Free Republic

Life-and-death decisions for ourselves and our loved ones will be left to the whims of a swarm of remote, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. But this isn’t the first time such a thing has happened: "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of FATIGUING THEM INTO COMPLIANCE with his measures. "He has erected a MULTITUDE OF NEW OFFICES, and sent hither SWARMS OF OFFICERS TO HARASS OUR PEOPLE and eat out their substance." --Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. [Emphasis added.] We used to know what...

Bookies are making bets on whether some version of ObamaCare will pass this year, but with five bills floating around, there is no betting on what it will look like. The threat of a "public option" has generated the hottest protest with voters understanding that the unfair competition of a government plan will quickly destroy the private health insurance system. By contrast some conservatives have expressed support for Senate Finance Committee proposal requiring that everyone must purchase insurance. After all, they reason, isn't it just a matter of fairness to expect everyone to bear responsibility for their own care? In...

Morton Sloan feels besieged. Over the last several years, the Bronx-based entrepreneur has watched the property taxes on the ten Morton Williams supermarkets he runs in the city swell by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Increasingly aggressive city inspectors now linger in those stores for hours, writing costly citations for items that clerks accidentally mislabel. Some of Sloan’s suppliers say they’ll no longer deliver to New York City because of the Department of Transportation’s frequent parking-ticket blitzes. It gets worse: a new Bloomberg-administration program that encourages fruit and vegetable vendors to set up on street corners has left him scrambling...

The following thumbnails describe a very small sampling of the locust horde of Leftist bureaucrats President Barack Hussein Obama has deliberately chosen to help him grasp the helm of America's ship of state, strip it from the American people, and steer it hard to port. The Obama Administration is plainly subverting democracy in America, wildly careening our previous 230-year history of democracy so dangerously Leftward that after a mere nine months we are in terrible danger of sinking.

Two cases of “public option” administrators rejecting patient requests for lifesaving or life-extending drugs (and instead offering to fund those patients’ assisted suicides) reached the mainstream media in the last two weeks. This has caused critics of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul proposal to look to Oregon for clues about what a national health system would bring. The picture is not pretty. Oregon, the only state to allow assisted suicide (via the 1997 “Death With Dignity Law”), has used its public health care “option” as a pretext for enacting an official policy of trading lives that bureaucrats determine to...

Critic: Officials in capital city still not getting 2nd The District of Columbia, where government restrictions prompted the landmark Heller decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court found individuals have a right to be armed, still doesn't understand the Second Amendment, according to a new lawsuit.

ARE the "savings" promised for health-care reform wise ones? Some cost-savers just aren't worth it: Skipping a mammogram when you have a family history of breast cancer is a bad idea. Yet there are lots of bad ideas on the table in the health-reform debate. Patients are "going to have to give up paying for things that don't make them healthier," President Obama announced at his last prime-time press conference. "If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half...

RUDD should invest in a voucher scheme instead of taking over hospitals. IT'S a quarter of a century since Medicare was established, but no one is celebrating. No wonder, considering the critical condition of the public hospital system throughout Australia. Instead we have a 300-page reform blueprint from the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. At least the report has identified the main problem. The reality is that Australia's dangerously overcrowded public hospitals don't have enough beds to provide a safe and timely standard of care even for emergency patients. Unfortunately, the commission has strongly supported a range of non-solutions....

”Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another.” The only scarce resource in this country is common sense. If ANYONE NEEDS to see a doctor they go to the doctor. Yes, they will have to pay for that service just like they pay for any other service in America. Why pick on the health care industry? Marriages end in 50% divorce, why not say, good marriages are scarce, and have the government pick and choose your mate? Why not? If the gov’t can decide your health care, why can’t they also...

Now that corporate conference travel has fallen off a cliff, federal bureaucrats are stepping into the vacuum, providing customers for a luxury hotel in Phoenix, to help each other feel better. ABC News' Political Blotter reports: Claiming they needed to learn how to reduce stress because of a growing number of death threats being made against them, nearly 700 executives from the Social Security Administration (SSA) gathered for a lavish three-day conference in Phoenix, AZ last week, costing taxpayers about $700,000. "We received threats against our employees by people who are in the American public," said SSA Regional Commissioner for...

"There's a clear distinction between the two" Peter Spencer SSA Spokesperson explained. "They (the AIG Corporation) received specific bailout funds, we did not..." Posted by Tina Our government and citizenry experienced a major meltdown when bailed out AIG spent $440,000. in the midst of the financial mess sending employees on lavish exotic resort get aways. Now in the midst of our failing and flailing economic troubles, the SSA is indulging in a perk at the Biltmore in Arizona for new employees that smacks of reckless disregard for America's recovery and health, not to mention irresponsible fiduciary oversight...a smack in the...

The cost of hiring and retaining a federal bureaucrat may be going up for taxpayers.This week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 626, the "Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act." This bill would give federal employees up to four weeks of paid (that is, by taxpayers) parental leave for the birth or adoption of a child.How generous of Congress with our money.What this bill would do (and it has yet to pass the Senate) is to increase the cost of hiring a federal bureaucrat.  Based on my calculations from May, it costs between $2 million and $11 million to...

Governor Sarah Palin was on hand to help raise money for a museum honoring William Seward, the 19th secretary of state who purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867....“Alaskans get tired of hearing that Washington bureaucrats know what’s best for us so we push and we fight and we challenge decisions made inside the beltway when they’re not in our country’s best interest,” she said. “And we know decisions being made lately are not in our country’s best interest.”

Ca proposition insults teachers and firefighters. If you listen to the adds for prop 1A and 1B, they say that because of the budget problems teachers and firefighters will looser their jobs. So I guess janitors and assistant to the assailant, to the assistant, to the assistant bureaucrats are more important. If this is the case then maybe the teachers and firefighters are redundant and need to be cut.

Much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I must report the shocking facts. Medical care is medical care. Nothing more and nothing less. This may not seem like a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge, but it completely contradicts what is being said by many who are urging universal health care because so many Americans lack health insurance. Insurance is not medical care. Indeed, health care is not the same as medical care. Countries with universal health care do not have more or better medical care. The bottom line is medical care - but the rhetoric...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - If it seems like a nightmare now, it started with a dream come true. Anna Viviano got into one of the best schools in the country, and as an ROTC recruit, she didn't have to pay a penny. "I talked to a couple recruiters and they were just like you can go to Vanderbilt for free," she recalled. And for two and a-half years, Viviano thrived -- second in her ROTC class and a near-perfect GPA. "I thought everything was going swimmingly -- was right on track to do what I wanted," she said. Then came...

A new aristocracy walks among us. The formerly enormous middle class that dominated the American social structure for most of a century is crumbling before our eyes, as retirement accounts and home equity evaporate, while health care costs continue to grow inexorably by nearly 10 percent a year. In the face of rising unemployment and tumbling personal net worth, life has gotten much riskier for a vast swath of the American populace. However, the new aristocrats, government employees both currently employed and retired, are guaranteed generous pensions that are insulated from both retirement and stock market fluctuations. They occupy a...

The Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration had to wait more than a year to refurbish aging nuclear warheads � partly because they had forgotten how to make a crucial component, a government report states. Regarding a classified material codenamed "Fogbank," a Government Accountability Office report released this month states that "NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency." So the effort to refurbish...

Homeland Insanity The Blue Jackets travel party landed safely at 4:06 a.m. Monday. Odd timing, as that's roughly the time when the computer system used by U.S. Customs agents at Port Columbus crashed. What followed in the next hour and 20 minutes was a maddening sequence of government red tape, bureaucratic blather and remarkable incompetency. The Blue Jackets travel party numbers roughly 50, when you consider the players, coaching staff, training staff, equipment guys, traveling secretaries and media. As the group made it off the plane and wound its way toward an empty Customs area, the long trip home came...

State workers' pay can be cut to the federal minimum wage when lawmakers miss California's annual budget deadline, a Sacramento Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled. Assuming the ruling stands, it's a win for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a fight that started last summer when Controller John Chiang refused to cut paychecks that paid about 200,000 hourly state workers $6.55 per hour, the federal minimum. Exempt or salaried employees would get $455 a week. "(The tentative decision) is encouraging, and it's important so that the state has the ability to control spending in tough economic times," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron...

The strategic battle for the future economic structure of the United States and the world for that matter is being played out in the media each day in a form that suggests the only more obvious sign would be a billboard that says: "Pay attention: this is how this turns out". The only people that are missing the signs ahead are the ones who are looking at the old map in their lap or at their word processor. Here's how I see this little class war playing out over the next few years. Barack and the Bureaucrats are going to...

About 15 years ago, Don and Roxanne Carpenter went into business after buying what they said wasn't much more than a shack at Taylor and Morris streets. They installed ice cream machines, pop machines and cooking equipment and set up shop as the Dog-Out, a walk-up hot dog stand. To be honest, it wouldn't strike people as the best place to open a business. It's a little out of the way. But there were 500 people living within walking distance, Don Carpenter says, and several large factories were nearby, and business flourished. Word of mouth brought customers to the little...

In Washington this week, President-elect Obama called on Congress to create 3 million jobs over the next two years – “more than 80 percent of them in the private sector.” Republicans on Capitol Hill did a little quick math: That means 20 percent, or some 600,000 new jobs, will be in the public sector. That would boost the ranks of federal employees by a third, they said, none too pleased about the prospect of a “big government” revival. “The federal government is bloated, inefficient, and spends too much of your hard-earned money,” said Rep. Steve King (R) of Iowa, in...

WASHINGTON: Even before taking office, Hillary Clinton is seeking to build a more powerful State Department, with a bigger budget, high-profile special envoys to trouble spots and an expanded role in dealing with global economic issues at a time of crisis. Hillary is recruiting Jacob Lew, the budget director under president Bill Clinton, as one of two deputies, according to people close to the Obama transition team. Lew’s focus, they said, will be on increasing the share of financing that goes to the diplomatic corps. He and James Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, are to...

Classics scholars have accused councils of 'ethnic cleansing' after they banned staff from using Latin words. The local authorities claim the terms are elitist and discriminatory, and have ordered employees to use often-wordier alternatives in documents or when speaking to the public. Bournemouth Council, which has the Latin motto Pulchritudo et Salubritas - beauty and health - has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use......

At a closed-door meeting late last month in Turin, Italy, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon blasted his top officials, accusing them of crippling the world body through a combination of self-interest, petty squabbling and egoism. "We all know the U.N. is a huge bureaucracy," Ban told the assembled senior officials. "Coming here, 20 months ago, that prospect did not bother me. … "Then I arrived in New York. There is bureaucracy, I discovered — and then there is the U.N." ..."We waste incredible amounts of time on largely meaningless matters."

Unfair Demands On Boy Scouts http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=33a46ad1-5d62-4201-98b5-dd7602900835 By The Day Published on 7/29/2008 We are at a loss to understand why the state Department of Transportation wants to give East Lyme Boy Scout troops such a hard time over doing a good deed. For 25 years on Labor Day weekend the Scouts have served coffee and doughnuts around the clock to weary drivers at the weigh stations on Interstate 95 in Waterford. Drivers get a needed break. The Scouts take pride in providing a service. Donations collected help the Boy Scouts and other local groups. Who could object? Unfortunately, the bureaucrats...

July 04, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Ground Zero of National ParalysisRebuild the Towers, privately. By Deroy Murdock In olden days, Americans needed just 13 and a half months to erect the Empire State Building, four and a half years to build Hoover Dam, and six years, four months to install the Transcontinental Railroad. And yet this Independence Day, six years, nine months, and three weeks have elapsed since September 11, and Ground Zero remains an 80-foot-deep international embarrassment for the United States. The government functionaries who fathered this fiasco should yield immediately and assign private developer Larry Silverstein to arrange...

An official reaction to FEMA's no-ice policy came from U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor who referred to FEMA officials as a "bunch of buttheads." Last week, officials were told that FEMA had decided to only supply ice for use in medical emergencies and life-saving reasons. It's left local officials scrambling to figure out ways to make it available for the general public. During a meeting with Hancock County Board of Supervisors this morning Taylor said he intends to write to FEMA to register his objections to the new policy. He also urged Hancock County supervisors, as well as the city councils...

It has surfaced that the US State Department can't account for up to about 1,000 laptops, perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. The State Department's Inspector General has been conducting an equipment audit for three months. Only the first stage, an inventory, has been completed. Internal auditors found that the department lost track of US$30 million worth of computer equipment, "the vast majority of which... perhaps as much as 99 percent," were laptops, according to one official. Another official calculated that the average State Department laptop costs US$3,000 and figured that meant...

In a stealthy flurry of legal mumbo-jumbo, the Boulder County Commissioners have launched a proposal that would ban any April Fools jokes targeted at the “general Boulder County public,” including residents, visitors and employees within county limits. “If there was a way, we’d ban all statewide pranks, but we don’t have that authority,” Commissioner Will Tour said. “We had to settle for county-wide bans, but that should put a stop to them.” When pressed, Tour said that “them” referred to a certain monthly newspaper that had been a thorn in the commission’s side since it began concocting stories, but that...

There is an imbalance between supply and demand in energy, and some California bureaucrats are standing around wondering what to do about it.One says: “Run commercials asking people to conserve!” This is met with general approval.Another says: “Make homeowners install thermostats that we bureaucrats can remotely control!” More general approval.A third says: “Raise . . . prices?”A roomful of angry people turns on him. “Raise prices — as a way of balancing supply and demand?!?!?! What an idiot!”That’s California in a nutshell. It appears that proposal number two — letting bureaucrats control homeowners’ thermostats — is indeed a potential reality....

When did we lose our right to be lazy, unhealthy, and politically incorrect? Move over Big Brother! An insidious new group has inserted itself into American politics. They are the nannies--not the stroller-pushing set--but an invasive band of do-gooders who are subtly and steadily stripping us of our liberties, robbing us of the inalienable right to make our own decisions, and turning America into a nation of children. As you read this, countless busybodies across the nation are rolling up their sleeves to do the work of straightening out your life. Certain Massachusetts towns have banned school-yard tag. San Francisco...

Bucharest and Brussels, 16 Nov. (AKI) - Romania, one two countries accused by Europe's top human rights watchdog of hosting secret CIA jails used to interrogate Islamist terrorism suspects, says it has written to the European Union executive denying the charges. The letter to the European Commission is a response to a request from EU justice and security commissioner Franco Frattini asking Romania and Poland - the other country implicated by the Council of Europe - for an explanation. A Romanian spokeswoman in Brussels, Doris Mircea, said that a committee of inquiry set up by the government concluded that the...

High winds and bureaucratic wrangling kept much needed firefighting aircraft on the ground this week, but whom to blame seemed murkier Thursday than the skies above Southern California. Some legislators accused federal fire officials and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of making a slow-footed response followed by fast dancing and photo ops. Schwarzenegger called the criticism "a bunch of nonsense." But one federal legislator was poised to call for congressional hearings. "We'll wait until the smoke clears until I start raising hell," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach. "We need to put people under oath to find out whether a lack of...

Vincent and Pauline Matherick are devoted foster parents and have cared for almost 30 children throughout the years. Now the British government is taking away their current foster son because the Mathericks refuse to sign new sexual equality regulations. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=489285&in_page_id=1770 The couple does not want to sign it because it goes against their Christian faith. The British government feels that the boy will better taken care of by a government hostel than staying with the Mathericks ... simply because they refuse to teach their child about homosexuality. Earlier in the year, the County Council's social services department asked the Mathericks...

The television reporters covering the fires have been effusive about the capacities of the converted DC-10 airliner that has been dropping fire retardant on the fires in the vicinity of Lake Arrowhead, and the enthusiasm is warranted. Sometimes called the Tanker 910, and sometimes the 10 Tanker Air Carrier, the plane can carry 12,000 gallons of fire retardant or water in tanks attached under its belly. That's 10 times as much liquid as the other available California air tankers, and four times the capacity of the largest-available tankers operated by the federal government. It can create a fire line three-quarters...

In a surprising anti-consumer decision, the Connecticut Department of Public Utility (CDPU) rejected AT&T’s application to expand its U-verse IPTV service further across Connecticut. This is surprising because AT&T was granted a statewide video franchise, but the CDPU shockingly classified IPTV as a cable offering. By forcing IPTV to conform to 1970’s era regulatory standards designed for cable monopolies, the CDPU and state attorney general have sided against competition and the free market. Connecticut is the only state to consider IPTV a cable system, and therefore it is not covered under video franchise law. Unfortunately for Connecticut’s consumers, this decision...

Two cities in California are now considering unprecedented legislation that would ban smoking inside apartments and condos. We're talking private property and the right to legislate what goes on behind closed doors, in your own, private home. The City of Belmont, CA won initial approval last week to ban smoking in your home, if you live in an apartment or condo. The measure could trigger fines and actual eviction. The same measure is being considered in the city of Calabasas. In Bangor, Maine, a city councilman, oops, coulcilperson, Patricia Blanchette has submitted preliminary legislation to make Maine one of the...

...[The building of the Trans-Texas Corridor] is all too sinister for Jerome Corsi, the Vietnam War veteran who helped lead the Swift Boat charge against John Kerry. Corsi has knitted disparate strands of each of these separate road projects to help convince fellow xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Lou Dobbs and the John Birch Society that the corridor is the first leg of a secret federal project called the NAFTA Superhighway, a four-football-field wide monstrosity that would run from Mexico's Yucatan to Canada's Yukon... Yet even Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican candidate for president, has fallen...

Bureaucrats' Union Bosses Percentage of Unionized Government Employees Click on a state to view the full state profile. Government employees are more than four times likelier to be unionized than their private-sector counterparts, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Taxpayer-funded jobs are the only sector of the economy where unions have consistently grown for several years. And taxpayers are left with the check, rung up by government employee union officials and the politicians all too eager to appease them. * Some basic facts: The median public employee netted $39,416 in 2005, compared with $32,500 for the typical private-sector employee....

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued a San Jose semiconductor company today on charges that it racially harassed an African American assembly technician and then laid him off him when he complained. Novellus Systems Inc. allowed a Vietnamese American employee to play and rap aloud to music lyrics that included anti-black epithets, the federal agency said. The assembly technician, Michael Cooke, complained repeatedly to his superiors, but the co-worker continued to sing along to the music and use racial slurs, the agency said. "That kind of language pains me," Cooke said. "The N-word is not something I take lightly....

It's now leaking out that there was more going on than met the eye at the Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit in Montebello, Canada, in August. The three amigos - President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon - finalized and released the "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza." The "Plan" - that's what they call it, with a capital P - is to use the excuse of a major flu epidemic to shift powers from U.S. legislatures to unelected, unaccountable "North American" bureaucrats. This idea was launched on Sept. 14, 2005,...

The Census Bureau wants immigration agents to suspend enforcement raids during the 2010 census so the government can better count illegal immigrants. Raids during the population count would make an already distrustful group even less likely to cooperate with government workers who are supposed to include them, the Census Bureau's second-ranking official said in an Associated Press interview. Deputy Director Preston Jay Waite said immigration enforcement officials did not conduct raids for several months before and after the 2000 census. But today's political climate is even more volatile on the issue of illegal immigration. Enforcement agents "have a job to...

At the latest round of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee meetings, members of the committee criticized member nations’ anti-abortion laws, saying that undue restriction on abortions is “a crime against humanity.” Committee member Heisoo Shin said that it was necessary for governments to “create a momentum, a social force that stops the crime and allows a woman to avoid the risk of an illegal and possibly unsafe abortion.” CEDAW member Silvia Pimentel, faculty member at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, said, “Women have their reasons to seek...

Despite objections from restaurant owners and food-industry officials, the King County Board of Health on Thursday banned artificial trans fat and required nutrition labeling for menu items in chain restaurants. With the vote, King County joins a handful of jurisdictions in the country to ban artificial trans fats in restaurant meals and becomes only the second to require nutrition labeling on menus. While most restaurant owners and their supporters testified against the trans-fat ban -- most said they're already getting rid of trans fats but they simply hate mandates -- they saved their harshest words for the nutrition-labeling requirement. Chris...

In an effort to test the ability of terrorist groups to obtain nuclear material, Congressional investigators set up a sting operation. A fake company named “Death to America, Inc.” and listing Al Kyda as its president was able to obtain a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) authorizing the firm to buy enough radioactive material to build a so-called "dirty bomb." Apparently, nobody at the NRC checked whether the company was legitimate and an NRC official even helped “Mr. Kyda” fill out the application form. The NRC acknowledged that it “may have erred” in granting a license to the...

EDITORIAL Ignore city's spin: Flag flap a slap at vets Friday, June 29, 2007 2:24 AM EDT The heart and soul of the Marietta July Fourth Parade each year are the many military veterans who take part, some of them in their old uniforms - not the hordes of politicians who use the event as an excuse to get "face time" in front of potential voters. The veterans and veterans groups elicit by far the loudest ovations from the crowds that line the parade route, louder than the cheers for any politician or other participant. And that's as it should...

(Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2681 commander) Dean and other veterans questioned the policy, arguing that they had distributed the 3-by-5-inch U.S. flags from their float to children and other people on the sidewalks for the past several years, without incident. After his morning meeting with Flynn and a second meeting in the afternoon regarding the language of the agreement, Dean said he was satisfied with the compromise and said Flynn was "very cordial." Under the agreement, veterans will be allowed to walk-up to spectators and hand them flags 10 to 15 minutes before the parade begins,... [snip] "Some of...

The globalists are making a new attempt to circumvent and weaken a right explicitly recognized in the U.S. Constitution: Americans' exclusive ownership of their own inventions. Fortunately, Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., have exposed this mischief and called on Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to slow down and discuss the proposed legislation before making costly mistakes. As we've learned with "Comprehensive Immigration Reform," we should all be on guard any time politicians patronize us with pompous talk about "reform." The so-called Patent...