Time to choose

You and I are watching the greatest expansion of government in our lifetime and there seems to be nothing we can do about it.  “Seems to be” is exactly what, Obama’s chief of staff,  Rahm (it down their throats) Emmanuel wants us to believe.  Rahm likes a crisis and I think it is time Americans gave him a real crisis, like a couple of defeats on the carbon tax and healthcare.

Rahm has pushed the Obama agenda along so fast, it has made the president a liar buy not living up to his campaign promise of allowing legislation to remain on a government web site for all to read and savor for five days.  Part of the reason for this is the president’s popularity is waning and Americans are catching on to the fact there is no money except OURS, to run the ever expanding government programs.  America, it is time for us to choose our future and we need to do it in the next six weeks.

Because of Obama’s unsound financial policy and our faltering economy, the Chinese are no longer willing to buy our debt as they once did.  They know we are in economic trouble.  If passed, the carbon tax (cap and trade) will cost each of us dearly in the price of durable goods, unemployment, loss of competitiveness to overseas manufacturing and energy cost.  The entire bill is a con designed by trading companies like Goldman Sachs who will sell the tax credits at tremendous profits.

National healthcare is also unaffordable.  The president plans to pay for healthcare by taxing those grossing over $260,000.  That is most every small business in America.  With the additional taxes for the TARP bailout, the Obama stimulus, the carbon tax, healthcare tax and the January 2010 sunset on the Bush tax cuts and state taxes, the average American taxpayer will soon be in the 45-50% tax bracket.  I say “average American taxpayer” because 43% of Americans pay no taxes at all.

President Reagan started an economic revolution based on conservative principals. Yet many of us and members of Congress are afraid to be called “conservatives.”  Why, I ask.  Reagan’s conservative economic policy and tax cuts created 25 years of stable growth, with low inflation.  Tax cuts stimulated the economy as never before and business boomed.  Conservative fiscal policy works.

The Obama administration offers its programs at unsustainable costs.  It is the FDR-New Deal all over again and it didn’t work.  The Obama stimulus was designed as a payback to the constituents who voted for him as recently revealed it went to blue states.  The major portion of stimulus dollars was deferred for years.  I believe it was designed this way so a second stimulus could be Rahmed down taxpayers gullets as more redistribution of wealth.  Karl Marx would be thrilled with the way things are going here.

President Obama and Congress are clearly moving in the direction they want, but many of the Left are becoming disappointed: what Obama is trying has not worked, reports the liberal columnist Eyal Press in a recent article in The Nation magazine.  Even the “blue dog” Democrats who voted for Obama are wishing for the Reagan policy to return.

There is momentum against this administration’s policies and the next six weeks will tell the story of our future. American industry is about to lose its competitiveness and we are all about to lose our prosperity unless we choose to say, “ENOUGH!” Now is the time for the American taxpayer to stand-up and be heard.  This papers website www.nmfreepress.com has a direct link to all members of Congress as well as the White House.  I hope you will let them hear your thoughts.

In a nutshell

America has the best healthcare system in the world. As a result, healthcare is expensive and so is health insurance. The Heritage Foundation reports 85% of us have insurance coverage, 61% have it through work. By law, no one can be denied treatment because of an inability to pay. Therefore, the issue is not about the availability of healthcare. It is not even about the cost of health insurance for those not covered. If these were such important issues, some of our stimulus dollars would have been spent to insure those have- nots. The real issue is about increasing government control over our lives and developing a new income stream to continue spending and the proposals sent forward from Congress demonstrate such.
The Congressional Budget Office says ObamaCare will require an additional 38 trillion in revenue over the next fifty years. That means more taxation well beyond the plan to collect from those making above $280,000. We can’t afford it. To further obfuscate the present economic truth, the White House has told the CBO to delay releasing July’s mid-term outlook report until after the congressional August recess.
In this country, no one can be denied access to healthcare, but wait until ObamaCare takes over. Second opinions will become a thing of the past as will records privacy, choice of treatment and provider. Protocols will be established and bureaucrats will determine treatment regimens, not physicians or patients.
“I feel your pain,” will become a sardonic joke when the government select committee starts cost management and rationing. To those who say healthcare is a right; rights are granted in our Constitution by our Creator and cannot be taken away by act of government. Healthcare is actually closer to having “right” status under the present system than it will be under government managed care where treatment can be rationed or denied.
Like with social security, big government liberals are seeking a cause which sounds compassionate (healthcare), which they can promote to the average citizen as top quality and lower cost. They set-up the upper income guy as the pay- patsy, don’t rock the boat too much in the beginning and allow private systems to continue. One plan calls for government audits for all businesses that choose to self insure. Harass and regulate the private plans and tax their profits until they become unprofitable and go out of business. In a few years, the government will control a new income stream amounting to 16-20% of the nation’s economy.
Run this income through the general fund like happened to social security set-asides and big spending politicians can prolong reconciling the books. That’s called operating on the roll-over or cash flow, not profit. Dollars flow in and out, but with government, more flow out than in. It is a shell game where you keep hiding the deficit until another tax grab scam comes along like cap and trade to put more dollars into to the system. It’s the Ponzi scheme Barney Madoff went to jail for operating.
The only way government can reduce the cost of healthcare will be by controlling and cutting income and profits to doctors and hospitals or by limiting services. Twenty-five percent of all healthcare cost accrues during the final year of life. If enacted, ObamaCare will greatly limit services to the elderly so they can cover illegal aliens. If we surrender to ObamaCare, we will lose our freedom of choice and a good portion of our liberty.

Soros and company

George Soros has been described by the NY Times as “The world’s single largest donor.” His favorite projects are economic globalization, euthanasia and the legalization of illegal drugs. Soros describes himself as a “deus ex machina” – a god who appears suddenly to help someone overcome insolvable difficulty. He certainly did that for Barack Obama. One might conclude Soros is the ideas man who buys his acolytes to further his causes.
In the May 1996 issue of Organizational Trends, Soros claims “The war on drugs is doing more harm to our society than drug abuse itself.” Through his philanthropy, Soros has built a public relations team to sell his concept of the “Open Society” promoting drug use as acceptable conduct. In an Atlantic Monthly article titled “The Capitalist Threat” he poses that laissez-faire capitalism presents a greater threat than Communism and Nazism.
Soros’ Open Society Institute recently published a position book Drugs and Democracy: Toward A Paradigm Shift which came out of a recent meeting of Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which Soros supports. The book promotes legalization as an international policy.
He considers himself a philosopher who wants to build a society based on human fallibility and his financial success has allowed his grant funding to underwrite politicians who are willing to toe his line and make public policy to undermine the moral foundation of our economic model. He is largely behind the environmental madness which brought us cap and trade and he hopes Congress will soon adopt the European style value added tax to all purchases. Here’s the deception: Soros’ candidate Obama promised taxes would not increase on households making under $250,000. With cap and trade and a VAT taxes, everyone will pay more.
George Soros is a conniver and a master of deception. He likes geopolitical imbalance which gives rise to opportunity for change. Because of his position on legalizing illicit drugs, he tends to side with the merchants of “medicalization,” including ousted Honduran president, Mel Zelaya.
On October 13, 2008, Zelaya said at a Soros sponsored conference on drug trafficking held in Tegucigalpa: “ Drug use ought to be legalized as a way to combat violence.” He proposed creating a regional counternarcotics plan that would displace the US-led efforts in Colombia and Mexico. It was in this conference that Soros presented his plan for a paradigm shift within democracies to accommodate legalization.
After Zelaya’s removal from office, Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez told CNN en Español that Zelaya, a friend and emulator of Hugo Chavez was implicated in transshipments of drugs from Venezuela to the U.S. and that the DEA knew of the activity. Subsequently, the Obama administration and Hugo Chavez sponsored a UN resolution that condemned the government of Honduras for legally removing the would-be dictator and Chavez puppet. While I can prove no financial connection between Soros and Zelaya, I can connect their philosophy.
It puzzles me why President Obama, an intelligent man, chastised the Hondurans for legally expelling a president who refused to adhere to constitutional law and obey the mandate of his Supreme Court. I can only guess it was because George Soros was Obama’s “deus ex machina.”

Clear and present danger

Every president must make difficult choices to protect our people. Beyond our shores the president must also make decisions to protect our strategic interests and I applaud President Obama for increasing troop levels in Afghanistan.
On April 5, North Korea launched a missile which demonstrated their strike capability, especially to Japan. This achievement from a rogue nation cannot be ignored. Kim Jong-il’s intentions are purely military.
Back in the days of MAD (mutual assured destruction), when powers were balanced, there was a paramount need to keep abreast of Soviet capability, but with those days past, there seems to be a lack of urgency with this administration to fund sufficient countermeasures.
Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of rogue nations pose the largest threat to survival in the 21st century. With North Korea’s launch and Iran’s continuing program of nuclear development, a renewed effort must be made to develop a sufficiently layered missile defense capability. The growing risk also endangers our allies in the Mideast, Central Asia and the Fareast alike.
Despite the risk, the Obama administration wants to decrease our defense capabilities and leave us and our strategic allies vulnerable to attack. China and Russia also voice their dissent to our developing missile countermeasures. This should be our first warning of how much they like us.
On the very day that North Korea proved its capability to deliver a nuclear weapon, President Obama announced in Prague, new budgetary restrictions on our anti-missile program, which include anti-missile tracking radar to be emplaced in Eastern Europe. The cuts of 15% include holding short on additional ground-based interceptors in Alaska, The Airborne Laser and Multiple Kill Vehicle programs which are not proven, but we do need to continue the R&D effort to prove systems which will counter a hostile launch in the early stage.
This administration’s priorities curtail development of new technologies in favor of trillions in domestic stimulus on shovel ready projects to help employment. By doing so, the administration speaks loud and clear what it thinks of the defense industry. If these missile defense programs are allowed to continue, our dollars will be spent right here in the United States, developing and manufacturing weapons systems with domestic workers. That means jobs and improved security.
This administration has either underestimated the threat from rogue players or it is blinded by ideology as to the real threat posed by nations unwilling to negotiate the end of their weapons programs. The threat of a North Korean missile reaching our mainland is still in the future. Alaska is vulnerable.
The real danger we face from rogues is a launch from a freighter or sub off our shores which would detonate within minutes, disabling much of our electrical grid and all things electronic.
There is presently bipartisan support in Congress for the continued development of the integrated, layered defense system capable of defeating a launch in its early stages. This is an expense we must be able to afford in order to combat the real threat posed by Iran and North Korea. Our congressional representatives should be encouraged to spend the money necessary. For sure it means domestic jobs and possibly will save lives.

Checks and balances on autocracy

Our government is out of control. The Markey-Waxman cap and trade legislation was voted on without a finished draft being in the House hopper, only a 300 page addendum dropped in at 3:09 am, the morning of the vote. This is a violation of House rules and ignores the president’s promise of transparency and public review. No legislator read it, not even the Energy Secretary.
Think about it, cap and trade proposes a tax on all industries which emit carbon and this means refineries which produce fuel for transportation. Add up the tax on US refineries and look forward to fuel imports which avoid the tax. This means more money going out of the country and more foreign energy dependence. Let’s call it redistribution of wealth. “Cap and trade” is ill-conceived legislation, a product of environmental chicanery and a tax grab scheme.
Where is legislative protocol and transparency? The president and congressional leaders have decided to continue cramming legislation down our throats to build the Obama autocracy. Obama continues to rule through the Executive branch by creating 14 czars who enforce his desires and whose power exceeds that of cabinet secretaries.
The House Energy and Commerce committee recently heard testimony from Frank Blankenbeckler III, whose family has owned Carlisle Chevrolet in Waxahachie, Texas since 1926 and more recently, a Chrysler Jeep dealership. His dealerships were clearly the most successful in Ellis County. In 2008, they paid $1.3 million in taxes and employed 90 people, yet his franchises were canceled, in favor of keeping another dealer who had been in Waxahachie for less than one year, but had political connections to the Obama administration. Such is the hatchet work of czars.
During his tenure, FDR appointed 30 Executive branch administrators who also circumvented Congress and served only the president’s desires. Through them, he nationalized the growing utilities industry and competed with private enterprise. Utility conglomerates like Commonwealth & Southern supplied electricity at lower rates than government owned utilities, but C&S was forced to sell to a government enterprise because it was run by New Deal opponent, Wendell Willkie, who became the1940 Republican nominee for president.
FDR made his own national industrial policy by directing his czars and attorney general to break-up the businesses of his political detractors while ignoring his well vested friends and political allies. Americans finally became fearful of such power. This is the reason we now have the Twenty-second Amendment, limiting our president to two terms.
This past week, Honduras President Manuel Zelaya attempted to hold an illegal referendum to extend his presidency for another term. His attempt was clearly unconstitutional. The military refused to cooperate and Zelaya removed the senior military general. The Honduran Supreme Court reversed his order on constitutional grounds and ordered Zelaya removed from office for exceeding the power of the presidency.
The system of checks and balances worked in Honduras, yet Hillary Clinton and President Obama disagreed with the Honduran Constitution and Court ruling, by joining Hugo Chavez, the Castros and Daniel Ortega in calling for Zelaya’s return to office. I am confused by our president, the leader of the free world who refuses to support demonstrations against voter fraud in Iran, but demeans Honduran defenders of democracy and law.
If you know someone who voted for “change,” you should share these facts with them.

Time to push back

Why are President Obama and his Democrat Congress in such a hurry?  Why do bills get speed read and voted on without proper consideration?  Is it due to his ambition or fear the people will catch on to what is really happening?  We now have two proposed policies on the fast-track which deserve a thorough debate, void of expediency.  These plans propose “forever” changes in our way of life and encompass a vast portion of our economy.

Obama wants the finished healthcare overhaul to be on his desk by mid-October and the financial reform plan to be complete by year end.  In light of the CBO’s evaluation of the cost-benefit ratio of the Senate healthcare reform bills and the far reaching, new powers granted to the Federal Reserve in the financial reform bill, it is time for Americans to push back at Congress and demand they slow down.

Of the two healthcare proposals currently in the Senate, the CBO claims one would cost $1 trillion over 10 years and reduce the number of uninsured by only 16 million. The other would cost $1.6 trillion and still not provide universal coverage.  That is way too much tax-payer cost for too little gain.  There has to be a better way which could emerge from an active debate among blue-ribbon committee members rather than a ram-rod vote in Congress.

If 45 million Americans have no health insurance, it could be partially due to high rates caused by excessive malpractice judgments.  Preexisting conditions also contribute to no coverage.  If Congress would enact tort reform and insurers would cover preexisting conditions in an expanded risk pool, the gap could be closed and far less expensive than a government managed one payer system which is where we are headed. 

According to the Fed’s Flow of Funds Report for the 1^st quarter 2009, the credit meltdown which began last September actually worsened in this year’s first quarter.  Banks have lessened their exposure in the lending market largely due to the Fed sopping up $1.4 trillion of the available credit to cover our debt, leaving little for private sector use.

Not a branch of the US government, the Fed is a privately owned financial institution with congressionally delegated powers to regulate sectors of our monetary system and economy. Do we really want to rush into a law which expands its power over our economy?  This is the same Fed that according to former chairman, Alan Greenspan, failed to foresee the coming mortgage crisis when President Bush and numbers of other congressional representatives were sounding the warning that unsound loans were threatening our financial markets.

It is my belief that many regulators at the Fed had a clear idea of the coming crisis and chose to allow it to happen so they could usurp more powers in the remediation process.  After all, power is the name of the game and bureaucrats and bankers seldom pass the opportunity to have more sway over the lives of their subjects.

It is true some things need to be changed in healthcare coverage and economic regulations need to be sensible and enforced.  But the present Obama push to usurp more control over these markets is revealing of his approach to governance.  The urgency he voices indicates his desire for control before public push-back can limit the government grab. Push back people.

Castro’s legacy

At the recent Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez ambushed President Obama and gave him a copy of the strongly anti-American book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.  The book, like many leftist Latin American leaders blame their centuries of trouble on white Europeans.  Watching were the Marxist from Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega who lectured 50 minutes on how we had hurt the economies of Latin America, especially Cuba.

Evo Morales, the Aymarian president of Bolivia claimed the US tried to assassinate him; Cristina Kirchner of Argentina blistered us for our intelligence support to Britain in the Falkland War and assisting the Contras who prevented the Marxist-Sandinistas in Nicaragua from creating their utopia; and Brazil’s Lula da Silva blamed their financial crisis on “blue-eyed bankers.”

Obama offered no retort to their diatribe, but did quip that Ortega’s rail went 50 minutes too long and he was glad not to be blamed for things that happened when he was three months old.

Yes, the US has made mistakes in Latin America and pulling support of the Cuban resistance at the Bay of Pigs was one of the largest. If the Cuban patriots had been successful, Cubans would have been spared 50 years of despotic rule which currently imprisons 1 in 11. Once rooted, Castro attempted to spread his communist revolution to the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Bolivia, Granada, Angola and numerous other countries who were smart enough to turn him away.  Through US efforts, Castro and his revolution has been mostly contained to his island.  Rightly, we assisted the defeat of the communist in Guatemala, helped the Bolivian’s capture Ché Guevara, sent the Marines to save the Dominican Republic, the Army to reclaim Granada and we did assist the Contras who secured free elections that defeated the Marxists in Nicaragua.

 I have worked with Cuban physicians who were sent to Central America in ’98 in response to Hurricane Mitch.  One female immunologist left her 6 month old son behind in Cuba.  She was promised to return home in 6 months.  She remained 2 ½ years.  Castro said the child belong to him as did all the Cuban children. Another 55 year-old surgeon was privileged and allowed to travel.  When he returned to Cuba, his commandante put him to work in the cane fields for 6 weeks, saying he was “too fat.”

Elderly women are assigned to watch the waters for a US invasion.  A janitor makes about $7 per month, professionals earn $12-18 per month and prefer working in tourism for tips.  It is more productive to hustle the streets than work for the government.  According to the communist party newspaper,  Granma, 20 % of working age people in Havana are unemployed.  Having a dual based currency, Cuba pays government workers in worthless pesos, but sells consumer goods in dollars. The cost of living in this socialist paradise is greater than the salaries earned.

To save energy consumption, the Cuban government bought 300,000 refrigerators from China and forced families to replace their aging appliances.  The refers cost $286 a piece which no one could afford so, they financed with the government at 10% interest and so goes Cuba’s modern socialist society.

Naked US

Have you ever had a dream where you were totally naked and the whole world was watching?  Psychologist say such dreams are pretty common, but this is no dream.  The Obama administration has stripped our intelligence community naked and exposed our secrets for all to see.  The administration did this when it ordered the release of classified memos relating to enhanced interrogation techniques which yielded actionable, high value intelligence from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and numerous others.

Because of these enhanced techniques, KSM quickly gave up another plot to fly a passenger jet into the Library Tower in Los Angeles and as a result, a terror cell of 17 operatives was rolled-up.  This information was crucial to maintaining our security and preserving the lives of perhaps thousands more Americans, but the – what some are calling – “treasonous” exposure of the interrogation techniques is the present administration’s politicizing of a previous administration’s successful operational procedure.  A procedure, which I might add was twice approved by the congressional leadership under both a Republican and Democrat congress.

However, certain individuals, among them George Soros and moveon.org want to strip America naked in order to embarrass us before the anti-war, anti-American factions around the world. These are the same folks who wanted the “War on Terrorism” renamed an” Overseas Contingency Operation.” They must not have read the bipartisan 9/11 Report.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) has been on a political witch hunt for years and now wants those who “bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses” to face criminal charges.

Those responsible for authorizing and carrying out these interrogation techniques are our heroes and should be celebrated for foiling terrorist plots and not prosecuted.  I feel the real target of such an inquisition is former Vice President Dick Chaney, the only man the left hates more than George W. Bush.

President Obama claimed he had no interest in conducting any investigations into the previous administration’s policy on interrogation, but shortly after issuing this statement said it was “a decision for the attorney general” whether Bush administration officials who provided legal backing for the enhanced interrogations would be prosecuted.

This is no way to treat people who saved American lives through service to their country. This amounts to political payoff for those far left factions who backed the Obama campaign and who I believe would do about anything to demoralize and destroy our intelligence apparatus.  If this pernicious pathology continues its course, it will destroy America.

I have an old friend who served in Army intelligence in WWII as an interrogator of German prisoners. While doing his job in England, one German spat on him. When the prisoner woke up, he found himself stripped totally naked and finished his interrogation unattired and no doubt “uncomfortable and humiliated.”

The collective result of intelligence he gathered led to the uncovering of an escape plot which would have involved 75,000 German POWs and opened a third front in England. My friend received the Bronze Star for his part in this relatively unknown event.

When the uproar began over interrogation practices, I asked him if he didn’t want to turn himself in and confess to a war crime.

Apocalipse now?

Commitment to friends and allies is the basis of geopolitical stability.  The Obama administration has gone out of its way to snub three important partners,  South Korea, Japan and Israel. What this realignment does to world peace will soon be clear.

While diplomats of past administrations watched and dialogued, Korea’s nuclear program has produced a bomb and delivery platform and has more than likely shared technology with Iran who is getting closer by the day to nuclear strike capability.  These are the tests Obama knew were coming his way. His cold-shoulder toward Israel and lack of outrage toward Korea’s recent missile launches was calculated and two of our strongest allies seem forgotten.

Our secretary of state recently went to China.  From news reports she talked about global warming.  She should have been talking about how China could end the North Korean nuclear threat by imposing energy sanctions, but China doesn’t want North Korean refugees flooding across her border and the communist Chinese really don’t care if their ally has the bomb.

Through recent purges inside the North Korean officer corps, Kim Jong-il has eliminated all but the true believers. His convention strike capability could destroy Seoul in a day and the recent multiple missile launches have made some Japanese politicians consider amending their constitution to allow development of nuclear weapons.

Kim Jong-il is a madman and so is Iran’s holocaust denier, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has threatened to wipe Israel off the map.  Powers within North Korea and Iran as well as others around the world are watching Obama’s reaction to nuclear weapons proliferation.  Will his policy pursue economic and military sanctions for continued violations or will it be consistent with his campaign promise to dialogue to a solution?  The bets are that military sanctions are off the table for now because Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has just been admonished by the Obama administration not to attack Iran.

If Obama places his trust in and settles for more sanctions and international condemnation from the UN, it will signal his weakness to all the madmen around the world that there is no reason to halt their  intimidations. Seoul and Japan are already held hostage, with promises if protection under the US defense umbrella and Israel is totally exposed. Both are watching closely and if diplomacy fails, they may deem it survival to take matters in their own hands.

With a bomb in Iran’s arsenal, Hezbollah and Hamas will be emboldened to continue striking at will.  To end the threat, Israel surely will be forced to act militarily to reduce the possibility of a nuclear attack which would more than likely kill half the population.  Netanyahu knows all too well that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows he would become the new leader of Islam should he strike Israel successfully.  Some even speculate, given Ahmadinejad’s suicidal mentality and apocalyptic belief, he may not even care about Israel’s certain retaliation which would usher him into a world of waiting virgins.

Considering the tribal rivalry within the Islamic world, if Iran could just possess the bomb to threaten Israel, it would reestablish them as the revolutionary power they once were, make them the heroes of the faith and elevate the Persian Shiites and not the Sunni Arabs to the catbird seat over a good bit of Islam.

Apocalypse now?  Get ready, the answer is coming soon.

Checks and balances on autocracy

Our government is out of control. The Markey-Waxman cap and trade legislation was voted on without a finished draft being in the House hopper, only a 300 page addendum dropped in at 3:09 am, the morning of the vote. This is a violation of House rules and ignores the president’s promise of transparency and public review. No legislator read it, not even the Energy Secretary.
Think about it, cap and trade proposes a tax on all industries which emit carbon and this means refineries which produce fuel for transportation. Add up the tax on US refineries and look forward to fuel imports which avoid the tax. This means more money going out of the country and more foreign energy dependence. Let’s call it redistribution of wealth. “Cap and trade” is ill-conceived legislation, a product of environmental chicanery and a tax grab scheme.
Where is legislative protocol and transparency? The president and congressional leaders have decided to continue cramming legislation down our throats to build the Obama autocracy. Obama continues to rule through the Executive branch by creating 14 czars who enforce his desires and whose power exceeds that of cabinet secretaries.
The House Energy and Commerce committee recently heard testimony from Frank Blankenbeckler III, whose family has owned Carlisle Chevrolet in Waxahachie, Texas since 1926 and more recently, a Chrysler Jeep dealership. His dealerships were clearly the most successful in Ellis County. In 2008, they paid $1.3 million in taxes and employed 90 people, yet his franchises were canceled, in favor of keeping another dealer who had been in Waxahachie for less than one year, but had political connections to the Obama administration. Such is the hatchet work of czars.
During his tenure, FDR appointed 30 Executive branch administrators who also circumvented Congress and served only the president’s desires. Through them, he nationalized the growing utilities industry and competed with private enterprise. Utility conglomerates like Commonwealth & Southern supplied electricity at lower rates than government owned utilities, but C&S was forced to sell to a government enterprise because it was run by New Deal opponent, Wendell Willkie, who became the1940 Republican nominee for president.
FDR made his own national industrial policy by directing his czars and attorney general to break-up the businesses of his political detractors while ignoring his well vested friends and political allies. Before Americans finally became fearful of such power. This is the reason we now have the Twenty-second Amendment, limiting our president to two terms.
This past week, Honduras President Manuel Zelaya attempted to hold an illegal referendum to extend his presidency for another term. His attempt was clearly unconstitutional. The military refused to cooperate and Zelaya removed the senior military general. The Honduran Supreme Court reversed his order on constitutional grounds and ordered Zelaya removed from office for exceeding the power of the presidency.
The system of checks and balances worked in Honduras, yet Hillary Clinton and President Obama disagreed with the Honduran Constitution and Court ruling, by joining Hugo Chavez, the Castros and Daniel Ortega in calling for Zelaya’s return to office. I am confused by our president, the leader of the free world who refuses to support demonstrations against voter fraud in Iran, but demeans Honduran defenders of democracy and law.
If you know someone who voted for “change,” you should share these facts with them.