Tone-deaf Democrats and Scott Brown’s truck
January 25, 2010 by Warren Tompkins · Leave a Comment
It should come as no surprise to anyone that liberals put another notch on their belts recently by making jokes about U.S. Sen.-elect Scott Brown’s pickup truck. Being out-of-touch never looked so blatant. In a speech intended to back Mass. Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley, President Obama said, “Forget the ads. Everybody can run slick ads. Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck.” That line drew laughter from the crowd.
Brown, to his credit, responded, “Mr. President, unfortunately in this economy, not everybody can buy a truck. My goal is to change that by cutting spending, lowering taxes and letting people keep more of their own money.” And he’s right. People don’t invest in big-dollar purchases like automobiles in times like these. A majority of Massachusetts voters agreed, too, making history by putting a Republican in the seat held by the Democrats for decades.
Maybe it never came across the minds of liberals, in their elitism, attacking Brown that the pickup truck has led auto sales in this country for years. From the smaller models to a decked-out full size version, you’ll see pickups involved in every aspect in American life. They also missed the fact that Brown’s truck is American-made, by GM of all places. Like most of us, Brown hasn’t been going out and getting newer models. He’s put more than 200,000 miles on his vehicle.
This episode is eerily reminiscent of when Obama went to San Francisco in 2008 and tore into small-town America, saying, “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Sounds a little more like the bitterness and antipathy is coming from the left side of the aisle. It’s no wonder the country is in the depths of buyer’s remorse.
Though Massachusetts is a decidedly blue state, the voter registration numbers tilt heavily in favor of independents. Recently, independents have been swinging races across the country, and they’re not happy with the way liberals are acting. From bailouts to health care, cap-and-trade and giveaways to unions, they’re realizing that their voices and opinions and needs aren’t making it to the powers that be.
Liberals are now reaping what they’ve sown. Long-time Congressional Democrats are retiring. U.S. Rep. John Spratt is reportedly considering not running for reelection. Others, up and down the line, are switching parties. Because voters have seen the liberals for who they really are, the tide is switching back to conservatives, who will get this country working again.
Unions get their Obama payoff
January 19, 2010 by Warren Tompkins · Leave a Comment
The country is up in arms about the ObamaCare plan going through Congress. In the past week, another move is only going to stoke the fires among those of us who’ve figured out the folly going on in Washington. One aspect of bill is that so-called “Cadillac” health care plans will be taxed at 40 percent. That is bad enough, penalizing people for taking out comprehensive health care packages. If you’re a union member, though, you get to skate by – they’re exempted.
Not all that surprising a liberal is willing to sell out everyone else for his paymasters. If the bill is signed into law, unions will get about a $60 billion tax break over eight years. The rest of us will have to cough up $90 billion in taxes. And forget about dental and vision insurance – those will be exempt forever.
Doesn’t hardly seem fair, does it? Democrats like to paint Republicans as discriminatory, but this is another example that it’s the liberals themselves that choose who benefits and who doesn’t. Of course, they’re just “dancing with the girl what brung ‘em,” as the saying goes. The amount of money given by unions to Obama and Democrats in the 2008 cycle is simply staggering. Obama got $526,597, the Democratic National Committee received $661,586, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee brought in $1,086,820, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee socked away $1,057,700. That’s a lot of “change.”
Just how out of touch can these people be? It seems that Washington liberals believe they can go about their business, giving sweetheart deals to their backers while taxing the pants off middle-class families and small businesses to pay for it.
The movement of this health care plan has been bad from the get-go. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made giveaways, with taxpayer dollars, to Sens. Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson to get them to vote for the bill. Then instead of reconciling the House and Senate bills in conference committee, as is the usual process, Democrats chose to negotiate the changes among top leadership behind closed doors. Obama campaigned saying he would have all the health care debates and negotiations televised on C-SPAN. That didn’t even come close to happening.
And now we have another back-room deal, a deal cut between Washington Democrats and Big Labor to save union fat cats a ton of money while giving the shaft to the majority of Americans – non-union workers.
Democrats using back-room negotiations on health care
January 5, 2010 by Warren Tompkins · Leave a Comment
You just can’t take Congressional liberals anywhere. After Sen. Harry Reid cut deals with Sens. Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson – basically a legal bribe – to get the Democrats’ health care bill through the Senate, they want to hammer out differences between the Senate and House versions in what can only be called a back-room deal.
Normally, the bill would go to a conference committee, which would give conservatives another chance to halt the Democrats’ latest attempt to grow government and waste your money. In order to get around this basic part of the legislative process, top Democrats in both chambers are planning to reconcile the bills among themselves. The move is being driven by Reid & Co. in the Senate, which is really not a surprise considering his antics since becoming majority leader.
The House Democrats, fortunately, aren’t sold on the idea yet. Of course, the only reason is that they wouldn’t have as much power as the senators, not that the effort is inherently undemocratic or shutting out the input of the 254 legislators who have voted against the plans. Liberals under the Capitol dome seem willing to do anything to pass a bill that will end up as an unmitigated disaster as policy.
It should have come as to surprise to anyone that liberals’ campaign promises of government transparency were just that – promises. They apparently haven’t turned on a television in the past year, as Americans from coast to coast rose up and voiced their opposition to even more spending and bloating of government.
President Obama said during his campaign that he would broadcast the health care negotiations on C-SPAN. That plan definitely went by the wayside. Maybe he realized the public has no want of a government takeover of our health care system. The Washington Times pointed out in a recent editorial that a Georgia Republican filed a bill in October to make all health care debate held in public. The bill went nowhere. It’s almost like Democrats want to lose their majority, and doing everything they can to reach that point. The problem is, there will be a big mess to clean up when they’re gone.
Conservatives worked hard to defeat these measures, but the numbers worked against us. Sweetheart deals to get yea votes didn’t hurt the liberal cause, either. Fortunately, those numbers are likely to change after the November elections, as people make their opposition to the Democrats’ free-spending ways known at the ballot box. Vladimir Putin would be proud!