Aid Seeking Oklahoma Republican Reps Denied Hurricane Sandy Aid

There will be factual but misleading commentary and quotations in the coming week condemning the elected Congressional representatives from Oklahoma for accepting Federal assistance in the recovery from the EF-5 tornado that utterly destroyed much of the small Oklahoma town of Moore. These statements will claim that those Oklahoma politicians who had voted down the initial $50 Billion aid package to assist the Hurricane Sandy victims in New York and the Northeast when it was before Congress are now being simply greedy in expecting funds for the recovery from the tornado. The main targets will be these conservative Republicans; Senator Tom Coburn, Senator James M. Inhofe, Representative Jim Bridenstine, Representative Markwayne Mullin, and Representative James Lankford. Both Representative Frank Lucas and Representative Tom Cole will be free from blame as they supported this legislation, well, they may receive a pass now but come the next election this vote may be used against them for supporting such massive unnecessary pork included in this legislation. And it is the included pork spending which makes the blame game unprincipled and purely a political witch hunt in an attempt to gain political points by disregarding the actual truth.

The legislation which allocated generous funding to assist and enable full recovery from much of the damages incurred during Hurricane Sandy still did not utilize even half of the $50 Billion. The greater part of these funds went to numerous projects or to supplement existing programs which had absolutely nothing to do with hurricane Sandy. Many of the expenditures went to numerous states and locations untouched by Hurricane Sandy and even to some which have never been touched by any hurricane in recorded history. These were the expenditures which the Oklahomans in the House of Representatives and the Senate voted against and they had made their positions very clear back in Oklahoma. Furthermore, there is not going to even be a vote on relief aid for the tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma as FEMA has a surplus of funds at this point and all outlays will fall well within already allocated emergency funds set aside for just such emergencies. The difference for Hurricane Sandy was in order to fund the repairs after that disaster had to come from spending above and beyond allocated spending thus the discussion was to allocate supplemental spending. This is a normal situation which has happened before and will happen again in the future simply because some years storm and other emergency disaster recovery allocations are less than budgeted and other years it will exceed allocated spending. The evil which is hidden in the example of Hurricane Sandy was the practice of attaching additional spending for pet items, most often funding items within a Senator or Representatives State or District, often to reward major financial supporters of their campaigns, to legislation which is obviously necessary such as emergency spending, defense budgets, and other pressing or popular legislations thus guaranteed to pass. This is a convenient and efficient way of hiding what is in reality unnecessary expenditures from discussion, debate, or media coverage while guaranteeing passage and allocation of these somewhat nefarious spending items which would suffer defeat and embarrassment if their sponsors were to submit legislation solely for the approval of such expenditures.

The hiding of pork and pet project spending within unrelated legislation is an old trick of the political class but has, like so many other underhanded and circuitous measures, exploded over the last fifty years. There is another legislative misdirection used by politicians by which they pass legislation for items which they are fully aware that should they support it straight out they would be pounded come the next election as their constituents would hold their feet to the fire for supporting something the voters would find undesirable, odious even. What is done is there are three versions of the legislation presented for consideration, each one worded just sufficiently different to make each one appear to be different. This can be accomplished by changing technical terms or making less direct references within the bill such that it is a difference without a difference. Then our Representatives and Senators can vote against at least one variation while they agree on which one will be passed, maybe all three will be passed and still allow any who need to have cover for opposing the legislation is also met. Another misdirection used was a favorite of retired Texas Representative Ron Paul who would add copious amounts of pork to guaranteed to pass comfortably legislation and then he would make a grand pontification denouncing all the pork in said piece of legislation and, after demanding a roll call vote, proudly vote against the legislation into which he had placed the pork for his district. When his reelection campaign was hitting the home stretch he could wave his vote against a bill containing pork for his own district as dyed in the wool anti-pork purist despite knowing full well that the pork would safely pass and his district receive the largess he intended for them. Representative Ron Paul was one of the most successful practitioners of this method of deceit.

These are simply a pair of ways our Senators and Representatives mislead and outright lie to us and still manage to do every dirty little trick necessary in order to build government and spend all of the citizens’ tax monies to buy the votes to keep them in their cushy jobs in Washington or each state capital. There is one method which will never see the light of day unless “We the People” demand that such be made into law, or better yet, made into a constitutional Amendment. What is necessary to end these practices is single item legislation requirement where each piece of legislation must state exactly the measure or condition it will address and then every article, addendum, and amendment must be justified as to how it addresses the defined subject of the legislation. Such constricting rules will never be imposed by our elected representatives because such would end much of their little games and secrets through which they enrich their big money supporters and even often find channels that put more cash directly into their own wallets. Single item legislative requirement would not be the end and cure-all but it would be a solid step towards curbing runaway spending which we currently suffer from in almost immeasurable amounts. Once we have corralled the spendaholics in our government, perhaps then things will become easier to observe, then further steps towards honest and forthright political service can be demanded and excesses finally be rendered to the past. Everybody is allowed to dream and sometimes that first step, the dream, can lead to actual achievements. Truth be told, if you never dream it, you will never achieve it, so let’s get the dreams started and the necessary changes introduced into the discussion.

Beyond the Cusp

The ‘A’ Responses to Pregnancy

If the question was put to a thousand Americans what word beginning with the letter ‘A’ they associate with unwanted pregnancy the vast majority, if not every single one, would most likely respond abortion. As a Western society with what has come to be considered a metropolitan attitude in which anything that causes life to become troublesome must have an easy resolution which frees the citizen from any responsibility for their actions. In the case of what is euphemistically called an unwanted pregnancy, the easy, no fuss, no muss answer is to get an abortion and presto, no more pregnancy. Abortion was presented as the simple and neat way to avoid one of the consequences of having unprotected sexual encounters which, of course, are nobody’s fault as such can occur to any woman at a moment’s notice.

 

Abortion came to the fore as the responsible way to resolve the situation of an unwanted pregnancy replacing its predecessor, adoption. But the modern metropolitan answer to pregnancy in the new, no responsibility, fast paced, immediate resolution of all problems had to find an instant, microwave fast resolution to pregnancy that did not require actually going full term and giving birth to a baby then giving the child up for adoption. Adoption was too messy and required the consequence of carrying the pregnancy for the full nine months and might even cause the unthinkable, ruin a girlish figure. Not in this modern world was it even thinkable to make a woman carry a baby to term just because she and her interest of a moment had pleasured each other without bothering to take precautions which might have actually delayed such actions and possibly even ruined the mood which drove the desire for such actions. Thus, adoption was out and abortion was in. Everything was now sped up to keep pace in the no consequence, fast paced, modern metropolitan world.

 

The ghastly, repulsive, repugnant details of what abortion is in reality was glossed over by changing the argument to make pregnancy resolution simply a choice and the zygote or fetus, dependent on length of pregnancy before detection, was minimalized and dehumanized into being nothing more than a collection referred to as a cellular mass. Everything about the actual pregnancy had to be redefined into a non-humanized, new world, metropolitan denotation which masked the entirety of what was actually occurring. But that is all falling apart and in the coming months this wondrous clean metropolitan lifestyle is going to have to face some very unpleasant and grizzly truths. The first shot across the bow was fired by the trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. The abortionist who kept jars with baby’s feet on his desk and other jars of various baby parts as mementoes decorating his clinic. Abortionist Kermit Gosnell ran a less than perfect clinic which lacked refinement, cleanliness, or observance of the law. Kermit Gosnell performed late term abortions beyond the legal limit, delivered live births and then performed what was referred to as clipping which severed the spinal cord at the base of the neck disconnecting the brain from the rest of the body. Every single horrific practice which one could imagine in their worst nightmare was a weekly occurrence in Kermit Gosnell’s clinic. Kermit Gosnell also preyed upon those women who really had nowhere reputable for them to turn to and were the most vulnerable in our society. This should make our indignation even more strident and purposeful for if our society does not protect the most vulnerable among us, what can be said to mitigate such callousness.

 

There are already the faint rumblings of even more Kermit Gosnells operating similarly grotesque abortion mills from other states. What we should fear but also prepare to face is a torrent of similar findings from numerous more cities and towns than we may care to admit, but that will not prevent witnesses from coming forward in the coming months. Initially the Kermit Gosnell case will be heard despite the near total media blackout and refusal to give this horrid and sordid case the attention deserved and that will start the first smattering of other such clinics being made known. The growing number of such clinics will force coverage from a reluctant media which will only serve to bring more cases into the light of day. We had best brace ourselves for the shocking horrors that are the truth about abortion as it will be coming into our consciences and there will be no way of avoiding the truth. The only honorable result of this entire sordid affair will hopefully be the awakening of our society to the actual truths about abortions and a return to a more sane approach to unwanted pregnancy and a return to the other ‘A’ answer, adoption. If the horrific witnesses testimony and horrifying evidence uncovered and brought before the courts and the public results in a renewed debate over the appropriateness of legal and easy abortion as an acceptable alternative for adoption, then some goodness may yet be salvaged from this shockingly graphic tale of criminal malfeasance. Maybe we as a society can demand that much of the needless expenses and overtly complicated legal forms and many layered administrative demands be streamlined and simplified and return adoption as the societal default answer to an unwanted pregnancy. Where our societal discussion went wrong was confusing the concept of an unwanted pregnancy with the fallacious concept that the child, which would result from the pregnancy going to term, would be equally unwanted. Nothing could be further from the truth as is witnessed by the long lists of people wishing to adopt and being circled around the system like an airplane at an overcrowded airport waiting for clearance to land. It is time our society weighed the truthful facts about abortion and gave equal consideration in the debate for adoption. If we prove to be half as civilized and removed from barbarism, then we will choose life over destruction, promise over regret and fulfillment of dreams over nightmares of hope dashed and kindness discarded.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

For a Healthy, Well Regulated Society Where Every Action is Regulated, Illegal or Mandatory

We live in the era of rule by bureaucracy. The path to this impossibility was a quick slide down a slippery slope of lazy politicians. At some point in time, the early 1960s is my best guess, our elected officials found an easier way to make laws while not needing to understand or research the particulars for the application and implementation of said laws. Their new operational model was they simply passed new legislation that gave a somewhat malleable and vague definition of the target ideas and ideals the legislation was targeted to produce and then assigned to different cabinet departments, cabinet Secretaries, select committees, or even in extreme cases some NGO to make the necessary regulations in order to fulfill the requirements stated and set in the legislation. Never in the wildest imagination of any conspiracy theory was there a more powerful way to slide down the slippery slope to a society where any and every act is either illegal or required or, in the best of cases, both. The epitome and perfection of this procedure will be taking effect throughout the rest of the year and is scheduled to be complete and workable by January 2014; but trust when we tell you that there will be more regulations spawned by this legislation in every year going forward for as far as one can envision. This strangling legislation is the Affordable Care Act which is better known as Obama Care. Most of us probably thought that everything would have been fully fleshed out and completely defined and everything that could possibly be required described in full and complete detail somewhere in the many hundreds of pages of the bill. After all, were we not told by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that we had to pass the bill in order to see what was in the bill? Well, that probably meant something quite different than was understood by most of us.

 

The reality is that within the legislation were hundreds of pages enacting or setting in place the requirement for many items which had absolutely nothing to do with healthcare while also not defining definitively much of anything and simply left amorphous definitions of intent of coverage and systems and left much of the filling in of details and regulations up to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. What is even more worrisome is that when these laws are passed such as Obama Care there is no date which prevents new regulations from being added past that point. This was a peculiarity which President Obama decided provided an unintended plethora of new regulations. In order to mine this gold mine that never stops giving technically, President Obama made a position named Regulations Czar Cass Sunstein with the given job description of reviewing government regulations in order to delete those regulations which are no longer deemed to be fulfilling any necessary purpose. The actual work being performed by Mr. Sunstein is to review all legislation passed into law over the entire history of the United States mining them for potential application of new regulations which serve the intents and ends of the Administration’s legislative and policy aims. Since any new regulations, or any regulations, which are written in order to fulfill the required implementation of passed legislation does not require debate or even the knowledge of Congress and can be completely enacted and implemented by the Administrative branch of the government. Simply put, if the President can produce justification for any regulation within any piece of existing law, then the regulation can be written, implemented, and enforced without the knowledge or action from any other branch of government. If this worries you, welcome to the scariest of secrets with which the Federal government is being grown beyond the wildest dreams of the most ardent fascist or other big government advocate.

 

Now for the really worrisome part of this story, Obama Care. Just imagine what a policy wonk given unlimited power to write regulations with the intent of controlling all actions over such areas as diet, exercise, habits, risky behavior, participation in dangerous sports, accident avoidance, and virtually anything one can imagine a person either participating or avoiding in their lives as long as these regulations can be tied in any manner to healthcare costs. We have seen a small example of such in New York City with Mayor Bloomberg and his smoking ban, trans fat ban, salt limiting, and attempted soda size limitation. When addressing all things which can be considered as potential health risks, where risk is defined as requiring healthcare expenditures, and you quickly realize that everything in life is now legally defined as something that government may choose to regulate. With government health care where the government decides what care you as a patient are entitled to receive, just imagine what requirements can be placed on one so that they can qualify for the best possible care allowed. Your diet can be controlled by requiring a scientifically specified diet with excessively restrictive meal plan. You might also be required to perform specified physical exercise routine. Should your weight deviate from the governmental norms for BMI you could be placed on an even more restricted diet to address your potential health risk. You like trail biking, sky diving, scuba diving, or any other potentially dangerous or injury prone activity? Not if you want healthcare to cover sprains, broken bones or other injuries which could result even if one does not participate in any injury risk behavior. Or perhaps in order to enjoy such activities one would be required to be licensed after taking required instruction which is required for your own good and would presumably teach you the safest manner to participate in your selected activity. Of course the fee for the licenses would be directly proportional to the risks involved in the particular activity. In all honesty, nothing in life is beyond being controlled in order to assure you remain in tip-top healthy shape in order to minimize the likelihood for you to require other than normative healthcare treatments. There is already a system which will likely be the eventuality of Obama Care which is known as the Complete Lives System. This system sets up formulae which are to be used to determine whether or not it would prove to be cost effective for government to provide healthcare services depending on the cost of the care required, the prognosis for success, the age of the patient, and numerous other cold, hard facts which then make the determination whether or not you will be treated. This system almost guarantees that there will be nothing beyond the most basic care provided to the elderly and high cost procedures would also not be approved for youth, especially if the problem will require continued care. This is as impersonal a system and arbiter for the dispensing healthcare as one could ever imagine, but then government has never been accused of being emotional or particularly caring. The future under universal government healthcare, which is inevitable under Obama Care, will result in a tangled web of regulatory requirements and restrictions which will ensnare every life and strangle from them any deviance from whatever is determined to be governmental norm. The other unavoidable result will be the absolute and complete end to personal privacy as in order to assure your life meets all health requirements, your life will necessarily have to be totally monitored. The amount of privacy that remains today, as restrictive as it may seem, will seem like unbelievable freedom in a decade or two when the government has reached the point where it must regulate all activities, diets, exercise, and all else in order to assure the healthiest of populations under its care. After all, it will be for your own good, honest.

 

Beyond the Cusp