Congressman Heller Says Congress Should Join Any Federal Health Plan

Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., told colleagues Thursday that members of Congress should be required to join any federal public health benefits plan created by Congress.

“I do not believe the federal government should be running health care in our country and levying massive tax increases on America’s small businesses,” said Heller in urging support for an amendment to the proposed plan. “However, if this administration and the majority party are going to force government-run health care on the American people, then members of Congress should be required to enroll in that plan.

“If the government-run ‘public plan’ is good enough for millions of our constituents, then it should be good enough for members of Congress,” he said.

He asked the committee reviewing the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act to adopt the amendment requiring Congress to participate in the plan. The amendment, however, was rejected by the committee 21-18.

The legislation would create a government-run health insurance plan. Heller said independent estimates place the bill’s cost to American taxpayers as high as $1.5 trillion.

He said he believes the legislation could result in 114 million Americans losing their current health insurance coverage.

Socialized Medicine Will Destroy Health Care

White House Putting Off Release Of Budget Update

The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its ridiculous predictions about the economy and today’s bleak landscape.

The administration’s annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in Obama’s budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his socialized health care and global-warming tax through Congress.

The release of the update – usually scheduled for mid-July – has been put off until the middle of next month. The White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.

The administration is pressing for votes before then on its $1 trillion socialized health care initiative. Runaway costs are jeopardizing Senate passage.

“Let’s be honest about what this is: an attempt to hide a record-breaking deficit as Democratic leaders break arms to rush through a government takeover of healthcare,” said John Boehner of Ohio, the top Republican in the House of Representatives.

“By burying this budget update until after Congress leaves town next month, the administration is not willing to own up to the consequences of this dangerous fiscal agenda,” he said.

“This routine report could be a nightmare,” Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department official and White House spokesman under President George W. Bush, said of the delayed budget update. “There are some things that can’t be escaped.”

The Obama administration earlier this year tried to frighten the public by saying that unemployment would peak at about 9 percent without a big stimulus package and 8 percent with one. Congress did pass a $787 billion two-year stimulus measure, yet unemployment hit a 26-year high to 9.5 percent in June and appears headed for double digits.

Obama’s unrealistic current forecast anticipates 3.2 percent growth next year, then 4 percent or higher growth from 2011 to 2013. Private forecasts are contradicting those numbers.

Why is the Obama administration lying to us? Because any downward revision in growth or revenue projections would mean that budget deficits would be far higher than the administration is trying to sell us on.

Setting the stage for bleaker projections, Biden recently conceded, “We misread how bad the economy was” in January.

The new budget update comes as the public and members of Congress are becoming increasingly frightened over Obama’s economic policies.

A Washington Post-ABC News survey released Monday shows approval of Obama’s handling of health-care reform slipping below 50 percent for the first time. The poll also found support eroding on how Obama is dealing with other issues that are important to Americans right now – the economy, unemployment and the swelling budget deficit. The people are beginning to wake up the reality of socialism.

The Democratic-controlled Congress is reeling from last week’s testimony by the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, that the main health care proposals Congress is considering would not reduce costs – as Obama has insisted – but “significantly expand” the federal financial responsibility for health care.

The Obama administration has unrealistically projected that the annual deficit for the current budget year will hit $1.84 trillion, four times the size of last year’s deficit of $455 billion. Private forecasters suggest that shortfall may actually top $2 trillion.

Jobless Rate Tops 10 Percent In 15 States

The Labor Department on Friday said unemployment topped 10 percent in 15 states and the District of Columbia last month. And the jobless rate in Michigan surpassed 15 percent, the first time any state hit that mark since 1984.

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the state’s jobless rate was 22.5 percent, according to Michigan’s Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Development. Nationwide unemployment by that measure was 16.5 percent in June, the highest on government records dating to 1994.

Many workers have seen hours trimmed, their pay cut and have lost benefits. Combine that with a dismal housing market making it difficult for people to sell their homes and move to other places to find work, some jobseekers are trapped.

The other states where unemployment topped 10 percent last month were: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee. In May, 13 states plus the District of Columbia watched their jobless rates surpass 10 percent. Alabama and Georgia joined the list in June.

Rhode Island had the second-highest unemployment rate in the country in June at 12.4 percent. When including people who stopped looking for work and those forced into part-time jobs, the state’s unemployment rate was 22.7 percent, Mishel estimated.

Oregon had the third-highest unemployment rate at 12.2 percent, which was 21.6 percent by the broadest measure. South Carolina’s jobless rate of 12.1 percent jumped to 22 percent when underemployed workers were included. It was followed by Nevada with a jobless rate of 12 percent, or 21.6 percent by the broadest measure, Mishel said.

The June jobless rates for Nevada, Rhode Island and South Carolina were the highest ever for those states in records dating to 1976. Other record-highs: Florida at 10.6 percent, Georgia at 10.1 percent and Delaware at 8.4 percent.

Is Man-made Global Warming Science? or Politics? Dr. Robert L. Dean Jr.

For more than 15 years the world has heard that the earth is gradually getting warmer and that this is caused by public enemy #1, the human race. Mainstream media, designed to be the watchdog on government and the protector of the public, continues to drink the kool-aid. Why? Perhaps its related to a common world-view rather than real science. However, again and again the opposing view, based on real science, not “politicized” science continues to make their case.

Unfortunately, the left has discovered that there is not only serious money in promoting man-made global warming (just take a look at Al Gore’s balance sheet), but also tremendous power. By promoting legislation to overhaul business the liberal left sees their opportunity to not waste this crisis, but to destroy real economic freedom.

For more on this read this column and others by economist Walter Williams.

Child Shoots Intruder During Home Break-In

PORT ALLEN, LA (WAFB) – A ten-year-old boy left home alone with his sister used his mother’s gun to shoot an intruder in the face, police said.

Late Tuesday, West Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputies received a call to a Port Allen apartment complex after several shots rang out from inside one of the apartments. “You are out here trying to work and for someone to come and do that and invade your home is very hard,” the children’s mother said. She asked to not be identified.

Deputies say Dean Favron and Roderick Porter knocked several times on the apartment door. The two young children, a ten-year-old boy and eight-year-old girl, stood on the other side, terrified. “He told his sister to be quiet and seconds later, they started kicking on the door and finally kicked the door in,” said Sheriff Mike Cazes. The two children ran to their mother’s bedroom closet.

In a panic, the ten-year-old grabbed his mother’s gun for protection. “He did what I told him to do. I never told him to get the gun, but thank God he did,” she said. Once the two suspects opened the door, threatening the kids, deputies say the boy fired a bullet into the lip of Roderick Porter. The two men were taken to the hospital by a third suspect, who is a 15-year-old juvenile. Once they got to the hospital, they were later arrested. “It’s just hard. I don’t understand why they would do that. I know they have little brothers and sisters and they wouldn’t want anyone to break into their house,” said the mother.

Each man is held on $150,000 bond. The juvenile, was taken to a local detention center. One of the suspects, Dean Favron, just finished serving almost seven years in prison for aggravated assault on a Baton Rouge police officer and two carjacking charges. He was released on June 6th.

Both men will appear before a judge next month.

http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?s=10741492

America Bordering On Communism

Investor extraordinaire Jim Rogers has harsh words for the government’s interventionist economic policy.

That policy, which he dates back to the Bush administration, verges on communism, he told Moneynews’s Dan Mangru in an interview.

“America now owns the car industry. America owns the mortgage industry. America owns a lot of the insurance industry,” Rogers said.

“Karl Marx must be somewhere standing up in his grave cheering.” And why is that? “America has become a socialist and maybe even communist nation in many ways,” Rogers said.

In Asia, by contrast, “they’re not doing that. In Asia, they’re getting rid of state and government ownership,” he said.

As for stimulus, Rogers said that President Bush approved two packages, President Obama one, and now there’s talk of a fourth.

“The first stimulus didn’t work. The second stimulus didn’t work. The third stimulus hasn’t worked,” he said.

“They’ve been doing the wrong thing for over two years. Nothing has worked. I don’t know why they think this is going to work. This is going to make things worse, too.”

Rogers said that Japan implemented a huge stimulus in the 1990s. “It didn’t work in Japan, and Japan was a creditor nation… It’s not going to work for us, either.”

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and White House economic adviser Larry Summers “used to say to the Japanese: ‘You’re doing it wrong. This approach isn’t going to work,’” Rogers said. “We’re doing exactly the same thing.”

Rogers isn’t too happy with the massive monetary easing the Fed has engineered under Chairman Ben Bernanke, either.

“Printing money has been tried many times throughout history in many countries,” he said. “It has never worked in the long term; it has never worked in the medium-term. Occasionally, it has worked in the short term.”

Still, he says, “Printing money is going to lead to serious problems down the road.”

The amounts involved are staggering, Rogers said. “They’ve already injected huge amounts of money into the system. The Fed has more than tripled its balance sheet in the past year or so.”

The federal government “has increased its own debt by four, five, six times,” he said.

“We don’t know much, because they took over Fannie Mae, AIG and the rest of them who had huge debts, which we are now responsible for,” he said.

Rogers scoffs at the conventional wisdom of diversification. “If you are a successful investor, and if you’ve made a lot of money, then maybe you’ll think about diversification,” he said. “But if you want to make money, if you want to build a fortune, you don’t diversify. You find the right horses, you back those horses, and you watch those horses very carefully.”

http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk/jim_rogers/2009/07/15/235777.html

Ted Nugent & The Second Amendment

They Carry Guns

Below is the beginning of the Cover Story in San Diego Weekly Reader. I think it is well worth the read!

It’s a beautiful day in Pacific Beach as Nate approaches the bronze pelican statue on the boardwalk. He’s slight and blond, spectacled and clad in jeans and an army-green T-shirt. He squints. The sun’s so bright overhead that he is prompted to spray a fine mist of sunblock over his fair skin to stave off a burn.

I’ve never met Nate before, but I know it’s him (a) because I’ve seen his picture and (b) due to the handgun that sits on a holster against his hip. I’m about to get up from where I’m sitting and introduce myself when someone else beats me to the punch. A scraggly-looking beachgoer, a man of indeterminable age because he is so weather-beaten, approaches.

“What’s that for, bro?” he asks, pointing in the direction of Nate’s gun, a Taurus Tracker .44 Magnum revolver.

Before Nate can answer, the man continues.

“There are surfers at the beach looking to party, and you show up with that? That’s not right. Love life! Be mellow!”

This is when I walk up and introduce myself. The beachgoer looks at me for a moment with wild blue eyes, then looks back at Nate, as Nate is beginning to explain what he will have to reiterate time and time again to concerned and/or interested parties: he is open carrying

The term “open carrying” refers to one who is in possession of a holstered, unloaded firearm on his or her person, displayed in plain view. Nate begins to explain the legalities of this to the beachgoer when Sean approaches, video camera in tow. In shades, a green shirt with double-breast pockets, green cargo pants, and a Sig Sauer P229 holstered on his hip, Sean looks not unlike a police officer.

The beachgoer does a double take.

“Another one!” he exclaims, as Sean greets us warmly.

The beachgoer, incredulous, excuses himself — with one final stare — to go “get baked.”

Soon we are joined by a third open carrier, Sam, who is Nate’s older brother. He’s a tall fellow in jeans and a T-shirt, and his gun, a Glock 17C 9mm semiautomatic pistol, sits squarely in a black holster, handle well visible against the blue of his shirt.

And now it’s my turn.

As the others deal with the beachgoer, who has returned, Nate and I take off to his car, where he removes from the depths of his trunk a silver handgun with a wooden handle. This is a Ruger Single Six .22 revolver, he tells me, as he slides it into the borrowed holster I have fixed to my belt. The gun is surprisingly heavy, nestled just below my waistline.

Back at the boardwalk, it seems that Sam and Sean are getting nowhere with the beachgoer, so we prepare to head out.

First, I am given instructions on what to do if approached by the police. I brace myself as Nate explains.

“What’s going to happen is, they’re going to want to do a 12031(e) unloaded check,” he begins. “They’ll say they want to check your weapon. You say, ‘Are you requesting or demanding?’ If they say, ‘Demanding,’ you say, ‘I don’t consent to any warrantless searches. But I’m not going to resist.’ And then you stick your hands out, they check your weapon, and it’s done.”

Sounds easy enough, I figure. I’ve got my tape recorder ready, as open carriers are urged, via websites like OpenCarry.org, to keep recording devices on them while carrying to capture any interactions with police (and civilians) they might have in case their rights are infringed upon.

“You don’t have to answer any other questions. You don’t have to give them your ID,” Sam instructs. “It’s technically an illegal search under the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment says you have protection against unreasonable search and seizure. If there’s a woman pushing a baby stroller down the boardwalk, that does not give the police the right to check if the kid is kidnapped. So if you’re in full compliance with the law, minding your own business, they technically don’t have the right to stop you to check if your weapon is unloaded or loaded.”

Open carrying, Nate explains, is legal in San Diego and the rest of California.

“[The law says] you can’t carry a loaded gun in an incorporated area,” he says. “This is an incorporated area.”

“Because San Diego is a corporation,” Sam chimes in.

“So then, [the law] says, ‘Firearms carried openly in belt holsters are not concealed within the meaning of this section,’ ” Nate continues, referencing California Penal Code Section 12025(f), which outlines the illegality of concealed carrying and what is and is not considered a concealed firearm.

“So there you have that,” Nate continues. “And then case law says that ammo next to the gun is not considered loaded. So, basically, you start out with a great idea and it gets detracted down to what we have now.”

The nuances of gun laws in California, I find, are difficult. For example, concealed carrying is not legal in San Diego (and all of California) without a permit — that much is abundantly clear — and neither is carrying a loaded gun. Having ammunition situated next to a firearm, however, does not amount to “loaded,” meaning that Nate, Sean, and Sam can carry full magazines on their belts.

The legalities involving open carry are dizzying, the restrictions numerous. One cannot open carry 1,000 feet from a school, for instance, or in the “sterile area” of an airport or in a post office or a national park (though it is legal in a national forest).

And then there’s the somewhat sticky issue of the Second Amendment.

“Instead of [the Bill of Rights] being automatic, they did amendment-by-amendment incorporation,” Sam explains. “So now practically all the amendments have been incorporated against the states except the Third, because nobody’s tried to quarter soldiers in [anyone’s] house, and the Second, because it hasn’t happened yet.” By “incorporated against the states,” Sam means that the U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled that the amendment applies to the states.

So if it’s such a hassle, why open carry?

As we walk, the trio explains.

For Sam, 39, who works from home studying “history and behavioral economics independently and try[ing] to figure out what’s going to happen next before everyone else,” it’s mostly about constitutional freedom, a cause he says he’s felt strongly about since childhood. He’s been open carrying for about seven months and heard about it through Nate and Calguns.net, a popular online meeting place for California gun owners and enthusiasts.

“I really believe, and I think that most thinking people believe, that we are slowly losing our freedoms in this country,” he says. “Everything’s become more and more restricted, and nobody seems to know what to do about it. If we would just get back to following the Constitution, America would again be the place it was intended to be, the place where everybody wanted to come. This whole open-carry movement, for me, is really about more than just guns; it’s about liberty and what it means to be a free man.”

Nate, a 22-year-old human biology student, voices another issue: the lack of CCW (concealed-carry weapon) permit issuance. A concealed-weapon license allows one to have a concealed weapon on his or her person. In California, Nate says, concealed-weapon licenses are most commonly issued to lawyers, jewelers, and traveling doctors.

“I knew I wasn’t going to get a CCW permit. I’m not important enough — I don’t make enough money, I don’t have a good enough ‘cause,’ according to California — so I said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll just start open carrying,’ ” he says. “Another reason I started doing it is that it’s a political statement. I’m not important enough for my right to self-defense, so what we do is we just take it out in the open. This is what we have to do.”

Nate has been open carrying for about a year and heard about it on Calguns.net.

“I just started doing it,” he says. “Read[ing] up, whatever I could do.”

Sean, a 32-year-old senior systems engineer, chimes in.

“I’ve always been somewhat of a gun-rights activist,” he says. “I’m really in it more for the activism more than anything else. I’ve noticed that a lot of the guys are younger, and the police seem to react differently to folks who are in their 30s than to folks that are in their 20s. So I feel it’s a good idea to keep the reactions moderated a little bit.”

Sean has been open carrying for about a year, he says, and is also an active member of Calguns.net.

Most of the response the trio has gotten while open carrying has been positive.

To read the rest of this great article, please go to http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2009/jul/15/cover/

A Legislative Alert From Gun Owners Of America

A vote to protect your right to travel out-of-state with a firearm could come to a vote next week — even as early as Monday (July 20th)!

Senators John Thune and David Vitter are the sponsors of S. 845 — a bill that will establish concealed carry reciprocity amongst the several states.

This bill is being offered as an amendment (#1618) to the Department of Defense authorization bill (H.R. 2647).

This provision will use the constitutional authority allowing Congress to enforce “full faith and credit” across the country, so that each state respects the “public acts, records, and judicial proceedings” of every other state (Article IV).

The benefit of the Thune/Vitter legislation is that — unlike other, competing measures — it would protect the right of any U.S. citizen to carry out of state (regardless of whether he possesses a permit), as long as he is authorized to carry in his home state. This is important because of states like Vermont and Alaska, where residents can carry concealed without prior approval or permission from the state… in other words, without a permit!

Please urge your Senators to vote yes on the Thune/Vitter concealed carry reciprocity amendment and no on any modifying amendments.

Below you will find the information you need to contact the leaders of Your America:

To find your Senator, click here.
Or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
Email: senator_reid@reid.senate.gov
Phone: 202-224-3542