Category Better Life

Nov 26 2017

The Red County Caucus Issues Statement on Senator Collins

 

We of The Red County Caucus would like to remind Senator Susan Collins that the Constitution of the United States was written to protect the Natural Born Rights of the Individual. These Rights, inherent, unalienable, and God-given, have been, in times past and present, under repeated assault from activism from all corners of our society in an effort to undermine the Founding Ideal of this Free Republic: that the government of free men should defend and protect the free will of the individual. What is common sense was once common place but now a rarity to be sure.

Congress is now engaged in a pitted debate over the nuance, impact, and economics of tax reform. The Red County Caucus is not prepared at this point to issue a statement on a tax reform plan as Congress is still far from formulating one. However, we will comment on the recent duplicitous behavior of Maine’s Senior Senator, Susan Collins.

Senator Collins has threatened to sabotage the tax reform process unless the repeal of the individual mandate of Obamacare is removed. This is strikingly hypocritical of the good Senator, who was heard on many occasions on the campaign trial, decrying to enthusiastic Maine voters the disastrous impact the individual mandate and ObamaCare has had on Maine household budgets, all the while chanting “Repeal and Replace”. Now returned to Congress’ marbled halls, Collins’ mantra seems to have changed to “Defend and Deny” at all cost.

Can there be a more glaring violation of the Constitution than the Individual Mandate? To mandate, that is to force by law, an individual to purchase a product the individual may or may not want, to fund an ideal of socialized medicine that the individual may or may not want, and to do so under threat of penal action by the government, the maker of the product, is the very epitome of the kind of governmental abuse and overreach our Constitution was written to protect against. Yet, Senator Collins remains dogged in her determination to undermine, once again, Congress and the President’s attempt to fix a failing and outdated tax system in a fixated effort to defend a healthcare system she promised voters she would work to “repeal and replace”.

We ask Susan Collins once again: Who is she representing? Is it the bureaucracies and Washington power brokers who wish to force the individual, through a government mandate, to comply to their wishes? Or the individuals here in Maine who have and still protest this Individual Mandate with its destructive impacts on the households of the State she represents. Senator Collins must choose against the interests of Washington and for the individual rights of her constituents in Maine.

Oct 19 2017

The Red County Caucus Issues Statement on Ballot Initiatives

 

The Red County Caucus wishes to interject a healthy dose of Common Sense into the debate concerning the Ballot Initiatives facing Maine voters this coming November. Both Question 1 and Question 2 have far reaching implications to future welfare of this great State. Voters should take the time to look past the rose colored rhetoric, over-used, and tired political jargon. Investigate these questions through the eyes of common sense and the answers become clear.

Question 1: From the onset this initiative has smelled of corruption, and the stench has grown stronger the more we see of it. The very fact that the $5 million in question are controlled by one man shouts of a con. Mainers should see through this miles away and vote this down.

This is why government should not be funding business. This only attracts the most unseemly opportunists who are looking for “easy money”. Men such as this Shawn Scott, with the apt moniker “Shady Shawn”, hope through these referendums to profit off your tax dollars rather than take the hard earned path of the free market.

Question 2: We’ve tried this before. Hospitals were left with a mountain of unpaid balances, $750 million in fact, that left our hospitals over-leveraged and on the brink of insolvency. Extending coverage to able-bodied working adults has failed in the past and if enacted will once again cause hospitals to have to cut back on services, staff, and causing another state budget crisis to the tune of $100 million a year. It’s the proverbial “Deja Vu all over again” which will see Maine return to neglecting its elderly and truly needy as funds are redirected into the consuming demands of non-working childless adults.

For emphasis, We have tried this before and it failed. It makes no sense for hospitals to claim to be losing money from medicaid on one hand and ask for an expansion on the other. We have made positive advances in the effort to rectify the financial crisis in Maine’s healthcare sector. To return to the policies that caused the budget crisis in the first place is the very definition of fiscal insanity.

Oct 15 2017

Forget the Law, Be Nice

 

Senator Susan Collins is reveling in her new found notoriety as chief saboteur of conservative policy. It was not even two years ago that the Honorable Senator from Maine chanted “Repeal and Replace” to the cheering delegates of the Maine Republican Convention. It would seem that the promise to remove ObamaCare was something akin to her promise to only serve two terms as a U.S. Senator: a lie.

Now she is touring the wheel of D.C. Punditry wielding a healthy disregard for the rule of law. Her criticism of President Trump’s order stopping ObamaCare subsidies is based on the emotion that she feels his decision hurts certain people groups. This may in fact be true but she is missing, by ignorance or design, the irrefutable and incontrovertible fact that the payments were illegal.

In order to pay the exorbitant price tag of the ACA, President Obama circumvented Congress by Executive Order and began paying insurance companies, subsidizing the high costs of government healthcare. The Constitution clearly states that the President cannot make any financial payments without Congressional authorization and a Federal Court has ruled that these payments were in fact illegal, criminal, and theft.

In light of this legal ruling and the Constitution, this sitting President is bound by law to correct the illegal and criminal actions of the past President. The problem of damage to any certain people groups may be a sad truth, but the fault lies not with those who are bound by law to correct the crime. The fault lies with those who committed the crime in the first place: President Obama, those in Congress who enabled the President with silence, and the insurance companies who are complicit in the fraud.

It is concerning at best, that the senior Senator from Maine seems content to base her decisions, and arguments for such, on emotions rather then facts and the rule of law. The healthcare debacle is a national crisis which is not best served by leaders who vacillate from year to year manipulating their political stances to accommodate political expediency, changing from election year rhetoric to special interest’s influence. Senator Collins should work to find solutions grounded in fact and law rather than emotion wielded in spite.

Oct 5 2017

Lethal Weapon

 

The cry of decency has been buried beneath the din of opportunism and exploitation. The decent man has been forced into battle to protect his rights when he would prefer silence to honor the dead. The onslaught is upon us, trampling the graves that have yet to be filled with the fallen.

But is was inevitable. The shameless have become predictable, bludgeoning Americans into a dull, numb apathy. We are a tired, we are worn, and we are sick of being blamed for the monstrosities of every madman.

It was interesting to hear a recent caller to radio program insist that he enlighten the listening world that one should see by looking at a black rifle that it is designed to kill. Yes, all guns are designed to kill just as knives are designed to cut and hammers are designed to pound. A weapon’s efficiency does not preclude it from use.

So, predictably, we are here again, reminding the willfully ignorant that the Second Amendment is not for hunting or sport, but it is the fail-safe our Founders acknowledged in protecting our Natural Born Right to self-defense against the most lethal weapon of all, government. They knew that a government without the restraint of the people is by its own very nature oppressive. It must put down dissent to ensure its own survival.

This writer is a gun owner but in no wise an expert. I am just now understanding what a bump stock is. I do know, with strong conviction, that the people must have weapons that level the field with the government. This the purpose of the Second Amendment; to insure a government that fears the people.

Every government that has taken the Natural Born Right of the people to self-defense away has always perpetrated violence upon those citizens. Any voice of dissent by the populace is squashed with violence. This is without exception. So remember this simple truth as these redundant arguments boil and regurgitate again; the most lethal weapon on this earth is armed government unrestrained by an disarmed citizens.