed those compromises as vital because they view the Senate-passed version as doing too little to help working families. Under the Senate-passed bill, 94 percent of Americans would be covered, compared to 96 percent in the version passed last year by the House.
The House plan would increase taxes on millionaires while the Senate plan would tax so-called Cadillac, high-cost health insurance plans enjoyed by many corporate executives as well as some union members.
When the House passed its version, members assumed it would be reconciled with the Senate bill and then sent back to both chambers for final approval, even if by the narrowest of margins.
A GOP win in Massachusetts on Tuesday would likely kill that plan, because Republicans could block Senate action on the reconciled bill.
The newly discussed fallback would require House Democrats to swallow hard and approve the Senate-passed bill without changes. President Barack Obama could sign it into law without another Senate vote needed.
House leaders would insist that the Senate make some changes later under a complex plan called "budget reconciliation." It requires only a simple majority, but it's unclear whether that could happen.
The plan is highly problematic. House liberals already are bristling over changes the Senate forced upon them earlier, and some may conclude that no bill is better than the Senate bill. Meanwhile, some moderate Democrats may abandon the health bill altogether after seeing a Republican win Kennedy's seat in strongly Democratic Massachusetts.
Republican activists openly scoffed at the notion of Democrats passing the highly contentious health package after a GOP takeover of Kennedy's Senate seat. But some Democrats said failure to pass a health bill will cripple their ability to tell voters this November that they accomplished anything with their control of the House, Senate and White House.
"The simplest way is the House route," a White House aide said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity because Democrats have not conceded the race to Brown.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to discuss the option, telling reporters that the administration expects Coakley to win.
If she does win, final passage of a House-Senate compromise on overhauling health care is not guaranteed but seems likely.
But even as Obama campaigned for Coakley in Boston Sunday, top aides furiously weighed options if she loses. They include:
_Acting before Brown is sworn in. Congressional and White House negotiators could try to reconcile the House and Senate bills quickly and pass the new version before Brown takes office. A firestorm of criticism would follow, but some Democrats say it would be better than having no bill.
_Seeking a Republican to cast the crucial 60th Senate vote. Some Democrats hope Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, might do this, but others seriously doubt it.
_Start over and pass a new, scaled back health bill using budget reconciliation, which requires a simple majority of 51 Senate votes. Several Senate aides said this was unlikely.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly ruled out a House vote on the Senate's version, and privately, officials have raised concerns about asking the rank and file to vote on legislation containing provisions that might prove problematic in the midterm elections.
As an example, the Senate-passed measure exempts self-insured health plans from many of the steps Democrats say are essential to curb insurance industry abuses. By one estimate, as many as 100 million individuals are covered under such plans.
It was unclear how the negotiators at the White House in recent days have resolved that issue.
Additionally, House Democrats in last week's talks pushed for additional subsidies for lower-income individuals and families who would be required to buy insurance under the measure that cleared the Senate. Several Democrats familiar with the talks said Obama had agreed with this point of view, and changes had been made accordingly. Associated Press writers David Espo and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.
CNN’s Cafferty Slams Obama for ‘Lie’ on Healthcare Talks Is CNN going rogue on President Obama?
Commentator Jack Cafferty — who has been outspoken in his praise of Obama in the past — launched a blistering attack on Obama and the Democrats over the closed-door negotiations to reconcile the House and Senate versions of healthcare reform legislation. “How dare they!” he began on a recent edition of CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “President Obama and Democratic leaders have decided to bypass a formal House and Senate conference committee in order to reconcile those two healthcare bills. Instead, White House and Democratic leaders will hold informal — that’s another word for secret — negotiations meant to shut Republicans and the public out of the process. “What a far cry from the election, when candidate Obama pledged to ‘broadcast healthcare negotiations on C-SPAN so the American people can see what the choices are.’ “President Obama hasn’t even made a token effort to keep his campaign promises of more openness and transparency in government. It was all just another lie that was told in order to get elected.” C-SPAN Chief Executive Brian Lamb sent a letter to House and Senate leaders on Jan. 5 asking that the negotiations be televised, saying healthcare reform “will affect the lives of every single American.” The request was rebuffed. “The Democrats insist this is all on the up and up,” Cafferty continued, “with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying ‘there’s never been a more open process for any legislation.’ Really? “This is the same Nancy Pelosi who, you may recall after becoming speaker in 2006, promised the Democrats would have the ‘most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.’ “Here’s hoping the voters remember some of this crap when the midterm elections roll around later this year.” The blast was a sharp turnaround for Cafferty, who in March rhapsodized about the “bright” and “terrific” Barack Obama in an interview with Media Bistro. Asked whether he thought the president could turn things around, Cafferty described himself as "hopeful" and gushed, "I like him a lot. I think he's a bright guy.” Then in a statement that now appears strikingly ironic, he added: “I like the fact that he's visible and that, you know, he's attempting to bring some transparency and some legitimacy and honesty to the office, which has been missing for a while."
Commentator Jack Cafferty — who has been outspoken in his praise of Obama in the past — launched a blistering attack on Obama and the Democrats over the closed-door negotiations to reconcile the House and Senate versions of healthcare reform legislation. “How dare they!” he began on a recent edition of CNN’s “The Situation Room.”
one can be liberal, lovey dovey all they want until the tap comes to their wallet.....go ahead and promote the giving all ya want until it's yours that you have to give or some one MAKES you give what THEY think is just........I dont think Mr.Cafferty wants to pay for those poor poor union/government workers....those poor pathetic slobs and their hard up situations....what a sorrow it is in America and the plight of the union workers....
maybe they should turn on their handlers and bite their untruthful hands and really get what they are paying for and get their soul-stealing monkey union bosses off their backs.........
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
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