There are billions of dollars being spent on programs that do nothing to increase jobs in America or to raise GDP. Instead of talking about those items, both parties are using scare tactics about Social Security and Medicare. Two things that will get the American voter engaged in doing something next year at the booth.

At the same time, the Democrats are feeling the pressure from the labor unions telling the Dems to stand firm on Social Security and Medicare. While I strongly believe in keeping the benefits of the two programs in place, there are other areas of the programs that can be cut. Such as administration costs of the program. We all know that government offices have to many employees in each of the different offices. They can not tell us that there is no way to cut at least 15-20% of staff within each of the programs. Most of the system is automated and to have so many employees in the system is taxing on the program itself.

The federal government has known about this issue for months now and have touched on the subject, but they wait until now to really get involved in it. Why is it that they wait until the last minute to do something? It’s because with the pressure of time, they can push the bill through quickly and claim later on that they didn’t realize what was in the bill since they didn’t get adequate amount of time to go through it. Of course the American people have short-term memory and forget that they waited and that’s what the politicians hope for, so they can do it again.

So as we see the politicians are trying to draft anything to get a majority of the politicians to vote yes on extending the debt. The Republicans in the House of Representatives have unveiled a two-tier plan that will cut $1.2 trillion over a ten year period and will only raise the debt ceiling for a few months. Obama has already expressed that he will not sign it because it’s a temporary fix.

Meanwhile the Democrats have presented their own plan to cut @2.7 trillion over the next ten years, but with a debt limit hike that will carry it through the 2012 elections. An election where Obama and many lawmakers will be up for re-election.

As we see over the last decade that the situation is getting worse as in the politicians doing what is necessary to get the fiscal condition of this country back in order. It’s always a temporary fix and not a permanent one. Each time the debt ceiling has come into play, politicians never cut the spending that is needed, instead they draft plans that cut spending in the future, not in the present. What happens is the cuts never come, but the spending and the raising of taxes always do.

We are coming to the end of the fuse and if we, the American people don’t do something to change the mindset of Washington, we will be finished sooner than later. This has gone on for way to long and it will come to an end one way or another.

Eric’s first sentence in the comment went like this,

All you people do is whine and throw around unguided, random superstitions and wrong information.

All you people??? Eric, we are all Americans and people who make comments like “all you people” want to keep everyone separated. That kind of thinking has been going on too long and it needs stop so we can move forward in this county. And if you really thought all we did was whine and give wrong information you wouldn’t feel so threatened by us. You would have just blown us off as just another misguided political site.

I’d like to hear you guys provide some ideas on the economy, or maybe the least you could is provide a legitimate point.

I’m not quite sure what Eric was talking about because he posted on a poll that is not even open anymore. If “you guys” was directed at Libertarians, then Ron Paul and Alexander Snitker, among other Libertarian minded candidates, had some great ideas, but it fell on deaf ears because these men (especially Mr. Snitker) weren’t taken seriously and given a fair shake in debates. If “you guys” was directed at this site, then your comment proved that you were only here to throw around a few insults because if you would have taken time to actually read some of the posts here, I have provided my ideas and very legitimate points.

You people are delusional. Maybe you’d be happier with Bush who started two wars (that still need to be paid for, under Obama) and turned a budget surplus into a 9 trillion dollar deficit and passed no considerable legislation that did anything besides allowing the Fed. to tap your phone line and check your emails ( oh yeah and he tortured a lot of people). Ya, he’s a good guy, let’s get someone like him.

Partisan and insulting in the same first sentence. I’m not sure if you took the time to notice Eric, but we’re Libertarians. That means we think the Democrats and the Republicans screwed us. Maybe if you read through the site before commenting, you wouldn’t have come across as so misinformed. Eric had a lot to say in these few sentences, so I will address each one separately.

As for being happier having Bush as president. What are my choices? If it’s a toss up between him and Obama, Yes I would want Bush as president. Let’s be for real though, Bush also didn’t do what he needed to when it came to war. Nearly ten years later and I’m still not sure if he had a right to be in Iraq. As for Afghanistan, we should have never been in there. While we’re on the subject, at least Bush did get Congressional approval before entering into these countries. We are now in Libya thanks to Obama decision after listening to the United Nation and NATO. It’s been over 90 days and there is still no justifiable reason from Obama to be there. How come you didn’t mention that Eric?
Lets talk about Eric’s comment about the $9 trillion surplus. There has not been a surplus in the federal government since at least 1969 when the federal government has spent more each year than it had collected in taxes. The so-called surplus was a numbers game for the Democrats. It was a “projected” surplus if Congress and the next President didn’t change a thing. And we all know the neither of them know how to do that.

As for the Patriot Act (if that’s what Eric was referring to since he didn’t mention it by name), The Patriot Act is totally against the Constitution that it should have never been enacted, never mind being renewed by President Obama in 2011(again Eric fail to mention).

So for Eric’s comment of “Ya, he’s a good guy, let’s get someone like him.” NO, let’s not. This country has been taken so far of course from it’s original intent of being a republic, governed by a set of laws, it’s not funny. We need someone who isn’t entrenched in Washington and the good ‘ol boy way of doing business in the Beltway.

One thing we don’t allow here on LeftAndRightPolitics is insults and attacks towards other readers. We want to promote open conversation and dialogue between readers and our authors, but it must be done with respect and not insulting. If you read the comments in the original post, you will notice another reader mentioned using name calling. The comment with the name calling was removed and I apologize for it getting through in the first place.

In response to one of our readers –

You seriously need to CHECK YOUR FACTS. Im pretty sure it was the democrats who passed the CRA. And the Republican Party of Lincoln is not the same Republican party of today. The South was primarily democratic until Civil Rights. You guys sound poor and uneducated, maybe you should consider supporting democrats who are for making progress and taking care of people who aren’t the top 5%, as opposed to the republicans (apart from Ron Paul) who are for “less-government” (who have not allowed Obama a political inch with anything unless it’s banning abortion) and taking care of their rich friends. The president can’t just wave a wand and make all of your lives perfect. This you’d know if you actually used your brain.

Anyone who says “CHECK YOUR FACTS”, without backing up their own just wants to throw out catch phrases. Here is where I laugh at the two major political parties. Neither one of them are for the American people. The Republicans and the Democrats are in it for themselves and their contributors. That is why we need term limits for all political position. If not this will never change.

Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital Boston, feels it isn’t the point to blame the parents, but to act in the child’s best interest to get them the help they need for whatever reason the parent can’t provided. I don’t know about many parents feel about this but in my opinion, this would be a clear case of government overreaching their authority.

Ludwig is quoted, “State intervention ideally will support not just the child but the whole family, with the goal of reuniting child and family as soon as possible. That may require instruction on parenting,” Ludwig, along with Lindsey Murtugh who is a lawyer at Harvard’s School of Public Health, wrote this article. “Despite the discomfort posed by state intervention, it may sometimes be necessary to protect a child,” Murtagh said.

While I feel that this is a problem in the United States and is the responsibility of the parents to provide healthy choices for their children, others like bioethicist Art Caplin feel it can be blame on other factors as well. He states, “obese children are victims of advertising, marketing, peer pressure and bullying _ things a parent can’t control.” Caplin continues “If you’re going to change a child’s weight, you’re going to have to change all of them,” Caplan said.
I can see his statement in regards to advertising and marketing, but peer pressure and bullying?

This has gotten out of hand with people who feel that the government needs to be involved in issues that they have no authority to be in. Where does it end? By what “standard” are they going to gauge a child being obese?
What has happened to this country where we remove ourselves from responsibility? Over the last few years, the federal government has been expanding their authority and if this is the next thing where they (government) are to get involved in, where does it stop?

Yes, these days families either have both parents working or consist of a single parent. Being with our children have become less and less as parents struggle to keep their financial lives in order. There are those though that just don’t care what their kids eat, but does that now make it the responsibility of the state? As it is, the government can’t even take care of the issues they are required to handle and now let’s throw in raising obese children. Ultimately this is a personal issue and that’s it. If it falls into child endangerment, child abuse or neglect, that one thing, but this crossing the line.

There are currently nearly two million children in the United States who considered extremely obese. As it is, the foster care system has trouble finding foster homes for the kids that need it. How would the system improve with adding obese children into the mix?

From what I can tell…nothing but money. President Obama when he ran for office, he had no experience as an executive or even as a legislator. Yes he was a Senator, but when he was a Senator on the state level, he spent most of that time running to be a U.S. Senator. Shortly after becoming the U.S. Senator, he was running to be president. So where did he get his experience? During the 2008 election, many people were saying that Sarah Palin didn’t have experience to be president, but in my opinion, she had more experience than Obama since she was a Mayor and the Governor of Alaska.

We are now hearing stories of how Michele Bachmann is not experienced enough to be president of the United States. How is that possible since she has been a Congresswoman for the state of Minnesota since 2007 and that is after six years as a state Senator.

What it all comes down to when having the qualification to be president, of course the statutes written out in the Constitution must be met, but it has to do with money. We have politicians putting up their own money to the tune of million of dollars for a position that will pay $175,000 per year plus benefits. The old saying of, “money makes the world go round”, doesn’t just apply to business. If your think about it, politics is big business. it’s expected this election cycle will have the candidates putting in a combine total of over one billion dollars. I’m amazed how much money is spent to just run for one political position. So it’s definitely big business.

So when you sit back to think about who you’re going to vote for, remember don’t vote for the person who’s had his or her face plastered all over the TV. Don’t listen to the opponent’s smear campaigns. Instead do your own homework and watch the debates each and every time. The debates are the best way to weed through the crap the candidates are saying. I’m not fond of any of the Republican candidates really, but I will be voting for whoever wins the nomination since Obama has done enough of nothing for this economy. What republican voters need to do is to find the best candidate to put on the ticket.

The main stream media has been bought out by Washington. I’ve seem it for years how CNN, MSNBC and the other left-leaning station will cover stories about things that don’t affect our lives in any major way. But now even FOX has taken the same path as to not informing the American people of major issues or policy changes coming out of Washington. It gotten to the point where I’ve stopped watching these “news” outlets and searching for the real issues at hand that are affecting the freedoms and the quality of life for Americans.

We have major problems in our country as well as the world. There is still a problem in Japan with the Fukushima Nuclear plant, never mind the problem at the Ft. Calhoun Nuclear plant in Nebraska that many don’t even know about. Why? Because the federal government are the ones responsible for the problem in Nebraska by opening up the dams to save other interests.
We have a president that has taken us into another war without Congressional approval and Congress is looking to sue the president to get the troops out of Libya. The House of Representative have every right and duty to impeach Barack Obama and they try to “fool” us by some frivolous law suit. On top of all that, we have reports coming out of North Korea about their capabilities for using a “super EMP” nuke. If it wasn’t for the different websites I go on, I wouldn’t even know about these stories. They are other stories I read that I can’t even confirm to really want to discuss here on this blog.

We as Americans need to stay away from the lame stream media and the news they spew out every night. It’s allowing Washington to get away with showing us how incompetent they really are. Of course there will always be a large amount of “brainwashed” people who will never get out from under the vail of lies they are fed each and every night.
We can only start with ourselves and do what we can to keep as many others informed of the “real” news going on out there.

Let’s take a look at the state of Maine. A state that had 128,000 citizens that were uninsured in 2003. At the time, Governor John Baldacci (D) signed into law a state-wide health care plan to combat the situation. By the time 2009 arrived, it would cover all of Maine’s citizens. The system would help keep control of hospitals and physicians to hold down insurance premiums. It was sold as a way to provide everyone insurance as well as save business and patients money. To top it off, it was stated that there would be no increase in taxes.

Well after five years of the program, not only has the program not save any money, but it has also cost the taxpayers of Maine $155 million and is still rising. Here’s how the program was supposed to work. There were to be two government programs that would cover the uninsured. The legislature greatly expanded MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program. Today Maine families with incomes of up to $44,000 a year are eligible; 22% of the population is now in Medicaid, roughly twice the national average.

Then the state created a “public option” (where have you heard that lately?) known as DirigoChoice. The plan would compete with private plans such as Blue Cross. To get lower income Mainers to enroll, it offered taxpayer-subsidized premiums. (again, this sounds familiar) The plan’s original funding source was $50 million of federal stimulus money the state got in 2003. Over the years, the plan was to be “funded by the savings in the health-care system.”

During the peak of the program in 2006, only about 15,000 people had enrolled in the DirigoChoice program. That number has now dropped to below 10,000, according to Maine’s own reporting. About two-thirds of those who enrolled already had insurance, which they dropped in favor of the subsidized public option. So instead of the 128,000 that were uninsured, the actual number is only 3,400.

Most of what is in Maine’s health care program is actually in the Obama-care bill. So why bother with trying to have a national health care program when they can’t even get it to work on a small scale? If Obama and his friends are so into this bill, then may I suggest that we do a test on the actual program on the state level. Sort of like a “try it before you buy it” program. Try it in California for five years and let’s see how successful it is at that point. If it can survive without a constant need of federal stimulus money, then I say we go ahead with it on a national level.

I know it will never work. One because that it has already been tried in Maine as well as Massachusetts and Tennessee and each time it failed. Currently in Maine, a healthy single male at the age of thirty, pays a monthly premium of $762 while a citizen in the same condition in New Hampshire only pays $222.

This bill (HR3200) needs to be stopped and the discussion of health care reform needs to be re-focused to look at tort reform. A major part of health care costs come from malpractice insurance that the doctors need to have to protect themselves from from major law-suits. The lawyers have pushed the price of health care up from the class-action suits to individual cases. As for class-action suits, no one benefits from this type of practice other than the lawyers. Lawyers will pocket millions of dollars while the people who are affected by the situation only get a few dollars each as compensation.

Will Universal Health Care really work here in America? The answer is no. If you don’t believe it, then you need to go look for the information like I did.

The latest one to make the rounds features Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas. It shows Jackson-Lee answering and talking on her cell phone while a woman from the audience is asking a question. As you watch it, it seems that this Congresswoman isn’t even listening.

The Congresswoman was a guest on the Greta Van Sustren show on Thursday to have her chance to explain. Throughout the entire segment, Congresswoman Jackson-Lee was filibustering. She was being very evasive and only wanted to get the health care message out. When Greta asked her who was on the phone (in the video), she replied, she was wasn’t trying to be rude and apologized to the woman that asked the question at the town hall meeting. She continued with pushing the health care bill and stated that she has read all 1,100 pages of the bill. She finally confessed that she was on the phone with the “Hot Line” that was set up for the politicians to get assistance during tough questions at town hall meetings. Here’s one of the clips. You decide if she is being rude.

Jackson-Lee said that what she is trying to do is to convince the people that this is what’s best. What I want to know is, why is she trying to convince anyone? I may not have read all of the bill myself, but I have read a few highlights. This bill is not a bill to reform health care, it’s going to change it completely.

It’s a shame that the people that were elected to these positions aren’t listening to the people who voted them in. The politicians in Washington aren’t listening to the American people any longer and the only way to change that is to vote them ALL out when they’re up for re-election.

On his show today, one of his guest was Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) of the house of Representatives, a former F.B.I. agent as well as military officer. A gentleman who is well informed and aware of what it takes to deal with this type of situation.

The discussion was in regards to the terrorist having their Miranda Rights read to them on the battlefield. That’s right, non-American citizens are receiving the rights of American citizens. Thanks to the Democrats, our enemies are being protected by rights that they don’t even have the rights to.

We are at war with Jihadist who are firing at our solders, which makes them army combatants which gives them the rights of the Geneva Convention. In that case they should be tried under those laws, but because the Democrat’s defense is that the terrorist don’t wear uniform, they don’t fall under the guidelines. That’s well and good, but then why protect them under U.S. Constitution laws?

We can’t waterboard them because of the Geneva Convention and at the same time they’re not under the Geneva Convention laws. This has gotten totally out of control and the present Administration doesn’t have a clue as to what to do to protect this country. Which is what the main duties of the federal government is supposed to do.

Our government has lost sight of what our fore fathers had written out for this country. We have a little over a year to change the balance of power in Congress and about three years and four months to remove President Obama from the White House. That day can’t come soon enough for me.

Senator Kay Hagan (D_NC) is the presiding officer, in the video clip. In it she’s asked many questions pertaining to other issues that are going on currently. Every one of her answers are the same, which is “yes”. The question that are asked are from Sen. Jim DeMint. Each one of them show a clear sign of the double standard that is going on between the Democrats and the Republicans.

These two parties have reached a point where they are no longer looking out for the American people. Their on;y concern is fro themselves and their lobbyist. Politicians like Ron Paul and Jim DeMint are just a handful of politicians that are truly trying to make a difference in Washington. When It comes time to vote we have to bond together and vote the current Senators out. They’ve grown too comfortable in their positions. Our founding fathers never meant for these positions to be a career.

This will tax everything. That includes flatulent cows, that’s right cows that pass wind. It doesn’t just end there. the truck driver who drivers the cow to the slaughter house. Let’s not forget the wrapping the is needed to package the meat. All the different processing plants that are needed to get the meat to your plate. Everyone of them will have to pay higher taxes to the government because of the carbon dioxide that they produce.

If you think that won’t affect you, you are dead wrong. It’s a known fact that these costs will be passed on to the consumer.

All in the name of global warming. That’s right we are going to be taxed more to help save the entire planet from a chemical that is a basic necessity for the world to survive. The global warming concern is nothing but a political move to redistribute wealth. Many African countries don’t have an infrastructure system and don’t emit carbon emissions, so counties like America (especially the U.S.) will have to buy the carbon credits from those countries, henceforth wealth distribution.

I expect that type of planning from the Democrats but to see Republicans join the crusade is not. The final vote was 219-212 for the bill. There were eight Republicans that voted for the bill. We need to send a clear message to those eight members of Congress that helped the Democrats raise our taxes. The only way to do so is to call them and let them know that we will not contribute to their campaign because we aren’t going to vote for them.

Here are the names and phone numbers to their office. There is time for them to change their vote and if they want any chance of being re-elected, they will have to do so.

Bono Mack (CA) 202-225-5330
Castle (DE) 202-225-4165
Kirk (IL) 202-225-4835
Lance (NJ) 202-225-5361
Lobiondo (NJ) 202-225-6572
McHugh (NY) 202-225-4611
Reichart (WA) 202-225-7761
Chris Smith (NJ) 202-225-3765

Remember that when you call them to inform them of your dissatisfaction, you must state that you are a contributor. If you don’t, they really don’t care what you have to say (which is a whole other story). They only care about their campaign fund and their own wallets. Which is another reason why we need to vote all of them out when they’re up for re-election.