Against our will, and over a cliff

From Reclaim America on Facebook

Iraq Veterans for Congress PAC Endorses Three Arkansas Republicans

by Dr. Bill Smith : Fox News calls the Iraq Veterans for Congress Political Action Committee “The driving force behind a nationwide coalition of veterans vowing to shake up Capitol Hill.” The number of veterans in Congress have declined over the years – note the below bar graph:

As a result, Congress has over time lost touch with one of its primary Constitutionals mandates to provide oversight, funding and support for the US Military forces. Over recent years, Congress has turned to focused on expanding domestic programs and ignored much of the threat to American from other countries. This has precipitated numerous events and situations like the 9-11 attack on the United States, nations seeking to develop nuclear weapons with no fear of the consequences, modern day pirates raiding U.S. ships on the high seas and more. Leaders of Congress and its members have increasingly disparaged members and branches of the military and its commanding officers. Even today’s Coast Guard has been moved under the Homeland Security Department and is presently being downsized when we have greater threats to our coastal cities and invasion of our coasts by terrorists and other.

The Iraq Veterans for Congress PAC, or IVC, is seeking to make a difference. IVC is a federally registered political action committee supporting the congressional campaigns of conservative Republican Iraq Veterans. They seek determined conservative Republican veterans to become a voice for our troops, military families, and hardworking patriotic Americans who believe that our country, our Constitution and our way of life are worth fighting for.

They began their first year of operation in 2008 and helped elect two rock-solid conservatives and battle-tested Iraq Veterans to be elected to Congress: Reps. Mike Coffman (R-CO) and Duncan Hunter Jr. (R-CA). They have continued their funding efforts and anticipate more victories in 2010.

IVC likes to target Liberal Democrats who are the biggest threat to America’s safety and security. And they have remained in constant contact with fellow Veterans across the country and looked for the best and strongest candidates for the most competitive and winnable races. Once endorsed, the PAC helps to fund the candidates.

Presently, Iraq Veterans for Congress, has endorsed and is supporting 35 Republican veterans candidates for the House of Representatives and 1 candidate for the US Senate for 2010. Out of the 35 people endorsed for Congress, three of the veterans are in Arkansas. Arkansas has the largest number of endorsed Veteran candidates and at present, is the only state with an endorsed candidate for US Senate. The endorsed candidates from Arkansas are:

Tim Griffin For Arkansas’s 2nd District U.S. Army Veteran

Rick Crawford For Arkansas’ 1st District U.S. Army Veteran

Conrad Reynolds For U.S. Senator from Arkansas U.S. Army Veteran

Without a Vote?

The Washington Post: “Pelosi may try to pass health 
bill without vote.”

Congressmen vacation on your dime!

Twenty Congressmen and Congresswomen, under the watchful eye of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), took so many staff and family members with them to the Global Warming Climate Change conference in Copenhagen last month.  The delegation, which included Democrats and Republicans, was chosen by Pelosi.

Though she promised to “drain the swamp” in the US House, Pelosi refuses to answer any questions regarding the costs of the trip.  Costs that you, the American taxpayer, will bear.

Jack Cafferty on CNN condemns Pelosi on the liberal network, referring to her as a “horrible woman”.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) wants you!

I received this letter from Michele Bachmann this morning, asking me to invite all my friends to participate in the call this evening.  So here it is friends. Rep. Bachmann wants you and me, along with all the rest of concerned taxpayers in America to help her stop all federal funding of ACORN!

Join us in our effort to keep ACORN from receiving another taxpayer dollar!

September 17, 2009 Dear Friends: I want to invite you to join me in a conference call tonight for an update on ACORN: Thursday, September 17, 2009 8:10 pm to 9:10 pm ET 7:10 pm to 8:10 pm CT Call in # 877-269-7289 PIN: 13533# The past week has seen a flurry of activity around this scandal-ridden organization. With headlines of more voter registration fraud arrests in Florida and undercover videos of ACORN employees giving advice to pimps and prostitutes in city after city, ACORN had a very bad week. Bad enough that the U.S. Census Bureau finally headed our calls to sever its ties with ACORN! I’ve been telling them for months that ACORN has not earned the public trust and should not be a partner in the 2010 Census. After these headlines, they finally agree! But, there’s more work to be done! ACORN could be eligible for as much as $10 billion in federal funds and that’s simply unacceptable! We need no more evidence that the organization is either unable or unwilling to live up to the ethical standards that the American people demand. No one has a right to your tax dollars — especially not an organization with ACORN’s track record! I’m continuing my fight to protect the American taxpayer. In fact, I’ve asked the IRS to revoke their tax-exempt status and I’ve asked the Department of Housing and Urban Development to bar them from any federal funds. Please invite your friends to join our call, sign my online petition and join our fight to stop the flow of your tax dollars to ACORN! Visit my Online Action Center Here! Thank you, and God bless, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann

A House of Hypocrisy

by Representative John Carter (R-TX)

( WASHINGTON , DC ) – The 111th Congress could go down in American history as the “House of Hypocrisy” after Democrats today followed months of ignoring potentially criminal tax evasion by U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), while scheduling an immediate vote against Republican Congressman Joe Wilson for an inappropriate verbal outburst during last week’s Joint Session of Congress.

“We are witnessing perhaps the most blatant display of moral and legal hypocrisy in the history of this body,” says House Republican Conference Secretary John R. Carter of Texas . “Speaker Pelosi and President Obama have allowed Democrats at the highest levels of the federal government to violate the tax laws of the United States with impunity, blocked all attempts by this body to hold them accountable, and have made a mockery of our system of justice and the Rule of Law. Yet they find it important to hold a vote against a Republican for two words blurted out during a speech by the President, for which he has already apologized. We are witnessing truly malignant partisanship of historic proportion.” Carter has joined other Members of the House in support of Wilson ’s apology being adequate to address any breach in House rules for his comment.

Carter introduced a privileged resolution earlier this year calling for removal of Rangel as Chairman of House Ways and Means, the House committee that oversees the IRS, while Rangel remained under investigation for tax violations, among other ethics charges. The resolution was blocked from consideration or debate on a party line vote by Democrats, in spite of the removal being supported by the editorial boards of the New York Times, Washington Post, and numerous other major daily newspapers historically favorable to Democrats.

Carter also introduced the Rangel Rule legislation that would provide the same waiver of penalties and interest on back taxes for all Americans as that enjoyed by Rangel. That measure has also been blocked by House Democrats.

“It is becoming increasingly apparent that the only way this House will restore the Rule of Law is for the American people to overthrow it,” says Carter. “It is time for a revolution at the polls in November 2010.”

They can’t handle the truth

by Sandy Rios at Townhall.com

While Congressman Joe Wilson from South Carolina gets harangued by his colleagues (Republican and Democrat alike) for yelling “That’s a lie!” During President Obama’s 38th healthcare speech, much of America is cheering him on—or are at least sympathetic to the legislator and the frustration that led to his outburst.

In that same spirit of profound indignation, thousands have been showing up at tea parties and town halls across the nation, creating their own passionate slogans and making impassioned speeches to legislators who “can’t handle the truth” because they’re saturated in a culture that has made obfuscation of truth routine behavior.

For years the Senate has sworn in judicial candidates with an oath to tell the truth while—all too frequently—proceeding themselves to smear the candidate with distortions and outright lies.

While the “gentleman from Vermont” or the late Senator from Massachusetts made sport of slander and smear, the “gentlemen” on the other side of the aisle are too polite to use such terms as “liar” so that the lies stand and reputations are destroyed and Senators strut and take their pay and prestige and violate their trust with the people they have been elected to represent. But decorum is maintained.

The same thing applies in the House. Congressmen cheat on their taxes, steal taxpayer money to spend on themselves and constituents who will in turn re-elect them, and no one cries out “Liar!” “Cheat!” or “Scoundrel!” as the charade of deceit continues.

…More

$1 TRILLION for Democrats’ Criminalization of America’s Health Care

ARRA News Service: Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House democrats rolled out their health care plan called “America’s Affordable Health Choices.” Part of their plan would force employers to offer workers health coverage or face severe fines. Also it would forcw individuals to participate in a health insurance plan or face penalties that would generally vary with their income level. Maybe it should have been called “Criminalizing of America’s Health Care” or the “Destroy Individual Choices in Health Care.”

The Heritage Foundation is reporting the cost of the bill at $1.3 Trillion. The bill is 1,018 pages and comes to $1.264 billion per page. It even includes universal abortion coverage at taxpayer expense. The Congressional Budget Office, not a conservative “right minded” think-tank, reported that the health care reform plan proposed by House Democrats on Tuesday will add more than $1 trillion ($1,042 billion) to the national federal budget deficit over 10 years (2010–2019) . And, this is only their preliminary estimate of the damage.

The CBO report states that its cost estimates are not comprehensive. They are only preliminary as administrative and other costs are not yet projected. Heritage advises, “But even this analysis understates the true costs of the bill. The CBO only scores bills on a ten-year time frame, and House Democrats have designed their bill to obscure the catastrophic long-term fiscal path on which it places our country.”

Heritage identifies that according to the CBO, the cost for the first four years is just $84 billion, but then it accelerates sharply. By 2019, the new entitlement is set to cost American taxpayers $254 billion. So while many Americans may look at the $1.3 trillion price tag over ten years and conclude the plan will cost $130 billion a year, in reality it will cost nearly double that. By backloading all the spending, the House is hiding the true cost of their plan from the American people. Between 2018 and 2019, federal costs for the new entitlement and the enlargement of Medicaid would increase by a combined 8.9%.

Last week CNS News reported that Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) introduced legislation calling for a $540-billion tax hike to pay for the health plan that President Barack Obama insists will be “deficit neutral.” This tax is a new surtax on households earning $350,000 and above. It starts at 1%, bumping up to 1.5% at $500,000 in income and to 5.4% at $1 million. Since many small business owners fall within this income range, this surtax will also be a huge job killer.

The Washington Post writes: [T]here is no case to be made for the House Democratic majority’s proposal to fund health-care legislation through an ad hoc income tax surcharge for top-earning households. …There is simply no way to close the gap by taxing a handful of high earners. … Pretending that “the rich” alone can fund government, let alone the kind of activist government that the president and Congress envision, is bad policy any way you look at it.

Summary: President Obama, Democrats in Congress, powerful special interests and influential lobbyists are hard at work in Washington, D.C. trying to drastically change our current health care system. They are seeking to replace it with a “nationalized health care ” system where the politicians and government officials will dictate the kind of medical services you and your family receive and the rules under which you access care and coverage. Read : Patients First – Vote No on Government Run Health Care and then take action.

My Nobel Prize for Economics

by Rich Galen on Townhall.com

How much do Members of the U.S. House and Senate make? Are they suffering as are regular people? Do they feel the pain of tax increases and new regulations?

In reverse order: No. No. And $174,000 per year.

In addition Members of Congress get a tax break on their housing, have health care completely paid for by you and me, and have a pretty good retirement system although the other benefits are so good you can’t get them to retire much before their 113th birthday, on average.

That $174,000 is for the rank-and-file, show-up-for-work four-days-a-week members of the House and Senate. You want to be really aggravated? The Speaker of the House, who happens to be Nancy Pelosi, and who happens to be one of the wealthiest members of Congress, makes $223,500.

And she gets to fly home on an Air Force jet which the rank-and-file, show-up-for-work four-days-a-week members of the House and Senate do not get to do.

I do not mention this because I am particularly angry with Members of the House and Senate – at least not any more than usual. I mention all this because of California.

The California fiscal year ended at midnight last night, June 30. They ain’t got no money.

California – the state which is held in such high regard by the Obama Administration that they just shoved through a global warming bill which is largely based on California standards – is more than in fiscal distress. It is bankrupt. Bust. Broke. Penniless. Insolvent.

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House Dems to Republicans: Sit down and shut up

That’s basically what Representative Louise Slaughter(D-NY), Chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, said to Representative David Dreier (R-CA) when he wanted to ask questions about upcoming appropriation bills in the House.  “Even the Democrats on the committee were stunned to silence…We knew this day was coming, but it really is a sad day when the Democrats stop any form of questioning between the Republicans and chairmen who are presenting their bills before the committee,” an observer noted.

Just last month, Obama claimed he expected more bipartisanship and that Americans “want results, not bickering.”  Is it bickering to pose questions when it comes to wasting taxpayer money?  After Joe Biden plainly stated the administration and its Democratic allies in Congress are wasting money, I believe the people want more debate, more questions, and more who are willing to stand up and demand accountability.  But the Democrats’ definition of bipartisanship is for the GOP to lay down and play dead as evidenced by Slaughter’s silencing of Dreier.  Apparently, Democrats have decided recent Republican challenges to their burgeoning spending programs have awaken the American people to the fallacy of their Utopianic promises to tax and spend America into prosperity.  To counter, they result to the totalitarian tactic of silencing all dissenters.

Just consider what happened Tuesday night at the Capitol and you’ll see this isn’t just an exaggeration by a Right-Wing Extremist.

Most lawmakers left at 6:30 pm after approving an emergency war spending bill, led to believe by the Democratic leadership that no more votes would occur that night.  But the plan all along was to ensure Republicans wouldn’t get a chance to offer key amendments that Dems didn’t want to see attached to another spending bill.  Almost two hours after being dismissed for the day, lawmakers were suddenly summoned to return for the vote they’d been told would not occur.  Of course not all made it back.  This trickery avoided debate over two key amendments that would have denied federal funding to the criminal organization ACORN, a well-known patron of Democratic candidates.  The third was an amendment to launch an investigation into the House Speaker herself, lying Nancy Pelosi, over her accusations that the CIA lied to her about waterboarding terrorists.  The trickery worked for the tyrannical Dems and debate on the amendments was quashed by a vote of 179-124.  More than 100 Congressmen didn’t get the word and their constituents were disenfranchised by the totalitarian rule of the Democratic majority.

With an overwhelming majority, the question is “Why do the Democrats have to resort to such tactics?”  The answer is their positions can’t stand public scrutiny.  Recent Republican criticism has pointed out obvious flaws in the Democratic agenda on issues from health care reform to the closing of Gitmo.  Polls are beginning to turn against the party that seeks to ram its Socialist policies down the throats of all Americans and the Dems don’t like it.

But if they can’t win an honest debate, the Democratic leadership is showing that it can and will resort to tyranny and trickery.