Tom Reed: End Congressional Obamacare exemption

CONGRESSMAN REED: GET RID OF SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR CONGRESS

Rep. Tom Reed introduces bill to end special treatment under Obamacare to Congress, President, Congressional staff 

Rep. Tom Reed is taking an additional step to encourage the Senate to avoid a government shutdown. Rep. Reed introduced the End Special Treatment for Congress CR Monday to end the special treatment Members of Congress, congressional staff and the President receive under the President’s health care law.

“If Harry Reid and the President continue to refuse to negotiate to avoid a government shutdown, I present a simple request to them: end the special treatment under Obamacare that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the President support,” Reed said. “Even if the Senate fails to do any work today, like it failed to do over the weekend, I will be here working to find a solution, working to avoid a shutdown. Ending the special treatment for Congress is a basic minimum to ask for.”

While Senate members and the President say they will not negotiate with the House, Rep. Reed says that position makes a government shutdown even more of a reality: “We are here, working to find a solution,” Reed said. “Harry Reid and the President saying they won’t negotiate isn’t helpful and is grossly irresponsible when the country is just hours away from a government shutdown.”

“I did not come to Washington to support the status quo,” Reed continued. “To me, getting rid of special treatment for Congress is a no-brainer. My bill keeps the government open and puts Congress on a level playing field with every other American. We need to clean up this obvious inequality. It is the right thing to do, it is the fair thing to do.” 
The House of Representatives sent an amended continuing resolution to the Senate over the weekend, where the bill now sits. The Senate is expected to convene later this afternoon. 

Up In My Grill

"Today is the day they put paper to quill..."

No Mo Cuomo

Nozzolio to Address Gun Owners

UNITED GUN OWNERS OF NEW YORK STATE

2nd MEETING

SUNDAY MARCH 10th

at 2:00 PM (DST!)

GUEST SPEAKER SENATOR MICHAEL NOZZOLIO

SOUTH SENECA SPORTSMAN CLUB

6894 YARNELL RD

OVID NY 14521

OUR GOAL IS TO MODIFY THE NYS SAFE ACT FOR THE PROTECTION OF OUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS.

                 BRING FRIENDS AND FAMILY
 
      LEARN HOW TO GET INVOLVED AND HELP
 
      PROTECT YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

Imagine life without a farm bill

The Washington Post, of all sources, questions the urgency behind Congress's 10 trillion dollar farm bill.   

Why farmers, alone among all businessmen, should be entitled to a nearly guaranteed income is especially inexplicable when total U.S. farm equity is projected to $2.3 trillion this year, up $500 billion since 2008, according to the Agriculture Department.

Here at South of 5 and 20 Industries, LLC, we support a guaranteed annual income for bloggers, and will endorse and support any politician who makes that vital cause a national priority.

We'll drink to that!

Freedom wins in Wisconsin.

Fighting food facism

Glenn Reynolds quotes James Lileks on Michael "Mikey Donuts" Bloomberg:

A culture that redefines food choices as moral issues will demonize the people who don’t share the tastes of the priest class. A culture that elevates eating to some holistic act of ethical self-definition - localvore, low-carbon-impact food, fair trade, artisanal cheese - will find the casual carefree choices of the less-enlightened as an affront to their belief system. Leave it to Americans to invent a Puritan strain of Epicurianism.

We've had enough of the food fascists ourselves, and so has Professor Reynolds:

Let me be clear. These people are not well-meaning do-gooders who have just gone a bit too far. They don’t actually “mean well” at all. They don’t mean well, they mean to be in control. They are power-fetishists, drunk on the joys of bossing the little people around. They are not good people. They are evil. They should be ashamed of themselves, but shame — like taxes — is for the little people.

They don't like you.

Penn Jillete on Obama's Fallon appearance

Warning: strong language.

Where our food actually comes from

Family farm-raised Ronald Baily explains why he doesn't care where his food comes from:

One of the great glories of modern life is the enormous elaboration of the division of labor and how the efficiencies gained from that division makes people much wealthier than they could otherwise be. Since we all don't have to stitch our own clothes, bake our own bread, compound our own medicines, or even cook our own meals, we are all much better off.

Baily's 2002 post constitutes the official South of 5 and 20 position on  the "local foods" dogma so popular here in the Finger Lakes.

Afraid of Flo? You should be.

Annoying Progressive Insurance TV flack Flo is despised by almost everyone, including Midwestern mom Stephanie Doss.  Steph is also creeped out by clowns, so we know we can trust her judgement. 

Progressive Insurance is owned by billionaire insurance heir Peter Lewis, sugar daddy to many radical leftist causes, primarily Obama's presidential campaign.  So we should not be surprised that the saccharine Flo wants you to install a big-brother "Snapshot" device that connects your car directly to Progressive's headquarters.  The pitch is that you'll get a discount on your insurance rate.  The unstated catch is that Progressive will collect a record of when and where you drive and how fast you drove to get there.  Running a little late for that gun club meeting?  Flo knows.

Of course, unlike health insurance, we still have a plethora of auto insurance providers fighting for our business, so its easy enough to keep Progressive out of your life.  It won't be so easy when's Flo's little citizen tracker becomes mandatory in 2015.  Yes, your elected representatives in Washington are planning to nationalize Flo's little pilot project.

The latest brick in the wall is the predictably named "Moving Ahead For Progress in the 21st Century Act," also known as Senate Bill 1813. (See here for the full text of the bill itself; the relevant section is 31406.) This legislation -- already passed by the Senate and likely to be passed by the House -- will impose a legal requirement that all new cars made beginning with the 2015 models be fitted with so-called Event Data Recorders (EDRs). These are the "black boxes" you may have read about that store data about how you drive -- including whether you wear a seat belt and how fast you drive -- ostensibly for purposes of post-accident investigation.

Once the snoop-o-matics are in new cars, author Eric Peters is confident your older car will be next.

In fact, sure as the rooster crows in the morning, you can bet the next step will a law requiring older cars not originally fitted with the technology be fitted with it -- or else decommissioned. It is inconceivable that they -- the government and its insurance company cronies -- will allow anyone to drive a vehicle not subject to this monitoring and control. They will insist it's not "safe" -- and of course, "unfair" that owners of older cars not equipped with EDRs are able to "get away" with "speeding" and not wearing their seat belts.

With the feds planning to to roll out EDRs in 2015, cynics might suspect that the Lewis-owned Progressive's Snapshot program is not just a coincidence.

Light bulb rebels

Colonists throw CFLs overboard, 1773

Professor Reynolds quotes Claudia Rosett:

Please don’t think this is easy for me. I’m one of those crazed Americans who can’t walk into Home Depot, Target or my local grocery store right now without wanting to grab one of those king-sized shopping carts and stuff it to the gunwales with 100-watt incandescent lightbulbs.

Maybe it’s the sheer thrill of buying bulbs that in just over a month, as of Jan. 1, 2012, will be banned for sale in America. What fun, in this incandescent twilight, to acquire legally what the federal government will soon treat as contraband, should it appear in any American marketplace. Or maybe it’s that gut sense that with the dollar teetering toward an abyss of unfathomable and inflationary government spending, those beloved old 100 watt bulbs will at least provide a decent store of value, even if all I do is use them to read by for the rest of my life — meticulously taking care never to violate federal law by offering even a single bulb for sale to some fellow citizen willing to pay for it.

Or, just possibly, this urge to stockpile incandescents is the product of simmering outrage. For decades, I have written about America as the world’s beacon of freedom, which it has been. Yet here we are, wards of the nanny state, with politicians dictating that even that prime symbol of American ingenuity, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb, shall be regulated into oblivion. All this has been ably exposed as an act of crony capitalism, designed to enrich manufacturers who prefer to sell pricier light bulbs that a lot of Americans, if free to choose, prefer not to buy.

Bold added.  The insane light bulb ban was signed into law by George W. Bush.  Read Claudia's entire piece.  

Do your neighbors have any idea about this?  Are you willing to spread the word?

"Economic development councils" will prevent economic development

Planned city, now abandoned, former USSR

Who believes that that way to revive the once-Empire State's moribund economy is to allow the people who got us here to spend billions more of our tax dollars on Soviet-style central planning?  We'll tell you who:  Andy Cuomo and his gang of politicians, union bosses, academics and crony capitalists.

Dryden resident Tracy Marisa, speaking for the Dryden Safe Energy Coalition, takes to the Ithaca Journal to to explain why Cuomo's merry band is doomed to fail.

Central planning is not what New York needs; we need less government planning and a reduction in the role of government.

New York starts in the race for jobs with two strikes against it: one of the highest total tax burdens in the nation and excessive regulation coupled with bureaucratic administration. These are the problems that need to be addressed.

Marisa reminds us who's riding in Cuomo's clown car.

The composition of these councils also demonstrates a failure to understand how to achieve economic development as a majority of their members are drawn from academia and government.

Marisa provides alternative suggestions for shocking Upstate back to life.  Be sure to read the whole thing. 

Opening of the Erie Canal, 1825

Liberals for Palin

The busiest professor at Cornell University, and the are thousands of them, Bill Jacobson, analyses this morning's shocking Palin-positive commentary in the New York Times.

Pigs fly today.  Anand Giridharadas at The NY Times picks up on this theme, recognizing that in vilifying Palin liberals have closed their minds to Palin’s ideas, which are liberal (in the traditional sense, not the modern Democratic Party sense)...

The good Professor's take on this historic event matches our own.

This probably will not signal a sea change in media coverage of Palin, or among conservative pundits.  Liberals and conservatives alike have been played for fools by their media and their parties.

But hopefully it is a starting point of the recognition that Palin stands alone among major political figures in the United States seeking a transformation of the country consistent with its founding principles, not against them, principles which used to appeal to liberals.  Palin’s anti-statist anti-crony capitalism message has the power to reach across parties, which is why that message gets buried in Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Unless you're shoveling mud out of your living room today, we recommend you read the whole thing.

Afghan teens shop for tunes

Stylish Afghan teenagers check out the latest hits at a local record shop.  Some of the disks available are even "stereo compatible!"  

This happy scene is, however, from the 1960s. Since the photo was taken, certain cultural changes have occurred in Afghanistan.  This picture could not be replicated today, or, regardless of the billions of dollars US taxpayers have spent to make it otherwise, all involved would risk beatings or execution.

PA residents support fracking

A poll released yesterday by Quinnipiac University shows Pennsylvania residents support hydrofracking for natural gas production by a 2-to-1 margin.  In what should serve as guidance to bankrupt New York's governor Andy Cuomo, Quinnipiac pollsters reported:

"'Drill, baby, drill,' is the call from Pennsylvania voters, and 'tax, baby, tax,' is the follow-up as voters see natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale as an economic plus more than an environmental negative," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "They also see added taxes on gas drillers as one of the few acceptable ways to help balance the budget."

While New York lets its neighbor to the south reap the benefits of hydrofracking, Unlikely Hospitalist is following the escapades of our seemingly corrupted US congress, which continues to transfer Finger Lakes tax dollars to giant agribusinesses.  Ethanol subsidies enrich political campaign donors, while increasing your food and energy costs.  And UH reminds us that mandatory ethanol in our gasoline is a hazard to your power equipment as well.

Flag Day

The Birth of Old Glory

Percy Moran, 1917

Foster to serve 30 days in UAE prison

John Christensen updates the story in the Chronicle Express.  No word if our federal representatives influenced the outcome.

According to reports posted on the Help Adam Foster facebook page, Adam Foster was convicted on the lesser charge of possessing a lost item and jailed for a month on Thursday.

Adam Foster, 30, of Watkins Glen and the son of Jeannette Andrews Foster, a native of Dundee, is the young man at the center of an international scandal over the treatment of prisoners by the United Arab Emirates, a close ally of the United States and one of the largest exporters of oil in the world.

Glen man tortured in UAE, where's Schumer?

A young engineer from Watkins Glen has been arrested, tortured, and faces prison in the UAE, a supposed US ally.  John Christensen reports in the Chronicle Express:

Adam Foster, 30, of Watkins Glen and the son of Jeannette Andrews Foster, a native of Dundee, is the young man at the center of an international scandal over the treatment of prisoners by the United Arab Emirates, a close ally of the United States and one of the largest exporters of oil in the world.

Accused of stealing a pair of handcuffs, the Finger Lakes resident was tortured in order to extract a confession:

Prosecutors accused him of stealing the handcuffs during questioning. “To this day, I remain confused by the prosecution’s accusation. I was under constant surveillance during my time at the police station, by personnel, security cameras, and the other detainees,” says Foster.

Foster was chained to 15 other men in a tiny cell and questioned repeatedly for 12 hours. “They finally took me into a room, cuffed my hands tightly behind my back and sat me down on a chair. The officer removed my shoes and socks and began to whip the soles of my bare feet with a heavy gauge metal cable. After 15 minutes of interrogation, the officer said to me, “I am going to continue to hit you until you tell me that you stole them.”

Foster could be forced to serve up to seven years in a foreign prison.  Whether guilty or innocent of what would be at most a minor infraction, Adam Foster's treatment has been barbaric.  Perhaps the Finger Lakes' high ranking representative in the US Senate could provide assistance?

What's Chuck Schumer been up to while Adam Foster suffers?  Why, he's been playing politics.  Professor Jacobson points out that our senior senator is hard at work, trying to bring down radpidly rising Republican star Paul Ryan.

From Schumer's official web site: "Contact Chuck".

New media hurting TV sales?

The number of US households owning a TV set has declined for the first time in twenty years.  The NZ Herald reports:

Ownership of television sets by US households has fallen for the first time in two decades.

Granted, the decline - 96.7 per cent of American households now own sets, down from 98.9 per cent previously - may not seem like much, but there will be many in the industry who will wonder if it's the faint tremor that presages an earthquake.

While you're reading this blog, you're probably not watching network TV.   Electronics manufacturers should not be concerned because the world's growing economies (China, India, Canada... ) will devour as many new technologies as Asian factories can churn out.  The Herald points out that its our ruling elites who should be worried.

If that's changing, then it's big news and not just for the industry concerned: politics in most western countries is largely driven and dominated by broadcast TV. 

British writer supports fracking

Better than a royal wedding

In the best thing to come out of England since the 1966 BSA Thunderbolt pictured above, British columnist James Delingpole takes on Soros-backed anti-energy propagandist Josh Fox, Cornell University junk science, and watermelons of every stripe in his current column in the Telegraph.  In addition to providing the word a plentiful source of cheap, reliable energy, Delingpole points out that shale gas is also good for the environment (who knew?).

What I simply want to do here... is remind you of the horrendous socio-political crisis we in the free world are facing today: one in which economic progress and commonsense threaten to be undermined at every turn by an insidious, mendacious and terrifyingly powerful global green movement which has its tentacles in almost every pie from the Obama administration to David Cameron’s Coalition to the EU to the UN to the MSM to the schools, universities and NGOs. The ideology of these Watermelons has virtually nothing to do with saving the environment (if it were, they’d be embracing shale gas wholesale) and almost everything to do with an instinctive loathing for economic growth combined with a bullying, puritanical urge to impose energy policy by diktat rather than by allowing the market to decide the most effective method.

This Brit gets it.  Shale gas opponents are really opposed to all progress, that is to say, opposed to you.