Monday, August 24, 2009

Barack Obama teaching Alinsky organizing tactics


http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=76170

Saul Alinsky
Barack Obama: The Alinsky Connection
Guess who recommended Obama to enter HarvardMystery man in senator's memoir now revealed as disciple of socialist agitator
September 24, 20088:54 pm Eastern
In a revelation tying Barack Obama even closer to radical community organizing, WND has learned that a renowned disciple of the late socialist agitator Saul "The Red" Alinksy wrote a letter of recommendation for Obama when he applied to Harvard Law School.
Obama approached Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight – a loyal student of Alinsky's radical tactics – to pen the Harvard letter in the late 1980s. McKnight serves on the boards of radically anti-American groups in Chicago, including one accused of thuggery.
Obama in his 2006 memoir alludes to McKnight – whom he describes as an "older man who had been active in the civil rights efforts in Chicago in the sixties" – but stops short of identifying him by name. He referred to him only as "my friend."
But McKnight, who enforced affirmative action for Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was far more than that to young Obama. He helped trained him in the agitation tactics of Alinsky, who wrote the organizing manual, "Rules for Radicals," which he dedicated to mankind's "very first radical, Lucifer."
The Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation lists McKnight as a board director. From1985 to 1988, Obama worked for a subsidiary of Gamaliel, where he cut his teeth as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side. McKnight and Gamaliel, which was founded on Alinsky's principles, provided training for the budding radical.
Before leaving for Harvard, Obama wrote an article published in a journal titled, "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois," in which he praised McKnight and his organizing strategies. He also decried "institutional racism" and called for more "power" to put in place "a systematic approach to community organization."
While at Harvard, he found time to take advanced training courses at the Industrial Areas Foundation, a group founded by Alinsky and affiliated with Gamaliel. He also would return to Chicago to work as a consultant and trainer for Gamaliel.
Under the tutelage of McKnight and other hardcore students of Alinsky, Obama says he got the "best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School." He made the remark last year while campaigning in Iowa.
His mentor McKnight also sits on the board of a militant leftist group called the National People's Action, the professor's curriculum vita reveals. NPA employs the hardball street tactics of Alinskyite organizing.
NPA claims to be simply a coalition of neighborhood advocacy groups based in Chicago, but conservative analyst Michelle Malkin describes it as a "left-wing goon squad." She says NPA has been known to bus hundreds of angry protestors to the homes of business and government leaders to demand "justice" for inner-city blacks.
While preparing to intimidate the families of officials and trample over their private property, she says NPA picketers belt out the following battle cry:
Who's on your hit list, NPA? Who's on your hit list for today? Take no prisoner, take no names. Kick 'em in the a-- when they play their games."NPA's militant tactics cross the bounds of decent political debate," Malkin wrote in 2004.
Obama, in his 1995 memoir, said he wanted to go to Harvard Law School to "learn power's currency in all its intricacy," with the goal of "making large-scale change" as a national politician.
Before writing his recommendation, McKnight, a former ACLU director, advised Obama not to "compromise" his principles.
While Obama says he's perhaps more tolerant of compromise than McKnight, he says his views haven't really changed from his days organizing on behalf of radical Alinsky groups like Gamaliel and ACORN in Chicago.
"My views are not so much more refined than they were when I labored in obscurity as a community organizer," he averred in his 2006 autobiography.
Socialist dream
Alinsky, the father of community organizing, dreamed of socialism one day replacing the "jungle" of American capitalism. He wrote that he hoped "for a future where the means of production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful."
Alinsky dedicated the first edition of his book, "Rules for Radicals," to Satan: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer."
McKnight has advocated for another war on poverty, something Obama is proposing with his "Urban Prosperity" plan.
_______________________________
Any astute and somewhat well read political observer could have seen the Alinsky-esque campaign tactics being utilized by Senator Obama's campaign. "Rules for Radicals," Alinsky's classic book of how to organize political extremists to destroy their competition and the case they attempt to make to oppose their radical agenda is demonstrably on display in Obama's strategy. This connection comes as no surprise to me.
Incidentally, "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky is one of the best books I've ever read. If you read that book, you will understand many of the tactics, actions and ultimate goals Marxists, secularists and other assorted Leftist wing-nuts have and wish to impose on YOU. Alinsky was brilliant. In dedicating his book to "the first rebel, Lucifer," we also know his source of inspiration.
JDW
posted by J. Dale Weaver, M.Div. at 12:23 AM
http://www.military-money-matters.com/obama-and-alinsky.htmlhttp://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:Bvc7sQ5C_V0J:www.military-money-matters.com/obama-and-alinsky.html+Obama+and+Alinsky+connection&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

John Voight gives Obama Hell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD5C9BIMWXUActor/Director and Conservative Activist John Voight gives the Obama administration HELL and has advice to go forward -for the patriots in the audeince of Sean Hannity's 2009 Atlanta Freedom Concert. Actor/Director and Conservative Activist John Voight gives the Obama administration HELL and has advice to go forward -for the patriots in the audeince of Sean Hannity's 2009 Atlanta Freedom Concert. Category: Nonprofits & Activism
Tags: john voight sean hannity freedom concert actor John Voight Atlanta Gwinnett Arena Hannity Freedom Concert URL
Herman Cain Gwinnett Arena aug. 22
youtube videos of Herman Cain at Gwinnett Arenahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCa7GrsCqbkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFhJ7EoLZM0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww0WFai6lH8

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Background on Acorn

ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS FOR REFORM NOW (ACORN)
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6968

Obama Files from newzeal.blogspot.com

The Obama Files --http://newzeal.blogspot.com/

The Obama File 1 Forget Islam-Look at Obama's Socialism!
Obama File 1- 81
Pelosi Dossier 1 Nancy Pelosi and the Radical Hallinan Clan

Glenn Beck - Current Events & Politics - Video The Apollo Alliance.mht
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/28568/
Obama administration linking social justice to 'green job'
http://www.americansforprosperity.org/national-site
Van Jones
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2406
Became a Communist in the aftermath of the 1992 "Rodney King riots" in Los Angeles
Founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 1996
Was active in the anti-Iraq War demonstrations organized by International ANSWER
Served as a board member of the Rainforest Action Network and Free Press
In March 2009, President Barack Obama named Jones to be his so-called "Green Jobs Czar."
Born in 1968 in rural West Tennessee, Van Jones earned a B.A. degree from the University of Tennessee at Martin and then attended Yale Law School. During his years at Yale, Jones served as an intern with the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR), which views the United States as an irredeemably racist nation and "champions the legal rights of people of color, poor people, immigrants and refugees, with a special commitment to African-Americans."Jones says that he first became politically radicalized in the aftermath of the deadly April 1992 Los Angeles riots which erupted shortly after four L.A. police officers who had beaten the infamous Rodney King were exonerated in court. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th," says Jones, who is black, "and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."Jones was arrested during the L.A. riots and spent a short time in jail. "I met all these young radical people of color," he recalls, "I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary."After earning his Juris Doctorate from Yale in 1993, Jones relocated to San Francisco, where he helped establish Bay Area PoliceWatch, a hotline and lawyer-referral service that began as a project of LCCR. In 1996 he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which, claiming that the American criminal-justice system is infested with racism, seeks to promote alternatives to incarceration. According to the Baker Center:
"Decades of disinvestment in our cities have led to despair and hopelessness. For poor communities and communities of color it's even worse, as excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration have left people even further behind."
By the late 1990s, Jones was a committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist who viewed police officers as the arch-enemies of black people, and who loathed capitalism for allegedly exploiting nonwhite minorities worldwide. He became a leading member of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a now-defunct Bay Area Marxist-Maoist collective that was staffed by members of various local nonprofits, a number of whom had ties to the Ella Baker Center.In the early 2000s, Jones and STORM were active in the anti-Iraq War demonstrations organized by International ANSWER, a front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party. STORM also had ties to the South African Communist Party and it revered Amilcar Cabral, the late Marxist revolutionary leader (of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands) who lauded Lenin as "the greatest champion of the national liberation of the peoples." (In 2006 Van Jones would name his own newborn son "Cabral" -- in Amilcar Cabral's honor.)During his tenure with STORM, Jones collaborated on numerous projects (including antiwar demonstrations) with local activist Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez, who served as a "mentor" for members of the Ella Baker Center. Martinez was a longtime Maoist who went on to join the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), a Communist Party USA splinter group, in the early 1990s. To this day, Martinez continues to sit on the CCDS advisory board alongside such luminaries as Angela Davis, Timuel Black (who served on Barack Obama's 2004 Senate campaign committee), and musician Pete Seeger. Martinez is also a board member of the Movement for a Democratic Society, the parent organization of Progressives for Obama. Martinez and Van Jones together attended a "Challenging White Supremacy" workshop which advanced the theme that "all too often, the unconscious racism of white activists stands in the way of any effective, worthwhile collaboration" with blacks.In 2005 Jones and the Ella Baker Center produced the "Social Equity Track" for the United Nations' World Environment Day celebration, a project that eventually would evolve into the Baker Center's Green-Collar Jobs Campaign -- "a job-training and employment pipeline providing 'green pathways out of poverty' for low-income adults in Oakland."Soon after attending the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2007, Jones launched "Green For All," a non-governmental organization "dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty … advocating for local, state and federal commitment to job creation, job training, and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy - especially for people from disadvantaged communities."In 2008 Jones published his first book, The Green Collar Economy, which focused on environmental and economic issues. The book received favorable reviews from such notables as Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Winona LaDuke, environmentalist Paul Hawken, and NAACP President/CEO Ben Jealous.Jones has served as a board member of numerous environmental and nonprofit organizations, including the Rainforest Action Network; Free Press; Bioneers (which accepts the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Report's warning that "[h]uman activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted"); the National Apollo Alliance (which seeks "to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs"); the Social Venture Network (which aims "to build a just economy and sustainable planet"); and Julia Butterfly Hill's "Circle of Life" environmental foundation.Jones was also a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress and a Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.
In March 2009, President Barack Obama named Jones to be his so-called "Green Jobs Czar." Jones' formal title is "Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation" for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.In a July 2009 interview with Newsweek magazine, Jones said he could not explain exactly what a "green job" is:
"Well, we still don't have a unified definition, and that's not unusual in a democracy. It takes a while for all the states and the federal government to come to some agreement. But the Department of Labor is working on it very diligently. Fundamentally, it's getting there, but we haven't crossed the finish line yet."
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The communist organisation Van jones went on to lead was called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM).According to the leftist blog Machete 48Returning to Van Jones, with all the shimmer associated with a rising star, many forget that a man now advising the president was a member of a revolutionary organization in the SF Bay Area called STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement). Throughout the group’s history, Van Jones was seen as a public figure within the Bay Area left and a leading member of STORM. STORM had its roots in a grouping of people of color organizing against he Gulf War in the early 1990’s and was formally founded in 1994. The group’s politics had a number of influences, but evolved towards what could be best characterized as third worldist Marxism (and an often vulgar Maoism). The group grew in influence until its disbanding in 2002 amid problems of internal dynamics and especially controversy around the leadership roles that members played in the youth movement (such as the fight against Proposition 21). Nearly the entire membership of the organization was staff members for various social movement non-profits in the Bay Area, many linked to the Ella Baker Center, which Van Jones steered.While never large, STORM was one of the most influential and active radical groups in the Bay Area, controlling numerous front organisations including Bay Area Police Watch, one of several anti police activities Jones was involved in.Van Jones right, "interacting" with San Francisco policeOther STORM fronts included a Marxist training organisation-School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) and an unemployed rights group-People Organized to Win Employment Rights(POWER). Jones and STORM were also very active in the anti Iraq War demonstrations of the early 2000s.Jones supporting International ANSWER-a front for the pro North Korean Workers World PartyWhile way out on the left STORM also worked with "mainstream" communists.Bay Area left identity Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez was close to Jones and helped "mentor" his Ella Baker Human Rights Center.Betita MartinezMartinez was a long time Maoist who went on to join the Communist Party USA breakaway organisation Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)in the early 1990s.Martinez still serves on the CCDS advisory board alongside radicals such as Angela Davis, Timuel Black (a personal friend of Barack Obama who served on his 2004 Senate campaign committee) and musician Pete Seeger (who performed at Obama's Washington Inauguration Concert.Martinez is also a board member of Movement for a Democratic Society, the radical parent body of Progressives for Obama.Martinez and Jones worked together on several projects including attending a Challenging White Supremacy workshop which much impressed Jones;“To solve the new century's mounting social and environmental problems, people of color activist and white activists need to be able to join forces. But all too often, the unconscious racism of white activists stands in the way of any effective, worthwhile collaboration. The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop is the most powerful tool that I have seen for removing the barriers to true partnerships between people of color and white folks. If the CWS trainings were mandatory for all white activists, the progressive movement in the United States would be unstoppable.”They also both worked together with another STORM member Adam Gold on the organizing committee for anti Iraq War newspaper War Times.STORM also had ties to the South African Communist Party, with three "core" comrades attending the SACP Congress in 1998.STORM also very much admired Amilcar Cabral the late revolutionary leader of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde IslandsAmilcar Cabral rightSTORM may have learned about Amilcar Cabral from the SACP which also revered him.A tribute to Cabral from the SACP's African Communist, No. 53, second quarter 1973. "How is it that we, a people deprived of everything, living in dire straits, manage to wage our struggle and win successes? Our answer is: this is because Lenin existed, because he fulfilled his duty as a man, a revolutionary and a patriot. Lenin was and continues to be, the greatest champion of the national liberation of the peoples." These were the words addressed to the delegates attending the seminar on "Lenin and National Liberation" held at Alma Ata, capital of Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan, in 1970 by Amilcar Cabral, Secretary-General of the PAIGC, who met his death on 20th January 1973 at Conakry, Guinea, at the hands of a traitor, Innocenta Canida, an agent of the Portuguese colonialists who had infiltrated into the ranks of the movement three years ago. These words reflect the revolutionary thinking and life-work of this utterly dedicated patriot, outstanding African revolutionary of our time and the father of the new independent sovereign State of Guinea in the process of birth. It was the cognition of the scientific theory of revolution, of Marxism-Leninism, to which he was introduced by his contacts with the Portuguese Communist Party during his student days in Lisbon which was to combine within him, in the words of the statement of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party, "a deep understanding of the processes of the African revolution with an untiring devotion to practical struggle." Van Jones has named his three year old son Cabral-in honor of his hero.Jones reportedly uses a quote from Cabral in every email he sends; “Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories. . . . Our experience has shown us that in the general framework of daily struggle this battle against ourselves, this struggle against our own weaknesses . . . is the most difficult of all.”Is Van Jones living up to that quote?Is Van Jones hiding "nothing from the masses of our people"?Obama file 73 here

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Workers Paradise


http://cuban-exile.com/menu1/%21menu.html
Be the first one on your block to be a snitch. Just like the worker's paradise .

Remind you of what the White House is asking its social thinking snitches?

Saturday, August 15, 2009

HR 3200 House Health Care Bill.

docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
HR 3200: The House Health Care bill. Wed, 07/15/2009 -- This is all we have right now to truly know what the left has planned. Please read it for yourself -- House's 815-page draft became a 1018-page bill.
http://www.voiceoftheopposition.com/2009/06/ronald-reagan-speaks-out-against.html

Health Care Daily Report
Volume: 14 Number: 37February 27, 2009Medicare, Medicaid Cuts in Obama Budget Total $316 Billion Over 10 Years
http://healthcenter.bna.com/pic2/hc.nsf/id/BNAP-7PNMU2?OpenDocument
President Obama's fiscal year 2010 proposed budget relies on substantial payment reductions in Medicare and Medicaid to pay for a $634 billion reserve fund for health reform, including large spending reductions for Medicare managed care plans, according to budget documents released by the White House Feb. 26.
The proposed budget includes $633.8 billion over 10 years for a health care reserve fund, paid for equally by increasing taxes on families earning more than $250,000 and individuals earning more than $200,000 annually and a series of Medicare and Medicaid policy changes.
The savings in Medicare and Medicaid proposed by Obama would total $316 billion over 10 years.
The reserve fund will be used to help pay for health care reform; the White House believes more money will be needed to fully implement reforms.
The White House released a summary document on the budget Feb. 26. Obama's complete budget proposal is expected to be released in April.
Crushing Health Care Costs.
“Because of crushing health care costs and the fact that they drag down our economy, bankrupt our families, and represent the fastest-growing part of our budget, we must make it a priority to give every single American quality, affordable health care,” Obama said Feb. 26.
“That's why this budget builds on what we have already done over the last month to expand coverage for millions more children, to computerize health records to cut waste and reduce medical errors, which save, by the way, not only tax dollars, but lives,” the president said.
“With this budget, we are making a historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform,” he added. “It's a step that will not only make families healthier and companies more competitive, but over the long term it will also help us bring down our deficit.”
MA Payment Reductions.
A large chunk of the savings from Medicare would come from introducing a competitive bidding system for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans in which plan payments would be based on an average of plans' bids submitted to Medicare, according to the budget. This change would save $176.6 billion over 10 years, it said.
An industry official told BNA Feb. 26 that managed care plans have been expecting for some time that their Medicare payments would be reduced, adding that despite the reductions, plans will continue supporting health care reform. Of more concern to plans is talk by congressional Democrats of creating a public plan option in health reform that would compete with private plans, the official said.
Plans are expected to fight to keep managed care payments higher in rural and low-payment areas, according to the official, who requested anonymity. The official said the MA payment reductions will eliminate the policy of some plans offering zero premium coverage to beneficiaries.
America's Health Insurance Plans Feb. 26 said the spending reductions “would force seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage to fund a disproportionate share of the costs to reform the health care system.”
AHIP said “[a] cut of this scale would jeopardize the health security of more than ten million seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage and would turn back the clock on innovative payment incentives to improve the quality of care that patients receive.”
Medicare managed care plans are paid as much as 17 percent more than fee-for-service providers, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Democrats have long proposed significantly reducing those payments, while plans and most Republicans believe that MA plans provide needed coverage for low-income and minority beneficiaries.
Enzi to Fight Reductions.
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee ranking member Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.) said Feb. 26 he would work to prevent MA reductions from becoming law.
“We should not pay for health care reform by slashing programs and eliminating choices,” Enzi said. “The President said repeatedly during his campaign that Americans who like the health insurance they have would keep their existing plans in his Administration. His budget proposal undercuts that promise.”
Other Medicare providers that would experience payment reductions would be home health agencies, which would see their reimbursement cut about $37 billion over 10 years. The budget would eliminate the home health inflation update for 2010.
The budget also includes numerous changes to Medicare hospital payment policies. For example, it would create hospital quality incentive payments, reducing program spending by about $12 billion over 10 years.
It also would implement policy to reduce hospital readmission rates, saving $8.4 billion over 10 years, and bundling some post-acute care payments, saving $17.8 billion, according to the budget blueprint.
Fixing Physician Payment System.
The budget also assumes that Congress will fix permanently Medicare's physician payment system, and the White House has put nearly $330 billion over 10 years in its budget baseline for that purpose.
But the White House said it would support “comprehensive, but fiscally responsible reforms to the payment formula. The administration believes Medicare and the country need to move toward a system in which doctors face better incentives for high-quality care rather than simply more care.”
The American Medical Association said in a Feb. 26 statement that it supports this approach.
“President Obama's budget proposal takes a huge step forward to ensure that physicians can care for seniors by rejecting planned Medicare physician payment cuts of 40 percent over the next decade,” AMA said.
“Looming widespread physician shortages coupled with aging baby boomers highlight the urgent need for permanent Medicare physician payment system reform to preserve seniors' access to health care,” the association said.
Physicians' Medicare reimbursement is scheduled to be reduced 20 percent in 2010 unless Congress intervenes.
The budget also contains a line item noting it would address “financial conflicts of interest in physician specialty hospitals,” although no savings figure was listed.
Congressional Democrats have been trying to pass legislation closing what they have called a loophole in the physician self-referral law (known as the Stark law) that allows doctors to refer Medicare patients to hospitals in which they have ownership interests.
Drug Rebate Changes.
The budget also would increase the Medicaid drug rebate for brand-name drugs from 15.1 percent to 22.1 percent of the average manufacturer price and apply the additional rebate to new drug formulations. It also would allow states to collect rebates on medications provided through Medicaid managed care plans, the budget said. Those provisions would save about $19.5 billion over 10 years, the budget said.
Congressional reaction to the budget fell along party lines.
“By dedicating substantial funding--and starting the dialogue about how to pay for it--the President shows he's serious about health care reform as a top, immediate priority,” Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said in a Feb. 26 statement.
“Congress shares that urgency,” Rockefeller said. “We've begun putting proposals together and are ready to work with the President's health team to move forward. Making health care affordable and accessible for all Americans is an essential part of fixing our economy--it is not a side priority. We must chart a new course immediately.”
The budget is paving the way “for comprehensive health reform to expand coverage and address skyrocketing health costs that threatens access for those with insurance and prevents tens of millions of Americans from getting the care they need,” added House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.). “By strengthening existing programs, we can lay a foundation for reform to ensure that everyone has access to affordable care that meets their needs.”
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said in a Feb. 26 statement that the budget blueprint indicates “a clear commitment to action this year with an important and historic down payment on reform. We can and must achieve comprehensive health care reform this year, and this budget gives us a launching pad to move forward.”
Republicans pledged to work with Obama in crafting health reform legislation, but said increasing taxes is the wrong way to attack the issue.
“Republicans and Democrats need to work together to expand access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans, but increasing taxes during an economic recession, especially on small businesses, is not a responsible way to accomplish this goal,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a Feb. 26 statement.
“Republicans agree with President Obama: America's health care system is in dire need of reform,” House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said.
“Unfortunately, the health reform principles presented today rely on old-style spending increases and government-knows-best approaches which have historically failed to achieve better outcomes at lower costs,” Cantor said. “Republicans believe we should focus on preserving patients' options for their care while ensuring that doctors are free to make critical decisions without interference from restrictive government policies.”
AARP announced Feb. 26 it is launching another phase in its push for health care reform in which members are visiting state offices of members of key congressional committees to lobby for congressional action on the issue.
“The president's budget plan includes an important down-payment on health care reform,” the seniors' lobby said. “As he said, however, he will need bipartisan action from Congress this year to get the whole job done. It's time for Congress to put its own solutions forward.”
In a related area, Obama said Feb. 26 that funding under the economic stimulus law (Pub. L. No. 111-5) to help workers who lost their jobs maintain their health insurance is now available.
The law includes $24.7 billion to help workers maintain their health insurance under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), which Obama said would help about 7 million workers.
The law provides a 65 percent subsidy for nine months to help workers who have lost their jobs keep their COBRA coverage.
The budget document is available on the Web at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget.
Government’s only tool is force, and force is usually the worst possible tool to apply in social matters.
http://www.voiceoftheopposition.com/2009/06/ronald-reagan-speaks-out-against.html

Government’s only tool is force, and force is usually the worst possible tool to apply in social matters.

http://www.voiceoftheopposition.com/2009/06/ronald-reagan-speaks-out-against.html July 1993 - The Road to Freedom George Roche, President, Hillsdale College What Free Men Know "...For nearly a century, the Left in this country has claimed that socialism, whether represented by Soviet-style communism or European-style socialism, is morally superior to our market-based capitalist system. They have criticized every aspect of America, all the while chanting their chants and rattling their bones. They have compared our “failures,” real and imagined, with their utopian pipe dreams. Through the testimony of those forced to live under communism and socialism, we know that the truth is exactly the opposite of all the promises. In the former Soviet Union, in the name of “equality” and “economic justice,” the party bosses gave themselves a cut of the wealth one hundred to one thousand times greater than that of the masses. They created a ruling class, the nomenklatura, more autocratic and exploitative than the tsars. In a system much like apartheid, except far more virulent, they reserved for themselves all the top jobs, the best education, the best medical care, and up to 100 percent of the quality goods sold in special stores that only they could patronize. So shamelessly did the nomenklatura bleed workers that, by some of their own calculations, it was estimated that 86.5 percent of the Soviet population were dirt poor. Many did not have running water or electricity. Only 11.2 percent of the population could be called middle class. That left just 2.3 percent with virtually all the power and privilege; and among these was a “super-elite” of about 400,000 people who alone had access to such luxuries as the system was able to import. The promises were all frauds. “Power to the people” turned out to be totalitarian power in the hands of a tiny, highly privileged ruling class. “Economic justice” turned out to be rank exploitation. Recent years have been bad for the nomenklatura and good for the people. The cause of freedom has blossomed not only in Eastern Europe and Russia but around the world. Today, for the first time in history, a greater number of the world’s people are free than are not. Many more enjoy some limited freedoms, and free nations outnumber the unfree. Free men know what tyrants never learn, that the ultimate economic resource is the mind and energy of a free person. Only from a free mind comes the direction of all productivity and the innovation that is tomorrow’s prosperity... Tomorrow’s Agenda As I said at the outset, communism is dying, but we need no more than the unrepentant Left to remind us that the war of ideas is not over. It may even grow more intense. The rejection of communism leaves a vacuum that other “isms” and ideologies will rush to fill. Certainly among them will be milder forms of socialism that build the power of the state. It is the business of all who stand for individual rights in a civilized order to refute these efforts and make our own ideas heard. The answer to bad ideas is good ideas. Let us never forget that the war of ideas is a real war, with real casualties should we fail. One cannot predict the politics and perils of tomorrow exactly, but the enemies of the moral order change little. We know them. We can in some measure anticipate their assaults by their beliefs and goals and plan our own strategy accordingly. The enemy, as ever, will be the exploiters, the wielders of power and privilege. They will take positions against the traditional and the normal, against home and family, against distinction between man and woman, against human nature itself: positions which, on analysis, will treat people as mere conveniences to somebody’s plans, not as individuals of infinite worth. Whatever they seek, they will be armed with ideological formulas and warped words. Above all, they will try to force their schemes on us, using the power of government. Such resort to government “solutions” always seems to me a giveaway that something wrong or dishonest is involved. In freedom, persuasion—not coercion—is the way to get one’s ideas across, and the only way. Imposing them by law denies to others their liberty, their dignity, their right to their own opinions. It is, in fact, an act of contempt toward them and an act of pride in oneself—a claim to know better than we what is best for us. In the view of Nobel laureate E A. von Hayek, this is the “fatal conceit.” In the Judeo-Christian view, it is sin. Deep down, it implies a false, secularist view of life that throughout this century has been at war with Western, and especially American, ideals. It is precisely the kind of thinking that has collapsed due to hard experience in Eastern Europe and Russia; but it is still rampant here. We need not know the whys and wherefores of a given statist scheme to realize that it serves bent thinking and bad purposes. It will, of course, be made to sound good, as if it were correcting injustice instead of creating it, or helping the needy instead of making them dependent and helpless. It will, of course, have the support of all the familiar “opinion makers” in the academy, the media and the Washington Beltway. But it is going to cost us dearly, not only in taxes and liberty but in moral values. Certainly in the coming years we will have to deal with liberalism, a set of once-noble ideas that sold its soul to statism decades ago and now grows more decadent every day. It remains strong, but as a reflex. Tap any liberal with a rubber hammer, and an informed person can predict where the knee will jerk. The reflex the Left constantly encourages is: Uncle Sam is there to do what individuals can’t or won’t accomplish on their own. If we agree with this reflex, we forget the basic facts of life. Government can’t do anything for us without first taking from us the means to do it. Government’s only tool is force, and force is usually the worst possible tool to apply in social matters. Neither must we forget that we ourselves, as free men and women, are the doers, builders and producers. Running to Uncle Sam with our problems only takes away from our own freedom and resourcefulness. We have, I’m afraid, lost our fear of big government, and we had better regain it soon. America is not immune to suffocation by an Old World-type state, any more than Eastern Europe or Russia has been. Our survival is at stake. We are seeing momentous change around us, but cannot be sure where it will take us. Will a springtime of liberty bloom into a full summer of peace? Or will our hopes collapse before some new peril? Surely it is up to us to create the right tomorrow for our children by taking charge today. There has never been a generation in the history of the world that has had such an enormous opportunity to make a clear choice and to have such a strong hand in implementing that choice. We can play our part in shaping the world now emerging, or we can stand aside and be overrun. The other side is working against us. We have to be better. We have to lead with the right ideas..." http://74.125.47.132/custom?q=cache:QZ43Z11FGqMJ:https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp%3Fyear%3D1993%26month%3D07+Liberal+to+socialism&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=google-coop-np --------- Paul Revere's Ride -- By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. When I read this poem I can not help but think that America is finally waking up from its sleep. Who is Raila Odinga? And why did Obama copy his slogan? http://www.military-money-matters.com/obama-and-odinga.html How is that change working for you? Just check off what he has done TO YOU...NOT for you. Anything that is worth something -- You have to work for it. No one is going to give you gas to put in your car. No one is going to pay your mortgage. Same for healthcare just tell Obama to keep his change. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI -- Utopian socialism