Conscience? What’s a Conscience?
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee raised over $11 million, about half from special interests corporations and PACs, in the 2005 to September 30 2009 reporting period. We want to reiterate our suggestion that these professional politicians wear a patch on their suits for their sponsors as do the NASCAR racers and golfers. I don’t know what the patch for Jack Abramoff would look like but this Poster Boy would be entitled to one. Of course, investment and insurance companies, lawyers and big pharmaceuticals are the largest payers for his services. No surprise –all of our poster boys and girls do the bidding of their main contributors and it is the reason that we no longer have many serious challengers to entrenched incumbents. The huge advantage of incumbency is overwhelming.
Max Sieben Baucus, 68, a Democrat, has been in politics since college. He earned both a Bachelor of Arts degree and a law degree from Stanford University. He began law practice in Missoula, Montana, in 1971, and then coordinated Montana’s 1972 Constitutional Convention. He served as a state representative from Missoula until his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974. He was re-elected in 1976. Baucus was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978 where he has remained until present. Sound familiar?
As with our other poster children there is no real life, no private sector, experience. Yet, they make the laws that affect virtually all of our daily lives. But they do not have to live under their laws and regulations. This is our basic argument against career politicians and in favor of citizen-legislators who take their business and/or professional experience and understanding to making laws that regulate businesses and professions –then they go home and live under those laws. Sen. Jim DeMint has introduced a proposed Constitutional Amendment that would limit terms of Congress to two for the Senate and three for the House. Such statutory limitations as we have for most governors and many state legislators, county commissioners, city councilmen and other elected positions, would go a long way in reforming Congress.
On 2/2/2012 on the vote to limit the terms of congress it is telling that the senators who voted against term limits have been in the Senate for an average of 13.6 years compared to just 6.4 years for those who support them. The longer people are in Congress, the more power they get, and the more they lose touch with the voters who elected them.
See how your Senator voted: http://senateconservatives.com/site/votes/112/2/11?c=5R4F2B4F9B3A137 hint: All Democrats but Joe Manchin of WV voted AGAINST.
Baucus is often referred to as a “moderate” Dem but one finds little to justify the moderate moniker except that he did vote for the North American Free Trade Agreement. He voted for the Brady gun control measure and after getting a lot of heat from Montanans he has since voted against some gun control measures. Nothing moderate about his spending votes, though: the non-partisan National Taxpayers Union has rated him a “Big Spender for the past three years and mostly D’s previously. His version of the health Care Bill contains no conscience protections on abortions for employees who don’t want to be involved in them or refer for them. Naral –ProChoice America rates him 100% for his pro-abortion votes. Baucus has long opposed opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling –for which the Saudis, Chavez and Putin thank him. All liberal positions.
Sen. Baucus has vowed to raise the estate tax back to 35% to 55% this year, and to make it retroactive to Jan. 1. That it would be of questionable constitutionality does not bother career pols. Can Congress impose a new estate tax, say in April, on someone who is already dead and buried in February?” asks Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal. Then he says, “I hope not.”
“The most compelling environmental issue of our lifetime: global warming” Baucus said on the floor of the Senate in favor of a cap and trade bill for greenhouse gases, like CO2. In that speech in June 2008 he rhapsodized over the trillion dollar cash flow to the FedGov from a cap & tax program. No moderate, he is as liberal as the other poster children who have spent their entire adult lives in the government, almost totally oblivious of the consequences to the nation of such a restriction on energy use. Of course, it is even more senseless today as the global warming hoax is being exposed and the earth is experiencing one of the coldest winters on record. (It was 30 degrees F yesterday here in S. Florida.)
Just this week Judicial Watch has released its list of the 10 most corrupt politicians in Washington and wouldn’t you know it, five of the six congress-critters named are featured Poster Children on this blog – Dodd, Barney Frank, Pelosi, Murtha and Rangel. Does the slogan “Tenure Corrupts” come to mind? Baucus is not far behind as he has been caught giving one of his staffers, Melodee Hanes, a nearly $14,000 pay raise shortly after they began dating. He also took her on taxpayer-funded trips to Southeast Asia and the Middle East, though foreign policy was not her specialty. Then he nominated her for attorney general of Montana. They each left their spouses in March and April of 2008 and later moved in together.
Sen. Baucus, who is leading bipartisan negotiations on health care legislation, said he would include in his bill a proposal by the Obama administration to bar illegal immigrants from buying health coverage through a new insurance marketplace, or exchange, even if the illegal immigrants were willing and able to pay the full cost. Hospitals would still be required to provide emergency treatment to illegal immigrants and that the federal government would continue to reimburse hospitals for unpaid bills, a cost that now runs $250 million a year. Does that make any sense? It does to career pols that have had NO private sector experience where there are personal consequences to an individual’s ideas and actions; professional pols are insulated from the results of what they do. Maybe Sen. Max was drunk that day as he was on this day slurring on the floor of the Senate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Y9X5ggxzA
We need to go back to a citizen-legislature! Please support Sen. DeMint’s proposed amendment by signing the petition for term limits on congress at www.termlimits.org
