Current Events
CONSERVATIVE CONVERSATIONS
Sponsored by the Republican Women of Tuscaloosa County
BOOK REVIEWS
Tuesday, August 17: “The Overton Window” by Glenn Bleck
12:00-1:00 p.m., Rotary Room of the Tuscaloosa Public Library
Elois Zeanah, AFRW President and RWTC Past President will review the book
FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Bring your lunch, if desired.
Thursday, April 8: “Going Rogue: An American Life” by Sarah Palin
Dr. Cathy Randall will review this book for the audience
1:00 p.m. at Capstone Village
601 5th Avenue, East Tuscaloosa
Thursday, April 29, 2010
“Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto”
By Mark R. Levin
Reviewed by Dr. Richard Cobb
1:00 p.m. Capstone Village
601 5th Avenue, East Tuscaloosa
NO COST. Public is invited.
For more information call: Jackie Ray at 339-4979
OUR HEALTH CARE FORUM ON SEPT. 15 AT THE BAMA THEATRE WAS A HUGE SUCCESS
Attendance was approximately 300 people
Health Care Forum Summary of Key Issues
HEY, OBAMA – TAKE YOUR BOAT AND SHOVE IT!
By Lucy Kubiszyn
At first, I didn’t believe what I heard on the radio. Listening to Rush Limbaugh discuss the section of Obama’s government health care plan now in Congress, I thought, this is America, and we don’t do things like that. But as I continued to listen, I actually became fearful. These people in power are serious about change, change in our values, our ethics, and yes, our country.
Under Democrats, the future doesn’t look bright for grandma and grandpa. As part of the pending legislation, senior citizens must submit to government counseling on “end-of-life issues” at least once every five years. If seniors have health problems or are in assisted living or nursing homes, they must be counseled more often on these issues. Combine this part of the legislation with the section that says under Obama’s plan older citizens may be denied more health services in the future because of their age, and it really doesn’t look good for seniors.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the global population of seniors will double from seven to 14 percent over the next 30 years. Obviously, this population is taking up too much of the nation’s resources and therefore, has become disposable. Yet, this is the group of people who have worked hard their entire lives, paid their taxes, supported their schools, churches and communities and served in our military. Now in their golden years, these seniors find Obama and his cohorts turning their backs on them.
Maybe most upsetting to me is the fact that I am one of their number, and I’m not ready to be shipped out to sea on Obama’s boat. I may be pushing 74, but I still have a pretty good life. I enjoy my husband, five children and 13 grandchildren. We work and bring money into the economy. We pay our taxes, support our church and community organizations. Bottom line, we are still active and productive citizens.
So, take your boat, Obama, and shove it! I’m not being shipped out anywhere right now.
“Each person has a Mission. God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.”
by Cardinal John Newman, “Echo of Mary Queen of Peace”, 1995
HEALTH CARE “SHOPPING”: Obama Sells “Spending” as “Savings”
By Elois Zeanah
President Obama is using tactics of a car salesman to sell his health care plan. Given his superman sales skills, it’s only appropriate that he recently bought a car company. Surging with success of selling the public on “investments” in the insurance, banking, and car industries, Obama is now supremely confident the public will buy his latest pitch to “spend” between one and three trillion dollars in order to “save” money. The fact that some balk at the argument that a broke nation should count spending deficits as income doesn’t bother Obama.
Getting a bargain or being fleeced?
Obama tells the public they shouldn’t worry about deficit-busting spending this year. Nationalized health care, he says, is a bargain because it will save more than the trillions it will cost long term. In truth, not only will the cost of government-run health insurance explode with additional taxes and fees that will hurt the middle class, the public will pay more for less.
Using trust to trick buyers
Obama is counting on his personal popularity and the fact that voters trust him to sell them on his latest idea for government takeover. Like a good car salesman who gets personal to make friends, then uses the “trust” factor to trick customers to let their guard down, Obama is not telling customers the “drive-out price”.
Creating a sense of urgency
Hoping to sell his plan before taxpayers have a chance to understand the financing, Obama plies the “urgency” trick of a “limited time offer” to make a sell. We must reform health care this year, Obama warns, or the opportunity to save the economy will be lost forever. The urgency to buy right now prevents the public from shopping around to get the best deal possible by making an informed choice.
Guilt trip
Obama appeals to public compassion with a guilt trip: We cannot ignore the 46 million uninsured Americans that go without health care, he moralizes. His dazzling popularity and gift of double talk makes it hard for voters to separate out facts from the sales pitch.
Leaving out details
A salesman doesn’t have to lie to sell an inferior product, he can just forget to mention key details. This is what’s happening with the cost argument of government-run health insurance. For example: Of the 46 million Americans that Obama says need health insurance, the truth is more like 13 million. Consider these rough estimates given by Bill Frist, a medical doctor and former House Majority Leader on CNBC on June 19:
11 million are entitled to health care insurance and opt not to take it
11 million are illegal immigrants.
11 million earn $75 thousand or more a year.
This leaves about 13 million uninsured who need health care. Multiplying the need three times helps, of course, to drive up the price Obama wants taxpayers to pay.
Shouldn’t there be a debate about these groups who are uninsured and whether the government should insure them? Maybe taxpayers don’t want to pay for people who are here illegally, or for people who have access to insurance but don’t take it; and maybe taxpayers don’t feel it’s right to be forced to pay for insurance for people who can afford it.
The public has a choice: Voters can be tricked by pressure sales tactics before they see the fine print, or voters can avoid getting swindled on yet another bureaucratic boondoggle and buy the best deal possible before we choose a car to drive off the lot.
HEALTH CARE REFORM: Is Obama’s public option for health care “competition” or a Trojan horse?
President Obama’s health care reform goal, he says, is not a single payer plan, but what he says in 2009 is not what he said in 2003.
Today, Obama speaks about choices – a public option and private insurers. In 2003, Obama spoke about how government health care would be possible only after Democrats regained the White House and Senate. Today from the White House, Obama tells the public that if they like their private health plan, they can keep it. But for how long?
Fellow Democrats define what Obama calls “competition” in the market place between a public option and private insurance this way: “A public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single payer.” (Rep. Jan Schokowsky, a fellow Illinois U.S. Representative, on April 18, 2009.)
Is a public option really a back door to single payer? Democrats admit that a public option is a strategy for getting there. It’s not a Trojan horse, one strategist asserts; it’s easy to see. “We’re going to get there,” he said. The government will move away from reliance on employer health insurance – but in a way not to frighten people and in a way to get them to accept government control. A public option, Rep. Schakowsky says, is “a strategy for getting there.”
Check the following video to hear the above comments:
OBAMA’S HEALTH CARE PLAN GAME: “Pass the Buck” to Young People
President Obama’s health care reform plan reminds me of the TV game show “Pass the Buck” which premiered in 1978: It relied on luck, instant decisions under pressure, and players risked losing everything. “Pass the Buck” lasted only 13 weeks and dissolved into the long-running game show, “The Price is Right”. Let’s hope Obamacare will do likewise. Otherwise, the same young voters who put Obama in office will ironically pay for his folly, forfeiting family income that should go to improve their quality of life to burdensome taxes to pay for the past generation’s free ride.
Will Obama “pass the buck” to kids who were born in 1978-on?
My daughter was born in 1978 so this parallel is personal. Here’s one way to view the impact of “pass the buck” on the Young Generation: A 30-year-old’s parents are retiring. They’ve worked hard and scrimped all their lives for the basics but want more in their golden years than pensions and savings can afford. They feel entitled to live the last 20 years of their lives in luxury. After all they deserve it! They’ve been fiscally frugal their whole lives and have sacrificed to give their children more than they had growing up. Their children are now grown and on their own. The parents have a great credit rating, so they buy their dream life by borrowing.
The parents die and their children, expecting to inherit the means to a similar luxurious lifestyle, discover to their dismay that alas, their parents left the bills for pleasures past to them. Alarmed, they wrestle with the reality that not only will they not inherit money and the American Dream their parents promised if they studied and worked hard, they will have to spend every penny they earn to pay off their parents’ debts, leaving nothing for themselves and their children. Their parents had passed the buck. Horrified, the children wonder how they failed to see through the high-falutin’ illusion while there was time to change the outcome.
Obama’s funding scheme for health care is a fanciful illusion
Today’s Young Generation will face this dilemma unless enough college students and young careerists who put Obama in office see through his glittering rhetoric and slow down the gathering storms that could overshadow their adult lives. We, the Older Generation, are the guardians of the American Dream and of our children’s well-being, and it’s our responsibility to provide comparisons and solutions to safeguard our children’s future. While we need their help, we must provide the leadership.
Even without Obama’s catastrophic nationalized health care plan adding trillions of dollars more, public debt will double over the next ten years and the bill will pass on to today’s young adults. Americans must not follow the pied piper Obama and rely on luck, make instant decisions under pressure, and risk losing everything. We must sort through this problem methodically and take the time to do it right. We simply cannot “Pass the Buck” to our children, but must make sure “The Price is Right” before the best health care in the world becomes inferior and its cost burdensome to the next generation.
FUNDING FOR OUR TROOPS: Bill Includes Billions to Bail Out Foreign Countries
On June 16th the U.S. House of Representatives passed a funding bill to support our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though the $106 billion bill was supposedly for American military forces, $5 billion of these funds will go instead to the IMF to help bailout foreign countries hurt in the global economic crisis. This $5 billion will secure a $108 billion U.S. line of credit to the International Monetary Fund for loans. Republican Minority Leader John Boehner, stated: “Funding for the IMF should be considered the way it’s supposed to be — in a separate bill on its own merits — not jammed through the House on the backs of our troops.”
MORE VOTERS CONSIDER THEMSELVES “CONSERVATIVE” THAN LIBERAL
A poll released on June 16, 2009 shows that 40% of voters characteristized their ideological leaning as “conservative”. This was the largest of all groups and almost twice the number who called themselves “liberal” at 21%.