Just after 1 a.m. this morning, the United States Senate voted to end debate on the health care reform bill that will create $2.5 trillion in new spending, will burden states with hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded Medicaid mandates, and generates myriad new taxes for you and your employer.

While Hoosiers were sleeping and he thought no one was paying attention, Sen. Evan Bayh was the 60th vote that Democrats needed to move the bill forward. Had he opposed it, the process would be slowed down so Democrats could explain what they are doing with their legislation. Instead, his vote helped speed up the process. A vote for final passage has already been set for Christmas Eve.

What a Christmas gift: the Democrats handing out your tax dollars!

Democrats continue to push this bill as quickly as possible so that Americans have no chance to learn about the consequences until it is too late. And even though he complained to reporters last week about out-of-control federal spending, Evan Bayh has now voted twice to move this massive spending bill forward.

Time is ticking away, but Evan Bayh can still stand with Hoosiers and oppose this bill. Please call or e-mail Sen. Bayh before Christmas Eve and tell him to oppose this bill that will greatly damage our economy and our health care.

Bayh is a Hypocrite

Just last week, Bayh sent a mass email to voters saying he was “Fed Up With Spending.” In it, he even praised Ronald Reagan!

Bayh is a hypocrite masquerading as a fiscal conservative Republican by supporting Democratic health care reform that collects taxes from you starting in 2010. Not until 2014 will Uncle Sam start handling out health care entitlements. Ironically, now that Democrat-style health care reform is closer to reality, Bayh’s position as a “debt-fighter” precedes Democrats’ one-track mind of raising your taxes.

Democrats say Republicans offer no solutions, however, the Dems argue taxes and nanny-state government is the solution. The trouble is, bigger government brings more corruption — and events like an extremely rare Christmas Eve vote.

Sen. Evan Bayh
Washington – (202) 224-5623
Indianapolis – (317) 554-0750
Hammond – (219) 852-2763
South Bend – (574) 236-8302
Ft. Wayne – (260) 426-3151
Evansville – (812) 465-6500
Jeffersonville – (812) 218-2317

Or click here to send Sen. Bayh an e-mail.

The Democrats are fighting hard for robbing from the rich and enslaving the poor with a welfare state for everyone. When are you going to speak up and against the Democrats?

Check out excerpts from this mass email from the Democratic National Committee:

Democratic senators are currently fighting hard alongside the President to pass reform. They deserve our appreciation. Republicans are still trying to score partisan points rather than stand up for American families.

If we don’t pass health reform, millions of Americans will be trapped in a broken status quo. … There’s too much at stake not to get this done. That’s why Obama For America supporters have made 849,856 calls to Congress in support of health reform since August.

As a Republican, it is your duty to make the call, to speak out, and to share your disgust for the Democrats strong-arming you, your prosperity, and your well-being.

Ever wondered why there are so many TV commercials for buying and selling gold? If you haven’t heard, world governments are ditching the U.S. dollar and buying gold. Entrepreneurs are acting on suckers unwitting consumers willing to part with their gold for last year’s prices.

Let’s look at the precious metals markets — the only enduring source of trading stability because of the scarce nature of the commodity. While this may sound like G. Gordon Liddy in a gold commercial, just look at the facts.

In the past year, gold has climbed 54 percent to record highs exceeding $1,100 an ounce. In the same period, silver has nearly increased 96 percent in value.

The Democrat-led U.S. government has torpedoed the dollar’s value with reckless spending in stimulus packages, bank and auto bailouts, costly social programs, and so forth.

Inspired by the long-debunked Keynesian economic theories of the 1940s, the Obama administration preaches a promiscuous fiscal policy where government spends, spends, spends taxpayer money in an attempt to resuscitate a lifeless economy.

You can’t spend money you don’t have, but if you’re the government, you just crank up the money printing presses! This source of cash is not the mythical “money tree” or even pennies from heaven. It is a stealthy way to strip away buying power from our paychecks or our life savings. We see it when gas prices go up. We see it when a sack of groceries gets more expensive. We see it when gold prices skyrocket.

The word on the street is that another government stimulus plan is coming that will further tranquilize our economy and tank the dollar. With Americans screaming “Where are the jobs?” now the president wants to do something about it. But as you would expect, Obama is going about it all wrong.

You can’t spend your way to prosperity with other people’s money.

Today, Congressman Mike Pence released a video statement urging Americans to “Let Your Voice Be Heard” in speaking out against the Pelosi health care plan — an amalgam of three different House plans — that the Speaker of the House unveiled last week.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT7xfoSiH5Q

The chart to the right, courtesy of CBS News, shows where we are on the crooked, winding path down the road to a socialist nanny state. And if you thought your elected officials were looking out for you, think again. Health care reform will swallow one-sixth of the U.S. economy and likely result in higher taxes for 46 million middle-class Americans.

Have a look yourself at the 1,990-page piece of legislation.

Also, we have posted a link to Contact My Congressman with all the info you need to tell your Senators and Congressman that government-run health care is a bad deal for America. Our children and grandchildren simply can’t afford it.

Links

• Transcript of Mike Pence’s Video Statement
• CBS News: Health Care Progress Report: November 2
• Pelosi House Bill, Oct. 29, 2009. 1,990 pp. (PDF)

“Washington, D.C. is the world capital of unintended consequences.”

We often hear Rep. Mike Pence say it in his speeches and interviews, and it’s true.

Taken from lessons of economics, the idea is that while legislation and government programs often provide measurable public good, the costs often outweigh the benefits. Let’s look at the unintended consequences of Social Security.

Workers Retire with Less

For years, Democrats have lauded Social Security as the defining moment of FDR’s presidency. Although millions indeed benefit from it, unfortunately, the tens of millions who pay for it are often worse off than the program’s recipients. Further, the program’s true cost far exceeds the payroll taxes collected from workers and employers.

In anticipation of receiving Social Security checks, workers save less for retirement. With less money saved, retirees invest less, and the overall economy and wages suffer as a result. Untold billions of dollars, decades of progress, and foregone individual opportunities are lost to oppressive social programs like those favored by Democratic leadership — and made possible by an ever-expanding government.

Nowadays, the power-hungry Obama administration speaks of “fundamental transformation” in advancing an insidious fiscal policy that threatens our liberty. Starting with socialist programs in the 1930s, namely Social Security, and continuing with Medicare in the 1960s, today we see the same old ideas dressed up as modern and progressive. Does taking a step back into the 1930s sound progressive to you? It’s regressive. And, when the government mandates it — it’s oppressive.

Handouts Repress All Takers

Democrat politicians and their endless entitlements work to repress minorities by making them less inclined to work. Their own government robs them of any financial incentive to break free from a nanny state of continual coddling via food stamps and other government benefits.

In an article by black conservative commentator Juliette Ochieng, she describes many government programs as “life subsidies” that reward indolence, whoredom and irresponsibility.

Welfare Case Study

A friend of mine who lives in Madison County, we’ll call him “Mike,” once took a job for minimum wage and hated it. He didn’t even last a week. He was somewhat of a deadbeat, and when he saw an opportunity to mooch off the government indefinitely, he immediately jumped on the idea.

His plan was to gamble on a career as a world-famous rap music artist — a huge longshot for anybody and especially for Mike. To help finance his plan, he would count on our tax dollars to provide him a mediocre subsistence. He got the idea for welfare fraud from a friend, and, sadly, other friends soon caught wind of the scheme.

Mike first committed fraud by faking a disability to a doctor — no, not the doctor in Middletown, Indiana. In one visit plus a follow-up, his doctor supplied him the necessary authorization to start monthly paychecks for Supplemental Security Income. In addition, he obtained a legal prescription for anti-depressant medication.

The constant panic attacks made him unable to work, or so he told the doctor. We all knew he was faking it. With all his wheeling and dealing, Mike would not have survived if he were a socially inept recluse. In fact, he was an extrovert and also a philanderer. He was a father to no fewer than five children from three different moms. And, was he current on his child support payments? You already know. I think that if he applied the same energy to ongoing employment instead of ongoing debauchery, he might have made something of himself.

He would even barter his medication for electronics obtained “from a friend of a friend.” The drugs would eventually make their way to the black market. To this day, Medicare provides the meds for Mike’s phony illness, and the USDA provides food and the occasional block party cookout courtesy of monthly food stamps.

A Decade Later: Going from Bad to Worse

With Mike now in his mid-30s, 10 years have since passed and government assistance still supports him. Every August, he hustles and scrounges for money to buy his kids new sneakers for school. Any money left over from his SSI income he uses to feed an addiction to hydrocodone pain pills to get high. He crushes and snorts the pills to intensify the effect. Not even the drug overdose death of a friend could stop his illicit behavior.

I see Mike less and less these days, as he has drifted into an underworld of drug dealers and crime. It’s a bleak existence that I prefer to avoid.

When I last I saw him, I noticed that he had taken up smoking cigarettes, and you can bet our tax dollars are indirectly fueling his newly acquired habit. He lives the life of a bum because the Democrats’ massive government entitlements make it all possible.

Links

• Why is the Black Vote in the Democratic Pocket?
• Middletown Doctor Linked to Overdose Deaths Faces Suspension

U.S. payrolls plummeted by 260,000 in September as the unemployment rate inched upward to 9.8 percent, the highest level since 1983. State and local governments are reeling, and businesses small and large are posting losses.

“Where are the jobs?” is a rightful refrain Republicans like Rep. Mike Pence have been repeating for months now, and the Obama administration continues to lose focus.

In a statement, Pence said:

The American people know that true economic recovery starts with fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C., and tax relief for working families, small businesses and family farms.

The Democrat-led Congress is letting those wise words fall on deaf ears.

Adding insult to idiocy, Vice Pres. Joe Biden gave the not-so-brilliant assessment that “We don’t think that ‘less bad’ is good.”

Entrepreneurialism Not a 4-Letter Word

The problem at hand is a lack of jobs, caused by government meddling in what should be left to individuals acting in their own self-interests. This is free-market capitalism, where the unintended consequence is that everyone benefits.

It’s amazing what happens when liberals tax and spend other people’s money. Just look at how our government has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on an inefficient pet projects like John Murtha’s airport. The bottom line is that individual “greed” motivates an entrepreneur to allocate his own resources efficiently, where his past profits become his future investments.

It takes money to make money, and coincidentally, it takes workers to make the widgets in the capitalist’s factory. As my economic professor used to say, “What greedy little capitalist piggy wants to stop at making $50,000? $100k? $500k? $1 million?”

Competition is a capitalist’s constant threat. It keeps him in line; it keeps him honest and on his toes. Liberals seem to ignore that fact and are eager to portray entrepreneurs as evil-doers. However, it is their complete and utter ignorance of how the world works that poses threats to our liberty and prosperity.

The Equality of Opportunity

The real evil is the United States’ fiscal irresponsibility that has empowered indirectly other countries, including our enemies, at the expense of blacks and minorities in this, a U.S. welfare state. Instead of economic equality and racial reparations, we need the equality of opportunity, where everyone starts the race from the same starting line.

Add to our nation’s woes a looming crisis in the Middle East, a belligerent, tyrannical dictator in North Korea, and not to mention an ongoing war in Afghanistan. All the while, Democrats keep conjuring up new ways to legislate the way to prosperity. It will never work. I can’t think of a better way to drive investors and jobs out of this country.

Will liberals ever admit that government is the problem?

Instead, these events have captured our imagination in recent months, overshadowing the urgent need for jobs:

Top 10 Reasons the U.S. is Losing Focus on Jobs

10. Cash for Clunkers
9. Health Care Reform
8. Cop, Educated Idiot Meet for Beers
7. Chicago-style Olympics Pitch
6. National Energy Tax
5. Soft Drink, Fatty Food Sin Tax
4. Where to House Guantanamo Bay Prisoners?
3. United Nations Apology Tour
2. A Hate Crimes Bill for Gays and the Transgendered
1. Presidents Clinton and Carter Form Racial Tag-Team

Watch for Pres. Obama to host another prime time news conference soon. Or maybe this time, we’ll be treated to a long-winded speech live from the Oval Office?

Links

• September Unemployment Data
• Pence Statement on Latest Unemployment Figures
• Biden on Unemployment: “Less Bad” Isn’t Good
• Republicans Seize on Jobs as Proof Obama’s Policies Have Failed

In an ongoing display of incompetent leadership, the Democrat-led city of Anderson has the community’s blood boiling over higher fees and taxes.

Rebuild Anderson, the eponymous, bipartisan group recently posted City Salaries for 2009 on its web site. Surprisingly, the list includes three husband-and-wife teams collectively taking home nearly half a million dollars.

The city has already levied trash fees and hikes in the water, sewer, and electric rates. Then came an increase in the County Option Income Tax (COIT). Now, city officials are pitching a Local Option Income Tax (LOIT).

Mayor: Traditional Cuts Won’t Work

Salary cuts are always a last resort for Democrats because cuts endanger the public perception of them as champions for the common worker. It’s a sham. Propped up salaries not only reduce the budget but also eliminate employment opportunities for capable and qualified workers.

If we could reduce the salaries of the city’s Top 10 earners by 5 percent, we could save $40,745 — nearly enough to hire another police officer or another firefighter. With the city’s finances in such dire straits, perhaps deeper cuts among the Top 100 earners would get us where we need to be?

Former Mayor: It’s a Financial Train Wreck

“The Ockomon administration is a financial train wreck,” former Mayor Kevin Smith said in a June 9 interview with the Herald Bulletin. Since leaving office, Smith is now a business owner, media producer and radio host of the program Kevin Smith Reports heard Saturday mornings on WHBU 1240 AM.

“In 2005, I outlined these exact same issues where we called together the employees, we explained we had a reduced revenue stream and we took proactive measures,” Smith said. “We publicly announced and documented the decrease in revenues the city was facing, including the pending legislation House Bill 1001, which capped property taxes. By 2010, we knew the city had $5 million less.”

Power-Hungry Democrats

For Democrats, salary cuts are never an option. Instead, they prefer to blame the previous administration and make the case for layoffs, wage freezes, overtime cuts, and increasing insurance deductibles.

Democrats ignore the economic reality of regular hard-working citizens being priced out of the market by over-compensated employees. Willing to do anything to protect the salaries of their political cronies, power-hungry politicians cannibalize the city’s budget. They would rather service themselves by reducing services to you.

In contrast, a conservative fiscal policy helps hire good people willing to work harder for reasonable compensation. The Ockomon administration clearly lacks the business savvy that could propel the city forward.

Links

• Belt Tightening? City Salaries for 2009
• City Employee Salary List 7-31-2009.pdf
• Layoffs, Furloughs on City’s List of Cost-Cutting Measures
• Anderson Officials Brainstorm Budget Fixes
• Kevin Smith Reports

The city of Anderson is in shambles with a projected $8.2 million budget shortfall in 2010, and government leaders are getting nervous. They are ready to pull the trigger on a new tax with a funny name: LOIT, or Local Option Income Tax.

A bipartisan organization called Rebuild Anderson, recently released figures on what LOIT means for you and for other residents of Anderson and Madison County.

The city of Anderson is hosting an information session at City Hall, 120 East 8th Street, on Thursday, Sept. 24 at 5 p.m. Now is the time to let your officials know that tax hikes and new taxes are unacceptable, especially at a time when all of us are belt-tightening. Let your voice be heard before it’s too late!

Download the LOIT Alert Flyer at right and distribute to your family and friends.

The mayor of Anderson, Kris Ockomon, said last week there is “not really a way” to lay off workers. Why is furloughing city workers out of the question?

This author knows two city employees, by name, who dawdle behind their computers every day playing solitaire, forwarding joke/humor emails to friends, and checking their Facebook pages. Why are we paying for this?

Just this week, local radio personality Leland Franklin (WHBU-1240 AM), described seeing a city employee napping in a city truck while parked at Shadyside Park. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and it’s time for underutilized employees to find other employers who will appreciate and better utilize their skills.

The Herald Bulletin reported that the city can save $1 million for every 25 employees who get the pink slip. Let’s get creative and think of ways to downsize staff and upsize service.

If the Anderson City Council was so quick to defund economic development consultant Greg Winkler in 2007, then we need to start trimming the fat in other areas.

Legislators had apparently considered naming their new tax the “Standard Healthy Income Tax,” but instead opted for the term, LOIT, that best describes the liberal tendency to “loiter” (wander aimlessly) around unpopular, burdensome issues like tax hikes and increasing the size of local government. Nonetheless, it’s another instance of government helping itself to more of your hard-earned money.

Links

• Rebuild Anderson
• Anderson officials brainstorm budget fixes
• State Deadline Dates for Communities to Adopt LOIT

Who picks up the tab for massive government spending? You do!

A local business professional has crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office to find what every American’s share of U.S. government spending would be for 2009. Your total comes to $5,175 per person, up 243 percent from $1,508 in 2008. Thank you and have a nice day.

How’s that “Hope and Change” working out for you?

Links

• Your Federal Deficit by Michael L. McDonald
• Unintended Consequences by Rob Norton