Prepare To Be Offended

Not content to ram the stimulus and omnibus bills down your throat, the democrats are now looking to ram a health care bill down everyone’s throat by using a little congressional trickery.

From the AP:

Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated Wednesday he’s willing to move sweeping health care legislation through the Senate with a procedural maneuver that would block a GOP filibuster. The prospect of the controversial tactic has already ignited Republicans’ ire, and key Senate Democratic chairmen have said they don’t want to do it.

Reid, D-Nev., took a different position on a conference call with reporters.

“I think it’s something we need to consider,” Reid said.

At issue is a so-called reconciliation bill, which could pass with a simple majority of 51 votes and without Democrats fearing a GOP filibuster. Democrats would struggle to gather 60 votes needed to break a filibuster for something as complex as a plan to meet President Barack Obama’s goal of overhauling the nation’s health care system to cover 48 million uninsured Americans.

Revising health care via reconciliation has been viewed favorably by House Democrats. The House Budget Committee included language providing for the method in its annual budget resolution released Wednesday. Reconciliation is not favored by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and was not part of his committee’s plan.

White House officials reiterated Wednesday that it’s not their preferred method but they don’t want to take it off the table.

So basically they know their bill won’t stand on its own, they don’t care what the cost is going to be and they don’t want to hear alternatives and just want to force it upon the American people. Really starting to like this “Hope and Change”.

As the protesting over the AIG bonuses continue, more execs are leaving the troubled company and I don’t blame them. From Hot Air:

Several more employees are leaving the controversial financial products unit that brought American International Group Inc to its knees last year, according to a person with knowledge of developments there.

The resignations are in addition to the “handful” of senior AIG Financial Products executives who have already given notice, said the person, who could not quantify the total number of departures.

To date, AIG said the situation at the financial products unit remains “manageable,” despite the departures. But if too many employees quit, Chief Executive Edward Liddy has warned it could be disastrous for AIG and, ultimately, for U.S. taxpayers who are the insurer’s majority owners. Employees there were promised retention payments more than a year ago, on condition they stayed long enough to wind down their areas of business, effectively working themselves out of a job.

But now some have changed their minds, fed up after 10 days of ridicule and scorn from lawmakers who broadly derided the bonuses, demonstrators picketing outside AIG offices and a threat by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to publicly name anyone who did not return the bonuses.

The employees still working are not the ones who caused the large losses and “are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials,” wrote Jake DeSantis, an executive vice-president for the Wilton, Connecticut-based financial products unit, in a resignation letter printed by the New York Times on Wednesday.

This is the problem with the mob mentality and an over eager congress and administration that wishes to hide their real problems. They don’t pay attention to the facts, or worse, the consequences of their actions.

Kiss your billions dumped into AIG good bye.

No kidding. Who the hell is Congress to say that they can retro tax these people? They are all pissed of because AIG is honoring their contract with their employees and yet they waste hundreds billions of dollars of our money on their shit pet projects?

I can understand a little bit how people get upset they the execs are getting their money when the company needed a bailout. However, like the idiots that the public usually are, they fail to see that a) AIG made those obligations before receiving money and b) the administration knew about it.

I wish I was one of these execs. I would get in front of congress and them what fucking hypocrites they are and if they want to take my money away they should give up everything they’ve received from AIG (hello Chris Dodd and Obama), stop making deals they then turn around and renege on.

As reported in the NYT:

Full details of Mr. Obama’s budget for the 2010 fiscal year will be released in April. The outline on Thursday will make clear that he intends to push ahead on promises to contain health care costs and expand insurance coverage, and to move toward an energy cap-and-trade system for controlling emissions of gases blamed for climate change.

Human Events shows the costs of such a system:

The potential costs to America from cap-and-trade policies are enormous. The Department of Energy estimates that S. 2191, the Warner-Lieberman cap-and-trade proposal, will increase the cost of coal for power generation by between 161% and 413%. DOE estimates GDP losses (see chart) over the 21-year period they forecast, at between $444 billion and $1.308 trillion, with particular damage to the manufacturing sector. (This gives some hope that organized labor will, in a rare occurrence, oppose Democratic leaders on this issue.) Winegarden estimates that this bill could increase unemployment by 2.7% or about 4 million jobs. In fact, companies are already preparing to avoid increased level and volatility of American energy prices by setting up factories and partnerships in countries which won’t be subject to cap-and-trade restrictions…proving with real-world behavior of producers that no carbon-limiting regulation can succeed if it is not universal.

Yep, 4 million jobs. Let’s face it, cap and trade is just another redistribution program. This time from one company to another. I suppose the idea is to make companies produce less emissions to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist. What it will do for sure is cost companies billions of dollars in a thinly disguised tax. Just what the economy needs isn’t it?

h/t GatewayPundit

This is unbelievable. Obama is actually telling people to live within their means while he is stealing their money, their kids money and probably their grandkids money.

h/t GatewayPundit

This is truly scary and if it is true, could drastically change this country for a very long time. The following is a transcript from a Chicago democrat that was told what this stimulus package is really for. Read and weep.

“I really feel that what I’m gonna give you here is a smoking gun.

I’m a conservative Democrat and I’m from Chicago… and I, I feel that I was betrayed.

I was in a meeting after Obama got elected and I was told by the Democratic officials in that meeting that we were gonna give billions of dollars that was gonna come down the pike, our way, and what we were to do with it was we were supposed to do with it…

We are gonna build an army of Democratic patronage jobs…. gonna completely freeze up the Republicans forever and ever…

It’s a job-capturing system, the same one they have in Chicago… everyone’s asking ‘why isn’t that money being released until 2011 and 2012?’

Because it needs to be released at a time that’s close to the election, so that they don’t go blow the money and spend it. So they’re gonna hold some back and that’s where… the real bucks will be spent, right up close to the election.

…It’s not a stimulus package, it’s not pork! It’s a job patronage system… there’s gonna be more [people] working for the Democrats in a patronage system than the United States Army…

And the jobs are gonna be camouflaged in a million different ways, whether you’re workin’ for the city, or workin’ for the state, but when the election comes around, you’re gonna be obligated to go out and get that vote… …like ACORN, except the jobs will be larger scale. I just wanted to say that, because I was really depressed when they told me, because I really thought they’d be different.

If I’ve done nothing else in my life, I’ve informed what that bill really is… it’s a job patronage system.”

here is the originating video:

h/t DirectoryBlue

HotAir.com has a post about the impending collapse of the Venezuela government due in large part to Hugo Chavez’s spending on social programs and not paying the contractors that keep his one vital money maker flowing. oil.

What does this have to do with the U.S.? Simple. The U.S. is borrowing heavily from China to fund our social programs and at any time they could simply stop, or keep going to the point where we can’t afford to borrow anymore and worse, not pay anything back. What will happen then?

Here is my favorite part:

Chavez faces another key vote this year. If he stops spending money on his pet projects, he’ll lose the support of the poor, practically his only constituency now. If he doesn’t pay the contractors, though, his entire economy could collapse, creating a huge backlash against the man who claimed nationalization would cure all Venezuela’s ills. Chavez may soon reach the end of his rope, and as Benito Mussolini discovered when his dictatorship resulted in disaster, that’s not necessarily a figurative phrase.

Many in this country also think socialism is the way to go. Newsweek even claims we are already there, that we are just like France.

Will we fore go our failed social programs to save the country? Is that what it will take for people of this country to finally wake up and see what a mess government controlled social programs are and how they are slowing killing us? I’m not generally a pessimist, but I have no faith in the American public. This past election has proven how the ignorant and lazy can elect people into office whose only goal is power and corruption.

In another move to give kickbacks to his union supporters, Obama signed legislation that says that only union-based companies can big on government projects. This move negatively affects 25,000 companies. So much so that The Association of Building Contractors has condemned the executive order.

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) today denounced an Executive Order signed by President Obama that repeals Executive Order 13202, that prohibited federal agencies and recipients of federal funding from requiring contractors to sign union-only project labor agreements (PLAs) as a condition of performing work on federal and federally funded construction projects.

“Today’s decision to repeal Executive Order 13202 opens the door to waste and discrimination in federal and federally funded construction contracts,” said ABC President and CEO Kirk Pickerel. “This action removes the safeguards that prohibited discrimination based upon union affiliation in the awarding of federal contracts.

“Construction contracts subject to union-only PLAs are designed to be awarded exclusively to unionized contractors and their all-union workforces,” said Pickerel. “Absent the economic benefits of competitive bidding, union-only PLAs are known to increase construction costs between 10 percent and 20 percent and discriminate against minorities, women and qualified construction workers who have traditionally been excluded from union membership.

“Union-only PLAs drive up costs for American taxpayers while unfairly discriminating against 84 percent of U.S. construction workers who choose not to join a labor union,” added Pickerel. “All taxpayers should have the opportunity to compete fairly on any project funded by the federal government.”

Way to go. In a time of huge unemployment, let’s eliminate the possibility of putting some people to work. Combined with their so called “free choice act”, then unions will become the man behind the curtain running this country.

h/t GatewayPundit

Not content with capping executives pay at $500k for companies that receive government funding, Barney wants to extend it to all companies regardless of if they get government help or not.

via HotAir:

Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.

“There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.

He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies.

The provision will be part of a broader package that would likely give the Federal Reserve the authority to monitor systemic risk in the economy and to shut down financial institutions that face too much exposure, Mr. Frank said…

Mr. Geithner said he would consider “extending at least some of the TARP provisions and features of the $500,000 cap to U.S. companies generally.”

Nevermind the hatred that the public has for congress. Nevermind that BJ Barney helped get us into the mess we are in.

If the word gets out about this, expect to see companies jump overseas and massive amounts of money flowing into the Republican coffers.

The new RNC chair has asked the entire RNC staff for their resignations, signaling a massive cleanup in the GOP.

From Ben Smith

A Republican source says newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has requested the resignations of the entire RNC staff and signaled a dramatic turnover at the party organization.

Some aides may be retained, though Republicans are under the impression that Steele will lead a large-scale changeover in the institution, which has about 100 staffers. Obama’s new team at the Democratic National Committee also requested mass resignations.

Many, including communications staffers, have been told their last day is Feb. 15

Quite frankly I think this is a good idea and needs to happen.