The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Obama backs plan to legalize illegals
Yesterday Obama gave a thumbs up to the outline of a plan to legalize illegal immigrants and create a flow of low-skilled foreign workers for the future, saying the immigration bill being worked on by a Republican and a Democrat is "promising."
In their broad blueprint, Sens. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, call for illegal immigrants to be put on a path to citizenship, offer green cards to keep high-skilled foreign university graduates and would create a temporary program for low-skilled workers, with some also getting the chance to become citizens.
The senators also proposed to turn all Social Security cards into tamper-proof IDs to be checked by employers when they are about to hire a worker. The cards would include biometric information designed to prevent counterfeiting -- but the senators said the information would not be stored in a government database.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/18/obama-endorses-immigration-blueprint/
EXCLUSIVE: Biden Says White House Getting Earful from Nervous Lawmakers Over Health Care
Biden Tells ABC Passing the Legislation Will Help Stem Democratic Losses in November. Of course Biden doesn’t face the voters.
He said yesterday that vulnerable members of Congress, worried that the health care reform legislation will cost them their jobs, have expressed their frustrations to the White House and have been critical of how the issue has played out over the last year.
Biden said once these provisions take effect and the American people feel the impact, lawmakers who vote "yes" will reap the benefits. What he fails to note is that impact will not be realized – if there were any – in time to effect the November election.
Democrats Move on Health-Vote but remain six votes short
U.S. House Democrats, who cleared a big hurdle in their effort to overhaul the health-care system by producing “compromise legislation”, picked up fresh support for a likely showdown vote this weekend.
Democrats need about six more votes from House members to pass the 10-year, $940 billion bill, Obama administration officials said today.
White House and Democratic leaders aim to collect those votes from a pool of about 14 to 15 undecided lawmakers to get to the 216 votes needed to pass the measure, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aEE5p_J1ZJRg
Opinion:
Health Care and the end game
The sheer desperation of Democrats regarding Obamacare shows. They see passage of their scheme as the end all and be all of their fate in this session of Congress and an issue on which the Obama Administration will rise or fall.
Failure to attain passage, and Obama may become a lame duck before reaching the half way mark of his first term. Whether the stakes are that great doesn’t matter. That is the way Democrats see it and are playing it. Once again, “truth is what people believe” – facts to the contrary matter not.
That Democrats have been forced into calling for a vote this Sunday, strongly suggest they think they can cobble together the number needed for passage.
Imagine the back room drama – Chicago-style pressures are being focused on any “no” voter who allows even a hint of weakness to appear. Better a Bart Stupak than a Blue Dog – Stupak has made his position clear, any Blue Dog is suspect.
The case of Dennis Kucinich is particularly telling. Kucinich is a far left Democrat – among the most extreme. But he is also one honestly committed to positions on which he takes a stand. It is of special interest that when Kucinich enunciated a steadfast position in opposition to the Obama scheme then, 48 hours later – after a trip back home on Air Force One – he stepped forward to announce he is now on board. What happened? He was bribed with something in some way. Make no mistake about that fact.
For Kucinich, the basic interest is a “robust” public option. It is unlikely he would back any bill that failed to provide that. Under the present bill, there is no public option, robust or otherwise. It’s a reasonable assumption Obama was able to mollify Kucinich during one-on-one conversations on Air Force One.
It is logical to expect Obama cut a deal satisfying the Kucinich public option demand. Probably by swearing to insert a “robust public option” after the bill has been passed. Democrats have issued dire hints the bill can be “fixed” later. In short, Americans have no assurance the bill on which Congress will vote Sunday is what the actual legislation will be once its more than 3,000 pages have been bound and made law over Obama’s signature. Modifications are in the wings. Obama’s assurance had to be iron-clad to capture support by Kucinich.
For those who might have missed it – even Barney Frank is forced to admit “public option” provisions are pathways to Canadian-style socialized medicine. That means say goodbye to current quality in health care, and brace yourself for lack of access – especially for senior citizens. (Sooner or later, everyone becomes a Senior Citizen. Everyone.)
Pressures opposing health care plots by Democrats represent the greatest magnitude of public pressure on a single issue. For one thing, this is the first controversy of this intensity Congress faces since the advent of the Internet and Fox News and talk radio.
That makes it a whole new ballgame in terms of grass root impact.
It is important to note that a couple of years back, efforts were made to pass amnesty legislation for illegals. A bill – sponsored by John McCain and Teddy Kennedy – had the fervent backing and support of the US Senate, the Bush White House, and the mainstream media. However, sponsors of the measure were forced to back down and withdraw the bill due to grass root pressures generated one way or another by the Internet.
This week the Internet is even more active in opposing Democrat government take-over, and Internet activity has matured even more.
The latest polling show 55% of Americans oppose the Obama scheme. (Keep in mind that no matter how hard Democrats struggle to sell the idea the bill is “reform” – in truth, it remains a plot for government take-over.)
If Congress passes the bill Sunday, it will not be the end of the story. States are lining up to file lawsuits, and provide legislation that allows their citizens to by pass onerous provisions of the Democrat bill.
Democrats can anticipate passage of their health legislation will generate its own version of house-to-house urban warfare. Democrats will pay a serious political price, unless its effects can be blunted, all Americans will pay a serious price in terms of the quality and accessibility of their health care.
“When you or a loved one is seriously ill, only the very best quality of care is good enough”. The Democrat plan will deny Americans such quality. That is the bottom line.
Nuff said.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34605.html
Republicans plot ways to block health reform in Senate
CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN & MANU RAJU
POLITICO 44
Democrats might like to think that health care reform is all but a done deal if it clears the House, but the Senate is where Republicans have been plotting for months to sentence it to a painful procedural death.
Republican aides have been mining the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules for an attack that aims at striking elements both broad and narrow from the bill, weakening the measure and ultimately defeating it. Their goal is to force changes that leave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) without 51 votes to pass it, or at the very least, that drive it back to the House for a second vote that drags out the process and saps Democratic resolve.
But the first step in the Republicans’ game plan is making sure they never need to use the rest of it.
“Our initial goal is to stop the bill in the House,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “Part of convincing House members to vote for the Senate bill is that it can be fixed by reconciliation, and I think that is a highly questionable proposition.”
It’s a pre-emptive strike meant to scare jittery House Democrats into withholding their support from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who needs 216 votes to pass the Senate bill and a companion measure that fixes unpopular elements of the bill. If she falls short, comprehensive health care reform dies.
Senate Republicans will advance their campaign Thursday with floor speeches detailing why a provision to delay the “Cadillac tax” — a must-have for House liberals in the companion bill — could fall victim to the chamber’s parliamentary rules.
The provision is just one of many that Republicans expect to challenge. Under a strategy developed by Republican Policy Committee Chairman John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Republicans are plotting ways to strike major elements of the reconciliation bill, including changes to the special Medicaid deal for Nebraska and the carve-out for Florida senior citizens from Medicaid Advantage cuts. They are also going small bore, looking to strike seemingly minor provisions, including one that would fix language dealing with the employer mandate and the construction industry.
One senior Republican aide said staff and senators believe that as much as 40 percent of the measure can be killed through procedural objections.
At the same time, Senate Republicans are engaging in an under-the-radar effort to target wavering House Democrats by engaging local media in their districts — mainly in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. They are using GOP heavyweights, including Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), to drive coverage.
Democrats aren’t quaking at the prospect of the Republican offensive.
Senate Democratic aides spent the weekend with the Senate parliamentarian, scrubbing the legislative language to ensure that “very little” of their bill will be subject to challenge, said North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee.
“We’re going through a laborious process — we spent 8 hours with the parliamentarian on Sunday — so there’s a laborious process to identify the things that should be stricken or taken out,” Conrad said.
There is reason for the Democratic confidence. Every reconciliation bill introduced since the fast-track rules were first used in 1980 has passed.
“If it gets here, it will pass,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). “It only requires 50 votes plus the vice president, so that is an easy hurdle for them.”
But here is what gives Republicans comfort: Two-thirds of those reconciliation bills faced procedural challenges.
Every line in the bill must adhere to complex rules or risk being struck by the parliamentarian. If so much as a comma is changed in the bill, it will need to return to the House for a second vote. Depending on what is eliminated, passage in the House could be tough.
“It will go back with a bunch of holes in it,” Coburn said.
Under the Democratic plan, the House would pass the Senate bill and the sidecar measure by this weekend. The president would then sign the Senate bill, and the Senate would take up the sidecar measure through reconciliation — a parliamentary maneuver that allows Democrats to sidestep the filibuster but subjects the bill to a byzantine set of procedural challenges.
The sidecar measure would delay implementation of the Cadillac tax from 2013 to 2018, remove the Nebraska and Florida deals, raise the Medicare payroll tax on the wealthy, boost subsidies for lower-income people to purchase insurance and narrow the doughnut hole in the Medicare prescription drug program.
The question is whether the sidecar measure can survive the budget reconciliation process.
Republicans have at least two major tools available to them.
The first involves points of order. Republicans can raise budget points of order — arguing, for example, that the bill does not comply with the chamber’s pay-as-you-go rules. But the bigger weapon is the Byrd Rule, named after Sen. Robert W. Byrd (D-W.Va.), which prohibits lawmakers from including anything “extraneous” in the bill. The bill must meet six different tests, such as requiring every element to affect the budget in a significant way.
The second tool is the amendment process. After 20 hours of debate, Republicans can offer as many amendments as possible. The goal is to force Democrats into votes on politically treacherous issues and force the approval of amendments that kill the bill. The voting could go on for days, unless Democrats convince the parliamentarian that Republicans are being “dilatory.”
Here’s an example of how the Byrd Rule could wreak havoc for Democrats.
Senate Republican aides have begun advancing the idea that Democrats cannot make changes to the excise tax on Cadillac insurance plans through reconciliation — an argument that could cause House liberals to think twice about supporting the legislation.
The reason is that the proposed changes to the so-called Cadillac tax could violate the Byrd Rule’s prohibition on making changes to Social Security. Republicans say that, according to reports from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, part of the deficit savings over the next 10 years stems from increased Social Security revenues generated by the Cadillac tax, which was supposed to start in 2013.
But under the deal reached between the White House and Democratic congressional leaders — and codified in the reconciliation bill — the tax would not kick in until 2018.
Republicans are circulating a document that concludes that this change would reduce revenues to the Social Security program and would fall outside the current budget window, thus compelling them to raise two points of order to strike this provision from the bill.
If the parliamentarian agrees with Republicans, Democrats would need 60 votes to waive the point of order — which they don’t have.
A House Democratic aide said the leaders would not proceed “until we have a comfort level with what we can and cannot do in a reconciliation bill. We are confident that the changes in the excise tax will survive.”
But on Thursday, Republicans plan to give raising doubts about it their best shot.
At least four senators will go to the floor to argue that House Democrats should not trust their Senate counterparts when they say reconciliation will protect their interests.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34605_Page3.html#ixzz0iYOiQvxQ
2.
Democrat Rep. John Conyers' wife declared indigent by court -- taxpayers to pay her legal fees
"This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history." - Speaker-Elect Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Press Release, November 16, 2006.
Part of that leadership is Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Last week his wife Monica, who is the former president pro tempore of the Detroit City Council, was sentenced to three years in prison for her role in a bribery scandal--she pleaded guilty last year. But Monica tried to renege on her plea shortly before her sentencing. And that could cost taxpayers in Michigan and beyond. Her flip-flop means that her case continues--and a federal judge has--get this, declared Ms. Conyers indigent--so in the words of the Detroit News, "a tax-funded public defender" will represent her.
Chairman Conyers makes $170,000 a year. But according the the News, federal law dictates that the income of family members doesn't figure into such rulings.
But of course it's quite likely that the chairman of the committee that overseas federal prisons could pay Monica's legal bills if he wanted to pay. Maybe the pol-power couple is too smart for that--using other people's money is the cheap way to go. A staffer for Chairman Conyers wouldn't say why John won't be footing the bill for his wife's defense.
Monica's lawyer asked to withdraw from the case after the sentencing.
As a News columnist reported last week, the chairman signed an ethics form that neither Conyers accepted a gift worth more than $335--but a contractor paid the private school tuition for one of their sons.
Conyers' ethical problems are nothing new. Here's what the New York Post wrote in 2007:
After a probe lasting more than three years, the (Ethics) committee declared that Conyers has "accepted responsibility" for a series of House rules violations involving the use - and abuse - of his staffers.
According to published reports, Conyers used several staffers as his personal servants - requiring them to babysit and tutor his children, chauffeur him to personal events, help his wife with her law-school classes, work on his campaigns and pay restaurant and motel bills.
One staffer was even ordered to move into Conyers' home for six weeks and serve as a live-in nanny to his kids.
As I wrote on Sunday, it's time for the House Ethics Committee take a closer look at the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
After all, Speaker Pelosi promised the "most open, and most ethical Congress in history."
I'm not going to let up on this story.
And how come so few people are angry about the two Conyers crapping on taxpayers?
3.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/62779
ACORN Branches Rename, Rebrand After Video Scandal
Michael Tarm, Associated Press
Chicago (AP) - Affiliates of the once mighty liberal activist group ACORN are remaking themselves in a desperate bid to ditch the tarnished name of their parent organization and restore federal grants and other revenue streams that ran dry in the wake of a video scandal.
The letters A, C, O, R and N are coming off office doors from New York to California. Business cards are being reprinted. New signs with new names are popping up in front of offices.
The breakaways are trying to shed the scandal that emerged six months ago when videos showed some ACORN workers giving tax tips to conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute. But while their names are different, most groups have kept the same offices and staff.
That, critics say, means the groups really haven't started anew and severed all ties to ACORN, which faced accusations of mismanagement and rampant voter registration fraud well before the video brouhaha sent even longtime Democratic backers scattering.
Even the national office of ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, doesn't blame affiliates for bolting from under its umbrella -- conceding its entire 40-state network has been devastated by what backers characterize as right-wing attacks.
"It is true that these range of attacks do damage to your brand and your good name," said Kevin Whelan, ACORN's communication's director. "The other reality is that we are starting to win some vindication on the facts. But vindication doesn't necessarily pay the rent."
ACORN's financial situation and reputation went into free fall within days of the videos' release in September. Congress reacted by yanking ACORN's federal funding, private donors held back cash and scores of ACORN offices closed.
On Wednesday, a U.S. judge reiterated an earlier ruling that the federal law blacklisting ACORN and groups allied with it was unconstitutional because it singled them out. That doesn't mean any money will automatically be restored, however.
For years, ACORN could draw on 400,000 members to lobby for liberal causes, such as raising the minimum wage or adopting universal health care. Locally, its activists pushed city officials to fix broken street lights and it pressured banks to offer more favorable loans to low-income Americans. ACORN was arguably most successful at registering hundreds of thousands of low-income voters, though that mission was dogged by fraud allegations, including that some workers submitted forms signed by 'Mickey Mouse' or other cartoon characters.
There's a chance the national group could disband, and it, too, may consider changing its name.
"The sorts of attacks ACORN has faced as an organization are unprecedented since the McCarthyism in the '50s, and it remains an open question whether an organization can survive that," Whelan said. "Time will tell."
One of the latest groups to adopt a new name is ACORN Housing, long one of the best-funded affiliates.
Now, the group is calling itself the Affordable Housing Centers of America.
Others changing their names include what were among the largest affiliates: California ACORN is now Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and New York ACORN has become New York Communities for Change. More are expected to follow suit.
The housing affiliate has lost more than most. The federal cutoff slashed its budget 75 percent, from $24 million in 2009 to $6 million in 2010. It's closed half of its 33 offices, cut half its 250 staff and reduced numbers of low-income families it gives financial advice to from 20,000 to 10,000.
An unadorned paper sign with the new name was taped at the entrance of the group's Chicago headquarters on a recent afternoon. But much else is unchanged: The new group is in the same offices; and the head of the old group, Mike Shea, is the head of the new one.
Still, insisted Shea, "We really have no relationship with ACORN whatsoever."
Many opponents don't buy it. A distinguishing feature of ACORN for years has been its complex web of affiliates, some of which shared money and manpower without ever assuming ACORN's name, said Frederick Hill, spokesman for Republicans on the U.S. House oversight and government reform committee.
"The idea that some ACORN organizations are trying to obscure who they really are should be troubling to Americans," he said.
A recent report on ACORN compiled by the House Republicans whom Hill represents describes ACORN as a "shell game" with a structure "designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators."
To credibly claim a clean break, argued Hill, the new groups should at least have hired directors from outside ACORN.
"But I can't tell you of a single example our committee has seen where we say, 'Geez, it really looks like they're purging all the individuals who are with national ACORN,'" he said.
The breakaways insist they have changed in more than just name, pointing to tougher ethics rules and better management. Shea said his Chicago-based housing group brought in independent auditors to pour through its books; all, he says, gave them high marks.
"We can prove to our stakeholders that we've put reforms in place and what you saw on the video can never happen again," he said.
In the end, all the confidence-building measures may do little good when it comes to divisive, politically active groups like ACORN. Foes like Hill and a vast range of longtime detractors are sure to harken back to the old ACORN names at every opportunity.
"If a company changes its name, the hubbub eventually dies down," said Bill Lozito, head of Minneapolis-based branding firm, Strategic Name Development. "Changing a name associated with politics is a lot tougher. People won't let go of the original name and won't forget."
ACORN by any other name is still corrupt.
Posted by: Charles M. Sakai | March 19, 2010 at 11:35 PM