Thank you for holding up the vote on health care in the Senate. You are a hero if you do not cave to Harry Reid’s demands. I am a California Conservative Republican (rare, indeed) who supports your position on the health care bill.

The fact that Reid is threatening the security of the country by saying he will close down military bases in Nebraska if you don’t go along with him on health care is pathetic.  Stand strong! This bill must be defeated. National security must NOT be compromised and it is unconscionable that Reid would stoop to this tactic on a fellow Democrat at the expense of our country! Shame on him!

- FedUpEditor

Imagine a two-term Republican governor from a state carried by Barack Obama who turned an $800 million deficit into a $1.2 billion surplus by cutting overhead and bringing sound business principles to his state’s government even as he provided new health benefits for poor citizens. Imagine no longer. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels accomplished this and more, and he did it all while enacting the biggest tax cut in state history.

Despite a long career in public service, Mr. Daniels is not nearly as well-known as some of his colleagues. He worked for several years on Capitol Hill as chief aide to Sen. Richard G. Lugar and served former President Ronald Reagan as political director. After a 15-year stint in private business, Mr. Daniels became former President George W. Bush’s director of the Office of Management and Budget and then won back-to-back gubernatorial races in 2004 and 2008 in Indiana. His second victory was won with the biggest vote total of any candidate for any office in state history.

Despite his relatively low public profile, Mr. Daniels has been a successful, reform-minded, conservative governor. He took office in 2005 with a huge deficit and state spending growing at an unsustainable 6 percent rate.

But Mr. Daniels is not one to kick the can down the road. He immediately went to work finding savings wherever he could. Cost-cutting and businesslike practices cured the state’s operational deficit, but Indiana, like virtually every other state, also faced a huge shortfall in capital infrastructure funds. Mr. Daniels tackled that with the largest public-private partnership in U.S. history, a lease of the Indiana Toll Road, which brought the state nearly $4 billion for investment in transportation plus billions more to modernize the Toll Road itself.

In an interview, Mr. Daniels explained the impediments to conservative reform. “One is the public-sector employee unions who benefit from higher government spending and oppose pro-taxpayer reforms such as contracting for basic services.”

There is also the need to convince employees and state legislators who are often “far more comfortable with preserving the way things have always been rather than seeing what we could do to make things better.”

To read the entire column, please visit The Chairman’s Corner on the GOPAC website by clicking here.

One is the Cap and Trade bill. We will post here who voted for it so when their election is up in 2010, you know whether you want to support them or not.

The second is the Health Care bill. We have already made it clear we don’t want it, but the Obama administration is tone deaf. Obama along with cohorts Pelosi and Reid are determined to get this public “option” (can’t post that without laughing at the lie) through not matter what. Pelosi will push it because her seat is safe with all the San Francisco nutcases who will vote for her not matter what, and Reid because he is a weak leader in spite of his vulnerability in Nevada. Obama has 3+ years on his contract, so right now he has nothing to lose.

We will be watching very closely as these two bills will cripple our economy for years to come! And when they are passed, we will name the villains and the heroes who voted for and against them!

- FedUpEditor

The biggest threat to President Barack Obama’s agenda on healthcare and climate change could come not from Republicans but from six centrist Democrats (you mean there are some? – Ed.) in the Senate.

GOP leaders have been reaching out to the half-dozen legislators, and any defections from the party line could cost Democrats the 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority they achieved in the Senate with Tuesday’s swearing in of Al Franken.

“The Democratic Conference has 60 votes, if they’re all here, and if they are straight party-line that means that Republicans cannot stop legislation,” said Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona.

But “if a couple of Democrats don’t vote with their party, then it doesn’t matter that they have 60 votes,” Kyl noted.

The potential defectors include Sen. Ben Nelson [possible hero], a pro-business Democrat from Nebraska; Sen. Joe Lieberman [another possible hero], an independent Democrat from Connecticut; and Sen. Mary Landrieu [a third possible hero] of Louisiana, according to The Hill newspaper.

Lieberman has indicated he might vote against Obama’s healthcare reform effort.

Nelson has expressed opposition to the healthcare proposal and is against the cap-and-trade program to limit carbon emissions. Landrieu is expected to oppose both initiatives.

The other three Democratic senators being wooed by the GOP are Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

Bayh opposed the $410 billion omnibus spending bill and joined Nelson in voting against the budget. Lincoln and Pryor have both voiced concern over the Employee Free Choice Act (Card check as noted in our HOT NEWS today), a top priority of labor unions that is supported by most Democrats, The Hill reported.

Pryor has said: “Liberal groups need to understand that we are not elected to represent the president. We’re elected to represent our states.”

Ron Bonjean, Kyl’s former chief of staff, told The Hill: “Creating bipartisan coalitions on key issues is important to prevent Democrat legislative victories. Getting Democratic moderates is extremely important.”

A Virginia congressman, very quietly, has signed onto a measure in Congress that would require presidential candidates to verify their eligibility to hold the highest elected office in the United States.

WND earlier reported when freshman Rep. Bill Posey [Hero], R-Fla., filed H.R. 1503, an amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971.

According to the Library of Congress’ bill-tracking website, H.R. 1503 would “require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of president to include with the committee’s statement of organization a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the Office of President under the Constitution.”

Read the entire story here.

I recently led a group of committed Senate and House members in introducing a bill that would increase our domestic energy production and in the process save or create two million jobs and help bring real relief to family budgets across America – all without costing the taxpayers more of their hard­earned money.  It is called the No Cost Stimulus Act of 2009, and it was introduced with support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Black Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, Americans for Tax Reform and Alliance for Worker Freedom.   

The bill forces the Secretary of the Interior to move forward with offshore leases rather than continuing to block energy development off the East and West Coasts.  It would also open ANWR for oil and gas development and use the revenues derived from production to support alternative and renewable energy.  

The No Cost Stimulus bill also reconciles outstanding environmental law issues that have been used to slow production and development by continually tying up projects in lawsuits that prevent job creation.  And it extends state boundaries so states have more say in what happens off their coasts, providing them with a tool for greater energy production opportunities and creating new opportunities for individual states to increase their own revenues without asking the federal government to bail them out.

We can create more jobs in Louisiana and throughout the country by simply harnessing our natural resources and increasing our energy production – and we can achieve this goal without increasing our debt or raising taxes on Louisiana families.
Sincerely,

David Vitter
U.S.  Senator

Dear Tim,

I am most thankful to see of your interest in meeting with others of the same conservative orientation throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. I am thinking that our respective goals may be quite mutual and as such worthy of greater collaboration.

In my mind, the conservative movement (broadly defined as a commitment to the preservation of our American Nation and Constitution, based on a real insight, first articulated for our purposes by specific statements within the Declaration of Independence, that men have certain God given and thus inalienable liberties and that those liberties may be exercised by men in America only if and when the American Nation is freed from oppressions by foreign powers, whether they be the British Empire of the time of our own Revolution, or more recently the emergence of globalist institutions that work against our own national sovereignty) cannot achieve political power, unless and until it takes back the Republican Party from those who subvert the articulated principles of that party.

We must remember that the party, in its founding documents and in its more recent state and national party platforms, is meant to be a conservative nationalist political party. The fact of what the Republican Party has meant historically means that it is the natural home for conservatives (not to mention the fact that, from the standpoint of political practicality, we have no chance of gaining actual, political power in Sacramento or in Washington, by wasting our energies in one of the “third parties” or outside of parties altogether).

How is it that the Republican Party is the historical home of an American nationalism? Because we are the party that secured the Union in the course of the American Civil War. In recognizing the triumph of federalism (over anti-federalism) in the Declaration of Independence, and later in the U.S. Constitution (which replaced the anti-federalist Articles of Confederation on the understanding that a weak confederacy of states cannot guarantee in actuality the capacity of Americans to exercise their liberties in freedom from the encroachments of the internationalist powers of their own period, such as the British and French Empires, which had their own colonial aims in the North American continent), the Republican Party recognized that the unity of the American people triumphed over the parochial interests of any one state.

Yes, the states can and should be protected in their own, legal prerogatives against the encroachments of the federal government (the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution); but that is not the same as allowing the states to disrupt the unity of the American people themselves through secession. In being the anti-secessionist party, our Republican Party thus is the party of the American Union and, as we would describe today, of the American Nation. Preserving our national sovereignty, whether from the NAU (North American Union), or from globalist banks and investment funds which are buying up our assets in return for servicing our debts, is therefore a hallmark of what the Republican Party should stand for today, just as such a commitment to our national sovereignty is a hallmark of what is means to be a conservative nationalist.

How is it that the Republican Party is the historical home of an American, who desires to exercises his God given liberties in freedom? Because just as we were the anti-secessionist party, in the context of the Civil War in which the Republican Party first emerged, so were we also the anti-slavery party. There is an important insight in understanding that slavery in fact is as much a tyranny upon the master, as it is upon the slave, because the master comes to see the fruits of labor for which he has not paid. As the slave sows but never has the chance to reap, so does the master reap what he has not sown. That is why ours was the “free labor” party, meaning that the laborer should be afforded a wage commensurate with his labor and not have his wages reduced, because there is a contingent of slave labor that has the effect of bringing down all wages.

This is why we Republicans must oppose illegal immigration, because the illegal immigrant, whether we say as such or not, is in fact our version of the slave: he is allowed to stay here so as to reduce wages; and if and when he obtains amnesty and then a right to vote, he is meant to keep socialists in power. Indeed, the stain of illegal immigration is a testament to the collaboration of corporatists and socialists. If we are truly to be conservatives, and if our Republican Party is to be in league with her own historical principles as a party for what has been termed “free labor,” then we must stand against this unholy collaboration of Big Business and Big Government and act for the middle class, American family. It is in this manner that we may be in defense of liberty in actuality, because there is no exercise of liberty where the family has broken down and the middle class has been reduced to penury.

We must have the understanding first and foremost that preserving American nationalism and sovereignty and protecting the free man in the exercise of his liberty go hand in hand. Note that I said here preserving an “American nationalism and sovereignty.” I did not state “American government,” as it is clear that all too often our present forms of government have become in themselves instruments of selling out our sovereignty abroad and promoting tyranny at home, whether it be in the form of collusion between the United States Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve (whose membership often rotate back and forth), or the efforts of a local School Board to censure a fellow Trustee for opposing them on a ballot measure. In all such examples of government inspired tyranny, it is the Constitution be damned, all in a name of “capitalism,” or “progress,” or “diversity,” or “tolerance” (note how the corporatist side of the two-headed hydra of corporatist-socialist collaboration tends to favor the first two words, while the socialist side tends to favor the later two words, though often they are serving the same underlying purpose of selling out our sovereignty and undercutting middle class families).

Furthermore, we must know that the Republican Party, because of its actual and historical legacy, has a unique capacity to be the voice for American nationalism and for the free man in the exercise of his liberty. It is our natural home as conservatives and as nationalists (which, as you see here, I regard as essentially interchangeable); it is rightfully ours, not that of the timid do-nothings, or the “Democrat Lite” liberals, or the callous globalists who sell themselves under the guise of “free commerce” (meaning open borders, outsourcing, and other such impediments to our national and economic sovereignty).

In light of these comments, I recommend always the following plan of real action: recruit conservatives of goodwill (who may not agree on all issues but who share an overall orientation towards our nation and our liberties) and, by all means, inspire them to run for their County Republican Central Committees. In my mind, that should be an underlying focus for all of your meetings with other conservative persons or groups.

I know that I have said much here; but I wanted to share with you at least my own thoughts on the larger struggle. What we are attempting to do, each of us with the gifts that we have in our lives, is part of a much greater struggle, one frankly that cannot allow the “Sashi McEntees” [Chairman of the Marin Republican Central Committee whose leadership is seen as being a moderate] of the world to get in the way. There is history to be made: patriots to be recruited; political stands to be taken; RINOS to be overcome.

Besides courage, there must be a commitment to a sound, focused strategy of action. I am happy to see such a strategy coming together among the patriots in Marin County; it is my hope that, by our common efforts, we may spread this bold strategy, and an understanding of the larger picture, to our friends in neighboring Counties as well.

Sincerely,

Michael Erickson, Chairman
Sonoma County Republican Party

World Net Daily, February 24, 2009 – Oklahoma’s House of Representatives is the first legislative body to pass a state sovereignty resolution this year under the terms of the Tenth Amendment.

The Oklahoma House of Representatives passed House Joint Resolution 1003 Feb. 18 by a wide margin, 83 to 13, resolving, “That the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”

The language of HJR 1003 further serves notice to the federal government “to cease and desist, effectively immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”

The sponsor of the resolution, state Rep. Charles Key, told WND the measure was a ‘big step toward addressing the biggest problem we have in this country – the federal government violating the supreme law of the land.”

“The Constitution either means what it says, or it doesn’t mean anything at all,” Key said. “The federal government must honor and obey the Constitution, just like the states and this citizens of this country are obligated to do, or our system of government begins to fall apart.”

The Ninth Amendment reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The Tenth Amendment specifically provides, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

As WND reported, eight states have introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.

Analysts expect 12 additional states may see similar measures introduced this year, including Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, Maine and Pennsylvania.

Read the entire story here.