It is no secret among thinking people that the Democratic Party is a socialist group. Most of them mask their Socialistic or Communistic tendencies but they are moving closer and closer to everything being run by the government and redistribution of all wealth except for the wealth of the ruling class. They will remain rich and try to control our lives. Barack Hussein Obama is a Socialist. He believes in class warfare and he believes it is up to government to take money from the wealthy and give it to the poor. He is a regular liberal Robin Hood.

The Democrats have moved in this direction for quite some time and they are often aided by Republicans who have some strange desire to pander to the left rather than espousing good conservative principles. They give tax “rebates” to people who paid no taxes. They take money in the form of taxes and spread it out across the country in the form of earmarks. They push for universal health care which means the taxpayers will pay for everyone’s health care (and their own since they will not qualify for gubmint health care). They have Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security a program whose name tells you it is socialist. They do all these a little at a time and they will eventually take over our lives and we will still be wondering what hit us.

Stop the ACLU has a video up and it show how brazen the left in America is getting. The clip features Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), member of the House Appropriations Committee, stating that if there are more refineries built in this country then the government should own them. Think about that for a minute. How can the government own anything? The people of this country pay the taxes that the government spends so if they start building refineries the taxpayers will own them.

That is the first point but more importantly, what business does the government have owning a refinery or anything else? With private companies owning them there are stock holders and an expectation of making money, which by the way is not obscene or record. They are at 10% and that is reasonable for any business. If oil companies have problems then they must spend company money to correct them. Whose money will the government spend if their refineries have problems? You guessed it, yours. And since they are Congress they can keep taking as much of your money as they want. You can bet that they will not be selling stock and if they did it would all go to members of Congress.

The idea of the government taking over private industry is Socialist and it would put us more in line with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. In the same clip at STACLU there is a woman on Fox discussing how she thinks this is a great idea. She is an obvious idiot and should have one of those protective helmets on when she is out and about. The problem is, there are many more just like her out there and a whole lot of them are called Congressional Democrats. This is not some slip up either. Remember when they had the oil execs in for their regular grilling. One of the less than intelligent members said that she wanted to nationalize oil. In other worlds, she wanted the government to take it over.

The government is an entity that works for the people and it is designed to represent the people. We are supposed to be left alone to pursue what we want in life. That is what freedom is all about. If government starts taking over private industry, we have lost our freedom and we will be a Socialist nation. The government’s quest is not limited to oil. They want to take over health care. Remember all the fuss about Walter Reed and Army medical care? You know all the news reports about troops not getting the care they need? Their care is run by the government. The same Democrats who went on TV describing the horrors at Walter Reed want to give you that very same government run system.

What will happen next? Will they decide pills cost too much and take over the pharmaceutical industry? Will they then spend billions in taxpayer dollars to make drugs to give away? Remember, if government screws up it taxes you more to get the money it needs. If private industry screws up it must answer to stock holders and consumers.

This whole debate started because Republicans are pushing to resume drilling for oil on our own property. Democrats oppose that. They have opposed it for decades and that is why we are in this predicament. They always use the same excuse; we need to get off our dependence on oil and it will take 10 years to get any oil from the new drilling. They said that over 10 years ago and Bill Clinton vetoed drilling in ANWR. Guess what, it has been a little more than 10 years so we would be getting oil right now when we need it. As for alternative energy, sure that would be great but there are no new technologies that will be ready any sooner than the oil in ANWR. Alternate choices are decades away. Why don’t we use our oil while they start building new technologies?

It is a certainty that we need to drill our own oil. The Democrats are absolutely wrong when they say it will make no difference. It will have a huge impact and have little impact on the environment. What we absolutely do not need is the government taking over oil companies or building refineries. The government is inefficient and does not run anything well. This would be setting up a system that would be rife with corruption and it would make all the members of Congress richer than they are.

The government could not organize a birthday party. It could not lead a group of people out of a burning building and the government would lose money and have corruption, fraud and waste if they were selling air, a product guaranteed to have customers.

We need to demand that they allow drilling on our property (what happened to state’s rights?) and we need to make sure they are never allowed to take over any business.

The next revolution may well be on the way. I would prefer we overthrow the government by voting them all out and replacing them. However, it might be wise to stock up on ammo (as if any good conservative needed to be told that).

Additional source:
Fox

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California is proposing that residents add a radio FM controlled receiver enabling the government access in an effort to control thermostats, refrigerators, pool pumps, computers, etc…. If passed, California politicians said that building permits would be denied for any contractor who refuses to comply with the new law.

WND reports:

Add thermostats to the list of private property the government would like to regulate as the state of California looks to require that residents install remotely monitored temperature controls in their homes next year.

The government is seeking to limit rolling blackouts and free up electric and natural gas resources by mandating that every new heating and cooling system include a “non-removable” FM receiver. The thermostat is also capable of controlling other appliances in the house, such as electric water heaters, refrigerators, pool pumps, computers and lights in response to signals from utility companies. If contractors and residents refuse to comply with the mandate, their building permits will be denied.

The proposal, set to be considered by the commission Jan. 30, requires each thermostat to be equipped with a radio communication device to send “price signals” and automatically adjust temperature up or down 4 degrees for cooling and heating, as California’s public and private utility organizations deem necessary.

Claudia Chandler, assistant executive director for the California Energy Commission, told WND the new systems would be highly beneficial to residents.

“From the Energy Commission’s perspective, all we’re doing is ensuring that this new technology is included in new homes instead of the older programmable technology,” she said.

The Programmable Communication Thermostat, or PCT, will allow power authorities to control home temperatures while denying consumers ability to override settings during “emergency events.” Nowhere in the proposal does it clarify what type of situation would qualify as an “emergency,” but Chandler offered her own explanation: “An emergency is when the utilities need to implement rolling blackouts and drop load in order to be able to meet their supplies because the integrity of the grid is being jeopardized.”

If Californians are stupid enough to buy into this crap then I propose that they all get on one large barge in the middle of the pacific ocean and pull the plug. Either that or send these nanny state advocates on a one way trip to Venezuela, Cuba, China, or North Korea (take your pick) where their ideas would be more in line with that of those governments. We don’t need people so obviously ignorant that they would let the government decide how warm their houses need to be and actually hand over the keys.

This is the nanny state x 100 and is yet one more reason we need to get people like Claudia Chandler and her cohorts out of power.

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You all remember the Aesop’s fable about the Ant and Grasshopper, don’t you? That’s the one where the Ant works hard all year, while the Grasshopper just dances around. When winter comes, the Ant is comfortable in his warm, well-stocked home, while the Grasshopper is miserable and hungry. Or maybe you know the story of the Little Red Hen. She keeps asking for help as she plants her seeds, waters her wheat stalks, harvests the wheat, and bakes her bread loaf. To each request for help, her lazy farm companions say “no.” Then, when her bread is finally baked, they ask her to feed them, to which she replies “no.” These are both old stories. Aesop’s fable is probably about 6,500 years old, while the Little Red Hen story is at least a hundred years old and probably much more. The stories are blatantly moralistic: if you work hard, you will be fed and sheltered; if you don’t, you won’t.

We all know, of course, that life is not fair and that hard work will not always provide you with life’s necessities. Bad things happen: lost jobs, war, illness, drought, economic disasters, and other things over which even the hardest working individual has no control. And I believe that those of us who are in a more comfortable position have a moral obligation to take care of those who are victims of things over which they have no control. BUT (you knew there was going to be a “but” here, didn’t you?)….

But, lately I feel as if we, the hard working middle class, are being asked to take care of people, not who are victims of ill-fortune, but who are victims of their own bad choices. Right now, this issue is playing out on the macro field, with the S-CHIP debate. Or, more specifically, with the discovery that the boy whom the Democrats chose as the spokesman for imposing S-CHIP costs on working Americans is, in fact, from a middle class family whose father is following his employment bliss (that is, he has made the choice not to get a steady job) and who decided not to get insurance, even though he could afford it. That is, Dad made the choice but we, the American taxpayers, are being asked to pay for the consequences of his bad decision making.

I understand that it’s not the child’s fault that his parents make lousy decisions. But really, if we’re being asked to pay because the Dad is a dunderhead, maybe we should get more control over the situation. We have to assume that this Dad will make more and more choices that negatively affect his children and for which we, the taxpayers, then have to pay. (I think we can make this assumption because Dad is not apologetic about and has not learned from his choices. He’s instead using them to suck up wealth from people who, apparently foolishly, opted to work hard and be self-reliant.) Since he who pays the piper calls the tune, maybe we should take these children and put them in a home where the parents have proven track records of good choices? Eh. You’re right. I don’t think anyone is going to go for that. But really and truly, I don’t want to be called upon to pay for bad choices, without any ability to force those same people into making good choices that will cost me less.

I happen to be very sensitive about this issue because of my own life experience. Years ago, when I was a young, idealistic lawyer whose gay friends were dying left and right from AIDS, I got involved with a free legal service for people suffering from AIDS. My training consisted of attending several hours of lectures about helping these people maximize their Social Security, Medicare and Medical benefits to pay for their expensive treatments and other life needs. I never once put that training into use. I had about 15 referrals over the two years I stuck it out in that program and, without exception, the men who called on my free services were absolute flakes whose only skill was using the system to avoid paying for the messes they made. All had (or probably had) AIDS, but the illness was entirely unrelated to their demands on me. What they wanted me to do was relieve them of their obligations to pay rent or credit card debt. And they didn’t need this help because their disease had rendered them unemployable. All of them worked, and all of them, grasshopper-like, spent their money on drugs, alcohol, clubbing, clothes, trips, etc. Indeed, they spent their income on anything but rent and paying off all the debts they incurred supporting their hedonistic lifestyle. I became incredibly hostile to the whole organization, feeling (rightly, I think) that I was being used, and quit.

Ironically, as I was providing free legal services to these deadbeats, a friend of mine was slowly dying from AIDS and working himself to the bone to keep up with his obligations. He worked when he could hardly walk because of the mushroom shaped tumors bursting out from the bottom of his foot. He worked when he could hardly stand upright because if the giardia ravaging his system. He worked when all his hair fell out. He kept his health insurance alive to the bitter end, with the only government help coming from MediCal augmentations to his insurance. I gladly loaned this man money when he needed it. When he had to sell the little boat on which he lived to pay all of his debts, he insisted on paying me back, even though I tried to refuse the money. At the very end, a friend of his took him in, and he spent his last weeks dying slowly on that friend’s couch. These two men were Ants, and they’ve always lived in my memory, two of the most decent, moral people I’ve ever met.

I appreciate that, once a bureaucracy is in place, it won’t, or can’t, distinguish between ants and grasshoppers. All it will do is means testing. That is, once someone shows up at the bureau’s door and proves he has no money, the inquiry stops. The bureaucracy won’t and can’t take the time to discover whether his money vanished because his employer laid him off (despite his being a good worker) and his kid has a horrible disease, or if his money vanished because he’s an unemployable flake who can’t be bothered to hold down a job, but who still likes living the high life. We pay for them all. But to the extent we do pay for them all, I want to be damn sure that every new government program is carefully crafted to pay for extremely limited services and that it is set up, as much as possible, to help the Ants, while shutting the door on those damn Grasshoppers. S-CHIP, which is casting an ever wider net of those for whom the taxpayers must pay is the antithesis of what an Ant-oriented government program should be.

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I’ve been researching the Legislative history of a California statute enacted 30 years ago. The statute affected how insurance companies could conduct investigations that would determine their risk in issuing a given policy. At that time, insurance companies would conduct personal interviews with neighbors and colleagues, with the results stored away in files. A secondary industry sprang up which, for a fee, would conduct those same interviews and sell the results to the insurance companies, landlords and employers. Inevitably, there were abuses, with people being dogged by the fallout from inaccurate reports. The Feds stepped in 1971 (and again in 1973) by enacting the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which allowed people to contact the credit bureau or other investigative agency for a summary of the file contents. Again, there were abuses, with stories of investigative agencies inaccurately summarizing the file contents.

In 1975, one California man had a horrific experience: he was a former Naval man, with an impeccable record, who suddenly found himself unemployable. Eventually, he discovered that he was a victim of identity theft: someone had stolen his wallet, and the thief had set out living a life under the name of his victim. The problem for the victim was that he didn’t realize what the problem was. Employers did not advise him that they were consulting these investigative agencies as a prerequisite to his employment, and he kept getting bland rejections that did not alert him to the identity theft. Once he knew, he immediately relied on his federal right to get a summary of the file.

A California legislator decided to fix the problem this victim experienced by requiring companies to make all the details of the reports fully available to the consumer, although companies could block out the identity of the individuals who were interviewed and provided information that went into the reports. The proposed legislation also placed controls on how the report could be used, and created substantial penalties against companies that violated these new rules. And so, the California Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (”ICRAA”) came into being. It’s since been amended to require that companies affirmatively notify individuals that the company intends to obtain the report, and to add a few other, less interesting, legislative massages. For the most part, I don’t think any of us would quibble with it. We like feeling that people aren’t building huge and possibly false histories about us that affect everything we do. We live in such a data saturated society that it’s nice for the consumer to feel he’s having a bit of control over the whole thing.

Nevertheless, reading the Legislative history was eye opening in that it was a chance to see what I call “legislating to the fringe” — that is, taking a problem that, at that time, affected a very small number of people, and turning into a vast procedural burden on American business. The ICRAA history shows these downsides of the Legislation in the form of fervent opposition letters insurance companies and investigative agencies sent to the California legislature.

For example, the President of the Underwriters Research Bureau crafted this beautiful paragraph:

When selective underwriting can no longer be practiced, then the day will have come when the worthy and deserving, hard-pressed insuring public, already groaning under the financial burdens of insurance payments, will be lumped together with the irresponsible, high-exposure segment of our driving society. The man who can withstand the cursory investigation made of him and, who, by investigation, seems to be a good, ordinary, average risk, must, without investigation, pay the price for his opposite.

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More than twenty years ago, I attended a speech that famed legal scholar Arthur Miller gave, in which he decried the fact that the zone of privacy surrounding ordinary citizens was shrinking rapidly with the dawn of the computer age. What he pointed out then is even more true today: unless you step entirely off the matrix, every time you engage in any type of commercial transaction, whether it’s using your ATM or credit card to buy a latte, using your cell phone to call your mother, or buying an airplane ticket, your transaction creates a record that a corporation owns and that the government can find. Theoretically (and in actual fact if the authorities are after you with the right warrants), someone can put those transactions together and create a comprehensive picture of every detail of your life.

I walked out of Miller’s talk knowing that he was correct and yet curiously unimpressed. I could not then and cannot now work myself into a lather knowing that some clerk in Dubuque or Bombay can have access to information about my grocery shopping habits or the number of times I called my mother. Of more concern to me has always been what people who know me might think of me if they could pry into the small details of my life. While I may be unmoved by the Dubuque or Bombay clerk knowing about my grocery list, I’d find it very unpleasant if my next door neighbor, colleague or classmate were to learn too many of the details of my life. In other words, for me, privacy is local.

In the years since I first heard Miller’s speech, I’ve often had reason to think about his thesis and about my response and I’ve come to the conclusion that I haven’t changed my viewpoint since then. Indeed, my blog is a perfect example of that fact. I’m more forthcoming with you, my readers, than I am with my immediate neighbors because I won’t run into you on the street. If I’m grumpy, I grouse on my blog, whereas I make an effort to present a cheerful face to my neighbors. If my kids are driving me up a wall, I wail in cyberspace, but make light hearted jokes to the parents I see during the day. And of course, I talk politics on my blog in a way that I never would to the flesh-and-blood people around me who believe that conservatives aren’t just misguided, but are evil. Privacy is therefore often on my mind insofar as it relates to me.

The privacy issues I’ve discussed above can, of course, be reframed as the flip side of freedom: freedom from oversight and intrusion. And in our world, there are three basic categories of people or institutions that infringe on that freedom: individuals, corporations, and the government.

Traditionally, individuals infringing on your freedom from oversight and intrusion have been the nosy next door neighbors who physically peer into your world. (For purposes of this discussion, I’m going to ignore the Peeping Toms or stalkers, who are committing out-and-out criminal acts — that is, acts that can be characterized as visual assaults.) Corporations, as I noted above, have become an increasing infringer on that same freedom. As Miller argued so long ago, the computer records they keep mean that, with a push of a button, corporations (especially banks and credit card companies) can create a comprehensive record about you.

Whether it’s a nosy neighbor or a data collecting computer, we are usually willing to put up with the infringement on our freedom because of the benefits that come with those intrusions or, at most, we place small, almost symbolic barriers in the way. As to our neighbors, we may determine that their help with the children is the price we pay for their knowing how messy our house is. Alternatively, we may close the windows when we argue or draw the curtains when we let our hair down. And as for the corporations, most of us have long ago sold our soul to that Devil, recognizing that the convenience of credit card purchases or the discounts from our grocery store’s “Club Card” are more than worth the information those Dubuque or Bombay drones (and their computers) are collecting about us. Any barriers we attempt are likely to be minimal, such as refusing to give our phone numbers to the blank eyed clerk at the local store (after having first paid with our credit card, of course). Certainly that is my world view, and one I’ve consistently held to for decades, as I believe most other Americans have.

But when it comes to the government, our relaxed attitude to these assaults on privacy suddenly vanishes, and we see ever escalating levels of paranoia about our right to freedom from oversight and intrusion. The government, after all, is huge; it has the ability to engage in spying and data gathering at an unparalleled level; and, worst of all, it has punitive powers that even the most gossipy, vindictive neighbor or the most aggressive corporation lack. And as we’ve seen, most notably in East Germany, but also in other Communist and totalitarian countries, when the government gets into the business of invading our privacy — removing all those safeguards to freedom from oversight and intrusion — individual freedom is effectively at an end.

Most of us, of course, recognize that there is practical, personal information that we keep private from others, but that the government does get to see. For example, because the government needs to be funded (a concept separate from whether we believe it’s doing the right things with those funds), we all regularly provide it with all of our financial information, something we’d be loath to let our friends and neighbors peruse. Because the government is charged with the business of running our criminal justice system, we long ago agreed as a society that it could keep data about people’s criminal habits, as well as their fingerprints. (DNA, of course, has been a more touchy subject.) Because we all pay into Social Security (whether or not we think it’s an appropriate program in the 21st Century, as opposed to the 1930s) and we all want to get at least some of that money back, we allow the government to maintain our Social Security number, which ties into just about everything, for better or for worse.
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Three dozen lawmakers will now have access to the “secret court” orders !

Now that the Dems have pushed for this “compromise”, doesn’t that make you feel oh, so, safe???

And don’t you just love the leftie spin?

“Domestic Syping” (that is if you are communicating with al Qaeda or a terrorist organization).

“Secret Court” (that is if you can’t use Google to discover their names which are openly shared on the “Secret Court” FISC 2006 Membership roster.)

According to the CRS Report for Congress (January 24, 2007), a January 17, 2007, letter from Attorney General Gonzales to Chairman Leahy and Senator Specter advising them that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge had “issued orders authorizing the Government to target for collection international communications into or out of the United States where there is probable cause to believe that one of the communicants is a member or agent of al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization,” stating that all surveillance previously occurring under the TSP will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceCourt . . .

Here’s a summary of the news with sources hyperlinked.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush authorized the NSA to monitor telephone calls between the U.S. and overseas without warrants if one party was believed to be linked to al-Qaida or related groups. . .

A federal judge in Michigan ruled in August that the wiretapping program was unconstitutional. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ordered the president to shut down . . . “the illegal program”. The federal government appealed the ruling. . .

[Read more and discuss over at Faultline USA...]

Other Reading:
BlackFive

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Hi. I’m OttO. Welcome to my restaurant. Today’s Special is Boiled Carrots. That will be $8.99. Give us about 20 minutes.

OttO’s Bar & Freedom Grill is happy to serve you in accordance with the fine folks at the Nanny-State Bureaucracy division of Big Government. If you look around here, you will see people who have used the power of government to create their own Rights to eat and drink at my establishment.

Oh…excuse me. Could you please put out your cigarette? My business partners in Big Government have determined that you can’t smoke in my restaurant, even if I wish to allow it. See, I had other partners that I was not even aware of: non-smokers. Those partners got together with my partners in Big Government and decided against my business-sense and better judgment and forced me to agree that my restaurant should be smoke-free.

My partners informed me that my restaurant presented an unhealthy atmosphere for non-smokers. I had offered to remove the man from my front sidewalk who places his gun against the heads of non-smokers and forces them to eat here, but we all decided it would be best to just appease the non-smokers instead.

My partners were also concerned that some of our employees wished to work in a smoke-free environment. Other than a bartender and two waitresses who left my employment to pursue non-smoking related careers (case closed!), I thought those matters worked themselves out. Fortunately, my partners were there to tell me I was wrong.

They obviously know more than I do about the employer/employee relationship which I why I was forced to agree to make them my HR managers as well. They tell me who I can’t refuse employment to and who I have to hire. Along the lines of forcing me to open my property and my wallet up to people who I may not want to associate with (who needs that pesky Bill of Rights anyway?), they are now essentially telling me that I have to employ non-smokers. Which creates some gray areas. Do I have to hire that gay, transvestite cross-dresser if he…smokes? I’ll make an inquiry…

My partners have been gracious enough to tell me that despite the fact that I have employees who are willing to work for lower wages, I really must pay them more. I was paying six full-time employees minimum wage. The proposed $2/hour increase will amount to just under $2000 a month in new payroll (which takes a substantial chunk out of my net income). My partners have given me no indication that they will be pitching in to cover this. So what am I getting out of it? More business? Higher profits? Better employees? As far as I can tell, I’m getting absolutely nothing out of it. I typically don’t invest in sure losers, but my partners do! By the way, when you flip open the menu, you may see some changes in pricing - my partners decided it was best if we take out of your pocket what I can’t afford to take out of mine.

But the sticker-shock shouldn’t be too striking. I am making internal adjustments to cover this generous 40% raise for my employees, made possible on behalf of the good feelings of my partners. Did I mention I had six full-time employees? Make that five. Four-and-a-half really. I had to fire the new guy and cut some of the waitresses positions down to part-time. I took away paid vacations and other voluntary benefits. That will cover about two-thirds of everyone else’s wage increases. It’s most unfortunate since before the increase goes into effect, my minimum-wage employees were really earning on average about $23,000 a year with tips. Between a shrinking bar/smoking crowd and price increases, the employees who I could afford to keep are making substantially less in tips. And unfortunately, with the loss in manpower, your wait for your food may be a little longer and the stress in the kitchen may be a little higher, so please bear with us…I guess I am getting a return on my investment after all - thanks to their friends in Big Government, my minimum wage employees will have to work much harder to maintain current service levels. Everyone wins!

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Others:
Libertarian Party of Colorado,

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Police in England are considering placing microphones with their CCTV cameras so that they can listen to conversations. In the UK they already watch every move people make via those closed circuit cameras. Now they will be able to listen to anyone, not just terrorists. In England, they do not enjoy the same freedoms and rights we here in the states do.

Here, we have to have a warrant to listen in on people, though I imagine the courts could get rule that the street is a public place and you can be monitored. Hell, many places are setting up closed circuit cameras to try and reduce the crime rate. Many big cities (notice that rural communities never need these kinds of things) have either started or are considering installing these cameras. I guess if the UK is successful it will not be long before they try this in the US. I wonder how they would square that with the uproar to the perfectly legal wiretapping of terrorist’s phone calls?

Here’s looking at (and listening) to you kid.

Source:
Times on Line (UK)
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Police Big Brother

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