Ping Pong

by Thomas Paine

Well, if you haven’t heard (and you should have), Congress has passed bills on health care reform.

This is not, however, the end of the road on this legislation. What happens next is that the bill is pushed back and forth between the houses to be edited, amended, approved, and argued over. Typically, these negotiations would be formal processes, taking place on the Senate and House floors and being debated publicly. However, last time the Democratic majority allowed this bill to be openly debated on the floor, the Republican minority threw considerable wrenches in the works, stalling passage of the legislation for as long as possible.

So what’s the solution? Perform all these talks informally. This would not only allow the Dems to block out the Republicans and any pesky Independents, but keep the American public out of the proceedings!

That’s right. Remember C-SPAN, the station that covers every move within the houses as deliberations occur? Apparently, the station is being blocked from covering health care debates! We American voters are obviously too stupid and too disinterested to need cameras on our legislators.

C-SPAN went (and rightfully so) up in arms on the issue, sending this letter to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell (the Speaker of the House, Majority Leader, and Minority Leaders, respectively) requesting access to the deliberations.

Let us hope that increasing media pressure and hopefully pressure from the public - their constituents - will force the Congress to broadcast on the debates and deliberations that will so strongly affect our futures.

The Census

by Thomas Paine

Let’s take a minute and talk about something that no one seems to care about: The US Census.

When asked about the census, most people will say something about counting the number of people in the United States, or something of the sort, and likely throw in something about how irritating the census takers are.

What we have gradually forgotten about Article I, Section 2, which”” reads: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers…”

Roughly translated, this means “We’ll take a census, and decide what states get the most representation and how much those states pay in tax money based on how many people live in them.”

This is a good idea. It means that representation is as evenly distributed as possible, right?

Sort of. Remember all those dead Illinois voters that mysteriously turned up to ratchet up the Democratic vote in Chicago? Remember that whole ACORN issue?

Well, the White House is set to take this particular problem to a grand scale.

You probably didn’t notice, as this bizarre turn of events was hardly covered in the early media storm, but three weeks into Obama’s presidency, he shifted control of the census from the Commerce Department to the White House. The census is now under the control of Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief political advisor.

So why does this matter? Because if the census goes the way of ACORN and Chicago, fair representation will be shot to pieces. “Estimations” of numbers of poor, homeless, and illegal residents of blue states would hike the number of votes for blue-leaning states up, effectively drowning the votes of the red states and maintaining the left’s current massive influence over legislation.

So it’s too bad no one cares about the census anymore. What can you do? Well, start by badgering your state legislature like crazy. Ask for appeals to the Supreme Court - it has the power of judicial review, the ability to decide if the actions of the other branches are Constitutional.

So what do you think? Will you stand up?

The Right of the People to Peacably Assemble…

If you recall, the completion of that sentence goes something like, “Shall not be abridged.” Here’s some (althoug a little outdated, we’ll admit) insight from “John Adams” on the protests at the G20 Summit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uB6adIx03Q&feature=related
There is the basis of what was happening. Note that the organizations that were interviewed, the main organizations planning on showing up, were/are organizations based off Peace. Some of their biggest ideals are peace. So we can only assume that the protests would have been peaceful, that however did not stop the city of Pittsburgh from denying them the right to protest. Thus the following happened.

http://my.nowpublic.com/world/some-cry-foul-over-pittsburgh-police-g20-crowd-control-tactics

http://my.nowpublic.com/world/pittsburgh-g20-riot-police-towers-patio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeYg0qCn11U&feature=player_embedded
(this one is important)

http://my.nowpublic.com/world/chicago-indymedia-anarchists-and-police-clash-day-1-pittsburgh-g-20

So if you bothered to watch those, I hope you realized something about each one. These particular protests were peaceful. These people were just marching or in the case of the 3rd video they weren’t doing anything at all, they had nothing to do with the G20 protests. Our right to peacefully assemble was violated in Pittsburgh, and I doubt more than 100,000 people noticed. So I’m here to let y’all know. The government is abusing its power, I don’t care how you stereotype the protesters (the anarchists or the peace organizations), government can not stop them from protesting until AFTER they’ve become violent. It is our right to protest and they can not assume that we won’t be peaceful. Protesting should never have to be sanctioned, ever. Bring all the police force you want just in case, but until it becomes violent the police should never start attacking. Most of the violence caused in these protests, by the way, was caused by police firing first….