Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Fascism of Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi continues to show herself as one of the most condescending and hypocritical members of Congress to date. The current Speaker of the House and the first woman to hold this position has continued to show time after time, her belief that the American taxpayer is incapable of independent thought. Any disagreement by a group of Americans against the policies of Nancy Pelosi has been met with allegations that the unwashed masses don't know what's good for them and as Bill Maher once said about Single Payer Health Care; “You can't get Americans to agree on anything. Sixty-percent? Sixty-percent of people don't believe in evolution in this country. He just needs to drag them to it. Like I just said, they're stupid. Just drag them to this." When confronted with mounting resistance to ObamaCare, she referred to the protests at the Town Hall Meetings as Astroturf, meaning;

"those not interested in health insurance reform are disrupting public meetings and not allowing concerned constituents to ask questions and express their views. Many of these opponents who are shutting down civil discussion are organized by out-of-district, extremist political groups, and industry-supported lobbying firms." However in the same breath she says, “Successful, informative constituent meetings are being headlined by Democrats across the country.”

One is left with two possibilities; either she simply can not believe that anyone can see significant flaws in the workings of the Democrats in Congress, or she believes that any disagreements by her constituency is beneath her; the later would seem more likely. This of course is nothing new. Whenever Speaker Pelosi's rhetoric runs contrary to fact or reality, she simply states the absurd and presents it as fact. Such was her seemingly incompatible views on abortion rights and her professed Catholicism. Speaker Pelosi, in an interview with Tom Brokaw was asked “when” her faith believes life begins; her response was “I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition.” When Brokaw brought to her attention that it is common knowledge that the Catholic church believes life starts at conception, she compounded her hypocrisy in the area, by saying, “I understand. And this is like maybe 50 years or something like that. So again, over the history of the Church, this is an issue of controversy.” The responses from Catholics reached Pope Benedict himself, who stated after a hearing with Ms Pelosi, that all Catholics—especially legislators, jurists and political leaders—should work to create "a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development." Pope Benedict has written at length that the greatest threat to Catholicism in the United States is “Relativism”, meaning Catholics who choose only that part of their faith that is convenient or fits their world view; apparently he was thinking of Speaker Pelosi at the time.

In her acceptance speech as speaker, Ms Pelosi stated, "In order to achieve a new America, we must return this House to the American people. So our first order of business is passing the toughest ethics reform in history. This new Congress doesn't have two years or 100 days to renew itself”. It is interesting to note after almost two years, and numerous ethics violation, not one member of the house has been disciplined. The glaring example is Rep Charles Rangel. Rep Rangel is Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee; the committee that writes the tax code. The New York Post reported that he had bought a Caribbean Villa with an interest free loan given to him by one of his political donors. He then failed to report the loan and income from renting the Villa ($75,000), not only on his congressional disclosure forms, but also on his state or federal income taxes. Interestingly enough, Rep Rangel called for his own investigation on this and other violations, but Speaker Pelosi has refused to have him step down from his post, nor has Rep Rangel been disciplined in any way.

Speaker Pelosi was also become a critic of the coercive interrogation techniques used on terrorists. Speaker Pelosi gives a Clintonize ( I did not have sexual relations with that woman) explanation on what when she wasn't briefed:

When my assistant told me that the committee had been briefed -- now, I'm not on that committee any more. I'm now out of it. We have a new -- that ranking member wrote the appropriate letter to protest that, but the committees can look into and see the timing of who knew what and when and what the nature of the briefing was. I have not been briefed as to what they were briefed on in February. I was just briefed that they were informed that some of the enhanced situations were used”.

So for political reasons, Speaker Pelosi is throwing the CIA members who protected us after 911 under the bus. Did they go too far? Probably. Should we have invaded Iraq? Probably not. Was Speaker (then Rep) Pelosi, as a high ranking member of the House Intelligent Committee September 2002), briefed in coercive interrogation techniques? Of course. Is Speaker Pelosi misleading Americans and then recklessly charging the CIA with deliberate misconduct to cover her tracks (as factcheck.org asks)? What do you think?

Speaker Pelosi was represented the Cap and Trade Bill as a jobs bill. Cap and Trade is a tax based on the belief the human produced carbon dioxide causes Global Warming (aka the Green House Effect). While there is no doubt of the existence of Green House Effect, the last decade has thrown a monkey wrench in the computer models that were meant to predict an expedited increase in the Green House Effect caused by rising C02 levels, refereed to as Global Warming. Twenty years ago, earth temperatures were indeed warming and there was increased pressure on Climatologist to prove the connection between C02 levels Global Warming. Unfortunately for the scientist, temperatures have actually decreased on the last 10 years, causing the political pundits to change the name, Global Warming to Climate Change. The current computer models have been able to show that any and all climate conditions are the negative results of rising C02 levels; this is the definition of dogma, not science.

Well what about the jobs? Ed Histrodt; from TheNewAmerican.com;

You may have seen Nancy Pelosi jumping up and down like a junior high-school cheerleader and shouting “Jobs, jobs, jobs!” when she promoted Cap and Trade on the House floor. Wasn’t the bill about saving the planet, not a jobs bill?

It’s more likely that “green jobs” refers to new jobs in the massive bureaucracies necessary to issue emission allocations and police the energy used by all American businesses, and, doubtlessly soon, American households. (The equipment is already in limited use in the U.K. to monitor household electrical usage.) The Energy Police would not only have to monitor use, but also ascertain that the credits being sold were from bona fide “renewable” sources or determine that the originator wasn’t really cheating on that end of the transaction — a daunting task even for a massive bureaucracy".

From an article by Speaker Pelosi, "I believe we have to [pass a cap-and-trade bill] because we see that as a source of revenue," she said, noting that “proposed cap-and-trade bills would raise billions of dollars by forcing major emitters to buy credits to release greenhouse gases”.

President Obama has said that Cap and Trade will necessarily make gasoline prices “skyrocket”. What Cap and Trade does is allow the government to tax anything that produces carbon dioxide, such a breathing. None of the green jobs promised exist or are even on the drawing board. The point of Cap and Trade, is to make our current use of resources so expensive, that it is expected that innovation will supply the option. No matter the endgame, is the government that will tax and control the means of production.

Dr Steve Runnings, is a co-author of the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and founder of the Climate Change Studies program at the University of Montana. Dr Runnings has stated, “If the US passed a cap and trade and other countries did not, it wouldn’t work. It would ruin the US economy and it wouldn’t save the climate either. So this is a global issue, the global climate statistics are global in nature, global carbon emissions are global in nature, and we really have to have an international consensus of what to do. That is going to stretch our international diplomacy to its limit, there’s no doubt about that.” That's right Speaker Pelosi, it's all about, “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs”

If there is a final chapter in the emergence of fascism in American it would be the Democratic health care reform debate. The President was attacked every aspect of the current healthcare industry to try and convince the American people that the only solution is a government controlled Single Payer Plan; being presented now as a Public Option or ObamaCare. The President has said that doctors would rather cut off patients feet than treat Diabetes, that private health care 's mission is to take your money and deny services, and charged the big drug companies have successfully lobbied to eliminate drug price bargaining (Pres Obama has since made a deal with big pharmaceutical; they help fund OmabaCare with $80 billion and he will end Medicare (and Obamacare) drug bargaining. The plan on it's face makes no sense; it will still leave 30 million uninsured, with no contingent plan for 20 million illegal aliens; the first five years will be paid for by money saved over the previous 10 years; and 50% of the program will be funded by cutting $500 billion from Medicare, without cutting Medicare coverage (we already know drug prices are going to go up).

Speaker Pelosi has been front and center with her support for a public health plan and believes that if any American Tax payer does not share her support for the public option, they are weak minded and have been led astray by talk radio and FOX News. Speaker Pelois is so condescending that she believes all that is necessary is to change the name of the “Pubic Option” to the “Consumer Option”, than all the resistance to the Public Option would disappear. In the same speech, she said she wanted people to think about it as "their consumer option, because public is being misrepresented as being something that's paid for by taxpayer dollars, which it is not'' and that health reform would “actually improve Medicare coverage for seniors.” Apparently the Speaker has been on the public dole for so long, that she has forgotten that every cent that the government uses is paid for by taxpayers. Of course, a month ½ earlier she said, “Half the bill will be paid for by squeezing excesses out of the [Medicare and Medicaid] system, and there is $500 billion dollars to do that and we’re looking for more.” Only a politician with lifetime private health insurance paid by the government could make such claims. This of course comes after plans of taxing existing private health care plans and a value added tax (a federal income tax).

What is known is that most of the Public Health care promises are smoke and mirrors. From an article by Robert Samuelson; “Public Plan: Delusion in Health Care Debate”:

The public plan's low costs would be artificial. Its main advantage would be the congressionally mandated requirement that hospitals and doctors be reimbursed at rates at or near Medicare's. These are as much as 30 percent lower than rates paid by private insurers, says the health care consulting firm Lewin Group. With such savings, the public plan could charge much lower premiums and attract lots of customers. But health costs wouldn't subside; hospitals and doctors would offset the public plan's artificially low reimbursements by raising fees to private insurers, as already occurs with Medicare. Premiums would increase because private insurers must cover costs to survive.

As for administrative expenses, any advantage for the public plan is exaggerated, say critics. Part of the gap between private insurers and Medicare is statistical illusion: Because Medicare recipients have higher average health expenses ($10,003 in 2007) than the under-65 population ($3,946), its administrative costs are a smaller share of total spending. The public plan, with younger members, wouldn't enjoy this advantage.”

In other words the Medicare overhead advantage (3%) over private insurers (13%) is obtained by comparing apples to oranges; the public plan will likely have a similar overhead as the private insures of today. Finally:

The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more "choice" and "competition") to expand government power. But why would a plan tied to Medicare control health spending, when Medicare hasn't? From 1970 to 2007, Medicare spending per beneficiary rose 9.2 percent annually compared to the 10.4 percent of private insurers - and the small difference partly reflects cost shifting. Congress periodically improves Medicare benefits, and there's a limit to how much squeezing reimbursement rates can check costs. Doctors and hospitals already complain that low payments limit services or discourage physicians from taking Medicare patients.

The only way we have to estimate the future cost of health care in the past; and the past shows the so called skyrocketing health care costs rose similarly with Medicare. Samuelson went on to say the reason Medicare can keep it's cost down, is they can mandate low reimbursement rates; without which, “the public plan would founder”. And an advantage not given to private insurers.

Perhaps the greatest indicator of fascism is the size of the lie. Speaker Pelosi and Pres Obama seem to have no respect for the American citizen. In their world view, individual freedom and liberty must make way for collectivism; that the needs of the many now supersede the needs of the individual. When faced with the moral values of her religion, she defers to as a need of the state. When faced with the needs of the free market, she points to nationalizing the means of production as a need of the state. When faced with capitalism and the free market, they point to re-distribution of wealth as a need of the state. This has all been tried before; it is the fascism playbook, word for word, and it has never been successful and always resulted in tyranny. But their unending narcissism makes them believe that this time they'll get it right. They praise the ideas of Marx, and Mao, and now Chavez and Castro. Hopefully the American people will not forget what it is that makes America great. It's not hard, because it is written in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Our founding fathers battled tyranny and created the greatest country that has ever been. Let's not return the country to tyranny, because, the day will come when we'll want liberty again, and history has shown that only through the loss of life and limb can liberty be gained. It would be tragedy of unimaginable sacrifice, the sacrifices of our forefathers, that will be needed again.

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