Thursday, March 11 – Jim Hanson, Ken Timmerman, Pete Hoekstra

The War of Ideas continues.  Frank starts the show by demonstrating the serious defects of Obamacare, its impact on America’s fiscal security, and how it may make the health care system worse instead of better.  Blackfive’s Jim Hanson updates Frank on the recent Parliamentary elections in Iraq and what they mean for you.  Ken Timmerman discusses how the Iranian regime has been using INTERPOL for the purpose of harassing its political opponents.  Congressman Pete Hoesktra (R-MI) wraps up the  show with news of Jihad Jane.

MONOLOGUE – March 11, 2010

First, I’m going to deviate a little bit from the usual topic of this program and candidly from my area of expertise; I want to talk to you about this healthcare bill. Now, I’m a consumer of healthcare like probably you and everybody you know. I want it to be good; I want it to be affordable; I want it to be something that will save my life and be there for me, particularly in an emergency. And because, I confess, I don’t know very much about how all that gets done, and I certainly don’t have any solutions to the problems that are driving up the costs and are making it unavailable and inaccessible to some people. But what I do know is this – the old adage ‘you want it bad, you gonna get it bad’ applies big time in this area.

It is a sixth of our economy that President Obama and the majority in the Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are pursuing in a way that is not only obviously indifferent to the real and growing concerns the American people have about what they’re doing, but it seems, at least to this layperson, on a whole lot of scores as though it is going to make things worse.

Now, I know there are certain benefits that are putatively going to be available that will make this insurance program more portable and more accessible and lower costs, or at least so we’re told, and yet I’ve just got to believe that if all that were true, if all that were going for it, there wouldn’t have to be this kind of pell-mell rush to get it done on the one hand, and the kind of, well, Chicago mafia-style effort to do it in the face of so much opposition, not just of Republicans in Congress, but of, again, you and me.

So, I’m coming at this from the point of view of, yes, an interested party with a need for healthcare like everybody else, but also just as a person who really believes in good governance. I admire the Framers and their vision of a constitutional government in which we were represented by people elected by us, and they were charged with a checks and balance kind of arrangement, making thoughtful, deliberate, transparent, accountable decisions on our behalf.

And I just have to say that from what I’ve seen of this mess very few of those adjectives apply; there are no checks and balances, but that obviously now with Scott Brown’s arrival in the Senate they’ve said, “Oh, never mind we’re not going to follow that filibuster rule anymore.” And this game that’s now being played that they’re going to jam through the Senate version which House Democrats, at least some number of them, clearly hate, betting on the come that the Senate will agree to changes that Senators clearly hate, after the votes are in on the House Bill. I mean come on – who do they think they’re kidding?

And what I’m really fearful of, and I suspect that if you are like me you are to, is that what is going to come out of this is going to be a lot worse than what we have now. It can be made worse; it can be made worse most especially by undo government, intervention, control, bureaucracy, larding the thing up. That’s where we’re headed, I’m fearful, unless members of the House Democratic Caucus hear from all of us that we really don’t want this bad, and if they need more time to make sure that it isn’t that we want them to take that time, get it right, that if it needs a do-over do it over, but don’t do it just because, I don’t know, the President need to go to Indonesia. That’s a pretty good reason for jamming this through the Congress, don’t you think?

Well I don’t and I’m sure you don’t either so let’s all resolve to, please, let your elected representative, especially if they’re one of the members of the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, know that you really want this done thoughtfully, carefully, accountably, transparently and most especially not it in haste. Not doing it via the Chicago mafia rules. That’s my view. I hope it’s yours; let me know.