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« on: November 18, 2013, 08:10:00 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Monday Digest 11-18-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION
“To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.” –Alexander Hamilton
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
Democrats Panic Over ObamaCare
On Friday, the House of Representatives voted 261-157 in favor of the “Keep Your Health Plan Act,” authored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI). Some 39 Democrats joined all Republicans in voting yes just a day after Barack Obama announced his own unilateral and illegal “fix”1 for his ailing law.
The Wall Street Journal summarized Upton’s bill2:“The one-page bill would allow insurers to continue offering for sale in 2014 the policies that ObamaCare terminated, exempting them from federal regulatory edicts.” However, because insurance companies have spent the last three and a half years working to comply with ObamaCare regulations, Upton’s bill is unlikely to actually save many plans. Such is the nature of Obama’s “you can keep your plan” lie.
By contrast, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) offered her own version of a “keep your plan” bill in the Senate. In this case, the Journal writes, Landrieu’s bill “would order insurers to continue to offer the dumped plans that in many cases no longer exist. This is also a substantive due process violation for business and unconstitutional commandeering of state regulators.” That would be par for the course.
Unfortunately, but predictably, the House vote didn’t come close to a veto-proof majority as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) did the necessary nagging to prevent a caucus-wide jackass stampede. Furthermore, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) vowed that he won’t take up the House bill. Either way, Obama would never let Congress compromise his legacy when he can come to the rescue himself.
But the House vote does indicate that, thanks to the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare, at least 39 Democrats are in near-total panic3 over their election prospects in 2014. Nearly all of them barely won their 2012 elections, and many are in Republican-leaning districts. Their short-sighted scrambling is quite a shift from 2010, when Democrats gleefully used their Washington hegemony to realize the 100-year-old progressive dream of “universal” health care. Recall that Democrats lost a near-record 63 seats in 2010 after passing the law.
It’s also clear that ObamaCare will hang like an albatross around Democrats' necks. They’ll never admit it – in fact, DNC chair Debbie Wassermann Schultz swears Democrats will run on ObamaCare next year – but they all know it’s true.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Immigration Reform Dead This Year?
House Majority Leader John Boehner announced last week that the House has no intention of conferring with the Senate over its immigration reform bill, effectively killing the legislation for this year. Boehner’s words may be anticlimactic since many inside and outside the Swamp had figured immigration reform a dead issue anyway. No movement has been made since the Senate passed its comprehensive reform package in June. Since that time Syria, the government shutdown and the ObamaCare implosion have served to push immigration further down the list of priorities.
House Republicans were never fans of the comprehensive approach to immigration reform and with good reason. Large sweeping bills like the one proposed by the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight are too complex to work effectively (ObamaCare, anyone?). They ultimately become little more than vehicles to shovel gobs of money in numerous directions that have nothing to do with the intended alleged purpose of the legislation. Furthermore, in this particular case the Senate provision did not properly address the issue of border security which the House GOP considers to be the top priority.
The House also had its own Gang of Eight working in secret on a bill for much of Obama’s first term. The idea at the time was to produce a piece of legislation that focused on the enforcement issues that the House GOP wanted to see in any final bill. Their package would provide a counterweight to the Senate’s liberal proposal and give the House leverage in negotiations. But the White House and Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) put pressure on House Democrats to slow down its progress. They feared losing the support of Senate Republicans like Marco Rubio (FL) if the House brought a more conservative bill into the final conference. The Senate got their way, and the House Gang fell apart through attrition from election losses and lack of interest among its members. Fortunately, the White House and the Senate had no strategy beyond getting a bill out of the Senate, and they never realized just how toxic their plan was in the House. Had they known, Boehner’s announcement wouldn’t have come as such a shock.
ECONOMY, REGS & TAXES
Around the Nation: UAW Closer to Unionizing Tennessee VW Plant
Generally when one thinks of automotive labor strife, it’s a picture of a rusty old car plant somewhere in the bowels of Detroit. But there’s now a push to unionize the workers in a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it’s being backed by an unusual source: management.
Because of a German law that allows their union leaders up to half the seats on a “supervisory board” that dictates how production would be allocated, company leaders argue that, in order to have a better opportunity to benefit from any increases in production, workers will have to accept representation from the United Auto Workers union here in America. In June it was reported that a second assembly line for the plant was at stake, held hostage by the demand that the plant unionize.
Yet workers in this right-to-work state are cool to the demands. While UAW organizers like Gary Casteel claim support is there, they’re reluctant to push for a vote6. “We know if we go for a traditional election where the outside organizations could campaign against us, we’d probably lose,” admitted Casteel. Instead, they’re attempting to deem the matter decided through the notoriously anti-democratic “card check” process. Casteel added, “We’ve determined we definitely have a majority of employees who favor this representation.” So they “have a majority,” but they’d “probably lose” an actual vote. Get it?
The UAW is very interested in how this process plays out as they eye other German automakers who own plants in the United States. If Volkswagen succumbs, BMW and Mercedes-Benz may follow suit. At stake are millions of dollars in coerced union dues that Big Labor can use to shore up failing pensions and reward friendly politicians. It’s not about the workers. It’s about the Benjamins.
CULTURE, SCIENCE & FAITH
China Revises One-Child Policy
More than 30 years ago, Communist China instituted its infamous one-child policy for married couples. As did many Western leftists, party leadership feared pure population growth, but they also feared losing control over a hugely populous country. China’s population as of 2010 had still grown to 1.34 billion, the largest in the world. Yet millions of unborn children have been killed since 1980 in forced abortions, and countless other babies were abandoned.
The only previous exceptions to the one-child policy were for some rural couples, or for couples that were both only children themselves. Now, President Xi Jinping has announced that couples can have two children if only one parent is an only child. The longstanding policy has left China with a growing labor shortage and an aging population. According to the document making the change, China’s new policy will “gradually adjust and improve family planning, promoting the development of a balanced population.” It’s a travesty that the policy was not scrapped altogether, though it’s so culturally engrained now that couples still may not take advantage of the shift.
Another change for China is that Xi says he will end forced “re-education” labor camps, a relic of Mao Tsetung’s reign of terror that have been used to punish millions – from religious activists (especially Christians) to human-rights advocates and those who would dare to object when mistreated by party bureaucrats. Some 190,000 at a time were cycled through the system for as long as four years, all without trial. Still, don’t expect persecution of Christians and other “enemies of the state” to stop. The Communists have other ways of causing suffering. |
