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Saturday, November 2, 2024 - 12:22 PM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

A reporter asked Majority Leader Harry Reid how he could justify exempting Nebraska from Medicaid payments forever, in exchange for Sen. Ben Nelson's vote. His reply:

There's a hundred senators here. And I don't know if there's a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them. And if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them. That's what this legislation is all about. (Harry Reid, Dec. 21, 2009, Democratic press conference after cloture vote on health-care bill)

Apparently, Sen. Reid sees the legislative process as an activity through which individual senators vie for taxpayer dollars to obtain results that are beneficial to them. If individual senators don't get something out of specific legislation, then it "doesn't speak well of them."

As the supreme benefit broker, behind closed doors, Sen. Reid dished out abundant benefits to selected members of the Senate as a reward for their vote on the health-care bill.

This behavior is nothing short of bribery – with taxpayer dollars. Reid is not only proud of his skullduggery, but he suggests that senators who do not poke their hands into the public honey pot aren't doing their job.

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This Marxist majority has made a travesty of our government: The U.S. Senate should be the world's highest platform of political debate, but Harry Reid has transformed it into a cesspool of political payoffs. Democrats everywhere should be embarrassed. Non-Democrats everywhere should be determined to rid the nation of this corruption.

The elections in 2010 will reveal whether the United States has succumbed to the immoral, unethical, "end-justifies-the-means" corruption practiced by this administration and congressional majority, or whether the people will rise up and demand a return to the limited federal government and free market the Constitution requires.

This is the choice: America as a land of individual freedom, free markets and unlimited opportunity for personal achievement, or America is the land where individuals are forced to buy what government dictates and surrender their prosperity to the government in taxes to subsidize the failure of others.

When people were free to pursue their own self-interest, and the market was free to provide what the people wanted, the nation flourished. In a free market, failures are corrections and a learning experience on the road to getting it right. In a managed market, failures provide an opportunity for government to expand its control and corruption.

Government regulations and arbitrary taxes are unnatural weights on the market. As these weights continually increase, the rate of market growth continually decreases. For half a century, government has been piling regulation on top of taxation, virtually strangling a formerly robust free market. Now that the economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, government ignores the real cause, blames greedy capitalists and is moving rapidly to "fix" the problem by taking absolute control over the economy.

A government-managed economy means a government-controlled society.

Obama and his Marxist majority's health-care bill is a major step toward government confiscation of more than 16 percent of the economy and control over the people who consume and deliver health-care services.

Obama and his Marxist majority are poised to effectively confiscate the energy industry and take control over the people who consume and deliver energy products.

Legislation is also moving through Congress to give government ultimate control over the use of land and water. Other legislation creates a new bureaucracy with the power to shut down private businesses that the government says may create a threat to the economy.

Obama and his Marxist majority are transforming America into a Marxist nation – just as he promised to do. It is significant to note that this transformation is taking place over the unanimous objection of Republicans.

This transformation must be stopped – and reversed. The only way to make this happen is to change the majority in Washington. Therefore, every non-Marxist freedom lover who believes that the U.S. Constitution created the best government yet devised is duty-bound to do everything possible during the next 10 months to unseat the current majority in Washington and replace them with candidates who honor and pledge to support and defend the U. S. Constitution.

How do you separate those who will from those who only say they will defend the Constitution? Ask every Congressional candidate if they will co-sponsor, endorse, and vote for the Enumerated Powers Act, which requires the citation of constitutional authority for all proposed legislation. Any candidate who refuses to make this commitment should be rejected.

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Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization and chairman of  Sovereignty International.