Trickle Up Poverty (23 page)
Russia had Stalin.
Italy had Mussolini.
America had Roosevelt.
“But Mike,” you may say, “FDR wasn’t a fascist. He was a good guy.”
I’m not suggesting Roosevelt was an outright fascist. I’m saying he was dabbling in the popular thought of the day; namely, that the government knows better than private business and the private sector about what’s best for the people. If the prices are too high or too low, the government will fix it. If the people don’t save enough for retirement, the government will force them to save à la Social Security, one of FDR’s pet programs. What’s more, if the sheeple don’t go along with the plan, they end up with a stiff fine—which isn’t hyperbole.
Remember, that’s in Obama’s health-scare bill.
That said, just as this isn’t the first time Americans have been shackled with unfair, unconstitutional legislation, history demonstrates a legal way to fight back—and win. How? Let me set the stage by taking you back to the Great Depression when, in 1934, unemployment had reached 23 percent. Virtually one-in-four Americans were without work. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted from its high point of 381 in 1929 to just 93 points. Against that backdrop, FDR went into a quasi-socialist overdrive by over regulating banks, railroads, farming, and private industries.
The people accepted it because they were desperate.
The people lost sight of the freedoms they’d give up in the exchange.
Using the heavy hand of government intervention—think Lenin, think Stalin—FDR instituted the National Recovery Administration (NRA). His goal? Under the guise of fairrrrrrness, FDR mandated a number of regulations or “codes of fair competition” in order to minimize what he thought were destructive competition practices. In reality, FDR was “systematically vilifying businessmen whose leadership had brought goods to their customers, jobs to their workers, and profits to their shareholders.”94 Why am I rehashing this history?
Because, as you’ll see in a moment, buried in the dusty pages of history lies the tool I believe Americans can use against the ObamaCare juggernaut. Yes, a legal maneuver has been used successfully when one of the three branches of government overstepped its boundaries.
Here’s the rest of the story.
It’s the case of the Schecter Poultry Company in New York City, founded by four Jewish brothers—the Schecter Brothers. These first generation immigrants migrated to America to open two kosher poultry slaughterhouses. In Yiddish, their last name means “ritual butcher” and the value of their service was based upon the fact that they butchered chickens to conform to Jewish dietary law. In order to maintain a kosher operation, the Schecter Brothers had to sort out and remove sickly or dangerously unhealthy chickens. That flew in the face of the new regulations handed down by FDR’s totalitarian mandate.
In short, the government said customers had to buy either an entire coop of chickens or half a coop of chickens—but they were forbidden to pick out particular birds in the transaction. In other words, the new law forced the Schecter Brothers to sell unhealthy chickens to people who didn’t want to buy them. Somehow operating a “kosher” business that way made sense in the upside-down world of liberalism. But from the Schecter Brother’s viewpoint, this was nothing short of a violation of their religious freedom.
That meant nothing to the government, which cracked down on the Schecter Brothers saying they couldn’t sell chickens their way. They had to sell them the government way—or go to jail. The brothers failed to comply. Having run afoul of the Live Poultry Code of the NRA, they were arrested and tried in court where they went head-to-head with the government lawyers.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that these were uneducated men and had no legal training. While they did have legal representation, they didn’t have deep pockets and couldn’t hire some big-shot lawyer from a top law firm to represent them. In fact, their command of English was broken and “their intonation and syntax were the sort we today associate with a stand-up comic from the Catskills.”95 In the end, the court found them guilty as charged, fined them a years’ wage, and then sent them to prison. But the story doesn’t end there.
The Schecter Brothers appealed their case, which ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Against all odds, in Schecter Poultry Corp v. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the Schecter Brothers. The Supremes ruled that FDR’s program was unconstitutional on several levels. Of primary concern was the way his NRA program sought to regulate intrastate commerce. Constitutionally speaking, intrastate law is governed by the states and not the feds.
Furthermore, the court said that FDR’s regulations were an usurpation of congressional power. After the decision was handed down, Justice Louis Brandeis told a lawyer representing FDR’s New Deal:
This is the end of this business of centralization, and I want you to go back and tell the President that we’re not going to let this government centralize everything. It’s come to an end.96
Back then we had justices who could speak plain English and tell the plain truth. Imagine one of our Supremes drawing a line in the sand against this president in such a direct manner. This brings us to how Obama’s Frankenstein healthcare bill can be repealed. After all, 58 percent of Americans want to see it repealed according to a Rasmussen poll taken three short weeks after ObamaCare passed.97
Keep in mind this is something you can do rather than wait around for the checked-pants Republicans to act. They’ve already signaled they won’t go to the mat to repeal the unpopular measure. They’re cowering before the ever-arrogant President Obama who welcomed that fight: “My attitude is, go for it. If these congressmen in Washington want to come here in Iowa and tell small-business owners that they plan to take away their tax credits and essentially raise their taxes, be my guest.”98
Let’s set aside that Obama’s bill doesn’t do small business any favors, as I’ve already documented. The strategy to undo this mess lies within the pages of the bill Congress passed. Did you know that Baby Dictator Obama’s healthcare bill makes religious exceptions in several instances?
That’s right. Buried within this 2,000+ page monstrosity is the Achilles’ heel that can be used to fight back. Read it for yourself:
Exemptions From Individual Responsibility Requirements
In the case of an individual who is seeking an exemption certificate under section 1311(d)(4)(H) from any requirement or penalty imposed by section 5000A, the following information:
(A) In the case of an individual seeking exemption based on the individual’s status as a member of an exempt religious sect or division, as a member of a health care sharing ministry, as an Indian, or as an individual eligible for a hardship exemption, such information as the Secretary shall prescribe [emphasis added].99
The three groups mentioned are “a member of exempt religious sect” of which the Amish or practitioners of Islam who view insurance as a form of gambling might be included, Indians, and members of a “health care sharing ministry”—which are non-profit, non-insurance, and typically faith-based organizations such as Samaritan Ministries International or MediShare whose members pool their funds and share in one another’s medical expenses.
If you’re a religious person—whether you’re a member of the Christian Science Church, the Old Order Mennonites, or a member of another religion that does not believe in using modern medicine who, instead, believes in faith healing—you can follow the Schecter brothers. You can get yourself a top-flight lawyer and sue Obama once you are forced to buy a healthcare plan. It might take a few years to fight your way through the legal system, but, as we challenge this bill in court, the time will come when this entire centralized, socialist healthcare plan will tumble down around Obama’s clay feet. Yes, he will be brought to his knees and exposed for being the dictator that he is.
What’s more, the fact that “religious conscience” exemptions exist for some religious groups but not all could run contrary to the “equal protection clause” in the Constitution. Professor and lawyer Marci Hamilton of Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law says, “If the government can tolerate a religious exemption, then it must do so evenhandedly among religious believers with the same beliefs. This is sheer favoritism for a certain class of religions, or even for one religion.”100
Just as FDR’s regulations turned out to be unfair to the Schecter Brothers, the Supreme Court found them to be an unconstitutional breach of power. Do you understand that? That’s exactly what Obama’s health insurance scam is going to turn out to be for you and me. What we’re seeing is a repeat of history. Once again, the government has overreached. Nationalizing health care will be destructive to smaller insurance agencies.
It will be destructive to independent doctors.
It will be destructive to small hospitals.
Mark my words, it will destroy the entire medical infrastructure of the United States of America. Irrespective of whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, when the government forces one man to pay for another man’s illnesses or to pay for another man’s problems such as lack of medical coverage, what’s that called? Obama smiles and calls it spreading the wealth around. I call that robbery. And I’m not smiling.
Obama is a liberty stealer.
Obama is a business killer.
Obama is a spreader of trickle up poverty.
If this man can get away with force-feeding us socialized medicine when the majority of American people do not want it, what’s to stop him from doing anything else he may damn well please? Don’t think for one minute that socialized medicine will be the last stop on the train bound for perdition. When the stooges in Washington follow the marching orders from Obama like Lemmings, and when they continue taking us down the road of socialism in the days ahead, don’t think this benign joyride will end well. It is aimed at circumventing the Bill of Rights. It is aimed at robbing your freedoms.
It is aimed at destroying the middle class. Only the American people can stop him.
I just showed you how. Use the religious freedom exemption. If four immigrant butchers could stop FDR, you might stop BO.
The Late Great Climate Scam
This is not fiction. It is science.
—President Barack Obama, Copenhagen Climate Summit 20091
If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.
—Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, Germany 19332
My mother told me never to talk about politics or religion or else I’d get into too many arguments. Since I now talk mainly about politics and religion, I thought I would add a third rail to her admonition—the weather. From the beginning of humankind, people have speculated about the weather. They’ve prayed to weather gods, made sacrifices for the rains to come so there would be bountiful crops. The Bible contains numerous references to the weather. Yet now, in this generation, we have seen complete madness overtake this ancient subject.
Al Gore, the huckster who I have not so affectionately called “Al Goreleoni”—head of the Goreleoni crime family—for years on my radio program, is the high priest of the voodoo-science called “Global Warming,” which, owing to the cooling trend of the past decade, has been renamed “Climate Change.” Goreleoni’s disciples had to revise the name given the fact that the winter of 2009-2010 produced snowfall in every state in the union, including the mountaintops in Hawaii.3
And yet, as some in the press have reported, Al could “become the world’s first carbon billionaire”4 from this global warming panic, even though global warming has now been proven to be built upon a foundation of false, fabricated, and pseudo-science. They continue to promote this fraud despite all the contrary evidence, namely, that some of the “authoritative science” used to support global warming was nothing more than “data” gleaned from anecdotal evidence cobbled together by a geography student and ripped from the pages of a mountain climbing magazine.5
That’s number one.
Stephen Schneider, climatologist, professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University, and ardent global warming defender, has said this about what scientists need to do to convince people that global warming is real: “[W]e have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”6
“Scary scenarios” and “dramatic statements”?
I thought this was science.
Make no mistake. Global warming alarmists and environmental radicals have been lying about climate change for decades, as I will demonstrate in a moment. We’ll touch on the history of this farce, the shifting sand upon which the “science” has been built, who pushed it, who stands to profit from it, and how the “cap-and-trade” legislation that Congress is considering will hammer every middle-class family with a tsunami of new taxes. Speaking about those new taxes, if cap-and-trade were to become law, here’s how the Heritage Foundation quantifies the financial impact: “Six hundred hurricanes couldn’t cause this much economic damage” to our country.7
You have Al Gore to thank for that.
After all, the history of this bogus phenomenon started with him.
Al Goreleoni, having failed in his bid for president in 2000 against George W. Bush, was a lost man. After twenty-four years in politics, this career politician faced an uncertain future. Unaccustomed to manual labor or a real job, Goreleoni roamed around the halls of his ten-thousand-square-foot mansion in the hills of Tennessee dreaming up his next move. Having been one of the early global warming alarmists and a strong advocate for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, Al, the ultimate Hollow Man that T. S. Eliot wrote about, decided that saving the planet would be his next move. His first step?
In 2006, Gore presented a global warming disaster scenario in his film, An Inconvenient Truth. With the skill of Freddy Krueger, Al butchered science on the big screen, bludgeoned the truth to a pulp, and scared the hell out of millions of unsuspecting dolts. His “gore-fest” included the release of a book based on the same junk science used in his movie. The Hollywood lapdogs ate it up, handing Al an Academy Award for this so-called documentary—a real piece of fiction if ever there was one.
His second step? Like a good con artist, Goreleoni invested heavily in a range of companies poised to benefit from the “carbon credits” scam that was sure to rise as mass hysteria mounted over the fate of the planet unless carbon emissions were capped. Responding to the ensuing public outcry over Al’s end-of-the-world-we’re-all-gonna-die-if-we-don’t-act-now fear tactic, several of our not-so-brilliant politicians introduced so-called “cap-and-trade” legislation.
In short, the “cap” in cap-and-trade is a government-imposed limitation on the carbon emissions (also called greenhouse gases), which a business may legally emit. Each business under this plan would be issued a finite number of “permission slips” or carbon credits. Once they’re gone, they either must buy more credits or suffer heavy fines.
In theory, this forces companies to find creative ways to pollute less. Less pollution, less impact on the environment and, in turn, less global warming. Or so the argument goes. The “trade” part of cap-and-trade is a government-created market that allows businesses to buy or sell their unused greenhouse gas credits. What’s this got to do with you? More than you can imagine as you’ll see momentarily.
What you should know is that global warming connivers like Al Gore are not so much saving our planet from the disastrous effects they disingenuously insist a few degrees rise in temperature might bring. Rather, their ultimate goal has everything to do with their thirst to exercise power and accumulate wealth they otherwise could only imagine. But before going into the details, as I write, there’s a new twist emerging in the battle to pass cap-and-trade legislation. It’s a move designed to deceive the public.
Here’s what the Old York Times reports: Cap-and-trade is dead.
They cite a number of reasons why this “policy of choice” won’t gain any traction in Congress. The Times points to a weak economy, the meltdown on Wall Street, and a polarizing name, but no mention of the fraud surrounding the junk science used to justify such far-reaching legislation. The Times says, “the concept is in wide disrepute, with opponents effectively branding it ‘cap-and-tax’ and Tea Party followers using it as a symbol of much of what they say is wrong with Washington.” Furthermore, “the sponsors of a Senate climate bill likely to be introduced in April, now that Congress is moving past health care, dare not speak its name.”8 In other words, they’d like you to think that Congress will face far too much opposition to pursue a “cap-and-trade” bill.
Is that so?
Didn’t Congress face a mountain of opposition to Obama’s healthcare bill? Didn’t the overwhelming majority of Americans reject socialized medicine? None of that stopped the leftist dictator from Chicago from putting the screws to our healthcare system. I predict you’ll see the same thing with a new version of cap-and-trade.
What’s more, the global warming eco-extremists aren’t waiting around for Congress to enact cap-and-trade. They are convinced in their own minds that global warming is man-made and, as such, must be stopped by any means possible. Their new strategy? They’re suing a wide range of companies whose carbon emissions or greenhouse gases, they claim, are largely responsible for the problem of global warming. Their angle? They’re using “public nuisance” laws to extract hefty fines from those they think are responsible, on some level, for global warming, and they’re seeking injunctions to reduce or prevent further offenses.
As of this writing, three such cases have already been filed:
1. Connecticut v. American Electric Power. Using “public nuisance” tort law, electric power producers are being sued by the global warmers to cap and then reduce their carbon emissions.
2. Corner v. Murphy Oil. The oil company is being sued for allegedly causing Hurricane Katrina! Those filing the suit even want compensation for the damages they suffered.
3. Kivalina v. Exxon. Alaska natives are suing oil, power, and coal companies claiming the emission of greenhouse gases threatens their very existence by provoking more global warming.9 That case is pending appeal before the ninth Jerk-it Court of Schlemiels in San Fransicko.
Proving causation between an oil company’s emissions and a hurricane is as absurd as it gets. It just goes to show how desperate these fools are to send our industries back to the Stone Age. A senior fellow at Chicago’s Heartland Institute think tank evidently agrees with me that these are frivolous lawsuits. “The only public nuisance here,” says James M. Taylor, “is liberal activists seeking to circumvent the democratic process by cherry-picking liberal courts and asking them to impose restrictions on the American people that our elected representatives are wise enough to reject.”10
Whether there will be a flurry or a blizzard of such lawsuits is yet to be seen. What is clear is that the Obama enviro-Marxists are not suddenly abandoning their quest to seize control of the energy sector just because they encountered some resistance at first. After all, cap-and-trade is central to Obama’s agenda. He made that clear on the campaign trail and he hasn’t given up his push to—in his mind—slow global warming. He’s committed to cutting emissions by 17 percent by 2020.11 Don’t underestimate the devi-ousness of this president or Nancy “The Hammer” Pelosi.
The Democrats are smart enough to realize their pet initiative has been tarnished as more people view it as “cap-and-TAX.” That’s why they’re regrouping. They’re still looking for ways to accomplish the same massive tax grab via an economic package sporting a new name. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave his comrades clear marching orders to, as the Washington Post reports, “produce a bill as soon as possible to have any chance of passage in 2010” because, according to Reid’s spokesmouth, Reid wants to “bring it up to the floor for a vote.”12
Make no mistake. They haven’t given up. Not by a long shot.
Here’s how the Wall Street Journal puts it, “If this Democratic Washington has demonstrated anything, it’s that ideology often trumps common sense. Egged on by the left, dug in to their position, Democrats might plow ahead [on cap-and-trade]. They’d be better off acknowledging that the only ‘consensus’ right now is that the world needs to start over on climate ‘science.”13
No question, the Demoncats have become emboldened by the passage of their socialized healthcare plan. They’re drunk with their own power. As Obama’s press secretary said, “[Obama] goes into these negotiations, and into these legislative battles, with a stronger hand because people understand that he’s going to fight for what he believes in”14 [emphasis added].
As I demonstrated in chapter one, this president “believes in” a makeover of the country. Which is why I believe he will ignore the will of the people once again and attempt to pass a clean energy bill with striking similarities to cap-and-trade.
It may have a new name, but it will be the same old game.
Need proof? Look no further than how Obama tried to grab even more power using the nation’s greatest environmental crisis—the BP Gulf oil spill—to promote his pan-Leninist agenda. On June 15, 2010, in his first televised speech from the Oval Office, Obama blasted “our addiction to fossil fuels” and spoke of a need to “transition away from fossil fuels.” In the spirit of never letting a crisis go to waste, Obama was quick to leverage the disaster in the Gulf to push what will be a disaster for the nation. He said, “Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill.”
That’s code language for cap-in-trade.
Obama continued, “Now, there are costs associated with this transition [to clean energy].” Pause there. Better hold on to your wallet when this man tells you there’s a price to be paid. He’s a tax and spend president of the lowest order, and his taxes are impoverishing the middle class. Obama said, “And some believe we can’t afford those costs right now.” You got that right, Mr. Obama. People are out of work. They’re losing their homes. What’s more, those in the middle class fortunate enough to have a job are already shouldering the cost of two failed bailout schemes. These facts were ignored by this tone deaf president, who droned on: “I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy—because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are fargreater.”15
As you might expect from a man with no executive leadership experience, Obama advanced ideas not in keeping with the problem at hand (i.e. the oil disaster). Rather, he advanced ideas about “clean energy” and “green jobs” in keeping with what you’d hear in a college faculty lounge filled with limited minds and unlimited tenure. This really isn’t about Obama’s desire to create a “green economy” so that America will never have to face another environmental catastrophe. Far from it.
Obama won’t rest until he seizes yet another slice of the economy through cap-in-tax.
The BP oil spill just so happens to be putty in his hands.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
Much like the Wizard of Oz, who used smoke and mirrors to stay in power and control the people of Oz, a not-so-hidden sinister agenda sits behind the curtain of this fraudulent global warming initiative. Radical environmentalists, through the promotion of cap-and-trade policies and legislation, hope to grab control of yet another significant segment of our economy and funnel untold billions of dollars into the hands of the leftists.
In the bargain, the government is about to weasel its way into our everyday lives, dictating everything from what kinds of light bulbs we can use to what kind of fuel we can put in our cars. And they’re banking on the fact that you’re too lazy to learn what’s going on.
What really matters to environmentalists, and those on the left in general, is the promotion of an anti-capitalist agenda, specifically one that says industrial civilization is bad for the environment across the board, in the current instance because it tends to generate significant amounts of the gas carbon dioxide, which ostensibly contributes to the greenhouse effect, which in turn they say is going to lead, possibly within our children’s lifetimes, to massive changes in the earth’s climate that will render many regions of our planet uninhabitable and create unimaginable chaos in our descendants’ lives.