What's the matter with Senator Lindsey Graham?

Did he enjoy the camaraderie of the U.S. Senate "Gang of 14" so much that he wants to put the band back together?

That's the only acceptable explanation for a Republican in either the U.S. Senate or the House to promote such a suggestion. His stated purpose, to find a way to pass a smaller version of Obamacare without the use of the procedure known as reconciliation, a misnomer if ever there was one, is out of bounds.

For those who don’t recall, the “Gang of 14” was an alliance of moderate U.S. Senators who tried to broker peace between opposing factions when it came to judicial nominations. Their working theme was “Can’t we all just get along?” and their theme song was “We are the World.”

Senator Graham was so smitten with the connection they made in their gatherings, he thinks they can recreate the magic and defuse the tension over the Democrats’ plan to invoke reconciliation, the “nuclear option,” to steamroll the GOP and pass their 2,000 page plus health legislation, which will require a forklift to deliver to President Obama’s desk.

Allow me to say it slowly and clearly for Senator Graham and others who would unwittingly sacrifice our individual liberty and further cripple one-sixth of our economy - this is a bad, bad bill. Any pressure placed on the Democrats, whether it’s over the content of the bill or the procedures they invoke to pass it, is deserved and necessary.

The average American has been bamboozled to think this bill will reduce costs, which is supposed to be the whole point of this exercise. Even then-candidate Barack Obama criticized his opponent, Senator Hillary Clinton, for proposing an individual mandate to purchase health insurance because he said health care cost containment, before universal coverage, was the critical path toward the reform of health care.

This bill’s answer to the problem of health care costs, however, is simply not to pay them, which is why doctors are increasingly refusing to accept Medicaid and Medicare payments. Doctors will not provide a service if they’re not getting paid for it, and that will reduce the quality of medical care.

We need look no further than Massachusetts to see where Obamacare will lead us as a nation. Commonwealth Care or, as I like to call it, Romneycare, provides 96% of state residents with medical insurance, which is universal coverage for all intents and purposes. But let’s look at the rest of the story.

Medical costs under Romneycare are nearly 40% higher than they were in 2006 when the program started. The state is $1.3 billion in debt, overcrowded waiting rooms are worse, doctor shortages are worse - but everyone is covered.

Obamacare’s solution to arbitrarily determine costs means medical professionals will be paid less for their services. New doctors have an average of $140,000 in medical school loans to pay off, not to mention shelling out for medical malpractice liability insurance. Fewer doctors will start or remain as general practitioners, where the doctor shortage is most acute.

No government health care program has ever come in at or under its projected cost. In fact, Medicaid, Medicare and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) busted their budgets by over $171 billion, and Medicare is going to become insolvent in the next decade.

None of this matters, of course, to those who demand health care services as a right. They will get their mandatory health insurance at someone else's expense, but who will they blame when the doctors shut their doors because they can't meet their expenses? Who will be vilified when their taxes go up to pay for the immense bureaucracy created in Washington to administer this $1 trillion program? What will they do with full coverage that gives them access to long waits and limited services?

People need a reality check, or at least lessons in math or economics. This bill isn't about securing a right. It's about government taking over and taking services away. I fear for this country; we have surrendered our common sense and self-sufficiency, and let elites frighten us into submission.

Don’t join them, Senator Graham. The Democrats are desperate; they are jumping all over the place to find a hook that will stem the tide of opposition to their takeover plan.

First, it was “bending the cost curve” when most people knew it did nothing at all about costs.

Then it was “seize the moment” because the 9-12 March on Washington and the polls, which they refuse to acknowledge publicly, but they read privately, told them they were losing momentum – if they ever had it.

After the “Massachusetts Miracle” of Scott Brown’s election, they donned sackcloth and ashes, promised us they would focus on the citizens’ number one priority, jobs, and said they would put together a package that could win bipartisan support.

Then, in an inexplicable burst of defiance – maybe Rahm Emanuel visited them in the shower? – they had a chance of heart and challenged the Republicans, mano a mano, to meet them at Blair House at high noon for a showdown.

When the Republicans came well-armed with information and explanatory defenses, while the Democrats effectively brought a knife to a gunfight with their anecdotes, false denials and sob stories, they needed a new bogeyman.

They turned on the insurance companies, the ones they held hands with at the White House in the beginning – “I was for the insurance companies before I was against them.”

Never mind that the insurance companies comprise a single-digit sliver of the health care cost pie chart – they are evil and must be subjected to the wrath of The One, preferably in front of college-age crowds who want to subsist on their parents’ health insurance until middle age.

They’re on the run, Senator Graham. Why are you throwing them a lifeline, however tenuous it may be? You need to stand resolute with your colleagues, not because it’s the politically popular thing to do, but because this bill will harm our nation’s bottom line and cripple our health care system even further, dumping tens of millions of new customers on a creaking beam that’s about to break.

Don’t crumble on this issue, Senator Graham.

There’s an old saying that “stuff flows downhill” - or words to that effect! There’s no better description I can think of for this barely half-baked notion that a four-figure tax credit per new employee is going to set off this explosion of small business hiring. That “stuff” started in Washington and is flowing downhill to Annapolis, and it doesn’t smell any sweeter.

Since neither Barack Obama nor Martin O’Malley has ever run a business, perhaps they can be forgiven for their ignorance, except they’re in charge. If they don’t know anything about business, they should hire people that actually ran a business once or twice in their lives rather than the academicians, Wall Street financiers or ideological cronies that staff their advisory councils. As I’ve recounted in this space before, there’s not a lot of people surrounding the President who have actually experienced starting and running a company, managing profit and loss, or meeting a payroll.

As I’ve also recounted in this space, O’Malley is at the helm of arguably the most anti-business state in the nation, a state where one of its legislators, Senator Verna L. Jones Rodwell, criticized Maryland businesses, and the producers and innovators who own them, because "the large corporations are not willing to share…the richest among us are not willing to share." Yep, that’s why people take enormous risks, work long hours away from their families, make tremendous personal sacrifices, and devote their lives to turning their dreams into reality, things that lesser men and women will not do – so they can “share.”

It’s not like Maryland businesses get much of an opportunity to “share.” An 8.25 percent corporate tax rate and a “millionaire’s tax” negates the need for sharing because it’s already being confiscated. The free spenders in Annapolis are more than happy to take the earnings generated by the blood, toil, tears and sweat of others, yet they still manage to botch the budget to the tune of multi-billion dollar deficits every year.

Meanwhile, across the river in Virginia, their House of Delegates is considering a bill to repeal their corporate tax altogether. They have no “millionaire’s tax” and everyone making over $17,000 is taxed at the same rate, making it essentially a flat tax. Is it any wonder Virginia consistently ranks at or near the top for business-friendliness, and Maryland near the bottom?

After pounding small businesses and their customers into submission with record tax increases, and implementing burdensome paperwork requirements that cost small business owners about $50 an hour in lost productivity, O’Malley wants to throw them a bone with what started out as a $3,000 tax credit and is now a whopping $5,000! I’m sure small business owners all over Maryland are bowing down in gratitude at this very moment in recognition of such generosity.

Either he thinks we’re rubes who can’t do the math and figure out his measly tax credit won’t cover the cost of a new employee for longer than two months at best, or he’s truly clueless when it comes to basic economics.

Since he wasn’t paying attention in class – too busy trying to impress the girls with his guitar licks, I suppose - we’ll go over it one more time.

Businesses exist to create wealth, which benefits the business owner, the business owner’s family, the employees of the business and their families, and the communities in which they purchase other goods and services, contribute to charitable causes, save and pay down debt to secure their futures, invest their wealth to create more wealth and, yes, pay taxes. It’s the most effective economic system in world history and the most realistic because it taps into the innate human drive to create and achieve.

Businesses create wealth by selling their goods and services to the general public. How well they do - in other words, how much demand they generate for their products - determines how much they have to produce and that, in turn, determines how many people they must hire to meet their production goals and keep up with the demand. When business is good, everyone wins – the consumers who get value for their money, the workers who earn a decent wage, and the employers who put more money into the business so it can grow, and the community along with it.

When people aren’t buying because they lack the means or the confidence to do so, businesses aren’t selling and they can’t keep people on the job when there’s no demand. A small tax credit placed in the hands of the small business owner isn’t going to make consumers buy more, and that is what has to happen for the job market to be revived.

The question they ought to be asking on Capitol Hill and at the State House is, “How do we put more money in people’s pockets so they’ll go out and spend again, giving businesses a reason to hire?”

Another young Democratic President, John F. Kennedy, understood this was the question that needed to be answered, and he addressed it by cutting taxes and giving people back their money, rather than doling out small tax credits as if the money belonged to the government and not the people. I was astonished by the number of public statements President Kennedy made equating tax cuts to job growth, economic revival, and greater tax revenue for the government.

"In short, it is a paradoxical truth that ... the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The experience of a number of European countries and Japan have borne this out. This country's own experience with tax reduction in 1954 has borne this out. And the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus."

In a 1962 radio and television report on the state of the national economy, President Kennedy described the legislation he planned to introduce:

“It will include an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in both corporate and personal income taxes. It will include long-needed tax reform that logic and equity demand ... The billions of dollars this bill will place in the hands of the consumer and our businessmen will have both immediate and permanent benefits to our economy. Every dollar released from taxation that is spent or invested will help create a new job and a new salary. And these new jobs and new salaries can create other jobs and other salaries and more customers and more growth for an expanding American economy."

When was the last time you heard a Democrat describe tax cuts with the words “logic” and “equity”? Not in Maryland – not in a long time.

Senate president Mike Miller thinks it’s politically courageous to raise taxes, and mocks those of us committed to keeping more money in the private economy where it can grow and do the most good for the most people. He’d rather keep the money in the public treasury where it’s subject to mismanagement, waste, being used to buy one’s re-election and who knows what else.

Governor O’Malley and his cohorts can get serious and cut taxes for small businesses and their customers, or they can insult our entrepreneurs’ intelligence with tax credits and stink up the Maryland economy even more than they already have. 

Yesterday, I watched the daily White House press briefing. I was streaming it live while working on my computer.

As I was mostly listening, it dawned on me that Robert Gibbs gives the same campaign non answers at every press briefing. We all know the DNC talking points: The president is dedicated to transparency, bipartisanship, health care for the uninsured, thin US children, etc... Even though Gibbs' rhetoric remains the same, his arrogance has only grown.

When Robert Gibbs walks into the White House press room, oxygen masks must drop down from the ceiling for the reporters. Gibbs' über hubris was recently noted in a very astute piece by Dana Milbank.

During the briefing, a reporter shouted out a question to Gibbs from the back of the room. This reporter was obviously not a member of the elite mainstream media who sit in the front rows of the briefing room. Gibbs smuggly told the "unimportant" reporter he will try to take his question at the end of the briefing. He then jokingly assured the press pool it will be "the cherry on the sundae." Clearly, Mr. Gibbs did not think that his question was worthy of discussion during the middle of the briefing.

Who is Robert Gibbs? Where did he go to college? What opinions and articles did he author? What awards did he win? Where did he work prior to becoming the press secretary to the President of the United States?

It appears that Robert Gibbs' background and entire life experience has revolved around politics. He is a career political hack. He is a graduate of NC State University. He went from a poli sci major in college to a congressional intern and kissed plenty of asses to become spokesman for senators Obama, Kerry and Hollings. I suspect Gibbs left John Kerry after his presidential loss and latched on to then Senator Obama in hopes of being his press secretary if he ran for president. Unfortunately for the American public, Gibbs' arrogance and inexperience mirrors our president.

It takes big Kahunas to ignore and patronize questions from veteran journalists with distinguished records of accomplishments. But in the world of Washington, DC, Robert Gibbs is living proof it is not what you know, but who you know.

Thank you Mr. Gibbs. You have given Hope for the mediocre!

SUBJECT: George W. Bush Has Left The Building

ATTN: Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Majority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives

Rep. Hoyer:

It's pretty clear that you never spent any time on active duty. You and many of your fellow Democrats have a difficult time accepting responsibility for - well, anything.

When I was in the U.S. Air Force, If I had started babbling like you do about how the current deficit spending and the voter's anger over it is everyone's fault but your own, my commander would have stopped me and said, "Lieutenant, are you making excuses?" The right answer? "No excuse, sir."

I heard your voice on the radio a couple of days ago, talking about voter anger and how it's justified. Just when I thought I might run off the road because His Highness the Majority Leader was about to speak the truth, you snapped out of it and blurted out the same tired line about "the depth of the recession inherited by the administration and by this Congress."

Enough already, Mr. Majority Leader. If you think the voters are mad at you now, just keep that up. We're not stupid or blind; we can see who's spending what and when.

Yes, President Bush increased the national debt by $3 trillion dollars over eight years. We know President Obama's term began in the shadow of a major economic crisis for which every one of you, and millions of us, bear responsibility.

From politicians in both parties who loosened the terms of mortgage lending to burnish their populist credentials, to the banks who made risky home loans, to the financial firms who took these securities and played the market like it was Las Vegas, and to the borrowers who bought more home than they could afford, there is no one that isn't to blame. If anything, the only voices warning of the dangers these risky mortgages could bring on the economy were -- wait for it -- George W. Bush and John S. McCain.

Incidentally, during the last two years of the Bush Administration, the Congress was controlled by the Democrats, but you were all either on an extended martini lunch break or running for President, because you accept no responsibility for deficit spending in that time frame.

Fine - saying you were asleep at the switch and derelict in your duties under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution is much better than taking ownership of your actions.

Now you've got the whole ball of wax - the White House and both houses of Congress. You can look under the beds if you like - that bogeyman George Bush is gone. Every action you've taken from January 19, 2009 forward belongs to you. How're you doing so far?

According to projections by Obama's own Office of Management and Budget, by the end of fiscal year 2010, this administration and this Congress will have increased the debt by $3.3 trillion - in 20 months!

Let that sink in, people - by October 1st of this year, Obama and the Democrats will run up as much debt in 20 months as President Bush did in EIGHT YEARS!

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Obama's initial budget blueprint will add to the national debt by as much as $14 trillion over the next decade, which is more than the entire national debt as it stands today, and more than all previous Presidents COMBINED.

Unless President Bush is hiding in the Oval Office curtains by day and rewriting budget documents by night like some malevolent elf in the shoemaker's shop, you own every single penny of spending that's occurred on your watch.

The $787 billion stimulus package, heavily slanted toward the public sector and political allies like the labor unions, rather than the private sector where jobs are truly created, and that claimed it would keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent but, in the end, couldn't stop it from reaching 10 percent? Yours.

The $410 billion appropriations bill and the proposed fiscal year 2010 budget totaling $3.69 trillion? Yours.

The proposed $1.9 trillion increase in the debt ceiling, a record increase and an amount that will allow the government to push the national debt to $14.3 trillion? Yours.

As an officer in the United States Air Force, a new duty assignment always presented me with challenges, not the least of which was the situation my predecessor left behind for me. From the moment I assumed command of my unit, however, everything that happened going forward was my responsibility - no excuses and no blame. That is the code of the leader.

Democrats whine that they are being punished for doing something about the economic crisis. No, you are being punished for doing something stupid.

You don't dig out of a deficit by digging a larger hole faster than anyone in history. You don't stimulate the U.S. economy or create jobs by stimulating primarily yourselves and your cronies.

Most importantly, you don't call the American people who oppose what you're doing "un-American," "brownshirts," "Nazis," "racists," "Astro-Turf," or "tea baggers," a vulgar term of which I was completely unaware until you and your allies brought it to the nation's attention. Leaders are expected to know better and set a positive example for others.

I agree with almost nothing Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley does in the policy arena, but I respect his statement when asked about the large protest that recently occurred right outside his public residence in Annapolis - "We welcome dissent, and we welcome the exchange of ideas." Good for him.

President Bush was always conciliatory toward those citizens who opposed him in public, expressing support for their First Amendment rights of speech, assembly and petition and extolling the virtues of our nation's freedoms. He would never have admonished them as this President has done ("Don't do a lot of talking"), nor would he have used the aforementioned vulgar term from the White House podium to categorize his public opposition.

Public servants are supposed to show deference to their constituents, for they serve at the consent of the governed; in short, we're the boss - you are not.

You clearly don't believe that. People who attended your town hall meeting this summer to express their concerns about the health bill - I refuse to use the words "care" or "reform" because it is neither - were dismayed by your open display of arrogance toward them. You created a lot of energized people dedicated to your defeat on that day.

Your recent suggestion that the American public was mistaken in 1994 when they swept the Democrats out of power in the Congress, and mistaken today in their anger over the President's agenda, is further evidence that the people's opinions mean nothing to you.

If a leader isn't successful in persuading those he leads, that's not a "them" problem, it's a "you" problem.

You haven't made a compelling enough case to the American people despite controlling every branch of government, and the pervasive liberal presence in the opinion-shaping institutions of the press, academia and the entertainment industry.

I have learned to trust the common sense and integrity of everyday Americans regardless of their credentials, economic status, or social standing. You have lost your intuition toward anyone outside of the echo chamber in which you, your contemporaries and your dependent constituencies reside.

Your title itself imbues you with the mantle of leadership, and one of your party's notable leaders from the past, President Harry Truman, summed up leadership in a nutshell; "The buck stops here."

Apparently, you and your allies believe the buck stops at Daria Drive in Dallas, Texas.

Party does indeed trump race

Amazing isn’t when a quote progressive unquote—like Harry Reid—utters objectively racist remarks, how the progressive establishment i.e. the President himself bends over backwards to excuse the comments. Move along nothing to see here.

Everything is kosher though because Obama knows what’s in Reid’s heart, and because of his allegedly “passionate leadership” on issues of “social justice.” Meanwhile progressives label nonracist opposition to their campaign for a government takeover of health care as…racist. It’s a pathetic update of the old and equally pathetic cultural Marxist argument that conservatives are bad guys because of rigid potty training.

Of course, when a conservative mockingly parodies a progressive’s racial insensitivity, it’s—natch—proof positive of the base racism at conservatism’s core.

The hypocrisy would be laughable if progressives weren’t so cynically tone deaf to their own history of racism and eugenics.

Also, never mind the tsunami of progressive harpies shrieking smashing the bulkheads had prominent Republican senator s spoke Reid’s words.

Mark Steyn keenly notes that the progressive reflex to defend Reid is a natural consequence of the absurd identity politics they pursue:

 

To those of us who find identity politics repugnant, it would seem to confirm that an unhealthy obsession with "anti-racism" eventually becomes so condescending it's indistinguishable from racism - or, at any rate, the micro-classifications of apartheid - to the point where bigtime Dem honchos are sitting around saying, "What we need here is a clean octoroon." "Well, this high yaller from Chicago might do the trick."

Don’t fret though my progressive friends, the good senator Gladden has a prescription for your woes: Just simply don’t care. Nothing else matters, massive budget deficits, tanking economy or whatever because well... Barack Obama is president.

Most are aware of the climate change scandal emanating from the leaked emails out of East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit. However, did you know there is a climate scandal in Maryland? Don’t be too hard on yourself if you didn’t, because as with the CRU story the state’s liberal media outlets aren’t interested in covering this scandal either.

Despite the utterly debunked “consensus” on global warming, Maryland’s climate fear mongers are boring full speed ahead with implementing their own draconian burdens on the state’s economy and taxpayers. And much like the scientists involved in the CRU scandal, our own alarmists don’t want the public to know what they are doing either.

In fact, secrecy has been the hallmark of state climate policy under Governor Martin O’Malley. In 2007, O’Malley hired the Center for Climate Strategies, a global warming alarmist advocacy group, to manage the state climate commission. Initially, the Maryland Department of the Environment refused to release documents pertaining to CCS. Then, after media scrutiny, the department agreed to release the information. However, MDE charged exorbitant fees. MDE billed me over $1,300 for copying charges, even though I requested the information electronically. It will cost you a similar price to find out which special interest groups are writing the regulations (cap and trade) for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act. What did they want to hide?

Perhaps MDE was concerned the public would see a draft memo from CCS instructing them that commission participants, “will not debate the science of climate change.” What’s the point of a commission if the outcome is predetermined? Much like the scientists now under fire, Maryland warmists feared honest debate about global warming.
Maybe MDE doesn’t want the public to know about the left wing environmental foundations funding CCS’ work in Maryland. For example, the board of directors of the progressive Town Creek Foundation in Easton MD, gave CCS a $100,000 grant to “facilitate policy recommendations” for the state climate commission. Donald Boesch, director of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, sits on the Town Creek board. Boesch just also happens to chair the commission’s scientific and technical working group. Town Creek gave UMCES $143,000 over the last three years, $70,000 specifically to assist the commission produce its final climate action plan. Peer review of the plan’s economic analysis by the Beacon Hill Institute revealed that it “offered no worthwhile guidance” for policy makers, and “no basis to judge the merits of its recommendations.”

Town Creek gave over $400,000 to the state’s leading environmental lobbying/activists groups, Environment Maryland and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network to agitate for the GHG Reduction Act. Indeed, Environment Maryland’s director—and commission member—Brad Heavner boasted that his organization was the “lead policy/lobbying group” in passing the bill.

A stacked state commission bought and paid for by environmental foundations. Legislation and policy recommendations, written and formulated by environmental activists paid for by the same environmental foundation. In any state but Maryland, that’s a scandal.