The Texas 18th District Blog

AP Poll: Obama leads or tied in 8 crucial states. Yahoo! article here

Article here:  ACORN Owes Millions in Taxes

Obama just said on TV that we may think he is a communist for sharing his toys in kindergarten.  Actually we may think he is a communist for taking the other childrens’ toys.  Don’t Kindergartens actually own the toys, its been so long since I or my kids went to Kindergarten I can’t remember.

One of the hypothetical questions being asked in an ad on TV is who would you want to wake up and find out is President on November 5th. 

If Charlie Rangel gets his way and a military draft call-up is implemented, which President would you want to serve under?

I just heard that the Fed interest rate cut today is the lowest its been since the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950s.  I was about 10 years old then.  My parents and my sisters and I lived better than ever before and ever since.  My mother was a high school graduate but my father wasn’t.  He did however go to night school to get an equivalent education.  My point though is they were not college graduates but inflation was low, interest rates were low and we lived more comfortably than we could have imagined.  Because of low interest rates we were able to have a car and a television.  No one else on our street had either in the early 1950s.  When a neighbor needed a ride to a hospital or doctor my parents took them.  We lived in a suburb of Philadelphia.  The key to the wonderful economics then was very low inflation.  Also as the evil villain Donald Rumsfeld once said in a speech, the USA was the only country that could export goods.  Our factories still functioned.  Most of Europe and Asia had been destroyed by Europeans and Asians.  We joined the war in the last few years and helped out.  We also helped rebuild them both after the war.

The market reaction to the 1% interest rate has been mixed because no one knows what the effects will be.  In the previous paragraph I was trying to show that it could be good. My oldest sister and her husband bought a house with a 2% mortgage in the late 1950s.  She still lives in it today.  She paid $12,000 in 1950’s dollars.

I heard late yesterday that the stock market dropped just before closing again because someone issued a false report about a large company.

Obama To Spread the Wealth Around to Needy Rivals (Scrappleface does satire)

by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace · 32 Comments

(2008-10-25) — Coming off a month in which his campaign raised a record-breaking $150 million, Sen. Barack Obama announced today that he would voluntarily redistribute his cash to his presidential rivals including Libertarian Bob Barr, Independent Ralph Nader, Green Party pick Cynthia McKinney and even Republican John McCain, who has struggled to make ends meet while running on public assistance.

Breaking News Item: I wonder if George Soro’s accountant is upset about a $150 million unidentified out of balance condition in the records. (just being sarcastic)

Dick Morris on O’Reilly last night: If the healthcare system is expanded to include 47 million Americans who currently don’t have health insurance who is going to treat them.  He also mentioned that the 47 million figure politicians use includes illegal aliens. (Whether or not we provide for them is a moral issue not germaine to this election at this time)  Also among the 47 million are young people in the 20 to 40 age range who don’t want health insurance because 12 monthly premiums greatly exceeds the fee for service they can pay for a flu shot or rare doctor visit.  I’m not going to go in depth on services currently available to the poor because we covered that in at least two previous posts.

However the limited medical service provider issue is relevant and something I hadn’t thought about.  When you provide taxpayer funded healthcare to 47 million more people, people who didn’t go to the doctor for routine illnesses and cuts and bruises now start going.  As I mentioned when I was a kid  my family never went to a doctor for anything.  When my dad’s employer began offering health insurance as an employee benefit we started going every time we had something  more than the common cold.

Other families did as well.  That is when doctors’ fees and hospital costs started rising.  Demand drove prices up.  An individual might not have wanted to pay, but if an insurance company was paying, why not use it.  As an adult I watched co-workers take their kids to a doctor for things I never would have.  So if the supply of medical service providers remains the same we have to go to rationing.  If the government sets an artificial or bureaucratic price on fees then it becomes unprofitable for doctors.

It costs a doctor a couple hundred thousand to go to medical school.  He also has to pay for malpractice insurance and all of the diagnostic equipment in his office as well as staff.  I went to a doctor this week for a foot problem.  He had at least 6 staff in his office,  medical and clerical.  He has to bill for insurance coverage payments, schedule appointments, provide for accounting and bank deposits for his office.  He had a medical professional prepare my foot for minor surgery which I hadn’t anticipated when I went  into his office.

If the government tells him he cannot charge a fee adequate to cover all of his professional expenses and include enough for his personal residence, auto and family expenses why go to medical school and incur the costs.

We then go to a rationing basis as in Europe and Canada.  Now, Canadians come here.  Europeans go to Africa on vacation for medical treatment.  Where will we go!

One last comment.  I didn’t watch the 30 minute Obama infomercial last night but I saw clips in the news.  Obama said he will put a 90 day moratorium on mortgage payments.  Will that increase the ability of the homeowner to resume his  payments monthly when the moratorium expires.  What affect will it have on the mortgage companies not receiving cash during that period and not collecting the interest which is the life blood of their business.  It is the interest that enables them to pay their bills.

Citizens For A Freer America

The socialism paradigm penalizes success and rewards mediocrity and failure. It brings to mind an old Russian saying. “The government pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.” An apropos epithet for USSR’S Gross Domestic Product. Well folks, there isn’t a one of us that haven’t heard someone say “I don’t want to work overtime on Saturday because all the extra money will go to taxes.” We’re penalizing productivity for the alleged benefit of all. All being those that can’t or won’t provide adequate income, retirement or medical care for themselves, and those who don’t need it, but having had it extorted from them, insist on receiving their rebate as a social entitlement program.

Making The Rounds On The Internet (Satire I think)

Note To Employees

As of November 5, 2008, when President Obama officially becomes president-elect, our company will instill a few new policies which are in keeping with his new, inspiring issues of change and fairness:

1. All salespeople will be pooling their sales and bonuses into a common pool that will be divided equally between all of you. This will serve to give those of you who are under-achieving a ‘fair shake’.

2. All low level workers will be pooling their wages, including overtime, into a common pool, dividing it equally amongst you. This will help those who are ‘too busy for overtime’ to reap the rewards from those who have more spare time and can work extra hours.

3. All top management will now be referred to as ‘the government.’ We will not participate in this ‘pooling’ experience because the law doesn’t apply to us.

4. The ‘government’ will give eloquent speeches to all employees every week, encouraging its workers to continue to work hard ‘for the good of all’.

5. The employees will be thrilled with these new policies because it’s ‘good to spread the wealth around’. Those of you who have underachieved will finally get an opportunity; those of you who have worked hard and had success will feel more ‘patriotic’.

6. The last few people who were hired should clean out their desks. Don’t feel bad, though, because President Obama will give you free healthcare, free handouts, free oil for heating your home, free food stamps, and he’ll let you stay in your home for as long as you want even if you can’t pay your mortgage. If you appeal directly to our Democrat Congress, you might even get a free flat screen TV and a coupon for free haircuts (shouldn’t all Americans be entitled to nice looking hair?)!!!

If for any reason you are not happy with the new policies, you may want to rethink your vote on November 4th.

 My question is where do they get money when the last dollar has been “redistributed” and spent?  When government taxes and spends, it spends through contractors to build anything and everything and also pocket huge sums (which are shared with the politicians).   Government employees don’t mine anything, grow anything, manufacture anything, repair anything, sing, dance or otherwise entertain us.  The government doesn’t create wealth it only takes it from us. 

I was just cleaning out some old files from my hard drive when I came across this article.  It is amazing how accurate it was and still is.  You can see what they have accomplished.  I checked and her website address is still active (it is at bottom of the article).

Every day, the headlines scream with some new threat from the American Civil Liberties Union. I believe it’s important to look behind the curtain and discover the origins of groups and organizations to better understand their activities.

The ACLU was founded in the 1920s by Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman, described as a “progressive” and “the perfect feminist.”

Earl Browder was general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States from 1930 through its dissolution in 1944. When the party was reconstituted as the Communist Political Association later that year, Browder was chosen as its president. Browder proudly proclaimed that the ACLU functioned as “a transmission belt” for the party. To deny the ACLU’s founding was attached at the hip to communist organizations is to deny what can easily be proven as truth.

For the past few decades, the ACLU has been on a major crusade to destroy Christianity in America, promote filth under “freedom of speech and expression,” and of course, vigorously defend the homosexual culture of death. On Jan. 10, 1963, Congressman Albert S. Herlong Jr., D-Fla., read a list of 45 communist goals into the Congressional Record. Below are the communist goals being implemented by the ACLU in their quest to destroy America’s culture and traditions:

• Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions, by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
• Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
• Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. An American communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings,” substituting shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.
• Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
• Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
• Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and television.
• Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural and healthy.”
• Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
• Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
• Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the communists took over. Obliterating the American past, with its antecedents in principles of freedom, liberty and private ownership is a major goal of the communists then and now.
• Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
• Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

Anyone who has been following the destructive path of the ACLU can easily see how effective these communist goals have been implemented to “promote democracy” and protect your “civil rights.” Lenin stated: “Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy.” (See Tucker, “The Lenin Anthology”). James Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution” had something different to say about a democracy:

Democracy is the most vile form of government … democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

Perhaps it’s time to recognize the ACLU as the American Communist Lawyers Union instead of their disingenuous “civil rights” stage name.

No organization can exist without memberships and funding. It is inconceivable to me how anyone who claims to be a Christian, lawyer or layman, could belong to such an anti-American organization as the ACLU. Burn your card and get out. Organizations like Working Assets, tobacco companies and big corporations all donate to the ACLU, which in turn uses that money to buy the favors of those who serve in Congress – who vote to unconstitutionally fund the activities of the ACLU under the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976.

If Americans really want to put the ACLU out of business, remove yourself as a member of their organization, boycott companies that donate to them and demand these public servants in Congress repeal the unconstitutional funding of this subversive organization.

There is no justification under Art. 1, Sec. 8, to steal from the people’s treasury to give money to the ACLU or any other organization for “civil rights” lawsuits. Your Congress critter will be in your district during the month of December – make the most of it.

FEMA Cannot Or Won’t Do The Job 

Sandy Coachman, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s federal coordinating officer, said the state had decided to take over Galveston’s only remaining shelter and keep it open. Some of the residents said they have no place to live after the shelter closes.

However, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry said the state is working with a nonprofit group, Baptist Children and Family Services of San Antonio, to find housing for shelter residents.

 FEMA is a Federal Government Agency

Thibodeaux: “I saw one woman living in a tent who was crying, moving around cooking pots to catch the rain that was leaking through. It’s terrible.”

Michael Gerber, executive director of the Texas Department of Housing and Community affairs, acknowledges a “serious housing crisis” is facing several thousand who were left homeless by Ike.

He holds FEMA responsible for what he calls a “bureaucratic logjam.”

“FEMA keeps telling us that they’ve got a process to deploy temporary housing. But in four weeks, they’ve deployed fewer than a hundred that are occupied,” Gerber said. He estimated several thousand more are needed across the region, particularly in Chambers, Orange, Jefferson and Galveston counties.

Wouldn’t we be better off with emergency management under state control.  Even small states could help each other as they do anyhow and get around Federal bureaucracy.  With Ike utility companies from all over the country sent volunteers on their on volition to Texas to help out.

An aside, during the weekend that Ike hit our family had no electricity.  On Sunday afternoon we were listening to a battery powered radio when a caller called Sheila Jackson Lee at the TV station.  He was angry.  He asked her why was she at the TV station all weekend when her contituents had no TV?

If unemployment is up in the Houston area it because it is affected in a major way by Ike.  My guess is that it is up because a lot of businesses were damaged and projects in process on damaged buildings and homes are stopped or delayed. I also suspect the Houston area unemployment is reflected in the national numbers for the last several weeks.

National numbers from Bloomberg this morning:

According to an American Medical Association ad on TV the cause of more illness and more early death in the US is lack of health insurance.  What happened to the Hippocratic oath.  I think I have some oaths for the AMA if they don’t treat the poor.

Apparently the guns hunters and religious people in rural areas have is a problem for Obama’s campaign.  He wants them taken away.  How about guns in the high crime areas of cities?  Does he want to take them away from people who use them in perpetration of crimes or just people who have them to protect themselves from criminals?  Studies have shown resolutely that crime goes down when criminals suspect a potential victim may have a concealed weapon.  Chicago Study

Ed Rendell (Governor of Pennsylvania) smirks while he says a $5000 tax credit is a government give away.  How is not taking $5000 from you a government give away.  He thought he had us.  As opposed to a deduction on your tax return where you only keep a portion (the tax rate multiplied by the amount of your dedcution) a tax credit means you subtract  $5000 from the amount of calculated tax on page two and reduce what you have withheld or write your check for.  The government doesn’t get its hands on the money let alone write you a check.  Its like walking through a store, not buying something and saying the store gave you money on your way out because you have the same amount of money you walked  in with.  The government doesn’t own your money.  To the contrary you own the government.

And Today:

“On the other side of the Capitol (the first speaker was a Bush administration person), Greenspan, who stepped down in February 2006 after serving as Fed chairman for 18 1/2 years, was asked to explain his role in the crisis.

Greenspan told the House Oversight Committee that his belief that banks would be more prudent in their lending practices because of the need to protect their stockholders had been proven wrong by the current crisis. He called this a “mistake” in his views and said he had been shocked by that.

Greenspan said he had made a “mistake” in believing that banks in operating in their self-interest would be sufficient to protect their shareholders and the equity in their institutions.

Greenspan called this “a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.””  Greenspan  Greenspan admitted fault, former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt admitted fault, current SEC Chairman Christopher Cox admitted fault.  Will Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank admit fault.  Don’t hold your breath.  The current hearings in Washington are not to find out what went wrong or who is to blame but how to deflect blame to somebody other than the democrat congress.

Bankers acted in their own self interest.  By getting the higher interest rates from mortgages (remember, the interest rates are higher because of higher risk) they produced  (temporarily) higher profits and received high bonuses.  99% of the time humans act in their own self interest.

What Walter Williams describes matches what my relatives in the UK experience.

“One of the campaign themes this election cycle is “affordable” health care. Shouldn’t we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the “affordable” housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us affordable health care? Shouldn’t we also ask how things turned out in countries where there is socialized medicine? ”

Great article about Joe the Plumber and licensing 

The Obama camp has been attacking Joe Wurzelbacher saying he isn’t licensed to be a plumber!

“In Ohio Joe’s not required by law to get a license before he can practice plumbing. But he need to get a license if he decides he’d rather make his living as an accountant, architect, barber, chiropractor, cosmetologist, dental hygienist, dentist, paramedic, funeral director, hearing aid fitter, insurance agent, land surveyor, lawyer, nursing home administrator, nurse, occupational therapist, optometrist, pesticide applicator, pharmacist, physical therapist, physician assistant, physician, podiatrist, psychologist, public school teacher, real estate agent, real estate appraiser, school counselor, stock broker, social worker, truck driver, veterinarian or vet’s assistant.”

A quick comment about polls

When you listen to the radio or TV you hear Obama is up by 2%, up by 5, up by 10 or even that McCain is up by 2 on the same day.  You also hear that Palin and McCain are doing  poorly when every rally they go to the crowds are enthused and excited far more than Obama and Biden’s supporters.  Some polls are calculated using a moving average or other “smoothing” technique.  This means the poll is averaged with poll results from several weeks ago.  In some cases the poll a few weeks ago reflected an event favorable or unfavorable long ago forgotten or dismissed by the general public.  When people are angry they respond in a way to pollsters to punish someone. As the anger subsides they change their minds.  Pollsters also misinterpret the reasons for polling answers.  They have to take large amounts of data and make sense of it quickly because the media wants it yesterday.

Another interesting piece of data was presented by Karl Rove on O’Reilly last night.  He showed a handwritten chart he made showing the red states with minuses for states McCain might lose and how many electoral votes each had plus states with their electoral votes he hoped to pick up.  The result of the calculation being that if he is correct he gets about 4 more electoral votes than he needs.

He showed a similar chart for Obama.  Of course the pluses and minuses are the key.  That’s why they are campaigning diligently where they are.  If McCain keeps the states he is unsure of (e.g. like Florida) he has some extra margin.  This is why a nationwide poll is not always accurate. He can be unpopular in California but so what.  Republicans never get California anyhow.

“the constituency of the Democrats will force many of them to support the interests of the rich”
Democrats indisputably represent more rich voters than Republicans; their constituency is the people in their district, not the people in their district who voted for them.Liberals Love To Say Conservatives Are Dumb, Study Proves Not SoThe questions concerning US politics fared better than the question of who is Prime Minister of England, though. Only the readers of The New Yorker/Atlantic (59%) and listeners of NPR (57%) knew at above 50% that Gordon Brown is the current PM of Britain. All the other respondents were under 49%.

But, where it concerns US politics, more respondents from the Rush Limbaugh and Hannity & Colmes shows knew that Condi Rice was the current Sec. of State and that the Democrats currently controlled the House of Reps, beating the audiences of Colbert, Stewart, the NewsHour, C-SPAN, Letterman and Leno, CNN and the Nat’l Enquirer. Even O’Reilly’s audience didn’t fare as well as Limbaugh’s and Hannity & Colmes.’

• The New Yorker/Atlantic: 71 percent (correctly identified Democrats as the majority in the House), 71 percent (correctly identified Condoleezza Rice), 59 percent (correctly identified Gordon Brown)
• NPR: 73 percent, 72 percent, 57percent
• Hannity & Colmes: 84 percent, 73 percent, 49 percent
• Rush Limbaugh: 83 percent, 71 percent, 41 percent
• Colbert Report: 73 percent, 65 percent, 49 percent
• Daily Show: 65 percent, 48 percent, 36 percent
• NewsHour: 66 percent, 52 percent, 47 percent
• O’Reilly Factor: 70 percent, 60 percent, 41 percent
• C-SPAN: 63 percent, 59 percent, 35 percent
• Letterman/Leno: 51 percent, 42 percent, 31 percent
• CNN: 59 percent, 48 percent, 29 percent
• National Enquirer: 44 percent, 32 percent, 22 percent

Hawaii Dropping Only State Universal Health Care Program

HONOLULU (AP) _ Hawaii is dropping the only state universal child health care program in the country just seven months after it launched.

What are the primary issues in Germany regarding health care?

The German health system does not meet with unqualified approval by the German public. In a 1999 poll, 49.9 percent of respondents said they were very or fairly satisfied with their health care system, while 47.7 percent replied that they were fairly or very dissatisfied with it. The German health ministry concluded in May 2003 that their health care system suffered from a lack of competition; superfluous, insufficient or inappropriate care; shrinking revenue and an aging population. Long waits for care are a particular problem in Germany; in a 1990 poll, 19.4% of Germans reported waiting more than 12 weeks between being seen by a specialist and receiving surgery. To fix these issues, the ministry suggested, among other measures, that they provide incentives to promote cost-effective care; perform a therapeutic benefits/cost analysis of prescription drugs by the Centre for Quality in Medicine; and finance benefits not covered by health insurance by increasing the taxes on cigarettes.

Let’s work together to put John Faulk in office. We need to elect members of Congress with strong financial backgrounds.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. ”

• Edmund Burke Renowned British Statesman and Political Philosopher.

Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago, 4 weeks ago?  Actually you are the same, you just didn’t know it because your congress kept it hidden from you.  Every evening on the “News” we hear of more people having reported concerns to the House Banking Committee about the problems in the mortgage industry  from out of control Federal Agencies,  and Congress overriding attempts to make the regulators do their jobs.

The balloon had been becoming inflated for years.  The final puff occurred 4 weeks or so ago but the hot air was building all along.  Who runs congress, Nancy Pelosi (D-California), Harry Reid (D-Nevada).  Who chairs the House Banking Committee, Barney Frank (D- Massachusetts).  Who represents us in Congress, Sheila Jackson Lee, (D-Texas). 

Its time to vote them out.  We can’t vote against Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank but we can replace Sheila Jackson Lee.

We know they knew because John McCain, George Bush and a host of other Members of Congress told them.

The ownership role government plans to take in banks will be preferred stock, non-voting.  Theoretically preferred shareholders cannot vote for company policies but simply get dividends before common shareholders if there are profits available. Congress makes the banks do whatever Congress wants now anyhow so I don’t see much difference.  Currently banks are audited by the Federal Reserve Bank, the State Banking Departments, the US Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.   Who dares to say they are not regulated?  The audit reports were just ignored by Congress in exchange for campaign donations.  Who leads Congress, Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Harry Reid (D- Nevada), who is Chairman of the House Banking Committee, Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts).  What is the current approval rating of Congress by American voters, 13%.

NEW WORD FOR TODAY - OBFUSCATION 

“ Re, fair and insurance”

Fair Tax: as currently used it refers to a national sales tax.  It wouldn’t work because congress would make exceptions and exemptions for donors defeating the benefit of the fair tax.  The current Internal Revenue Code allows Congress to grant favors to campaign donors.  Congress likes that ability especially at re-election time. 

They are not about to give it up.  Advocates of  “Fair Tax” say Congress would lose the ability to manipulate the tax code for their own benefit.  Don’t bet on it.  Rather than replace the Tax Code, replace Congress.  Replace your representative in Congress, Sheila Jackson Lee.

Fair Trade:  imported goods that are taxed by Congress (tariffs) to make them cost more so you are forced to buy the more expensive domestically produced goods.  Why this is undesirable.  International trade functions on the principle of comparative advantage.  If minerals are abundant in another country, or certain crops grown abundantly in another country because of weather, soil, temperature, etc. they can produce and sell them cheaper.  In exchange they buy from us things like technology and manufactured goods that we produce cheaper.  Everybody benefits.  You say but the news media claims we don’t manufacture any longer.  To put it mildy, balderdash.  We still have a large manufacturing sector.  Its just that since other areas of our economy have grown percentage-wise it is a smaller part of the whole.  Some examples:  Institute for Supply Management Index and Manufacturing Index Contracts.  The opposite of Fair Trade (managed by Congress) is Free Trade where we benefit from comparative advantage.

I’m always entertained when they use the prefixes “re” as in Community Reinvestment Act and Re-distribution of wealth, as well as insurance as in National Health Insurance when no one pays premiums.  Under state insurance laws “Free” insurance is illegal. What the politicians actually are referring to is “free” healthcare.  They say insurance to infer the covered persons will pay a premium.  Not true.  The tax payers will pay taxes from which the healthcare will be financed.  I have a hard time believing we have a healthcare crisis because it comes up in every election and has for decades.  We have that hospital tax that is part of social security, we have medicaid, SCHIPS, local clinics, and pharmacy companys will provide medications for free to those who cannot pay (Montel Williams advertises for the pharmacies).  Doctors have samples given to them by salemen that they give for free to patients.  It is very rare if ever that we hear of someone not getting medical treatment in this country (usually someone too ill to go to a hospital on their own or living in a remote rural area).  It is common in Europe and other countries where they have National Healthcare. Renowned author and political commentator P.J. O’Rourke once wrote: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait and see how expensive it’ll be when it’s free.”

Benjamin Franklin introduced the concept of insurance in America to spread the risk of houses burning down in colonial times.  Actually farmers had an unofficial form of insurance as well.  When a farmer’s barn burned down, neighboring farmers would all pitch in and build him a new one.  The principle of insurance is violated when someone comes along who never helped his neighbors but demands that they build a barn for him.  Only the government can force that to happen.  Insurance existed in England in colonial times to reduce the risks of sending ships full of goods to foreign lands to sell them and buy and bring back goods from those lands, comparative advantage.

Did we invest in those communities before and it was ineffective so we have to do it again?

Was there ever a “distribution” of wealth?  If so, I missed out and I want my portion.  No one ever gave me anything.  I paid from my own pocket for every thing I bought: education for me and my children, my house, my car, my healthcare, etc.  Nothing was distributed to me.  I performed labor or services for a paycheck.  Where does distibution and re-distribution come from? Its foreign to me.

Congress this weekend has a 13% approval rating.  Why re-elect them.  Wayne Rodgers of Wayne Rodgers Investments (and MASH) says we should go to DC and shoot them.  He says the way to shoot them is vote them out.

If you like your present situation re-elect them.

We don’t need lawyers in Congress, we need proven financial practicioners like John Faulk.

People had low expectations for Gov. Sarah Palin’s performance last night.  We were fed interview clips for the last two weeks showing her appearing to be unable to answer the interviewers’ questions.  Actually these were snippets from the  Charles Gibson and Katie Couric interviews.  Each interview was 30 minutes or more in length.  The media carefully chose what they wanted to present to you.  In her remarks on TV last night Governor Palin looked at you through the TV camera and said it is nice to be able to address the American people directly, not filtered through the media.

That’s why we were all so surprised that she did so well.  She performed normally.

In her answers about the Israeli-Palestinian problem she mentioned that she and McCain supported a two state solution, including an Israeli capitol in Jerusalem.  Biden and all commentators I heard last night and today missed the significance.  The Arab world considers Jerusalem to be their city even though it is in Israel.  This has been a major point of contention.  The Arabs want Telavive to be the Israeli capitol.  It still will be a point of contention forever but she stated her courageous view.

The accountants listening to Biden’s comments must have been in heaven.  He threw out one number after another.  It reminded me of the late Senator Everett Dirksen commenting when he was in the Senate:  “a billion here a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking big money”.   I couldn’t keep up with all of the statistics being tossed around.  Since Biden was wrong on many other remarks he probably invented a few of them too.  Biden is known for making inaccurate statements.  Last week he cited Franklin D Roosevelt’s speech on TV in 1929.  TV wasn’t available until the late 1940’s and Roosevelt wasn’t president in 1929.

After the debate I watched Karl Rove evaluate it.  He said he identified 10 outright lies and 4 that were debatable.  Sometimes under stress people make mistakes but in the instances of lies he said Biden knew better. 

Some of Biden’s erroneous statements here

Biden’s comments about McCain taxing health care were resonant with me.  McCain wants to decrease taxes on healthcare.  When I was in college I did tax returns for a small local accounting firm to help with my expenses.  I was an accounting major.  On those tax returns you could deduct the insurance premiums people paid for health insurance.  People bought the insurance through employer or union sponsored plans but as today in most cases you had to pay out of your paycheck for a portion.  Some also bought insurance on their own directly through an insurance company.  Medical costs weren’t so high back then so many people didn’t buy private insurance.  We showed how much they paid on their tax return (we usually got the information from their check stubs).  It reduced their taxable income hence making their taxes less and the insurance easier to pay for.

Since lawsuits continually cause insurance premiums to increase, they are even more painful today.

Thomas Sowell on the bailout

 In the original bailout bill in congress last week there was a provision to give millions of dollars to ACORN, a group supported by Sheila Jackson-Lee.  Here is an article by Ken Blackwell about  ACORN.  Ken used to be Secretary of State of Ohio.  ACORN

More than ever before Americans need to elect members of Congress with strong financial backgrounds instead of lawyers who put us in this situation like Sheila Jackson Lee.

John Faulk has a demonstrated background history of strong support for Houston’s advanced Medical Community as an administrator and fundraiser in the Medical Industry.

Houston has the most concentrated and advanced Medical Community in the world with a long term history of medical breakthrough technology.

Our advanced “World Class Medical Community/Center” in Houston serves a great and noble purpose for all of mankind, offering; hope, healing and medical breakthroughs. People come to Houston from all over the world to be treated here with our advanced medical technology. 

You can rest assured that John’s past experience with and support for Houston’s Medical Community will be amplified after being elected to Congress.

Ken

You can help us send John Faulk to Congress today. 

Below is a table with a comparison of views on issues by the candidates; John Faulk and Sheila Jackson Lee in their race for the Texas 18 Congressional seat.

Candidate views represented above are presented true and accurately as best I know. Make sure and bookmark this page because this table may change as we wind down to election day, most everyone seems to be “flip-flopping” this year, except John.

Ken

You can help us send John Faulk to Congress today.

“Until recently, family doctors throughout Texas were being driven out of our state, and even out of business, as medical liability insurance premiums skyrocketed. Specialists and primary care physicians were forced to weigh the financial practicality of offering certain services or working in certain communities.

Predictably, patients paid a high price as well. Expectant mothers had difficulty scheduling appointments with an obstetrician-gynecologist and those in rural Texas communities often had to drive long distances to meet with an experienced physician.”

Read the letter from Senator John Cornyn here.

When you visit a doctor for an illness he prescribes medication to help you and may write you up for lab tests, xrays, MRIs, etc.  Then he tells you to come back in a few days or a week or so for a follow-up visit.  Could his diagnosis have been wrong?  Actually he is not finished making his diagnosis.  If you have symptoms of the flu or common cold or whatever else is “going around” he may be done with your diagnosis.  If you may have more than that but he is not sure, he asks you to come back for a follow-up visit so he can confirm to himself that he is right.  If you have not improved, he needs to do more looking.

If he presribed potent medicine he may want to see you again to be sure you are taking it as directed and to see if you are having a negative reaction or insufficient progress. Did he make a mistake? Not necessarily!  He did the right, ethically and medically sound things.  However, a few patients play the judicial lottery, that is to say they hire a lawyer and sue.  Juries think to themselves doctors and hospitals are rich and passing some extra money along to a common working person or not-working person is a nice charitable thing.  Well after a jury has taken a doctor’s practice, medical equipment, bank account with his business operating funds and his home, he leaves your state.

There have been a number of documentaries on major TV stations about this.  Texas juries drove too many doctors out of Texas creating a healthcare crisis.  Insufficient doctors.  It is a great environment for politicians to claim in their campaign speeches that they are going to solve the healthcare crisis by raising taxes.  But that approach didn’t work every single time it was tried.

In his letter John Cornyn explains how Texas Voters put in place limits on lawsuits a couple years ago and now we are getting doctors again.

What Healthcare is available for those who cannot afford insurance premiums?

Free Healthcare for Those Who Cannot Pay

We continually hear about lack of healthcare.  The politicians making those comments don’t elaborate.  So, I am going to help them.  The City of Houston has a dozen or more clinics at various locations around the city.  The Harris County Hospital District provides hospital care for those who do not have a means of paying.  Those who can pay are charged.  Many Houston doctors and doctors outside the city limits also treat patients for free.  Also medicaid is available as well as SCHIPs health insurance for children in school.  Doctors and other professionals are treating diseases for all who need help.

Let me give you an example.  About a year ago I went to a scheduled appointment with my cardiologist.  I have insurance and I am getting up in years (with a heart problem history) so he has me come in to see him a couple of times a year.  That particular day he looked very tired.  I asked jokingly if he had been out partying all night.  (I have been going to him for many years so I knew better).  He told me he had been at the hospital all night with a patient who had a very serious problem.  When he saw me in the afternoon he had been at work in his office or at the hospital since early morning the previous day, more than 24 hours.  He felt good about trying to save the patient but he was tired and told me he doesn’t get paid at all for attending the patient all night.  I asked “what about the Harris County Hospital District, don’t they pay when a patient cannot”.  He replied that they pay the hospital not the doctors.

So, an indigent patient unable to pay anything received the same treatment as me from the same doctor and at the same hospital I go to with my health insurance.  It doesn’t sound like a lack of healthcare for the less fortunate in our society to me.

Maybe our politicians ought to be guiding our down and out to the care available to them rather than telling them there is no healthcare available.

Incidentally the City Health Department clinics also offer free dentistry.

You can help us send John Faulk to Congress in November, today.