Vast Write Wing - February 2011

[lwoolley]

Attack by CBS Host on Governor of Wisconsin, Falls Flat
By: Kyle Drennen

Friday, February 18, 2011 -- On Friday's CBS Early Show, co-host Chris Wragge attempted to portray Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's efforts to curb costly benefits for public sector unions in his state as purely political: "Your teachers union, which votes Democratic...hit very hard. Yet your police, state trooper, firemen unions, who all supported and endorsed you, did not get touched in any of this. Why is that?"

Walker's response quickly dismantled the premise of Wragge's attack: "Chris that actually is not true. There are 314 fire and police unions in the state. Four of them endorsed me. All the rest endorsed my opponent."

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=hdqG6USUaG

Wragge began his interrogation by urging the Governor to back down on his budget-cutting proposal: "Your Democratic state senators have all fled the state, schools have been closed, the state house, for all intents and purposes, is a mad house right now. And you've talked about potentially mobilizing the national guard. So has your position softened at all here?" Walker replied: "No. This is a bold political move, but it is a modest request of our employees ... . What we're asking for is still a lot less than what most of our average taxpayers are paying for health and pension benefits."

[lwoolley]

Jeromy <jeromy.fowler@wtxpatriots.org>

FYI Lynn,

Mitt Romney owns part of Dominoes Pizza which just got a 13 million dollar bailout from us tax payers to push to use more cheese from the dairy farmers union. Look it up

[lwoolley]

1. I remember the depression of 1930's. I do not remember ever seeing an overweight person. We did not need the gov. to tell us what to eat. Most of us were hungry at various times in our life. I remember eating fried squirrel.. After I became educated I never told my mother that the squirrel we ate l were a part of the rat family. I was afraid she might faint.2. How much of our Texas state debt could we pay off if each family gave five bucks just for that specific fund? Of course if we did do something like that we would have to have non political people in charge of the funds. I do not trust politicians with money. However I am very embarrased and worried that we are so much in debt and would do whatever I could do to help us get out of this crises. Do you think other Texans would go for something like this? I would even be willing to donate 25 or maybe 50 dollars to this kind of an emergency fund. We donate to every other good cause. Why not to our precious state of Texas? Keep up the good work. 81 and counting, Bonnie, Midland, Texas

[lwoolley]

Lynn, heard this breaking news just now! Apparently at the suggestion of VP Biden in an effort to quell the cartel violence coming out of Mexico, Obama has ordered 25,000 cattle guards moved to the border!

Jim
Temple

[lwoolley]

Lynn-
Your callers are great. Fantastic show. If you could get Ben from cutting people off that disagree with him it would help. Lol.
Round Rock Ron

[lwoolley]

Dave Stoner (cool name) <ddstone55@yahoo.com>

We were told last week that in couple of days that a bill was being past to protect a lizard in New Mexico an Wes Texas. Someone got the bill post-poned until we had a chance to look at it. Tonight we are having a meeting with Rep Mike Conaway an State Senator Uristi, If past this bill is designed to shut us down to save a stupid lizard.

[lwoolley]

It is imperative that you contact your state Senators and ask them to VOTE AGAINST CSSJR 1 which calls for a Constitutional Convention (Con Con). CSSJR 1 by Senator Ogden could come up for a vote on the Senate floor beginning tomorrow, Wednesday, February 23.

We live in very precarious times in a country that is very poorly educated. The biggest percentage of the people in our society have come through the public schools where they have been educationally “abused” because they have not read, studied, and learned the great pieces of literature and history that our Founding Fathers knew.

Our forefathers “cut their teeth” on the Bible; they studied it in school and at home. The Constitution is an inspired document that came from people whose lives were centered upon Biblical virtue, Truth, and principles. Even though the Founding Fathers did not live perfect lives by any means, Biblical principles still permeated their books, their culture, their written documents, their social communications, their journals, and their private exchanges. When it came time for these Founding Fathers to draft the Constitution, they infused the best of their sum knowledge and inspiration into this document. That is why the Constitution has stood the test of time and has guided our nation amazingly well for 224 years!

During the early American years in our country, a man’s word was a sacred trust; and many contracts during this period of history were settled with a simple handshake. Think how far our culture has slipped since then. Now many of our elected officials cannot be trusted to tell the truth, and certainly the news media is full of deceit.

Unfortunately, we do not have statesmen like the Founding Fathers any more because of the corrupt culture in which we live. Look at the person who sits in the White House. The American public elected him. That shows how bereft our nation is of substantive discernment.

Obama holds the power whether we like to admit it or not. What he could do to destroy any positive outcome of a Con Con makes me cringe. With Obama in control of our country, the people who have now infiltrated every government agency, the people with whom he has surrounded himself, the organizations who live off his favor, the liberal media who do his bidding, and the powerful people who support him (George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, etc.) are enough to convince me that this is not the time to take a chance on a Con Con.

Think what we could risk as a nation if Obama’s people gained control of the Con Con and completely rewrote the contents of the Constitution! The troubling thing is that there are no laws that would prevent this from happening. Nothing really dictates how the delegates to the Con Con would be elected nor is there a legal way to hold them accountable for their actions. Nothing would limit the Con Con to just the issue of the Balanced Budget Amendment; and with the wrong person at the podium of the Con Con, almost anything in the Constitution could be changed right before our eyes.

Yes, I am encouraged by the Nov. 2010 elections; and I value highly the work of the tea partiers; I am one of them. However, we have a long way to go in this country before we take back the Presidency and the U. S. Senate.

Our focus right now should be on finding good candidates, getting them ready to run, building networks to help them get elected, and on terribly important issues right here in our own state. We have a huge redistricting fight coming; we need to pass good immigration bills; we need to get the sanctity of life bills passed in this session; we have to deal with the budget crisis including school finance; we must support the elected Texas State Board of Education to protect the education reform that is being implemented into our public schools because of the hard work of the conservatives on the Board; and we have to stop the expansion of gambling by defeating the bills that are coming down the pipeline.

My head is spinning with so many important battles that we must win, and we need the “newbies” to be learning and growing during this time in their knowledge of politics so that they will be fully equipped for the 2012 battles that are sure to come. Thank God for each and every one of the “newbies”; they are now focused and engaged.

A Balanced Budget Amendment going through the normal Constitutional approval process is a possibility; but if we conservatives do our “jobs” right, we can throw out the candidates and elected officials who want to tax and spend and those who are bereft of conservative values. We could make a Balanced Budget Amendment an unnecessary process.

ACTION STEP:

Contact your Texas Legislators TODAY and say “No to a Con Con.” The vote on the bill is to come up on the floor tomorrow, 2.23.11

Blessings,


Donna Garner
wgarner1@hot.rr.com

[lwoolley]

Reminder: I have not heard anything since 2.7.11, but I presume Congressman Bill Flores is still coming to the townhall meetings according to this schedule. It will be fun to visit with him and see what his perspective on Washington, D. C. is now after having been in Congress for a few months. -- Donna Garner

From: Edward Getterman [mailto:eegetterman@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 4:09 PM
Subject: Congressman Flores Feb. 2011 District Town Hall Tour

I'm pleased to announce that, as he promised he would throughout the campaign, Rep. Flores will be holding his first round of town hall meetings at the end of this month. We hope you'll all be able to attend. Please feel free to tell all your friends.

Feb. 23
6:15 pm
Knox Hall
100 Texas Ranger Trail
Waco, TX 76701


Feb. 24.
8:30 am
City Hall
116 West Bridge Street
Granbury, TX 76048

6:15 pm
Cleburne Conference Center
1501 West Henderson St.
Cleburne, TX 76033


Feb. 25
6:15 pm
Sam Rayburn Middle School Cafeteria
1048 North Earl Rudder Freeway
Bryan, TX 77802

[lwoolley]

OBAMACARE IN WSJ:

May it please your highness……
I had just finished reading the column and was about to email you…….with a question. I’d like to know how many years are required for an old goat like me to recover all that has been paid in to Social Security by me and for me (including interest earned). This question has been triggered by my belief that Social Security has never been anything more or less than a Ponzi scheme, that there is no “lockbox” account with my name on it, and a speech by Marvin Leath about 27 years ago to the Central Texas Chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs in which he declared that a retiree would receive ALL of his “lockbox” benefits in fewer than five years after retirement. Can you develop this information?

Hide and watch. This Social Security chicken has already come home to roost and Medicare, Medicaid, and ObamaCare are circling in a hold pattern.

May we all live in interesting times.
USL

[lwoolley]

In view of the radicals in Congress and the WH howling in protest over the proposed budget cuts, Coburn’s remarks should provide a little focus on the situation. Those howling about the cuts need to be sent home in 2012 so our great-great grandchildren aren’t paying for these boon doggles, paybacks, and tax payer funded graft.

PLEASE READ, UNDERSTAND AND SUPPORT WHAT SEN TOM COBURN IS SAYING THROUGH

THE MESSAGE BELOW.

Gary Taylor


Salado TX 76571




Sen. Tom Coburn is an MD (general practitioner) and Senator from Oklahoma. And recognized as 'the conscience' of the US Senate. He is well respected on both 'sides of the aisle' & probably one of the few senators to actually read these 'bail-out' bills. (Google him for his background.)

----------------------------------------------------------------

"We are going in exactly the wrong direction. We ought to be standing on the principles that made this country great. There ought to be a review of every program in the Federal Government that is not effective, that is not efficient, that is wasteful or fraudulent, and we ought to get rid of it right now. We ought to say, you're gone, to be able to pay for a real stimulus plan that might, in fact, have some impact.

I would be remiss if I didn't remind everybody that next week we are going to hear from the Obama administration wanting another $500 billion. Outside of this, they are going to want another $500 billion to handle the banking system. Still not fixing the real disease - the pneumonia - we are going to treat the fever or treat the cough, but we are not going to treat the real disease.

Until we treat the real disease, this is pure waste. It is worse than pure waste. It is morally reprehensible, because it steals the future of the next two generations.

I am going to wind up here and finish, but I wanted to spend some time to make sure the American people know what is in this bill. I think once they know what is in this bill, they would reject it out of hand.

Let me read for my colleagues some of the things that are in this bill...

The biggest earmark in history is in this bill. There is $2 billion in this bill to build a coal plant with zero emissions. That would be great, maybe, if we had the technology, but the greatest brains in the world sitting at MIT say we don't have the technology yet to do that. Why would we build a $2 billion power plant we don't have the technology for that we know will come back and ask for another $2 billion and another $2 billion and another $2 billion when we could build a demonstration project that might cost $150 million or $200 million? There is nothing wrong with having coal-fired plants that don't produce pollution; I am not against that. Even the Washington Post said the technology isn't there. It is a boondoggle. Why would we do that?


Tonight, we eliminated a $246 million payback for the large movie studios in Hollywood.


We are going to spend 88 Million to study whether we ought to buy a new ice breaker for the Coast Guard. You know what. The Coast Guard needs a new ice breaker. Why do we need to spend $88 million? They have two ice breakers now that they could retrofit and fix and come up with equivalent to what they needed to and not spend the $1 billion they are going to come back and ask for, for another ice breaker, so why would we spend $88 million studying that?

We are going to spend $448 million to build the Department of Homeland Security a new building. We have $1.3 trillion worth of empty buildings right now, and because it has been blocked in Congress we can't sell them, we can't raze them, we can't do anything, but we are going to spend money on a new building here in Washington .


We are going to spend another $248 million for new furniture for that building; a quarter of a billion dollars for new furniture. What about the furniture the Department of Homeland Security has now? These are tough times. Should we be buying new furniture? How about using what we have? That is what a family would do. They would use what they have. They wouldn't go out and spend $248 million on furniture.


How about buying $600 million worth of hybrid vehicles? Do you know what I would say? Right now times are tough; I would rather Americans have new cars than Federal employees have new cars. What is wrong with the cars we have? Dumping $600 million worth of used vehicles on the used vehicle market right now is one of the worst things we could do. Instead, we are going to spend $600 million buying new cars for Federal employees..

There is $400 million in here to prevent STDs .. I have a lot of experience with that. I have delivered 4,000 babies. We don't need to spend $400 million on STDs. What we need to do is properly educate about the infection rates and the effectiveness of methods of prevention. That doesn't take a penny more. You can write that on one piece of paper and teach every kid in this country, but we don't need to spend $400 million on it. It is not a priority.

How about $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs? That might even be somewhat stimulative. New sewers. That might create jobs.

How about $150 million for a Smithsonian museum? Tell me how that helps get us out of a recession. Tell me how that is a priority. Would the average American think that is a priority that we ought to be mortgaging our kids' future to spend another $150 million at the Smithsonian?

How about $1 billion for the 2010 census? So everybody knows, the census is so poorly managed that the census this year is going to cost twice what it cost 10 years ago, and we wasted $800 million on a contract because it was no-bid that didn't perform. Nobody got fired, no competitive bidding, and we blew $800 million.

We have $75 million for smoking cessation activities, which probably is a great idea, but we just passed a bill-the SCHIP bill - that we need to get 21 million more Americans smoking (and paying tobacco taxes) to be able to pay for that bill. That doesn't make sense.


How about $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges? Since when is a community college in my State a recipient of Federal largesse? Is that our responsibility? I mean, did we talk with Dell and Hewlett-Packard and say, How do we make you all do better? Is there not a market force that could make that better?

Will we actually buy on a true competitive bid? No, because there is nothing that requires competitive bidding in anything in this bill. There is nothing that requires it. It is one of the things President Obama said he was going to mandate the Federal Government, but there is no competitive bidding in this bill at all.


We have $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas. Well, that will put 10 or 15 people to work. Is that a priority for us right now?

There is $6 billion to turn Federal buildings into green buildings. That is a priority, versus somebody getting a job outside of Washington, a job that actually produces something, that actually increases wealth?

How about $500 million for State and local fire stations? Where do you find in the Constitution us paying for local fire stations within our (the federal government) realm of prerogatives? None of it is competitively bid - not a grant program.

Next is $1.2 billion for youth activities. Who does that employ? What does that mean?


How about $88 million for renovating the public health service building? You know, if we could sell half of the $1.3 trillion worth of properties we have, we could take care of every Federal building requirement and backlog we have.


Then there's $412 million for CDC buildings and property. We spent billions on a new center and headquarters for CDC. Is that a priority? Building another Government building instead of - if we are going to spend $412 million on building buildings, let's build one that will produce something, one that will give us something.


How about $850 million for that most "efficient'' Amtrak that hasn't made any money since 1976 and continues to receive $2 billion or $3 billion a year in subsidies?

Here is one of my favorites: $75 million to construct a new "security training'' facility for State Department security officers. We have four other facilities already available to train them. But it is not theirs. They want theirs. By the way, it is going to be in West Virginia ... I wonder how that got there? So we are going to build a new training facility that duplicates four others that we already have that could easily do what we need to do. But because we have a stimulus package, we are going to add in oink pork.

How about $200 million in funding for a lease - not buying, but a lease of alternative energy vehicles on military installations?


We are going to bail out the States on Medicaid. Total all of the health programs in this, and we are going to transfer $150 billion out of the private sector and we are going to move it to the Federal Government. You talk about back dooring national health care! Henry Waxman has to be smiling big today. He wants a single-payer Government-run health care system. We are going to move another $150 billion to the Federal Government from the private sector.

We are going to eliminate fees on loans from the Small Business Administration. You know what that does? That pushes productive capital to unproductive projects. It is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Then there is $160 million to the Job Corps Program - But not for 20 jobs and not to put more people in the Job Corps but to construct or repair buildings.


We are going to spend $524 million for information technology upgrades that the Appropriations Committee claims will create 388 jobs. If you do the math on that, that is $1.5 million a job. Don't you love the efficiency of Washington thinking?


We are going to create $79 billion in additional money for the States, a "slush fund,'' to bail out States and provide millions of dollars for education costs. How many of you think that will ever go away? Once the State education programs get $79 billion over 2 years, do you think that will ever go away? They cry and hue of taking our money away - even though it was a stimulus and supposed to be limited, it will never go away. So we will continue putting that forward until our kids have grandkids of their own.


There is about $47 billion for a variety of energy programs that are primarily focused on renewable energy. I am fine with spending that. But we ought to get something for it. There ought to be measurable results. There are none. It is pie in the sky, saying we will throw some money at it.

Let me conclude by saying we are at a seminal moment in our country. We will either start living within the confines of realism and responsibility or we will blow it and we will create the downfall of the greatest Nation that ever lived. This bill is the start of that downfall. To abandon a market-oriented society and transfer it to a Soviet-style, government-centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated program, that is the thing that will put the stake in the heart of freedom in this country.


I hope the American people know what is in this bill. I am doing everything I can to make sure they know. But more important, I hope somebody is listening who will treat the pneumonia we are faced with today, which is the housing and mortgage markets. It doesn't matter how much money we spend in this bill. It is doomed to failure unless we fix that problem first. Failing that, we will go down in history as the Congress that undermined the future and vitality of this country. Let it not be so."



http://coburn.senate.gov/public/

[lwoolley]

Mr Woolley ,
When I was 16 or 17 I bagged groceries in Wisconsin & I had to pay union dues to work at a grocery store for minimum wage. Did make no sense to me. My Dad's a old retired union worker. I haven't talk to him about this mess. He'll get upset with me cuz we won't agree. Robert is something else. Have a good day.
Ken

[lwoolley]

Greetings all!

I certainly don’t have any insider information here and do not claim to be a well-researched expert on the long or short term effects of the Affordable Health Care Act. What I can observe and be confident of is that health-care consolidation was going on long before any act was even contemplated by Congress. King’s Daughters hospital has been losing money for years working under the old business model. The same applied to Hillcrest hospital in Waco. Their consolidation into Scott & White was a given about four years ago.

Actually since the Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Balanced Budget Act back in the mid-90s, the health-care industry has been steadily hurting more and more, and that was the intent. I have several physician clients who are receiving about the same income they were ten years ago. After even the mild inflation we have had along the way that amounts to a steady decrease in their earning power. Since my wife is employed by Scott & White she too has seen the steady erosion of money.

If you look at the sources of income for the medical industry in the United States, you will find that Medicare is the huge elephant in the room. We spend multiples of what other nations do on health care, but the vast majority of that is expended in the last two years of life on generally very elderly people who are actively dying. As Medicare has been tightened down, the money machine that has turned many physicians into mega-millionaires is winding down.

As efforts to cut the federal deficit have been put in place, Medicare has been rightfully a prime target. Hospitals have to take Medicare if they are to stay in business, but if a hospital takes Medicare it must also accept uninsured patients. Those uninsured patients have been growing in both percentages and cost in the recession. At the same time with some pretty powerful adverse selection going on in the insurance pools insurance companies are cutting payments. Adverse selection for those of you not familiar with insurance theory means in this case that when people lose their group medical insurance either because of a lay-off or because the employer dropped the coverage, they are enabled to retain the coverage at their own cost under COBRA. People who are sick are retaining the coverage and people who are not sick are dropping it. That results in a larger percentage of the insured pool being less healthy. That raises the cost to the insurance company a lot.

Whether or not one likes any or all of the Health Care Act, blaming a process and a trend that was going strong before the Act was even considered on the Act is not rational. It makes about as much sense as Al Gore citing CO2 levels as a cause of global warming. If you examine the facts he presents, you can see that the warming occurred first, then the CO2 levels went up. In this case the health care industry consolidation occurred first then the Health Care Act was passed.

Jeff

[lwoolley]

Controversy has arisen about Sarah palin's truthfulness w/ regard to the so called 'bridge -to-nowhere" First of all IT WASN'T A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE.It was intended to stimulate use of an unused island by linking it to the more populous island of Ketchikan.

Thusly, real life is far more complicated than headlines...as usual, and it reveals that ,far from a John Kerry-type mega flip -flop; Palin at 1st promoted the bridge and later canceled on it when it became evident that cost overruns would make it unprofitable.So take your choice .You can designate her as 'wasteful" for contemplating the project but as a tax-fighter for nixing the project when the prospective cost became too bloated

From wash. post ,Sept 2,2008:

After becoming governor, Palin became a critic of Young and the Stevenses. She endorsed Young's opponent in a Republican primary last week that is still too close to call, and last year she demanded Ben Stevens's resignation as Alaska's member of the Republican National Committee. She has also criticized Ted Stevens.

In addition, Palin has reversed course on at least one major earmark: After initially supporting the $223 million bridge, which was to connect the town of Ketchikan with a remote island, she reversed course last year and canceled the project because of cost overruns. Critics have dubbed the project the "Bridge to Nowhere."

But her administration remains eager for many other earmarks.

In February, Palin's office sent Sen. Stevens a 70-page memo outlining almost $200 million worth of new funding requests for Alaska.
Al, Lemon Grove

[lwoolley]

Hans Hartung <hhartung@hot.rr.com>

You mentioned that impeachment is a very difficult process to perform. I seem to recollect that when Clinton was being impeached, we had all these Republicans just chomping at the bit to impeach Clinton. They had, what over 50 impeachable offenses, they knocked it down to 4 and then when the impeachment was over with, Clinton got off scott free. Oh he bragged on how he was impeached and the Congress and Senate did nothing. So, the process has become a joke. Obama will not be impeached because he's got way too many freinds. If he could have it his way, he'd be King Obama, and we would be his servants.

[lwoolley]

Medicare is taken care of by a constitutional TAX


Obamacare is not a TAX - it has PENALTIES if you do not have Healthcare







Ken Botsch
Earthmovers Supply, Inc.
115 Tradesmen Drive
Hutto, TX 78634
www.earthmoverssupply.com