Once upon a time, I was invited to the White House for a private dinner with the President. I am a respected businessman, with a factory that produces memory chips for computers and portable electronics. There was some talk that my industry was being scrutinized by the administration, but I paid it no mind. I live in a free country. There's nothing that the government can do to me if I've broken no laws. My wealth was earned honestly, and an invitation to dinner with an American President is an honor.
I checked my coat, was greeted by the Chief of Staff, and joined the President in a yellow dining room. We sat across from each other at a table draped in white linen. The Great Seal was embossed on the china. Uniformed staff served our dinner. The meal was served, and I was startled when my waiter suddenly reached out, plucked a dinner roll off my plate, and began nibbling it as he walked back to the kitchen.
"Sorry about that," said the President. "Andrew is very hungry."
"I don't appreciate..." I began, but as I looked into the calm brown eyes across from me, I felt immediately guilty and petty.. It was just a dinner roll. "Of course," I concluded, and reached for my glass. Before I could, however, another waiter reached forward, took the glass away and swallowed the wine in a single gulp.
"And his brother Eric is very thirsty." said the President.
I didn't say anything. The President is testing my compassion, I thought. I will play along. I don't want to seem unkind. My plate was whisked away before I had tasted a bite.
"Eric's children are also quite hungry."
With a lurch, I crashed to the floor. My chair had been pulled out from under me. I stood,brushing myself off angrily, and watched as it was carried from the room.
"And their grandmother can't stand for long."
I excused myself, smiling outwardly, but inside feeling like a fool. Obviously I had been invited to the White House to be sport for some game. I reached for my coat, to find that it had been taken. I turned back to the President.
"Their grandfather doesn't like the cold."
I wanted to shout - that was my coat! But again, I looked at the placid smiling face of my host and decided I was being a poor sport. I spread my hands helplessly and chuckled. Then I felt my hip pocket and realized my wallet was gone. I excused myself and walked to a phone on an elegant side table. I learned shortly that my credit cards had been maxed out, my bank accounts emptied, my retirement and equity portfolios had vanished, and my wife had been thrown out of our home. Apparently, the waiters and their families were moving in. The President hadn't moved or spoken as I learned all this, but finally I lowered the phone into its cradle and turned to face him.
"Andrew's whole family has made bad financial decisions. They haven't planned for retirement, and they need a house. They recently defaulted on a subprime mortgage. I told them they could have your home. They need it more than you do."
My hands were shaking. I felt faint. I stumbled back to the table and knelt on the floor. The President cheerfully cut his meat, ate his steak and drank his wine.
I lowered my eyes and stared at the small grey circles on the tablecloth that were water drops.
"By the way," He added, "I have just signed an Executive Order nationalizing your factories. I'm firing you as head of your business. I'll be operating the firm now for the benefit of all mankind. There's a whole bunch of Erics and Andrews out there and they can't come to you for jobs groveling like beggars."
I looked up. The President dropped his spoon into the empty ramekin which had been his creme brulee. He drained the last drops of his wine.
As the table was cleared, he lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. He stared at me. I clung to the edge of the table as if were a ledge and I were a man hanging over an abyss. I thought of the years behind me, of the life I had lived. The life I had earned with a lifetime of work, risk and struggle. Why was I punished? How had I allowed it to be taken? What game had I played and lost? I looked across the table and noticed with some surprise that there was no game board between us. What had I done wrong?
As if answering the unspoken thought, the President suddenly cocked his head, locked his empty eyes to mine, and bared a million teeth, chuckling wryly as he folded his hands.
"You should have stopped me at the dinner roll," he said.
Wake up, America!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Cap and Trade passes the House
The “American Clean Energy and Security” Rip-Off
Peter Orvetti
Campaign For Liberty
Monday, June 29, 2009
On Friday evening, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), a well-intentioned but misbegotten Frankenstein monster of a bill intended to combat climate change. Republicans Mary Bono Mack, Mike Castle, Mark Kirk, Frank LoBiondo, John McHugh, Dave Reichert, and Chris Smith joined 211 Democrats to put the bill over the top 219-212. Showing the profiles in courage typical to elected politicians, about three dozen Democrats hung back during the roll call until passage was certain, waiting until they could safely vote no without riling their party’s leaders.
As its sponsors struggled to make it palatable to representatives from energy-producing states, the bill swelled from 942 pages to just over 1,200, leaving undecided members little time to digest the new material. This brings to mind Rep. John Conyers’s admission to Michael Moore that members of Congress “don’t really read most of the bills” they vote for, because it would “slow down the legislative process.”
Two weeks after his election as president, Barack Obama said, “Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.” Shortly thereafter, more than 100 scientists signed a newspaper advertisement responding, “With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true.” The scientists, from places as varied and esteemed as Los Alamos National Laboratory, the American Physical Society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania, said the “case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.”
But even many who are not skeptical about global warming found things to dislike in ACES. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who voted against it, said, “It won’t address the problem. In fact, it might make the problem worse.” Kucinich faulted the bill’s “Enron-style accounting methods” and allocation of $60 billion for Carbon Capture and Sequestration, “a single technology which may or may not work.” Kucinich faulted the corporate welfare embedded in the bill, saying that the “trillion dollar carbon derivatives market will help Wall Street investors,” with any benefits “passed through coal companies and other large corporations, on whom we will rely to pass on the savings.”
“I take climate change seriously,” libertarian economist Megan McArdle wrote last week. But she said the projections for ACES’s “effect on global warming are entirely negligible,” and any hope that U.S. passage of the bill will “persuade China and India to get on board” is “entirely wishful thinking on the part of American environmentalists. China is not going to let its citizens languish in subsistence farming because 30 years from now, some computer models say there will be some not-well-specified bad effects from high temperatures. Nor is India.”
Indeed, United Nations data suggest that ACES will reduce global warming by 0.07 of a degree Fahrenheit by 2050. In exchange, the U.S. risks sparking a trade war with those two massive economic powers when their own near-certain failure to act results in U.S. sanctions. While the Congressional Budget Office says ACES will drive up the average family’s energy bill by about $175 per year by 2020, that does not take into account the larger economic cost.
A Center for Data Analysis study concludes ACES will hurt the gross domestic product by $9.4 trillion by 2035 and cost the average family $1,241 per year. That’s because, as the Wall Street Journal put it last week, “the whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars.” A British analysis finds the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year for carbon-cutting programs that were introduced just a few years ago.
As Obama himself said during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.” Meanwhile, reductions in consumer spending will necessarily mean a decline in production which could eliminate more than 1.1 million jobs.
This is an awful lot to pay for legislation that will not reduce global warming and will not encourage other major economic powers to become more environmentally conscious. Maybe next time, Congress should read the bill before voting on it.
Peter Orvetti
Campaign For Liberty
Monday, June 29, 2009
On Friday evening, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), a well-intentioned but misbegotten Frankenstein monster of a bill intended to combat climate change. Republicans Mary Bono Mack, Mike Castle, Mark Kirk, Frank LoBiondo, John McHugh, Dave Reichert, and Chris Smith joined 211 Democrats to put the bill over the top 219-212. Showing the profiles in courage typical to elected politicians, about three dozen Democrats hung back during the roll call until passage was certain, waiting until they could safely vote no without riling their party’s leaders.
As its sponsors struggled to make it palatable to representatives from energy-producing states, the bill swelled from 942 pages to just over 1,200, leaving undecided members little time to digest the new material. This brings to mind Rep. John Conyers’s admission to Michael Moore that members of Congress “don’t really read most of the bills” they vote for, because it would “slow down the legislative process.”
Two weeks after his election as president, Barack Obama said, “Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.” Shortly thereafter, more than 100 scientists signed a newspaper advertisement responding, “With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true.” The scientists, from places as varied and esteemed as Los Alamos National Laboratory, the American Physical Society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania, said the “case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.”
But even many who are not skeptical about global warming found things to dislike in ACES. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who voted against it, said, “It won’t address the problem. In fact, it might make the problem worse.” Kucinich faulted the bill’s “Enron-style accounting methods” and allocation of $60 billion for Carbon Capture and Sequestration, “a single technology which may or may not work.” Kucinich faulted the corporate welfare embedded in the bill, saying that the “trillion dollar carbon derivatives market will help Wall Street investors,” with any benefits “passed through coal companies and other large corporations, on whom we will rely to pass on the savings.”
“I take climate change seriously,” libertarian economist Megan McArdle wrote last week. But she said the projections for ACES’s “effect on global warming are entirely negligible,” and any hope that U.S. passage of the bill will “persuade China and India to get on board” is “entirely wishful thinking on the part of American environmentalists. China is not going to let its citizens languish in subsistence farming because 30 years from now, some computer models say there will be some not-well-specified bad effects from high temperatures. Nor is India.”
Indeed, United Nations data suggest that ACES will reduce global warming by 0.07 of a degree Fahrenheit by 2050. In exchange, the U.S. risks sparking a trade war with those two massive economic powers when their own near-certain failure to act results in U.S. sanctions. While the Congressional Budget Office says ACES will drive up the average family’s energy bill by about $175 per year by 2020, that does not take into account the larger economic cost.
A Center for Data Analysis study concludes ACES will hurt the gross domestic product by $9.4 trillion by 2035 and cost the average family $1,241 per year. That’s because, as the Wall Street Journal put it last week, “the whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars.” A British analysis finds the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year for carbon-cutting programs that were introduced just a few years ago.
As Obama himself said during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.” Meanwhile, reductions in consumer spending will necessarily mean a decline in production which could eliminate more than 1.1 million jobs.
This is an awful lot to pay for legislation that will not reduce global warming and will not encourage other major economic powers to become more environmentally conscious. Maybe next time, Congress should read the bill before voting on it.
WyoBraska Tea Party Contact Info
WyoBraska Tea Party
PO Box 1266
Scottsbluff, NE 69363-1266
(308) 633-2100
PO Box 1266
Scottsbluff, NE 69363-1266
(308) 633-2100
These People Truly Hate America
By Doug Patton
June 29, 2009
Like much of the country, you may have spent your time last week snickering about the peccadilloes of yet another hapless politician who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Or maybe you were captivated by the untimely but predictable passing of the most talented musical freak of the last quarter century. Perhaps while watching the ABC-Barack Obama dog-and-pony show purporting to deal with the future of your health care system, you were deceived into thinking that this was the big issue of the week. If so, you would be wrong. Make no mistake, it is on the agenda, but the real threat of the moment was simmering up on Capitol Hill in the United States House of Representatives.
Far too many Americans were distracted by other things to notice that on Friday, June 26th, 211 House Democrats and 8 Republicans defiantly thumbed their noses at the will of their constituents and passed the largest tax increase in the nation’s history.
The “Cap-and-Trade” bill will likely kill two or three real jobs for every so-called green job it creates. If this bill passes the Senate, the president’s signature will make it the law of the land. If that happens, look for your utility bills to increase by fifty percent. Expect gasoline to rise to last summer’s levels and above. Count on the cost of food, clothing and anything else affected by fuel prices — in other words, everything — skyrocketing.
In fact, “skyrocket” was the exact word Obama himself used last year to describe the inflationary effects of this legislation, even as he promoted the idea during his presidential campaign. Obama told voters at that time that his cap-and-trade proposal “will necessarily cause energy prices to skyrocket.” That was a striking admission from a presidential candidate, on a par with Walter Mondale’s startling statement at the 1984 Democratic National Convention that he would “raise your taxes.” (The fact that John McCain is no Ronald Reagan has a great deal to do with Obama not losing every state but his own like Mondale did, but that’s a column for another day.)
As we look back on Barack Obama’s first six months in office, one of two things must be true: the man either believes his policies are good for the country (in which case he is a fool), or he knows those policies are destructive to our economy and he is promoting them anyway (in which case he is every bit the autocrat and Marxist many of us warned he was during the campaign). I have come to believe the latter, but either way we have a long, expensive ride ahead of us.
For those who supported this president out of frustration with either John McCain or with George W. Bush, is it not obvious to you yet that Barack Obama hates America? Those of you who thought Jeremiah Wright was an anomaly in this man’s life, can you now see that this preacher of hate was just part of a long chain of negative, anti-American influences on Obama?
Rather than the Founders of this country, Barack Obama’s heroes have always been terrorists, felons and anarchists. Where most presidents revere Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, the father of the Constitution, this president’s role models have been domestic bomber Bill Ayers and Marxist Saul Alinsky, whose “Rules for Radicals” contains the blueprint for tearing a free America from its underpinnings and replacing it with a repressive nanny state.
As militant as this president is, he is not alone in his extremism. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, a woman two heartbeats away from the presidency herself, is perhaps even more radical than Obama, if that is possible. Pelosi and her counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, have thus far done this president’s bidding. That may change, especially in the Senate, but one thing is clear. These people hate the America you and I love, and they will do whatever they can to alter it forever.
__________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright 2009 by Doug Patton
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and policy advisor to conservative candidates, elected officials and public policy organizations. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
June 29, 2009
Like much of the country, you may have spent your time last week snickering about the peccadilloes of yet another hapless politician who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Or maybe you were captivated by the untimely but predictable passing of the most talented musical freak of the last quarter century. Perhaps while watching the ABC-Barack Obama dog-and-pony show purporting to deal with the future of your health care system, you were deceived into thinking that this was the big issue of the week. If so, you would be wrong. Make no mistake, it is on the agenda, but the real threat of the moment was simmering up on Capitol Hill in the United States House of Representatives.
Far too many Americans were distracted by other things to notice that on Friday, June 26th, 211 House Democrats and 8 Republicans defiantly thumbed their noses at the will of their constituents and passed the largest tax increase in the nation’s history.
The “Cap-and-Trade” bill will likely kill two or three real jobs for every so-called green job it creates. If this bill passes the Senate, the president’s signature will make it the law of the land. If that happens, look for your utility bills to increase by fifty percent. Expect gasoline to rise to last summer’s levels and above. Count on the cost of food, clothing and anything else affected by fuel prices — in other words, everything — skyrocketing.
In fact, “skyrocket” was the exact word Obama himself used last year to describe the inflationary effects of this legislation, even as he promoted the idea during his presidential campaign. Obama told voters at that time that his cap-and-trade proposal “will necessarily cause energy prices to skyrocket.” That was a striking admission from a presidential candidate, on a par with Walter Mondale’s startling statement at the 1984 Democratic National Convention that he would “raise your taxes.” (The fact that John McCain is no Ronald Reagan has a great deal to do with Obama not losing every state but his own like Mondale did, but that’s a column for another day.)
As we look back on Barack Obama’s first six months in office, one of two things must be true: the man either believes his policies are good for the country (in which case he is a fool), or he knows those policies are destructive to our economy and he is promoting them anyway (in which case he is every bit the autocrat and Marxist many of us warned he was during the campaign). I have come to believe the latter, but either way we have a long, expensive ride ahead of us.
For those who supported this president out of frustration with either John McCain or with George W. Bush, is it not obvious to you yet that Barack Obama hates America? Those of you who thought Jeremiah Wright was an anomaly in this man’s life, can you now see that this preacher of hate was just part of a long chain of negative, anti-American influences on Obama?
Rather than the Founders of this country, Barack Obama’s heroes have always been terrorists, felons and anarchists. Where most presidents revere Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, the father of the Constitution, this president’s role models have been domestic bomber Bill Ayers and Marxist Saul Alinsky, whose “Rules for Radicals” contains the blueprint for tearing a free America from its underpinnings and replacing it with a repressive nanny state.
As militant as this president is, he is not alone in his extremism. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, a woman two heartbeats away from the presidency herself, is perhaps even more radical than Obama, if that is possible. Pelosi and her counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, have thus far done this president’s bidding. That may change, especially in the Senate, but one thing is clear. These people hate the America you and I love, and they will do whatever they can to alter it forever.
__________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright 2009 by Doug Patton
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and policy advisor to conservative candidates, elected officials and public policy organizations. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
Support from Congressman Adrian Smith
Brian - the Congressman's schedule is keeping him from attending many Panhandle events on July Fourth; however, he wanted to be sure you received the attached in the event you are reading letters of support for your great cause.
click here to read the Congressman's Letter of Support
click here to read the Congressman's Letter of Support
Monday, June 8, 2009
Obama's Muslim Speech
Hi friends.
I don't know if you were able to listen to any of Obama's speech to the Muslim people, but there was something about it that disturbed me and angered me. First, I find it ironic that a group of people (liberals) who are so adamant about separation of church and state are quick to make peace with the religion of Islam. It is not like Obama was trying to make peace with a country, but a religion. He does not want the Muslims to be offended by anything America may do or has done. Why doesn't President Obama try and make nice with other religions, particularly the Christian faith? Many, if not a very good majority of Christians are offended with the careless attitude regarding abortion today. When is this dialogue going to start? Our president would rather make peace with our enemy than protect his own citizens.
With the recent killing of Dr. Tiller in Kansas, Pro-Life organizations have unequivocally gone out of their way to condemn the actions of the killer and yet many people still want to call us pro-lifers terrorists. But after 9/11, how many Muslim organizations came out and condemned what had happened? If there were any, I do not remember seeing it. And now our President wants to treat the Muslims as if we did something wrong and look at our faiths as a bunch of people who are terrorists. They claim that Islam is a religion of peace, but last time I checked, so is the Christian faith. I don't remember that last time a Christian be-headed someone in the name of God.
I don't get it. This president is allowing congress to spend us into debt up to our grand-children and is busy taking over American privately owned industries. He is sympathizing with our enemies who have made threats to kill Americans. Correct me if I am wrong, but is he not over-stepping his oath of office to protect and uphold the constitution? Is some of this not grounds for impeachment? The chances of that happening are pretty slim at this point in time, but I would be willing to bet there are a lot more Americans who are just as disgusted as I am right now.
Ryan
I don't know if you were able to listen to any of Obama's speech to the Muslim people, but there was something about it that disturbed me and angered me. First, I find it ironic that a group of people (liberals) who are so adamant about separation of church and state are quick to make peace with the religion of Islam. It is not like Obama was trying to make peace with a country, but a religion. He does not want the Muslims to be offended by anything America may do or has done. Why doesn't President Obama try and make nice with other religions, particularly the Christian faith? Many, if not a very good majority of Christians are offended with the careless attitude regarding abortion today. When is this dialogue going to start? Our president would rather make peace with our enemy than protect his own citizens.
With the recent killing of Dr. Tiller in Kansas, Pro-Life organizations have unequivocally gone out of their way to condemn the actions of the killer and yet many people still want to call us pro-lifers terrorists. But after 9/11, how many Muslim organizations came out and condemned what had happened? If there were any, I do not remember seeing it. And now our President wants to treat the Muslims as if we did something wrong and look at our faiths as a bunch of people who are terrorists. They claim that Islam is a religion of peace, but last time I checked, so is the Christian faith. I don't remember that last time a Christian be-headed someone in the name of God.
I don't get it. This president is allowing congress to spend us into debt up to our grand-children and is busy taking over American privately owned industries. He is sympathizing with our enemies who have made threats to kill Americans. Correct me if I am wrong, but is he not over-stepping his oath of office to protect and uphold the constitution? Is some of this not grounds for impeachment? The chances of that happening are pretty slim at this point in time, but I would be willing to bet there are a lot more Americans who are just as disgusted as I am right now.
Ryan
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