An Immodest Absolutely Immoderate Proposal...

...for Preventing Progressives from Burdening the Taxpayers and Their Country While Benefitting the Public by Their Absence from Public Life.
With thanks to Jonathan Swift. No children were consumed in, or as a result of, this post.

Once principled progressives Mary Landrieu, Louisana and Ben Nelson, Nebraska pragmatically sold their Obamacare votes to Harry Reid, Nevada for $300,000,000 Medicare pads for their respective states. You see a pattern, right?

In total there were 278 progressive votes for Obamacare - House(218) Senate(60).

Our immodest proposal - assuming that Senators Landrieu and Nelson are typical of progressives in the Senate, as well as the House, and further assuming that $300,000,000 is the going rate for a progressive politician in Washington, DC - is as follows:

Offer all 278 House and Senate progressives conditional early retirement packages comprised of one-time payments of $300,000,000. This payment would naturally be subject to capital gains tax at the rate they proposed while in office, unless the prevailing rate is higher than they proposed - which is highly unlikely.

Total cost of the package to taxpayers in the United States - exactly $83,400,000,000.

The conditions attached to the package will also define some offsets, not including the election surtax, which go toward reducing the overall cost of the package. Those conditions are as follows:
Recipient waives all lifetime pension/perks associated with their service.
- waives all Social Security payments
- agrees to enroll in Medicare or their state health plan, or moves to Canada, Cuba, or England.
- assumes liability for all out-of-pocket expenses not covered by their health plan.
- signs a 25-year binding agreement barring them from seeking any elected office, anywhere.

Further cost savings can be realized in reduced jet fuel consumption, staff headcount reduction, reductions in waste, fraud and abuse, reductions in franking, deficit reduction, and by other such sums as may be required.

All that's left is to find sponsors for the bill. Senators Boxer, Landrieu, Nelson and Reid and Representatives Lincoln, Pelosi, Brady, Frank, Hoyer and Markey can carry the bill in their respective chambers. Mr. Markey's global warming committee won't get a chance at this one.

Once the proposal has been scored by CBO and returned to both the House and Senate, we can then expect a quick, near-unanimous vote in both chambers, because as Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Christopher Dodd and Harry Reid have all clearly demonstrated, every progressive has their price.

While $83,400,000,000 may seem like a large sum of money, it is:
2.38% of President Obama's proposed $3,500,000,000,000 proposed Federal budget for 2010.
1.67% of the 10-year estimated $5,000,000,000,000 cost of Obamacare and cap-and-trade.

Beyond the obvious benefit to the economy and the taxpayers, consider this:
Eliminating the single greatest domestic threat to the Republic - PRICELESS!!!!

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - but 278 progressives are cheap at twice the price....

An Honest Discussion about Race

I want to have an honest discussion about race.

I want to understand why some people want to be hyphenated Americans, and others don't. I want to understand what makes it OK for some people to make racially divisive remarks, but an honest observation, depending on the source, is shot down as racist.

I want to know how a prominent democrat says something that makes him sound like an ignorant hick and he gets a pass. I want to know how the happy accident of birth and locale that makes me white and southern, combined with my conservative convictions, automatically make me a racist to some.

This is personal.

As an American in the "land of the free", I want to know why some consider themselves not free. I want to know why some people are so invested in racial division that they have created a whole industry, in and of themselves. The federal government has spent liberally - tens of trillions of dollars fighting poverty and disparity, and this has led to a near-permanent underclass, more disparity, and finally, despair. Yet conservatives, who stand for self-sufficiency and opportunity are said to lack compassion.

Yeah, we need an honest discussion about race.

Dr. Martin Luther King said he was looking forward to a country where people "...would be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." When he made the speech forty-seven years ago Dr. King was talking about his dream for his children. It was also his dream for America. Well that's my dream for my children. America, too. Yet there are those who would reserve Dr. King's legacy unto themselves.

I said on on a social networking site that I was going to do this, and so I've done it.

I want to have an honest discussion about race.

The comments are moderated so if you're planning to be mean and nasty, don't bother. They won't get by me. You can post anonymously if you prefer, but including a name or pithy handle will make it easier for us to follow.

You know where I stand. Post your comments here.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Christianity and the Anti-Christian Zealots

Anybody in the blogosphere has the right to say whatever they want, as do the radical/socialist/progressive sycophants and acolytes in the state-run media. That same right is extended to church-state separatist liberal evangelicals. And to those paragons of tolerance in the race industry and the victims' industry. And to Bhuddism, Islam, atheism, liberation, treason, anarchy, Unitarianism, Gaia, Green, Pink, and sedition. Conservative, Christia-- no -- wait a minute --

And right there is where the wheels come off the tolerance wagon.

In some circles Christians and political conservatives can say what ever they like about just about anything, as long as they hew to boundaries of tolerance and open-mindedness. But let just one of us say something about Jesus Christ or faith of any kind, and soon we're confronted by the now close-minded, bigoted, but otherwise tolerant sort that rushed Brit Hume.

There's no reason to recount Hume's conversation about Tiger Woods here. It's out there if you want to find it. We will, however, briefly take issue with the Washington Post TV critic who said that Hume's words were the worst of 2010. That was right before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, of the health care bills in Congress, "There has never been a more open process for any legislation", which is, of course, a bald-faced lie, has been covered in other pages here, and is slightly off-topic. That TV critic is either a sycophant or an acolyte as described above, so Speaker Pelosi's comment didn't faze him. Then there was the critic that called for separation of church and TV....

We do not require all Americans to think or believe as we do. We also recognize that, even among conservatives, there are many streams of religious thought. We are happy to stand with anyone of any religious stripe in common cause for the advancement of freedom and the protection, preservation and defense of the United States Constitution and the United States of America. We will not stand quietly in the face of bigotry, hypocrisy, and the double standard against Christians and Christianity. We will not be railroaded into submission and silence by politically correct discrimination.

There is a strong temptation to end this post with words from a famous hymn about solid rock and standing and Christ, but we will forbear. Instead, we will end as we always try to here.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, even for the liberty of anti-Christian zealots.

Dotting the I's and Crossing the T's of Health Care "Reform"

While Nancy and Harry are rushing to get their health "reform" bills reconciled, we hope they're able, in view of their compressed time frame, to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's".

We'll do that here at Eternal Vigilance, as well.

These bills, from inception to final votes, are - ill-founded, ill-advised, ignoble, ignominious, illegitimate, illusory, ill-conceived, irrevocable (in some respects), irredeemable, irritating, infuriating (in all respects), and insensate.

The process by which these bills have been forced upon the American people has been - taxing, tiring, treacherous, tricky, tactless, trying, truculent, tyrannizing, (generally) truthless, (always) troubling, trumped-up, and a travesty.

Unfortunately, these are times when words alone just aren't enough. If you identify with these sentiments, please continue to contact your elected representatives - make your voices heard up and down the halls of government. Remind the members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate of their sworn constitutional obligation, that they serve at your pleasure, and that, absent this getting stopped, you intend to make them keenly aware of your displeasure in November.

Urge them, with Thomas Paine's immortal words, to "lead, follow, or get out of the way".

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.