"I'm a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?
Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:
One, illegal immigration.. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.
Two, the STIMULUS bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.
Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.
Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.
Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!
Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.
Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.
Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why -- what do you have against shareholders making a profit?
Nine, charitable contributions.. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.
Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band-Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.
Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try -- please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me..
Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.
Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.
I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill.. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.
From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington . Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding.. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words Stop treating us like we're morons.
We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work , pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic freedom spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long.. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when he will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.
Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming."
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
CZARS: Who are they and how much POWER do they have?
1. Afghanistan Czar - Richard Holbrooke
Title: Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Appointed: January 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: State
• Will work with CENTCOM head Gen. David Petraeus to integrate U.S. civilian and military efforts in the region.
• 45 years of experience have made him a fixture of the Democrats' foreign policy establishment.
• Was U.S. ambassador to U.N., 1999-2001
• Brokered the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords in Bosnia
• Also served as Assistant secretary of state, East Asia and the Pacific (1976 to 1980); worked in foreign service (1962 to 1976)
• From 1972 through 1976, was the editor of Foreign Policy magazine.
2. AIDS Czar * - Jeffrey Crowley
Title: Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy
Salary: $102,000
Reports to: President Obama (as part of the Executive Office of the President’s Domestic Policy Council)
Appointed: February 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Health and Human Services
• Coordinates HIV/AIDS policy domestically and internationally.
• Senior Research Scholar at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute and a Senior Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University Law Center.
• Was Deputy Executive Director for Programs at the National Association of People with AIDS
• Has Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
3. Auto Recovery Czar - Ed Montgomery
Title: Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Larry Summers, the president's top economic adviser, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis
Appointed: March 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Labor
• Will work to leverage government resources to support the workers, communities and regions that rely on the American auto industry.
• Was Deputy Secretary and Chief Economist at the Labor Department (1997 to 1998)
• Is Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland (2003 to present)
• Has PhD in economics from Harvard
• In 2008, made $1,200 in political donations, all of which went to Obama’s presidential campaign.
• Wife is the granddaughter of a General Motors worker from Portland, Mich.
• Drives a 2000 Lincoln
4. Border Czar * - Alan Bersin
Title: Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and Special Representative for Border Affairs
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
Appointed: April 2009
Agencies that might have handled similar issues: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
• Will coordinate all of the department's border security and law-enforcement efforts.
• Essentially had the same job under President Clinton; served as Attorney General Janet Reno's special representative on border issues, a job that he held while retaining the position of U.S. attorney for San Diego.
• This time, boss will be Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who will expect him to handle illegal immigration and drug violence issues along the Mexican-American border
• Previous experience: Chairman of the San Diego Regional Airport Authority (2006 to 2009); Secretary of Education for California (2005 to 2006); Superintendent of San Diego Public Schools (1998 to 2005); U.S. Attorney for San Diego (1993 to 1998)
• Graduate of Harvard and Yale Law School
• Talking about border security shortly before he was named Clinton border czar in 1995, said he wanted to focus on suspected smugglers of both drugs and people and was not interested in prosecuting “economic migrants.”
• Often tied to the 1994 border policy called “Operation Gatekeeper.” The policy shifted the U.S. focus from the arresting of immigrants who actually crossed the border to an increased border presence designed to stop border crossing in the first place. When Bersin left the position in 1998, border arrests were on pace for an 18-year low of just more than 200,000. Latino groups complained that Operation Gatekeeper was immoral, saying the program monitored the border near San Diego but simply forced illegal immigrants to other, more dangerous areas.
• Has given more than $50,000 to political campaigns since 1999, almost all of it to Democrats.
5. California Water Czar - David J. Hayes
Title: Deputy Interior Secretary
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
Appointed: June 2009
Confirmed by Senate (as Deputy Interior Security): May 20, 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Interior
• Charged with coordinating federal agencies to ease California's water shortage
• Graduate of Stanford Law School; clerked for U.S. District Court for the D.C., has been a partner at two big D.C. law firms
• Was deputy interior secretary under Bruce Babbitt during Clinton administration
• From 1993 to 1995, was chairman of the board at the Environmental Law Institute, a non-profit research center.
• As a lobbyist, represented the Southern California Metropolitan Water District in 2001
• In August 2008, wrote a policy report while working at the Progressive Policy Institute accusing the Bush administration of leaving a “damaging legacy” in their natural resource management policies
• Donated $2,300 to Clinton during 2008 campaign; after she withdrew, donated $2,300 to Obama
6. Car Czar - Ron Bloom
NOTE: on July 13, 2009, Bloom took over as head of the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, replacing Steven Rattner
Title: Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council head Larry Summers
Appointed: July 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Treasury
• A leader of the White House task force overseeing auto company bailouts; worked on restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler LLC.
• Was special assistant to president of the United Steelworkers union from 1996-Feb 2009
• Has negotiated restructuring deals for more than 50 companies, getting major concessions from unions and companies.
• Was raised in New York in a pro-union family, which included a schoolteacher mother and unionized relatives.
• After working for the Service Employees International Union, got an MBA from Harvard University because he thought unions lacked business smarts, he said in a 1996 interview in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
• From 1985 to 1990, he worked as an investment banker with Lazard Freres & Co., which specializes in mergers, acquisitions and corporate restructuring, before co-founding the investment-banking firm Keilin and Bloom.
7. Central Region Czar - Dennis Ross
Title: Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Central Region (encompasses the Middle East, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia)
Salary: unknown
Reports to: National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones
Appointed: June 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: State
• Spent 12 years in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations trying to create a permanent agreement between the governments of Israel and the Palestinian territories
• In 1981, was named to President Ronald Reagan’s national security staff as the director of Near East and South Asian Affairs.
• Was director of the State Department’s Policy Planning office during President George H. W. Bush’s term.
• 1993: appointed to the position of Middle East coordinator, making him the top negotiator for peace between Israel and Palestinian territories
• After he left government in 2000, headed up Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a hawkish think tank with a pro-Israeli bent
8. Climate Czar - Todd Stern
Title: Special Envoy for Climate Change
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Appointed: January 2009
Agency or department that might have handled similar issues: Environmental Protection Agency; State
• Responsible for developing international approaches to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
• Served in the Clinton White House from 1993 to 1999; Was Head of the Initiative on Global Climate Change (1997 to 1999) and Adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury (1999 to 2001)
• As a top aide to President Clinton, helped negotiate the Kyoto and Buenos Aires climate pacts, both of which fell apart partially because of a lack of U.S. support during Bush administration.
• After Bush was elected to office, went to the Wilmer Hale law firm, where he is a partner in the regulatory and government affairs division.
• Was most recently a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focused on climate change and environmental issues.
• Has written extensively on climate change, and has called on the American government and the international community to take a series of steps to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
• Supports a national cap-and-trade system that would limit carbon emissions and reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil
• Has law degree from Harvard
9. Domestic Violence Czar - Lynn Rosenthal
Title: White House adviser on Violence Against Women
Salary: unknown
Reports to: President Obama and Vice President Biden
Appointed: June 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Health and Human Services
• Will advise the President and Vice President on domestic violence and sexual assault issues.
• 2000-2006: served as the Executive Director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence
• Was an advocate for the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2000 and 2005 and has assisted states and local communities with implementation of this federal legislation
• Was director of the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence
10. Drug Czar * - Gil Kerlikowske
Title: Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
Salary: unknown
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: March 2009
Confirmed by Senate: May 7, 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Justice
• Directs drug-control policy in the U.S.; is expected to shift drug policy to intervention, treatment and a reduction of problem drug use.
• Was police chief for the city of Seattle from 2000-2009
• Was Deputy Director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (1998 to 2000); Police Chief for the city of Buffalo (1994 to 1998); Police chief of Fort Pierce, Fla. (N/A to 1994)
• A strong gun-control advocate, urged both the Washington legislature and the U.S. Congress to pass an assault-weapons ban and has worked to close the loophole that doesn't require background checks at gun shows
• 2003: admitted that busting people for personal marijuana possession was not a top priority of the Seattle police department.
• As Seattle police chief, assigned an officer full-time to the drug court, which commuted sentences of drug users who complete medical treatment in lieu of going to jail.
11. Economic Czar * - Paul Volcker
Title: Chairman of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Salary: Volcker reportedly isn't paid for his advice.
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: January 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Treasury
• Charged with offering independent, nonpartisan information, analysis, and advice to the President as he formulates and implements his plans for economic recovery.
• Some reports say he's been marginalized by Larry Summers.
• Former Federal Reserve chairman (1979-1987)
• Was Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs, Department of the Treasury (1969 to 1974); Deputy Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs, Department of the Treasury (1963 to 1965)
• Gave Obama campaign $2,300 in 2008.
12. Energy and Environment Czar - Carol Browner
Title: Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change
Salary: $172,200
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: January 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: EPA
• Coordinates energy and climate policy, emphasizing regulation and conservation.
• Was Environmental Protection Agency administrator in the Clinton administration (1993-2000)
• Was Florida Secretary of the Environment (1991 to 1993)
• Founded and continues to serve as a principal of The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Also a principal of Albright Capital Management, an investment advisory firm that concentrates on emerging markets.
• Worked on the Socialist International's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which argues that the global community must work collectively to address environmental policies
• Described Bush administration as the "worst environmental administration ever"
• While orchestrating private discussions between the White House and auto industry officials on vehicle fuel efficiency standards, kept the talks as quiet as possible. Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, said, "We put nothing in writing, ever."
• 2003: A federal judge held the Environmental Protection Agency in contempt for destroying computer files during the Clinton administration that had been sought by a conservative legal foundation. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth also ordered the EPA to pay the Landmark Legal Foundation's legal fees and costs because the agency disobeyed his order to preserve the electronic records of Browner, the former EPA chief.
13. Faith-Based Czar * - Joshua DuBois
Title: Director of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Salary: $98,000
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: February 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Health and Human Services
• Acts as a liaison between faith and secular community groups and the White House, often partnering with them to tackle social issues. Helps these groups apply for federal grants available to them.
• Is 26 years old
• Has master’s in public affairs from Princeton University; served as associate pastor
• Worked for Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) as an intern and then as a fellow for Rep. Charles B. Rangel (DN. Y.).
• Hired as a legislative correspondent in Obama’s Senate office in May 2005
• In 2008, at the age of 25, was appointed director of religious affairs for the Obama campaign.
14. Government Performance Czar - Jeffrey Zients
Title: Chief Performance Officer
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzag
Appointed: April 2009
Confirmed by the Senate (as deputy director for management for the OMB): June 19, 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: OMB
• Charged with cutting costs and finding best practices throughout government.
• Has never worked in government before
• Was a chief executive and former management consultant
• Was founder of Portfolio Logic (2004 to present); Partner of the Washington Baseball Club (2004 to 2006); CEO of the Advisory Board (1998 to 2004)
• Has donated just over $90,000 to political campaigns since 1999, almost all of which went to Democratic candidates
15. Great Lakes Czar - Cameron Davis
Title: Special advisor to the U.S. EPA overseeing its Great Lakes restoration plan
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson
Appointed: June 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: Environmental Protection Agency
• Oversees the administration's initiative to restore the Great Lakes' environment.
• President of the Chicago-based environmentalist group Alliance for the Great Lakes
• Was a litigating attorney and served as an adjunct clinical assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School.
• Served with the United Nations Environment Program in Nairobi, Kenya, where he worked on the Montreal Protocol to protect the Earth’s ozone layer, and U.S. EPA’s Office of Regional Counsel in Chicago.
16. Green Jobs Czar - Van Jones
Title: Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Head of Council on Environmental Quality Nancy Sutley
Appointed: March 2009
Agency or department that might have handled similar issues: Environmental Protection Agency; Labor
• Will focus on environmentally-friendly employment within the administration and boost support for the idea nationwide
• Rose from near obscurity in the Oakland, Calif., grassroots organizing scene to the leader of a national movement to spur the green economy.
• Founded Green For All, an organization focused on creating green jobs in impoverished areas
• Also co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Color of Change, which includes Bay Area PoliceWatch, a group devoted to "protect[ing] the community from police misconduct"
• Published New York Times best-seller The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, in October 2008
• Started career as a prison-reform advocate in Oakland, Calif., lobbying for reform of the juvenile justice system and youth-violence prevention programs
• Has law degree from Yale
• 2007: worked on the Green Jobs Act with then-Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored the bill in the House
• 1993: was arrested at the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of cops in the Rodney King beating. "I was arrested simply for being a police observer," says Jones, who had just graduated from Yale Law School and was working with the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco.
• 1999: was arrested in the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization
• Excerpt from a Nov. 2005 interview in the East Bay Express:
Jones had planned to move to Washington, DC, and had already landed a job and an apartment there. But in jail, he said, "I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'" Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. "I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary." In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist." In 1994, the young activists formed a socialist collective, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, which held study groups on the theories of Marx and Lenin and dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia. They protested police brutality and got arrested for crashing through police barricades. In 1996, Jones decided to launch his own operation, which he named the Ella Baker Center after an unsung hero of the civil-rights movement.
17. Guantanamo Closure Czar - Daniel Fried
Title: Special envoy to oversee the closure of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
Appointed: March 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Justice; State
• Works to get help of foreign governments in moving toward closure of Guantanamo Bay, in fulfillment of Obama's promise to close the prison within a year of taking office.
• Was Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, State Department (2005 to 2009); Director for European and Eurasian Affairs, State Department (2001 to 2005); U.S. Ambassador to Poland (1997 to 2001)
18. Health Czar * - Nancy-Ann DeParle
Title: Counselor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform
Salary: $158,500
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: March 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Health and Human Services (HHS)
• Coordinates the development of the Administration's healthcare policy agenda.
• Experience: Managing Director, CCMP Capital (since 2001); Adjunct professor (focusing on healthcare policy), Wharton School of Business (since 2001); Commissioner, Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (since 2001); Fellow, Harvard Institue of Politics (2000 to 2001); Director, Healthcare Financing Administration (1997 to 2000)
• Has law degree from Harvard
• Served as the OMB’s representative on health-care reform during Bill Clinton’s first term
• As head of the HHS Health Care Financing Administration under Clinton, ran the largest health insurance provider in America, overseeing $600 billion in payments annually to 74 million recipients of Medicare and Medicaid
• 2001: left government to take a year-long fellowship at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, where she was part of Harvard’s Health Care Policy Forum and led a weekly study group on reforming Medicare.
• During Bush administration, sat on the boards of many health companies, from medical treatment producers to hospital systems
• In September 2008, donated $2,300 each to Clinton and Barack Obama.
19. Information Czar - Vivek Kundra
Title: Federal Chief Information Officer
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag
Appointed: March 2009
Agencies that might have handled similar issues: other federal agency CIOs
• Basically in charge of overseeing other federal agency CIOs and for setting technology policy across the government.
• Head of a federal technology budget that amounts to $71 billion annually
• Operation is housed in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and will likely have authority to question how money in departmental technology budgets is used
• Formerly head of the District of Columbia's technology operations
• Shortly after he joined the OMB, federal authorities raided his old District government office. They arrested two technology office managers and a subcontractor, charging them with a bribery scheme that allegedly defrauded the city out of at least $500,000. Kundra was not a suspect in the case, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
• Has a masters from Maryland in information technology.
• Experience: Washington, D.C. Chief Technology Officer (2007 to 2009); State of Virginia's Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Trade (2006 to 2007); CEO of computer security firm Creostar
20. Intelligence Czar * - Dennis Blair
Title: Director of National Intelligence
Salary: $197,700
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: January 2009
Confirmed by Senate: January 28, 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: CIA
• Nation’s top intelligence official.
• Retired four-star admiral.
• Graduate of the United States Naval Academy, 1968; sixth-generation naval officer
• Lacks professional roots in the world of intelligence
• Held a number of prestigious Washington posts, including the Pentagon’s top liaison to the CIA and director of the Joint Staff.
• Ran the non-profit Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), which focuses primarily on issues related to national security, and does a lot of work for the Defense Department. Left IDA under a cloud of controversy in mid-2006.
21. Mideast Peace Czar - George Mitchell
Title: Special Envoy for Middle East Peace
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
Appointed: January 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: State
• Works to maintain the shaky peace between Israel and Hamas after recent hostilities
• Senate majority leader from 1989 to 1994
• Was special envoy to Northern Ireland during the Clinton administration and lead investigator into steroid use in Major League Baseball.
• 2000: led a fact-finding committee to study violence in the Middle East; 2001's Mitchell Report formed the basis for the road map for Middle East peace
22. Pay Czar - Kenneth R. Feinberg
Title: Special Master on executive pay
Salary: reportedly receiving no compensation for his work.
Reports to: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
Appointed: June 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Treasury
• Named to examine compensation practices at companies that have been bailed out more than once by the federal government
• Oversaw the payouts to the families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
• Was the chief administrator to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, which commemorates the students who died in the April 2007 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech
• Founder and managing partner of Feinberg Rozen LLP (1992 to present), law firm specializing in mediation
• Was Chief of staff for Sen. Edward Kennedy (1978 to 1980)
• While working with the Feinberg Group, donated over $150,000, nearly all of which has gone to Democratic candidates and political action committees. In 2007, donated $2,300 to 2008 presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani (R).
23. Regulatory Czar - Cass R. Sunstein *
Title: Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Office of Management and Budget head Peter Orszag
Appointed: January 2009
Nomination was sent to Senate on April 20, 2009 - no action yet taken
Agency that might have handled similar issues: OMB
• Will be responsible for reviewing draft regulations and assessing their costs and benefits
• Is a Harvard Law School professor; prior to that, was a professor at the Univ. of Chicago Law School (1981-2008)
• Academic specialties: constitutional law, administrative law, and regulatory policy
• Obama: "Cass is not only a valued advisor, he is a dear friend"
• Known for advancing a field called "law and behavioral economics" that seeks to shape law and policy around the way research shows people actually behave; though embraced by conservatives, critics say it fails to account for the sometimes less-than-rational aspects of human behavior.
• In his 2002 book, Republic.com, discussed the drawbacks of limitless choices on the Internet that allow people to seek out only like-minded people and opinions that merely fortify their own views; he talked about the idea of the government requiring sites to link to opposing views. He later came to realize it was a "bad idea."
• In his 2004 book, Animal Rights, suggested that animals ought to be able to bring suit, with private citizens acting as their representatives, to ensure that animals are not treated in a way that violates current law.
• In a 2007 speech at Harvard he called for banning hunting in the U.S.
• The American Conservative Union started a website, Stop Sunstein, in an effort to keep him out of the White House.
24. Science Czar - John Holdren
Title: Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology
Salary: unknown
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: December 2008
Confirmed by Senate: March 19, 2009
Agency or department that might have handled similar issues: Energy
• Top adviser to Obama on science and technology, issues that are increasingly relevant to other issues such as homeland security, energy and environmentalism
• Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and Director, Program in Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (1996-2009); Harvard University Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy (1996-2009); University of California, Berkeley Professor of Energy and Resources Emeritus (1996 to present)
• Studied aerospace engineering and plasma physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — where he earned his BS and MS — and Stanford University, where he received his doctorate in 1970
• Is an outspoken advocate of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and believes the United States should sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
• In a 2008 New York Times op-ed, Holdren called climate change skeptics “dangerous” members of a “denier fringe.”
• In 1971, co-authored a paper in Global Ecology suggesting "some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century."
• Some conservative media outlets have called attention to a book Holdren co-authored in 1977 titled Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment. The book reportedly includes this statement: "population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution." Holdren's office says he "does not now and never has been an advocate of compulsory abortions or other repressive measures to limit fertility."
25. Stimulus Accountability Czar - Earl Devaney
Title: Chair of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Vice President Biden
Appointed: February 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: OMB
• Leads oversight board that monitors money spent by the stimulus package
• Experience: Inspector General at the Interior Department (1999 to present); Director of criminal enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency (1991 to 1999); Special Agent at the Secret Service (1970 to 1991)
• During his tenure at Interior, uncovered the shady dealings of disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, an investigation that eventually led to Abramoff's imprisonment and the resignation of Interior's no. 2, J. Steven Griles, for lying under oath about his own role in the scandal.
• On July 8, 2009, the U.S. General Services Administration issued a press release announcing an $18 million contract for a new recovery.gov web site, which quoted Devaney as saying, “We are pleased that another major milestone has been achieved."
26. Sudan Czar - J. Scott Gration
Title: Special Envoy to Sudan
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Appointed: March 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: State
• Will coordinate U.S. role in the aftermath of the genocide in Darfur
• Experience: Supreme Allied Command, NATO (2004 to 2005); Air Force assistant deputy undersecretary for international affairs (2003 to 2004)
• Commanded all air operations during the Iraq war in 2003
• 2006: left Air Force position to join Obama’s staff after traveling to Africa with the then-Senator from Illinois, even though he was a Republican
• Has won a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, a Defense Superior Service Medal and 16 other awards
• Is a fluent Swahili speaker who grew up in the Congo
• Has called on the Obama administration to incentivize participation by the Sudanese government in peace talks by lifting sanctions, a position that is controversial. Also worked to position himself as the principal negotiator between the Sudanese government and its adversaries in Darfur, and is planning an international conference for September 2009
• Has M.A. in security studies from Georgetown
27. TARP Czar - Herb Allison
Title: Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
Appointed: June 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Treasury
• Leads the government's $700 billion financial rescue program in the office of financial stability
• Veteran Wall Street banker and interim head of the mortgage-finance company Fannie Mae
• Worked at Merrill Lynch for 28 years, reaching position of president and COO
• Was CEO of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association College Retirement Equities Fund (2002 to 2008); CEO of the Alliance for Lifelong Learning (2000 to 2002)
• Has undergraduate degree from Yale and MBA from Stanford
• 2000: was John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign finance chairman
• In 2008, donated $2,300 to Obama's presidential campaign
28. Technology Czar - Aneesh Chopra
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Salary: unknown
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: April 2009
Confirmed by Senate: May 21, 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Commerce
• Will lead in the effort to eliminate wasteful government programs
• Will probably work to increase broadband access nationwide and computerize medical records
• Was Virginia’s secretary of technology (2005-2009)
• Has degree in public health from Johns Hopkins, Master's from Harvard in public policy
• Worked at Morgan Stanley as investment banker; also worked at Advisory Board, a health-care research and consultancy firm
• Has donated more than $24,000 since 1997 to various campaigns. With the exception of a $1,000 donation to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) in 2004, all of Chopra’s contributions have gone to Democrats. From 2007 to 2008, Chopra donated $2,750 to Obama’s presidential campaign.
29. Terrorism Czar - John Brennan
Title: Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
Salary: $172,200
Reports to: National Security Adviser James L. Jones
Appointed: January 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Homeland Security
• Under Obama's plan the homeland security adviser’s office would be eliminated, and the National Security Council would take over those duties. Brennan would be responsible for guarding against natural disasters and terrorism.
• Has called for increased integration between the Departments of Commerce, State and Defense
• Graduated from Fordham University in 1977 after a year of intensive Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in Cairo. Earned his J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin before joining the CIA as an intelligence director in 1980.
• Is a CIA veteran and fluent Arabic speaker
• Was CIA deputy executive director (2001 to 2003) and National Counter-Terrorism Center, Chair (2004 to 2005)
• Worked at Analysis Corp, (2005 to 2008);
• Staunch supporter of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Program; defended the use of extraordinary rendition, saying it is “an absolutely vital tool.”
30. Urban Affairs Czar - Adolfo Carrion Jr.
Title: White House Director of Urban Affairs
Salary: $158,500
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: February 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Housing and Urban Development
• Job entails coordinating transportation and housing initiatives, as well as serving as a conduit for federal aid to economically hard-hit cities.
• Has undergraduate degree in world religions from Kings College; became an associate pastor at a Bronx church; earned his master’s degree in urban planning from Hunter College
• Was Bronx Borough President (2001-2009); President of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (since 2007); City Council member (1998 to 2000)
• Many reporters say he has higher ambitions and will probably run for New York City mayor in the next ten years.
• Was an active campaigner for Obama, travelling across the country to speak on his behalf. He focused particularly on states with large Hispanic populations.
• The NY Daily News reported numerous developers made tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to Carrión around the same time he was considering approving their projects in the Bronx.
31. Weapons Czar - Ashton Carter
Title: Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Defense Secretary Robert Gates
Appointed: April 2009
Confirmed by Senate: April 23, 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Defense
• Will coordinate the Pentagon's acquisitions, technology and logistics for weapons.
• Will oversee a weapons-buying system that Obama has placed at the top of his list of federal programs he wants to fix and will be asked to quickly weigh in on difficult decisions concerning at least 10 major defense programs, while also instantly dissecting the procurement system’s ailments so he can advise the administration on its Pentagon acquisition reform agenda
• Is a physicist and Harvard academic whose only previous Pentagon stint was in a mid-level policy post from 1993 until 1996 under the Clinton administration
• Graduated from Yale summa cum laude; studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar and earned a doctorate in theoretical physics.
• Chair of Harvard’s International Relations, Science & Security Area International Security Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy (1993 to 1996); Director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School (early 1990s)
• Has donated primarily to Democratic politicians since 2000. He donated $6,900 to then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in 2007 and 2008. He gave the same amount to then Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) during that same span.
32. WMD Policy Czar - Gary Samore
Title: White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control
Salary: unknown
Reports to: National Security Advisor Gen. James L. Jones
Appointed: January 2009
Department or agency that might have handled similar issues: NSC; Defense; State
• Will coordinate issues related to weapons of mass destruction across the government. His portfolio includes proliferation, nuclear and conventional arms control, threat reduction, and terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction.
• Position sits within the National Security Council.
• Is a veteran arms control negotiator.
• B.A. in sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his PhD in government from Harvard University in 1984.
• After brief stints with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the RAND Corporation, joined the State Department during the Reagan administration in 1987. Held several positions there, including director of the Office of Regional Non-proliferation Affairs; special assistant to the Ambassador-at-Large for Non-proliferation and Nuclear Energy Policy; and deputy to Ambassador-at-Large for Korean Affairs Robert Gallucci. Helped to negotiate the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Framework Treaty
• Joined the Clinton administration’s National Security Council in 1995 as an adviser on nonproliferation. Coordinated U.S. policy on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
• Was Director, Council on Foreign Relations (2006 to 2009); Vice President for Global Security and Sustainability, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (2005); Researcher, International Institute of Strategic Studies (2001 to 2005)
Title: Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Appointed: January 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: State
• Will work with CENTCOM head Gen. David Petraeus to integrate U.S. civilian and military efforts in the region.
• 45 years of experience have made him a fixture of the Democrats' foreign policy establishment.
• Was U.S. ambassador to U.N., 1999-2001
• Brokered the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords in Bosnia
• Also served as Assistant secretary of state, East Asia and the Pacific (1976 to 1980); worked in foreign service (1962 to 1976)
• From 1972 through 1976, was the editor of Foreign Policy magazine.
2. AIDS Czar * - Jeffrey Crowley
Title: Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy
Salary: $102,000
Reports to: President Obama (as part of the Executive Office of the President’s Domestic Policy Council)
Appointed: February 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Health and Human Services
• Coordinates HIV/AIDS policy domestically and internationally.
• Senior Research Scholar at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute and a Senior Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University Law Center.
• Was Deputy Executive Director for Programs at the National Association of People with AIDS
• Has Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
3. Auto Recovery Czar - Ed Montgomery
Title: Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Larry Summers, the president's top economic adviser, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis
Appointed: March 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Labor
• Will work to leverage government resources to support the workers, communities and regions that rely on the American auto industry.
• Was Deputy Secretary and Chief Economist at the Labor Department (1997 to 1998)
• Is Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland (2003 to present)
• Has PhD in economics from Harvard
• In 2008, made $1,200 in political donations, all of which went to Obama’s presidential campaign.
• Wife is the granddaughter of a General Motors worker from Portland, Mich.
• Drives a 2000 Lincoln
4. Border Czar * - Alan Bersin
Title: Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and Special Representative for Border Affairs
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
Appointed: April 2009
Agencies that might have handled similar issues: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
• Will coordinate all of the department's border security and law-enforcement efforts.
• Essentially had the same job under President Clinton; served as Attorney General Janet Reno's special representative on border issues, a job that he held while retaining the position of U.S. attorney for San Diego.
• This time, boss will be Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who will expect him to handle illegal immigration and drug violence issues along the Mexican-American border
• Previous experience: Chairman of the San Diego Regional Airport Authority (2006 to 2009); Secretary of Education for California (2005 to 2006); Superintendent of San Diego Public Schools (1998 to 2005); U.S. Attorney for San Diego (1993 to 1998)
• Graduate of Harvard and Yale Law School
• Talking about border security shortly before he was named Clinton border czar in 1995, said he wanted to focus on suspected smugglers of both drugs and people and was not interested in prosecuting “economic migrants.”
• Often tied to the 1994 border policy called “Operation Gatekeeper.” The policy shifted the U.S. focus from the arresting of immigrants who actually crossed the border to an increased border presence designed to stop border crossing in the first place. When Bersin left the position in 1998, border arrests were on pace for an 18-year low of just more than 200,000. Latino groups complained that Operation Gatekeeper was immoral, saying the program monitored the border near San Diego but simply forced illegal immigrants to other, more dangerous areas.
• Has given more than $50,000 to political campaigns since 1999, almost all of it to Democrats.
5. California Water Czar - David J. Hayes
Title: Deputy Interior Secretary
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
Appointed: June 2009
Confirmed by Senate (as Deputy Interior Security): May 20, 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Interior
• Charged with coordinating federal agencies to ease California's water shortage
• Graduate of Stanford Law School; clerked for U.S. District Court for the D.C., has been a partner at two big D.C. law firms
• Was deputy interior secretary under Bruce Babbitt during Clinton administration
• From 1993 to 1995, was chairman of the board at the Environmental Law Institute, a non-profit research center.
• As a lobbyist, represented the Southern California Metropolitan Water District in 2001
• In August 2008, wrote a policy report while working at the Progressive Policy Institute accusing the Bush administration of leaving a “damaging legacy” in their natural resource management policies
• Donated $2,300 to Clinton during 2008 campaign; after she withdrew, donated $2,300 to Obama
6. Car Czar - Ron Bloom
NOTE: on July 13, 2009, Bloom took over as head of the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, replacing Steven Rattner
Title: Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council head Larry Summers
Appointed: July 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Treasury
• A leader of the White House task force overseeing auto company bailouts; worked on restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler LLC.
• Was special assistant to president of the United Steelworkers union from 1996-Feb 2009
• Has negotiated restructuring deals for more than 50 companies, getting major concessions from unions and companies.
• Was raised in New York in a pro-union family, which included a schoolteacher mother and unionized relatives.
• After working for the Service Employees International Union, got an MBA from Harvard University because he thought unions lacked business smarts, he said in a 1996 interview in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
• From 1985 to 1990, he worked as an investment banker with Lazard Freres & Co., which specializes in mergers, acquisitions and corporate restructuring, before co-founding the investment-banking firm Keilin and Bloom.
7. Central Region Czar - Dennis Ross
Title: Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Central Region (encompasses the Middle East, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia)
Salary: unknown
Reports to: National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones
Appointed: June 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: State
• Spent 12 years in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations trying to create a permanent agreement between the governments of Israel and the Palestinian territories
• In 1981, was named to President Ronald Reagan’s national security staff as the director of Near East and South Asian Affairs.
• Was director of the State Department’s Policy Planning office during President George H. W. Bush’s term.
• 1993: appointed to the position of Middle East coordinator, making him the top negotiator for peace between Israel and Palestinian territories
• After he left government in 2000, headed up Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a hawkish think tank with a pro-Israeli bent
8. Climate Czar - Todd Stern
Title: Special Envoy for Climate Change
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Appointed: January 2009
Agency or department that might have handled similar issues: Environmental Protection Agency; State
• Responsible for developing international approaches to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
• Served in the Clinton White House from 1993 to 1999; Was Head of the Initiative on Global Climate Change (1997 to 1999) and Adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury (1999 to 2001)
• As a top aide to President Clinton, helped negotiate the Kyoto and Buenos Aires climate pacts, both of which fell apart partially because of a lack of U.S. support during Bush administration.
• After Bush was elected to office, went to the Wilmer Hale law firm, where he is a partner in the regulatory and government affairs division.
• Was most recently a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focused on climate change and environmental issues.
• Has written extensively on climate change, and has called on the American government and the international community to take a series of steps to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
• Supports a national cap-and-trade system that would limit carbon emissions and reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil
• Has law degree from Harvard
9. Domestic Violence Czar - Lynn Rosenthal
Title: White House adviser on Violence Against Women
Salary: unknown
Reports to: President Obama and Vice President Biden
Appointed: June 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Health and Human Services
• Will advise the President and Vice President on domestic violence and sexual assault issues.
• 2000-2006: served as the Executive Director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence
• Was an advocate for the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2000 and 2005 and has assisted states and local communities with implementation of this federal legislation
• Was director of the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence
10. Drug Czar * - Gil Kerlikowske
Title: Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
Salary: unknown
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: March 2009
Confirmed by Senate: May 7, 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Justice
• Directs drug-control policy in the U.S.; is expected to shift drug policy to intervention, treatment and a reduction of problem drug use.
• Was police chief for the city of Seattle from 2000-2009
• Was Deputy Director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (1998 to 2000); Police Chief for the city of Buffalo (1994 to 1998); Police chief of Fort Pierce, Fla. (N/A to 1994)
• A strong gun-control advocate, urged both the Washington legislature and the U.S. Congress to pass an assault-weapons ban and has worked to close the loophole that doesn't require background checks at gun shows
• 2003: admitted that busting people for personal marijuana possession was not a top priority of the Seattle police department.
• As Seattle police chief, assigned an officer full-time to the drug court, which commuted sentences of drug users who complete medical treatment in lieu of going to jail.
11. Economic Czar * - Paul Volcker
Title: Chairman of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Salary: Volcker reportedly isn't paid for his advice.
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: January 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Treasury
• Charged with offering independent, nonpartisan information, analysis, and advice to the President as he formulates and implements his plans for economic recovery.
• Some reports say he's been marginalized by Larry Summers.
• Former Federal Reserve chairman (1979-1987)
• Was Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs, Department of the Treasury (1969 to 1974); Deputy Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs, Department of the Treasury (1963 to 1965)
• Gave Obama campaign $2,300 in 2008.
12. Energy and Environment Czar - Carol Browner
Title: Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change
Salary: $172,200
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: January 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: EPA
• Coordinates energy and climate policy, emphasizing regulation and conservation.
• Was Environmental Protection Agency administrator in the Clinton administration (1993-2000)
• Was Florida Secretary of the Environment (1991 to 1993)
• Founded and continues to serve as a principal of The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Also a principal of Albright Capital Management, an investment advisory firm that concentrates on emerging markets.
• Worked on the Socialist International's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which argues that the global community must work collectively to address environmental policies
• Described Bush administration as the "worst environmental administration ever"
• While orchestrating private discussions between the White House and auto industry officials on vehicle fuel efficiency standards, kept the talks as quiet as possible. Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, said, "We put nothing in writing, ever."
• 2003: A federal judge held the Environmental Protection Agency in contempt for destroying computer files during the Clinton administration that had been sought by a conservative legal foundation. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth also ordered the EPA to pay the Landmark Legal Foundation's legal fees and costs because the agency disobeyed his order to preserve the electronic records of Browner, the former EPA chief.
13. Faith-Based Czar * - Joshua DuBois
Title: Director of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Salary: $98,000
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: February 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Health and Human Services
• Acts as a liaison between faith and secular community groups and the White House, often partnering with them to tackle social issues. Helps these groups apply for federal grants available to them.
• Is 26 years old
• Has master’s in public affairs from Princeton University; served as associate pastor
• Worked for Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) as an intern and then as a fellow for Rep. Charles B. Rangel (DN. Y.).
• Hired as a legislative correspondent in Obama’s Senate office in May 2005
• In 2008, at the age of 25, was appointed director of religious affairs for the Obama campaign.
14. Government Performance Czar - Jeffrey Zients
Title: Chief Performance Officer
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzag
Appointed: April 2009
Confirmed by the Senate (as deputy director for management for the OMB): June 19, 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: OMB
• Charged with cutting costs and finding best practices throughout government.
• Has never worked in government before
• Was a chief executive and former management consultant
• Was founder of Portfolio Logic (2004 to present); Partner of the Washington Baseball Club (2004 to 2006); CEO of the Advisory Board (1998 to 2004)
• Has donated just over $90,000 to political campaigns since 1999, almost all of which went to Democratic candidates
15. Great Lakes Czar - Cameron Davis
Title: Special advisor to the U.S. EPA overseeing its Great Lakes restoration plan
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson
Appointed: June 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: Environmental Protection Agency
• Oversees the administration's initiative to restore the Great Lakes' environment.
• President of the Chicago-based environmentalist group Alliance for the Great Lakes
• Was a litigating attorney and served as an adjunct clinical assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School.
• Served with the United Nations Environment Program in Nairobi, Kenya, where he worked on the Montreal Protocol to protect the Earth’s ozone layer, and U.S. EPA’s Office of Regional Counsel in Chicago.
16. Green Jobs Czar - Van Jones
Title: Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Head of Council on Environmental Quality Nancy Sutley
Appointed: March 2009
Agency or department that might have handled similar issues: Environmental Protection Agency; Labor
• Will focus on environmentally-friendly employment within the administration and boost support for the idea nationwide
• Rose from near obscurity in the Oakland, Calif., grassroots organizing scene to the leader of a national movement to spur the green economy.
• Founded Green For All, an organization focused on creating green jobs in impoverished areas
• Also co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Color of Change, which includes Bay Area PoliceWatch, a group devoted to "protect[ing] the community from police misconduct"
• Published New York Times best-seller The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, in October 2008
• Started career as a prison-reform advocate in Oakland, Calif., lobbying for reform of the juvenile justice system and youth-violence prevention programs
• Has law degree from Yale
• 2007: worked on the Green Jobs Act with then-Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored the bill in the House
• 1993: was arrested at the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of cops in the Rodney King beating. "I was arrested simply for being a police observer," says Jones, who had just graduated from Yale Law School and was working with the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco.
• 1999: was arrested in the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization
• Excerpt from a Nov. 2005 interview in the East Bay Express:
Jones had planned to move to Washington, DC, and had already landed a job and an apartment there. But in jail, he said, "I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'" Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. "I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary." In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist." In 1994, the young activists formed a socialist collective, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, which held study groups on the theories of Marx and Lenin and dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia. They protested police brutality and got arrested for crashing through police barricades. In 1996, Jones decided to launch his own operation, which he named the Ella Baker Center after an unsung hero of the civil-rights movement.
17. Guantanamo Closure Czar - Daniel Fried
Title: Special envoy to oversee the closure of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
Appointed: March 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Justice; State
• Works to get help of foreign governments in moving toward closure of Guantanamo Bay, in fulfillment of Obama's promise to close the prison within a year of taking office.
• Was Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, State Department (2005 to 2009); Director for European and Eurasian Affairs, State Department (2001 to 2005); U.S. Ambassador to Poland (1997 to 2001)
18. Health Czar * - Nancy-Ann DeParle
Title: Counselor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform
Salary: $158,500
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: March 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Health and Human Services (HHS)
• Coordinates the development of the Administration's healthcare policy agenda.
• Experience: Managing Director, CCMP Capital (since 2001); Adjunct professor (focusing on healthcare policy), Wharton School of Business (since 2001); Commissioner, Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (since 2001); Fellow, Harvard Institue of Politics (2000 to 2001); Director, Healthcare Financing Administration (1997 to 2000)
• Has law degree from Harvard
• Served as the OMB’s representative on health-care reform during Bill Clinton’s first term
• As head of the HHS Health Care Financing Administration under Clinton, ran the largest health insurance provider in America, overseeing $600 billion in payments annually to 74 million recipients of Medicare and Medicaid
• 2001: left government to take a year-long fellowship at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, where she was part of Harvard’s Health Care Policy Forum and led a weekly study group on reforming Medicare.
• During Bush administration, sat on the boards of many health companies, from medical treatment producers to hospital systems
• In September 2008, donated $2,300 each to Clinton and Barack Obama.
19. Information Czar - Vivek Kundra
Title: Federal Chief Information Officer
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag
Appointed: March 2009
Agencies that might have handled similar issues: other federal agency CIOs
• Basically in charge of overseeing other federal agency CIOs and for setting technology policy across the government.
• Head of a federal technology budget that amounts to $71 billion annually
• Operation is housed in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and will likely have authority to question how money in departmental technology budgets is used
• Formerly head of the District of Columbia's technology operations
• Shortly after he joined the OMB, federal authorities raided his old District government office. They arrested two technology office managers and a subcontractor, charging them with a bribery scheme that allegedly defrauded the city out of at least $500,000. Kundra was not a suspect in the case, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
• Has a masters from Maryland in information technology.
• Experience: Washington, D.C. Chief Technology Officer (2007 to 2009); State of Virginia's Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Trade (2006 to 2007); CEO of computer security firm Creostar
20. Intelligence Czar * - Dennis Blair
Title: Director of National Intelligence
Salary: $197,700
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: January 2009
Confirmed by Senate: January 28, 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: CIA
• Nation’s top intelligence official.
• Retired four-star admiral.
• Graduate of the United States Naval Academy, 1968; sixth-generation naval officer
• Lacks professional roots in the world of intelligence
• Held a number of prestigious Washington posts, including the Pentagon’s top liaison to the CIA and director of the Joint Staff.
• Ran the non-profit Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), which focuses primarily on issues related to national security, and does a lot of work for the Defense Department. Left IDA under a cloud of controversy in mid-2006.
21. Mideast Peace Czar - George Mitchell
Title: Special Envoy for Middle East Peace
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
Appointed: January 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: State
• Works to maintain the shaky peace between Israel and Hamas after recent hostilities
• Senate majority leader from 1989 to 1994
• Was special envoy to Northern Ireland during the Clinton administration and lead investigator into steroid use in Major League Baseball.
• 2000: led a fact-finding committee to study violence in the Middle East; 2001's Mitchell Report formed the basis for the road map for Middle East peace
22. Pay Czar - Kenneth R. Feinberg
Title: Special Master on executive pay
Salary: reportedly receiving no compensation for his work.
Reports to: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
Appointed: June 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Treasury
• Named to examine compensation practices at companies that have been bailed out more than once by the federal government
• Oversaw the payouts to the families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
• Was the chief administrator to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, which commemorates the students who died in the April 2007 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech
• Founder and managing partner of Feinberg Rozen LLP (1992 to present), law firm specializing in mediation
• Was Chief of staff for Sen. Edward Kennedy (1978 to 1980)
• While working with the Feinberg Group, donated over $150,000, nearly all of which has gone to Democratic candidates and political action committees. In 2007, donated $2,300 to 2008 presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani (R).
23. Regulatory Czar - Cass R. Sunstein *
Title: Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Office of Management and Budget head Peter Orszag
Appointed: January 2009
Nomination was sent to Senate on April 20, 2009 - no action yet taken
Agency that might have handled similar issues: OMB
• Will be responsible for reviewing draft regulations and assessing their costs and benefits
• Is a Harvard Law School professor; prior to that, was a professor at the Univ. of Chicago Law School (1981-2008)
• Academic specialties: constitutional law, administrative law, and regulatory policy
• Obama: "Cass is not only a valued advisor, he is a dear friend"
• Known for advancing a field called "law and behavioral economics" that seeks to shape law and policy around the way research shows people actually behave; though embraced by conservatives, critics say it fails to account for the sometimes less-than-rational aspects of human behavior.
• In his 2002 book, Republic.com, discussed the drawbacks of limitless choices on the Internet that allow people to seek out only like-minded people and opinions that merely fortify their own views; he talked about the idea of the government requiring sites to link to opposing views. He later came to realize it was a "bad idea."
• In his 2004 book, Animal Rights, suggested that animals ought to be able to bring suit, with private citizens acting as their representatives, to ensure that animals are not treated in a way that violates current law.
• In a 2007 speech at Harvard he called for banning hunting in the U.S.
• The American Conservative Union started a website, Stop Sunstein, in an effort to keep him out of the White House.
24. Science Czar - John Holdren
Title: Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology
Salary: unknown
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: December 2008
Confirmed by Senate: March 19, 2009
Agency or department that might have handled similar issues: Energy
• Top adviser to Obama on science and technology, issues that are increasingly relevant to other issues such as homeland security, energy and environmentalism
• Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and Director, Program in Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (1996-2009); Harvard University Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy (1996-2009); University of California, Berkeley Professor of Energy and Resources Emeritus (1996 to present)
• Studied aerospace engineering and plasma physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — where he earned his BS and MS — and Stanford University, where he received his doctorate in 1970
• Is an outspoken advocate of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and believes the United States should sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
• In a 2008 New York Times op-ed, Holdren called climate change skeptics “dangerous” members of a “denier fringe.”
• In 1971, co-authored a paper in Global Ecology suggesting "some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century."
• Some conservative media outlets have called attention to a book Holdren co-authored in 1977 titled Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment. The book reportedly includes this statement: "population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution." Holdren's office says he "does not now and never has been an advocate of compulsory abortions or other repressive measures to limit fertility."
25. Stimulus Accountability Czar - Earl Devaney
Title: Chair of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Vice President Biden
Appointed: February 2009
Agency that might have handled similar issues: OMB
• Leads oversight board that monitors money spent by the stimulus package
• Experience: Inspector General at the Interior Department (1999 to present); Director of criminal enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency (1991 to 1999); Special Agent at the Secret Service (1970 to 1991)
• During his tenure at Interior, uncovered the shady dealings of disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, an investigation that eventually led to Abramoff's imprisonment and the resignation of Interior's no. 2, J. Steven Griles, for lying under oath about his own role in the scandal.
• On July 8, 2009, the U.S. General Services Administration issued a press release announcing an $18 million contract for a new recovery.gov web site, which quoted Devaney as saying, “We are pleased that another major milestone has been achieved."
26. Sudan Czar - J. Scott Gration
Title: Special Envoy to Sudan
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Appointed: March 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: State
• Will coordinate U.S. role in the aftermath of the genocide in Darfur
• Experience: Supreme Allied Command, NATO (2004 to 2005); Air Force assistant deputy undersecretary for international affairs (2003 to 2004)
• Commanded all air operations during the Iraq war in 2003
• 2006: left Air Force position to join Obama’s staff after traveling to Africa with the then-Senator from Illinois, even though he was a Republican
• Has won a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, a Defense Superior Service Medal and 16 other awards
• Is a fluent Swahili speaker who grew up in the Congo
• Has called on the Obama administration to incentivize participation by the Sudanese government in peace talks by lifting sanctions, a position that is controversial. Also worked to position himself as the principal negotiator between the Sudanese government and its adversaries in Darfur, and is planning an international conference for September 2009
• Has M.A. in security studies from Georgetown
27. TARP Czar - Herb Allison
Title: Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
Appointed: June 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Treasury
• Leads the government's $700 billion financial rescue program in the office of financial stability
• Veteran Wall Street banker and interim head of the mortgage-finance company Fannie Mae
• Worked at Merrill Lynch for 28 years, reaching position of president and COO
• Was CEO of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association College Retirement Equities Fund (2002 to 2008); CEO of the Alliance for Lifelong Learning (2000 to 2002)
• Has undergraduate degree from Yale and MBA from Stanford
• 2000: was John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign finance chairman
• In 2008, donated $2,300 to Obama's presidential campaign
28. Technology Czar - Aneesh Chopra
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Salary: unknown
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: April 2009
Confirmed by Senate: May 21, 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Commerce
• Will lead in the effort to eliminate wasteful government programs
• Will probably work to increase broadband access nationwide and computerize medical records
• Was Virginia’s secretary of technology (2005-2009)
• Has degree in public health from Johns Hopkins, Master's from Harvard in public policy
• Worked at Morgan Stanley as investment banker; also worked at Advisory Board, a health-care research and consultancy firm
• Has donated more than $24,000 since 1997 to various campaigns. With the exception of a $1,000 donation to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) in 2004, all of Chopra’s contributions have gone to Democrats. From 2007 to 2008, Chopra donated $2,750 to Obama’s presidential campaign.
29. Terrorism Czar - John Brennan
Title: Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
Salary: $172,200
Reports to: National Security Adviser James L. Jones
Appointed: January 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Homeland Security
• Under Obama's plan the homeland security adviser’s office would be eliminated, and the National Security Council would take over those duties. Brennan would be responsible for guarding against natural disasters and terrorism.
• Has called for increased integration between the Departments of Commerce, State and Defense
• Graduated from Fordham University in 1977 after a year of intensive Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in Cairo. Earned his J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin before joining the CIA as an intelligence director in 1980.
• Is a CIA veteran and fluent Arabic speaker
• Was CIA deputy executive director (2001 to 2003) and National Counter-Terrorism Center, Chair (2004 to 2005)
• Worked at Analysis Corp, (2005 to 2008);
• Staunch supporter of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Program; defended the use of extraordinary rendition, saying it is “an absolutely vital tool.”
30. Urban Affairs Czar - Adolfo Carrion Jr.
Title: White House Director of Urban Affairs
Salary: $158,500
Reports to: President Obama
Appointed: February 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Housing and Urban Development
• Job entails coordinating transportation and housing initiatives, as well as serving as a conduit for federal aid to economically hard-hit cities.
• Has undergraduate degree in world religions from Kings College; became an associate pastor at a Bronx church; earned his master’s degree in urban planning from Hunter College
• Was Bronx Borough President (2001-2009); President of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (since 2007); City Council member (1998 to 2000)
• Many reporters say he has higher ambitions and will probably run for New York City mayor in the next ten years.
• Was an active campaigner for Obama, travelling across the country to speak on his behalf. He focused particularly on states with large Hispanic populations.
• The NY Daily News reported numerous developers made tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to Carrión around the same time he was considering approving their projects in the Bronx.
31. Weapons Czar - Ashton Carter
Title: Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics
Salary: unknown
Reports to: Defense Secretary Robert Gates
Appointed: April 2009
Confirmed by Senate: April 23, 2009
Department that might have handled similar issues: Defense
• Will coordinate the Pentagon's acquisitions, technology and logistics for weapons.
• Will oversee a weapons-buying system that Obama has placed at the top of his list of federal programs he wants to fix and will be asked to quickly weigh in on difficult decisions concerning at least 10 major defense programs, while also instantly dissecting the procurement system’s ailments so he can advise the administration on its Pentagon acquisition reform agenda
• Is a physicist and Harvard academic whose only previous Pentagon stint was in a mid-level policy post from 1993 until 1996 under the Clinton administration
• Graduated from Yale summa cum laude; studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar and earned a doctorate in theoretical physics.
• Chair of Harvard’s International Relations, Science & Security Area International Security Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy (1993 to 1996); Director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School (early 1990s)
• Has donated primarily to Democratic politicians since 2000. He donated $6,900 to then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in 2007 and 2008. He gave the same amount to then Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) during that same span.
32. WMD Policy Czar - Gary Samore
Title: White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control
Salary: unknown
Reports to: National Security Advisor Gen. James L. Jones
Appointed: January 2009
Department or agency that might have handled similar issues: NSC; Defense; State
• Will coordinate issues related to weapons of mass destruction across the government. His portfolio includes proliferation, nuclear and conventional arms control, threat reduction, and terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction.
• Position sits within the National Security Council.
• Is a veteran arms control negotiator.
• B.A. in sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his PhD in government from Harvard University in 1984.
• After brief stints with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the RAND Corporation, joined the State Department during the Reagan administration in 1987. Held several positions there, including director of the Office of Regional Non-proliferation Affairs; special assistant to the Ambassador-at-Large for Non-proliferation and Nuclear Energy Policy; and deputy to Ambassador-at-Large for Korean Affairs Robert Gallucci. Helped to negotiate the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Framework Treaty
• Joined the Clinton administration’s National Security Council in 1995 as an adviser on nonproliferation. Coordinated U.S. policy on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
• Was Director, Council on Foreign Relations (2006 to 2009); Vice President for Global Security and Sustainability, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (2005); Researcher, International Institute of Strategic Studies (2001 to 2005)
Monday, August 24, 2009
Obama Town Hall in Bozeman, Montana Explained
This came to me from a reliable source, and fits nicely with the press conference where Gibbs denies the White House preselects Town Hall guests at Obama gatherings.
This came from a friend in southwest Virginia , who got it from a friend in Montana.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Just a little bit of actual truthful information. We need to pray for our nation . Janice)
Eye witness report filed by a Bozeman , MT resident.
By now you have probably heard that President Obama visited Bozman Montana last
Friday. However, there are many things that the major news did not cover.
I feel that since Bill and I live here and we were at the airport on Friday
I should share some first hand observations with you. Whatever you decide to do with the
information is up to you.
On Wednesday, August 5th it was announced locally that the President would
be visiting. There are many Tea Party groups in this area that do not support
OBAMACARE and His socialist policies. These groups began e-mailing, talking and deciding on what they were going to do. The White House did not release ANY details other than the date of the visit.
On about Tuesday Bill learned from a friend working at the airport that they would be holding the "Town Hall" at the airport. Our airport is actually located outside of Belgrade (tiny town) in a very remote and isolated location. There is nothing around there. For a place to assemble the White House chose to use the most remote hanger on the airfield. It is so far off in a corner that access is difficult. The hanger is isolated and away from the public.
FYI: We have many areas in Belgrade and Bozeman which could have held a
large number of folks. All with sufficient parking. (gymnasiums/auditoriums). All
of which have chairs and tables. Instead the White House chose this empty remote location, and needed to ship in chars, tables and etc all at TAXPAYER EXPENSE.
During the week, TONS of cargo was coming in to the tiny airport.
Airport employees could not believe just how much, it just kept coming in.
The shipping must have cost hundreds of thousand of dollars of TAXPAYER dollars.
Late Tuesday/early Wednesday on the 12th, it was announced that tickets for the event would be distributed to the public on Thursday 9 AM from two locations in town. The President would be arriving around 12:30 noon on Friday.
Thursday morning about 600 tickets were handed out. However, we knew that 1500 had been printed at a local printing shop per White House request. It turns out that 900 tickets were reserved for the Obama Mercenaries that would be arriving latter
This same morning someone called into the radio and alerted us to the fact that THOUSANDS OF TAX DOLLARS worth of lobster were being shipped in for the Obama event. Montana , which has some of the best beef in the nation could have used the money, but they got Massachusetts lobsters instead, denying us some badly needed "STIMULUS DOLLARS". You think Obama would be considerate enough to help out the local economy, but it was not to be.
One can only imagine what the traveling White House is spending our TAX PAYER $$$ on.
On Friday, Bill and I got out to the airport about 10:45am. The groups that
wanted to protest Obama's spending and healthcare had received a permit. It limited us to a roped off area far away from the main event. We figured, and figured correctly, that we would be far away from the remote hanger so we did not spoil the President's image that every American supports him.
Soon, large motor coaches arrived , carrying SEIU (Service Employees International Union) members. They drove up onto the our area (illegal)and unloaded right there. When the two crowds mixed it created quite a commotion. 2 of the SEIU people were trying to make trouble and start a fight with our people.. Police did get involved and arrested one man, but they said they did not have the man power to handle the large crowd of SEIU Mercenaries.
The SEIU crowd, about 900, was large, organized and young. About 99% were under the age of 30. Few of them were locals! They had bullhorns and PROFESSIONALLY made signs. Some wore preprinted T-shirts. The Planned Parenthood folks were with them.....professing abortion rights with their T-shirts and preprinted signs. (BTW, these folks did have a permit to protest, but it was for another area).
Police herded those against healthcare/spending and wisely separated us from the SEIU crowd to avoid confrontation. The Tea Party folk were orderly and respectful. Even though SEIU kept coming over and walking through our lines, trying to be very intimidating and aggressive. All this was being controlled by the bull horn equipped yellow shirted SEIU leaders who were managing the crowd..
The Tea Parties had Montana folks from ALL OVER the state with their homemade signs.
Even their DOGS were decked out with homemade signs. We had cowboys, nurses, doctors you name it. We were even joined by a Texan who had been driving through. He found out about the occasion, went to the store, made a sign, and came to support our protest.
If you are wondering about the press.....Well, all of the major networks
were over by that remote hangar I mentioned. They were conveniently parked
on the other side of the buildings FAR away. None of our crowd were even
visible to them. I have my doubts that they knew anything about us,
as they were strategically located to avoid the seeing us.
We did have some local news media around us from this state and Idaho .
Speaking of the local media...they were invited. However, all questions had
to be turned into the White House in advance of the event. Wouldn't want
anyone to have to think off the top of their head!
It was very obvious that it was meant to be totally controlled White House event. Everything was orchestrated down to the last detail to make it appear
that Montana is just crazy for Obama and his policies. If anything was artificial it was the Obama crowd. We learned that the White House had called our local HRDC (Human Resource and Development Committee) and asked for the names of OBAMA Supporters. These were invited. Smoke and mirrors...EVERYTHING was staged!!!!!!!!!!!
Everything was artificial, everything was fake.....
I am very dismayed about what I observed about our current White House. The
amount of control and manipulation was unbelievable. I felt I was not living
in the United States of America , more like North Korea . I was physically
nauseous. Bill and I have been around when Presidents or Heads of State
visit. It has NEVER been like this. I am truly very frightened for our
country.
America needs your prayers and your voices. If you care about our country
please get involved. Know the issues. Let Congress hear your voices again
and again!! If OBAMA is willing to put forth so much effort to BULLY a small
town in Montana , one can only imagine what is going on in Washington DC !!!
WARNING: What you are seeing in the main stream media is a bold faced lie! It is artificial. It is fake. It is nothing more that a very expensive commercial made with our own money! And... it is time to stop this madness!!!!
This came from a friend in southwest Virginia , who got it from a friend in Montana.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Just a little bit of actual truthful information. We need to pray for our nation . Janice)
Eye witness report filed by a Bozeman , MT resident.
By now you have probably heard that President Obama visited Bozman Montana last
Friday. However, there are many things that the major news did not cover.
I feel that since Bill and I live here and we were at the airport on Friday
I should share some first hand observations with you. Whatever you decide to do with the
information is up to you.
On Wednesday, August 5th it was announced locally that the President would
be visiting. There are many Tea Party groups in this area that do not support
OBAMACARE and His socialist policies. These groups began e-mailing, talking and deciding on what they were going to do. The White House did not release ANY details other than the date of the visit.
On about Tuesday Bill learned from a friend working at the airport that they would be holding the "Town Hall" at the airport. Our airport is actually located outside of Belgrade (tiny town) in a very remote and isolated location. There is nothing around there. For a place to assemble the White House chose to use the most remote hanger on the airfield. It is so far off in a corner that access is difficult. The hanger is isolated and away from the public.
FYI: We have many areas in Belgrade and Bozeman which could have held a
large number of folks. All with sufficient parking. (gymnasiums/auditoriums). All
of which have chairs and tables. Instead the White House chose this empty remote location, and needed to ship in chars, tables and etc all at TAXPAYER EXPENSE.
During the week, TONS of cargo was coming in to the tiny airport.
Airport employees could not believe just how much, it just kept coming in.
The shipping must have cost hundreds of thousand of dollars of TAXPAYER dollars.
Late Tuesday/early Wednesday on the 12th, it was announced that tickets for the event would be distributed to the public on Thursday 9 AM from two locations in town. The President would be arriving around 12:30 noon on Friday.
Thursday morning about 600 tickets were handed out. However, we knew that 1500 had been printed at a local printing shop per White House request. It turns out that 900 tickets were reserved for the Obama Mercenaries that would be arriving latter
This same morning someone called into the radio and alerted us to the fact that THOUSANDS OF TAX DOLLARS worth of lobster were being shipped in for the Obama event. Montana , which has some of the best beef in the nation could have used the money, but they got Massachusetts lobsters instead, denying us some badly needed "STIMULUS DOLLARS". You think Obama would be considerate enough to help out the local economy, but it was not to be.
One can only imagine what the traveling White House is spending our TAX PAYER $$$ on.
On Friday, Bill and I got out to the airport about 10:45am. The groups that
wanted to protest Obama's spending and healthcare had received a permit. It limited us to a roped off area far away from the main event. We figured, and figured correctly, that we would be far away from the remote hanger so we did not spoil the President's image that every American supports him.
Soon, large motor coaches arrived , carrying SEIU (Service Employees International Union) members. They drove up onto the our area (illegal)and unloaded right there. When the two crowds mixed it created quite a commotion. 2 of the SEIU people were trying to make trouble and start a fight with our people.. Police did get involved and arrested one man, but they said they did not have the man power to handle the large crowd of SEIU Mercenaries.
The SEIU crowd, about 900, was large, organized and young. About 99% were under the age of 30. Few of them were locals! They had bullhorns and PROFESSIONALLY made signs. Some wore preprinted T-shirts. The Planned Parenthood folks were with them.....professing abortion rights with their T-shirts and preprinted signs. (BTW, these folks did have a permit to protest, but it was for another area).
Police herded those against healthcare/spending and wisely separated us from the SEIU crowd to avoid confrontation. The Tea Party folk were orderly and respectful. Even though SEIU kept coming over and walking through our lines, trying to be very intimidating and aggressive. All this was being controlled by the bull horn equipped yellow shirted SEIU leaders who were managing the crowd..
The Tea Parties had Montana folks from ALL OVER the state with their homemade signs.
Even their DOGS were decked out with homemade signs. We had cowboys, nurses, doctors you name it. We were even joined by a Texan who had been driving through. He found out about the occasion, went to the store, made a sign, and came to support our protest.
If you are wondering about the press.....Well, all of the major networks
were over by that remote hangar I mentioned. They were conveniently parked
on the other side of the buildings FAR away. None of our crowd were even
visible to them. I have my doubts that they knew anything about us,
as they were strategically located to avoid the seeing us.
We did have some local news media around us from this state and Idaho .
Speaking of the local media...they were invited. However, all questions had
to be turned into the White House in advance of the event. Wouldn't want
anyone to have to think off the top of their head!
It was very obvious that it was meant to be totally controlled White House event. Everything was orchestrated down to the last detail to make it appear
that Montana is just crazy for Obama and his policies. If anything was artificial it was the Obama crowd. We learned that the White House had called our local HRDC (Human Resource and Development Committee) and asked for the names of OBAMA Supporters. These were invited. Smoke and mirrors...EVERYTHING was staged!!!!!!!!!!!
Everything was artificial, everything was fake.....
I am very dismayed about what I observed about our current White House. The
amount of control and manipulation was unbelievable. I felt I was not living
in the United States of America , more like North Korea . I was physically
nauseous. Bill and I have been around when Presidents or Heads of State
visit. It has NEVER been like this. I am truly very frightened for our
country.
America needs your prayers and your voices. If you care about our country
please get involved. Know the issues. Let Congress hear your voices again
and again!! If OBAMA is willing to put forth so much effort to BULLY a small
town in Montana , one can only imagine what is going on in Washington DC !!!
WARNING: What you are seeing in the main stream media is a bold faced lie! It is artificial. It is fake. It is nothing more that a very expensive commercial made with our own money! And... it is time to stop this madness!!!!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Response from Jhnny Isakson Re Health Care Reform
Dear Mr. Shirk:
Thank you for contacting me regarding health care reform. I appreciate the comments you have shared with me and the opportunity to respond.
As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee as well as a former small business owner, I am aware of the problems our nation faces regarding health care, and am sensitive to the struggles the average, hard-working American faces when trying to gain access to adequate and affordable health care. I agree we must look for solutions to find ways to provide affordable health care to individuals who lack access to health insurance through an employer.
On July 15, I voted against a health care reform bill that was crafted exclusively by Senate Democrats. Republicans were shut out of the drafting of the bill, and numerous attempts to improve the bill in Committee were blocked by Committee Democrats. The bill passed out of Committee by a vote of 13 to 10. As written, this bill will do nothing to alleviate the financial burden of health care costs or raise the standard of care. This flawed health care reform bill will cost U.S. taxpayers over $1 trillion dollars and will place a massive financial burden on Georgia and other states to pay for a proposed 50 percent expansion of Medicaid eligibility.
I believe that the government-run "public option" plan included in this bill will end up decreasing choice and quality for consumers. It also will place the federal government in unfair competition with private health insurers and managed care providers, as it will be impossible for private entities to compete fairly with the government that regulates them, taxes them, and is exempt from having to pay taxes itself. I also oppose a mandate in the bill that will require employers with more than 25 workers to provide insurance or pay a penalty. I believe that provision would force many small businesses to eliminate jobs.
With a likely cost of more than $1 trillion, I am disappointed that the Committee rejected several amendments designed to reduce frivolous medical lawsuits. These lawsuits dive up health care costs by forcing physicians to purchase expensive malpractice policies and practice defensive medicine by ordering wasteful tests and procedures.
This bill will also expand the number of individuals eligible for Medicaid by allowing individuals earning up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level to be eligible for full Medicaid benefits. Currently, Medicaid is available to only those who earn up to 100 percent of the poverty level, meaning that the new plan represents a 50 percent increase in Medicaid. When Medicaid was first created in 1968, Georgia's total Medicaid spending was nearly $7.7 million, or 1 percent of all state spending. In 2008, Georgia's total Medicaid spending was over $2.4 billion, or 12 percent of all state spending. This new proposal would cost Georgia and other states billions of additional dollars to meet the 50 percent increase for their required share of Medicaid costs.
There are many good proposals from the Republican side of the aisle on how to address health care reform in creative ways. Many of these proposals focus on health care coverage through a private market provider-an idea that I support-rather than single-payer government insurance. Access to insurance through a private entity will increase choice for the consumer and quality for the patient. Numerous Republican amendments designed to reign in out-of-control spending and achieve true, effective reform were rejected.
I am a co-sponsor of S.1099, the Patient's Choice Act of 2009, which seeks to strengthen the relationship between patient and doctors by using choice and competition, rather than health care rationing and restriction, to contain costs and ensure affordable health care for all Americans. For more information on the Patient Choice Act please visit my website at http://isakson.senate.gov/healthcare.html.
Thank you again for contacting me and for your advocacy on behalf of health care reform. Please visit my webpage at http://isakson.senate.gov/ for more information on the issues important to you and to sign up for my e-newsletter.
Sincerely,
Johnny Isakson
United States Senator
Thank you for contacting me regarding health care reform. I appreciate the comments you have shared with me and the opportunity to respond.
As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee as well as a former small business owner, I am aware of the problems our nation faces regarding health care, and am sensitive to the struggles the average, hard-working American faces when trying to gain access to adequate and affordable health care. I agree we must look for solutions to find ways to provide affordable health care to individuals who lack access to health insurance through an employer.
On July 15, I voted against a health care reform bill that was crafted exclusively by Senate Democrats. Republicans were shut out of the drafting of the bill, and numerous attempts to improve the bill in Committee were blocked by Committee Democrats. The bill passed out of Committee by a vote of 13 to 10. As written, this bill will do nothing to alleviate the financial burden of health care costs or raise the standard of care. This flawed health care reform bill will cost U.S. taxpayers over $1 trillion dollars and will place a massive financial burden on Georgia and other states to pay for a proposed 50 percent expansion of Medicaid eligibility.
I believe that the government-run "public option" plan included in this bill will end up decreasing choice and quality for consumers. It also will place the federal government in unfair competition with private health insurers and managed care providers, as it will be impossible for private entities to compete fairly with the government that regulates them, taxes them, and is exempt from having to pay taxes itself. I also oppose a mandate in the bill that will require employers with more than 25 workers to provide insurance or pay a penalty. I believe that provision would force many small businesses to eliminate jobs.
With a likely cost of more than $1 trillion, I am disappointed that the Committee rejected several amendments designed to reduce frivolous medical lawsuits. These lawsuits dive up health care costs by forcing physicians to purchase expensive malpractice policies and practice defensive medicine by ordering wasteful tests and procedures.
This bill will also expand the number of individuals eligible for Medicaid by allowing individuals earning up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level to be eligible for full Medicaid benefits. Currently, Medicaid is available to only those who earn up to 100 percent of the poverty level, meaning that the new plan represents a 50 percent increase in Medicaid. When Medicaid was first created in 1968, Georgia's total Medicaid spending was nearly $7.7 million, or 1 percent of all state spending. In 2008, Georgia's total Medicaid spending was over $2.4 billion, or 12 percent of all state spending. This new proposal would cost Georgia and other states billions of additional dollars to meet the 50 percent increase for their required share of Medicaid costs.
There are many good proposals from the Republican side of the aisle on how to address health care reform in creative ways. Many of these proposals focus on health care coverage through a private market provider-an idea that I support-rather than single-payer government insurance. Access to insurance through a private entity will increase choice for the consumer and quality for the patient. Numerous Republican amendments designed to reign in out-of-control spending and achieve true, effective reform were rejected.
I am a co-sponsor of S.1099, the Patient's Choice Act of 2009, which seeks to strengthen the relationship between patient and doctors by using choice and competition, rather than health care rationing and restriction, to contain costs and ensure affordable health care for all Americans. For more information on the Patient Choice Act please visit my website at http://isakson.senate.gov/healthcare.html.
Thank you again for contacting me and for your advocacy on behalf of health care reform. Please visit my webpage at http://isakson.senate.gov/ for more information on the issues important to you and to sign up for my e-newsletter.
Sincerely,
Johnny Isakson
United States Senator
Response from Saxby Chambliss Re Health Care Reform
Dear Mr. Shirk:
Thank you for contacting me regarding your concerns about health care reform. It is good to hear from you.
As Congress and the Administration begin the debate on health care reform, all parties must commit to a full and thorough debate. With health care representing 17% of our nation's economy, both the House and Senate must devote the appropriate time and focus on this matter.
In the Senate, the two Committees of jurisdiction continue to review possible legislation and committee amendments. I agree that it is important for Congress to address the issues; however, I will urge my colleagues to take our time and debate all of the issues and proposals so that the American people can follow and understand the development and discussion of the legislation.
After committee action, the full Senate is expected to begin debate regarding comprehensive health care reform. While we have yet to see the final language of a bill, there have been many ideas about the direction of heath care in our country that are currently being discussed.
I do not believe that a health care overhaul bill should include a government run option to provide health coverage. Such an alternative would be able to charge much lower rates and would reimburse providers at a much lower level than private insurance plans and limit competition rather than fostering it. Overtime, this could well eliminate private insurance companies and drive all individuals to the government run option that would essentially become a single payer system. A health care system that is run by federal bureaucrats would allow the federal government to determine the coverage it feels is appropriate for you, choose the doctors that you see, and dictate the care that you receive.
Along with a government option, I am also opposed to a mandate on small business to cover the costs of their employees under a "pay or play" system. During these difficult economic times, I do not believe we should be penalizing businesses who already cannot afford health care for their employees.
Questions such as the expansion of a government run program, competition among providers and payers, and cost containment, among others, must be measured against maintaining the highest quality of care for our citizens. For example, the number of uninsured Americans continues to rise along with the premiums and out-of-pocket expenses incurred by insured consumers. We in Congress need to address this problem by searching for effective ways to expand access to adequate, affordable medical care for all Americans in a fiscally responsible manner.
It is my view that the majority in Congress and the Administration are moving too quickly with radical proposals that may or may not achieve the worthy objectives mentioned previously. A rush to legislative passage may limit access, lower quality, while increasing taxes and the nation's debt. Members of Congress have not been allowed the appropriate time to review aspects of a bill that is estimated to cost over $1.7 trillion and by some estimates could go even higher.
I do agree that our country is in need of health care reform. I am an original cosponsor of S. 1099, the "Patients' Choice Act," which was introduced on May 20, 2009, and was referred to the Committee on Finance. The legislation would make health care coverage accessible and affordable for all Americans through private insurance coverage, while also promoting prevention and wellness which can improve lives and lower long-term medical costs. S. 1099 would put individuals back in charge of their own health care by giving them a tax rebate, worth $2,300 for individuals and $5,700 for families, to be used for the purchase of health insurance. It would also allow patients to comparison shop for their health care the same way that they do for all other products and services and allow them to maintain their coverage if they move or change jobs. Individuals who are most vulnerable of being turned down due to preexisting conditions could not be denied coverage due to age or health.
During the health care reform debate, I will monitor the initiatives with the view that health care reform should focus on keeping health decisions between doctors and patients, empowering and entrusting individuals with their health care savings and decisions, and promoting competition in all areas of health care. Americans are right to demand access to affordable health care. We will move closer to this goal as we see more promotion of the same innovation and competition in health care that we see in every other American industry.
I appreciate your comments on this important matter. I will keep your views in mind as my colleagues and I weigh the various legislative proposals before the Senate. As we move forward in the Senate, the state of the economy and the support of legislation that will enable the health care sector to improve are and will remain uppermost in my mind.
Thank you for contacting me regarding your concerns about health care reform. It is good to hear from you.
As Congress and the Administration begin the debate on health care reform, all parties must commit to a full and thorough debate. With health care representing 17% of our nation's economy, both the House and Senate must devote the appropriate time and focus on this matter.
In the Senate, the two Committees of jurisdiction continue to review possible legislation and committee amendments. I agree that it is important for Congress to address the issues; however, I will urge my colleagues to take our time and debate all of the issues and proposals so that the American people can follow and understand the development and discussion of the legislation.
After committee action, the full Senate is expected to begin debate regarding comprehensive health care reform. While we have yet to see the final language of a bill, there have been many ideas about the direction of heath care in our country that are currently being discussed.
I do not believe that a health care overhaul bill should include a government run option to provide health coverage. Such an alternative would be able to charge much lower rates and would reimburse providers at a much lower level than private insurance plans and limit competition rather than fostering it. Overtime, this could well eliminate private insurance companies and drive all individuals to the government run option that would essentially become a single payer system. A health care system that is run by federal bureaucrats would allow the federal government to determine the coverage it feels is appropriate for you, choose the doctors that you see, and dictate the care that you receive.
Along with a government option, I am also opposed to a mandate on small business to cover the costs of their employees under a "pay or play" system. During these difficult economic times, I do not believe we should be penalizing businesses who already cannot afford health care for their employees.
Questions such as the expansion of a government run program, competition among providers and payers, and cost containment, among others, must be measured against maintaining the highest quality of care for our citizens. For example, the number of uninsured Americans continues to rise along with the premiums and out-of-pocket expenses incurred by insured consumers. We in Congress need to address this problem by searching for effective ways to expand access to adequate, affordable medical care for all Americans in a fiscally responsible manner.
It is my view that the majority in Congress and the Administration are moving too quickly with radical proposals that may or may not achieve the worthy objectives mentioned previously. A rush to legislative passage may limit access, lower quality, while increasing taxes and the nation's debt. Members of Congress have not been allowed the appropriate time to review aspects of a bill that is estimated to cost over $1.7 trillion and by some estimates could go even higher.
I do agree that our country is in need of health care reform. I am an original cosponsor of S. 1099, the "Patients' Choice Act," which was introduced on May 20, 2009, and was referred to the Committee on Finance. The legislation would make health care coverage accessible and affordable for all Americans through private insurance coverage, while also promoting prevention and wellness which can improve lives and lower long-term medical costs. S. 1099 would put individuals back in charge of their own health care by giving them a tax rebate, worth $2,300 for individuals and $5,700 for families, to be used for the purchase of health insurance. It would also allow patients to comparison shop for their health care the same way that they do for all other products and services and allow them to maintain their coverage if they move or change jobs. Individuals who are most vulnerable of being turned down due to preexisting conditions could not be denied coverage due to age or health.
During the health care reform debate, I will monitor the initiatives with the view that health care reform should focus on keeping health decisions between doctors and patients, empowering and entrusting individuals with their health care savings and decisions, and promoting competition in all areas of health care. Americans are right to demand access to affordable health care. We will move closer to this goal as we see more promotion of the same innovation and competition in health care that we see in every other American industry.
I appreciate your comments on this important matter. I will keep your views in mind as my colleagues and I weigh the various legislative proposals before the Senate. As we move forward in the Senate, the state of the economy and the support of legislation that will enable the health care sector to improve are and will remain uppermost in my mind.
Response from John Linder Re Health Care Reform
Dear Mr. Shirk:
Thank you for contacting me to express your views about President Barack Obama's health care reform proposals, and in particular, H.R. 3200. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.
As you may know, H.R. 3200 is a $1.3 trillion bill written entirely by House Democrats in consultation with the Obama Administration that will turn our health care system over to government bureaucrats. Instead of developing an initiative that would bolster the doctor-patient relationship, provide incentives for private insurance companies to make health insurance more affordable, maintain proper care for Medicare beneficiaries, and allow individuals to choose for themselves the type of care that is best for them, House Democrats -- led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and President Barack Obama -- have committed themselves to a government-run health care monopoly administered by appointed bureaucrats, number crunchers, and paper pushers who will serve the bottom line before addressing the real world needs of American taxpayers.
That is why I was proud to vote against this bill on July 16, 2009, when it was considered by the House Ways and Means Committee, and why I will continue to oppose it in the future.
Make no mistake; H.R. 3200 will bankrupt the United States. Even the head of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agreed that H.R. 3200 is financially unsustainable and would increase yearly deficits and our national debt for the foreseeable future. No matter for whom you voted last November, skyrocketing debt, higher taxes, and a multigenerational financial burden is certainly not the type of change that any American believes in.
For all the President's talk about bringing fiscal responsibility to Washington, D.C., H.R. 3200 is nothing more than old-fashioned taxing and spending. When you and I go shopping, we carefully compare prices and ensure that we buy exactly what we can afford, even if it's not precisely what we were hoping to get. For the President, however, nothing less than his dream health care plan will do, regardless of how much it costs the American taxpayer or how much crushing debt our grandchildren will have to deal with fifty or sixty years from now. In order to pay for his dream plan, the President has advocated raising over $800 billion in taxes on small businesses, high income earners, and even those making under $10,000 a year. Nobody is safe from this tax increase.
It would seem that raising $800 billion in taxes should be more than sufficient to fund any program, but once again, when shopping with the President, price tags are meaningless. As such, President Obama has called for massive Medicare and Medicaid cuts totaling roughly $500 billion; cuts coming mostly from Medicare Advantage, skilled nursing facilities, hospice care, home health programs, and hospitals. Apparently it's not just the "filthy rich" and the successful small businesses that need to pay their "fair share;" the sick, aged, poor, and dying will pay as well.
Of course, once we all pay, we should expect to get the best care imaginable, right? Wrong. Government-run health care systems in other countries have long waiting lists for access to doctors and life-saving medical procedures. Waiting lists are so ubiquitous in Canada that the country's Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that access to a waiting list did not equal access to quality health care.
Health care programs in Europe are governed by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who tell doctors what treatments can and can't be prescribed based solely on a simple cost-benefit analysis of how much a person's life is worth. In order to control costs in Great Britain, the country's bureaucrats have placed a price on life: 30,000 pounds, or roughly $48,000, per year. If a revolutionary cancer drug costs more than that to save a person's life, it's simply not worth the money to the British government. While I accept that cost containment is necessary, this type of life and death decision should never be made by a nameless, faceless government worker. It should be made by doctors, patients, and family members who have the best interests of patients in mind.
Finally, I am concerned about the lightning quick timeline that the President and Speaker Pelosi have committed themselves to. H.R. 3200 is over 1,000 pages, costs an estimated $1.3 trillion, has yet to be fully examined by the CBO or any Member of Congress, and will have untold implications for decades to come. Legislation that completely transforms our nation should have more debate and consideration then a mere four weeks. The House Ways and Means Committee, on which I serve, had a paltry one day to consider the final version of this bill. Our democracy demands that we spend more than one day, and the American people should be outraged at this total disregard for essential civil discourse. Our Founding Fathers would be appalled by this miscarriage of democracy.
That being said, I am more than willing to work with my colleagues in the House of Representatives, President Obama, and Speaker Pelosi to slow this process down and allow the American people to fully understand what H.R. 3200 will mean for their lives. I can only hope that the President and the Speaker will answer the call of the American people and carefully consider H.R. 3200 without bowing to special interests and artificial timelines.
Thank you again for contacting me. If I may be of any further assistance to you, please do not hesitate to call on me.
Sincerely,
John Linder
Member of Congress
Thank you for contacting me to express your views about President Barack Obama's health care reform proposals, and in particular, H.R. 3200. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.
As you may know, H.R. 3200 is a $1.3 trillion bill written entirely by House Democrats in consultation with the Obama Administration that will turn our health care system over to government bureaucrats. Instead of developing an initiative that would bolster the doctor-patient relationship, provide incentives for private insurance companies to make health insurance more affordable, maintain proper care for Medicare beneficiaries, and allow individuals to choose for themselves the type of care that is best for them, House Democrats -- led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and President Barack Obama -- have committed themselves to a government-run health care monopoly administered by appointed bureaucrats, number crunchers, and paper pushers who will serve the bottom line before addressing the real world needs of American taxpayers.
That is why I was proud to vote against this bill on July 16, 2009, when it was considered by the House Ways and Means Committee, and why I will continue to oppose it in the future.
Make no mistake; H.R. 3200 will bankrupt the United States. Even the head of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agreed that H.R. 3200 is financially unsustainable and would increase yearly deficits and our national debt for the foreseeable future. No matter for whom you voted last November, skyrocketing debt, higher taxes, and a multigenerational financial burden is certainly not the type of change that any American believes in.
For all the President's talk about bringing fiscal responsibility to Washington, D.C., H.R. 3200 is nothing more than old-fashioned taxing and spending. When you and I go shopping, we carefully compare prices and ensure that we buy exactly what we can afford, even if it's not precisely what we were hoping to get. For the President, however, nothing less than his dream health care plan will do, regardless of how much it costs the American taxpayer or how much crushing debt our grandchildren will have to deal with fifty or sixty years from now. In order to pay for his dream plan, the President has advocated raising over $800 billion in taxes on small businesses, high income earners, and even those making under $10,000 a year. Nobody is safe from this tax increase.
It would seem that raising $800 billion in taxes should be more than sufficient to fund any program, but once again, when shopping with the President, price tags are meaningless. As such, President Obama has called for massive Medicare and Medicaid cuts totaling roughly $500 billion; cuts coming mostly from Medicare Advantage, skilled nursing facilities, hospice care, home health programs, and hospitals. Apparently it's not just the "filthy rich" and the successful small businesses that need to pay their "fair share;" the sick, aged, poor, and dying will pay as well.
Of course, once we all pay, we should expect to get the best care imaginable, right? Wrong. Government-run health care systems in other countries have long waiting lists for access to doctors and life-saving medical procedures. Waiting lists are so ubiquitous in Canada that the country's Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that access to a waiting list did not equal access to quality health care.
Health care programs in Europe are governed by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who tell doctors what treatments can and can't be prescribed based solely on a simple cost-benefit analysis of how much a person's life is worth. In order to control costs in Great Britain, the country's bureaucrats have placed a price on life: 30,000 pounds, or roughly $48,000, per year. If a revolutionary cancer drug costs more than that to save a person's life, it's simply not worth the money to the British government. While I accept that cost containment is necessary, this type of life and death decision should never be made by a nameless, faceless government worker. It should be made by doctors, patients, and family members who have the best interests of patients in mind.
Finally, I am concerned about the lightning quick timeline that the President and Speaker Pelosi have committed themselves to. H.R. 3200 is over 1,000 pages, costs an estimated $1.3 trillion, has yet to be fully examined by the CBO or any Member of Congress, and will have untold implications for decades to come. Legislation that completely transforms our nation should have more debate and consideration then a mere four weeks. The House Ways and Means Committee, on which I serve, had a paltry one day to consider the final version of this bill. Our democracy demands that we spend more than one day, and the American people should be outraged at this total disregard for essential civil discourse. Our Founding Fathers would be appalled by this miscarriage of democracy.
That being said, I am more than willing to work with my colleagues in the House of Representatives, President Obama, and Speaker Pelosi to slow this process down and allow the American people to fully understand what H.R. 3200 will mean for their lives. I can only hope that the President and the Speaker will answer the call of the American people and carefully consider H.R. 3200 without bowing to special interests and artificial timelines.
Thank you again for contacting me. If I may be of any further assistance to you, please do not hesitate to call on me.
Sincerely,
John Linder
Member of Congress
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Health Care Resolved; Two Sides
I recently read a piece at http://savannahnow.com/node/765648, a very well written Op-Ed, outlining with clarity of purpose, and the statistics to support the position, that America needs health care reform in 2009. I agree with the goal of this editor, as do I agree with President Obama. We do need a massive change in the way Americans receive health care in our country. What I do not buy, and the argument the left has successfully suppressed all year, is that there is more than one way to solve this problem. The leftists in Congress, along with the mainstream media, and most importantly, the president of the United States have successfully controlled the debate to include only their way or no way.
This is America. We have some major fundamental problems with the way health care has evolved over the last 40 years, and the only answer being put forward collectively by our political leadership is to offer socialized medicine modeled after England, Canada, or Switzerland. Never mind the fact that we aren’t any one of those countries. Never mind the fact that we have proven over the history of our nation that we have the entrepreneurial spirit to govern ourselves, by and for ourselves. There is a way, no, there are many ways we can solve this very real issue without rendering unto Caesar, that which is ours. And make no mistake; putting the federal government in charge of the health care system will enable the government to control, ultimately, every facet of our lives.
About this time, those of you reading this who are in favor of health care reform, in the sense the debate has thus far been defined, have made up your mind that I am about to spew the same argument we’ve been hearing from the republican party, and you likely won’t even finish reading my thoughts. If so, then so be it, but if you can spare a few minutes, then hear me out. There is a distinctly American way to solve this problem.
Before a solution can be devised we must first understand what has brought us to where we are. The American health care system, mostly employer provided, for those who have sufficient insurance at any rate, began in a different time. The time included the fact that the majority of Americans worked for large companies who provided pensions, health care, and the promise of a life long job, if one were so inclined, or as members of a labor union. This worked better than countries that had nationalized systems until major change occurred in the landscape of America. First and foremost, the government instituted Medicare, then Medicaid. On the face of those two well intentioned programs there should not have been any major issues, but on the one hand, when you leave the government to their own devices, they can screw up anything.
The government determined that to provide insurance to our elderly and infirm, they would have to implement a massive paperwork trail, as well as determine exactly what doctors and hospitals should receive as remittance for the services they provided that were paid by the government. Without going into thousands of pages of rules thrust onto the medical industry, the results were fairly predictable. Medicaid has evolved over time to pay the medical industry about 80% of the costs of providing the care, and Medicare pays about 90% of the costs to the industry, while both add substantially to the cost of doing business for doctors and hospitals. The required paperwork is not only onerous, but absent of logic in most instances, thereby requiring highly skilled office workers to get even the 80 or 90% of actual costs paid by the government, minus the cost of the highly skilled office workers of course.
Being the business people they were, and unable to fight back against a government rife with bureaucrats who could sit on claims for months on end without payment, the hospitals first, then the doctors devised methods that have allowed them to collect an average 135% of the costs of supplying health care to those of us who still have medical insurance, either provided by our employer, or paid for as a private plan. At the same time, our Congress has made it literally impossible to obtain private insurance that is affordable by being loyal only to those lobbyists who pay huge sums of money into their reelection coffers. No one has ever united a lobby for just regular folks, and our Congress is polluted with elected officials who have made laws that allow them to take bribes of cash in exchange for passing laws favorable to the groups paying the bribes. This is true across every part of our government, but has proved to be the place that most damages the daily lives of Americans. Henceforth, we have finally come to this point in our country where we are finally having the great debate, and we are debating the wrong issue.
We should be debating the system that allowed the health care industry, as well as every other major form of expenditures in this country to be managed by laws passed by those who make Al Capone seem tame by comparison. Why is that you can’t purchase a health care policy from a company outside the state where you reside? You can buy most things you want or need in any state, whether or not you live there. The only things where that isn’t possible, are those items regulated by the federal government, such as health care, in this instance. There are others, like guns, but that is a subject for another day.
Businesses get huge tax incentives for providing health care for their employers. Those incentives are based on the premiums they pay per employee. Why then, can’t individuals gain a tax advantage for paying those same premiums? The question is of course rhetorical, but I will answer it anyway. There is no lobby giving individual Congressman money to pay for the favor of giving the tax incentive. Everything Congress does to benefit any group of people must be paid for, written up, and explained in detail, by experts from the organizations wanting the favors.
That is how our government has evolved. The Congressmen, nor their staffs, are even capable of implementing the laws that the various lobbies require and pay to have passed. The Congressmen don’t even read the legislation. We didn’t find that out until this year, but it has been that way for a long time. You can see the surprise and frustration on the faces of those legislators who have been called out for not reading the bills. It is inconceivable to them that we would even expect it. They have operated for so long, in the manner the government has evolved, that the members currently in Congress were not there when it was any other way. That is just the way they were taught, even the ones who came before them didn’t likely know the difference. There are a few, still serving , who have been present for the entire sordid affair, such as Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, as well as others not so well known, but for the most part, the legislators we have today truly think they are doing what is expected of them. To bear that out, we rarely know any better either, and have accepted this manner of governance as a matter of fact, for decades.
Everyone of our current Congressman, with a few exceptions as always, have purchased their position, not only through one election, but as a result of a career of doing political business in such a way as to be expert at listening to special interests, and voting on the laws and regulations paid for and created by the special interest groups that have good financial reasoning for controlling the laws that get passed. We therefore are governed by 535 mob bosses, except that not one of them understands their business the way mob bosses understood crime. We have to start fixing health care by fixing our elective representative government. We have to vote out the incumbents. We have to implement term limits, and we have to start over with respect to both the House and the Senate. In the meantime, we can start forcing our current legislators to do something productive, and pass laws that will benefit the people, not the special interest groups, and starting with health care has now become the most righteous place to begin.
There are many ideas out there on ways to solve the health care issues that make insurance unaffordable, that many times bankrupt hard working Americans who either can’t afford coverage, or roll the dice, don’t purchase even catastrophic coverage, and thus suffer failed lives when a major illness or injury strikes. We can fix that without becoming Socialists. The government has not been putting forth any ideas for change until now that the left has taken control of both branches of policy government. The left has always been willing to create a social democracy and become the ultimate nanny state. They just haven’t had the political clout to get it done before now. Since they now do have the power, the GOP is offering up some rather good ideas, that should have been done decades ago, except that no one was paying them to implement the ideas, and no lobby had sufficient interest in solving problems for individual American citizens.
Now that the conservatives, or fake conservatives have seen themselves soundly defeated in two straight elections, and now that big pharma, the insurance companies, the AMA, and the BAR are helping the democrats write the legislation that will end their gravy train, and as they are scrambling to minimize their losses, we are getting some decent ideas of ways to solve the inconsistencies with the basic premise of our health care policy in the United States. They certainly aren’t going far enough though, and are doing their best to minimize the effect on the Congress' own gravy train, notwithstanding that of the special interest groups. Below is a list of ideas I have either taken from conservatives, consumer interest groups, and some I have thought of on my own. It is by no means an inclusive list of ideas, as there are probably many other ideas as good or better than these. They do, however, provide methods, for solving the majority of our health care issues, and not turn over control of our health care system to the government.
Government run health care would result in most of the dangers considered by the left to be scare monger tactics. The fact is, if we turn over control of health care to a government system, immediately place an extra 47 million people into the system, while adding no doctors, and cutting expenditures, the only way it can possibly work at all is to ration health care. That isn’t hate speech. It certainly isn’t a lie, hysteria, disinformation, or racist. It is simple logic. Any plan that works, with respect to any subject, with respect to anything in life, requires the numbers to add up. In the case of government run health care promising to cover an additional 47 million people, while being deficit neutral, and not rationing care, just simply defies logic. It cannot be done. We can either spend trillions more dollars, or we can ration care, if we are to make a government system work at all.
There are alternatives though. It doesn’t have to be the government’s way or the highway. We can’t follow those on either side who refuse to listen, or who demonize those who aren’t in agreement with their position. If we are to have a debate, and if we are to solve the problems we face, we must first listen, and think for ourselves. Our government has failed us. We now must step up, take charge, and do the things that should have been done many years ago. Think about these ten things, how to get them accomplished, and then add some of your own. We can make the Congress do our bidding, but only if we are united, remain calm, and insist that the government take action based on the good of the people, and not the good of the government. Our actions do not have to grow government to solve these issues. We can:
1. Enable cross state health care insurance competition
2. Enable equal tax treatment for private pay health care insurance VS employer provided insurance.
3. Enable Tort reform for medical malpractice litigation.
4. Change patent guidelines for pharmaceutical companies to lower drug costs.
5. Incentivize medical students for taking up family practice and/or Internal Medicine.
6. Enforce immigration laws currently on the books
7. Increase minimum income requirement for Medicaid
8. Require insurance providers to accept high risk individuals through pool, similar to auto insurance
9. Regulate insurance industry at federal level, rather than individual state
10. Incentivize preventive health measures with declining premiums
With respect to number 1 above; competition is the cornerstone of prosperity in this country. The government has stifled competition, to individual states, only because it is in the interest of the insurance companies, and to the detriment of the people. The arguments I have heard as to how this would just result in higher costs for people in the states who currently have affordable insurance are ludicrous. IF XYZ insurance is making money now with lower rates in a state with minimal customers, they will make significantly more money as they add more customers. It will also force ABC insurance to lower their rates to compete and keep their customers, rather than allow XYZ to poach their customers. This is American as it gets.
Number 2 is a no brainer. We currently allow businesses a tax incentive for every cent they spend on employer health care coverage, and yet those people who are self employed, musicians, artists, and others who have the nerve to strike out on their own must pay higher premiums, with no tax break for the same or usually inferior coverage as do those who choose to work for someone else who has the nerve to strike out on their own. What is the logic in that? There is no logic. Businesses were given these tax incentives in order to insure Americans at a time when the vast majority of citizens worked for large companies, or were in trade unions. That just isn’t the case anymore, and there is no lobby for individualists in this country. The Congress should have been taking up that job from the jump, but they didn’t, they haven’t, and they don’t really have any intention of doing it unless forced to take action, and even then we will have to hire people to train them to write the legislation, as there is no lobby with the expertise to write and present it to them.
3. I’m not sure just how much Tort reform will reduce the overall cost of medical care, but it would be huge. Currently doctors and hospitals pay exorbitant premiums to those same insurance companies who cover health care, and the lawyers make a ton of money in both nuisance, as well as, well founded cases of malpractice. The not knowing how much a jury will award a defendant drives these costs through the roof. The answer is to set maximums for different levels of injury, specific time frames of recovery, and perhaps even more important, punish those who bring nuisance cases to court by forcing them to pay the defendants attorney fee, the court costs, and a substantial fine. The lawyers in Congress will never do this unless they are left no other choice. We have to take that choice away and force them to do it.
4. Research costs for new drugs are substantial. The pharmaceutical companies must be allowed to recover those costs, or they will stop the research. We must keep that in mind while awarding patents, but we must also weigh that with the cost of medical care. The rest of the world is reverse engineering America’s discoveries, and selling the generics for a pittance in order to take care of their citizens. We must tie the actual costs of individual drug research to the amount big pharma is allowed to recover. This is a difficult problem, but President Obama was able to buy off the pharmaceutical companies by limiting their hit in his health care bill to $80 billion. That shows that they have room to negotiate. We have to make the same, or a better deal for the citizens without government control of the entire system. After all, this is America, and we don’t need to socialize an industry to make it work. Our country was founded on a set of values and a proposition for equality and freedom, with minimal government interference. It is the best government ever devised. Why throw it away now?
5. We don’t have enough doctors to take on 47 million more people, particularly with respect to general practitioners. We do have an abundance of specialists. We need to offer incentives for those already in specialties, as well as students to go into general practice or Internal Medicine. Ignoring these facts will result in long lines. That isn’t spreading hysteria. It is simply recognizing the issues before us. Since we don’t currently have a really good preventive health care system in the United States, and do have a lot of specialists making a lot of money, and since as a result there is very little incentive for doctors to take up general practice, we have a severe shortage of just regular doctors. The ones we do have cannot take on 47 million more people without hugely significant issues. The government pay health care plan is not addressing these facts.
6. This is an emotional issue, and many liberals will not agree. However, of the 47 million people without health insurance in this country, there is an estimated 10 to 15 million of them in the country illegally. I cannot vouch for these numbers, but I can see, and every time I go to Walmart I can see that there are a significant number of people living all around me who cannot speak English. Some percentage of those people are in the country illegally. While I recognize we are a country founded on immigration, we do still have a responsibility to enforce our laws. We also have a responsibility to those who immigrate legally, and should not allow those who break the laws to obtain advantage over those who obey the same laws. Both the democrats and republicans have refused to enforce our immigration laws, and to protect our borders from penetration by illegal immigrants. This is a failure on the part of Congress we have allowed to go on for decades. It is time we insist something be done, and one of the many reasons to vote out every single incumbent in the House and the Senate. 47 million can be reduced to 37 or even 32 million, depending on whose numbers you believe. Even if only 5 million are here illegally, it will still help defray the costs of providing health care to those who show up in Emergency rooms around the country on a daily basis. If you have gone to an Emergency room in a major city in this country in the last 10 or 15 years you have seen for yourself who is there, and what it is costing us.
7. There are currently a lot of Americans who do not have health care offered by their employer, who cannot afford to purchase a private policy for their family, but still make more per year than the maximum allowed to qualify for Medicaid. A lot of people in this group are construction workers, who tend to earn much more on an annual basis than they can count on in monthly payments for insurance premiums. We have to revisit these numbers on a regular basis to ensure these hard working people don’t ruin their lives with an illness or accident, when they are already at the low end of the economic scale of those not considered impoverished, while those with no job get free medical care. This is the result of Congress not thinking through the legislation and regulations they pass along to their constituents and it is the constituents who are hurt by this particular brand of incompetence because they don’t have a lobby to protect their interests. Are you starting to see a pattern here, especially with respect to lobbyists?
8. Everyone is required in most states to carry car insurance in order to register their car, and in some states to get a license. This is basic civics 101, and why don’t we use the same system to insure people for health care? Again, the insurance lobby for automobiles wants to insure every single car on the road, and the people who are insured demand they be protected financially, from people who may run them over. With respect to health care insurance, those companies have no desire to collect premiums from people with pre-existing conditions, even minor ones, like pregnancy, as pointed out in the aforementioned Op-ed. In most cases I am not for government intervention, but with respect to health insurance, the providers have proven themselves to be unworthy of regulating themselves. They will require that the government force them to take the good with the bad, even in times when they will likely lose money. For these individuals, they will pay higher premiums, but it will be a regulated amount, and the government will not permit any individual to be priced out of insurance, or refused coverage due to any condition, either previously existing or contracted after having written the policy. This will necessarily increase everyone’s premium to some extent, precisely as it does with car insurance.
9. Primarily because of numbers 1 and 8 above, we cannot burden insurance company’s regulation in every single state. We must therefore assume insurance regulation at the federal level. We already regulate the financial industry at the federal level, and taking on insurance, while burdensome, especially in the beginning, is an evil we cannot get around.
10. Some of the arguments, from the president especially, but from the left in general do have a ring of truth to them, even though the government pay plan would not necessarily result in a healthier population. However, we could incentivize healthy behavior with a decrease in premiums, regulated by the government in 9 above, for those people who take their personal health seriously. Instead of punishing bad behavior, as in the fat tax, and other things the government has recommended, and even implemented in New York and other states, we can lower health care premiums for those who do not smoke, for those with cholesterol and triglyceride numbers in the pink, or even for those who have taken all the preventive precautions and office visits, while avoiding having to see a doctor for illness and injury. This would have the effect of lowering premiums for the young, for the middle aged, who took care of themselves while young, and even for those who don’t engage in high risk behavior resulting in broken bones, cuts, and other accidental health care visits.
The 10 ideas I put forth here are just that, ideas that do not require a complete government takeover, although they do represent quite a bit of government action, most of which they would avoid at all costs, other than the failure to be reelected. There are only two ways to get Congress to act. One is the pay them for voting the way your particular interest group wants. The second is with direct and demonstrable proof that failure to act will result in likely defeat in the next election. This only works with House members, and any Senators who are in their last two years of their 6 year term. Anything beyond two years, and legislators have learned that the people forget. We can’t afford to forget ever again. Barack Obama has appeared in a time and place that has given him the opportunity to put in place a Socialized Democracy in this country, replacing the republic so many have fought and died to protect. We cannot allow him to succeed. He has chosen the health care issue, because it is our single biggest failure as a nation. It is a black eye on our culture to have allowed our health care system to erode to such a low point of our society. We need to fix health care, but we don’t have to become socialists to do it. We can fix the health care system and rid ourselves of a Congress out of control and out of touch, all in one fell swoop. We only have to speak with one voice, with one purpose, and stop this left/right fight amongst ourselves. This is America, and in spite of the health care embarrassment, we are still the greatest nation on the Earth! We can keep it that way.
This is America. We have some major fundamental problems with the way health care has evolved over the last 40 years, and the only answer being put forward collectively by our political leadership is to offer socialized medicine modeled after England, Canada, or Switzerland. Never mind the fact that we aren’t any one of those countries. Never mind the fact that we have proven over the history of our nation that we have the entrepreneurial spirit to govern ourselves, by and for ourselves. There is a way, no, there are many ways we can solve this very real issue without rendering unto Caesar, that which is ours. And make no mistake; putting the federal government in charge of the health care system will enable the government to control, ultimately, every facet of our lives.
About this time, those of you reading this who are in favor of health care reform, in the sense the debate has thus far been defined, have made up your mind that I am about to spew the same argument we’ve been hearing from the republican party, and you likely won’t even finish reading my thoughts. If so, then so be it, but if you can spare a few minutes, then hear me out. There is a distinctly American way to solve this problem.
Before a solution can be devised we must first understand what has brought us to where we are. The American health care system, mostly employer provided, for those who have sufficient insurance at any rate, began in a different time. The time included the fact that the majority of Americans worked for large companies who provided pensions, health care, and the promise of a life long job, if one were so inclined, or as members of a labor union. This worked better than countries that had nationalized systems until major change occurred in the landscape of America. First and foremost, the government instituted Medicare, then Medicaid. On the face of those two well intentioned programs there should not have been any major issues, but on the one hand, when you leave the government to their own devices, they can screw up anything.
The government determined that to provide insurance to our elderly and infirm, they would have to implement a massive paperwork trail, as well as determine exactly what doctors and hospitals should receive as remittance for the services they provided that were paid by the government. Without going into thousands of pages of rules thrust onto the medical industry, the results were fairly predictable. Medicaid has evolved over time to pay the medical industry about 80% of the costs of providing the care, and Medicare pays about 90% of the costs to the industry, while both add substantially to the cost of doing business for doctors and hospitals. The required paperwork is not only onerous, but absent of logic in most instances, thereby requiring highly skilled office workers to get even the 80 or 90% of actual costs paid by the government, minus the cost of the highly skilled office workers of course.
Being the business people they were, and unable to fight back against a government rife with bureaucrats who could sit on claims for months on end without payment, the hospitals first, then the doctors devised methods that have allowed them to collect an average 135% of the costs of supplying health care to those of us who still have medical insurance, either provided by our employer, or paid for as a private plan. At the same time, our Congress has made it literally impossible to obtain private insurance that is affordable by being loyal only to those lobbyists who pay huge sums of money into their reelection coffers. No one has ever united a lobby for just regular folks, and our Congress is polluted with elected officials who have made laws that allow them to take bribes of cash in exchange for passing laws favorable to the groups paying the bribes. This is true across every part of our government, but has proved to be the place that most damages the daily lives of Americans. Henceforth, we have finally come to this point in our country where we are finally having the great debate, and we are debating the wrong issue.
We should be debating the system that allowed the health care industry, as well as every other major form of expenditures in this country to be managed by laws passed by those who make Al Capone seem tame by comparison. Why is that you can’t purchase a health care policy from a company outside the state where you reside? You can buy most things you want or need in any state, whether or not you live there. The only things where that isn’t possible, are those items regulated by the federal government, such as health care, in this instance. There are others, like guns, but that is a subject for another day.
Businesses get huge tax incentives for providing health care for their employers. Those incentives are based on the premiums they pay per employee. Why then, can’t individuals gain a tax advantage for paying those same premiums? The question is of course rhetorical, but I will answer it anyway. There is no lobby giving individual Congressman money to pay for the favor of giving the tax incentive. Everything Congress does to benefit any group of people must be paid for, written up, and explained in detail, by experts from the organizations wanting the favors.
That is how our government has evolved. The Congressmen, nor their staffs, are even capable of implementing the laws that the various lobbies require and pay to have passed. The Congressmen don’t even read the legislation. We didn’t find that out until this year, but it has been that way for a long time. You can see the surprise and frustration on the faces of those legislators who have been called out for not reading the bills. It is inconceivable to them that we would even expect it. They have operated for so long, in the manner the government has evolved, that the members currently in Congress were not there when it was any other way. That is just the way they were taught, even the ones who came before them didn’t likely know the difference. There are a few, still serving , who have been present for the entire sordid affair, such as Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, as well as others not so well known, but for the most part, the legislators we have today truly think they are doing what is expected of them. To bear that out, we rarely know any better either, and have accepted this manner of governance as a matter of fact, for decades.
Everyone of our current Congressman, with a few exceptions as always, have purchased their position, not only through one election, but as a result of a career of doing political business in such a way as to be expert at listening to special interests, and voting on the laws and regulations paid for and created by the special interest groups that have good financial reasoning for controlling the laws that get passed. We therefore are governed by 535 mob bosses, except that not one of them understands their business the way mob bosses understood crime. We have to start fixing health care by fixing our elective representative government. We have to vote out the incumbents. We have to implement term limits, and we have to start over with respect to both the House and the Senate. In the meantime, we can start forcing our current legislators to do something productive, and pass laws that will benefit the people, not the special interest groups, and starting with health care has now become the most righteous place to begin.
There are many ideas out there on ways to solve the health care issues that make insurance unaffordable, that many times bankrupt hard working Americans who either can’t afford coverage, or roll the dice, don’t purchase even catastrophic coverage, and thus suffer failed lives when a major illness or injury strikes. We can fix that without becoming Socialists. The government has not been putting forth any ideas for change until now that the left has taken control of both branches of policy government. The left has always been willing to create a social democracy and become the ultimate nanny state. They just haven’t had the political clout to get it done before now. Since they now do have the power, the GOP is offering up some rather good ideas, that should have been done decades ago, except that no one was paying them to implement the ideas, and no lobby had sufficient interest in solving problems for individual American citizens.
Now that the conservatives, or fake conservatives have seen themselves soundly defeated in two straight elections, and now that big pharma, the insurance companies, the AMA, and the BAR are helping the democrats write the legislation that will end their gravy train, and as they are scrambling to minimize their losses, we are getting some decent ideas of ways to solve the inconsistencies with the basic premise of our health care policy in the United States. They certainly aren’t going far enough though, and are doing their best to minimize the effect on the Congress' own gravy train, notwithstanding that of the special interest groups. Below is a list of ideas I have either taken from conservatives, consumer interest groups, and some I have thought of on my own. It is by no means an inclusive list of ideas, as there are probably many other ideas as good or better than these. They do, however, provide methods, for solving the majority of our health care issues, and not turn over control of our health care system to the government.
Government run health care would result in most of the dangers considered by the left to be scare monger tactics. The fact is, if we turn over control of health care to a government system, immediately place an extra 47 million people into the system, while adding no doctors, and cutting expenditures, the only way it can possibly work at all is to ration health care. That isn’t hate speech. It certainly isn’t a lie, hysteria, disinformation, or racist. It is simple logic. Any plan that works, with respect to any subject, with respect to anything in life, requires the numbers to add up. In the case of government run health care promising to cover an additional 47 million people, while being deficit neutral, and not rationing care, just simply defies logic. It cannot be done. We can either spend trillions more dollars, or we can ration care, if we are to make a government system work at all.
There are alternatives though. It doesn’t have to be the government’s way or the highway. We can’t follow those on either side who refuse to listen, or who demonize those who aren’t in agreement with their position. If we are to have a debate, and if we are to solve the problems we face, we must first listen, and think for ourselves. Our government has failed us. We now must step up, take charge, and do the things that should have been done many years ago. Think about these ten things, how to get them accomplished, and then add some of your own. We can make the Congress do our bidding, but only if we are united, remain calm, and insist that the government take action based on the good of the people, and not the good of the government. Our actions do not have to grow government to solve these issues. We can:
1. Enable cross state health care insurance competition
2. Enable equal tax treatment for private pay health care insurance VS employer provided insurance.
3. Enable Tort reform for medical malpractice litigation.
4. Change patent guidelines for pharmaceutical companies to lower drug costs.
5. Incentivize medical students for taking up family practice and/or Internal Medicine.
6. Enforce immigration laws currently on the books
7. Increase minimum income requirement for Medicaid
8. Require insurance providers to accept high risk individuals through pool, similar to auto insurance
9. Regulate insurance industry at federal level, rather than individual state
10. Incentivize preventive health measures with declining premiums
With respect to number 1 above; competition is the cornerstone of prosperity in this country. The government has stifled competition, to individual states, only because it is in the interest of the insurance companies, and to the detriment of the people. The arguments I have heard as to how this would just result in higher costs for people in the states who currently have affordable insurance are ludicrous. IF XYZ insurance is making money now with lower rates in a state with minimal customers, they will make significantly more money as they add more customers. It will also force ABC insurance to lower their rates to compete and keep their customers, rather than allow XYZ to poach their customers. This is American as it gets.
Number 2 is a no brainer. We currently allow businesses a tax incentive for every cent they spend on employer health care coverage, and yet those people who are self employed, musicians, artists, and others who have the nerve to strike out on their own must pay higher premiums, with no tax break for the same or usually inferior coverage as do those who choose to work for someone else who has the nerve to strike out on their own. What is the logic in that? There is no logic. Businesses were given these tax incentives in order to insure Americans at a time when the vast majority of citizens worked for large companies, or were in trade unions. That just isn’t the case anymore, and there is no lobby for individualists in this country. The Congress should have been taking up that job from the jump, but they didn’t, they haven’t, and they don’t really have any intention of doing it unless forced to take action, and even then we will have to hire people to train them to write the legislation, as there is no lobby with the expertise to write and present it to them.
3. I’m not sure just how much Tort reform will reduce the overall cost of medical care, but it would be huge. Currently doctors and hospitals pay exorbitant premiums to those same insurance companies who cover health care, and the lawyers make a ton of money in both nuisance, as well as, well founded cases of malpractice. The not knowing how much a jury will award a defendant drives these costs through the roof. The answer is to set maximums for different levels of injury, specific time frames of recovery, and perhaps even more important, punish those who bring nuisance cases to court by forcing them to pay the defendants attorney fee, the court costs, and a substantial fine. The lawyers in Congress will never do this unless they are left no other choice. We have to take that choice away and force them to do it.
4. Research costs for new drugs are substantial. The pharmaceutical companies must be allowed to recover those costs, or they will stop the research. We must keep that in mind while awarding patents, but we must also weigh that with the cost of medical care. The rest of the world is reverse engineering America’s discoveries, and selling the generics for a pittance in order to take care of their citizens. We must tie the actual costs of individual drug research to the amount big pharma is allowed to recover. This is a difficult problem, but President Obama was able to buy off the pharmaceutical companies by limiting their hit in his health care bill to $80 billion. That shows that they have room to negotiate. We have to make the same, or a better deal for the citizens without government control of the entire system. After all, this is America, and we don’t need to socialize an industry to make it work. Our country was founded on a set of values and a proposition for equality and freedom, with minimal government interference. It is the best government ever devised. Why throw it away now?
5. We don’t have enough doctors to take on 47 million more people, particularly with respect to general practitioners. We do have an abundance of specialists. We need to offer incentives for those already in specialties, as well as students to go into general practice or Internal Medicine. Ignoring these facts will result in long lines. That isn’t spreading hysteria. It is simply recognizing the issues before us. Since we don’t currently have a really good preventive health care system in the United States, and do have a lot of specialists making a lot of money, and since as a result there is very little incentive for doctors to take up general practice, we have a severe shortage of just regular doctors. The ones we do have cannot take on 47 million more people without hugely significant issues. The government pay health care plan is not addressing these facts.
6. This is an emotional issue, and many liberals will not agree. However, of the 47 million people without health insurance in this country, there is an estimated 10 to 15 million of them in the country illegally. I cannot vouch for these numbers, but I can see, and every time I go to Walmart I can see that there are a significant number of people living all around me who cannot speak English. Some percentage of those people are in the country illegally. While I recognize we are a country founded on immigration, we do still have a responsibility to enforce our laws. We also have a responsibility to those who immigrate legally, and should not allow those who break the laws to obtain advantage over those who obey the same laws. Both the democrats and republicans have refused to enforce our immigration laws, and to protect our borders from penetration by illegal immigrants. This is a failure on the part of Congress we have allowed to go on for decades. It is time we insist something be done, and one of the many reasons to vote out every single incumbent in the House and the Senate. 47 million can be reduced to 37 or even 32 million, depending on whose numbers you believe. Even if only 5 million are here illegally, it will still help defray the costs of providing health care to those who show up in Emergency rooms around the country on a daily basis. If you have gone to an Emergency room in a major city in this country in the last 10 or 15 years you have seen for yourself who is there, and what it is costing us.
7. There are currently a lot of Americans who do not have health care offered by their employer, who cannot afford to purchase a private policy for their family, but still make more per year than the maximum allowed to qualify for Medicaid. A lot of people in this group are construction workers, who tend to earn much more on an annual basis than they can count on in monthly payments for insurance premiums. We have to revisit these numbers on a regular basis to ensure these hard working people don’t ruin their lives with an illness or accident, when they are already at the low end of the economic scale of those not considered impoverished, while those with no job get free medical care. This is the result of Congress not thinking through the legislation and regulations they pass along to their constituents and it is the constituents who are hurt by this particular brand of incompetence because they don’t have a lobby to protect their interests. Are you starting to see a pattern here, especially with respect to lobbyists?
8. Everyone is required in most states to carry car insurance in order to register their car, and in some states to get a license. This is basic civics 101, and why don’t we use the same system to insure people for health care? Again, the insurance lobby for automobiles wants to insure every single car on the road, and the people who are insured demand they be protected financially, from people who may run them over. With respect to health care insurance, those companies have no desire to collect premiums from people with pre-existing conditions, even minor ones, like pregnancy, as pointed out in the aforementioned Op-ed. In most cases I am not for government intervention, but with respect to health insurance, the providers have proven themselves to be unworthy of regulating themselves. They will require that the government force them to take the good with the bad, even in times when they will likely lose money. For these individuals, they will pay higher premiums, but it will be a regulated amount, and the government will not permit any individual to be priced out of insurance, or refused coverage due to any condition, either previously existing or contracted after having written the policy. This will necessarily increase everyone’s premium to some extent, precisely as it does with car insurance.
9. Primarily because of numbers 1 and 8 above, we cannot burden insurance company’s regulation in every single state. We must therefore assume insurance regulation at the federal level. We already regulate the financial industry at the federal level, and taking on insurance, while burdensome, especially in the beginning, is an evil we cannot get around.
10. Some of the arguments, from the president especially, but from the left in general do have a ring of truth to them, even though the government pay plan would not necessarily result in a healthier population. However, we could incentivize healthy behavior with a decrease in premiums, regulated by the government in 9 above, for those people who take their personal health seriously. Instead of punishing bad behavior, as in the fat tax, and other things the government has recommended, and even implemented in New York and other states, we can lower health care premiums for those who do not smoke, for those with cholesterol and triglyceride numbers in the pink, or even for those who have taken all the preventive precautions and office visits, while avoiding having to see a doctor for illness and injury. This would have the effect of lowering premiums for the young, for the middle aged, who took care of themselves while young, and even for those who don’t engage in high risk behavior resulting in broken bones, cuts, and other accidental health care visits.
The 10 ideas I put forth here are just that, ideas that do not require a complete government takeover, although they do represent quite a bit of government action, most of which they would avoid at all costs, other than the failure to be reelected. There are only two ways to get Congress to act. One is the pay them for voting the way your particular interest group wants. The second is with direct and demonstrable proof that failure to act will result in likely defeat in the next election. This only works with House members, and any Senators who are in their last two years of their 6 year term. Anything beyond two years, and legislators have learned that the people forget. We can’t afford to forget ever again. Barack Obama has appeared in a time and place that has given him the opportunity to put in place a Socialized Democracy in this country, replacing the republic so many have fought and died to protect. We cannot allow him to succeed. He has chosen the health care issue, because it is our single biggest failure as a nation. It is a black eye on our culture to have allowed our health care system to erode to such a low point of our society. We need to fix health care, but we don’t have to become socialists to do it. We can fix the health care system and rid ourselves of a Congress out of control and out of touch, all in one fell swoop. We only have to speak with one voice, with one purpose, and stop this left/right fight amongst ourselves. This is America, and in spite of the health care embarrassment, we are still the greatest nation on the Earth! We can keep it that way.
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