Defense of the ENFORCE the Law Act...

"Rep. Trey Gowdy took to the House floor Wednesday to defend his proposed Enforce the Laws Act, which would empower Congress to take the executive branch to federal court for unilaterally changing or refusing to enforce federal laws."

Think of all of the Laws that this President has ignored. Think of the way his administration has refused to support Arizona with their efforts to deal with Illegal people crossing the borders. Think about all of the Gun Laws that go unenforced but this President and his Democrat buddies push for more restrictions on honest, law abiding, citizens. Think of the two Black Panthers standing in front of a voting polling place dressed in military garb and holding nightsticks but the President and his buddy Eric Holder saw no voter intimidation or problem with this. Think of all of the exceptions, select delays, and changes he has made to his own "ObamaCare" to protect Democrats facing re-election...

The House is showing a backbone and we need to support them on this...

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And now we have a Democrat thinking "the U.S. Constitution to be 400 years old"....

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Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas) declared the U.S. Constitution to be 400 years old Wednesday on the House floor, which would mean it was signed in 1614.

That would be seven years after Jamestown, Virginia became America’s first permanent English settlement.

Lee is off by only 173 years. It was adopted on Sep. 17, 1787.

Source: The Beacon

"Enforce the Law"... Well there's a thought...

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) said the Obama administration has “ignored” the Constitution.

Why have laws if the President and his administration is just going to ignore those that don't "Work" for him and even change or delay parts of laws like "ObamaCare" which he has done numerous times already?

 The House of Representatives passed the “Enforce the Law Act” Wednesday, a bill designed to push back against the numerous unilateral moves the Obama administration has used to circumvent the law.

Five Democrats joined Republicans in passing the bill by a 233 to 181 vote.

H.R. 4138, sponsored by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), would authorize the House or Senate to sue the executive branch for not enforcing laws and provide an expedited process through federal district courts. The bill is one of several the House GOP is pushing to combat the “imperial presidency.”

Republicans say the legislation is necessary in light of the numerous administrative actions taken by President Barack Obama to change and selectively enforce laws, including immigration, marriage, welfare rules, and his signature legislative achievement, Obamacare.

The administration has unilaterally altered Obamacare at least 20 times. Most recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that millions have been exempted from the individual mandate due to a rule change.

The administration also announced last week that individuals would be able to keep their so-called “substandard” health insurance plans that do not comply with Obamacare until October 2017.

Additionally, Obama unilaterally instituted the Dream Act by creating a deferred action program for young illegal immigrants and changed work requirements in welfare.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) said the Obama administration has “ignored” the Constitution.

“From Obamacare to welfare and education reform, to our nation’s drug enforcement and immigration laws, President Obama has been picking and choosing which laws to enforce,” he said. “In place of the checks and balances established by the Constitution, President Obama has proclaimed that ‘I refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer’ and that ‘where [Congress] won’t act, I will.’”

“Throughout the Obama presidency we have seen a pattern: President Obama circumvents Congress when he doesn’t get his way,” Goodlatte said.

Democrats called the vote a “sham.”

“It is simply another attempt by the majority to prevent the President of the United States to implement duly enacted legislative initiatives that they [the Republicans] oppose,” Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.) said.

The administration’s unilateral changes are simply the “reality of implementing sometimes complex laws,” Conyers said, referring to Obamacare.

Jonathan Turley disagrees. He testified at a House hearing last month that America is at a “constitutional tipping point.”

“The fact that I happen to think the president is right on many of these policies does not alter the fact that I believe the means he is doing [it] is wrong, and that this can be a dangerous change in our system,” the liberal law professor said. “And our system is changing in a very fundamental way. And it’s changing without a whimper of regret or opposition.”

Arguing that Obama should agree with the legislation, Gowdy gave a “pop quiz” on the House floor prior to the vote.

“That may seem unfair to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but I’m going to give them a hint,” he said. “The answer to every one of the questions is the same.”

“I’m going to read a quote and then you tell me who said it,” Gowdy said. “‘These last few years we’ve seen an unacceptable abuse of power having a president whose priority is expanding his own power.’ Any guess on who said that? Mr. Speaker, it was Sen. Barack Obama.”

“Here’s another one: ‘No law can give Congress a backbone if it refuses to stand up as a coequal branch the Constitution made it.’”

“’I taught the Constitution for 10 years, I believe in the Constitution,’” Gowdy again quoted then-Sen. Obama.

“So my question Mr. Speaker is what’s changed?” Gowdy asked. “How does going from being a senator to a president rewrite the constitution? What’s different from when he was a senator?”

Full article here at The Beacon

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New version of "Green eggs & Ham" from CPAC and right on it !!!...

Gov. Terry-Mac continues the road trip instead of working in Richmond...

Our Governor Terry McAuliffe continues his road trip across Virginia pushing for a massive expansion of Medicaid instead of working with the Legislature in Richmond on a sensible and sustainable solution. Last week he was in Augusta County at Augusta Health and the local media dutifully covered the event, but just like the mainstream media covering Obama's roadtrips & grandstanding events, failed to ask hard questions or provide further details and facts to the issue they are reporting on...

The NewsLeader reported this on Terry-Macs last visit but instead of asking how this expansion will be paid for it decided to make the Republican as the bad guys without providing valid concerns brought up by the GOP House:

The Democratic governor flew to Wise County on Tuesday to meet with doctors, hospital officials and low-income residents who don’t have health insurance.
McAuliffe asked them to press their state lawmakers into supporting a plan proposed by the Virginia Senate to accept federal Medicaid dollars and expand eligibility for the publicity financed health insurance program.
The county is in the heart of coal country and is in one poorest regions of the state.
Leaders of the GOP-controlled House of Delegates are staunchly opposed to Medicaid expansion, saying it would likely hurt the state’s long-term economy.

Fortunately Republican House Delegate Christopher Stolle has provided important and valuable information in his piece printed here in the Pilot

Last week, the House of Delegates and the state Senate approved separate budgets for the 2015-2016 biennium. The difference between the two was an incredibly low $40 million, or less than one-half of 1 percent of the General Fund budget items to be negotiated by the House and Senate. Yet there is talk of a Washington-style shutdown of state government.
A shutdown would mean schools, cities and counties, roads, public safety and other core responsibilities of state government would have their funding delayed or reduced.
The reason for a shutdown would be the state Senate's 23-17 vote to include in its budget a provision called "Marketplace Virginia," a private insurance exchange that would allow the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

At Gov. Terry McAuliffe's urging, the Senate has unilaterally abandoned the MIRC agreement and put funding for state programs at risk.
We all want high quality, affordable and accessible health care for all Virginians. We disagree on how that should be accomplished.
Medicaid covers about 1 million Virginians and has grown 1,600 percent over the past 30 years. It makes up more than 22 percent of our budget and continues to grow at an unsustainable rate, threatening to crowd out other key services.
The price of expansion has varied by as much as $3 billion over the past two years. No one really knows how much it will cost the state to expand. We do know, however, that without dramatic reforms, adding 400,000 individuals is fiscally irresponsible. Please visit mirc.virginia.gov for presentations on Medicaid reform efforts.

Delegate Stolle brings up a very important fact and a question that the local media(s) should be bringing up at every "Grandstanding" stop made by our Governor....

McAuliffe has stated that Virginia is too dependent on federal dollars and that the impact of federal cuts and sequestration undermines Virginia's economic vitality. Yet he maintains we need to take more federal dollars for Medicaid. Expansion without reform would only increase the state's over-reliance on borrowed money from Washington

The entire piece by Delegate Stolle is very good and should be read by every Virginian citizen so to hear the facts & issues not being reported by much of the VA media. It can be found here.

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If VA government shuts down it will be on Terry-Mac...

The local media is reporting that the Republicans in the House are requesting Governor McAuliffe a special session to hammer out a valid and workable Medicaid solution and allow a budget to pass and keep Virginia operating. It is reported that both sides are close to a budget approval but need more time to modify and agree on a plan for Medicaid expansion. One of the main issues being that Federal money from Washington would get the expansion up and running but that money will run out in the future and leave Virginian's picking up the extensive tab in the future. The House GOP has called for an audit of the present Medicaid system to identify and fix existing problems before this massive expansion as well as determine how to pay in the future any expansion.

If Terry-Mac plays the familiar game of allowing the government to shut down and then blame it on the Republicans as President Obama has done in the past, it will be obvious that Terry-Mac is at fault, not a leader, agenda driven, and does not care about the citizens of Virginia....




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NPR focus...

For the last two days I have had the car radio tuned to NPR news just to see where their focus is at this time. Yesterday they started off reporting that North Korea had fired two SCUD missiles and it was in violation on the United Nations resolution. See how well those UN resolutions work. NPR News spent about 12 seconds on that report then went on to about 10-12 minutes talking about how there is a election in Texas and the Republican incumbent has 6+ “Tea Party” challengers...

This morning NPR News started off with “mentioning” that Syria is behind schedule in their destruction of their chemical weapons as per another resolution. NPR News then went on to spend again much more time on the “Tea Party” challenge in Texas...

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If no budget next week be sure to ask where Terry-Mac was...

As mentioned in a prior post, VA Governor Terry McAuliffe was at the medical center over in Fishersville meeting with the staff and taking the opportunity to "Grandstand" in front of the reliable local press. Terry-Mac was trumpeting his desires for Virginia to jump onto the ObamaCare Medicaid bandwagon so to get that "Free-money" that we all deserve...

Turns out here in a release from the Republican House Leadership:

 “The Virginia General Assembly has only seven days to complete its budget work on time. House negotiators offered to work through the weekend, including today, in order to iron out the final differences between the House and Senate budget proposals, which are separated by less than one-tenth of one percent. But, Senate budget conferees declined that request and Governor Terry McAuliffe would rather grandstand than govern." 

But it seems our local-media-watchdog friends failed to do some research and report to us that the Augusta Health center where Terry-Mac was grandstanding actually had a 23% profit margin in 2013...  Most of those "Evil-Rich" corporations that all our Liberal friends howl about only make 6-10% at best and they are called "GREEDY" at every opportunity !!! 

 “Today the Governor is visiting the most profitable hospital in the Commonwealth. Augusta Health reported $64,470,310 in net revenue in 2012 and a 23 percent net operating margin in 2013. Augusta Health’s operating margin is higher than any other hospital in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The President and CEO of Augusta Health, Mary Mannix, was paid over $600,000 in 2011. Now, Governor McAuliffe is asking Virginia taxpayers to take a gamble on Medicaid expansion in order to offset cuts coming as a result of the Affordable Care Act – legislation that American Hospital Association wholeheartedly endorsed."... 

Remember this next week if in fact we don't have a budget and think about what your Governor (D) was up to....   No worries, I will remind you.....



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Terry-Mac and the Obama tactic....

Last night I caught the 11pm local Newscast crooning all over Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe who was at the Augusta Medical in Fishersville pushing his efforts to ram through a Virginia version of "ObamaCare" Medicaid plan...

Like Obama, Terry-Mac is traveling the State instead of staying in Richmond and working with all of the other "Electeds" that the citizens of Virginia sent them there to do the "People's work"...

Local newspapers did their duty covering the Gov as he made his rounds at the medical center and held a meeting with administrators and of like minded people. Terry-Mac did his grandstanding and I am sure it was a good show for those looking to get the "Free Money" from the Federal government in Wash DC, but is it really ever "Free"...

But I should not be to hard on our local media for they did also cover the three local Delegates from the Valley that held a public meeting just down the road in response to the Governor. These Delegates brought up the very good point of how will the expanded Medicaid program be paid for by Virginians once that "Free money" starts to go away? The House has brought forth plans to audit and fix the broken Medicaid system that wastes millions each year to fraud and theft as shown here but the Governor instead wants to push through Obama's plan as soon as possible. 

McAuliffe said he is open to compromise and wants to sit down with legislators and figure out a solution. Admitting the possibility that the proposal could get more expensive, he said, “Why would we not want our sickest Virginian’s to get in [to the Medicaid program] and be paid for 100 percent by the federal government?
Quote provided by the NewsVirginian

Here Terry-Mac mirrors his friend Obama by stating the obvious and indisputable fact that nobody wants to provide help to our sickest Virginian’s while appealing to those who love the idea of "Free" stuff from Washington. But at the same time he ignores the question of how "Virginian's" will pay for this program in the future.....

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Deepwater and media hype...

Roughly four years ago I stood at the 2010 Shad Planking handing out information and discussing with people the need for the United States to Drill for more oil here within the United States. There still remains solid reasons and benefits for us to pursue this option to secure our energy future and to improve the economy but the focus and discussions have changed...

The tent was busy and even with it being located away from the main aisle of the Planking event, there was good traffic and interest as well as a wind power booth not far away. Interesting how the focus has changed since then and there was little if any talk of "Fracking" for Natural Gas back then. In that short time Natural Gas use has increased considerably and many electric generation plants have changed from Coal to NatGas to make their electricity. A by-product of this change has been the reduction of CO2 gas which many claim is the reason for "Global Warming" and then "Global Climate Change". Our President has been quick to note the reduction of CO2 but fails to mention it is due to the increased use of Natural Gas via "Fracking" and the mainstream media is willing to avoid asking him the hard questions as they should....

Ironically during this event several of us were monitoring news reports of a offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that had a explosion and was still on fire. The "Deepwater Horizon" incident was to become a major environmental, political, and technological incident, regarding deep water drilling for oil and natural gas. Reports now put it at over 210 million gallons of oil released into the Gulf waters over several weeks and several attempts to "cap" the well.
 

Without a doubt the Deepwater Horizon incident was major and resulted in a detrimental impact to the environment but not anywhere near what the media predicted during and since. A U.S. Government report estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal) but that went into a substantial volume of water which diluted it greatly. The impressive thing is how “Mother Nature” took control of this “disaster” and repaired herself.


The Deepwater Horizon oil provided a new source of nutrients in the deepest waters," explained Hazen, who is with the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. "With more food present in the water, there was a population explosion among those bacteria already adapted to using oil as a food source. It was surprising how fast they consumed the oil. In some locations, it took only one day for them to reduce a gallon of oil to a half gallon. In others, the half-life for a given quantity of spilled oil was 6 days. This data suggests that a great potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil plumes exists in the deep sea and other environs in the Gulf of Mexico."

 Oil-eating bacteria are natural inhabitants of the Gulf because of the constant supply of food. Scientists know that there are more than 600 different areas where oil oozes from rocks underlying the Gulf of Mexico. These oil seeps, much like underwater springs, release 560,000-1.4 million barrels of oil annually, according to the National Research Council.

"The bottom line from this research may be that the Gulf of Mexico is more resilient and better able to recover from oil spills than anyone thought," Hazen said. "It shows that we may not need the kinds of heroic measures proposed after the Deepwater Horizon spill, like adding nutrients to speed up the growth of bacteria that breakdown oil, or using genetically engineered bacteria. The Gulf has a broad base of natural bacteria, and they respond to the presence of oil by multiplying quite rapidly."
source:

Gulf of Mexico has greater-than-believed ability to self-cleanse oil spills

It is also evident that the Deepwater Horizon incident did considerable damage to the local economies along the Gulf coasts and States. Many vacations were canceled as well as industries experienced substantial damages. Owners of the Deepwater Horizon project (BP petroleum) is continuing to payout a total estimated at $42.2 billion in damages.

But one can only imagine the negative influence on this incident that the mainstream media caused with it's reporting practices. We all know that the media portrays the worst case scenario for in this day and age that is what sells the best in the media. Think back to all the dire reports and predictions during that period and compare them to what you hear now. I recall hearing a story of sport fishing guides returning to the docks after a productive day of fishing in the Gulf only to find the NEWS media not interested in how the day of fishing went only to flock to the boat that returned with oil samples brought back in mason jars.

When living in Key West back in September 1998 we had hurricane Georges come through town at a category three and did some damage to electric service and flooding, but the most damage came from the reporting by the mainstream media. I recall getting phone calls and friends looking to see if we were still alive after they saw the reports coming out of the Keys. Turns out everybody was watching the same NEWS video coming out of downtown Key West where there was a large tree toppled in the street and the NEWS casters used this for a backdrop for their video shoots. If people on the “Mainland” only knew that if the camera man was to pan in either direction they would have seen the crowds of locals standing on the curb in shorts, tee-shirts, flip-flops, and drinking beer while watching the Newscast.... Found this piece in the wikipedia account of the hurricane incident...

"Due to lack of law enforcement, those who stayed in Key West went through red lights, double-parked, and disobeyed traffic laws. Long-time Florida Keys citizens noted the solitude of the time and enjoyed the island for how it once was, rather than the large crowds of tourists"

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