“Pay your taxes or step down !”

That’s the message House Republicans are sending to Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee and subject of a major ethics probe into alleged tax evasion and other violations.

House Republicans on Wednesday attempted to pass a resolution to oust Rangel from his chairmanship following the reading of a long and stinging list of alleged wrongdoing.  The measure stemmed from a major ethics probe into Rangel’s alleged failure to pay his taxes and disclose income on multiple properties — as much as $1.3 million.

But House Democrats were quick to strike down the measure to remove Rangel, who represents New York’s Harlem district, from his post.  House Republicans refused to accept defeat of the resolution, and asked for a second recorded vote following the first.  The reading of the resolution was interrupted several times, and at one point was challenged by Democrats before being put to a vote.

A representative from Rangel’s office on Wednesday blasted the resolution as a “highly partisan effort.”

“Let’s look at this resolution for what it really is — a highly partisan effort designed to undermine the important work in Congress on health care reform,” the representative, who declined to be named, told FOX News.

“It’s also an attempt to circumvent House rules, which provide for a comprehensive, bipartisan ethics committee process for reviewing matters such as these,” the Rangel aide said. “The congressman himself initiated the request for the committee to review the issues and the members should let the process work as established by the rules of the House.”

More…

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Romney on Obama’s Push for Health-Care Reform: Slow Down
Katie Connolly / Newsweek

In the last two weeks, political commentators have expressed doubts over President Obama’s time frame for health-care reform. Meanwhile, even some Democratic lawmakers appear to be getting cold feet. In response, Obama is relentlessly pitching his plan. He has spoken about health care on eight out of the last nine days, and he’s scheduled to hold a town-hall meeting on the topic this Thursday. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is one of the few politicians in the country with first-hand experience of steering major health-care reform through the legislative process. The reforms he enacted in Massachusetts have been criticized for being costly, but they’ve also managed to extend coverage to a significant number of uninsured people. By 2007, the proportion of uninsured people in Massachusetts was the lowest in the country.

I spoke to Romney about his experience with health-care reform this morning. His cautionary words for Obama? Slow down. Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

What do you think needs to happen over the next couple of weeks if President Obama’s deadline for health-care reform is to be met?

I think the president ought to hit the reset button. I think it is critical that he have the participation, involvement, and support of people on both sides of the aisle, as well as people in various sectors of the health economy. If we are going to have a dramatic shift in the nature of so large a part of our economy, then it needs to be something that has been thoroughly vetted and has received great support. Out of a desire to move very quickly, while his support is highest, he has skipped the critical steps of educating, involving, and evolving his own plans to meet the perspectives of the great majority of our citizens.

It sounds like you are encouraging the president to slow down. Aren’t there risks in delaying?

He’s in a very difficult position. We faced a very similar question [in Massachusetts] as we began our process. We spent over two years putting together a health-care plan and then building support for it on both sides of the aisle—working with hospitals, providers, doctors, business groups, labor groups, advocates for the poor. We involved all of these parties, and it took a long time, but what we ended up with was a bill that passed the legislature— if you combine the House and the Senate—198 to 2.

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You can read more and listen to a taste here…   

The issue at hand is NOT HEALTH CARE REFORM. If Congress really wanted that they would focus on Tort Reform in the Health Care Industry.  Its another more insidious left wing agenda.  The slow erosion, or on the Obama Administration’s watch the NOT so slow erosion, of capitalism and our individual freedoms and some of  most private liberties that the founding fathers of this nation sacrificed to protect for all citizens of this great country.   This is now about  a line in the sand to keep a power crazed Big Brother left leaning government mentality out of our private affairs — Including how we choose to die. Moderates, Independents and Libertarians are all united on this point. Obamanistas simply refuse to understand that socialized medicine has historically been the first step in establishing socialist state through the entire fabric of our lives.

If Obama wants to get back his credibility he should go to the American people and say… “I heard you.  Let’s see what we can do to IMPROVE what we already have without taking all this risk and potentially throwing the baby out with the bath water just to score a Political Victory in my first year in office”.  Somehow I doubt his ego would step aside to allow him to do that even if he does’nt say it in such a self incriminating way.

START WITH TORT REFORM IN HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY IF YOU WANT TO REALLY REDUCE COSTS !!   —   LEAVE THE REST OF THE SYSTEM ALONE !!

Frivilous lawsuits drive the cost up for doctors, insurance companies and both you and I.  Why is THAT not on the table?  Well because Congress is run by a bunch of lawyers that’s why.

What we have now needs some repair, yes, but not a major overhaul that puts in the hands of government powers that the framers would have cringed if they were alive today!!!

PALIN WINS — Wall Street Journal
Level-headed liberal commentators who favor more government in health care, including Slate’s Mickey Kaus and the Washington Post’s Charles Lane, have argued that the end-of-life provision in the bill is problematic–acknowledging in effect (and, in Kaus’s case, in so many words) that Palin had a point.

If you believe the media, Sarah Palin is a mediocre intellect, if even that, while President Obama is brilliant. So how did she manage to best him in this debate? Part of the explanation is that disdain for Palin reflects intellectual snobbery more than actual intellect. Still, Obama’s critics, in contrast with Palin’s, do not deny the president’s intellectual aptitude. Intelligence, however, does not make one immune from hubris.

For a wonderful example of such hubris, check out this post from David Kurtz of TalkingPointsMemo.com:

Is there anything quite as unsettling as when the nation’s political class (and I use that term broadly to encompass the occasionally political, like the tea partiers) turns its fleeting but intense focus to a new (for them) and complex topic, like end-of-life issues?

It seems like years of painstaking work to nudge our death-denying culture toward a more frank and humane approach to our own mortality and dying could be erased by one misguided national discussion set off by none other than Sarah Palin.

Except that Palin didn’t “set off” this discussion; President Obama did by trying to ram through legislation postalizing the medical system with no time for debate or reflection. How to care for dying patients is a serious, sensitive and complicated matter, one with which American families struggle every day. If you truly don’t want the “political class” involved, your quarrel is with the man who is pushing for more federal involvement in this most personal of matters. It’s entirely understandable that people would respond to such an effort by shouting, “Keep your laws off my grandma!” — — [Hat Tip: James Tarato / WSJ]

Good for you James Tarato!   This post is dedicated to: Kevin Callahan see post http://zardozz.com/zz/2009/07/page-425-of-health-care-bill-will-shock-you.html

Too funny for words… We thought it was worth sharing with you considering all the insanity that surrounds us lately.

The Blue Dogs have been hogging the health care spotlight for the last week. Now they’re having to share with it with the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus, and the rest of his small troupe.

The Gang of Six — Baucus and five committee colleagues — got their picture in The Times today, a snappily annotated photograph of a recent meeting. The six senators gather twice daily, according to the accompanying article, in hopes of hammering out a “bipartisan deal” on health care reform.

Though their efforts are ongoing, significant details of of their emerging agreement are now circulating. So far, says Brien Beutler at TPMDC, the gang’s plan seems to be one that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce can support. In a recent letter, the Chamber reminded the negotiators that it opposes any “new government-run insurance plan” as well an “any mandate” on employers to provide insurance to workers or pay a tax. “That’s basically the plan Max Baucus’ Senate Finance Committee is set to propose,” writes Beutler.

The synchronicity between the Chamber and Gang plans should not be surprising, says Ezra Klein at The Washington Post. All you have to do is look at the Gang’s group portrait in The Times.

Look at this picture. Study it. This is who is in the room helping Baucus put together his bill. Olympia Snowe, Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, Jeff Bingaman and Kent Conrad. In a Senate of 60 Democrats and 40 Republicans, the health care reform bill is being written by three centrist Democrats, one centrist Republican, and two conservative Republicans. And until last week, Orrin Hatch was in the room, too.

For Matt Yglesias, this lineup represents a structural problem that he is wont to harp on, the shortage of direct democracy in our current system… Read More — NYT

It seems clear that main stream media outlets like the New York Times are growing impatient with the Congressional leadership. The mutual agenda of driving out of America all vestiges of moderation and conservativism is not being driven fast enough by the “Browshirts” of the new left.  The very people who espouse freedom of speech, and first amendment rights are the first to seek the elimination of those rights from anoyone who does not agree with their point of view.  I hate to break it to this author, but all business on the hill is conducted in sub committes.  The idea of bipartian subcommittee should be welcomed in a free democracy not vilified !   The entier body of the House and Senate get to cast their vote on a bill.  Hopefull they all read it, but that is doubtful. (See post about “Page 425 of the House Healthcare Bill“)