Lots of pretty words have been used to describe how wonderful this legislation is. It would save the government a lot of money (and we all know how important deficit reduction is to Congress). It makes borrowing easier for students, though no measurable impact on the student can be cited. There would be more money for Pell Grants and other initiatives. Literacy programs would be better funded. College enrollment would go up. And so on.

Looking under the covers of the legislation, though, another picture is revealed. Private banks, you know those evil corporations who commit the unpardonable sin of making profits and abuse their customers by lending them money at competitive interest rates, the same ones who disburse 75% of these student loans, will be cut out of the picture. Their employees who work in student loans will lose their jobs. Sallie Mae alone (the largest private lender), projects that 20 to 30 percent of its workforce related to FFEL will be terminated and 26 offices will shrink to five or six. Those that remain will largely focus on servicing the current borrowers until their loans are paid off.

Another hidden objective of the legislation is to allow the far-left to expand its ability to socially engineer our society. When Uncle Sam becomes the lender and collector, he is free to set the terms and conditions. Preferred races and groups will be benefited, while the children of other tax-payers will not. Preschools, another beneficiary of the program, will be heavily subsidized and, not surprisingly, come under the regulatory power of the federal government. A new crop of dictates will burden universities and colleges who already struggle to comply with the near endless list of mandates that are tied to state and federal education programs.

One thing we can count on with SAFRA, like any government takeover, is that its negative consequences will be broad and predictable.

• As the government shuts down the private sector, it will build up its own bureaucracy of inefficient systems and processes, dramatically increasing the overall cost of making loans.
• The government will favor and benefit the special interests and cronies wherever it can.
• Ineptitude and cronyism will drive costs ever higher – not rarely, multiples of the original estimate.
• Where government provides “benefits”, strings will be attached. This is evidenced by the huge burden the federal government already places on universities and the absolutely obscene results of these federal dictates.

Other considerations aside, the purported $87 billion savings the government would realize over ten years was reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), who when pressed by Senator Judd Gregg, R-N.H., estimated the legislation would actually cost us, the tax-payers, an additional $40 billion over the same period. Once again, we see legislators playing fast and loose with the truth to deceive their constituents while amassing ever more power within the federal government over our lives.

For all the same, unchanging reasons, big government is bad government. The federal government should allow the private sector to do what it can (and what is better at). Where aid is needed, let the government do so in a simple, straight-forward, and transparent manner. Let it do so without bias or political agenda. Where this is not possible, the government should keep its hands off of the private sector and the lives of its citizens.

With this and all legislation, Congress ought to place a high priority on preserving the free market and empowering the people to care for themselves. Rarely is the government the solution and too often it is the problem. The vast majority of us do not want socialists or the nanny-state taking care of us. We want the government to get out of our way and to let us lead our lives as we see fit.

Sources:

• Cato Institute
• National Journal

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The level of public cynicism toward congress reached a new zenith this week as noted in a Zogby Poll commissioned by Let Freedom Ring, Inc., a grassroots public policy organization that promotes constitutional government and economic freedom. The poll found that more than 80 percent of Americans believe Congress drafts lengthy, complex bills for the purpose of 1) hiding spending on special interests and 2) to prevent the public from understanding the legislation before congress votes on it.

When broken down by party, political persuasion, race, religion, gender – you name it – the vast of majority of Americans believe Congress intentionally tries to confuse and mislead the public. What is worse is that members of Congress don’t even draft or read the legislation. In most cases our elected representatives outsource the drafting of legislation to aids, lobbyists and special interest groups. Then, citing the length and the obtuseness of the legislation, elected members of Congress don’t even read it before voting. We’ve seen this time and again this year, most recently with the health care reform bills in both the House and the Senate.

President Obama pledged transparency and committed to making legislation available to the public before voting. Ninety-one percent of Americans (that is a huge majority by any anyone’s measure) want all nonemergency legislation posted on the Internet for 72 hours before a congressional vote. There is a bipartisan bill in the House known as the “Read the Bill” resolution that would amend the rules of House of Representatives to require such a posting. Despite 91% of America being strongly in favor of this kind of change, Speaker Pelosi is working to kill the bill in committee and will likely succeed.

The events of this year have shown that congress is pulling out all the stops to reward their friends and supporters and is working hard to secure their power regardless of the job performance. They consistently and willfully thwart the will of those who elected them as representatives. I have to ask myself after a year of hope and change, “Can Congress really be so thick that they think they can get away with ignoring the will of the people?”

Whether they are that thick or not, let us all rise up en masse and make our voices heard so loudly and so clearly on every issue that Congress’ position on these issues stands in stark, painful contrast to the position of the electorate. Then, next November, let us again unite our voices, regardless of political stripe, and eliminate every representative who refuses to represent us, replacing them with committed protectors of liberty and transparency in government. Actually more than vote, let us each campaign actively for such candidates.

Congress has made it clear that our government is up for grabs. Let us take it back before it goes to the highest bidder!

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“At Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it because they think they are going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regimes around the world, like the European Union, will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

“I have read that treaty. And what it says is this. That a world government is going to be created. The word government actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the west to third world countries in satisfaction of what is called coyly a climate debt. Because we have been burning CO2 and they haven’t and we’ve been screwing up the climate. (We haven’t been screwing up the climate, but that’s the line.) The third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

“How many think that the word election, or democracy, or vote, or ballot occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement and took over Green Peace, so that my friends who founded it left within a year, because they had captured it.

“Now the apotheosis is at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign. He’ll sign anything. He is a Nobel Peace Laureate. Of course he’ll sign it. And the trouble is this. If that treaty is signed, your constitution says that it takes precedence over your constitution. And you can’t resile from that treaty unless you get the agreement from all the other states’ parties. Because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out.

“So, thank you America. You were the beacon of freedom for the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom, while it is still free. But in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, you president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your prosperity away forever. And neither you, nor any subsequent government you elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back again. That is how serious it is.

“I have read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or no. But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire, it is here that perhaps at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and the fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty.

“The problem with this treaty is that there is nothing wrong with the climate, and even if there were, economically speaking there is nothing we can do about it. So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour, before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet, Longfellow.

          Sail on, O Ship of State!
          Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
          Humanity with all its fears,
          With all the hopes of future years,
          Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

——–

Lord Christopher Monckton is chief policy advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute and former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He spoke at Bethel University in St. Paul, MN recently on the UN Climate Change treaty scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009.”

• Lord Monckton’s entire speech is here.
• Read a draft copy of the treaty here.
• Sign a petition opposing cap-and-trade here.

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Lots of pretty words have been used to describe how wonderful this legislation is. It would save the government a lot of money (and we all know how important deficit reduction is to Congress). It makes borrowing easier for students, though no measurable impact on the student can be cited. There would be more money for Pell Grants and other initiatives. Literacy programs would be better funded. College enrollment would go up. And so on.

Looking under the covers of the legislation, though, another picture is revealed. Private banks, you know those evil corporations who commit the unpardonable sin of making profits and abuse their customers by lending them money at competitive interest rates, the same ones who disburse 75% of these student loans, will be cut out of the picture. Their employees who work in student loans will lose their jobs. Sallie Mae alone (the largest private lender), projects that 20 to 30 percent of its workforce related to FFEL will be terminated and 26 offices will shrink to five or six. Those that remain will largely focus on servicing the current borrowers until their loans are paid off.

Another hidden objective of the legislation is to allow the far-left to expand its ability to socially engineer our society. When Uncle Sam becomes the lender and collector, he is free to set the terms and conditions. Preferred races and groups will be benefited, while the children of other tax-payers will not. Preschools, another beneficiary of the program, will be heavily subsidized and, not surprisingly, come under the regulatory power of the federal government. A new crop of dictates will burden universities and colleges who already struggle to comply with the near endless list of mandates that are tied to state and federal education programs.

One thing we can count on with SAFRA, like any government takeover, is that its negative consequences will be broad and predictable.

• As the government shuts down the private sector, it will build up its own bureaucracy of inefficient systems and processes, dramatically increasing the overall cost of making loans.
• The government will favor and benefit the special interests and cronies wherever it can.
• Ineptitude and cronyism will drive costs ever higher – not rarely, multiples of the original estimate.
• Where government provides “benefits”, strings will be attached. This is evidenced by the huge burden the federal government already places on universities and the absolutely obscene results of these federal dictates.

Other considerations aside, the purported $87 billion savings the government would realize over ten years was reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), who when pressed by Senator Judd Gregg, R-N.H., estimated the legislation would actually cost us, the tax-payers, an additional $40 billion over the same period. Once again, we see legislators playing fast and loose with the truth to deceive their constituents while amassing ever more power within the federal government over our lives.

For all the same, unchanging reasons, big government is bad government. The federal government should allow the private sector to do what it can (and what is better at). Where aid is needed, let the government do so in a simple, straight-forward, and transparent manner. Let it do so without bias or political agenda. Where this is not possible, the government should keep its hands off of the private sector and the lives of its citizens.

With this and all legislation, Congress ought to place a high priority on preserving the free market and empowering the people to care for themselves. Rarely is the government the solution and too often it is the problem. The vast majority of us do not want socialists or the nanny-state taking care of us. We want the government to get out of our way and to let us lead our lives as we see fit.

Sources:

• Cato Institute
• National Journal

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If you enjoyed this post, be sure to to our RSS feed.

Lots of pretty words have been used to describe how wonderful this legislation is. It would save the government a lot of money (and we all know how important deficit reduction is to Congress). It makes borrowing easier for students, though no measurable impact on the student can be cited. There would be more money for Pell Grants and other initiatives. Literacy programs would be better funded. College enrollment would go up. And so on.

Looking under the covers of the legislation, though, another picture is revealed. Private banks, you know those evil corporations who commit the unpardonable sin of making profits and abuse their customers by lending them money at competitive interest rates, the same ones who disburse 75% of these student loans, will be cut out of the picture. Their employees who work in student loans will lose their jobs. Sallie Mae alone (the largest private lender), projects that 20 to 30 percent of its workforce related to FFEL will be terminated and 26 offices will shrink to five or six. Those that remain will largely focus on servicing the current borrowers until their loans are paid off.

Another hidden objective of the legislation is to allow the far-left to expand its ability to socially engineer our society. When Uncle Sam becomes the lender and collector, he is free to set the terms and conditions. Preferred races and groups will be benefited, while the children of other tax-payers will not. Preschools, another beneficiary of the program, will be heavily subsidized and, not surprisingly, come under the regulatory power of the federal government. A new crop of dictates will burden universities and colleges who already struggle to comply with the near endless list of mandates that are tied to state and federal education programs.

One thing we can count on with SAFRA, like any government takeover, is that its negative consequences will be broad and predictable.

• As the government shuts down the private sector, it will build up its own bureaucracy of inefficient systems and processes, dramatically increasing the overall cost of making loans.
• The government will favor and benefit the special interests and cronies wherever it can.
• Ineptitude and cronyism will drive costs ever higher – not rarely, multiples of the original estimate.
• Where government provides “benefits”, strings will be attached. This is evidenced by the huge burden the federal government already places on universities and the absolutely obscene results of these federal dictates.

Other considerations aside, the purported $87 billion savings the government would realize over ten years was reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), who when pressed by Senator Judd Gregg, R-N.H., estimated the legislation would actually cost us, the tax-payers, an additional $40 billion over the same period. Once again, we see legislators playing fast and loose with the truth to deceive their constituents while amassing ever more power within the federal government over our lives.

For all the same, unchanging reasons, big government is bad government. The federal government should allow the private sector to do what it can (and what is better at). Where aid is needed, let the government do so in a simple, straight-forward, and transparent manner. Let it do so without bias or political agenda. Where this is not possible, the government should keep its hands off of the private sector and the lives of its citizens.

With this and all legislation, Congress ought to place a high priority on preserving the free market and empowering the people to care for themselves. Rarely is the government the solution and too often it is the problem. The vast majority of us do not want socialists or the nanny-state taking care of us. We want the government to get out of our way and to let us lead our lives as we see fit.

Sources:

• Cato Institute
• National Journal

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If you enjoyed this post, be sure to to our RSS feed.

The Senate bill will:

• Tax employers for hiring
• Tax health insurance companies for offering plans the government deems too expensive
• Tax medical-device companies for staying in business
• Force individuals to buy health insurance that meets government standards or pay a penalty
• Mandate increased state spending on healthcare
• Mandate increased employer spending on healthcare
• Mandate increased personal spending on healthcare

If passed by both the House and the Senate and signed by the president, the resulting government control of healthcare will:

• Drive insurance premiums much higher and much faster than they are currently rising
• Drive insurance companies out of the health insurance business as severe regulations drive all profits from the industry
• Force insurance companies to drop the elderly as the government cuts Medicare payments
• Force more and more Americans onto the “public” (government run) insurance option

When all is said and done, the clarion call from the most liberal legislators – we must ensure that all Americans have health insurance – will cease to matter. When they have fully implemented their agenda, we will have become slaves to a tyrannical bureaucracy. Instead of worrying about whether the poor have health insurance, each of us will agonize over our health and wellbeing, which will be in the hands of the “arbitrary and inhumane decisions of distant bureaucrats in Washington where there’s no competition and no compassion. There’s nobody else you [will be able to] go to if you’re handed a decision you don’t like regarding your family’s medical care.”1

Obamacare is being designed and implemented against the will of a large majority of Americans by the same individuals who have already driven our country massively into debt by underfunding other enormous entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The tragic thing is that while unprecedented numbers of Americans have protested this travesty, so many of us have failed to even call our legislators to demand they back away from the precipice. This is inaction we cannot afford as our nation, which was “founded on the notion of individual liberty, private property, limited government, is run by politicians now who reject it all!”2

There are those who are hopeful that the Senate will be more deliberate and responsive to the voices of their constituents. Whether that is true or not, it is certain they will not respond to our voices if we do not raise them. Make no mistake; this legislation will change your life and your children’s lives. Will we let this happen on our generation’s watch?

1. Limbaugh, Rush. “Obmamcare: the Road to Serfdom.” The Limbaugh Letter Nov. 2009. Print.
2. Ibid.

Also referenced: “An expensive way to die.” National Review 2 Nov. 2009: 16. Print.

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“Following the perestroika movement in the Soviet Union, popular demonstrations in Mongolia forced the Communist government to resign in March 1990. Other political parties were legalized, but the first Mongolian elections gave the Communists a majority in the new parliament, and the old repressive attitudes persisted in all government departments. The full functioning of a democratic process and the full enjoyment of the people’s needed freedoms do not occur without a struggle. In Mongolia, the freedoms of speech, press and religion — a principal feature of the inspired United States Constitution — remained unfulfilled.

“In that precarious environment, a 42-year-old married woman, Oyun Altangerel, a department head in the state library, courageously took some actions that would prove historic. Acting against official pressure, she organized a “Democratic Association Branch Council.” This 12-member group, the first of its kind, spoke out for democracy and proposed that state employees have the freedoms of worship, belief and expression, including the right to belong to a political party of their choice.

“When Oyun and others were fired from their state employment, Oyun began a hunger strike in the state library. Within three hours she was joined by 20 others, mostly women, and their hunger strike, which continued for five days, became a public demonstration that took their grievances to the people of Mongolia. This demonstration, backed by major democratic movement leaders, encouraged other government employees to organize similar democratic councils. These dangerous actions expanded into a national anti-government movement that voiced powerful support for the basic human freedoms of speech, press and religion. Eventually the government accepted the demands, and in the adoption of a democratic constitution two years later Mongolia took a major step toward a free society.

“One of the great fundamentals of our inspired constitution, relied on by Oyun of Mongolia and countless others struggling for freedom in many countries, is the principle that the people are the source of government power. This principle of popular sovereignty was first written and applied on the American continent over 200 years ago. A group of colonies won independence from a king, and their representatives had the unique opportunity of establishing a new government. They did this by creating the first written constitution that has survived to govern a modern nation. The United States Constitution declared the source of government power, delegated that power to a government, and regulated its exercise.”

In a time where we see our liberties and freedom threatened from all sides, each of us must be an Oyun in some way or we choose to simply surrender our liberties – and our children’s. It need not be a hunger strike, but we need to be politically active. A lot is accomplished by speaking about issues with friends and relatives, calling our representatives (sounds a little scary, but is amazingly easy to do), aligning with like-minded folks in larger movements like the Tea Parties, etc.

Then, if we are truly engaged, we will have the opportunity to dialogue with our political adversaries. The Honorable Dallin Oaks suggests some principles when engaging with political addversaries:

• Speak respectfully, always showing patience, understanding and compassion toward our adversaries.
• Do not be deterred or coerced into silence by the kinds of intimidation that abound today. We must insist on our constitutional rights, to vote our consciences on public issues and to participate in elections and debates in the public square and the halls of justice. These are the rights of all citizens.
• Be wise in our political participation. The call of conscience requires no secular justification. At the same time, we will be most persuasive in political discourse by framing arguments and positions in ways that are respectful of those who do not share our beliefs and that contribute to the reasoned discussion and compromise that is essential in a pluralistic society.

Decide today, what actions you will take to protect the liberties you enjoy and that your children deserve. Then, rigorously encourage friends and family to join you.

(Please see the full address here.)

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Six years later, little has been done to improve the electric-power grid, but that is about to change. The Obama administration announced today that they will use $3.4 billion in federal stimulus funding for 11 projects designed to modernize the grid and to cut energy use. Innocuous, right? Let’s take a closer look.

A significant amount of this investment will be used to ensure that one-quarter to one-third of U.S. homes are connected to advanced digital meters. These meters are squarely focused on cutting energy use.

A pilot program utilizing advanced digital meters is currently underway in Boulder, CO, with utilities and government officials around the country watching closely . Consider what these amazing new meters will be able to do when the program is fully implemented.

• The local utility company will have unprecedented authority to adjust settings in customers’ homes to “ease strain on the grid”. (This sounds too much like forced personal sacrifice for the good of the collective.) The utility company will be able reach into homes and:
  • adjust the home thermostat.
  • turn down the temperature on the hot water heater.
  • what times of day specific appliances can be used.
• The utility will be able to charge variable rates, based on:
  • time of day (more during peak consumption hours).
  • availability of power (less when the wind blows, more when it is overcast).
  • type of appliance (more for evil appliances like air conditioners, clothes dryers, hot tubs, and those that don’t meet efficiency targets).

Additionally, the Boulder city government will be granted access to private electricity usage of its citizens.

While most of the funds approved by the Obama Administration are designated for upgrading the electric-power grid, it appears that the government is using the broader initiative as cover to quietly implement new technology that empowers government control over how much power we consume, when we consume it, and which appliances we can use. This approach is consistent with many of actions of this administration: proclaim a crisis and then enact policy and laws that nominally seek to resolve the crisis while encroaching on the rights and freedoms of Americans.

In this case, the proclaimed crisis is twofold. We have an antiquated electric-power grid that does need upgrading and we are running short of electrical power. In response to the latter, the government approach is to impose reductions in consumption. While economizing is a good and noble idea, ideology and the free market will ensure we economize appropriately. The truth, however, is that there is only one reason we are running short of electrical power: government has prevented the construction of new power plants. With due deference to environmental concerns, we are fully capable of building clean coal and nuclear plants that will meet our growing need for electricity and protect the environment. The crisis of insufficient supply is totally a government created crisis.

Those in the government are watching Boulder and discussing this topic. They should know we are talking about it and won’t accept the level of intrusion being considered for the rest of America. One WSJ commenter wisely noted that: “If the utility company has access, motive and the power to “adjust” your home environment, it will do so.” The same is true of government.

Ask yourself, and then ask someone else today, “How comfortable are you with the government restricting supply and then dictating your use electricity?”

Share your thoughts on subject and leave comment below.

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