It takes a special sort of person that, when confronted with evidence, can say with a straight face, “I don’t believe it” and continue with their original presumption of a certain point of view.

With that, our favorite clownshoe in the OC blogsphere, Art Pedroza, is starting to look a lot like (in words and deed if not in fashion) birther Orly Taitz.

An amazing coincidence?  See for yourself:

Art: Is confronted by a statement from Lorri Galloway herself, in a Liberal OC exclusive, that she had nothing to do with recruiting Sue Perez to run against Senator Lou Correa, and Art replies in a comment here, “I don’t believe her…”

Orly: Is confronted with a certified copy of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and refuses to believe it’s legitimate preferring to believe a Kenyan Birth Certificate issued two years before Kenya was even a nation; doesn’t believe Honolulu newspaper birth announcements either.

Art: Has two jobs that are widely different — the head of his own safety consulting firm and publisher of a “opinion” blog. Both enterprises operate out of Art’s house and can be done in his pajamas with the fuzzy slippers.

Orly: Is a lawyer and a dentist.  Must wear the fuzzy slippers to court while buzzing on laughing gas.

Art: Has friends of questionable character and integrity, like Tony Bushala, Paul Lucas, Terry Crowley and Red Vixen/Jill Puich (or is it Jill Lynn now..who still doesn’t show up on any fundraising lists for Dem candidates she says she supports).

Orly: Has friends like Alan Keyes who ran on a pro-family values campaign only to denounce his openly lesbian daughter and Wiley Drake, a man of God, who prays for the death of the president. And don’t forget Congressman John Campbell (R-Orly Taitz) who is the co-sponsor of the Birther Bill in Congress and the recipient of $500 from Taitz in 2005.

Art: Has turned against friends and friends have turned against him.

Orly: Even Wiley Drake isn’t part of her lawsuit anymore.

Orly: Sounds like the missing Gabor sister

Art: Is the missing Garbor sister.

Orly: Gets national media coverage and is laughed at nationally.

Art: Gets little local media coverage and is laughed at locally and often.

Orly: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Art: Ditto.

Since YouTube took down the video, click here

Today the OCRegister Watchdog reports on the release of a study from Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse regarding the impact of frivolous litigation on the taxpayers.

The group complains that people see cities and counties as deep pockets the can be sued and that costs taxpayers millions of dollars every year that cold be used to fund important programs that have lost their funding due to budget shortfalls.

In Orange County, the $7.6 million spent on litigation could have more than paid for both the county’s Domestic Violence program and Emergency Medical Services.

In Anaheim, the $2.4 million spent on litigation could have covered the operating costs for the Workforce Development Division whose programs are designed to match employer needs with qualified local job seekers.

The report only briefly covers the costs that counties such as Orange County could easily avoid or eliminate.

Unfortunately, the very entities that are so often victims of excessive litigation sometimes perpetrate it as well. Particularly in these economic times, cities, counties and other public agencies are sometimes resorting to suing each other to try to make ends meet.

When public entities sue each other, litigation is even more damaging to taxpayers as they bear the costs of both prosecuting and defending the lawsuit.

Supervisor John Moorlach

The County of Orange has spent more than $2 million on their frivolous court challenge to overturn the pension benefits awarded to police and fire personnel across the state. While the chief proponent of this suit Supervisor John Moorlach claims that he is only pushing the matter because of the impact of Deputy Sheriff pension costs on Orange County and the potential $160 million plus savings to taxpayers, the fact is, he hopes to propel his own personal profile across the state, for the potential gain of future higher elected office. Moorlach of course forgets to point out that there is zero legal standing for his lawsuit and that it represents the biggest abuse of taxpayer dollars to fund frivolous lawsuits.

In addition, much of the outside litigation costs Orange Couty spends is to defend against their own brazen violations of employment law. This type of waste is unfortunately not highlighted in the report. In fact, the authors conveniently ignore it completely.

This could have something to do with their political bias, and the fact that they have featured Supervisor Moorlach as one of their champions.

While it is true that sometimes litigants see the County and city governments as a deep pockets, more often than not our elected officials use our money to fund frivolous lawsuits and abuse our legal system for nothing more than their own political gain.

Whether it is trying to overturn fairly negotiated pension benefits for Sheriff’s deputies, or to keep medical marijuana away from a patient in violation of state law (City of Garden Grove), Citizen’s Against Lawsuit Abuse seem to be willing to give elected officials a free pass when they abuse the legal system.

After months of debate, the House of Representatives is set to vote on major health care reform legislation today. Keep updating this page for breaking news updates, read the overview AP coverage HERE, and follow live streaming video of the fierce House debate and Twitter updates HERE.

11:07 PM ET — House health care bill gets votes needed for passage. 220 members of Congress — including one Republican, Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana — voted in favor of health care reform, advancing the legislation by the slimmist of margins. Forty-nine Democrats voted against the bill, along with 176 Republicans.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) cast vote #218, solidifying passage. Speaker Pelosi was “near sobbing,” HuffPost’s Ryan Grim reports.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/07/house-health-care-vote-br_n_349468.html&cp

CNN Reports that the final tally is 220 to 215.

Dena Bunis over at Total Buzz reports that despite wavering in support of the bill earlier in the day, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez ultimatly voted in favor of Health Care Reform.

President Barack Obama made the following statement:

Tonight, in an historic vote, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would finally make real the promise of quality, affordable health care for the American people.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act is a piece of legislation that will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality affordable options for those who don’t; and bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and the government while strengthening the financial health of Medicare. And it is legislation that is fully paid for and will reduce our long-term federal deficit.

Thanks to the hard work of the House, we are just two steps away from achieving health insurance reform in America. Now the United States Senate must follow suit and pass its version of the legislation. I am absolutely confident it will, and I look forward to signing comprehensive health insurance reform into law by the end of the year.

There’s a war going on in Ameica, and the stakes are nothing less than Glenn Beck’s internal organs.

A new LATimes/USC poll was released Friday regarding voter attitudes about Gay Marriage. A year after Proposition 8 removed the rights of same-gender couples to get married it seems that little has changed. 

According to the poll, a narrow 51% majority support marriage equalitywith 43% opposed. In addition, the LATimes reports that despite the majority support for marriage equality, a significant 60% of Californians do not want to revisit the matter in 2010.

In November 2008, California voters decided 52% to 48% that marrige should be limited to unions between one man and one woman, amending the State Constitution to reverse an earlier State Supreme Court decision legalizing same-gender marriage.  Voters in Maine this past Tuesday reached the same conclusion by virtually the same margin 53% to 47%.

Marriage equality advocates have been divided over when would be the best time to attempt a repeal of the Prop 8 initiative. Ballot language has been submitted to the Attorney General for review, the first step ahead of signature gathering and placement of an initiative on the November 2010 ballot. Fundraising efforts are also underway to raise the estimated $1 million needed to fund signature gathering efforts.

This poll provides added weight to the arguments of those who favor holding off until 2012. The results support the opinions of ballot initiative experts that 2010 is not the right time to move forward. It should be interesting to see if this poll has any effect moving advocates on either side of the debate to a new position.

From the LATimes story:

The California findings come from a new Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California College of Letters, Arts & Sciences poll. The survey, which interviewed 1,500 registered voters from Oct. 27 through Nov. 3, was conducted for the Times and USC by two nationally prominent polling firms, the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies. The results have a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points. Full results of the poll, including the status of the campaigns for governor and the U.S. Senate, will be published Sunday in the Times and on latimes.com.

The survey showed that same-sex marriage continues to reverberate differently along race and generational lines. Just over half of whites backed it, while just under half of African Americans and Latinos did.

All three groups, however, opposed having to vote on it in 2010. (Asians were questioned by the poll and included in the overall sample, but their numbers were statistically too small to isolate.) Young voters continued to be far more supportive of gay marriage rights than their elders.

Among those ages 18-29, 71% said they supported same-sex marriage; among those 65 and older, only 37% favored it. Younger voters were also one of the few groups who backed putting it on the 2010 ballot, which will be dominated by the races for governor and U.S. Senate.

The difference in views by age likely explains, in part, the changing results in California on same-sex marriage. In 2000, voters outlawed it by a margin of 61%-39%; by last November’s ballot, opposition had slipped significantly. Election results differ from poll results, of course, because not everyone polled will cast ballots.

I doubt that the people pushing for a repeal initiative in 2010 will be deterred from their efforts. The results of this poll only confirm what has already been known, and discounted by the 2010 advocates. The 2010 advocates have taken the position that if they put the initiative on the ballot there will be a groundswell of support for it. No matter how shortsighted it may be, the appeal of fighting a ballot battle out of principle is far stronger than the pragmatism of a slow and steady approach. In the world of the 2010 advocates, history and the reality of slowly changing voter attitudes don’t matter. For them the answer is quite simple…

Damn the polls; FULL SPEED AHEAD.

On one of the more less responsible blogs here in OC, there’s some speculation that 4th district Supervisor candidate and Anaheim city council member Lorri Galloway had something to do with recruiting Sue Perez to run against State Senator Lou Correa.  But unlike that blog, we actually contacted Galloway and asked the question.  Her response is below:

“The speculation that I was involved in recruiting Sue Perez to run against Senator Correa is absolutely untrue.  I was just as surprised as others when I heard she was a candidate.  Although, Sue and her husband Ed are friends whom I hold in high regard, I have not had a conversation with them about her candidacy.”– Lorri Galloway.

Honestly OJokers?  How hard is it to even make a call.  It takes more time and energy to cook up these rumors than it does to actually check it out. But then agasin, journalistic integrity was never their strong suit.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Keith Olberman’s Countdown segment last night has it on video.  But here’s what Rep. John Boehner said: This is my copy — this is my copy of the Constitution. And I’m going to stand here with our founding fathers who wrote in the preamble, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

And Rep. John Campbell (R-Orly Taitz) stood with his fellow Republicans in agreement that there should be some sort of violent overthrow of our government to prevent the reform of our healthcare system.  I wonder if Campbell scrubbed his website to change the name “rally” to “press conference.”

Rep. John Campbell (R-Orly Taitz and BSS with Michelle Bachman R-Bat$#!+ crazy) sent this email out today; read it first and then Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s response busting myths on healthcare reform.

From John Campbell:

Factoid of the Day: The Pelosi government run health care plan creates a new 2.5% tax on all medical devices not sold through a retail establishment. That means a new 2.5% tax on everything from wheelchairs and hospital gowns, to artificial organs. And that lowers health care costs how?

Tea Party: Earlier today on Capitol Hill, we Republicans held a press conference on the west front of the Capitol to oppose the Pelosi Health Plan.  The “Tea Party” people seized on this as an opportunity to express the grass roots opposition to what the Wall Street Journal has called the worst bill since World War II. They started sending their e-mails just a few days ago.

And boy did they deliver.   I would estimate that there were 25,000 people in the crowd all chanting “kill the bill; kill the bill.” There are those on the left who would dismiss this movement as a bunch of kooks and fringe players. They do so at their peril.  I talked to corporate CEOs, Doctors, an investment banker with an MBA, and many other educated people of accomplishment. I would not they say they are angry, but rather, they are filled with resolve. No one paid them to be here, and it should be noted that this event was at 12:00 noon on a Thursday. They just do not want this country to follow the path of collectivism that Pelosi and Obama espouse.  They know it doesn’t work,  and I agree with them.

Another interesting thing to note, is that there is no office for the ‘Tea Party.’  In fact, there is no centralization at all. It is completely organic, spontaneous, and organized only through the Internet.  It is just individuals making an individual decision to fight for freedom without any central direction or control, which I might add, is exactly the opposite of how Obama and Pelosi think health care (and many other things) should work.  This movement really is emblematic of the power and dignity of the individual over the power and control of the collective.

And it is that individual choice and right that we are fighting for.  Here is a picture I took of the crowd from my vantage point on the steps of the Capitol.  If you would like to see more photos, log onto my facebook page by clicking here .  The crowd was stretched out over such a wide area that I could not even begin to capture it all without a fish-eye lens, which I don’t have. But hopefully you will get the flavor.

As of this moment, the Democratic leadership still does not have enough votes to pass the bill. Tomorrow, the President will travel to Capitol Hill to meet with Democrats and try to talk enough of them into voting for it. They have scheduled a vote for Saturday, after the President works it some more.

As I write you this from my office in the Longworth Building, I can hear thousands of people outside chanting “kill the bill; kill the bill.” I know that my Democratic colleagues can hear them too.  Let’s hope they listen.

Until tommorrow or Saturday, I remain respectfully,

Congressman John Campbell
Member of Congress 

……

We’re on Speaker Pelosi’s mail list and this came in today in response to the TeaBagger party in DC.

Health insurance reform opponents continue to spread myths – now about the recently introduced Affordable Health Care for America Act. Below is a response to many of the myths repeated today at the U.S. Capitol.

MYTH:  The Affordable Health Care for America Act will lead to a “government takeover” of the health care system.

FACT:  America’s Affordable Health Choices Act builds on the current private, employer-provided health care system – and, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, will expand enrollment in private insurance by an estimated 6 million Americans.

Rather than creating a “government takeover of health care,” the bill is designed to help make the health insurance market work better – improving competition and choice for consumers through the creation of a one-stop shopping marketplace called a Health Insurance Exchange. 

In the Exchange, a public health insurance option would compete with private plans to put downward pressure on premiums and increase quality of coverage.  The competition is needed–many areas of our country are dominated by just one or two private insurers today.  The public option will operate on a level playing field.  It will be subject to the same market reforms and consumer protections as other private plans in the Exchange and it will be self-sustaining – financed only by its premiums.

While some critics claim that Americans will be “forced into” a new public health insurance option, the fact is that no one can be forced into the public plan.  All those choosing plans in the Health Exchange will have a range of options – various private plans and the public plan.  If an employer is providing their employees’ health insurance through the Exchange, it is the employee – not the employer – choosing the plan.  The only way someone would be in the public plan is as a result of their own individual choice. 

Finally, many of the same voices spreading this myth most loudly are also defending from ‘government takeover’ America’s largest government-run health care program: Medicare. 

Even former Republican Senate Majority Leader and heart surgeon Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) disputes the claim:

 “…what the Obama Administration is doing is not socialized medicine. You hear a lot of people on the extreme say that socialized medicine is going to come in and control everything. Socialized medicine is where the government owns the hospitals. They own the doctors and they decide how much people are getting paid. And that’s not what’s in these bills.” [CSPAN Washington Journal, 10/15/09]
MYTH:  The House bill would increase the federal deficit. 

 FACT:  Health insurance reform will not add to the deficit. According to the CBO, the House bill will reduce the deficit by $104 billion over the first ten years (2010-2019).  Furthermore, the legislation will continue to reduce the deficit over the second ten year period (2020-2029).  In fact, the House Republican substitute bill does almost nothing to expand coverage of the uninsured –which costs us all—but only reduces the deficit by $68 billion over the same period.

MYTH:  “Health insurance reform could be unconstitutional…or violate the 10th amendment.” 

FACT: As with Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government has the Constitutional power to reform our health care system.

The 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that the powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states … or to the people.  But the Constitution gives Congress broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce.  Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production. Since virtually every aspect of the heath care system has an effect on interstate commerce, the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.

The 10th amendment does not authorize states to constrict Congress’ power under the commerce clause.   As the Supreme Court has held, Congress can for example bar racial discrimination in Ollie’s Barbeque in Alabama (Katzenbach v. McClung), even in the face of state laws permitting such behavior.
 
The 10th amendment does place one significant limit on Congress and the federal government: Congress cannot “commandeer” state officials to administer programs.  It must get the consent of state officials who are asked, e.g., to run health programs for the poor or to help build highways.   Typically, Congress obtains that consent by providing financial support to the states.   A state is free to refuse the support and refuse to assist the federal government in administering the program, but Congress can authorize the federal government to administer the program on its own.   Thus, Congress cannot force a state to administer a health insurance exchange, but it can authorize the federal government to administer such an exchange in any state that declines to do so. 

MYTH:  The legislation does not require Members of Congress to enroll in the public option.

FACT:  It is true that the bill does not require Members of Congress to enroll in the public health insurance option. However, the bill does not require ANYONE to enroll in the public health insurance option. Providing affordable CHOICES to Americans is the whole point of reform. Under the bill, all those using the Health Insurance Exchange will have the choice of several private insurance plans, along with the public option. The only way anyone enters the public option is by their own individual choice. The bill simply includes a provision that provides Members of Congress the option of choosing the public health insurance plan, or keeping their private insurance group plan that is fully subject to all the reforms in the bill.

For more health insurance reform myth busting, please click here.

For more information on America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, please click here.