Nancy Pelosi said, “But we have to pass the [health care ] bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

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Congressional Reform Act of 2009



1. Term Limits: 12 years only, one of the possible options below.

A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

2. No Tenure / No Pension:

A congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security:
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund moves to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, Congress participates with the American people.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, server your term(s), then go home and back to work.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan just as all Americans
..

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.


6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

7. Congress must equally abide in all laws they impose on the American people..

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

8. All contracts with past and present congressmen are void effective 1/1/10.

The American people did not make this contract with congressmen, congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

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ď‚§ The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.
ď‚§ Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
ď‚§ Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.
ď‚§ War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to “the poor” and they only want more.
ď‚§ Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.
ď‚§ Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.
ď‚§ The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.

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I have a friend whose mother was living her retirement from coupons on GM bonds. When the government “restructured” GM, she was put in line AFTER the unions, and lost her income.

According to THE LAW, bondholders are entitled to the first dibs when a company collapses. But if you donate millions to the BHO election campaign, you might get paid back in BILLIONS, and little old ladies living on a pension are screwed.

Rodney Johnson at HS DENT has posted an excellent review at the Dent Financial Blog.

I’ll quote the article here:

Not every loser chosen by the government is a fat cat banker making millions of dollars, or a perceived corporate bad actor such as Lehman. Many are just ordinary people, which is what makes some of the choices of the US government over the last year so much more difficult to fathom. At issue is the results of the auto industry bankruptcies earlier in the year and how the pension mess has fallen out. We have written on this subject numerous times, and today the NYT has a feature on it (NYT, B1, 10/27/09). The example “loser” is a woman who took early retirement at Delphi as the company encouraged, received a pension of $2,925 monthly since retirement, but after the end of the bankruptcy she will receive $390 monthly. That’s correct – from $3k a month to $400. I’d say that qualifies as losing.

 

So what was makes her a loser? Not being in a union is the short answer, but it’s not the full answer. When GM spun off Delphi in the late 1990s, the Delphi United Auto Workers were given a promise that if their pensions were underfunded by Delphi that GM would “top-up” the payments. So far, so good, as these are the dealings of private companies with their labor.

 

Then Delphi does indeed go bankrupt in the mid 2000s. The company quits making full contributions to their pension plans for all workers – UAW, United Steel Workers, white collar workers, etc. In fact, they make tiny fractional payments. Just as you would expect, four years and one heck of a bear market later, the pensions are all dramatically underfunded. So Delphi does what is expected of a company in bankruptcy, they kick their pension obligations to the PBGC, which pays according to a very un-generous schedule, NOT according to what your pension benefits were at the company. This is where the Delphi UAW workers hold up their trump card, the one that says GM has to “top-up” their pension payments in the event of underfunding. Still, so far so good. Except, GM is now bankrupt too.

 

This is where the winners and losers are sorted.

 

GM now agrees to make those payments. But there’s more. The steel workers, electrical workers, and other unions cry foul because only the UAW is covered. So GM graciously agrees to top up all union payments. White collar payments? No. Nada. Zip.

 

Where did GM get the funds to make such payments, since they were bankrupt? From taxpayers, who infused the company with $53 billion.

 

This is the same convoluted scheme that allowed unsecured creditors (union health trust) to jump ahead of secured creditors (bond holders).

 

There are real consequences to these actions. Those that control capital, both investors and corporate officers, will long remember these actions and include them in their decision-making in the years to come. To pretend that such things have no consequence is disingenuous. To treat these situations lightly, when they have such a devastating and unequal affect on people, is callous.

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08.26.2009

No need to comment. This video says it all.  Visit the 9-12 project.

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An excellent article in IBD this week bullet points the extra powers our legislators want to hand over to government control.

Among the powers given to governmental:

• Seniors must submit to “advance care planning consultation” (aka end-of-life discussions) every five years, or more often if there is “a significant change in the health condition of the individual, including diagnosis of a chronic, progressive, life-limiting disease, a life-threatening or terminal diagnosis or life-threatening injury” (Pages 425 and 429). Will these consultants advise seniors to hurry up and die because they are costing too much money?
• Government bureaucrats will conduct “Comparative Effectiveness Research” to decide the effectiveness of treatments and drugs. That is the exotic label for rationing and, as House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., admitted, drugs and treatments that are “found to be less effective and more expensive will no longer be prescribed” (Pages 502 and 520).
• Government bureaucrats (not the medical profession) shall determine national priorities for research (Page 505).
• Preference in awarding grants or contracts will be given to entities that have trained “the greatest percentage” of public-health workers in the government and that have trained large percentages of “under-represented minority groups” (Pages 909 and 910). Think Acorn!

If we need reform, this is NOT reform, but a slide towards socialism at its worst.

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My father is in his late seventies, and has been a very active person, golfing many times a week. He lives in Florida in the winter, and in Northern Ontario, Canada in the summer.

This winter, he began to experience considerable knee pain. When he returned to Canada in April, he made an appointment to see a doctor about the pain, and an MRI was scheduled — for July! — 3 months later.

Not willing to wait, my father left Ontario and paid a few hundred dollars for an MRI in May, and brought the results back to his doctor, who he will see NEXT WEEK! So 3 months to get an appointment to review the problem.

Based on the comments on the MRI, it looks like it will be arthroscopic surgery .. a few hour procedure.

His expectation (and I will provide and update when he finds out) will be yet another 3 month wait!

Even for full knee replacement in the United States, the average wait time is 3 weeks! So why would a much simpler procedure take 3 months after diagnosis, and 3 months to get the diagnosis (versus 2 weeks in the USA).

If suffering with aliaments for long periods of time while waiting in line for care is your prefernce, then you will like the current government healthcare proposal in the USA. If not, let’s look for other, more creative options to repair the “ills” of the US system

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03.22.2009

Suddenly everyone recognizes the term (Article I, section 9, clause 3 of the United States Constitution).
Congress passed a law making past legitimate bonuses to AIG employees, approved by Congress, now subject to extra-ordinary taxes.

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