Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official -- not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President -- could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?
Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers -- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
Read the rest here: Dismantling America
by Thomas Sowell.
************
When you add up what has already transpired since January and what is yet to come, it is frightening. Just like many predicted during the election campaign. And you have to wonder...what will be next?
Do read the rest of Sowell's article. As he continues, he says, "How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin. Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles, and the people of this country." (In case you're one who never clicks on the links to read the rest of the story, Thomas Sowell is a black conservative. I think his thoughts are important, and I know that to some of my liberal "frienemies" race is important.)
Remember Sowell's sentence above. "How far the President will go depends, of course, on how much resistance he meets."
My fellow conservatives, keep resisting!
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Comments: 27
Marilyn should also not worry about her conservative friends that she quotes often. I subscribe to a number of financial blogs and read the major financial websites. No matter WHAT happens with the insurance issue, the rich people are going to be making money on it. Either way.
I just read Jim Cramer from CNBC. People say he is as "mad" as his "mad money" show on CBNC. But he called "the bottom" of the stock market twice. (Last October and March). He was right. He said today that if he was running his hedge fund he would be "shorting everything." Money is to be bad out there, during times of good or bad.
Smart people are out there trying to figure out how to make the money they know they will need.....rather than worrying about where their piddly taxes (federal income) are going to go. Learn to make the money.....then there won't be a problem, no matter what happens!
It is the sense that money is bad that seems pervasive by some of the Christian conservatives here. Not a Freudian slip. I am just tired, after spending the entire day reading - not Marilyn's posts - but reading all the financial news. I do know that she has posted at least 10 posts today, and this was only the second one I clicked through to look at.
Govt should let all businesses rise and fall on their own merits. Jumping in to save these just leads to more and bigger problems. Big brother can't even save themselves but want to control everything in our lives.
I think everyone who is intelligent enough to participate on this site and write a complete sentence (even a run on sentence like I do!), is capable of following the market and making money there, even a small amount of money to supplement their family's income. Whether to do that or not is a matter of CHOICE, and there is the freedom that Marilyn is so worried about losing!
What I really wanted to do was assure Marilyn that her "conservative" friends in high places were adapting to the current situation and they ARE making money. CEOs who don't like the "pay czar" are free to take other jobs and the smart ones will. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, it was Nixon who instituted wage and price controls back in the 1970s and also took away the silver standard that the value of the US Dollar was once measured by.
You conservatives though have to stop framing the debate in a simple two sided argument. Many people who fervently disagree with Obama are not conservative nor are all his supporters liberal. There are conservatives who are simply waiting for the Dems to get the eventual boot and are delirious with the thought of all that expanded power at their hands. There are also liberals who think he's going overboard, not so many nor as vocal as his other opponents but they exist.
If all of the Administration's opponents can get together, even if only for a short period-they could be stopped cold. The mid terms are scaring the hell out of the Dems now and that pressure has slowed down the Obama Express measurably. I hope we see some decent candidates to gather in the anger/fear, anything returning the two Houses to more of a balance would be good news indeed.
Another loser is the guy they picked to run against the 2d worst governor in the US. Christie should have massacred Corzine but now the race is a dead heat. An indie is getting 10-14% in NJ, shows how many people are bitter about the other two running.
So unless the GOP starts getting more solid candidates or works with other parties to support them, the bag looks mixed again. All we taxpayers can do is pray for enough seats to change hands that maybe, just maybe we get gridlock...
Is the IRS still going to be the branch of Goverment that regulates compliance to the manditory medical coverage. That is a joke and a half!!
Let this be a lesson, not that history hasn't already taught us this time and time again. There is no free lunch. If you want a Goverment that does everything for you: pay your morgage, your health insurance, your grocery bill, your charitable offerings... then you want a goverment that controls your freedom-or lack there of. You will get what they want you to get.
Where does the government get off deciding pay for businesses? When the pay czar was put into place, it was made perfectly clear that Obama thinks it's not only okay for him to decide the pay scale in any business receiving any money from the government, but also ANY business they think is doing something "dangerous" to the economy. How dare they?!
Exactly.