The Vision of a Marxist/Communist, Regulating Main Street, Ban on Fishing Possible, and Health Care Shenanigans

THESE people actually receive public taxpayers' funds from the state of NY - via the Stimulus Bill!!
Jed Brandt, admitted Marxist, and his Brecht Forum [a non-profit Marxist / communist organization in New York City that promotes social activism] is the recipient of stimulus funds from the Obama American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
 
From Townhall.com.: "The Brecht Forum's 09-10 program features workshops in the participatory theater techniques developed by the noted Brazilian director Augusto Boal. The program includes monthly workshops led by members of the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory and two master workshops led by Augusto Boal.”
The website for the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory describes this form of art in rather revealing political terms,
“Augusto Boal has defined Theater of the Oppressed as a rehearsal for revolution.”
The website further describes its mission as using “interactive theater as an organizing tool” and works with “educators, human service and healthcare workers, union organizers and community activists” to solve perceived problems.

Here is Brandt, in his own words:  “We have to help bring this government down, we have to help destroy this system and that requires increasing the alienation that working class and oppressed people feel. The way change is going to happen in this country is through the destruction of what we call the United States of America. "I’m opposed to white supremacy not because it’s white people involved. I am opposed to the system we traditionally call imperialism and the idea that some people have rights and privileges that are not granted to all human beings. And the solution to that problem is called communism and socialism and we should put it in our mouths. We should say it when we say what is your politics? I am a socialist. I demand that we have health care for people and it’s not a demand that’s negotiable with health insurance companies.
"We will take your insurance companies; we will take the farms in this country; we will shut down the military apparatus in this country and I am tired of being told to stuff my anger back in my pants.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Big Government: "Friday night on National Public Radio, a fitting place to announce an unprecedented growth in federal power, Sen. Chris Dodd praised his partner in crime Sen. Bob Corker for working together to create an “independent, autonomous, rule- writing entity, unlike anything we’ve ever had before.”  That is exactly why Tea Party activists from across the Volunteer State gathered in front of Corker’s office this past week to protest his back room dealmaking.
That entity won’t be regulating Wall Street.  it will be regulating Main Street.  Stores with layaway plans.  Check cashing companies.  Payday lenders.  Debt settlement companies.  Car Dealers and pawn shops (if their lobbyist written exemption falls out) will all be regulated by the federal government.
And that’s just for starters. How many government agencies do you know of that get less powerful as they go along? And how many can you think of that continue to grab more and more power over more and more parts of our lives?"
That entity won’t be regulating Wall Street. It will be regulating Main Street  .  Stores with layaway plans.  Check cashing companies.  Payday lenders.  Debt settlement companies.  Car Dealers and pawn shops (if their lobbyist written exemption falls out) will all be regulated by the federal government.
And that’s just for starters. How many government agencies do you know of that get less powerful as they go along? And how many can you think of that continue to grab more and more power over more and more parts of our lives?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Washington Examiner reported: "From a fact sheet on Obama's campaign website: Obama’s plan will save a typical family up to $2,500 on premiums by bringing the health care system into the 21st century: cutting waste, improving technology, expanding coverage to all Americans, and paying for some high-cost cases. However,the CBO just produced this analysis of the senate health care bill which concludes that the Senate health care bill will raise the average family's health care premiums by $2,300."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From ESPN Outdoors: "The Obama administration has ended public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters."
"Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard-working American families and small businesses are being ignored.
"In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President's concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Slaughter Solution to passing the health care bill, proposed by the House rules chairman: the rule would declare that the House "deems" the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but House members would be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/House-Democrats-looking-at-Slaughter-Solution-to-pass-Obamacare-without-a-vote-on-Senate-bill-87267402.html#ixzz0hprhgHmw
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Washington Times reports: "Last week brought bad news for universal health care. On Friday, the Daily Telegraph exposed Britain's National Health Service's secret plan to close hundreds of hospital wards after the next general election. Massive budget shortfalls will force Britain's government-run health care system to take this highly unpopular step in order to constrain costs. (Snip) But Britain's National Health Service demonstrates that what the government giveth, the government can also taketh away - especially when it runs out of money."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
National Review Online writes of Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah): "he has made few friends in official Washington with his plan to empower federal agencies to fire employees who are habitual tax scofflaws. He has made a lot of enemies, and there are more of them than you’d expect: According to data from the IRS and the Office of Personnel Management, nearly 100,000 current federal employees are behind on their taxes. Not all of them are big offenders, but they are delinquent to the tune of nearly $1 billion — an average of about $10,000 each.
"Chaffetz is, in a sense, running with a political football he intercepted from President Obama, who in January called for legislation that would prevent the hiring of, and enable the firing of, private-sector contractors with tax delinquencies. Chaffetz signed on to that plan and added an amendment that would cover government employees, too."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed out yesterday at former Rep. Eric Massa, calling him a “poor baby” who is “exaggerating” his importance by appearing on television to discuss his longtime penchant for tickling men.  Pelosi also told ABC’s Charlie Rose that Massa’s judgment may be clouded because he is suffering from cancer.
“This is a very sick person,” Pelosi told Rose. “He has been diagnosed with cancer. Perhaps his judgment is impaired because of the ethical issues that have arisen, and he is no longer in the Congress.”
The comments are surprising because new reports out today suggest Pelosi had known Massa was a “very sick person” for much longer than she seems to let on. [Count on Nancy to "drain the swamp" of the ethically impaired.]

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

This Is Our Role, National Biometric ID Card, Miss Me Yet, & D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program

Nancy Pelosi actually SAID the following yesterday:  "We must pass the health care bill so that we can find out what's in it!" Exactly! Unbelievable!  This blogger is headed for Washington, DC - to take part in FreedomWorks' "The People's Surge Against Obamacare" on March 16.  Please comment with ideas or with possible words for a sign I might carry.  I need to make the strongest stand I can to help defeat this bill - or answer to my grandchildren for standing idly by at our crisis point.  I heed the words of Judge Napolitano [following].
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coming to government computers in the USA, perhaps, and reported by the UK Telegraph about England:

Patients’ confidential medical records are being placed on a controversial NHS database without their knowledge, doctors’ leaders have warned.

The scheme, one of the largest of its kind in the world, will eventually hold the private records of more than 50 million patients.
But it has been dogged by accusations that the private information held on it will not be safe from hackers.
The British Medical Association claims that records have been placed on the system without patients’ knowledge or consent.
It follows allegations that the Government wanted to complete the project before the Conservatives had a chance to cancel it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dick Morris: "The final fight over health care boils down to a simple formulation: The People vs. Pelosi. In district after district, the next 10 days will feature an aroused citizenry demanding a no vote while an ideologically motivated speaker demands assent. The echo of this push/pull will take place in the minds of the Democratic House members. Each will ask himself whether he is really prepared to throw away his career for this vote. Is this it? Is this legislation worth the end of line?
To arouse public opinion, anti-Obamacare groups are drilling down to the congressional district level and running ads in each swing congressman's backyard pressuring their member to vote no. The League of American Voters is now running ads in the [swing] districts. The ads all feature the telephone numbers of the representatives. They will be hearing -- at some length, we suspect -- from their constituents. Will the din of those who vote on their re-election drown out the pushing of the speaker who doles out their privileges?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Andrew P. Napolitano is a 59-year-old former New Jersey Superior Court Judge.  He is a graduate of  Princeton University, and Notre Dame  Law  School.   At Princeton he was a founding member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton along with Justice Samuel Alito. 
 Judge Napolitano is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of  New Jersey .  In a stirring Utube video in which he makes the case for our government not being Constitutionally permitted to take over our health care system, he also tells a story about our FBI-written search warrant.  If the person to whom it is given tells ANYONE about the situation, he is eligible for 5 years in prison.  How scary is that?  The Judge ends with this: "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger.  You're that generation!  This is your role!  Now is that time!  Freedom must be defended from every assailant in every corner of this country, from inside this country, from outside this country and especially from the government that wants to take it away from us!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7n2m-X7OIuY

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This from the NYT: Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. [Once again, the government's idea to take care of a small percentage of people in America is to enslave and control ALL of us!]

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker. [And here I thought that only those who are ARRESTED must give their fingerprints to the government!  But this plan would be so much more inclusive - and wouldn't that be a good thing?  NOT!]
The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.
The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens. [Do you think?]

"It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."
Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. "We've all got Social Security cards," he said. "They're just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That's all I'm saying." [Now, all Americans can trust our government to do what they have so far never shown an ability to do - right?  That's like saying that Communism and Socialism have never worked as well as Democracy simply because the right people have not been in charge.]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954904575110124037066854.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many of us have seen the billboard of President George W. Bush - beside the words:  Miss me yet? A NYT columnist has written: "A perhaps more substantial sign incorporates a sign famous (or infamous) in the Bush presidency. The March 8 cover of Newsweek reproduces the famous 2003 photograph of Bush on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Lincoln. The president is in the left of the picture, striding away from the famous banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.” Those words haunted Bush for the next five years, but now, Newsweek reports, they may play differently because — and this is emblazoned on the cover — we may have “Victory At Last.” It has to be said, declare the cover-story’s writers, that “now almost seven hellish years later . . . something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq”; and, they add (eerily echoing Bush’s words in 2003), this development “most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.”
Analyses of how this has happened are plentiful and varied, but most agree that it had something to do with the summer of 2009, when the town meetings that seemed a good, nicely democratic idea in the spring turned into a recruiting device for the angry crowds that would become the Tea Party."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commentary Magazine informs us:  Writing in the Washington Post, Kelly Amis and Joseph E. Robert Jr. explain that the $450 billion spending bill last year “effectively dismantled a small, successful education program benefiting low-income children in the nation’s capital.”

Congress needed only to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program — as the local community asked it to do and as the research should have compelled it to do — but the members who mattered ignored the families outside their white marble offices, even rescinding scholarships to hundreds of hopeful students.

Where is Obama in all this? Nowhere to be found. They write:
Obama could have stood up for these children, who only want the same opportunities that he had and that his daughters now have. Instead, his education secretary, Arne Duncan, proffered an argument that would be funny if it weren’t so sad: Scholarships for poor students aren’t worth supporting because not enough of them are given out. [I wonder why we haven't heard about this from the marching college student and the unions which are driving them to rebellion?  No Child Left Behind, indeed.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Dumbed Down America, Federal Workers' Pay, Andy Stern to Deficit Commission, and Judge Liu

From the Canada Free Press: Decades of entrusting the federal government with our children’s education has led, inevitably, to the dumbing down of an entire nation. Our public school system has failed to provide the most basic and elementary skills, while at the same time functioning as a ministry of propaganda for left wing causes. The hijacking of our schools has been going on for decades; we are now experiencing the repercussions.  [I have lots more to say about this in the next blog].

Only in a thoroughly dumbed down America would Barack Obama’s astonishing ignorance of American history have gone unnoticed. Only in a thoroughly dumbed down America could Barack Obama have been elected to the presidency in the first place. A man with no executive experience, deeply disturbing associations, and gaping holes in his history was elevated to the highest office in the land. Our dumbness test is upon us. Obama’s BFF, Valerie Jarrett, broke down the Obama game plan for insulting the collective American intelligence:

“Could the Obama administration…write some much simpler booklets on housing foreclosure, on the health care bill…where as a typical person including those in the Tea Party could understand the basics of it? Cause I feel many of them simply don’t. Do you think that is an analogy?”

Yes! Start speaking more slowly and issue pop-up books and you’ll finally get those ignorant Constitutionalists converted to the cult of Obamanutz to receive the blessings of tyranny."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Politics Daily writes: "Talk about your preemptive strike. The success of national health care reform legislation is still an uncertainty, but some states are already taking measures to keep federal hands off their citizens. Thursday, Virginia became the first state to enact a law exempting its residents from any health insurance mandates. It's one of 36 states where lawmakers are trying to head off potential federal legislation."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Throw in benefits, and the average federal worker makes $38,000+ more than the average private sector worker -- the very same one who's ultimately paying his salary.

In December, USA Today was also responsible for reporting "federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months."

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/USA-Today-Average-federal-employee-makes-38000-more-than-private-sector-worker-86633182.html#ixzz0hOuvwPZC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fox News: "Andy Stern has been appointed by Barack Obama to his Deficit Commission. The 59-year-old president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union has angered business groups and political conservatives because of his support for health care reform and controversial "Card Check" legislation, which would make it easier for unions to organize in workplaces.
"Brian Johnson, executive director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom, which opposes Card Check, called the appointment a White House scheme to skirt lobbying laws. Three months ago, Johnson's organization and Americans for Tax Reform, headed by Grover Norquist, sent a joint letter to the U.S. attorney's office in Washington demanding a criminal investigation of Stern for failing to register as a lobbyist.

"That request stemmed from an investigation the groups conducted of Stern's dealings with government officials. Using public records, press reports, White House logs, Twitter messages and disclosures in union reports filed with the labor department, their investigation found that Stern spent more than 20 percent of his time in contact with policymakers and elected officials.

"Under the 2008 federal lobbying law, anyone who spends that amount of time trying to influence government must register as a lobbyist; failure to register is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $200,000 fine.

"Stern, whose union funneled $60 million to the Obama election campaign, has been a regular visitor to the White House since Obama's inauguration. White House logs released last October showed he visited the presidential mansion 22 times since Obama took office, including seven meetings with the president. But most of the visits were for group events, and it is an open question whether his attendance would count as lobbying activity.

"Called "the most important labor boss in America today" and once considered for secretary of labor, Stern has become a political lightning rod. His appointment to the commission, wrote Investor's Business Daily, "is like having a serial arsonist organize Fire Prevention Week." Katie Packer, executive director of Workforce Fairness, a group backed by the Chamber of Commerce, said his appointment to the commission "doesn't pass the laugh test."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JAKARTA, Indonesia – Yahoo News reports: "Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta's parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to this predominantly Muslim country.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.Such demonstrations of hostility toward Obama are rare in Indonesia, where he enjoys widespread popularity because he spend part of his childhood in Jakarta while his mother was married to his Indonesian stepfather.

Local government officials allowed business people to erect a statue of a 10-year-old Obama in a Jakarta park in December. But it was shifted last month to a nearby elementary school that he attended after more than 50,000 people supported a Facebook campaign against it and court action was threatened.

Obama is expected to sign the statue's pedestal while in Jakarta."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AP - Al-Qaida's American-born spokesman on Sunday called on Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces to emulate the Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Following are parts of a letter written by Marine Ken Russell to President George W. Bush:
On October 23, 1983 the Marine Corps Battalion Landing Team (BLT) building located at the Beirut International Airport was blown up.  Two hundred twenty Marines, 18 Sailors and 3 Soldiers were killed in a split second by a suicide bomber. 

Fast forward years later and that enemy became active again like a gurgling volcano.  The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Kobar Towers, African embassies, USS Cole all went unanswered like the '83 BLT bombing.  I was off active duty, had inter-service transferred into the Navy Reserves and working a civilian job in the aerospace industry when the first WTC bombing took place.  Obviously no one figured out how or still didn't have the moral courage to close with and engage the enemy even after the USS Cole was bombed several years later.  Terrorism, the exact same kind from the exact group of ideologies in 1983, was slowly defeating us and we acted like a nation locked out of a motel room, standing in the rain, naked.

Then, the worst terror attack in world history took place on our shores.  We all know it.  We all felt that same gut punch, but this time we had a leader who had his clothes on, the room key, an umbrella and a reassuring smile on his face.  Why so many hated him for that can only be explained by unbridled pettiness but there was no time to focus on destroying his life.  This enemy had now engaged us in our house and we had to close with him, borders or no borders, uniforms or no uniforms, battlefields or no battlefields.  George W Bush was that leader -- but how was he going to defeat these guys?

General Tommy Franks told us precisely how on Day One of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Few caught it.  It was so very simple and so very brilliant and almost everyone thought it only applied to one objective; overthrowing Saddam Hussein.  Remember what he said? 

"We will close with and engage the enemy at a time and place of our choosing." 

We drew them into Iraq and we killed them there.  Simple and genius.

Even Barack Obama admitted it -- and as usual, was clueless when he did so.  Remember his pre-election interview on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly?  Bill asked him if George W Bush was right about the surge and defeating al Qaeda in Iraq.  Remember what Obama said? 

"Before Bush invaded, there was no al Qaeda in Iraq." 

That is why I want to thank George W Bush and the military leaders who finally, finally after all the lost friends, lost Marines, lost three thousand plus Americans, had the courage and temerity to close with and engage this new enemy and defeat them in so many ways, crippling them to the point of near extinction.