As the fallout of President Obama’s latest healthcare mandate resounds around Capitol Hill an the nation with house speaker John Boehner vowing to block the controversial rule stating all employers must provide contraceptives as part of insurance coverage, even after the White House compromise placing the final burden on insurance companies, not religious institutions, Obama is still blasted. The latest, right wing republicans pointing to the mandate and saying this is what big, liberal government looks like, government making decisions for you. GOP current front runner Rick Santorum echoing them, adding in comments about the Paul Ryan healthcare plan, including turning Medicare into a voucher program, saying we wanted to give people choices, and he/they President Obama, democrats said oh no this what you should have. Santorum moved out of healthcare to the newest regulations on banks and lenders requiring full disclosure of both loan parameters and risks with a derogatory comment, now we’re going to tell you what kind of loans you can have. Fortunately for women and the American public, people who really are being told what to do, turns out, don’t like it very much and there has been pushback from Catholics against the hard line taken by bishops anti-Obama, anti the provision. Despite opposition party claims, it is routinely republican, conservatives, radical, religious conservatives who truly intrude on people’s lives, insist on making laws dictating the personal choices people make for themselves, their significant other, their family, are focused on regulating behavior in an extreme way.

 Contrast the 2 videos here; on top is something to be worried about, on the bottom are people complaining about seeing boxers, the equivalent of shorts.



– CLICK LINK BELOW TO VIEW SECOND VIDEO –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y0siGXwMfo&feature=related

 This video was chosen less for the created solution and more because it is the only one not complete with derogatory comments on how people choose to wear their clothes, given by prominent  net national or city figures, citizens alike.

 They are the ones telling you how or even if you can dance in a bar, restaurant, they are the ones passing laws telling you what kind of underwear, bikini or pants you can wear in public; no matter if you can’t see the first two items mentioned, even banning flip flops on visitors participating in Whitehouse tours. Conservatives, tea party or otherwise, are the ones telling you who you can marry and who you can’t, who marriages should be between, what kind of sexual activities you can enjoy between 2 consenting adults, not under biblical law, Islamic law, Torah law, but the city, county, state, and if they had their way, federal law of the United States of America. Remember the illegality of prostitution is trading money, goods, property for sex, not how many people you have sex with, not whom, providing they are willing and of age. The same conservatives who tie the moral fabric of a nation to do you or do you not wear pajamas in public, tie personal character to whether you sag your pants, not as you go to a job interview, not as you work, but as you shop, go to school, do everyday things.  It has routinely been republicans who support taxes on sugary beverages; one Illinois republican going so far as to say parents of obese kids should have tax deductions taken away. Bans on fast food restaurants and toys may have been sponsored or supported by democrats but are rooted in the conservative views of their constituents. Apartment complexes, housing developments and home owners associations have, for years, dictated everything from no smoking, no pets, to mandatory hanging of Christmas lights. My own city fines people who wash their cars on their own front lawns, regulations all usually enacted and supported by grouchy old people who have no use for freedoms they don’t agree with who  should qualify for fossil status, as they aren’t being taken seriously anyway.

Those who read my work regularly will recognize our favorite commissioner and his rant on pajamas; featured here again as a prime example of, once again, the true origins of “big government.”   

 Worse are those who may well be listed as a democrat or independent but quickly get drunk on their own power while in their small town, government job, using the council seat, office of mayor, state senator, governor to wage war on their list of pet peeves, some who make it all the way to Washington and then try to do the same on a national scale. Just look at Michigan’s emergency city manager law giving total financial and other power to one person. People who can do damn near anything from break union contracts, dissolve municipalities, take over pension systems, even set school curriculum with little qualification; in this case, 5 years experience and “demonstrable expertise in business, financial or local or state budgetary matters.”  What does this really mean; well for Michigan it means their elected city officials have been taken away and now the city manager has literally taken their voice away. How, by trying to sell the city’s radio station, both license and equipment on E-bay; something that is, by the way illegal. The FCC must approve any sale of a radio station license and the ad was thus removed from the auction site. Subsequently the emergency manager in question said he had a buyer for the station, previously getting no bids, the one bid meant to give it back to the people rejected, so we, along with the people of Michigan, will wait and see. Here it’s even more egregious because city commissioners have been traded for one person who doesn’t even know what’s legal and what’s not regarding the action he wanted to take; he obviously didn’t check to make sure it was, and even if you wanted to sell something as important to a community as a radio station, needed to for the money, surely you could find better avenues than e-bay.


And conservatives are the ones telling women their employers don’t have to provide them birth control, yet are the same conservatives who want to shorten unemployment benefits, cut people off welfare and food stamps regardless of why they lost their job, how hard they try to get another one, or the 4-5, 6, 7, 8 kids they have to support thanks to mandates engineered and backed by conservative politicians basically stripping reproductive rights, the right not to reproduce. Not everyone can be as wealthy as Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum; not everyone can afford the family size they have.  These are the same politicians pushing implementing abstinence only sex education, while shouting about personal responsibility; ironic since they don’t want well informed young people, at least one saying birth control was irresponsible, is a license to do unnatural things. Then horrified by a statistic that something like half the children born to women are born out of wedlock, wanting to blame that on birth control instead of a lack of proper information, sex education.  Of course this was a Catholic and Catholics are taught sex is only for procreation; how then priests explain the Songs of Solomon, we don’t know.  Ron Paul, championing personal responsibility in his own way, is looking to end social security and say people figure your retirement out; FEMA, no more rebuild your own disaster stricken home.  Newt Gingrich was at C-PAC spouting his usual rhetoric saying to get unemployment you should have to sign up for a business lead training program to modernize our workforce; here’s the rub, those have to A- exist, B- be up to date and C- be in session when busses run so people without cars can attend.   In my own city bus service ends at 6:25 3 days a week and the only clerical training program available teaches very basic skills in business letters, memos; PC skills are limited to MS office and the local vocational rehabilitation is steering their clients away from it because it is too simplistic up against employers who want adobe applications, accounting, book keeping, marketing, business school and so forth. Gingrich followed up that speech with a wonderful line on C- Span regarding the Obama budget, saying, contrary to the establishment, he would lower spending to revenue levels not increase revenue levels to finance the Obama credit card. But to do that, it means less care for our wounded veterans, welfare and food stamps will be cut off, unfortunately for all the wrong people, many of whom will be children, job training will go in favor of national security, just scratching the surface. The same “Obama credit card” looking to repair, rebuild infrastructure, thus creating jobs, boosting education, bolstering clean energy so we don’t need the Canadian pipeline to Huston. An “Obama credit card” partially financed with higher but fairer, proportionate taxes on the rich. Keeping in mind Gingrich is the identical would be commander and chief who wants to spend billions putting a colony on the moon by his second term, who is vying for the support of the tea party, a group willing to play chicken with the debit ceiling to “change Washington’s way of doing things,” forget if it stalled business, suspended stipends, schooling for the disabled, and grind our country to a halt.   


By contrast democrat, independent, fringe parties and our current president seek to safeguard the public, make laws aimed toward fair play evident in the new healthcare rule saying to women, no matter where you work, the moral, religious, doctrines, compunctions of your employer, you will have access to birth control, contraception should you choose to use it. How they have gotten by with not doing so all this time is a mystery, considering it is blatant discrimination of women. Neither is any of this big government making decisions for you, in fact it is actually making sure all options are open to you. Examining the validity of Santorum’s comment regarding the Paul Ryan plan, said plan was minus key details except it involved changing how Medicare worked for those younger than 55, including people in their mid to late 40’s, between 50 and 55 who have paid in all this time, planned around the system as it exists currently, who may not get equal coverage, who may not be able to retire, not only as planned, but for years to come. Couple that with making it a voucher program, which under the guise of giving people choices would inevitably throw some people under the bus, as they suddenly couldn’t get certain coverage for things automatically covered under the 80% Medicare pays for Parts A and B, persons eligible for various forms of part D also get prescription drugs at a fraction of the price. And certainly people were agitated and against it in favor of having to peddle a voucher at a big company hoping you can get what you need. Continuing, the idea was to put competition into health-care in order to keep costs down, but the reason that works for prescription drugs is because it is one commodity with multiple drug makers making the same thing, not so with unique kinds of care, specific programs, certain medical practice specialties.

No Obama legislation on full disclosure of mortgage types, requiring mortgage documents be written in plain, understandable English was not meant to tell people what loan they could have, rather tell them what loan they were getting, to make sure borrowers where fully aware of  both the risks and responsibilities of the loan they signed up for. Similar to the rules for banks and credit card companies saying no more hidden fees, no more unexplained rate hikes on people making their payments. All actions spurred in the interest of knowledge and fair play. Financial reform has been almost the exclusive goal of democrats wanting to return sanity to the financial market, re-institute things put in place after the great depression, fought tooth and nail by republicans concerned, they say about killing jobs, weakening the recovery, who want to tout the wonders of capitalism, more akin to crony capitalism, than the capitalism of the industrial revolution, the capitalism creating solid, beneficial business. Along those same lines are the comments uttered about creating a free market, wanting to eliminate the Federal Reserve; on the less extreme end scaling back regulations. No one realizing, or more aptly willing to admit, the reason we need additional regulation is because business, the financial sector hasn’t operated on the tenets of fairness, responsibility, good business sense, integrity for decades, preferring to function on greed, manipulation, whose collective moral compass centers around well it’s not technically illegal, so why not?  In that kind of an environment how can the government not act in the best interest of the public, yet when it doesn’t happen as fast as they think it should the accusation is a failure of leadership. When it does happen, the government tries to get ahead of problems; oh they are too big, making our decisions for us, taking our freedoms away. Conservatives are the ones who call Medicare, social security entitlement programs, who seem to want seniors to eat cat food, seeing as they will cut said programs before raising taxes, who balk at the payroll tax cut in favor of taking months or years to roll out sweeping restructuring of the tax code in a congress who can’t do such rudimentary tasks as pass a federal budget.

Holding up conservative vs. non conservative approaches to social issues, things surrounding civil liberties, yes Obama agreed to look at taxing sugary drinks, but has yet to try and enact any such measure, instead saying public schools must serve healthier options, making the same mandate for fast food, restaurant kids’ meals. The first lady has pushed for education campaigns to get kids exercising and eating better, not banning toys in Happy Meals, not going along with nicknamed fat taxes or added pricing of insurance based on do you like cheeseburgers. It is President Obama who understands the hardships of this recession hints 99 weeks of unemployment, who told someone in a recent interview people become eligible for food stamps he doesn’t make them so; as opposed to other politicians who mix food stamps up with other programs who must not want them to ever get jobs if they are willing to take away monies that allow them to buy toothpaste, mouthwash, shaving cream, sanitary napkins. Of course if they don’t it gives them something to campaign for reelection on themselves. While he, the president, with other non-conservatives have focused on bringing relief to struggling people, now and knows big, multifaceted policy changes must be implemented slowly. It is why the payroll tax holiday is on the agenda now and why parts of his healthcare plan do not take effect until 2014. Another example of, not big government, but leveling playing fields and giving options; under one of the last pieces of so called Obamacare all employers must provide health insurance, all people must have health coverage, regulation, legislation going both ways. An example of balanced government that is not in our closets, our bedrooms, our refrigerators, or telling us what we can put there. Balanced government that is not trying to tell us what clothing we can wear or rather can’t, who despite differing views of the constitution, didn’t do something blatantly illegal and certainly not out of ignorance of the law. No democrat, liberal government is not big government, never has been; fairer government maybe. Conservative government is the big, over reaching, monstrosity many want no part of.                                   

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