Is Senator Rob Portman really "Against" Obamacare?

In light of the John Kerry like flip-flops we have seen from Senator Portman lately, a fair question to ask would be is, "is Senator Rob Portman 'really' against Obamacare and is he dedicated to defunding it?"

In fairness to Senator Portman, it should be noted that he has signed on as a co-sponsor of a bill to defund Obamacare and also joined in with all 46 Republican Senators in a letter urging President Obama to permanently delay the implementation of Obamacare.

But, as we have so painfully seen, just because Senator Portman say's he is against something, doesn't mean he is "really" against it.  

Highlighting just some of  Senator Portman's recent triple lindy flips off the high dive of conservatism and belly flopping into the pool of progressive politics, we see Senator Portman.... 

• Was once strongly against same sex marriage -- he now supports same sex marriage.

• Continually claimed he was against Richard Cordray being appointed to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- he voted in support of Cordray's confirmation.

• Continually claimed he was against the Senate Immigration Reform bill (S. 744) -- he voted in support of Cloture which allowed the bill to move forward and eventually pass.

Well thanks to Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), Senator Portman has an opportunity to do the right thing and show conservatives where he stands by reinforcing his claims of being "against" Obamacare.

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and 14 of his fellow Senate Republicans sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) urging him to delay all of Obamacare, and declaring their intent to defund the law in any Continuing Resolutions or other measures to fund the federal government.

So, with Senator Portman co-sponsoring a bill to defund Obamacare, his joining with fellow Senators urging the permanent delay of Obamacare and, being fully aware that voters in Ohio have soundly rejected Obamacare with passage of the Ohio Health Care Freedom Amendment, one would think it would be a no-brainer that Senator Portman would support Senator Mike Lee's letter and additional attempts to defund Obamacare -- right?  Wrong!

To date, even though he claims to be against Obamacare, Senator Portman has not signed onto Senator Lee's letter to defund Obamacare in Continuing Resolution talks. Taking into account the above items Senator Portman also claimed to be against, his not supporting this effort should be a cause of great concern.

If we are to defeat or defund Obamacare - the do or die fight is now and Senator Portman needs to decide and show us whose side he is on.

Please contact Senator Portman's office and urge him for once to keep his word and not abandon his conservative base again.  Please urge Senator Portman to sign Senator Lee's letter and support this do or die effort to defund Obamacare.  

Senator Rob Portman
DC Office: (202)224-3353
Contact: https://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact-form
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/senrobportman
Twitter: https://twitter.com/portmanpress

To read the full text of Senator Lee's letter and to sign it yourself, please click here or on the picture below.

STOP THE AMNESTY : Melt Speaker Boehner's phones

STOP THE AMNESTY BILL

Time to melt Speaker John Boehner’s phones and faxes:

Butler County Office  PH (513) 779-5400

Miami County Office PH (937) 339-1524

Clark County Office   PH (937) 322-1120

D.C. Office: PH  (202) 225-6205

FAX (202) 225-0704

And his mailbox (more postcards):

Speaker John Boehner

7969 Cincinnati-Dayton Road, Suite B

West Chester, OH 45069

And his emailbox at http://boehner.house.gov/contact/

This just in from Tea Party Patriots:

House Speaker John Boehner is once again ignoring grassroots conservatives like you.  He is moving full steam ahead to pass a scaled down version of the 1,200-page Senate Amnesty bill.

We are identifying key Republicans who will decide whether this new immigration deal will pass the House.  Then we must pound them with letters, phone calls, faxes – everything we have! [but for now, Cleveland Patriots need to let Speaker Boehner hear from us!]

John Boehner plans to push through this scaled-down version of amnesty as soon as he can.  He’s under incredible pressure from the GOP establishment and Barack Obama to “do something” on immigration.

That’s why we need to push back now – and hard!

If Boehner is successful at ramming this new mini-amnesty bill through the House, he and his hand-picked conference committee will be free to simply adopt the Senate’s version of immigration reform.

It’s a clever way to get around conservatives in the House.  And he thinks it is a viable way to get around Tea Party activists like you.

That’s why we are launching this emergency effort to stop John Boehner.

Our goal is to mobilize local Tea Party groups in the districts of key swing Republicans to express outrage at this total lack of respect for the rule of law. We need to make sure an overwhelming number of Republicans understand that grassroots conservatives do not support this new plan, and that we understand exactly what the Speaker of the House is trying to do.

If you thought this immigration amnesty bill was dead in the House, please understand that you are very, very mistaken.

The special interests are flooding Capitol Hill with campaign contributions.  The Obama Administration is wheeling and dealing like you wouldn’t believe.

Amnesty is very much alive in the House.  And if "We the people" don’t rise up, make our voices heard, and fight back, this new mini-amnesty bill will pass.  

And Boehner’s conference committee will all but surrender to the Senate liberals.

Frankly, if we don’t fight back hard and NOW,  Barack Obama will probably be signing a full-fledged amnesty bill at a big White House ceremony in September.

And John Boehner will be smiling and standing right by the President’s side.

Make those calls * Send your faxes * Mail your postcards

1,000 points of contact TO STOP AMNESTY

UPDATE: Tea Party Patriots issued the following update with an easy link to their page  guiding patriots to four targeted members of the House. If you have time constraints (and who doesn't), try the link below to make your voice heard:

The Senate amnesty bill has yet to make its way to the House. However, we are hearing that there might be a plan in the works for the House to come up with their own version of the Senate bill to force the two bodies into a conference over the bill. We cannot let this happen because then the fate of amnesty will be left to Senators hand-picked by Harry Reid and Representatives hand-picked by John Boehner. This week we need an additional 1,000 people to make direct contact with Speaker John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy, Pete Sessions, and Paul Ryan. Ryan appears to be taking the same misguided course that Marco Rubio took and we need to do everything we can to let these "leaders" in the House know that this is not what the majority of Americans want. Will you pledge to be one of the 1,000 points of contact? Click to get started today!

Calling Cleveland Tea Party Patriots! STOP COMMON CORE ~ CALL COLUMBUS

This via Ohio TPP Co-coordinator Marianne Gasicki:

"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." ~ Vladimir Lenin

There is nothing more important than the education of our children. It is here where liberals have been planting their seeds for decades. 

Common Core Standards must be stopped in our schools. Seventeen states have already introduced anti-Common Core legislation; let's make Ohio the next one!

Anti-Common Core Legislation to be Introduced in Ohio

3 Days Left to be a Co-Sponsor

Rep. Andy Thompson is sponsoring a bill against Common Core, that is to be introduced July 25th Read the Bill Here

This bill addresses our concerns regarding data mining and sharing of our children's information, funding ties to adoption of CC, PARCC testing, etc.

Calls Make a Difference

Please call the House members below and ask for their co-sponsorship through the following message: 

1. Are you aware that the Common Core State Standards were never vetted or voted on by Ohio's lawmakers?
2. Are you aware that the standards are copyrighted and cannot be changed at the state or local level?
3. Are you aware that all grade level assessments will be through a national consortium with no input from teachers?
4. Are you aware that no cost projection was done to determine the implementation or operating costs to taxpayers?
5. Are you aware that the federal Race to the Top grant is the instrument that ties the Standards, Assessment and Data Collection together and allowed this end-run around you, our elected representatives?
6. And lastly, are you aware that the RNC issued a Resolution categorically rejecting Common Core citing among its issues the destruction of educational choice, massive student data collection, nationalized assessments, and the violation of three federal laws?

Please join Rep. Thompson in honoring your oath to defend the Ohio Constitution by protecting our state control over education. Repealing Common Core is the only acceptable response for a responsible legislator.

When you call, request that the legislator's office reply to you at (your phone number) letting you know your intentions before the bill is filed on Thursday, July 25th. Email Cleveland Tea Party Patriots at clevelandteaparty@gmail.com before Thursday. Here are recommended legislators; make as many calls as you can.  

• State Rep. Ron Amstutz, District 1 (614) 466-1474
• State Rep. Mark Romanchuk District 2  (614) 466-5802
• State Rep. Marlene Aneilski, District 6 (614) 644-6041
• State Rep. Nan Baker, District 16 (614) 466-0961
• State Rep. Terry Blair, District 42 (614) 466-6504
• State Rep. Tim Brown, District 3 (614) 466-8104
• State Rep. Tony Burley, District 82 (614) 644-5091
• State Rep. Margaret Conditt, District 52 (614) 466-8550
• State Rep. Rex Damschroder, District 88 (614) 466-1374
• State Rep. Doug Green, District 66 (614) 644-6034
• State Rep. Christina Hagan, District 50 (614) 466-9078
• State Rep. Wes Retherford, District 51 (614) 644-6721

Thanks to Ohioans Against Common Core for all their hard work and for providing this information.

CTPP supports Ohioans Against Common Core

Common Core is part of the UN's infamous Agenda 21. A website called “AreWeAwareYet” has a good overview and links, but here’s a short introduction:

Cherilyn Eagar connects the dots by linking Common Core State Standards to anti-Christian, redistribution of wealth, pantheistic, and environmentally extreme Marxists.  These Marxists have saturated the United Nations.  As a side note, this should be of no surprise to anyone since known Communist, Alger Hiss, was [a] founder of the United Nations.

The education arm of the United Nations, UNESCO, has its fingerprints all over Common Core.

Anyone who has studied the insidious Agenda 21, which is the brainchild of the United Nations, immediately recognized the Common Core, as another step of Agenda 21 – capturing our children’s minds and souls by dumbing them down to make it so much easier for totalitarians to control our country.

And from Eagar’s linked website:

The goal is to bring all educational standards under one common roof of compliance and global academic, philosophical and religious sameness.  That requires removing the “extremes” of fundamentalist and evangelical religion, including those religions that have strong missionary outreaches to non-Christians and that teach the biblical principles of marriage and the sanctity of Life. In order to do that, certain compromises must be made, and this is the essence of the Common Core curriculum.

The curriculum must be strictly secular and equitable in its teaching of the nations and the world.  Redistribution of the wealth is the standard because there is no private property, only collective ownership of the planet.  Therefore, the common core curriculum must take a pantheistic approach and while excluding one form of extremism (e.g. radical Islam) it embraces another:  extremist environmental policy.

Common Core is already here, but there is a way to stop it in Ohio. Representative Andy Thompson is sponsoring a bill in the Ohio House:

A BILL  “To enact section 3301.078 of the Revised Code with respect to the Common Core initiative academic standards and the distribution of student data.” Full Bill Text here   

This bill is scheduled to be filed with the House Clerk on July 25 – this coming week. Last week, Ohioans Against Common Core announced Action Alerts. Their suggested phone calls for requesting co-sponsorship of the bill in the House are to:

·         Rep. Andrew Brenner – Education Committee Vice Chair  (614) 644-6711 

·         Rep. Ron Amstutz – Finance Committee Chair (614) 466-1474

·         Rep. Matt Huffman – Speaker Pro Tempore & Education Committee member (614) 466-9624

·         Speaker Wm. Batchelder – (614) 466-8140

·         Rep. Gerald Stebelton – Education Committee Chair (614) 466-8100 

Please visit their website for more info. Another analysis is here at The Heritage Foundation. 

Immigration "reform" -- and now Paul Ryan

Some prominent members of the GOP continue to go wobbly on immigration and amnesty “reforms.” If they were serious about stopping illegal immigration, they would of course insist 1) that all borders be secured, and 2) current immigration laws be enforced. Only after those two steps have been taken and completed is it time to discuss the concerns about illegals who remain.

There are two facts usually omitted when legislators are promoting immigration "reform". One is the likely result of securing our borders and starting to vigorously enforce the laws would be to significantly reduce the number of illegals "living in the shadows". If memory serves, it was Mark Steyn who pointed it out years ago, when he was driving along the Canada-US border at Niagara Falls, shortly after 9/11. That day, Canada-bound traffic was at a standstill, jammed with illegals heading for Canada. They assumed, incorrectly as it turned out, that the United States would get serious about enforcing immigration laws and sealing the borders. So when we read about 11 or 12 million living “in the shadows,” how many of those millions would voluntarily leave if the government got serious about enforcing its existing laws? Half? Most? 

The other distorted "fact" concerns the hand-wringing about needing to bring people out from the shadows – and giving them a “path to citizenship.” There already are numerous paths to citizenship (and also click on the Exceptions tab on the left-hand sidebar for more paths), and anyone here illegally is welcome to go back to their country of origin and stand in line with those who are applying for immigration, legally, through one of these existing programs.

Rep. Paul Ryan, who seemed like a good guy VP candidate on the Romney-Ryan ticket, is going all “Rubio” on us.  According to the Boston Globe: 

Democrats doggedly pursuing a far-reaching immigration bill are counting on help from Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate last year and an unlikely candidate for delivering the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda.

Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who is frequently mentioned in the GOP lineup of possible 2016 presidential candidates, stands apart from many fellow House Republicans in favoring a way out of the shadows for the 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. in violation of the law.

Ryan’s arguments are the same ole, same ole. And the always astute Thomas Sowell debunked Ryan’s rationales – separating emotional appeals from economic realities --  in an interview with Laura Ingraham, reported in The Daily Caller: 

During a June appearance on Ingraham’s show, Ryan had said the U.S. might face labor shortages unless immigration policy is overhauled.

“That’s incredible,” Sowell said. “I mean —first of all to an economist, it is incredible to speak about shortages without talking about prices, in this case wages…You know there, there have been so many predictions of shortages of so many occupations and the shortages don’t materialize. And why not? Because if there is a shortage, the wage rate goes up. That attracts in more people and lo and behold, the jobs are filled.”

“In agriculture, the farmers would obviously prefer to get workers who get low pay rather than workers they have to pay a higher wage,” he continued. “And as long as there are an unlimited supply of farm workers coming in from Mexico, they will never have to raise the wages very much. They say Americans won’t do these jobs. These are jobs Americans have done for generations, if not centuries. And it’s a time when millions of Americans are out of work, and are looking for any kind of work. And so this is utter nonsense.”
. . . .
“The other main thing though is that if we don’t control the borders, we don’t have an immigration policy because regardless of what policy you put on paper, if people can just walk across the border when they darn well please, then your policy means nothing. The other thing that bothers me is the Republicans seem to think we will give — illegal immigrants citizenship if they do a, b or c. Democrats say x, y and z. I don’t know why we need promise anybody citizenship before we get control of the borders and have time to sit down and think and look at the facts, and then try to draw up some rational policy.”

Just more reasons to send postcards to members of the House of Representatives, and Paul Ryan moves to the top of the list. No Amnesty. No immigration "reform." Secure the borders.

Rep. Paul Ryan

216 6th Street

Racine, WI 53403

Speaker John Boehner

7969 Cincinnati-Dayton Road, Suite B

West Chester, OH 45069

Rep.  Eric Cantor

4201 Dominion Blvd. #110

Glen Allen, VA 23060

Rep. Kevin McCarthy

4100 Empire Drive, Suite 150

Bakersfield, CA 93309  

Rep. Trey Gowdy

104 S. Main St.

Greenville, SC  29601

Rep. Darrell Issa

1800 Thibodo Road, #310

Vista, CA 92081

Amnesty / Immigration "Reform," Obamacare, and Common Core

UPDATES July 17

The Tea Party Patriots Sunday evening weekly webinar was lengthy but very informative.  Ohio Co-Coordinator Marianne Gasicki summarizes below the critical points regarding the amnesty bill and the plan of action on Obamacare. There will also be an action item regarding repealing the Common Core Standards in education.

The Amnesty Bill

Republicans are Doing the Dance

Last week I had asked you to forward a letter to your Representative regarding key provisions on a proposed immigration bill.

I received a quick response from Rep. Gibbs Click Here to Read and a list of legislation that had passed out of committees Click Here, but nothing from Rep. Tiberi.  I will be stopping by his "office" tomorrow morning to hand deliver the letter. 

None of the five bills have anything at all to say about establishing a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants estimated to be here already. And at his regular Thursday press briefing following the Wednesday Conference, Speaker Boehner specifically commented that while he believed a majority of his Conference wants to see action on the immigration front, he's not at all sure there's a majority in the House for a pathway to citizenship.

There is also question as to the constitutionality of the Senate bill because it raises revenue, which is something that can only be done in the House.

This is good news, but we must keep the pressure on.

A letter was delivered to Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy yesterday, that was signed by 24 state coordinators and co-coordinators from Tea Party Patriots, representing 17 states Click Here to Read.  I will include that in my delivery to Rep. Tiberi and will email a copy to Rep. Gibbs.

We must also remember that it looks like we may have achieved our short term goal, and that was stalling the bill so that nothing was voted on in July.

On the Obamacare Front

Using the President's Actions Against Him

As you are probably aware, President Obama unilaterally acted in his recent decision to delay implementation of the employer mandate in Obamacare (ACA).  There was no involvement from Congress whatsoever.  

In response to that, there are two bills moving through House committees, one that would delay Obamacare employer mandates until 2015 and the other would delay the individual mandate.

Only 12% of Americans support the individual mandate, but Obama has chosen to grant waivers and delays to big business and special interests over the American people.

Obviously, the decision for any delays only emphasizes what a trainwreck Obamacare is.

Call Today

Please make your voice heard by calling your Congressman! Tell them to support HR 2667, The Authority for Mandate Delay Act , and HR 2668, the Fairness for American Families Act. 

You can call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or Click Here for individual Rep numbers and their district numbers.

Stop Common Core in Ohio

Legislation to be Introduced in State House

Representative Andy Thompson has a bill ready to be introduced to the House that would repeal Common Core Standards in Ohio!

There are now 17 states with anti-Common Core legislation pending, and Texas has flat out outlawed it!

I have yet to meet a teacher who supports Common Core, but they are being pressured by administration and fear for their jobs if they speak up.  We need to stop the implementation of a system that removes parents and teachers from the education process by nationalizing and standardizing education.

Click Here for the Text of the Bill.  It addresses the data collection issue, the loss of local control, eliminates ties to funding, etc. 

Please call your State Rep. and ask him/her to support this bill, and please thank Rep. Thompson for addressing the Common Core.

Click Here for Contact Information.