Category Politics

Apr 25 2012

Remorse and Revelry

Patterns tend to be emulated. We follow patterns to create clothing.
Prints are used to fabricate buildings. Engineers carefully
construct models for automobiles and skyscrapers. A syllabus is the
pattern of choice for teachers to coordinate the upcoming school year
to ensure all subjects have been probably taught through the year.
Leadership also rides the rails of patterns. The style of leadership
often permeates an organization from the head down like a fabric
throughout its many varied manifests.

 
A growing group of Democrats have stepped forward to voice
frustration with the President’s leadership style specifically in
regards to the Healthcare bill. They cite his aloof and distant
leadership style as major reasons that the healthcare law was so
large, so confusing and so onerous. They complained that the
President was not engaged in the process.  It was completely left to
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. In the end the Democrats hastily took
the work of five committees and combined them, hence, twenty-seven
hundred pages of mind-boggling confusion. Now these complaints could
be the fruit of political whispers, which herald the demise of the
ObamaCare at the hands of the Supreme Court. With a healthy dose of
buyer’s remorse, these Democrats, such as Barney Frank (one of our
favorites) are probably trying to distance themselves from the
inevitable political fallout from ObamaCare’s implosion.

 
There are consequences to leadership patterns. Barack Obama’s “do
whatever you want but don’t bother me” style has begun to show its
influence throughout the government. The recent revelations of the
GSA have appalled Americans. Misuse of agency credit cards, gift
cards and extravagant trips for meetings has taxpayers fuming. And
no, this was not the Maine Turnpike Authority or the Maine State
Housing, although, there seems to be a pattern with bureaucracy,
doesn’t there?  And the President wants more of this?

 
Bruce Poliquin, the Maine State treasurer, has been tirelessly
exposing this type of corruption here in Maine. Treasurer Poliquin
has decided to run for U.S. Senate. The Maine Conservative Voice
thinks it would be fun to see Mr. Poliquin team up with Rand Paul, Jim
DeMint and other fiscal Conservatives to expose more of this
bureaucratic revelry, which has come at the taxpayer’s expense.
The fabric of the President’s aloof leadership style has begun to
unravel and oh, the tangled web it weaves. We now learn of lurid
rendezvous between Secret Service agents on the President’s detail and
prostitutes in Columbia. Has this ever happened before? Perhaps, but
we’ve never heard about it before. And this is the point. The lax
leadership style of the President has resulted in a decline in
discipline throughout the government. No one fears the reprisal of an
accounting for his or her actions. They get lazy, flippant and
arrogant. They forget that, in time, they will have to answer to their
real boss, the American people, who are not so forgiving and do not
take so lightly the expenditures of their hard-earned tax dollars.
The ship is not so tight these days.

 
True leadership must balance the fine line between micro-management
and engaged disciplined authority. Any leader finds his leadership
vulnerable when he must confront and challenge the strong
personalities within his blanket of authority, but if the fabric of
leadership is strong enough it can withstand the push and pull of
strength within its weave and still maintain its unity and purpose.
Some who purport to be leaders seem uncomfortable with the oversight
of those within their influence. They seem to avoid the strong
personalities and let them behave as they wish with no check of
authority. This seems to be the governing style of this President.
If the President is uncomfortable with executive leadership perhaps he
should find something he is more comfortable with…like community
organizing…perhaps.

Apr 16 2012

Stacked Deck or House of Cards

The smug and arrogant disdain that the Maine media has for its readers and Maine residents, for that matter, has reached new and disturbing heights this past month. Donald Sussman, the billionaire husband of prominent Democrat U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree, purchased the media group that owns The Portland Press Herald this past year.  Some merely attributed it to a tax write-off move, as the media conglomerate was hemorrhaging money.  Others, such as this columnist, proposed that, in light of the dismal fiscal outlook for the paper, there was a more sinister reason for the “timely” purchase of the media group.

The acquisition has conveniently come on the eve of his wife’s latest campaign for office.  But the cynical have been rebuked by those in the media for fabricating a conspiracy where none exists, until the recent revelations that Mr. Sussman’s papers have blocked any editorials which criticize his wife.  The media mogul’s defense of his wife would be admirable if his wife were not an elected official whose record and policy must be scrutinized and critiqued by her peers and constituents in an public campaign.  This latest flaunt of the stranglehold the liberal left have on print media here in Maine tells of a last desperate and very troubling stand the Democrats are more than willing to make to retake their power over Maine and crush the first flickering flames of reformation within this great State.

Democrats know that those outside of their media market are so disgusted by their lies and blatant propaganda, they either simply don’t vote and remain disenfranchised or they choose to find their information through different and more credible sources.  So they must focus on those still within the fold.  They must follow the Sussman model of blocking dissenting views from reaching the minds of those they control.

Democrats also know that they have been successful in blunting the reformation attempts of the Governor by manipulating the weak leadership of the Republican legislature.  The GOP has heard the outcry against the obstructionist tactics of the Democrats’ moderate allies within the Republican ranks.  It is more than likely, if Republicans can maintain a majority in November, the tepid moderate leadership of the legislature will be replaced with strong conservative leadership, which will work with the Governor rather than against him.  This will herald the acceleration of the much-needed reform to the State of Maine and portend the anticipated rollback of the fiscal gloom that Democrats have toiled so hard to blanket the economy of Maine with, statewide.  This is a crucial last stand for Democrats.  They are building the media firewall now.

These tactics are not relegated solely to the State of Maine.  On the national level, media, both print and televised, have arisen to once again shield the Democrat party from the light of scrutiny’s beacon.  The searing heat of objectivity and fact must not reach those they pet and worship.

For instance, we have the Buffet rule.  Economists state that if the rule were implemented, it would gain the government six billion dollars per year. What the media refuses to acknowledge is that the Obama administration is increasing the debt at a rate of six billion dollars per week.  So the Buffet rule is really just silly math not worthy of grade school discussion.  It’s more for a campaign to afford those who stand on the deck of America’s sinking fiscal ship, a bat to bludgeon those “vile rich people” who are the very ones trying to throw them a lifeline.

Ironically, Warren Buffet has not paid his income taxes in some time.  This seems to be a pattern amongst the friends of the President.  Perhaps if the media were honest, they could expose the fact that the Buffet Rule is simply a re-burnishment of the tired old Democrat adage that rules and regulations are for everyone else to obey and for Democrat allies to ignore.  Sadly, blinded by its own pride and agenda, the media will not scrutinize anything.

A wise man said, “Pride goes before a fall.”  The Democrats have been so smug in the pompous belief that they can say what they will with no repercussions, they grown less careful about covering their deeper darker motives.  Now perhaps, they have made a final fatal trip of the tongue.  Democrats have attacked America’s greatest and most treasured institution, our mothers.  Flippantly discounting the countless hours mothers labor to hold up the bedrock of this great society, the Party, whose symbol is an ass, is seeing their stacked deck crumbling like a house of cards.  Perhaps it would have been better for the media to strengthen their candidate and Party of choice with critique than to let them flounder in misbehavior without fear of the recourse of discovery.  Set to the plummet of fact, their structure of character may have been more substantial than a falling, fluttering tower of cards.

Apr 10 2012

Lawbreaker

 

We are a nation of laws.  It is how we maintain the public peace.  Our businesses rely on laws to validate and insure the contracts in which they operate.  Law is the means to hold the members of a civil society accountable to decency and responsibility.

I would suspect that a majority of Americans have at one time or another found themselves crossways to some rule or regulation.  While we all may grouse and grumble at the results of our negligence or maybe just plain rebellion, oftentimes it soon becomes clear that some laws were put there for the protection of the public.  So we respectfully submit to the repercussions of our actions.

Not so for the members of the Democrat Party, who forage the halls of Washington D.C. in search of more slush funds to consume.  The Federal government is supposed to pass a budget each year.  It’s the law.  Senate President, Harry Reid, has refused to even allow budgets, passed by the House of Representatives, to come to the floor to be voted on and now the Federal government has not had an operating budget for three years.  The “Honorable” Mr. Reid claims that the Republican led House has not put forth a budget to vote on.  Yet the House has repeatedly put forth bi-partisan budgets, passed in the House, that Reid will not acknowledge for a vote.  The Senate President seems more content to break the law than to honor the legislation of a duly elected House of Representatives, the laws that govern him and responsibilities required of him that are vested in the position and authority he currently retains.

Perhaps Mr. Reid is pouting in frustration that the budgets presented by President Obama cannot make it out of the House with a single positive vote.  Yes, the House of Representatives have voted unanimously against the executive budget proposals on multiple occasions.  Barack Obama has proven to be so inept on matters of budget that both Democrats and Republicans have refused to have the President’s fiscal disaster on their hands and have voted a resounding bi-partisan “no”.  That’s zero, Z.E.R.O, zero votes for the President.  Strapped with a leader in the Oval Office that is feckless at best on matters of economy, Harry Reid has decided that perhaps it is best if the law does not apply to him.  Better no budget, than a balanced budget.  Sadly, Mr. Reid, even the nation of Mexico has an operating budget.  Shouldn’t we at least try?

But Mr. Reid is not the most notable lawbreaker amongst Democrat leaders.  President Obama now finds the signature act of his administration in direct challenge to the Law of the Land, the Constitution.  As ObamaCare weighs before the Justices of the Supreme Court, the President has taken the unprecedented tact of threatening the highest court of the United States while it is in deliberation.  The President challenged the court’s authority to judge the constitutional merit of a law, which is one of the primary purposes of the Supreme Court.  This outraged the American people and rightly so.  The President has spent the week trying to “walk back” his words, but curiously, trying to couch his words in such a way as to leave his threat on the table.

This leaves the citizens of the United States with these questions.  If the President is the Constitutional lawyer he claims to be, then is he simply an inept, incompetent lawyer or is he someone who fundamentally disdains the system of checks and balances that founding fathers established?  If you were a Party who believed the government should rule the people, not the people rule the government, wouldn’t you view laws that held you accountable and checked your actions as frustrating encumbrances or barriers to the advance of your agenda?  Something to think about.  What is certain is this. When we the citizens break a law, we pay a fine or face incarceration.  When our leaders in Washington break the law and are exposed, they, by their actions, tell we the people to simply go to Hades.

Mar 28 2012

The differences between ObamaCare and RomneyCare

When this column goes to press, the Supreme Court will have ended or
be near at end the argument phase of the case concerning the
Constitutionality of ObamaCare, that is, if the Judges even hear it.
There is some question that the Court may delay a hearing on the
matter, as some are arguing that none have been affected by the
mandate yet.  There are many businesses that would beg to differ on
that argument.  Nonetheless, let’s assume that the Supreme Court hears
the arguments.  One of the major arguments that the Obama
administration has put forth is that Mitt Romney did it.  Yes, with a
straight face, the President will again employ the “everybody else but
me” argument before the Supreme Court of the United States.
This President has promised to be a historical President and he has
succeeded in some unique ways.  He and his Party have produced in
George W. Bush the first three-term President in Modern History, by
blaming him for every uncomfortable situation they have faced.  Now
with a re-election campaign on the horizon, the President has decided
to give the credit for the signature policy achievement of his
administration to his most probable campaign opponent, Mitt Romney.
So in essence, Barack Obama is the President who never was.
The assertion by this President that ObamaCare is a mirror image of,
so called, RomneyCare is fundamentally flawed on several fronts.  The
Democrats, in their attempt to hang ObamaCare on Governor Romney, have
failed to acknowledge some key differences that they perhaps would
prefer remain undisclosed.  But this columnist could never let a
sleeping dog lie, could he?
The Massachusetts healthcare plan was debated on the floor of the
State legislature and in the public for many months.  After some time
of debates and compromise between the legislative and executive
branches, the plan, soon dubbed RomneyCare, was passed into law and
signed by then Governor Romney.  ObamaCare, on the other hand, was
crafted behind closed doors and rammed down the throats of Americans
and the Republican Party with little to no debate or public discourse.
The majority of the residents of Massachusetts approved of the state
plan and was in favor of its implementation.  Governor Romney was
giving the people what they wanted.  ObamaCare was incredibly
unpopular from the onset.  The hatred and anger for this law have only
increased as the years have passed.
This shows a fundamental difference between Conservatives and
Liberals.  Conservatives believe that States should have their own
sovereignty and rise and fall on the weight of their own decisions,
but other States should not be bound to the actions of one State.  The
liberal argument of this President is that one State has established a
precedent and the others should be forced to follow suit, like it or
lump it.
Mitt Romney was a Republican Governor with legislature that held a
strong Democrat majority.  Had he vetoed the bill, the opposing Party
would have most likely overridden him.  The Governor tried to
negotiate from a position of strength rather than weakness to craft a
bill that both Parties would accept and the people wanted.  President
Obama and his Democrat majority crafted their own bill in secret and
didn’t give a rat’s hinder-parts what the Republicans or the people
wanted.  So you see, when it comes to motives, there are some stark
differences between the two health plans