The day before yesterday’s White House health care summit, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) told reporters: “The only way this works is for the House to pass the Senate bill and then, depending on what the package is, the reconciliation provision that moves first through the House and then comes here.” When Conrad was reminded that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has repeatedly insisted that the House will not pass the Senate bill until the Senate passes a second bill that fixes the first, Conrad replied: “Fine, then it’s dead.”

This was the dynamic that President Barack Obama was trying to alter with his eventually-seven-hour meeting. And judging by pretty much every major news outlet, he completely failed. Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA), who is one of the 39 House Democrats that the White House needs to switch from a “no” the first time around to a “yes” this time, told The New York Times: “I don’t see very many at all who voted no who are going to switch their votes unless there are substantial changes in the bill.”

And that reality is already spreading throughout Capitol Hill. Politico reports that while Democrats were hoping to pass Obamacare by Easter, “there were signs Thursday night that the schedule was slipping. One Democratic lawmaker involved in the negotiations, who asked not to be identified to speak candidly of the process, said the party would not, in fact, start down the path of reconciliation next week.”

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Flacking for President Barack Obama’s “new” health care plan, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters assembled for yesterday’s press briefing: “The president posted ideas of his on the White House website today. We hope Republicans will post their ideas either on their website, or we’d be happy to post them on ours, so that the American people could come to one location and find out the parameters of what will largely be discussed on Thursday.” And this might have been a small bit of successful Obama administration gamesmanship on health care and transparency in government except for one small problem: reality. Not only do House Republicans already have their own health care plan, not only is it already available online, but the White House’s own website already links to it!

And speaking of the President’s behind-closed-doors plan, don’t believe any of those headlines showing a $950 billion price tag. That is an Obama administration-created number that should not be afforded any more credibility than Gibbs’ grasp of the contents of his own website. In fact, the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published this about the President’s new plan yesterday:

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Let me get this strait. Our current crop of legislators have at worst, killed the gas pipeline, at best, they’ve delayed it at least three years with the silliness that is AGIA.

This bunch is also responsible for doing nothing about a cruise ship initiative that is driving away passengers in droves. The cruise ship industry averaged in recent years spending $75,000,000 a year promoting Alaska globally. But since the initiative passed (backed by environmentalists and unions hoping to get a sweetheart deal) the industry this year will spend fewer than 17 million promoting our state. $75 million to $17 million overnight. What have lawmakers done to fix the problem? Squat!

These men and women we’ve elected to represent us in the senate and house have also done nothing to fix ACES which has already cost the state’s oil patch thousands of jobs and it will get a whole lot worse before things get better. Most of these legislatooooors were on duty when ACES passed. Most of them are turning a blind eye to the devastation the job killing tax regime is currently causing.

So we are closed for business in Alaska and what are our fearless leaders working on? Raising the limit to how much free stuff they can get.

Our brave men and women of the 2010 class of the Alaska Legislature say they can no longer lead us under the over burdensome requirement of having to report the free meals they get from lobbyists.

Currently the same people responsible for sending more than 2000 oil field workers to the unemployment line (with many more to come until ACES is fixed) say they want to raise the $15 dollar threshold for when lobbyists can buy them a meal or some boos without reporting it.

These sorry bunch of afraid to lose their power, kiss ass legislators say they want lobbyists to be able to buy them $50 worth of free food and drink without having to let the public know. It will be their little secret they say. 

North Pole Republican Sen. John Coghill, a man who should wake up every day feeling awful about the fact that he voted in favor of ACES and that vote has left more than 2000 families with many more coming out of work, is leading the effort to raise the $15 dollar cap. He told the Daily News the following,

"Is a meal unethical? No. Should it be reported? Well, maybe. If you spend $100 bucks on a meal, I think people have a right to know. But if you're just sitting down to a meal with somebody, what's the big deal? It's nothing unethical,"

Mr. Coghill, is it unethical to abandon your conservative ideas, principals, and values because you are afraid of a 110 pound woman who says “You Betcha” a lot. Is it unethical to go along with her plan to make Alaska the highest taxing oil and gas province in the world when you clearly know better?

Poor Mr. Coghill is more worried about his own comfort during his free lunch than the thousands of families he is directly responsible for putting out of work. Listen to this whiney crap he spewed to the Daily News,

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The freedom of speech is on trial at this moment in a Dutch court. Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom and a man well known for his outspoken resistance to the Islamification of the Netherlands, is facing a possible two years in prison.

He has a history of making controversial statements on Islam and even went as far as releasing a short film in 2008 titled Fitna, documenting violence and hatred by Muslims around the world.

A sizeable minority has seen fit to prosecute him for “inciting hatred and discrimination, based on comments by him in various media on Muslims and their beliefs.”

He has compared the Qur’an to Mein Kampf and accused the religion as being diametrically opposed to enlightenment principles valued in Western democracies.

The court however is not concerned with whether those accusations are true and that raises a very serious and disturbing problem. Under so-called “anti-hate” speech law, Wilders is not on trial for spreading falsehoods about Islam, but rather hurting the feelings of its adherents. Even if what he is warning against happens to be true, that can be of no aid in his defense.

The Dutch have abandoned truth in favor of sensitivity and allowed a small group of theocrats to hijack their courts in order to silence the opposition. Isn’t it amusing how Wilders accuses Islam as being fascist and its followers retaliate exactly how a fascist group would be expected to?

We also need to rid ourselves of this false question of “Hate speech or Free speech?”

There is no such dilemma. Much of the media separates these terms as being somehow independent. However, if you accept that a society ought to uphold free speech, then hate speech must accompany it.

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We are becoming a nation that no longer believes in the freedom to choose; there is really no other way to put it. In 2009 over 40,000 new laws were passed, many of which are nothing more than petty attempts by legislatures to micromanage our lives. Whether it’s the recent ban on trans fat in California or fish pedicures in Virginia, the notion that we ought to be able make decisions in our own lives is steadily losing ground. There are countless other examples but they all clash with the same principle. John Stuart Mill had it right when he stated, “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” The modern busybody however has shattered this concept and is willing to use the power of the state to force their neighbor to do what they feel is right.

This nanny tendency often initially comes from the knee-jerk reaction that because something is bad or immoral, it ought to be banned. During a 1988 debate over tobacco law, William F. Buckley dispelled this myth, “I would hope that we emancipate ourselves from the superstition that, that which is legal is necessarily honorable… It’s perfectly legal to contract syphilis, but it doesn’t mean that society is in favor of syphilis. As a matter of fact it’s perfectly legal to vote for Jesse Jackson. But that doesn’t make it reputable does it?” What needs to be understood is that in a free society, people will not always exercise their freedom in ways the majority of the population particularly likes. As long as the rights of others are not being infringed upon, people should be able to live out their lives without arbitrary interference.

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