Saturday, June 27, 2009

No time to give up.

The fact that Common Sense didn’t prevail in the House of Representatives with regards to the Cap and Trade bill doesn’t mean that it’s time to admit defeat. To the contrary, it means that it’s time to dig in and contact our Senators.

It doesn’t matter if you senators are democrats or republicans, they needs to be contacted and your voice raise against this mind numbing, economy killing, tax raising bill.

The national news media is stating that there isn’t much chance of getting this bill through the Senate. Could this be a ploy to get concerned citizens to back off their duty to contact their senators? After all, why go through the process if it’s going to fail anyway? Then when it passes, those senators sitting on the fence can say they didn’t hear anything from their constituents one way or the other.

Now I am going to pen a email, odd statement, type and email to my two senators asking them to vote against the Cap and Trade bill. While I’m at it, I will express my opposition to the health care bill too.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Finally-some common sense

Madame Speaker:

While there is still vigorous debate over the amount of the human contribution to global warming, it seems clear that man has played a role. I believe that we have a moral obligation to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and use clean, reliable, affordable sources of energy. But we must balance this moral obligation with an equal obligation we have to our constituents to do this in a manner that preserves our nation's economic competitiveness and jobs for Americans.

The Cap and Tax bill before us today is exactly that - an attempt to collect more money from Americans through indirect taxation; it is not a serious attempt to reduce carbon dioxide or other GHG emissions. The basic message of Cap and Tax bill is that "you can still emit CO2 as long as long as you pay the government for this privilege." This would be called extortion under other circumstances. Tony Soprano would be proud.

Other means of reducing emissions, such as phasing out older, dirtier, less efficient coal plants and replacing them in an orderly manner with clean, reliable, affordable energy like nuclear power were dismissed by the Democrat Leadership without even cursory consideration. However, this approach would produce more jobs than the Cap and Tax bill, and result in significant CO2 reductions without the significant increase in costs to consumers' utility bills this bill creates.

Advocates of the Cap and Tax bill state that it will not significantly increase the economic burdens on our constituents. This is just not true. The Cap and Tax bill also contains a Renewable Electricity Standard and other elements which will significantly increase costs to utilities and consumers. The Power District in my District conducted an independent analysis of the costs to my constituents, free of political interference like the one put out by EPA. Even with the free allowances allocated under the Waxman-Markey Cap and Tax bill, costs for ********* will increase by $74 million in 2012, and increase to $410 million a year by 2030 in the most optimistic case. My constituents will pay a new energy tax every time they flip on a light switch, turn on their computers, or charge their cell phones.

When the Energy & Commerce Committee met, amendments to replace old coal plants with clean, reliable, affordable energy from nuclear plants, or to encourage the construction of more nuclear plants to reduce our carbon emissions, were rejected on mostly party lines. This makes no sense. Nuclear power is clean, reliable, and the cheapest means of producing electricity in history to date. I urge my colleagues to reject this costly, job-killing legislation

This wasn’t written by a Grouchy Old Man, it was written by his Congressman. The letters were changed to red and italics by me. I think that he hit the nail squarely on the head.

I don’t have to write to my Congressman to push for this point of view but maybe you do.

A Grouchy Old Man

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Strip search follow-up

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090625/pl_afp/uscourtjusticesearch;_ylt=Ah5XzwcP3vLuhp_duCvVwAV1fNdF

This is a follow-up to my April 21st 2009 blog about the strip search of a 13-year-old girl. They were looking for ibuprofen. As you might guess, I was outraged by the school official’s action of strip searching a 13-year-old looking for over the counter non-aspirin.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – School officials in Arizona violated the rights of a 13-year-old girl when they ordered her strip-search and looked for extra-strength pain medication in her underwear, the US Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

I was even more outraged by the following portion of their decision.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court said the plaintiff could not sue for damages, because at the time the illegality of the strip-search had not been established.

The illegality had not been established? What about the mere insanity of the matter? Why wasn’t the child made to sit in the office until her parent(s) arrived and they could have handled the problem? What ever happened to common sense? Apparently the Supreme Court has lost some of theirs.

If the Supreme Court didn’t want to allow the girl that had her Constitutional rights violated the Constitutional right to sue her abusers; they should have come up with some other punishment. Why should the wacko school officials get away Scott free?

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Here we go again!

I thought that relaxed lending rules lead to the current housing trouble. Well, Barney Frank is at it again....

"Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said."

Here's a link to the article...and another copy of the best video about Barney Frank!

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Housing/idUSTRE55L39120090622

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

3 years for stealing a bike

Donte Stallworth is driving drunk and kills a guy. He pleads guilty to DUI manslaughter and receives a 30 day jail sentence and a monetary settlement with the family.

Lance Armstrongs bike is stolen and the theif gets 3 years.

So the moral of the story is: If you need to get somewhere and have no wheels it's better to get drunk and drive than to steal someone's bike. Either that or get the liberal judge that gives 30 days for killing a guy.

Obama's eligibilty going to court

Under growing pressure from several groups, Justice Antonin Scalia announced that the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear arguments concerning Obama's legal eligibility to serve as President in a case brought by Leo Donofrio of New Jersey . This lawsuit claims Obama's dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. Donofrio's case is just one of 18 suits brought by citizens demanding proof of Obama's citizenship or qualification to serve as president.

AP- WASHINGTON D.C. - In a move certain to fuel the debate over Obama's qualifications for the presidency, the group "Americans for Freedom of Information" has Released copies of President Obama's college transcripts from Occidental College. Released today, the transcript indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the school. The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California. The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program. To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship. This document would seem to provide the smoking gun that many of Obama's detractors have been seeking. Along with the evidence that he was first born in Kenya and there is no record of him ever applying for US citizenship, this is looking pretty grim. The news has created a firestorm at the White House as the release casts increasing doubt about Obama's legitimacy and qualification to serve as president. When reached for comment in London , where he has been in meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Obama smiled but refused comment on the issue. Britain's Daily Mail has also carried the story in a front-page article titled, "Obama Eligibility Questioned," leading some to speculate that the story may overshadow economic issues on Obama's first official visit to the U.K.

Do we really want Pres. Biden?

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Appendix to Obama's Bogeymen

I sense that I need to come clean and not be a hypocrite here. When speaking about Obama’s bogeymen I may have sounded as if I don’t care about the people who find themselves in financial problems. I truth is, I do. Once in my youth I found myself out of work once again (seniority layoff) and unable to pay my bills. There are several causes for reasons beyond a person’s control that he finds himself unable to pay his bills. It might be not having enough seniority to hold your job, it could be unexpected health issues, it could be a bubble in the housing market that drops the value of your house to half of what you owe on it. Then on the other hand, it could be that you made some bad choices in life.

I know the pain and heartache of having to swallow my pride and admit that I was not able to make it. I know the shame that I felt that I wasn’t man enough to provide for my family everything that everyone else had. Even though the turndown in the economy meant that there weren’t any jobs to be had, I still felt that I was less than a man because of the financial trouble we were in.

I made the hard decision, I bit the bullet and we lost everything, the house, the furniture, and even the baby’s bed. You know that you’ve sunk low when you watch as they take away your baby’s crib and there is nothing that you can do about it. It’s something that you look back on with shame for many years until you understand that there were no other options. We made the decisions that got us in trouble, we suffered the consequences of those actions and we learned the lessons that needed to be learned.

There were no rich relatives or liberal governmental programs that came in and bailed us out. It changed our lives in the short term for the worse but it modified our lived in the long term for the better.

The point of my listing wasn’t to belittle anyone who finds himself in financial difficulty. I’ve been there and done that. It was to speak against those who feel that it is the government’s job to come into their lives and make everything right. It’s to wake people up that the more you take from the government, the more they take from you.