The first course of what the Obama Presidency joining forces with the Harry Reid/Nancy Pelosi congress has been served and the long term economic and social structure of the United States of America is at stake.
Gone is the campaign happy talk of hope and change you can believe in replaced with threats of catastrophe and doom. In a measure full of fat and lots of sweets for the traditional Democratic special interests groups, what’s severely lacking is anything of substance that will truly help stimulate the economy. In less than one month of the Obama Presidency, American society has been transformed more substantially moving toward a caretaker state than the total of the entire Great Society of Lyndon Johnson essentially undoing all the reforms achieved by Ronald Reagan’s visionary approach toward expanding the economy through expanding free enterprise opportunity and a strong national defense and gains achieved in the early stages of the house and senate turning to Republican rule under the “Contract with America.”
Here’s the epitome of the classic Obama supporter in full overdose mode on the Obama stimulant. This is from the President’s trip to conduct a so-called “town hall” meeting to push his dopey legislation last week. This is NOT a skit from Saturday Nite Live. It is real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO3kHC61I88
Doesn’t that punk make you glad you’re not a Democrat? And what flavor Kool Aid was he gulping?
The welfare reforms achieved by a Republican congress and Bill Clinton’s approval have all but been eliminated. Substantial funds are going to social welfare and reengineering programs consisting of a laundry list of social causes and pet projects that have long been the stereotyped image of the loose spending nanny state. Aid has even been targeted to the film making industry in Hollywood. How is that for undisguised rewards for blind loyalty as the celebrity crowd not only paid generously during the last eight years to discredit the Bush Administration through slander and misinformation through their mouthpieces like MoveOn.org and DailyKOS, but also went head over heels in their support for the Obama campaign like a love struck teenager high on sniffing glue, Diet Pepsi, and pop rocks?
That a measure with so many funding provisions with such a high price tag would be rushed through as quickly as it was with no time to be published for public reaction defines what it means to “pull a fast one.” In providing the final draft of the bill after clearing house and senate conferees, the Democratic leadership would not even provide the bill in electronic form to allow for easier research and searching for details. The Obama/Pelosi/Reid Socialization Act of 2009, weighed in over 1,000 pages. In the amount of time between finally being approved and presented for vote, no legislator could possibly have read the whole measure much less delegated it to staff and had ample time to confer and follow up on concerns over specific provisions. “The Devil is in the details” couldn’t be more appropriate as given the far reaching impact of where this spending is directed will surely result in “hell to pay” in the future both in terms of the actual cost of paying for the obligations it creates but also in expansion of the size and roll of government which permanently alters the ratio of money between the public and private sector. The private sector creates capital while the public sector squanders it. Further, as in any measure where public funds go to bailout or stimulate private sector entities, substantial requirements, the proverbial strings attached, divert private sector activity from productivity to documentation of compliance that government regulations are being adequately implemented.
Even for the sake of discussion, the pork barrel provisions in the government stimulus, we should say narcotic, bill are far too numerous to even begin to articulate but some of them are such powerful illustrations of the abuse and arrogance of power. The government nationalized passenger rail service in the 1970’s when it created Amtrak which constantly loses money while reducing the quality and level of its service. Harry Reid represents Nevada. Pork for the big pig supreme, construction of a high speed railroad from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is one massive Federal program in the bill creating an umbilical cord making the huge palaces of excess for the entertainment industry interconnected. At a time when California is struggling economically, this provides a one-way ticket for California money to be spent in Nevada on glitter and gambling.
The supreme arrogance of power is astonishing beyond anything seen in American politics. The shift to the extreme left is also especially disturbing as it reveals the true nature of the so-called “Blue Dog” Democrats who ran on a sense of fiscal conservatism mocking the big spending habits of the GOP during its majority rule. As shameful as those GOP excises were, they are but chump change compared to what the Obama Abolition of Free Enterprise as We Know it Disguised as a Stimulus program offers.
Going into the efforts that resulted in this bill, Obama was portraying himself as a consensus builder looking for a bipartisan seemingly centrist approach to attempting to breathe life into a dormant economy but the real Obama, the sweat talker who addresses the public in carefully measured surely focus group confirmed language, condemns the bill’s opponents and Republicans sounding like an angry Negro, and revealing through and through here’s a guy who never worked in the Senate long enough to properly understand how spending measures can snowball out of control and the content of the bill he so eagerly embrace likewise upholds his reputation of having been the most liberal member of the Senate from 2006-2008. Be nervous whenever Obama tries to sound African-American, as it’s all a put on for a fellow who never was immersed in an environment where such speaking habits could be learned until much later in life after his Ivy League education. It’s all an act to try to shake off his image as an ivory tower elitist.
Though the connection might not be immediately seen, it is not ironic from the big picture point-of-view that while the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Stimulus-Should-Be-Called-Narcotic Act of 2009, the Obama Administration is moving functions of managing the census from the Commerce department to the White House making the census count a much more political and less administrative activity. While attempting to cast a bi-partisan veneer on his administration by nominating Republican New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg after their golden boy nominee, Bill Richardson, former cabinet official in the Clinton administration, was forced to withdraw as a Federal corruption probe was inching ever closer to the sitting governor’s fat neck, the clear intent was that Gregg be Secretary in name only, vanity window dressing for an administration with other plans. The real agenda was political in moving the census to White House control. Is it any wonder Gregg withdrew his nomination? Gregg also voted against the Stimulus/Narcotic Bill.
Why is the census so crucial? Representing far more than just gathering data on where the United States population resides, these figures are used to determine representation in the House and the dispersal of targeted Federal Funds based on identified populations documented by the census count. Since the census does not represent a hard count of actual citizens and employs sampling and other statistical techniques, the methodology and how it is employed can be manipulated to create predetermined desires for certain outcomes. Besides that, political decisions determine who is and is not counted as shown by the last census. In North Carolina with its huge military population, its military bases were established as the residence for soldiers whether stationed there or overseas. In Utah with its substantial Mormon population, thousands of Mormons were serving overseas to fulfill their missionary commitments. They were not counted. North Carolina gained a congressional seat. Utah would have gained a seat had their overseas population been tallied. Further decisions can be made to help award population in certain parts of certain states where politically friendly governors can supervise redrawing congressional districts favorable to the party in power.
Politically drawn congressional districts are nothing new to the Mid-Atantic. There is the famous Interstate 85 corridor where a North Carolina congressional district was essentially the width of that Interstate highway to connect two predominately African-American population centers, one in the Raleigh-Durham area, the other in Charlotte, to create what would be a sure Black seat in congress. Meanwhile in Maryland, traditionally, its 1st, 2nd, and 6th congressional districts have trended Republican. Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore are primarily rural and small town populations strongly Republican. The 2nd district represented wealthy suburbs and exoburbs in Baltimore and Harford counties, strong conservative territory. Under the corrupt and incompetent leadership of Parris Glendenning, Governor of Maryland in 2000, the Maryland congressional map was radically manipulated to dilute the strong conservative populations for the West (5th district) and Eastern Shore (1st district) while rearranging districts surrounding Baltimore to ensure strong Democratic representation. Now the 6th district extends from western Maryland all along the northern boundary to the Susquehanna River dipping into the Baltimore suburbs along the York Road and Reisterstown Road corridors, both major arteries around which suburban population centers grow.
The 2nd district was pushed deeper into the industrial and more impoverished east side of Baltimore County. The 3rd district, one of two which took in much of Baltimore City begins in the Annapolis area, then twists and bends northward through Baltimore taking parts of the York and Reisterstown Road communities. A slice of the 1st district cuts east/west across Baltimore County crossing York Road into Owings Mills and Reisterstown. The Second District, now follows the western shore of the Chesapeake crosses the Patapsco River to take in Northern Anne Arundel County and South Baltimore while having another meandering strip through the north suburbs crossing the York Road and Reisterstown Road corridors snaking around to comprise about 1/3 of Baltimore County’s western boundary with Carroll County including the community of Randallstown. Maryland’s 3rd District snakes its way from Annapolis to Reisterstown at one point only being the width of Northern Parkway in Baltimore City to connect Parkville with Towson two adjoining suburbs which have a huge wedge cut between for Paris only knows what. Finally, the firmly minority district representing most of Baltimore City, the 7th District now extends far west of Baltimore including Catonsville, a very conservative traditional community, Columbia, and the largely semi-rural parts of western Howard County, largely white middle to upper middle class. Given the Afro-centric politics of minority districts, Catonsville and western Howard County have essentially no representation of their interests in Congress.
The absurdity, one can travel up York Road within a few blocks of Cockeysville and travel through three districts, only a small part of the 2nd district which once represented this community in total passes through while most of this large bedroom community is split between Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore. Travel south on York Road to the county seat of Towson, another District, the 3rd then back into the 2nd and then moving into the 7th only three blocks into Baltimore City.
The effect of Maryland’s redistricting is two fold. First, regions with similar needs and concerns are sliced up so that the real purpose of what the House of Representatives was supposed to serve to represent the people has instead been converted to one of political opportunism. Baltimore’s two most populated surrounding counties effectively have no clear voice in Congress. Harford County, one of Maryland’s fastest growing districts has no local representation. Effectively divided into thirds, the top third is lumped in with Western Maryland, the middle third is set with the Eastern Shore, and the southern third which includes substantial military population is lumped in with the industrial region of Baltimore County.
The second effect was to give the Democratic party a death grip on Republican congressional representation in Maryland. Most of the Democratic strength in Maryland resides primarily within the Beltways of Baltimore and Washington and the corridor between the two cities. Now only Western Maryland’s district which takes on the northern populations of Baltimore and Harford counties, likewise Republican strongholds, remains intact. The Eastern Shore could be a toss up but has been diluted by carefully adding strong Democratic areas on the western shore of the bay. In the last election, a Republican from the western shore ran against a Democrat from the other side of the bay and lost. The second district once represented the northern suburbs of Baltimore, most of Baltimore County and most of Harford County. This area was Republican, though a little more moderate than the strongly conservative west and Eastern Shore. Drive from the Baltimore City line ten miles north through the county seat of Towson and one would pass through four congressional districts, but once north of Towson along York Road, the main drag, at the outer end of the suburban sprawl rests Cockeysville, where in less than a mile, what’s left of its old district, one that represents the eastern shore, and one that represents western Maryland. This is all within one zip code, one elementary school district, just a handful of stop lights!!! As such, Maryland was a state with three strong Republican districts and a 4th district that belonged to a Rhino (Republican in Name Only). Now Maryland has only one strong Republican district and another that can easily be reduced to a toss up which turned Democratic in the last election. An honest mapping that reflects easily defined geographic areas with populations with similar interests and concerns would make Maryland a state with three certain Republican seats and four Democratic seats with one area that could possibly be designed to go either way, is so obvious. An honest application of census data would only involve moving boundaries a little bit one way or another based on balancing out the population. What was never intended is the farce cynically created by crass political opportunism that is the Maryland map today.
There can be little doubt that the kind of political use of the census is exactly what the Obama administration intends by moving the Census lead to the White House. Remember, Barack Obama is a product of the Richard Daley machine of Chicago politics one of the most corrupt and manipulative political enterprises in the country. The state of Illinois has long been famous for its manipulated districts. Maryland is in many respects a little Illinois. Outside of Chicago, Illinois is a largely conservative, heartland state. Maryland is much more like old Virginia the further one gets away from the Beltway regions. Speaking of Virginia, with a governor who is a close Obama ally and the rapid growth of the Washington suburbs, Virginia is a state that has been strongly Republican until recently that could easily be manipulated to create some new strongly Democratic regions. One can only imagine an I-95 corridor connecting the Alexandria region with Richmond or how the I-64 corridor could be used for political purposes to link Hampton/Newport News with Richmond. Hopefully, we’re not giving the scoundrels any ideas by mentioning this.
What’s the big deal can easily be summarized, the future makeup of the United States House of Representatives. This is the prize that has Obama’s eyes in his politicizing of the Census.
Take the worst of the Lyndon Johnson years and add the worst of the Jimmy Carter years, multiplied then add some hardy scoops of the Richard Daley Machine and the recipe for Obama politics is complete. With Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco treat and man-in-need-of-strong-enema, Harry Reid leading congress the recipe for disaster beyond belief is coming to a boil. The first big serving has been tossed on America’s plate, and that’s just the appetizer.
Here’s the epitome of the classic Obama supporter in full overdose mode on the Obama stimulant. This is from the President’s trip to conduct a so-called “town hall” meeting to push his dopey legislation last week. This is NOT a skit from Saturday Nite Live. It is real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO3kHC61I88
Doesn’t that punk make you glad you’re not a Democrat? And what flavor Kool Aid was he gulping?
The welfare reforms achieved by a Republican congress and Bill Clinton’s approval have all but been eliminated. Substantial funds are going to social welfare and reengineering programs consisting of a laundry list of social causes and pet projects that have long been the stereotyped image of the loose spending nanny state. Aid has even been targeted to the film making industry in Hollywood. How is that for undisguised rewards for blind loyalty as the celebrity crowd not only paid generously during the last eight years to discredit the Bush Administration through slander and misinformation through their mouthpieces like MoveOn.org and DailyKOS, but also went head over heels in their support for the Obama campaign like a love struck teenager high on sniffing glue, Diet Pepsi, and pop rocks?
That a measure with so many funding provisions with such a high price tag would be rushed through as quickly as it was with no time to be published for public reaction defines what it means to “pull a fast one.” In providing the final draft of the bill after clearing house and senate conferees, the Democratic leadership would not even provide the bill in electronic form to allow for easier research and searching for details. The Obama/Pelosi/Reid Socialization Act of 2009, weighed in over 1,000 pages. In the amount of time between finally being approved and presented for vote, no legislator could possibly have read the whole measure much less delegated it to staff and had ample time to confer and follow up on concerns over specific provisions. “The Devil is in the details” couldn’t be more appropriate as given the far reaching impact of where this spending is directed will surely result in “hell to pay” in the future both in terms of the actual cost of paying for the obligations it creates but also in expansion of the size and roll of government which permanently alters the ratio of money between the public and private sector. The private sector creates capital while the public sector squanders it. Further, as in any measure where public funds go to bailout or stimulate private sector entities, substantial requirements, the proverbial strings attached, divert private sector activity from productivity to documentation of compliance that government regulations are being adequately implemented.
Even for the sake of discussion, the pork barrel provisions in the government stimulus, we should say narcotic, bill are far too numerous to even begin to articulate but some of them are such powerful illustrations of the abuse and arrogance of power. The government nationalized passenger rail service in the 1970’s when it created Amtrak which constantly loses money while reducing the quality and level of its service. Harry Reid represents Nevada. Pork for the big pig supreme, construction of a high speed railroad from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is one massive Federal program in the bill creating an umbilical cord making the huge palaces of excess for the entertainment industry interconnected. At a time when California is struggling economically, this provides a one-way ticket for California money to be spent in Nevada on glitter and gambling.
The supreme arrogance of power is astonishing beyond anything seen in American politics. The shift to the extreme left is also especially disturbing as it reveals the true nature of the so-called “Blue Dog” Democrats who ran on a sense of fiscal conservatism mocking the big spending habits of the GOP during its majority rule. As shameful as those GOP excises were, they are but chump change compared to what the Obama Abolition of Free Enterprise as We Know it Disguised as a Stimulus program offers.
Going into the efforts that resulted in this bill, Obama was portraying himself as a consensus builder looking for a bipartisan seemingly centrist approach to attempting to breathe life into a dormant economy but the real Obama, the sweat talker who addresses the public in carefully measured surely focus group confirmed language, condemns the bill’s opponents and Republicans sounding like an angry Negro, and revealing through and through here’s a guy who never worked in the Senate long enough to properly understand how spending measures can snowball out of control and the content of the bill he so eagerly embrace likewise upholds his reputation of having been the most liberal member of the Senate from 2006-2008. Be nervous whenever Obama tries to sound African-American, as it’s all a put on for a fellow who never was immersed in an environment where such speaking habits could be learned until much later in life after his Ivy League education. It’s all an act to try to shake off his image as an ivory tower elitist.
Though the connection might not be immediately seen, it is not ironic from the big picture point-of-view that while the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Stimulus-Should-Be-Called-Narcotic Act of 2009, the Obama Administration is moving functions of managing the census from the Commerce department to the White House making the census count a much more political and less administrative activity. While attempting to cast a bi-partisan veneer on his administration by nominating Republican New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg after their golden boy nominee, Bill Richardson, former cabinet official in the Clinton administration, was forced to withdraw as a Federal corruption probe was inching ever closer to the sitting governor’s fat neck, the clear intent was that Gregg be Secretary in name only, vanity window dressing for an administration with other plans. The real agenda was political in moving the census to White House control. Is it any wonder Gregg withdrew his nomination? Gregg also voted against the Stimulus/Narcotic Bill.
Why is the census so crucial? Representing far more than just gathering data on where the United States population resides, these figures are used to determine representation in the House and the dispersal of targeted Federal Funds based on identified populations documented by the census count. Since the census does not represent a hard count of actual citizens and employs sampling and other statistical techniques, the methodology and how it is employed can be manipulated to create predetermined desires for certain outcomes. Besides that, political decisions determine who is and is not counted as shown by the last census. In North Carolina with its huge military population, its military bases were established as the residence for soldiers whether stationed there or overseas. In Utah with its substantial Mormon population, thousands of Mormons were serving overseas to fulfill their missionary commitments. They were not counted. North Carolina gained a congressional seat. Utah would have gained a seat had their overseas population been tallied. Further decisions can be made to help award population in certain parts of certain states where politically friendly governors can supervise redrawing congressional districts favorable to the party in power.
Politically drawn congressional districts are nothing new to the Mid-Atantic. There is the famous Interstate 85 corridor where a North Carolina congressional district was essentially the width of that Interstate highway to connect two predominately African-American population centers, one in the Raleigh-Durham area, the other in Charlotte, to create what would be a sure Black seat in congress. Meanwhile in Maryland, traditionally, its 1st, 2nd, and 6th congressional districts have trended Republican. Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore are primarily rural and small town populations strongly Republican. The 2nd district represented wealthy suburbs and exoburbs in Baltimore and Harford counties, strong conservative territory. Under the corrupt and incompetent leadership of Parris Glendenning, Governor of Maryland in 2000, the Maryland congressional map was radically manipulated to dilute the strong conservative populations for the West (5th district) and Eastern Shore (1st district) while rearranging districts surrounding Baltimore to ensure strong Democratic representation. Now the 6th district extends from western Maryland all along the northern boundary to the Susquehanna River dipping into the Baltimore suburbs along the York Road and Reisterstown Road corridors, both major arteries around which suburban population centers grow.
The 2nd district was pushed deeper into the industrial and more impoverished east side of Baltimore County. The 3rd district, one of two which took in much of Baltimore City begins in the Annapolis area, then twists and bends northward through Baltimore taking parts of the York and Reisterstown Road communities. A slice of the 1st district cuts east/west across Baltimore County crossing York Road into Owings Mills and Reisterstown. The Second District, now follows the western shore of the Chesapeake crosses the Patapsco River to take in Northern Anne Arundel County and South Baltimore while having another meandering strip through the north suburbs crossing the York Road and Reisterstown Road corridors snaking around to comprise about 1/3 of Baltimore County’s western boundary with Carroll County including the community of Randallstown. Maryland’s 3rd District snakes its way from Annapolis to Reisterstown at one point only being the width of Northern Parkway in Baltimore City to connect Parkville with Towson two adjoining suburbs which have a huge wedge cut between for Paris only knows what. Finally, the firmly minority district representing most of Baltimore City, the 7th District now extends far west of Baltimore including Catonsville, a very conservative traditional community, Columbia, and the largely semi-rural parts of western Howard County, largely white middle to upper middle class. Given the Afro-centric politics of minority districts, Catonsville and western Howard County have essentially no representation of their interests in Congress.
The absurdity, one can travel up York Road within a few blocks of Cockeysville and travel through three districts, only a small part of the 2nd district which once represented this community in total passes through while most of this large bedroom community is split between Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore. Travel south on York Road to the county seat of Towson, another District, the 3rd then back into the 2nd and then moving into the 7th only three blocks into Baltimore City.
The effect of Maryland’s redistricting is two fold. First, regions with similar needs and concerns are sliced up so that the real purpose of what the House of Representatives was supposed to serve to represent the people has instead been converted to one of political opportunism. Baltimore’s two most populated surrounding counties effectively have no clear voice in Congress. Harford County, one of Maryland’s fastest growing districts has no local representation. Effectively divided into thirds, the top third is lumped in with Western Maryland, the middle third is set with the Eastern Shore, and the southern third which includes substantial military population is lumped in with the industrial region of Baltimore County.
The second effect was to give the Democratic party a death grip on Republican congressional representation in Maryland. Most of the Democratic strength in Maryland resides primarily within the Beltways of Baltimore and Washington and the corridor between the two cities. Now only Western Maryland’s district which takes on the northern populations of Baltimore and Harford counties, likewise Republican strongholds, remains intact. The Eastern Shore could be a toss up but has been diluted by carefully adding strong Democratic areas on the western shore of the bay. In the last election, a Republican from the western shore ran against a Democrat from the other side of the bay and lost. The second district once represented the northern suburbs of Baltimore, most of Baltimore County and most of Harford County. This area was Republican, though a little more moderate than the strongly conservative west and Eastern Shore. Drive from the Baltimore City line ten miles north through the county seat of Towson and one would pass through four congressional districts, but once north of Towson along York Road, the main drag, at the outer end of the suburban sprawl rests Cockeysville, where in less than a mile, what’s left of its old district, one that represents the eastern shore, and one that represents western Maryland. This is all within one zip code, one elementary school district, just a handful of stop lights!!! As such, Maryland was a state with three strong Republican districts and a 4th district that belonged to a Rhino (Republican in Name Only). Now Maryland has only one strong Republican district and another that can easily be reduced to a toss up which turned Democratic in the last election. An honest mapping that reflects easily defined geographic areas with populations with similar interests and concerns would make Maryland a state with three certain Republican seats and four Democratic seats with one area that could possibly be designed to go either way, is so obvious. An honest application of census data would only involve moving boundaries a little bit one way or another based on balancing out the population. What was never intended is the farce cynically created by crass political opportunism that is the Maryland map today.
There can be little doubt that the kind of political use of the census is exactly what the Obama administration intends by moving the Census lead to the White House. Remember, Barack Obama is a product of the Richard Daley machine of Chicago politics one of the most corrupt and manipulative political enterprises in the country. The state of Illinois has long been famous for its manipulated districts. Maryland is in many respects a little Illinois. Outside of Chicago, Illinois is a largely conservative, heartland state. Maryland is much more like old Virginia the further one gets away from the Beltway regions. Speaking of Virginia, with a governor who is a close Obama ally and the rapid growth of the Washington suburbs, Virginia is a state that has been strongly Republican until recently that could easily be manipulated to create some new strongly Democratic regions. One can only imagine an I-95 corridor connecting the Alexandria region with Richmond or how the I-64 corridor could be used for political purposes to link Hampton/Newport News with Richmond. Hopefully, we’re not giving the scoundrels any ideas by mentioning this.
What’s the big deal can easily be summarized, the future makeup of the United States House of Representatives. This is the prize that has Obama’s eyes in his politicizing of the Census.
Take the worst of the Lyndon Johnson years and add the worst of the Jimmy Carter years, multiplied then add some hardy scoops of the Richard Daley Machine and the recipe for Obama politics is complete. With Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco treat and man-in-need-of-strong-enema, Harry Reid leading congress the recipe for disaster beyond belief is coming to a boil. The first big serving has been tossed on America’s plate, and that’s just the appetizer.
No comments:
Post a Comment