Rapid Response

<>The following letter read on Glenn Beck's show, is rapidly circulating around the country. Americans everywhere identify with this 53-year-old woman. She has given us a voice. Once you read this, you will want to forward it to all of your friends...
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<>GLENN BECK: I got a letter from a woman in Arizona . She writes an open letter to our nation's leadership:
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<>"I am a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. Instead, we are burdened with Congressional Dukes and Duchesses who think they know better than the citizens they are supposed to represent.
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<>There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now.
<>You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would feel so horribly disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut-job am I? Well, these briefly are the views and issues for which I seek representation:
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<>One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This is not to be confused with legal immigration.
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<>Two, the STIMULUS bill. I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you No, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.
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<>Three: Czars. I want the circumvention of our constitutional checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution, and honor it.
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<>Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There are many conflicting opinions and it is too soon for this radical legislation. Quit throwing our nation into politically-correct quicksand.
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<>Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision that will burden me, my children, and grandchildren. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night without even reading it. Slow down! Fix only what is broken -- we have the best health care system in the world -- and test any new program in one or two states first.
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<>Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. More is not better! Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real [Constitutional] obligations. Why don't you start there.
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<>Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes -- how did they pull that one off? Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with any of our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.
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<>Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs -- and that is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person! Why do you want me to hate my employers? And what do you have against shareholders making a profit?
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<>Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.
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<>Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Every company must sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. (Have you ever ripped off a Band-Aid?) We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.
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<>Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please stop trying to manipulate and appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.
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<>Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.
<>Take a breath. Listen to the people. Slow down and get some input from nonpoliticians and experts on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed-reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.
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<>I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not.
<>It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is needless urgency and recklessness in all of your recent spending of our tax dollars.
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<>From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on bringing our concerns to Washington . Our president often knows all the right buzzwords like unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.
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<>We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented.. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work, pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone... and we are now looking at you.
<>You have awakened us, the patriotic freedom spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office.
<>We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us who will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.
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<>Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution, and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them.. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you.
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<>If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming."

White House to Fox News: How Dare You Check Our 'Facts'!

Posted By Bobby Eberle On October 19, 2009 at 9:41 am

I must admit... I thought for sure that the Obama administration's "war" against Fox News would surely just be a skirmish. Think about it. Fox News is more popular than all other cable news channels, and yet Obama's minions still thought it was a good strategy to go after the network. Their actions paint a clear picture of an administration that is elitist and arrogant.
Rather than realize they are employing a game plan that will fail, the Obama team has escalated the war. Now they are not only refusing to supply any guests for Fox News programs, but they are also telling other news networks to "join the administration in declaring that Fox is 'not a news organization.'" Remember the picture that Obama and the media painted of him?   He was supposed to be the person that brought the country together, right? What we are seeing through his use of race-baiting, prior administration bashing, and now the attacks against Fox News is that the arrogance and elitism of him and his advisors knows no bounds.

Obama advisor David Axelrod recently appeared on ABC's "This Week" program.   Just think about it... Axelrod has the nerve to say that Fox isn't real news because it is "pushing a point of view." Hello! What is CNN doing?   What is MSNBC doing?   In addition, Fox News is being black-balled by the White House, and guess why? Because they have the nerve...the audacity....the gall to listen to something Obama or an advisor says and then... verify the facts. Fact-checking is part of what a news organization should do, right? As noted in a story on FOXNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/18/white-house-escalates-war-fox-news-1925819282/ :

The White House stopped providing guests to 'Fox News Sunday' after Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August.   [White House Communications Director Anita] Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do."   "She criticized 'FOX News Sunday' last week for fact-checking -- fact-checking -- an administration official," Wallace said Sunday. "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/18/obama-team-continues-effort-isolate-fox-news/ Earlier in the month, Dunn made the media rounds and said, "But let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is." Appearing on CNN's John King program, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had this to say (or not say) about the White House strategy to
attack Fox News: "If you haven't done so in a while, I invite everyone to watch a couple hours
of CNN news programming. Observe the actual stories, note the guests and "experts," and realize what angle they are pursuing." Obama and his administration can't even defend their own policies. They run for cover if a news organization actually checks the facts. The longer they keep up this strategy, the sooner the American people will figure out that Obama is a radical, that he has a team of radicals, and they are bent on "transforming" America in their own socialist image. We should all "check the facts." We should all tell our friends and colleagues to pay attention to what is happening. A president taking on a news organization? How scary is it to know that the one news outlet that dares to "fact-check" and ask tough questions is being attacked by the president of the United States and his team?

AFGHANISTAN. The "worst case scenario" is at hand.

This may be a fool's errand on my part...to offer specific advice to the Hamlet in the White House now trying to decide on America's "new" strategy in that boiling part of the world.

But I always thought that any American strategy that includes American blood involves by definition critical American self-interest and involves WINNING. After 7 highest level meetings with his military advisors...and one more scheduled..., and after the carnage of the last week, how much more time does Obama need? Now, it can be said that he knows more about what he is doing than I know about what he is doing. Except for the crass political calculations that should have no part in the decision, I doubt that. Coverage of events and issues in Afghanistan and in Pakistan has been broad and deep. I know what I need to know; and so does he.

So here is my decision.

And why should America do all of this? Not because we are "nation-building". Not because we want to export our brand of democracy. Not out of pure altruism. Not because we want to pay anyone off for past assistance...or atone for our stupid and immoral abandonment of that region after the Russian defeat there. But simply because it is in our vital strategic self-interest right now.

There. That wasn't too hard, was it? President Obama, ARE YOU THERE??

The topics for today are old...and very current.

HEALTH CARE REFORM. We are now heading into "The Perfect Strom".

The result in the confluence of these three elements of the "Perfect Storm" is a shipwreck for all of us...unless the citizens take action now to demand a more prudent and effective approach to necessary health care reform. And an integral part of this must be medical mal-practice reform, at the heart of reducing very expensive "defensive medicine". One effective change would be to establish Health Care Courts, comparable to Patent Courts and Bankruptcy Courts, manned by unbiased medical experts. This is not a new idea; it simply has not been tried...thanks to the trial lawyers - who would lose their chances at the national medical lottery.

NUCLEAR ENERGY AS A FOUNDATION OF OUR EFFORTS AT ENERGY INDEPENDENCE. This has been supported in this section many times in the past. It is really a no-brainer.

TEACHERS: THE UN-PROFESSION (excluding those teachers who are just trying not to be black-balled by their unionist colleagues). The Teachers' Unions continue to resist successfully all efforts that might reduce their tenure protections, all efforts to introduce merit pay and the teacher evaluations that come with that, and all efforts to introduce some competition in the assignment of students through charter schools, magnet schools and especially through public school vouchers. This has produced a public school system in this country that is not worthy of the name.

But is there a light at the end of this black tunnel? Please read an important article that appears in the Oct. 24 edition of The Day (www.theday.com) entitled "Value-Added" Teacher Ratings Prove Divisive, Yet Effective", by Jason Felch and Jason Song, in Perspective, pE1. This idea has been around - and batted down - for 20 years, a very long gestation awaiting healthy birth. I'll say it again: if physicians practiced Medicine over the last four decades the way teachers have practiced Teaching...we physicians would rightly be in jail.

GS

By Emily P. Walker, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today
Published: October 21, 2009

WASHINGTON -- A procedural vote on the bill that would provide a "doctors' payment fix" has failed in the Senate, sending the message that the bill does not have the necessary votes to become law.

A cloture vote to end debate on the bill that would eliminate the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula used to determine Medicare reimbursements to physicians was defeated in the Senate 53 to 47.

Had it passed, the cloture vote would have moved the bill itself, sponsored by Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), to a vote.

Doctors have long lobbied for a new payment mechanism -- one that does not call for huge cuts in reimbursements year after year. Congress has voted at the eleventh hour to stall planned payment cuts seven times.

Stabenow's bill would erase the SGR, and reset the debt accumulated from the 1997 law to zero at a cost of about $245 billion. The bill doesn't lay out a new mechanism to pay doctors under Medicare, however.

The healthcare reform bills that the House leaders are working to meld into one bill would eliminate the SGR, but neither of the two Senate bills dealt with the SGR.

In a supposed deal made last week with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), doctor groups agreed to support wider healthcare reform legislation if the SGR issue was dealt with in a separate bill. The president of the American Medical Association (AMA) wouldn't confirm that deal, however, when asked about it on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, Republicans and Democrats alike criticized the SGR bill for adding to the federal deficit because it did not propose a way to pay for the $245 billion bill. Republicans were critical of the SGR measure being moved out of healthcare reform and placed in a separate bill.

"It's perfectly obvious why Democrats want to resolve this issue outside the larger debate over healthcare," Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor on Monday. "They're doing it so they can say their healthcare plan doesn't add to the deficit. It's a gimmick, and a transparent one at that."

Fiscally conservative Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), said he wouldn't vote for the SGR bill unless its cost is offset.

"We need to pay for this," he said. "We can't just tack it onto the debt."

So even before the roll call was read for the cloture vote, Stabenow and Reid knew they lacked the votes.

Reid took the podium on the floor on Wednesday and lamented the politics of Washington and accused Republicans of trying to railroad healthcare reform by not supporting the SGR bill.

He singled out Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) who had said he'd vote against the payment fix, despite being a co-sponsor of the bill.

"It's very interesting here, one of the sponsors of the legislation is not supporting it," Reid said. "This is another effort by the Republicans to slow down what we're trying to do on healthcare and everything else."

Reid said the the issue would resurface after a healthcare reform bill passes.

"If the Republicans don't want to do it this way, we'll come back after reform and deal with a multiyear fix," Reid said in a Senate floor speech before the cloture vote.

President Obama reset the formula to zero in his budget for this year, but the current formula calls for a 21% cut in 2010.

The AMA immediately issued a statement saying it is "deeply disappointed" in the vote.

"As we work to improve the health system, permanent repeal of the payment formula is essential to ensuring the security and stability of Medicare," said AMA president James Rohack, MD, in the statement.

Dear Dr. Sprecace,

Despite popular belief that the Baucus bill is a more reasonable approach, I would argue that it is just as harmful to patients and physicians as the House bill, H.R. 3200, which among other things, contains a “robust” government-run plan.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out last week with a revised score of the Baucus bill indicating that it would cost $829 billion ($100 billion more than the previous version), contains $404 billion in overall cuts to Medicare/Medicaid - including $22 billion in cuts to reimbursements to be determined by unaccountable, unelected Medicare Commission or “MedPAC on steroids”- and $349.2 billion in new taxes on employers, individuals, medical devices and drug manufacturers and insurers. All the while it fails to fix SGR. Instead the bill uses a budget gimmick so that CBO assumes Congress will let a 25% cut in physician reimbursements occur after 2010. This is politically unrealistic. The real cost of addressing SGR would tack on another $200 billion in costs.

Even more disturbing is the little talked about provision that would punish doctors, particularly specialists. The bill provides that doctors whose “resource use” is too high (top 10 percentile) compared to their peers would see their reimbursements cut starting in 2014. This not only completely offsets the meager SGR increase for 2010 (0.5%) before slashing it once again in 2011, but it will arbitrarily make cuts to the doctors who may be the best performers, see the toughest or the sickest patients. The provision, even if changed to be risk or geographically adjusted, would only increase the government’s meddling in the daily practice of medicine.

Despite all the recent frenzy over better than expected CBO numbers and a weaker public option (or “Co-Op”) the bill that Senators will vote on in the next few weeks may look nothing like the Baucus bill as it still has to be merged with the more onerous and liberal Senate HELP committee bill - which includes a government-run plan.

Meanwhile in the House of Representatives, secret closed-door negotiations continue to persist with Speaker Pelosi promising a “robust” government-run plan that dictates provider reimbursement rates and an expansion of Medicaid.

We have a long way to go before this debate is over – I urge you to weigh in with your Representatives before it is too late.

Yours Truly,

Congressman Tom Price, M.D.
Chairman, PCRR

Just two subjects today.

1) Subsidies to assist in affordability. They should not be available to anyone earning above 200% of the poverty line...but will probably go to people at or below 400% of that level. Wrong in fairness and wrong in economics.

2) Actuarial inclusion of pre-existing and life-style issues. Necessary; but probably will be omitted. Wrong for the same reasons cited.

3) Mandating health care coverage for all at some minimum level. Ditto.

4) Tort Reform, especially in the area of Medical Malpractice. Vital for any chance to reduce health care costs, by markedly reducing the current level of "defensive medicine", currently estimated to add up to 30% to those costs. Here, the experience in Mississippi is very telling. Likelihood of inclusion in the final Bill...nil.

5) Absolutely No Federal Funding for Abortion, except to save the life of the mother. Include this, and it's political war. So, they will likely include it.

6) Empower people to establish Health Savings Accounts, restoring the patient at long last to personal responsibility and to any interest in the costs of the health care they need...and want. Instead, their attraction will very likely be destroyed as a pay-back for all those political contributions from the managed care organizations and insurance companies.

7) Admit that the strong majority of physicians are opposed to the reforms as currently planned, notwithstanding the feckless actions and posturing of the AMA, which represents less than 30% of practising physicians in this country. And physicians are also citizens, not indentured servants as is rapidly becoming the case.

8) Be honest about how this is going to be paid for: more taxes and fewer covered services (aka "rationing", not by the patient in consultation with the physician...but by uninformed and distant bureaucrats. Don't hold your breath.

The end result: higher costs, lower quality, less access. It doesn't have to be like that...but that's where it's going. And I TOLD YOU SO...since the late 1970's. Look it up, on this web site and elsewhere.

Here are a few itmes that really got my goat this week.

"BAIL'EM OUT!!! ????
Hell, back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it.. They failed and it closed. Now, we are trusting the economy of our country, our banking system, our auto industry and possibly our health plans to the same nit-wits who couldn't make money running a whore house and selling whiskey?!"
"What are we thinking?

I only hope we find God again before it is too late!

The following was written by Ben Stein and presented by him on "CBS Sunday Morning Commentary."

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit-up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it.  It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Hurricane Katrina). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.  And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events: terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (She was murdered. Her body found a few years ago.) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said, "OK." Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said, "OK."

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem. Dr. Spock's son committed suicide. We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said, "OK."

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience; why they don't know right from wrong; and, why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'We reap what we sow.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it. No one will know you did' but, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My Best Regards,

Honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

Time now for another flight of consciousness, around the world.

"Is anybody there? Does anybody care?"

SGR Fix Fails in the Senate