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Free Mark Steyn!


We're Not Declaring, But…

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 07:25 AM PST

… given the choices, lefty Performance Artist Vermin Supreme is looking pretty good: at least you know what you're getting. If he won, maybe it would be like Belgium in 2011, which ran well enough without any actual government for several months.


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Muslim Brotherhood Declares 'Mastership of World'

Posted By Raymond Ibrahim On January 16, 2012

Although many Muslim leaders openly articulate their efforts as part of a larger picture—one that culminates in the resurrection of a caliphate adversarial by nature to all things non-Muslim—many Western leaders see only the moment, either out of context or, worse, in a false context built atop wishful thinking.

Among other things, this myopia causes virtually all Western politicians to overlook long-term threats and focus exclusively on violence and terror, the tangible and temporal—those things that may coincide with their tenure.

This narrow-sighted approach sometimes leads to absurdities, such as when Homeland Defense's Paul Stockton, being questioned by Dan Lungren at a recent hearing, refused to agree that al-Qaeda "is acting out violent Islamist extremism," insisting instead that the group merely consists of "murderers." In doing so, he divorced reality from any meaningful context, thereby living up to the Obama doctrine of not knowing your enemy.

Of course, all Islamists have the same goal: the establishment of a sharia-enforcing caliphate. The only difference is that most are prudent enough to understand that incremental infiltration and subtle subversion—step by step, phase by phase, decade after decade—are much more effective for securing their goals than outright violence. Then, once in power, "they will become much more savage."

Accordingly, thanks to the so-called "Arab Spring" and its Western supporters, more and more clerics feel they are nearing their ultimate goal of resurrecting the caliphate, the capital of which is to be Jerusalem. This sheikh, for instance, recently boasted that the caliphate will soon be restored and the West will pay jizya—tribute and submission, via Koran 9:29—"or else we will bring the sword to your necks!" So too this sheikh, citing infidel Germany as an example. And of course calls for jizya from Egypt's Christian Copts are growing by the day.

Now, consider the clear, unequivocal words of Dr. Muhammad Badi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Al Masry Al Youm (as translated by Coptic):

Dr. Muhammad Badi, supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, said: "The Brotherhood is getting closer to achieving its greatest goal as envisioned by its founder, Imam Hassan al-Banna. This will be accomplished by establishing a righteous and fair ruling system [based on Islamic sharia], with all its institutions and associations, including a government evolving into a rightly guided caliphate and mastership of the world." Badi added in his weekly message yesterday [12/29/11]: "When the Brotherhood started its advocacy [da'wa], it tried to awaken the nation from its slumber and stagnation, to guide it back to its position and vocation. In his message at the sixth caucus, the Imam [Banna] defined two goals for the Brotherhood: a short term goal, the fruits of which are seen as soon as a person becomes a member of the Brotherhood; and a long term goal that requires utilizing events, waiting, making appropriate preparations and prior designs, and a comprehensive and total reform of all aspects of life." The leader of the Brotherhood continued: "The Imam [Banna] delineated transitional goals and detailed methods to achieve this greatest objective, starting by reforming the individual, followed by building the family, the society, the government, and then a rightly guided caliphate and finally mastership of the world" [emphasis added].

Even so, it matters not how often and openly Islamic leaders like Badi articulate their grand agenda for the world to hear. Western leaders have their intellectual blinders shut so tight, frozen before the word "democracy"—even if "Arab spring" people-power leads to fascism (which, after all, will be someone else's problem after they leave office).

Thus, here is former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, who not only is "very pleased" with Egyptian elections—despite widespread allegations of voter-fraud against the Muslim Brotherhood—but, when asked if the U.S. should be concerned about the Islamist victory, said "I don't have any problem with that,and the U.S. government doesn't have any problem with that either. We want the will of the Egyptian people to be expressed."

Accordingly, the Muslim Brotherhood and all its offshoots can rest assured that, so long as they do not engage in direct terrorism, they can continue unfettered on their decades-long march to resurrecting the caliphate, which—if history and doctrine are any indicators—will, in its attempt to claim "mastership of the world," be a global menace.

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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/16/muslim-brotherhood-longs-for-%e2%80%98mastership-of-world%e2%80%99/

 


 


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New post on Political Vel Craft

Newly Discovered Alaskan Oil Reserve Is Equivalent To 30% Of The World's Oil Supply 83 Billion Barrels: Alaska Ends Peak Oil Theory!

by Volubrjotr

NWO's British Petroleum Ruin America's Gulf ~ But Drills 15 New Oil & Gasoline Projects In Obama's Indonesia To Be Online In 2012. Weekend Reflections: Defund Obama's $10 Billion Of U.S. Taxpayer Money ~ Funding Brazil's Off Shore Oil Drilling! Released: Obama Gave ACORN $3 Billion USD In Taxpayer Stimulus ~ While Shutting Down America's Oil Production! Astrophysicist..Global [...]

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New post on Bare Naked Islam

PAKI'S GONE WILD?

by barenakedislam

An elderly, frail Pakistani cleric dances in his chair for money, while men and women around him are singing and dancing. But isn't that forbidden in Islam?

barenakedislam | January 17, 2012 at 3:06 pm | Categories: Laughing at Islam | URL: http://wp.me/p276zM-ES1

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New post on Political Vel Craft

Political Vel Craft Goes Dark 2Morrow: SOPA Conflicts With 'FAIR USE' Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 U.S. Copyright Law.

by Volubrjotr

* * S P R E A D  T H E  M E S S A G E :  S O P A  S T R I K E * * On January 18, The Daily Paul will join Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitter, BoingBoing, MoveOn.org, The Free Software Foundation, and tens of thousands of other websites [...]

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New post on Scotty Starnes's Blog

What? Obama's New OMB Director Is a Bain Guy

by Scotty Starnes

Obama's Bain Guy

This should silence the attacks on the Romney-Bain connection.

From Beltway Confidential:

Jeffrey Zients will serve as President Obama's new acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), but the president's decision might undercut attacks on Republican Mitt Romney's career as a venture capitalist, because Zients and Romney are both alumni of Bain & Company.

"I'm pleased to designate Jeff Zients to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Since day one, Jeff has demonstrated superb judgment and has provided sound advice on a whole host of issues," Obama said in a statement accompanying the announcement today. Zients previously served as Deputy Director of OMB under Jack Lew, who became Obama's chief of staff with the departure of Bill Daley.

Romney might also be pleased at Zients' promotion, given that they have a common professional background; Zients worked with Bain & Company as early as 1988, according to the Bain website. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney worked at Bain & Company, first from 1977-1984, and then again from 1991 and 1992, when he was the Bain & Company chief executive officer.

Update: Bain & Company says that Zients worked there from August 1988 to June 1990. Romney apparently returned to Bain & Company from Bain Capital in January 1991, so they missed each other by six months.

Continue reading>>>

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Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Killing Dissent with War
by Jacob G. Hornberger

A point made by James Madison might well explain the U.S. government's strangulation of Iran's economy with ever-tightening sanctions: "Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended."

What better way to rally people to the government than a war? Wouldn't we expect many American dissidents, especially those in the Tea Party and Occupy movements, to immediately set aside their dissatisfaction with the U.S. government's domestic policies, especially out-of-control federal spending and debt, if war were to break out with Iran?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that a large segment of the American populace is starting to realize that the U.S. government's domestic and foreign policies are at the root of America's woes. Socialism at home and imperialism abroad have led to ever-increasing spending and debt, anti-American anger and hatred, and infringements on our rights and freedoms here at home.

Look at the support that the Ron Paul campaign is garnering from a large segment of American voters. Look at the Tea Party movement. Look at the Occupy movement. Discontent is growing. Equally important, increasingly people are correctly aiming their dissatisfaction at Washington, D.C., because they're realizing that it's the U.S. government's policies that are causing the problems.

But as Roman officials understood, there is a very effective way to suppress domestic dissatisfaction with the government: Start a war. Many people, out of sense of "patriotism," will immediately set aside their complaints and rally to the flag.

Of course, one option is simply to attack Iran first, like the U.S. government did with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. The problem with that route is that it doesn't inspire Americans to rally to the flag as much as when the United States is attacked. When officials want to go to war against another nation, the ideal is to maneuver that nation into doing the attacking. In that way, U.S. officials can exclaim, "We've been attacked! We're innocent! We were just minding our own business! This is another day that will live in infamy!"

Of course, when the attack comes, people are expected to forget the maneuvering that took place prior to the attack ­ maneuvering that was intended to provoke the other nation into firing the first shot.

That, of course, was how FDR did it prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. He placed an embargo on oil to Japan, knowing that it would strangle the Japanese war machine. FDR also did his best to humiliate the Japanese in negotiations prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. When the attack came, FDR appeared shocked but he had gotten what he wanted ­ America's entry into World War II, thanks to the attack by Japan on the United States.

That's obviously what the ever-tightening sanctions on Iran are designed to do ­ to cause Iran into responding to the strangulation with a military strike ­ not against the mainland of the United States but against some U.S. Naval vessel operating thousands of miles away from American shores in the Persian Gulf.

If that retaliation comes, the U.S government will have its excuse to do to Iran what it has done to Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan ­ to bomb Iran to smithereens, with the aim of effecting regime change in Iran, as it did in those three countries and, for that matter, as the CIA did with its coup in Iran in 1953.

And with the exception of libertarians and possibly a small number of conservatives, liberals, and independents, the likelihood is that Americans will immediately suppress their complaints against the U.S. government and rally to the government in a display of "patriotic" wartime fervor.

Equally important, U.S. officials will be able to use such the war to continue strangling the freedoms of the American people. That's another point made by Madison ­ that of all the enemies to freedom, war is the biggest, simply because war encompasses all the other threats to freedom.

As the possibility of war with Iran increases by the day, it would be prudent for Americans to ponder and reflect upon the following words of James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.


http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2012-01-17.asp
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America's Last Chance
by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, January 15, 2012

America has one last chance, and it is a very slim one. Americans can elect Ron Paul President, or they can descend into tyranny.

Why is Ron Paul America's last chance?

Because he is the only candidate who is not owned lock, stock, and barrel by the military-security complex, Wall Street, and the Israel Lobby.

All of the others, including President Obama, are owned by exactly the same interest groups. There are no differences between them. Every candidate except Ron Paul stands for war and a police state, and all have demonstrated their complete and total subservience to Israel. The fact that there is no difference between them is made perfectly clear by the absence of substantive issues in the campaigns of the Republican candidates.

Only Ron Paul deals with real issues, so he is excluded from "debates" in which the other Republican candidates throw mud at one another: "Gingrich voted $60 million to a UN program supporting abortion in China." "Romney loves to fire people."

The mindlessness repels.

More importantly, only Ron Paul respects the US Constitution and its protection of civil liberty. Only Ron Paul understands that if the Constitution cannot be resurrected from its public murder by Congress and the executive branch, then Americans are lost to tyranny.

There isn't much time in which to revive the Constitution. One more presidential term with no habeas corpus and no due process for US citizens and with torture and assassination of US citizens by their own government, and it will be too late. Tyranny will have been firmly institutionalized, and too many Americans from the lowly to the high and mighty will have been implicated in the crimes of the state. Extensive guilt and complicity will make it impossible to restore the accountability of government to law.

If Ron Paul is not elected president in this year's election, by 2016 American liberty will be in a forgotten grave in a forgotten grave yard.

Having said this, there is no way Ron Paul can be elected, for these reasons:

Not enough Americans understand that the "war on terror" has been used to create a police state. The brainwashed citizenry believe that the police state is making them safe from terrorists.

Liberals, progressives, and the left-wing oppose Ron Paul, claiming that "he would abolish the social safety net, privatize Social Security and Medicare, throw the widows and orphans into the street, abolish the Federal Reserve," etc.

Apparently, liberals, progressives, and the left-wing do not understand that privatizing Social Security and Medicare and destroying the social safety net are policies that many conservative Republicans favor and are policies that Wall Street is forcing on both political parties. In contrast, a President Ron Paul would be isolated in the White House and would never be able to muster the support of Congress and the powerful interest groups to achieve such radical changes. Moreover, Ron Paul has made it clear that a welfare-free state cannot be achieved by decree but only by creating an economy in which opportunity exists for people to stand on their own feet. Ron Paul has said that he does not support ending welfare before an economy is created that makes a welfare state unnecessary.

Candidate Paul cannot take any steps to reassure Americans that he would not throw them to the mercy of the free market, because his libertarian base would turn on him as another unprincipled politician willing to sacrifice his principles for political expediency. If libertarians were not inflexible, candidate Paul could endorse Ron Unz's proposal to solve the illegal immigration problem by raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour, so that Americans could afford to work the jobs that are taken by illegals.

Economist James K. Galbraith is probably correct that Unz's proposal would boost the economy by injecting purchasing power and that the unemployment would be largely confined to illegals who would return to their home country. However, if Ron Paul were to treat Unz's proposal as one worthy of study and consideration, libertarian ideologues would write him off. Whatever liberal/progressive support he gained would be offset by the loss of his libertarian base.

Why can't libertarians be as intelligent as Ron Unz and see that if the Constitution is lost all that remains is tyranny?

In short, Americans cannot see beyond their ideologies to the real issue, which is the choice between the Constitution and tyranny.

So we hear absurd accusations that Ron Paul, a libertarian "is a racist." "Ron Paul is an anti-semite." "Ron Paul would favor the rich and hurt the poor."

We don't hear "Ron Paul would restore and protect the US Constitution."

What do Americans think life will be like in the absence of the Constitution? I will tell you what it will be like, but first let's consider the obstacles Ron Paul would face if he were to win the Republican nomination and if he were to be elected president.

In my opinion, if Ron Paul were to win the Republican nomination, the Republican Party would conspire to refuse it to him. The party would simply nominate a different candidate.

If despite everything, Ron Paul were to end up in the White House, he would not be able to form a government that would support his policies. Appointments to cabinet secretaries and assistant secretaries that would support his policies could not be confirmed by the US Senate. President Paul would have to appoint whomever the Senate would confirm in order to form a government. The Senate's appointees would undermine his policies.

What a President Ron Paul could do, assuming Congress, controlled by powerful private interest groups, did not impeach him on trumped up charges, would be to use whatever forums that might be permitted him to explain to the public, judges, and law schools that the danger from terrorists is miniscule compared to the danger from a government unaccountable to law and the Constitution.

The reason we should vote for Ron Paul is to signal to the powers that be that we understand what they are doing to us. If Paul were to receive a large vote, it could have two good effects. One could be to introduce some caution into the establishment that would slow the march into more war and tyranny. The other is it would signal to Washington's European and Japanese puppets that not all Americans are stupid sheep. Such an indication could make Washington's puppet states more cautious and less cooperative with Washington's drive for world hegemony.

What America Without the Constitution Will Be Like

In the January 4 Huff Post, attorney and author John Whitehead reported on the militarization of local police. Some police forces are now equipped with spy drones. Whitehead reports that a drone manufacturer, AeroVironment Inc., plans to sell 18,000 drones to police departments throughout the country. The company is also advertising a small drone, the "Switchblade," which can track a person, land on the person and explode.

How long before Americans will be spied upon or murdered as extremists at the discretion of local police?

Recognizing the privacy danger, if not the murder danger, the American Civil Liberties Union has issued a report, "Protecting Privacy From Aerial Surveillance." https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/protectingprivacyfromaerialsurveillance.pdf

The ACLU believes, correctly, that liberty is threatened by "a surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by authorities."

The ACLU calls on Congress to legislate privacy protections against the police use of drones. I support the ACLU because it is the most important defender of civil liberty despite other misguided activities, but I wonder what the ACLU is thinking. Congress and the federal courts have already acquiesced in the federal government's warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency. The Bush regime violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act many times, and all involved, including President Bush, should have been sent to prison for many lifetimes, as each violation carries a 5-year prison term. But the executive branch emerged scot free. No one was held accountable for clear violations of US statutory law.

The ACLU might think that although the federal executive branch has successfully elevated itself above the law, state and local police forces are still accountable. We must hope that they are, but I doubt it.

The militarization of local police has received some attention. What has not received attention is that state and local police are also being federalized. It is not only military armaments and spy technology that local police are receiving from Washington, but also an attitude toward the public along with federal oversight and the collaboration that goes with it. When Homeland Security, a federal police force, comes into states, as I know has occurred in Georgia and Tennessee, and doubtless other states, and together with the state police stop cars and trucks on Interstate highways and subject them to warrantless searches, what is happening is the de facto deputizing of the state police by Homeland Security. This is the way that Goering and Himmler federalized into the Gestapo the independent police forces of German provinces such as Prussia and Bavaria.

Homeland Security has expanded its warrantless searches far beyond "airline security." The budding gestapo agency now conducts warrantless searches on the nation's highways, on bus and train passengers, and at Social Security offices. On Tuesday January 3, 2012, the Social Security office in Leesburg, Florida, apparently a terrorist hotspot, became a Homeland Security checkpoint. The DHS Gestapo armed with automatic weapons and sniffer dogs demanded IDs from local residents visiting their local Social Security office. http://www.dailycommercial.com/News/LakeCounty/010412shield

Thomas Milligan, district manager for the Social Security Administration office, said staff were not informed their offices were about to be stormed by armed federal police officers. DHS officials refused to answer questions asked by local media and left with no explanation at noon, reports infowars.com.

The DHS gestapo justified its takeover of a Leesburg Florida Social Security office as being an integral part of "Operational Shield," conducted by the Federal Protective Service to detect "the presence of unauthorized persons and potentially disruptive or dangerous activities."

One wonders if even brainwashed flag-waving "superpatriots" can miss the message. The Social Security office of Leesburg, Florida, population 19,086 in central Florida is not a place where terrorists devoid of proper ID might be visiting. To protect America from the scant possibility that terrorists might be congregating at the Leesburg Social Security office, the tyrants in Washington sent the Federal Protective Service at who knows what cost to demand ID from locals visiting their Social Security office.

What is this all about except to establish the precedent that federal police, a new entity in American life, the Federal Protective Service, has authority over state and local police offices and can appear out of the blue to interrogate local citizens.

Why the ACLU thinks it is going to get any action out of a Congress that has accommodated the executive branch's destruction of habeas corpus, due process, and the constitutional and legal prohibitions against torture is beyond me. But at least the issue is raised. But don't expect to hear about it from the "mainstream media."

Americans in 2012, although only a few are aware, live in a concentration camp that is far better controlled than the one portrayed by George Orwell in 1984. Orwell, writing in the late 1940s could not imagine the technology that makes control of populations so thorough as it is today. Orwell's protagonist could at least have hope. In 2012 with the erasure of privacy by the US government, protagonists can be eliminated by hummingbird-sized drones before they can initiate a protest, much less a rebellion.

Never in human history has a people been so easily and willingly controlled by a hostile government as Americans, who are the least free people on earth. And a large percentage of Americans still wave the flag and chant USA! USA! USA!

The Bush regime operated as if the Constitution did not exist. Any semblance of constitutional government that remained after the Bush years was terminated when Congress passed and President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act. One wonders how the National Rifle Association, the defender of the Second Amendment, will now fare. If there is no Constitution, how can there be a Second Amendment? If the President, at his discretion, can set aside habeas corpus and due process and murder citizens based on unproven suspicions, why can't he set aside the Second Amendment?

Indeed, it is folly to expect a police state to tolerate an armed population.

The NRA is very supportive of the police and military. Now that these armed organizations are being turned against the public, how will the NRA adjust its posture?

Many NRA members, pointing to the "Oath Keepers," former members of the military who pledge to defend the Constitution, and to police chiefs who support the Second Amendment, believe that the police and military will disobey orders to attack citizens. But we already witness constantly the gratuitous brutality of "our" police against peaceful protesters. We witness military troops all over the world murder citizens who protest government abuses. Why can't it happen here?

If you don't want it to happen here, you had better figure out some way to get Ron Paul into the Presidency and to get him a cabinet and subcabinet that will support him.

Meanwhile, the police state grows. On January 4, 2012, the Obama regime announced by decree, not by legislation, the creation of the Bureau of Counterterrorism which will among other tasks "seek to strengthen homeland security, countering violent extremism." http://newsok.com/obama-launches-bureau-of-counterterrorism/article/feed/332475

Take a moment to think. Do you know of any "violent extremism" happening in the US? The regime is telling you that it needs a new police bureau with unaccountable powers to "strengthen homeland security" against a nonexistent bogyman.

So who will be the violent extremists who require countering by the Bureau of Counterterrorism? It will be peace activists, the Occupy Wall Street protesters, the unemployed and foreclosed homeless. It will be whoever the police state says. And there is no due process or recourse to law.

Given the facts before you, you are out of your mind if you think Ron Paul's rhetoric against the welfare state is more important than his defense of liberty.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28669
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The Right Prescription
Heritage and the Individual Mandate
By Peter Ferrara on 12.21.11 @ 6:08AM

A political and policy memoir of battles lost -- and won.

I have kept the true story of the Heritage Foundation and the individual health insurance mandate under wraps for almost 20 years now, because up until now it has been too costly to tell it. But now it is too costly not to tell it.

This is not an attack on Heritage, which has long since mended its ways. But the story is now centrally relevant to the Republican presidential primaries.

In 1993, I was a refugee from the failed George H.W. Bush Administration, where I had served as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States, after my service in the White House Office of Policy Development, where I had worked for President Reagan. I was the Heritage Foundation John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow in Political Economy.

There I discovered the wonders of the Heritage health plan, devised to stop the Hillary health plan. Except that it followed the outlines of the Hillary plan far too closely. Worse, where it differed, it was destined to fail politically.

For example, the Hillary plan was based on an employer mandate, requiring employers to buy the health insurance plan for their workers the government specified they must buy. The Heritage plan was based on an individual mandate, requiring each worker to buy the health insurance plan the government specified they must buy. So the issue was framed as who should have to buy the health insurance, the employer as the Hillary plan required, or the worker, as the Heritage plan required. Not a winning issue for the Heritage plan.

Another key difference was that the health insurance plan Hillary would require the employer to buy would be a broad generous plan covering everything. But the health insurance plan Heritage would require the worker to buy would be a cheap bare bones basic plan. So the issue was framed as which do you want: broad, generous health coverage paid for by the employer, or cheap, bare bones coverage paid for by the worker? It seemed more like the Heritage plan was designed to fail politically.


Socialized Medicine

But that would be the best possible outcome. For if it passed, the individual mandate would inevitably lead to full blown socialized medicine. As I tried to explain to then Heritage Director of Domestic Policy Stuart Butler, once the government enacts an individual mandate for health insurance, then it must specify exactly what health insurance, with what benefits and coverage, would satisfy the mandate. Once the government enters that political minefield, then politics would inevitably force it to specify a broad, extremely expensive plan that covers everyone and everything.

What and who could you leave out? Not mental health benefits, drug and alcohol rehab, any uninsured no matter how sick and costly once he or she first showed up, not any possible service or treatment, each with its own little politically intractable platoon of the afflicted expecting to benefit, and service providers expecting to be paid to serve them.

The result would consequently inevitably be a mandate requiring purchase of the most expensive health insurance possible, as we will now see from Obamacare. That would inevitably lead to outcries from those mandated to purchase the monster for government help with the expense. We see that in Obamacare, too, with an enormously expensive new entitlement program providing subsidies for families earning close to $100,000 a year, and soon more than that under an automatic index.

The explosive cost to the government of that assistance would require the government to get involved in directly controlling health care, in order to try to control costs. That would result ultimately in government imposed health care rationing, with bureaucrats ultimately deciding who gets what health care and when. Hence we see in Obamacare the Independent Payment Advisory Board, the entering wedge of the death panel, eventually effectively supervising not just Medicare, but the entire health care system. And we see already under Obamacare government bureaucracies getting with the program, raising questions for the first time about tests for breast and prostate cancer, seeming to say that at a certain age if you have those life threatening illnesses, the government doesn't want to know about it, or you to know about it either. And for the first time the FDA is considering whether to approve therapies for life threatening illnesses considering what they cost.

I had been close friends up until then with Stuart Butler, even double dating a couple of times with our girlfriends and then wives. Before he became Director of Domestic Policy, Heritage had offered the job to then another friend of mine, Tony Pellechio. But I wanted Stuart to get it, because I thought Stuart was more hard core. So I talked Tony out of taking the job when he came to me to ask what I thought he should do. Sure enough, Stuart was next in line. Stuart does not know about this history almost 30 years ago to this day.

Stuart had no response to my objections to the individual mandate. But he was passionately devoted to the brilliance of the Heritage health plan. I told him it was so close to the Hillary plan, and so poorly framed as an alternative, that I predicted that President Clinton would come to point to it as the GOP alternative plan, and seek to get the Hillary plan passed as a compromise just ironing out the differences (employer pays or worker pays, generous health insurance or cheap health insurance).

Sure enough, a year later, as the Hillary plan was about to go down to defeat, President Clinton arose to point to the Heritage plan as the true GOP alternative, and offer to pass health reform by just ironing out the differences. Fortunately by then, I had already killed the Heritage health plan.


The Conservative Revolt

I fled Heritage near the end of 1993 to join John Goodman at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). Together, Goodman and I became the leaders ringing the alarm bells for the conservative movement about the Heritage plan, and the dangers of the individual mandate, as described above. My assignment at NCPA was to kill the Heritage health plan.

Heritage had convinced then stalwart conservative Senator Don Nickles from Oklahoma to introduce the Heritage plan. I went through that long bill line by line and wrote up a summary section by section of everything that was wrong about the bill from the conservative perspective. I then got 37 major conservative leaders to sign on to the petition. It was the only document in history to be signed by both Phyllis Schlafly and Ed Crane. It was signed by Grover Norquist and Paul Weyrich. It was a who's who of the leadership of the conservative movement at the time.

I then hand carried the document to the health policy staff of Sen. Nickles. When Nickles saw the document, he abruptly withdrew the bill. He thought in introducing the Heritage plan he was providing leadership for the conservative movement. My document/petition convinced him that was wrong.

To this day, my relationship with Stuart Butler and Heritage has never recovered. Before then, I wrote regularly for Heritage, contributing numerous Backgrounders, and writing whole chapters of Mandate for Leadership I and II. Since then, I am lucky if anyone from Heritage even talks to me, least of all Stuart Butler.

I received rewards for my work in killing the Heritage health plan from the American Conservative Union and Eagle Forum. I now have the reward now of the whole conservative movement agreeing that I was right all along.

About the Author
Peter Ferrara is Senior Fellow at the Carleson Center for Public Policy, Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, and General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is the author of America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, now available from HarperCollins.
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/21/heritage-and-the-individual-ma


http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/21/heritage-and-the-individual-ma




New post on Scotty Starnes's Blog

Ironic! Nancy Pelosi Now Claims the Democrats "Don't Really Have Much of a Connection to Occupy Movement" (Video)

by Scotty Starnes

Nancy tries to spin but she, and her Democrat cohorts, are deeply connected to the OWS (Obama's Whining Socialist) Movement and support it just as she does. Behind Obama, Pelosi is the second most documented liar in US history.

Pelosi is the same idiot who faked tears with her concerns about Tea Party "language" but hasn't shed a tear with the over 5,000 arrest, 2 murders, 9 deaths, several dozen sexual assaults and rapes, child molestation, public masturbation and a host of other criminal acts committed by OWS goons. She denigrates the Tea Party for peaceful protests and supports the OWS parasites who uses violence.

 

Scotty Starnes | January 17, 2012 at 3:02 PM | Tags: Nancy Pelosi, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, tea party | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-6o8

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