from the Cleveland Tea Party
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Updates:Gov. Kasich (RINO) on renewable energy and other bills
art credit: redstate
In an
article “Kasich Veto Draws Cheers From Environmental Lobby,” Steve Byas at The New American reports:
Once again, Ohio Governor John
Kasich used his veto power to kill yet
another bill favored by conservatives in his state. On Tuesday, he killed a
bill that would have made renewable energy benchmarks voluntary, rather than
mandatory, for the next two years.
Kasich defended his action,
saying, “Ohio workers cannot afford to take a step backward from the economic
gains that we have made in recent years, however, and arbitrarily limiting
Ohio’s energy generation options amounts to self-inflicted damage to both our
state’s near and long-term economic competitiveness.” Of course, how suspending
mandatory benchmarks imposed on electric companies would limit the companies’
“energy generation options," as opposed to doing exactly the opposite,
Kasich did not explain.
Not surprisingly, the
Environmentalist Lobby cheered Kasich, who ran for president this year as a
Republican. The Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon
Society, and Ohio Consumers’ Counsel all praised the veto. The “benchmarks,” as
they are called, were created by legislation in 2008, requiring electric
companies to gradually obtain more energy from “renewable sources,” rather than
being allowed simply to make a free market decision to buy the least expensive
electricity.
Senator Bill Seitz
(R-Cincinatti), however, was not pleased. “It is apparent that Gov. Kasich
cares more about appeasing his coastal elite friends in the renewable energy
business than he does about the millions of Ohioans who decisively rejected
this ideology when they voted for President-elect Trump,” Seitz said in a press
release. “We can only hope that President Trump and his amazing cabinet of free
market capitalists will save us from this regulatory overreach of Al Gore-style
policies that take unnecessary money out of ratepayers’ pockets.”
Seitz said he would move to
totally repeal the mandates in the next legislative session.
Kasich made it clear by his
veto that he does not trust the free market to sort out which type of energy
source is best for Ohio consumers. This veto is a confirmation for many more
conservative Republicans that Kasich is simply not a conservative.
Ohio legislators can return to
Columbus to override this veto, if they wish. . .
During the Republican
presidential contest, Kasich defended the implementation of controversial
Common Core standards in his state, and attacked fellow Republican candidates
who opposed them — fellow governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Bobby
Jindal of Louisiana, as well as former Governor Mike Huckabee, and U.S.
Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. At the time, Donald Trump was
not mentioned, although Trump also opposed Common Core, seen by conservative
opponents as an attempt to nationalize public education.
There have been numerous other
deviations from conservative principles by Kasich, including his backing of the
expansion of Medicaid in Ohio under ObamaCare. When Kasich was in Congress, he
was one of only 42 Republicans who voted for President Bill Clinton’s ban on
assault rifles. He also favors granting U.S. citizenship to illegal aliens.
Clearly, Republican primary
voters made a good decision to reject John Kasich for the Republican nomination
for president.
And
another item on the 2017 New Year’s Wish List to Columbus lawmakers: Pass the
Ohio Health Care Compact.
# # #
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Dr. Thomas Sowell retires
art credit: Benjamin T Brixey
One
of my favorite columnists, Dr. Thomas Sowell, is retiring. His farewell column
is here. And here are a few take-aways from it:
Most
people living in officially defined poverty in the 21st century have things
like cable television, microwave ovens and air-conditioning. Most Americans did
not have such things, as late as the 1980s. People whom the intelligentsia
continue to call the “have-nots” today have things that the “haves” did not
have, just a generation ago.
In
some other ways, however, there have been some serious retrogressions over the
years. Politics, and especially citizens’ trust in their government, has gone
way downhill.
.
. .
Years
of lying presidents – Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon,
especially – destroyed not only their own credibility, but the credibility
which the office itself once conferred. The loss of that credibility was a loss
to the country, not just to the people holding that office in later years.
With
all the advances of blacks over the years, nothing so brought home to me the
social degeneration in black ghettos like a visit to a Harlem high school some
years ago.
When
I looked out the window at the park across the street, I mentioned that, as a
child, I used to walk my dog in that park. Looks of horror came over the
students’ faces, at the thought of a kid going into the hell hole that park had
become in their time.
When
I have mentioned sleeping out on a fire escape in Harlem during hot summer
nights, before most people could afford air-conditioning, young people have
looked at me like I was a man from Mars. But blacks and whites alike had been
sleeping out on fire escapes in New York since the 19th century. They did not
have to contend with gunshots flying around during the night.
We
cannot return to the past, even if we wanted to, but let us hope that we can
learn something from the past to make for a better present and future.
Dr.
Sowell is also a prolific author of books; he has made esoteric or
downright boring subjects (such as economics) accessible and interesting. Check
out some of them here. Most will be available at your local library. But his regular columns will be much missed.
# # #
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Merry Christmas
And so as Tiny Tim observed,
art credit: Pinterest
Merry Christmas
from the Cleveland Tea Party!
# # #
Friday, December 23, 2016
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Ohio Electoral College reports
cartoon credit: Margulies [okay, so it's 4 years old!]
Gateway Pundit posted this report on the Electoral College vote on Monday in Columbus:
Ohio GOP
Delegate Casts Vote for TRUMP – Then Torches All of His DNC Troll Letters in
Yard Pit
Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones received
HUNDREDS of harassing letters from Hillary trolls begging him [to] reject
Donald Trump.
Sheriff Jones ignored the
letters, emails and phone calls and voted for Donald J. Trump for President on
Monday in Columbus, Ohio.
Then he went home and dumped
his pile of letters into a yard pit. Poured lighter fluid on the pile. … And
torched them all.
Sheriff Jones posted the videos
on Twitter . . . [scroll down on GP website here]
And
in the comments section, we find some photos of the Sheriff and Cleveland Tea Party’s
own Ralph King, who also served as a member of the Electoral College and cast his
vote on Monday for Donald J. Trump:
# # #
Monday, December 19, 2016
Ohio Electoral College votes for Trump
image credit: insider.foxnews.com
From The Columbus Dispatch earlier today:
Ohio members of Electoral College cast all 18 of their votes this afternoon to formally elect Republicans Donald Trump and Mike Pence as president and vice president.
None of the electors strayed from the GOP ticket despite protests from some of those who oppose Trump.
# # #
Labels:
Columbus Dispatch,
Donald Trump,
Electoral College,
Ohio
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Fake News and the Propaganda Media
Bill Whittle's Firewall video says it all (and in just over 5 minutes):
According to Newt, today's "propaganda media . . . has no relationship with the news. It’s aligned with a Washington establishment which is corrupt and dishonest” (via Gateway Pundit).
And the mainstream/lamestream media wonders why President-Elect Trump is bypassing them so often by using Twitter.
Via YouTube
According to Newt, today's "propaganda media . . . has no relationship with the news. It’s aligned with a Washington establishment which is corrupt and dishonest” (via Gateway Pundit).
And the mainstream/lamestream media wonders why President-Elect Trump is bypassing them so often by using Twitter.
# # #
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Post-election exploding cigars
art credit: The Hockey Writers
Following the Trump win six weeks ago, the Democrat party and its supporters have been apoplectic. And they have been employing all sorts of tactics to undo the results.
First, the strategy was to claim Hillary
won the popular vote, so the electoral vote was not a true measure of the
winning campaign. But nobody knows how many illegals voted in California due to
Motor Voter laws, and some estimates go as high as 3 million. Without those and
other potential illegal votes elsewhere, nobody can say whether Hillary or Trump won the
popular vote. (Two short essays on the Electoral College are here and here.)
And when that strategy didn’t get any traction, the
Democrats (presumably backed by the Clinton campaign and her financiers) got Green Party
candidate Jill Stein to demand recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and
Pennsylvania. That blew up in their face, too. Pennsylvania
denied Stein legal standing, Wisconsin’s recount yielded an additional 100+ votes
for Trump, and the Michigan recount was discredited when something like a third
of the tallies in Wayne County (Detroit) showed more votes counted than were actually
cast.
So now the Clintons et al are coming out
with two more strategies to attempt to either change the results of the
election or to de-legitimize to the maximum extent possible, the Trump win. Now,
Hillary is blaming Vladimir Putin for hacking the election, even though what is
hackable is the emails exchanged within the DNC, not to mention Hillary’s own
email server that was notoriously exposed and unprotected. She and Podesta also
continue to blame Comey and the FBI. And the lamestream media is repeating this baloney despite the fact that there is NO evidence for these claims. (Anything
but the obvious problem of an unlikeable and flawed candidate with a long list
of alleged criminal activity who didn’t campaign much in the months leading up
to the election…)
DNC supporters are now doing
everything they can to intimidate duly chosen electors who will cast their
votes in the Electoral College on Monday; many Trump electors are on the receiving end of
everything from death threats to mail/telephone/social media pressure to withhold
their vote or cast it instead for Hillary, even when many states have laws that require electors to vote
for the winning candidate in their respective states.
President Obama piled onto the most
recent why-Hillary-lost “narratives” before flouncing off to Hawaii for his
final Christmas vacation on the taxpayer’s dime. FLOTUS is already complaining
that America now understands what it is like to be “hopeless” – as she joins her family
in Hawaii to vacation on the taxpayers’ dime (“Hopeless In Hawaii”).
Despite all the interference in and attempts to undermine the
election process, despite all the phony baloney accusations, it is likely that
the results of the Electoral College votes on Monday will lead to the Jan. 20
inauguration of Donald J. Trump.
# # #
Monday, December 12, 2016
Fascism: redefining the word
woody.typepad via Steven Crowder/Twitter
If
you managed to wade through Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, you already know that the term “fascism” has been
misappropriated by Communists, Progressives, and other left-of-center isms to mean the opposite of its original far
left definition. Several online dictionaries today reflect the switch in meaning, and
even the Wikipedia entry shows the difficulty of navigating the origins of the
term and its current usage by the political Left as a pejorative.
Today
Bookworm (of the Bookworm Room blog) has a piece at American Thinker that
summarizes the origin of the left/right nomenclature and the sleight-of-hand in
redefining “fascism” – all in the context of a short history lesson. The entire article is here. Below are a couple of extracts:
For months now, the
Democrat-Progressive fever swamps have been using the word “fascist” in
connection with Donald Trump and those who voted for him. It took Michael
Kinsley to elevate this shoddy claim onto pages of the Washington
Post: Trump, he asserts, is a fascist.
. . .
Given that conservatives
Republicans, including the majority of Trump supporters, are on the liberty
side of the spectrum, far from the world’s most brutal tyrants, what gave rise
to the glaringly false syllogism that “Republicans are right-wing fascists and
Hitler was a right-win fascist, so all Republicans are Hitler”?
You can
blame it on a nasty little historic and linguistic trick American
communists pulled, which was to make “fascism” synonymous with the political
“right.” Once having done that, they could claim that American conservatives,
being “right wing,” are therefore fascist. This is pure disinformation.
. . .
“Fascism,” another historic
term, is one that American statists embraced until Hitler tainted it. It
first gained political traction in Italy in the 1920s. Mussolini defined it to
mean “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the
state.” In other words, fascism is purely on the statist side of the continuum.
Savvy readers will have noticed
that fascism sounds remarkably like communism: It’s all about concentrating all
power in the state, leaving the individual entirely subordinate to the state.
The primary difference between the two ideologies is that in communism the
government nationalizes private property, whereas in fascism the government
does not nationalize it but nevertheless completely controls — as is the case,
for example, with Obamacare, which saw the government establish the rules for
the private insurance market and mandate that Americans buy the product.
. . .
One more thing: Obama said that
the biggest disappointment of his presidency was his failure
to grab more guns from American hands. Statists always grab guns
because their regimes are
fundamentally hostile to the citizens they control, making it
impossible for those citizens to defend themselves against tyrannical
government. Trump’s promise to protect the Second Amendment is the antithesis
of a statist, especially a “fascist,” regime.
Read the rest here.
# # #
Labels:
American Thinker,
Bookworm,
Communists,
Donald Trump,
fascism,
history,
left,
Obama,
ObamaCare,
Progressives,
right,
totalitarian
Saturday, December 10, 2016
RIP John Glenn
Mark Steyn offered some sobering thoughts on the dwindling supply of American heroes here. He quoted John Derbyshire:
Soon they will all be gone: the last participants in the human race's most astonishing, most audacious, most wonderfully inspirational adventure to date.
Gone with them will be the memory of a U.S.A. that could accomplish such marvels, in those last years of heroic national vigor, before we turned our energies to guilt and rancor and divisive social crusades, and to persuading ourselves and each other that in the human sphere, everything is equal to everything else.
Steyn concludes:
John Glenn must surely have wondered, as all the astronauts weathered into geezers, how a great nation grew so impoverished in spirit.
Our heroes are old and stooped and wizened, but they are the only giants we have. Today, when we talk about Americans boldly going where no man has gone before, we mean the ladies' bathroom. Progress.
# # #
Labels:
John Derbyshire,
John Glenn,
Mark Steyn,
Mike Lester,
Townhall
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Calls Needed For Health Care Freedom in Ohio!
Passing out of the Ohio House in October 2015, the Health Care Compact (HB 34) has a new life and making an end of session comeback to put Ohio back in charge of our own healthcare destiny.
The Health Care Compact legislation can be one of the most powerful and one of the most important bills that can pass this legislative session. The Health Care Compact would empowere member states with the legislative and fiscal freedom to make health care truly reflective of the health care needs of their state and not a costly one-size-fits-all federal health care program (Affordable Care Act) that has proven to be a failure.
The Ohio Senate Government Oversight & Reform Committee is holding hearings on the Health Care Compact (HB 34) today and tomorrow. To read the text of HB 34, click here. To read the Legislative Services analysis of HB 34, click here.
Already passed in 9 states, in line with health care freedom Ohioans have been fighting for and looked at favorably by the incoming Trump Administration, more and more the Health Care Compact is becoming the clear solution to Obamacare....
Obamacare is dead. Long live ... what? That is unclear. "Vice President-elect Mike Pence said Tuesday that repealing and replacing ObamaCare would be the first item on President-elect Donald Trump's agenda," according to Fox News. Its successor will emerge from a series of discussions soon to take place. "It’ll be the first thing out of the gate. ... He wants the Congress when they convene in early January to take up the task of repealing and replacing ObamaCare first."
One of the possible replacements could be the Health Care Compact if only because the list of those who supported H.J.Res.50 reads like a Who's Who in the incoming administration.
- Indiana (home to VP-elect Pence)
- Alabama (AG-nominee Sessions)
- Georgia (HHS nominee Price)
- Texas (endorsed by Sen. John Cornyn)
- Kansas (proposed and endorsed by Rep. Pompeo and Sec. of State Kris Kobach)
- Oklahoma (endorsed by Sen. James Lankford)
The program that Mother Jones once derided as "a longshot" and pipe-dream of a delusional Tea Party has now come within measurable distance of becoming a serious contender to replace Obamacare.
HHS nominee Tom Price's rhetoric suggests he would have no objections in principle to taking Washington out of the picture. In a quote cited by the Wall Street Journal Price said: “We think it’s important that Washington not be in charge of health care,” the six-term congressman said in an interview this summer. “The problem that I have with Obamacare is that its premise is that Washington knows best.”
Congressman Price supporting the Health Care Compact, which utilizes block grants for the states and is a state based solution, is consistent with the incoming strategy of Trump & Pence as noted below....
Trump and Pence reissued their calls to eliminate barriers to encourage competition between health insurers across state lines, make it easier for Americans to open health savings accounts and block grant Medicaid funds to the states
Please contact the below GOP members of the Senate Government Oversight &Reform Committee and respectfully request that they support the Health Care Compact (HB 34) and put Ohioans in charge of their own health care destiny.
Senate Government Oversight & Reform Committee
State Senator Bill Coley (R) Chair
PH: (614) 466-8072
Email: Click Here
State Senator Bill Seitz (R) Vice-Chair
PH: (614) 466-8068
Email: Click Here
State Senator Troy Balderson (R)
PH: (614) 466-8076
Email: Click Here
State Senator Dave Burke (R)
PH: (614) 466-8049
Email: Click Here
State Senator Kris Jordan (R)
PH: (614) 466-8086
Email: Click Here
State Senator Frank LaRose (R)
PH: (614) 466-4823
Email: Click Here
State Senator Larry Obhof (R)
PH: (614) 466-7505
Email: Click Here
State Senator Tom Patton (R)
PH: (614) 466-8056
Email: Click Here
State Senator Bob Peterson (R)
PH: (614) 466-8156
Email: Click Here
Labels:
General,
HB 34,
Health Care Compact (HB 34),
OHCC,
Ohio,
Ohio Senate,
Rep. Boose,
Rep. Retherford
Monday, December 5, 2016
ALERT! Ohio Health Care Compact coming up again in Ohio Senate Committee!
Late
last week, Cleveland Tea Party blogged about the re-emergence of the Health Care
Compact as a key part of the solution in rolling back Obamacare. Rep. Tom Price,M.D. (R-GA) is President-Elect Trump’s nominee to head up Health and Human
Services, and Price is a longtime advocate of the Health Care Compact.
Last
year, the Ohio House passed the Ohio Health Care Compact, and then the bill
stalled. It was supposed to come to a vote in the Senate but nothing happened. However,
with the incoming administration and Rep. Price’s upcoming nomination,
something is percolating in Columbus. The Senate Committee is finally planning to reconsider the bill (and hopefully get the bill passed out of Committee for a vote).
The
committee reviewing the legislation is the Government Oversight
and Reform, and that committee website is here.
At this link, you can access the Chair, Sen. Bill Coley (R);
Vice-Chair Bill Seitz (R); and Ranking Minority Member Kenny Yuko (D). You can
access these and the rest of the members of the Committee by phone or by email.
Urge them to support the Ohio Health Care Compact (HB 34); if you are emailing,
just click on the committee member's picture to access the "contact" options, then choose the health-related drop-down subject line and type in that you
support putting the Ohio Health Care Compact before the full Senate. That’ll take a few seconds. And if you
have a little bit more time, call or email them to let them know WHY you
support it.
If you previously submitted proponent testimony in support of the
Ohio Health Care Compact in 2014 or 2015, this is the time to update your
testimony and resubmit it directly to Chair, Sen. Bill Coley. Or write up a few paragraphs now and email the Chair.
# # #
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Weekend video schadenfreude fun
Via Instapundit and Michael Walsh at PJ Media on Trump and the media / celebrities:
"As
Oscar Wilde famously said, "One must have a heart of stone to read the
death of Little Nell without laughing." Ditto with these cocksure
pronunciamentos about the impossibility of a Trump presidency from the usual
suspects. (The Ann Coulter clip is especially funny!) Enjoy":
# # #
Labels:
Ann Coulter,
Donald Trump,
George Clooney,
Maher,
media,
Obama
Thursday, December 1, 2016
The Health Care Compact: Moving to the front burner?
art credit: before it's news
According to the Congressional
record the HCC [Health Care Compact] would give "primary
responsibility for regulation of health care to the state. Federal and state
laws remain in effect in a member state until suspended by the state. A
member state is responsible for federal funding obligations that remain in
effect in the state. Each year, a member state is entitled to federal funds
equal to the total federal spending on health care in the state during FY2010,
adjusted for inflation and population." It turns federal funds into
what amounts to a block grant, leaving states free to create, cooperate and
compete.
The HCC specifically does not
affect the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration. "The compact
establishes the Interstate Advisory Health Care Commission to collect
information and data to assist member states in their regulation of health
care. The commission may make non-binding recommendations to the member
states."
That would ironically make it
an ideal vehicle for states like Vermont or California whose voters are largely
opposed to the Trump administration to roll their own health care and
effort in which other like-minded liberal states can join them. HHS
nominee Tom Price's rhetoric suggests he would have no objections in principle
to taking Washington out of the picture. In a quote cited by the Wall Street Journal Price said: “We think it’s
important that Washington not be in charge of health care,” the six-term
congressman said in an interview this summer. “The problem that I have with
Obamacare is that its premise is that Washington knows best.”
The general tenor of an Obamacare
replacement plans emphasize giving consumers money to pick and choose policies
instead of forcing them to consume Federally prescribed products.
. . .
The HCC like so many other dark
horses in this year of unexpected upsets is now a real player. Too many
impossible things have taken place for anyone to easily dismiss anything out of
hand now. The next few weeks will give a clearer indication of where
health care policy is trending. But one thing is for sure. The long
shot's not such a long shot any more.
The
article includes a key quote from (gasp) the New York Times. Read it and the
rest of Fernandez’s article here.
The last time Cleveland Tea Party reported on the Ohio Health Care Compact was October 2015, when the House in Columbus passed the bill. At that time, it was headed for the Senate. Perhaps the time has come.
# # #
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
The Democratic party, Progressive outrage, and post-election fallout
image credit: highfieldtales.wordpress
Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and classicist. He also contributes columns
to PJ Media and National Review online. Although he started off in the
NeverTrump camp in the now infamous Never Trump issue of National Review, I decided to give him another look today.
His
column today (“A Party of Teeth-Gnashers”) is about the fallout from the election
and what has become of the Democratic party and the Progressive agenda. Here
are a few paragraphs:
After the Democratic
equality-of-opportunity agenda was largely realized (Social Security, Medicare,
overtime, a 40-hour work week, disability insurance, civil rights, etc.), the
next-generation equality-of-result effort has largely failed. What is left of
Democratic ideology is identity politics and assorted dead-end green movements
as conservation has become radical environmentalism and fairness under the law
is now unapologetic redistributionism. The 2016 campaign and the frenzied
reaction to the result are reminders that the Left is no longer serious about
formulating and advancing a practical agenda. In sum, for now it is reduced to
a party of teeth-gnashers.
. . .
Progressive outrage should not
be taken too seriously because it is not intended to be serious. When Barack
Obama invites rapper Kendrick Lamar into the White House and announces that his
“To Pimp a Butterfly” is the president’s favorite song of the year — whose
album cover shows the corpse of a murdered white judge, with Xs in place of
eyes, on the White House lawn, as African-American youth toast his demise with
drinks and cash — do we really assume that progressives like Obama believe in
stopping hate speech and imagery, or perhaps even believe in anything at all?
Donald Trump, to progressives,
supposedly harmed the Constitution and threatened our democracy because he
would not say, after the WikiLeaks revelations, that he would accept the
outcome of the election if he thought it was rigged. Yet after Clinton’s
defeat, suddenly irate progressives have lodged conspiratorial charges that
voting machines (miraculously only in swing states Hillary lost) were
supposedly rigged, that the Electoral College should be dropped, and that
electors should be bullied to ignore their pledges. Did anyone ever believe
their original outrage at Trump’s suggestion that election results might be
rigged? Are we now to have recounts in Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, and all
the close states Trump lost, and then on into spring more recounts of recounts,
until the last count achieves the desired result?
The Democratic party leadership
is no longer an alternative to corporate wealthy America, but is
corporate wealthy America, albeit in a new garb of jeans and flip-flops, Silicon
Valley–style. The small-business person, assembly-line worker, and
non-government wage earner mostly now vote Republican.
Progressivism is a
pyramidal capstone of wealthy elites who have the influence and money to
embrace boutique positions and the cunning to profess egalitarianism, all while
they lead private lives that would otherwise be condemned as illiberal and
apartheid-like. So affirmative action ends up providing high-cheekboned
Elizabeth Warren entry into Harvard Law School, the same way that progressive
investigative journalism is reduced to Politico’s “hack” Glenn Thrush (who
asked the Clinton campaign to fact-check and approve his article), and in the
manner that philanthropy is reduced to the Clintons’ piling up of millions by
selling influence. We are a long way from Harry Truman’s working classes.
. . .
The Democratic party for now is
reduced to a loud racist/sexist/homophobe broken record that fewer and fewer
are listening to — including many of the Democratic elites who continue to play
it.
Hanson is not completely sold on Trump, though, as you will gather if you read the rest
here.
# # #
Rep. Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services
photo credit: Star Tribune
Good
news! Rep. Tom Price is going to be Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. CTH reports:
President-elect Donald J. Trump
has selected Representative Tom Price, a six-term Republican congressman from
Georgia who has led opposition to the Affordable Care Act, to be secretary of
health and human services, according to a transition team official.
Mr. Price, an orthopedic
surgeon, has been a severe critic of the health law, saying it interferes with
the ability of patients and doctors to make medical decisions.
And he says that events have
borne out his warnings. “Premiums have gone up, not down,” Mr. Price said
recently. “Many Americans lost the health coverage they were told time and time
again by the president that they could keep. Choices are fewer.”
An announcement of Mr. Price’s
appointment is expected as soon as Tuesday, according to the official, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been
released. [The WaPo announced it here.]
Some Republicans have attacked
the Affordable Care Act without proposing an alternative. Mr. Price, by
contrast, has introduced bills offering a detailed, comprehensive replacement
plan in every Congress since 2009, when Democrats started work on the
legislation.
From his days as a Georgia
state senator, Mr. Price, now 62, has been a voice for doctors, often aligned
with the positions of the American Medical Association and the Medical
Association of Georgia.
Even
the New York Times had something nice to say.
For
Tea Party people who were active during the run-up to the passage of Obamacare,
Tom Price is one of our heroes. Good news, indeed. And as Stephen Green (Mr.
Vodkapundit) adds on PJ Media, “Give that man a giant scalpel.”
# # #
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Secretary of State Romney? Or not.
Cleveland
Tea Party founder Ralph King is quoted in the Washington Examiner’s article “Mitt Romney wrong choice for Trump’s
secretary of state, experts say”, published on Nov-23:
Mr. Trump’s transition team has
floated the former Massachusetts governor’s name for appointment to the post,
and the two men met privately over the weekend in New Jersey.
Some in the tea party movement
and some prominent conservative Republican stalwarts don’t trust Mr. Romney to
hew to Mr. Trump’s views on a number of policy issues that were central to his
upset victory Nov. 8.
“I
trust Donald Trump’s decision-making, but I don’t trust Mitt Romney policy
views,” said Cleveland Tea Party founder Ralph King. “I think Romney will
actually work against Trump on trade, good relations with Russia, avoiding wars
in the Middle East. Trump can fire him, but will he want to do that?”
Mr. King said firing a top
Cabinet official gives ammunition to the president’s enemies.
“I understand why people say,
‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,’ but you don’t want to give
them a gun to shoot you with, politically speaking,” Mr. King said.
Read
the rest here.
# # #
The Electoral College and the popular vote
Michael
Ramirez cartoon (via Bookworm Room)
"The US Election Without the Electoral College"
William Sullivan at The American Thinker has a good article on the subject, well worth reading in light of the ongoing temper tantrums we are seeing:
By now, you’ve heard the disgruntled
leftists parroting the sentiment that the Electoral College is an archaic relic
that is either racist (what
else?), or has obviously outlived any usefulness it may have once had.
Therefore, in the interest of progress, it must be abolished.
Outgoing California Senator
Barbara Boxer has recently introduced a
doomed-to-fail bill meant to do just that.
This argument is, of course,
painfully dim and tiresome. The Electoral College is one of many
safeguards against what de Tocqueville would later describe as
the “tyranny of the majority” that our Founders feared, or more specifically,
the threat of a concentrated majority in a state that happened to be more
populous than another. After all, it’s doubtful that Rhode Island would
have chosen to ratify the Constitution and join these United States if they
believed that their state’s unique desires at the federal level would be
perpetually overruled by the much more populous New York, for instance.
In the simplest terms, the
United States was conceived as a voluntary union of sovereign states which were
unified under the limited federal government which bound them -- one which
could only act within the very strict guidelines enumerated in our
Constitution. It is very much by design that the prerogative of each
sovereign state is influential in the election of our president, and the
Electoral College helps to ensure that.
But I won’t beat that dead
horse. There is ample reading material to inform interested parties about
the wisdom of the Electoral College, in contrast to a strictly popular vote
where highly-populated urban strongholds located in a minority of states might
disenfranchise the will of the large majority of other states in presidential
elections.
Read
the rest here.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Giving thanks for abundance is giving thanks for free enterprise
Photo credit: en.wikipedia.org
Re-posted
from a 2013 Cleveland Tea Party blog:
What
Thanksgiving really means To Americans
A
couple of years ago, Jerry Bowyer, writing in Forbes Magazine, recounted the real significance of Thanksgiving, a
significance that is too often lost among the turkey dinners, football games,
and stories about Indians who befriended the early settlers.
In
1620, the Plymouth pilgrims based their original community on Plato’s Republic, a collective model that appealed
to their religious convictions and morality. But the communal model didn’t work
for them. After over two years of failing harvests and resulting malnutrition,
disease, starvation, and deaths, the pilgrims replaced the communal model with
a model based on private property. The ensuing harvest was abundant, with
surpluses available for trade.
Their
Thanksgiving celebrated the triumph of the individual, private property, and
incentive, over collectivism. At first, the pilgrims felt guilty because they were
putting self-interest over the seeming altruism of socialism. Yet the devout
survivors had learned two lessons: 1) that a theoretical and Utopian collective
society fails, and (2) in real life, private property and capitalism produce
prosperity. For them, God, not Plato, knew best. Accepting the principles of
private property and self-interest was God’s way of harnessing self-interest to
the greater good. We know all of this because an elder of the Plymouth
plantation, William Bradford, kept a journal and it survives today. Mr.
Bowyer’s earlier article, with additional historical background, is here.)
It’s wrong to say that American
was founded by capitalists. In fact, America was founded by socialists who had
the humility to learn from their initial mistakes and embrace freedom. One of
the earliest and arguably most historically significant North American colonies
was Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620 in what is now known as Plymouth,
Massachusetts. As I’ve outlined in greater detail here before (Lessons
From a Capitalist Thanksgiving), the original colony had written into its
charter a system of communal property and labor.
As William Bradford recorded in
his Of Plymouth Plantation, a people who had formerly been known for their
virtue and hard work became lazy and unproductive. Resources were squandered,
vegetables were allowed to rot on the ground and mass starvation was the
result. And where there is starvation, there is plague.
After 2 1/2 years, the
leaders of the colony decided to abandon their socialist mandate and create a
system which honored private property. The colony survived and thrived and the
abundance which resulted was what was celebrated at that iconic Thanksgiving
feast.
As my friend Reuven Brenner has taught
me, history is a series of experiments: The Human Gamble. Some gambles work and
are adopted by history and some do not and should be abandoned by it. The
problem is that the human gamble only works if there is a record of
experimental outcomes and if decision makers consult that record. For many
years, the story of the first failed commune of Plymouth Bay was part of the
collective memory of American students. But Progressive Education found that
story unhelpful and it has fallen into obscurity, which explains why (as I
alluded to before) a well-educated establishment figure like Jared Bernstein
would be unaware of it.
I’m often asked why our current
leadership class forgets the lessons of the past so often. They are, after all,
very smart men and women. Don’t they know that collectivism will fail?
No, they don’t. Not anymore.
For much of our history, our leaders were educated in the principles which were
to help them avoid errors once they have joined the ruling class. They studied
to learn how to not misuse power. Now our leaders learn nothing of the dangers
of abusing power: their education is entirely geared to its acquisition.
All of their neurons are trained on that one objective – to get to the top.
What they do when they get there is a matter for later. And what happens to the
country when they’re done with their experiments is beside the point: after
all, their experiments will not really affect them personally. History is the
story of the limitations of human power. But the limits of power is a topic for
people who doubt themselves and their right to rule, not the self-anointed.
That’s how it is now, and
that’s how it was in 1620. The charter of the Plymouth Colony reflected the
most up-to-date economic, philosophical and religious thinking of the early
17th century. Plato was in vogue then, and Plato believed in central planning
by intellectuals in the context of communal property, centralized state
education, state centralized cultural offerings and communal family structure.
For Plato, it literally did take a village to raise a child. This collectivist
impulse reflected itself in various heretical offshoots of Protestant
Christianity with names like The True Levelers, and the Diggers, mass movements
of people who believed that property and income distinctions should be
eliminated, that the wealthy should have their property expropriated and given
to what we now call the 99%. This kind of thinking was rife in the 1600s and is
perhaps why the Pilgrim settlers settled for a charter which did not create a
private property system.
But the Pilgrims learned and
prospered. And what they learned, we have forgotten and we fade. Now, new
waves of ignorant masses flood into parks and public squares. New Platonists
demand control of other people’s property. New True Levelers legally occupy the
prestige pulpits of our nation, secular and sacred. And now, as then, the
productive class of our now gigantic, colony-turned-superpower, learn and teach
again, the painful lessons of history. Collectivism violates the iron laws of
human nature. It has always failed. It is always failing, and it will always
fail. I thank God that it is failing now. Providence is teaching us once again.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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