June 27, 2009
President Barack Hussein Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Please say it aint so! This news story is a picture of corruption, deceit and failure to protect the average citizen from the Federal Government and union muscle.
Sen. Frankenstein photobucket
"With health care nationalization apparently headed for the morgue in the House and Senate, the latest scheme to revive it is to give union health plans a special tax break. This will create a Frankenstein.
Spending a trillion dollars as a down payment for a government takeover of health care is a dream of many Democrats. The current plan in Congress would create a government insurance plan that would drive out the private ones.
The problem, though, is the cost. Even moderate Democrats are having second thoughts about that, as well as all the quality problems associated with socialized medicine. Even so, health care nationalization's biggest boosters are cooking up bad new plans
Sen. Max Baucus(D) Susan Walsh / AP |
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., both would like to slap a tax on private health plans to pay for a new government one.
But they've carved out one very big exception: unions and their gold-plated benefit packages. This effectively gives Big Labor an advantage in the market and forces nonunion workers to subsidize unions for their share of this bad idea.
The logic behind this tax giveaway is that union health plans, which are lavish, would be subject to higher taxes than those of workers with regular private sector health care plans.
According to news reports, if unions get a special tax break for themselves on health care taxes, they'll gladly muscle "their" Congress members into supporting a "public option" health care bill."
In short, it's little more than a political payoff to unions for spending $400 million in campaign cash to elect Democrats to Congress and the White House last year. As if the outrageous favors they've received from the auto bailouts aren't enough.
But unions don't just get a tax break. They also get a great recruiting tool. After all, nationalizing health care in itself undermines any reason to belong to a union, since unions exist to squeeze more out of companies. If a company is no longer involved in health care and thus can no longer be squeezed, why belong to a union? The answer: special tax privileges.
This will artificially beef up union membership. Who wouldn't want tax-free health care over subsidizing someone else's as the current congressional bills dictate?
With the Employee Free Choice Act to coerce workers into unions now dead in the water, this could be a backdoor means of doing the same thing — while bringing in more campaign cash to Democrats. This may be great for the Democrats and their union backers, but it's bad for the rest of us. By creating a two-tier system of pricing for health care, and with it privileges for party elites, it's fundamentally unfair to the public as a whole. The people who will get the short end of the stick on this — the rationing, the shortages, the wait lists — will be the very ones forced into paying for other people's health care. Unions will get a free ride.
Remember that whenever health care is "free" or subsidized to consumers, it distorts the market and creates disincentives to cut costs. So under the Kennedy-Baucus plan, union health care costs will soar without restraint. And ordinary Americans will pay.
This will turn unions, whose members comprise only 6% of U.S. workers, into a privileged caste, for no other reason than their political muscle with Democrats.
There's a word for this: Peronism. That was the populist political patronage system that took Argentina from one of the richest countries in the world in the early 20th century to the economically troubled nation it is today. It's a bad model for the U.S. to follow.*
Just to mention that this is a gross mis-use of the office of the president and your administration. This is an example of change we did not elect you to do.
Lightfoot Letters
Investors Business Daily*, FOX News, ABC News
cc: David Axelrod
President Barack Hussein Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Invite royal war vet to D-Day anniversary?
June 01, 2009
© 2009
Just when I think I have heard or read every class less act by some politician or other public employee....I get this column from Roger Hedgecock.
Smiling shyly standing next to her British army lorry in World War II uniform, young Elizabeth Windsor, daughter of the king, service #230873, poses for a picture. A volunteer enlistment, she drove the truck and trained as a truck mechanic. Today, age 83, she is Queen Elizabeth II, the head of state of the only European country to defy Hitler in World War II and the only living head of state to serve in uniform in that war.
On June 6, President Obama and French President Sarkozy will commemorate the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings at Normandy. Queen Elizabeth won't be there. She wasn't invited.
Accusations are flying as to how this blunder occurred and who is to blame. The queen, a palace spokesman says, would have liked to attend.
Sarkozy is the host for the commemoration. Why didn't he invite the queen? No comment other than a French source saying that the commemoration was "primarily a Franco-American ceremony." Sarkozy should be reminded that the liberation of France from German occupation and French collaboration.
Which brings us to President Obama, widely recognized as the first Anglophobe U.S. President since Madison fled the British troops burning the White House in the War of 1812.
Breaking with a tradition that past commemorations of D-Day were open to the public, President Obama has asked that the cemetery where the commemoration will be held be closed to all but invited guests. At the 60th anniversary, President Bush was seen in line with the public to use the port-o-potty. But I digress.
Son of a Kenyan anti-colonialist who hated British rule in Kenya, Obama has gone out of his way to disrespect the British and ignore the "special relationship" with Britain that presidents since FDR have relied on. Obama has shown his disdain by giving back a British gift of a bust of Churchill and by ignoring protocol during visits with the PM and with the queen, and in giving both of them trivial gifts.
In an increasingly dangerous world, Obama bows to the king of our Saudi "friends," but risks our closest ally to honor his father's grudge.
On Sept. 12, 2001, Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side-by-side with President Bush in declaring a war on terror, forming the core of the "coalition of the willing" and bringing to mind the dark days of World War II when only Britain and the U.S. stood together against the axis powers of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan.
To some whose comments grace the blogosphere, the queen is just "some old white woman," irrelevant, a relic. The whole thing a "tempest in a teapot" by the British tabloids ever hungry to sensationalize the trivial. Who cares about ancient history anyway?
To the veterans of the D-Day invasion and the liberation of Europe, it was, as Churchill predicted, their "finest hour." Indeed, Western civilization's finest hour. The 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings honors the courage and sacrifice of the liberators.
It would be fitting if subaltern Elizabeth Windsor of the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service were there.
Mr. President,
Please send your own "Thanks for your service" message to:
Her Majesty the Queen
Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA
"I'm really upset by it," said Brian Swift, 83, a former royal engineer and D-Day veteran who is going to next week's ceremony. "It's a great shame. She likes being with her veterans and we like having her there." AP May 27
