With all the laws and regulations that the federal government has been imposing on American companies, those businesses are looking to cut cost in way that are hurting the American people.

Let’s look at Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, the city that was the capitol of the steel industry. In the last thirty years the government has been making it harder for the steel industry to stay in the United States, let alone Pittsburgh.

Yes I agree that to make steel, there is pollution on several different levels, water air and land pollution is a serious matter, but at what cost is these issues important?

Pittsburgh is no longer the biggest city that produces steel. Most of manufacturers have move to other countries to avoid tough regulations. So now we have thousands of people who are affected by the industry and are unemployed. The government has changed the landscape of the city.

Let’s look at it this way. We have a person who was working to provide for his family, the government steps in and tell the companies that there will be unions and there will be price fixing. Next, strict laws are passed for the pollution situation in Pittsburgh, causing the company to have higher costs related to the product. The company can no longer be profitable at this level, so they decide to have some of their products made in another country. Now the worker is laid off and is needed to be supported by the same government that cost him/her their job. But are they really being supported by the government? I say NO. It’s the rest of the American Taxpayer that is supporting those Americans because of the federal government.

I try very hard to purchase things that are made in the USA, but it getting tougher every day. The steel industry isn’t the only industry that this scenario has happened to. It will also continue until the American people stop voting for the same old type of politician. It wasn’t the Democrats or the Republicans that did this individually, it has been both of them and until we see them for what they are, it will continue.

“The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors’ own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul. It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration’s claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.”

“More than seven in 10 doctors answered “no” when asked if they believed “the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better.”

“This response is consistent with critics who complain that the administration and congressional Democrats have yet to explain how, even with the current number of physicians and nurses, they can cover more people and lower the cost at the same time.

The only way, the critics contend, is by rationing care — giving it to some and denying it to others. That cuts against another claim by plan supporters — that care would be better”.

Read the rest of the article at the link above.

The Liberator is a free newsletter from the Libertarian site, Advocates for Self-Government. The latest issue has an article on health care being called a ‘right”.

The right questions to ask about medical care and medical insurance:

* Which laws, regulations, or government mandates drive up the costs of medical care, medicine, and medical insurance?

* Which of these laws, regulations, and government mandates can your state legislature and governor repeal? Which need to be repealed by the U.S. Senate, the House, and the president?

* Which government-granted privileges and special protections has government enacted for the benefit of pharmaceutical corporations, hospitals, doctors, nurses, lawyers, or insurance companies that make medical care more expensive?

* Which of these privileges and special protections can your state legislature and governor repeal? Which need to be repealed by the U.S. Senate, the House, and the president?

100 Stimulus Projects Guaranteed To Make Your Blood Boil, is from June but I wanted to share it with you. The article comes from American Thinker and is just a fraction of what our tax dollars are paying for.

A California skate park will get a $620,000 “facelift.” Plans to refurbish the skate park in Long Beach, California, had stalled for months as local funds put towards higher priority park projects. With $620,000 in federal stimulus funding available to upgrade the skate park, the city council decided to move forward.

$800,000 for a backup runway for the now famous airport to nowhere, also known as the John Murtha airport in Johnstown. This is critical, because if they were to lose their current runway, all three flights a day and 20 daily passengers might have to find an alternative airport.

Last, but not least is Free Talk Live, a pro-liberty radio show that you can listen to on their website.

The Libertarian Party is America’s third largest and fastest growing political party. Libertarians engage in a variety of projects, working for everyone’s liberty on every issue.

The Libertarian Party was created in December of 1971 by people who realized that the politicians had strayed from America’s original libertarian foundation, with disastrous results. Their vision was the same as that of America’s founders — a world where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, a world of peace, harmony, opportunity, and abundance.

Libertarians are practical; we know we can’t make the world perfect. But, it can be better. Libertarians will keep working to create a better, freer society for everyone. As William Allen White said: “Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.”

“Libertarians believe the answer to America’s political problems is the same commitment to freedom that earned America its greatness: a free-market economy and the abundance and prosperity it brings; a dedication to civil liberties and personal freedom that marks this country above all others; and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade as prescribed by America’s founders.”

Libertarians believe in the American heritage of liberty, enterprise, and personal responsibility. Libertarians recognize the responsibility we all share to preserve this precious heritage for our children and grandchildren.

Libertarians believe that being free and independent is a great way to live. We want a system which encourages all people to choose what they want from life; that lets them live, love, work, play, and dream their own way.

The Libertarian way is a caring, people-centered approach to politics. We believe each individual is unique. We want a system which respects the individual and encourages us to discover the best within ourselves and develop our full potential.

The Libertarian way is a logically consistent approach to politics based on the moral principle of self-ownership. Each individual has the right to control his or her own body, action, speech, and property. Government’s only role is to help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud.

The Libertarian Party is for all who don’t want to push other people around and don’t want to be pushed around themselves. Live and let live is the Libertarian way.

Libertarianism used to be just a topic at your high school Government Club. But since all those Ayn Rand-niks are now in Congress, it’s become a bigger deal. This book is an admirably clear exposition of the position–defined by David Boaz as “the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others”–which is useful to both adherents and those who merely want to “know the enemy.”(more…)

Let’s take a look at the state of Maine. A state that had 128,000 citizens that were uninsured in 2003. At the time, Governor John Baldacci (D) signed into law a state-wide health care plan to combat the situation. By the time 2009 arrived, it would cover all of Maine’s citizens. The system would help keep control of hospitals and physicians to hold down insurance premiums. It was sold as a way to provide everyone insurance as well as save business and patients money. To top it off, it was stated that there would be no increase in taxes.

Well after five years of the program, not only has the program not save any money, but it has also cost the taxpayers of Maine $155 million and is still rising. Here’s how the program was supposed to work. There were to be two government programs that would cover the uninsured. The legislature greatly expanded MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program. Today Maine families with incomes of up to $44,000 a year are eligible; 22% of the population is now in Medicaid, roughly twice the national average.

Then the state created a “public option” (where have you heard that lately?) known as DirigoChoice. The plan would compete with private plans such as Blue Cross. To get lower income Mainers to enroll, it offered taxpayer-subsidized premiums. (again, this sounds familiar) The plan’s original funding source was $50 million of federal stimulus money the state got in 2003. Over the years, the plan was to be “funded by the savings in the health-care system.”

During the peak of the program in 2006, only about 15,000 people had enrolled in the DirigoChoice program. That number has now dropped to below 10,000, according to Maine’s own reporting. About two-thirds of those who enrolled already had insurance, which they dropped in favor of the subsidized public option. So instead of the 128,000 that were uninsured, the actual number is only 3,400.

Most of what is in Maine’s health care program is actually in the Obama-care bill. So why bother with trying to have a national health care program when they can’t even get it to work on a small scale? If Obama and his friends are so into this bill, then may I suggest that we do a test on the actual program on the state level. Sort of like a “try it before you buy it” program. Try it in California for five years and let’s see how successful it is at that point. If it can survive without a constant need of federal stimulus money, then I say we go ahead with it on a national level.

I know it will never work. One because that it has already been tried in Maine as well as Massachusetts and Tennessee and each time it failed. Currently in Maine, a healthy single male at the age of thirty, pays a monthly premium of $762 while a citizen in the same condition in New Hampshire only pays $222.

This bill (HR3200) needs to be stopped and the discussion of health care reform needs to be re-focused to look at tort reform. A major part of health care costs come from malpractice insurance that the doctors need to have to protect themselves from from major law-suits. The lawyers have pushed the price of health care up from the class-action suits to individual cases. As for class-action suits, no one benefits from this type of practice other than the lawyers. Lawyers will pocket millions of dollars while the people who are affected by the situation only get a few dollars each as compensation.

Will Universal Health Care really work here in America? The answer is no. If you don’t believe it, then you need to go look for the information like I did.

The latest one to make the rounds features Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas. It shows Jackson-Lee answering and talking on her cell phone while a woman from the audience is asking a question. As you watch it, it seems that this Congresswoman isn’t even listening.

The Congresswoman was a guest on the Greta Van Sustren show on Thursday to have her chance to explain. Throughout the entire segment, Congresswoman Jackson-Lee was filibustering. She was being very evasive and only wanted to get the health care message out. When Greta asked her who was on the phone (in the video), she replied, she was wasn’t trying to be rude and apologized to the woman that asked the question at the town hall meeting. She continued with pushing the health care bill and stated that she has read all 1,100 pages of the bill. She finally confessed that she was on the phone with the “Hot Line” that was set up for the politicians to get assistance during tough questions at town hall meetings. Here’s one of the clips. You decide if she is being rude.

Jackson-Lee said that what she is trying to do is to convince the people that this is what’s best. What I want to know is, why is she trying to convince anyone? I may not have read all of the bill myself, but I have read a few highlights. This bill is not a bill to reform health care, it’s going to change it completely.

It’s a shame that the people that were elected to these positions aren’t listening to the people who voted them in. The politicians in Washington aren’t listening to the American people any longer and the only way to change that is to vote them ALL out when they’re up for re-election.

It’s a shame that many (if not all) of these politicians are just going through the motions of actually listening to their voters. Quite a few of them have canceled their meeting and the ones that are having one are just trying to pacify the crowd.

Arlen Specter (Republican turned Democrat) had a meeting this morning and from the way his posture and his actions gave me the impression of not really listening to the people. When one woman asked a question about health care. She read from the Bill that at a certain age, the persons coverage would be limited. If a seventy-four year old with cancer, that patient would not be given the treatment to fight the disease. The Senator gave a snappy answer as to the statement is just a lie and 1that that is not the case for the elderly. He immediately asked for the next question and did not go into detail of the bill.

These politicians no longer care about the American people and in my opinion should be voted out of office at the first chance that they come up for re-election. Not just the Democrats, but the Republicans as well. The position of a Senator or a Representative was never meant to be a career. It seems that all politicians have forgotten the fact that they work for us, the American people. We are their base and they need to be reminded of the fact. No matter who is up for re-election, they should be removed from the position. The political ties that they have made have gotten too big.

For those who thought that President Obama was going to be a different type of politician, I guess you’re kicking yourself in the ass now. Republicans and Democrats alike will increase spending in the federal government and to do so, they have to raise taxes to pay for it. Taxes are a necessary thing in a society that is as advanced as the United States. The problem comes into play when too much spending is going on. We don’t need to spend millions of dollars to build a dog park for just one city. How is that going to create growth? Yes it will create a couple of dozen for a few months, but what happens after the park is done? How about the $4.545,000 for wood utilization research? Since 1985 taxpayers have already spent $90 million on this research and they still don’t know how to use wood.

Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, head of the President’s National Economic Council, was asked if the administration would keep to their word of not raising taxes on 95% of the American people, their answer was that they weren’t too sure. Tiny Tim Geithner said “We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically, that’s going to require some very hard choices. “We will not get this economy back on track, recovery will not be strong and sustained, unless we convince the American people that we are going to have the will to bring these deficits down once recovery is firmly established,” he said.

What recovery is he referring to??? The recovery is just a bunch of spending of American taxpayer’s money to satisfy the industries that backed the Obama while he was running for office. The problem is that there shouldn’t be a deficit of 1.7 trillion dollars as we currently have thanks to Obama and friends.

There is a big difference between debt and deficit. President George W. Bush put us in debt, but Obama is giving us a major deficit. The Obama Administration has spent more money than all other presidents combined and he did it in less than six months.

Stand up to the White House’s menacingly misguided attempt to monitor the free speech of American citizens.

From ABC’s The Note:

“Yesterday, White House director of new media Macon Phillips wrote a blog post urging readers to flag questionable claims about health care proposals.”

As Republican Senator John Cornyn wrote in an email to the president urging him to end the Big Brother program,

“By requesting that citizens send “fishy” emails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House. You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights.”

Read more here:
http://pumapac.org/2009/08/06/the-first-amendment/

This program is menacing and wrong, and it calls for action. Please send an email to the White House instructing them to brush up on their Constitution.

1. Send an email to Macon Phillips, aka Minister of Information, at flag@whitehouse.gov

2. Copy these emails into the BCC of your email: prowl@pumapac.org, hardball@msnbc.com, caffertyfile@cnn.com, comments@mclaughlin.com, Cavuto@foxnews.com, LouDobbs@cnn.com, hemmer@foxnews.com, headlinenews@cnn.com, Hannity@foxnews.com, gretawire@fox.com, charlierose@pbs.org

3. Encourage your friends, family, and co-workers to send an email.

Use this email, or edit it as you see fit.If you are not a PUMA member, please delete that line. Be sure to include the text of the First Amendment in your email. Short, sweet, and to the point.

Dear White House Minister of Information,

I am writing as a very concerned American citizen. I am also a member of Puma PAC, People United Means Action (http://pumapac.org). After reading about your program encouraging Americans to report instances of “fishy” speech by their sister and fellow Americans, we realized you had perhaps forgotten to read this before you got to the White House:

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Please brush up on the United States Constitution. It’s a rather important document, and it is especially crucial that people in your line of work are familiar with it.

Sincerely,
Your Name and State
Puma PAC Member