This is a must read:  Hunter makes the best damn case ever made against socialized medicine

Congressional Record  | August 10, 1994 | Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleagues who talked about what they saw as the benefits of universal coverage and, I think, a very eloquent closing by the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney], who spoke of the necessity of this House doing the people’s business, and the people not being special interests, not being necessarily corporations or industries, but people. And I think what America has heard, Mr. Speaker I want to speak very strongly against the first President Clinton plan that came out that now apparently is dead, not because of Republican opposition, but because we are outnumbered by 100 votes in this House and by quite a few in the other body, but because American people, business people, employees who wanted to keep their jobs, talked to their Democrat Representatives and their Democrat Senators, not to Republicans, who were in the minority and cannot control things, and told them not to pass this plan.

So you have the unique situation where a Democrat President, President Clinton, having total power, total control with his party over both bodies of the U.S. Congress, with the power to write a bill, delivery it to his desk within a few days, and sign it, with the Republican party being basically powerless to stop it, with all those things going for him, the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, was not able to push his first health care plan through.

Now, why did the people stop that plan? Why did Democrat Members of Congress and Members of the Senate stop that plan?

Well, I think it is fairly clear, Mr. Speaker. They sopped the plan because they perceived that it would be bad for them. And it was not just a few industries, because I don’t think the Democrat Party in the House is controlled by a few industries. I think that the Members of the House who are Democrats have the same representative reflection of their constituencies that those on the Republican side have. They do what their constituents ask them to do, and they try to reflect the feelings of their constituents.

Now, why would not Americans, when faced with what has been described as this nirvana of health care, this great new benefit, where nobody is ever left out, everybody has a guarantee for life, from cradle to grave, you are going to be taken care of, and that very appealing personality of this President, who can look at an audience, whether it is a talk show or people in the White House, and you see a little glisten of a tear in his eye, and he talks about giving them security, why would not Americans walk right up and sign up for that program?

It is because Americans are a little bit different from folks in the other parts of the world. We are a country full of people that appreciate when Government gives you some security, it takes away some of your freedom. This debate over health care is a debate between Government control and freedom.

And I hate to hear the word “reform” used when Members first started to describe the President’s own health care plan, because for practical purposes, President Clinton’s first plan was socialism. If it did not socialize the delivery of health care itself, it at least socialized the financing mechanism.

I have never considered socialism to be a reform of any kind. Certainly Cuba has all-inclusive health care coverage. They have got universal coverage. Communist China has universal coverage. All of the nations we have taught over the last 40 years concerning the faults of socialism have universal health coverage. The problem is they don’t have any quality, and they don’t have any quality of life for the people.

You know, John Papageorge, a former commander in the 101st Airborne, described quality of life in America as being a function of the amount of control that you have over your own life. I think that was a very good description of freedom and quality of life in this country.

A lot of people looked at the President’s health care package and decided that they did not like what I would like to call Clinton I, President Clinton’s first health care package. That was a health care package in which everybody had to march down and sign up for the Government health care program. And if you did not sign up for the Government health care program, Government caught you and fined you a double premium if they caught you not signing up for the plan. So nobody had the option to say I want to pay for it myself, or I would rather go somewhere else, or I don’t like this plan. Every American was obligated to go down and sign up with Government and pay Government money.

Everybody had to take a plan that was dished out under a Government system in which large cooperatives or purchasing alliances, Senator Phil Gramm called them collectives, but large purchasing alliances would make big deals with big insurance companies, and theoretically get good rates for packages. And those packages could either be an assigned doctor, where you basically spin a rotary wheel and if the doctor you get happens to be the guy who just immigrated from Bangladesh and has credentials to practice medicine in America, he was your doctor whether you liked him or not.

Or maybe the preferred provider list, where you had a menu of doctors, but you might still not have the right to have the doctor you wanted. Or, in some cases under President Clinton’s first plan, if an insurance company, and only if an insurance company, came forward and had a plan for what is known as fee for service, that is where you can pick any doctor you want, you could be under the government plan and still have a choice of doctors and go to your own doctor.

Well, the American people did not like that deal. They weren’t the French, they weren’t the British, they weren’t the German, they weren’t the Japanese nor the Canadians. They didn’t like that deal and wanted to maintain more freedom.

I don’t think it is unusual or unexpected that of all the nations in the world, the people of the United States like freedom maybe a little better than anybody else. And I think that is kind of a good thing.

So they didn’t sign up for President Clinton’s first plan.

Incidentally, I think another reason they didn’t sign up for President Clinton’s first plan was because they looked at some of these countries which had socialized medicine and although they looked pretty good at first, when you saw a few figures, if you looked through the figures and looked to the quality of medicine that was delivered, you saw some pretty ugly things.

And let’s go around the world and look at some of the things we saw that we could expect President Clinton to drive us toward with this first health care plan.

First, we looked at Canada. Canada was offered to us in the United States Congress as the heaven of health care. This was the place were you had a single payer system where government had finally come to grips and “reformed health care.”

Well, let me tell you what health care reform did to Canada, now that we have looked at it a little closer.

We now have discovered that the largest hospital in Ontario had to close down for 2 weeks last Christmas because they ran out of money.

Then we discovered that there are now 177,000 Canadians waiting in line for operations.

I asked the question when I was in Minnesota recently, why are all these Canadians coming down for operations in Minnesota, Detroit, MI, and other American cities? I was told it was because they don’t have to wait in line if they come to America. They get first-class health care and get it now. So they come to America.

We discovered in some places in Canada women in childbirth are not given epidural anesthetic. You may recall one of the articles that was in a national newspaper about a woman undergoing childbirth who was shivering in pain as her doctor passed her and said I know it hurts and I wish there were something I could do for you, but we just can’t afford it.

So we looked at Canada and we also saw of those 177,000 Canadians waiting for operations, over 25 percent of them surveyed say they are in some sort of pain. So we decided maybe Canada wasn’t the great model for “health care reform” or socialized medicine.

Well, some Members of the House talked about Japan, because Japan dedicates a smaller percentage of their Gross National Product to health care than the United States. We know what they have in Japan. They have a medical system in which doctors see approximately 49 patients a day on the average. Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is whipping people through pretty doggone fast.

My first question was how can you possibly do that? One answer was mass examinations. Well, Americans, especially Americans who have been in uniform, don’t like the idea of mass examinations. They like a little bit of privacy.

You know, when I saw that figure, 49 patients a day per doctor, I thought about the subway system in Tokyo, where they have the professional packers, and these guys look like former sumo wrestlers to me, maybe they are not. They don’t hurt anybody. But when the last Japanese passenger gets on that subway system who can possibly get in, they physically pack the people into the subway, and those big strong packers don’t hurt anybody, but they get the last body in. That is kind of the image you get when you think about 49 patients a day going through each doctor’s office in Tokyo. So we decided maybe we didn’t want to have that kind of socialized medicine.

We looked at Great Britain, where they have socialized medicine. And yet if you are a senior citizen, if you have passed a certain age, and you need a life saving operation, you don’t get it. The reason you don’t get it is because socialized medicine always operates ineffectively and they run out of money. When they run out of money, their philosophy to senior citizens in Great Britain is, you have lived a long and fruitful life and it is time for you to float from the tree, kind of like a leaf in the autumn time. You have had a full life and we will save these life saving operations for younger people.

That sounds fine if you look at it on paper. But when those senior citizens are your grandparents or your parents, you want to be able to have a chance to save their lives. So Americans have looked at Great Britain, and they do not like that socialized medicine system either.

The President has staked quite a bit on making a health care plan go this year. Although it is clear that a majority of the American people say, wait a minute, we do not want you to rush anything through in the immediacy of this election season. We want you to take your time, if you are going to do health care, because health care is a giant contract with the American people. And I do not think the American people like the 1,300-page document that President Clinton sent down the first time.

You know it took almost a year for the American people to be able to look at enough parts of that document and believe me, like a lot of Members of the House, I was pretty surprised when I would meet people at town hall meetings who had read that entire document, many others who knew the outlines, many others who knew the key provisions.

Americans read these things, folks. Ultimately they find out what we vote on. So we better doggone well read the documents ourselves before we vote on them.

So it took about a year for the American people to read President Clinton’s health care plan and read it and understand it so well that there were enough people who objected to the plan that President Clinton, with a 100-seat majority in the House of Representatives being Democrat, could not pass that health care plan.

Republicans did not beat that health care plan. The people of the United States beat that health care plan.

We have got a couple of days until recess. We are told that there is another plan coming up in the House and another plan coming up in the Senate and that we are going to vote on these plans in the next several days. These plans that are comprised of thousands and thousands of pages of regulations, every one of which will have some impact on Americans’ lives.

I think that is wrong. I think the Democrat leadership in both bodies knows that it was the time that the American people took to look at this plan, the first plan that President Clinton offered, that caused it to lose and to be dropped, not by Republicans but by Democrats. And I think if we give the same light of day to this second plan, what I call the Gephardt-Clinton plan, named after distinguished majority leader in the House and the Mitchell-Clinton plan, named after the Democrat leader in the Senate, if the American people get a chance to see President Clinton’s plan 2 and 3, they will be just as offended and just as put off and just as resistive of these two plans as they were of the first.

Let me talk about just a couple of things with respect to this plan.

First, I saw the exchange between President Clinton and the black entrepreneur Herb Kane, the gentleman who is the president and CEO of Godfather Pizzas. He did a businesslike thing, which I guess is sometimes unfair to do to politicians, especially when they are as smooth as our President is. He said, Mr. President, I am paraphrasing, I have looked at your plan. I am going to have to lay off people under this plan. I am going to have to close down franchises.

And the President said, essentially, to him, and I am paraphrasing the President, I do not know why you just cannot raise the price of your pizzas.

And I noticed on Mr. Kane’s face, after the President said that, what I consider to be a pretty naive statement to a businessman who understands you cannot just raise the price of your goods to accommodate added costs, I saw kind of a look of surprise. And later on he told a number of us in the House, he said, if I could get more money for my pizzas, I would be getting it. But the point is, this plan is going to kill jobs. It is going to force me to close down some franchises that are marginal.

And he said another thing that I thought was interesting and goes to the heart of this whole debate. Because this whole debate is developed on the Democrat idea that we are going to make employers, small businesses and larger businesses, pay for all the health care for their employees.

Mr. Kane, once again I am paraphrasing him but I thought this was important, he was asked why he did not think that he owed giving health care or a health care program to every one of his employees. He said, because my first duty to my employees it to give them a job. And sometimes you cannot do both.

That is the point with Clinton 2, with the second Clinton package which is being put together on the Senate side by Senator Mitchell and Clinton 3, the third Clinton package which is being put together by Mr. Gephardt and the Democrat leadership behind closed doors on the House side, these plans are going to kill jobs.

I come from a State in which we have done what we thought were wonderful things for workers. The only thing we forgot to include was a job. We have got a workmen’s compensation program in California that allows people to sue for stress and we have had a ton of fraudulent claims for stress. That has not helped workers. It has hurt the good workers because the fraudulent workers have gone out and collected their dollars, and the good workers have kept on working and the good businesses have moved out of California and moved to other States. And there is a continuing exodus.

So with the legislature of California attempting to be so kind to the workers, they forgot one thing. Blue collar workers cannot hire each other. White collar workers cannot hire each other. You have to have a businessman or a businesswomen, a business owner to hire you. And you cannot make the environment so unfriendly to them or so unprofitable or so burdensome that they go out of business,because if they go out of business, you are out of a job.

Well, the Clinton 2 and Clinton 3 health care plans put a lot of folks out of jobs.

Let me tell you how many they put out of jobs. This is an estimate that is taken off the CONSAD study, “Employment Impact of Ways and Means plans and Approximate Impact under the Gephardt Plan.” The plan that the Democrat leadership is putting together in the House of Representatives is going to destroy almost a million jobs and it is doing to affect many times a million jobs. What do I mean by saying affect?

I mean this: If you have a business that is selling a particular product and they are only making a $20,000-a-year profit on this small business and they discover that the mandated health care plan under President Clinton 2 or 3 or 1 is going to cost them an additional $30,000, then they close up. Let us say they are still making slight profit and they intended to put that profit into giving their employees raises so they could increase productivity. Now they have to forgo the raises because there is no money there to do it with.

When you take money out of the payroll, especially when so many American businesses are having trouble meeting that Friday payroll, you either detract from the amount of money you are paying the present employees or you have to lay off employees. That is what this health care bill is all about. It kills jobs and it degrades jobs.

Let me tell the American people what the CONSAD study says. I want to read the States and I am going to read the numbers of jobs that are lost and the number of jobs that are downgraded because of President Clinton’s second plan, that is Clinton-Gephardt.

Alabama, they lose 13,000 jobs; 716,000 jobs affected.

Alaska, Alaska loses 1,200 jobs; 74,000 jobs are affected.

Arizona loses 11,000 jobs; 641,000 jobs are affected.

Arkansas loses 7,000 jobs; 398,000 jobs are affected in Arkansas.

California, my State, loses 108,000 jobs. Over half the jobs that we lost with the aerospace flight are going to be lost with the Clinton health care plan. Over 5 million jobs will be affected.

Colorado, 11,000 jobs are lost; 638,000 jobs are affected.

Connecticut, 15,000 jobs are lost under the Clinton health care plan; 796,000 jobs are affected.

Delaware, 2,800 jobs are lost under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan; 154,000 jobs are affected.

District of Columbia, 4,900 jobs are lost. That is like a large company leaving the District of Columbia and taking all of its jobs with them, except in this case, the jobs do not go anywhere, they are just destroyed. But under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan, 4,900 jobs are lost in the District of Columbia; 240,000 jobs are downgraded.

Florida, 41,000 jobs are lost, 2.3 million jobs are downgraded;

Georgia, 23,000 jobs are lost, 1,200,000 jobs are downgraded under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan.

Idaho, 2,000 jobs are lost, 153,000 jobs affected; Illinois, 47,000 jobs are lost, 2,478,000 jobs are affected, Indiana, 22,000 jobs are lost, 1,168,000 jobs are affected; Iowa, 9,000 jobs are lost, 530,000 jobs are affected.

Kansas, 8,000 jobs are lost, 469,000 jobs are affected or downgraded under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan; Kentucky, 11,000 jobs are lost, 610,000 jobs are downgraded; Louisiana, 11,000 jobs are lost, 645,000 jobs are downgraded.

Maine, 4,000 jobs are lost, 227,000 jobs are downgraded under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan; Maryland, 16,000 jobs are lost, 953,000 jobs are downgraded; Massachusetts, 29,000 jobs are lost, 1.4 million jobs are downgraded; Michigan, 36,000 jobs are lost, 1.8 million jobs are downgraded.

Minnesota, 18,000 jobs are lost, 931,000 jobs are downgraded; Mississippi, 7,000 jobs are lost, 375,000 are downgraded; Missouri, 20,000 jobs are lost in Missouri under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan, and over 1 million jobs are downgraded; Montana, 1,700 jobs are lost in the Big Sky country, 105,000 jobs are downgraded.

Nebraska, 5,000 jobs are lost, 313,000 jobs are downgraded; Nevada, 6,400 jobs are lost, 320,000 jobs are downgraded; New Hampshire, 4,000 jobs lost, 223,000 jobs downgraded, New Jersey, 29,000 jobs lost under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan, 1.6 million jobs downgraded in New Jersey.

New Mexico, 3,000 jobs lost, 205,000 jobs downgraded; New York, 76,000 jobs lost in New York under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan, 3.9 million jobs downgraded; North Carolina, 28,000 jobs lost, 1.4 million jobs are downgraded; North Dakota, 1,600 jobs lost, 96,000 jobs downgraded.

Ohio, 44,000 jobs lost, 2.26 million jobs downgraded; Oklahoma, 8,000 jobs lost, 466,000 jobs are downgraded under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan; Oregon, 8,000 jobs are lost, 499,000 jobs downgraded.

Pennsylvania, here is a whopper, 47,000 jobs are lost in Pennsylvania under Clinton-Gephardt, 2,453,000 jobs are downgraded; Rhode Island, 3,800 jobs lost, 202,000 jobs downgraded; South Carolina, 12,000 jobs lost, 681,000 downgraded; South Dakota, 1,700 jobs lost, 103,000 jobs downgraded under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan.

Tennessee, 19,000 jobs lost, 987,000 jobs downgraded; Texas, 55,000 jobs lost, 3 million jobs are downgraded. No wonder Texans, Democrat and Republican, have not been happy about this brand of socialized medicine.

Utah, 5,000 jobs lost, 309,000 jobs downgraded; Vermont, 1,800 jobs lost, 102,000 jobs downgraded; Virginia, 21,000 jobs lost, 1.2 million jobs downgraded.

Washington, 16,000 jobs lost, 936,000 jobs downgraded; West Virginia, 4,000 jobs lost, 238,000 jobs downgraded; Wisconsin, 19,000 jobs lost, 1,100,000 jobs are downgraded under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan. We end up with Wyoming, 930 jobs lost, 60,000 jobs downgraded.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that this administration and a few Members on the Democrat side are willing to sacrifice American jobs for Government control of health care.

Mr. Speaker, I did not give the figures of jobs that are going to be lost under so-called Clinton-Mitchell, but I would say that it is not going to be much less than the jobs that are lost under Clinton-Gephardt, which are close to 1 million jobs, and there are a couple of other things about the Mitchell plan, the Clinton-Mitchell plan, that I think are important to talk to the American people about.

Mr. Speaker, I want to quote the author of the plan, Senator Mitchell, July 21, 1994. He said these words: “Our plans will be less bureaucratic,” he said this, “more voluntary, and will be phased in over a longer period of time.”

Let me just read to you a few of the 50 new Government agencies that we are going to establish if we pass the Clinton-Mitchell health care plan. Ready to go? Fifty new bureaucracies.

He said this is going to be less bureaucratic and more voluntary. Let me tell you about a few of the non-voluntary bureaucracies which are going to be employing hundreds of thousands of new Federal workers.

We are going to have a National Health Benefits Board. That is section 1211. We are going to have the Health Insurance Purchasing Cooperatives set up by States or local governments. That is section 1321.

There will be the Health Insurance Purchasing Cooperative set up by the Federal Office of Personnel Management, section 1341. We are going to have a National Guaranty Fund for Multi-State Self-Insured Plans.

We are going to have an assistant secretary for the Office of Rural Health Policy. We are going to have a Federal Accreditation, Certification and Enforcement Program. That is going to be called ACE.

We are going to have a State Accreditation, Certification, and Enforcement Program under section 1501. We are going to have a Health Plan Service That is under section 1502.

We are going to have State Risk Adjustment Organizations. That is section 1504. We are going to have an Advisory Committee for Risk Adjustment Programs, section 1504.

We are going to have State Guaranty Funds. That is section 1505. We are going to have State Public Access Sites for Medically Underserved Areas, 1508. We are going to have the Prescription Drug Payment Review Commission, that is section 2004.

Incidentally, Mr. Speaker, let me just say with respect to drugs and the cost of medicines in America, the reason you don’t want to have socialized medicine in America is this: An interesting fact that a lot of Americans discovered after the First Lady and the President went on their binge against the companies that develop medicines and cures, we discovered–and this was a surprise to me, and I think to a lot of our constituents across the country, but it is a fact–the United States of America develops more cures for diseases than all the rest of the nations of the world combined.

Isn’t that incredible? That means you take Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada, all the rest of these civilized nations, and Third World nations, and you add them all up, and the good old United States of America, that has what the Democrat leadership calls this backward system, produces more cures that save the lives of your family and families around the world that all the rest of these so-called progressive nations, remember, Cuba is in that group, too, combined.

Why do we produce more cures than all the rest of the nations combined? I would submit it is not because Japan does not have great universities, and probably some pretty smart people; it is not because France and Great Britain do not have good universities. It is because none of them have the free enterprise system that we have.

Mr. Speaker, I have a gentleman in San Diego, a friend of mine named Bill Otterson, who suffers from a fairly rare disease. He and some other folks told me about a drug called Intron-A. Intron-A tells you why you do not want to pull the free enterprise system out of the development of medicine.

Intron-A costs $100 million to develop and when they first put it together, when they first took a chance on it and decided to burn up $100 million and bet that it would be a winner, they knew that there was only a small group of Americans initially who would be able to access or use that drug, and that was this very small pool of people who have what is known as hairy cell leukemia, a very unique type of leukemia. There are only about 1,000 folks in the United States who have that brand of leukemia. Yet a group of private investors put $100 million forward to develop this drug called Intron-A. They knew that initially it would take care of folks that had hairy cell leukemia. Of course those folks were pretty happy it was being developed. But they thought it also might, if it succeeded and if their gamble paid off, be able to address 17 or 18 other types of diseases. They were right.

Today Intron-A is used to treat about 17 or 18 major diseases. It is a big success. It brings in about $500 million a year to the United States from countries all over the world that use it. It was developed because we have a free enterprise system. All those people,including people like Bill Otterson who are themselves afflicted with these medical diseases that are treated by these miracle drugs say, “Please don’t socialize medicine” because if Mrs. Clinton, respectfully, had been around to tell the Intron-A people, “If you develop Intron-A and put $100 million of your own money into it, I am only going to let you charge $1 a pill when you develop it,” would it ever have been developed? Would the people who have hairy cell leukemia ever have had a chance to be cured or helped? Would Bill Otterson and the other hundreds of thousands who now use Intron-A to save their lives have a chance to have it? Absolutely not.

Mr. Speaker, the consensus of the medical community, including experts from places likes Johns Hopkins and other great medical centers is, if we socialize medicine and the creation of new medical cures, what the companies will do is simply this: They will go to a system in which they do not take any medical risks, because nobody is going to go out and put $50 million into a drug that you can only get $1 a pill for. So what they will do is they will take our present inventory of drugs and they will incrementally increase the capability of those drugs. They will try to research them a little bit and make them a little bit better, but they will never go out there and try to whip that new disease that nobody has beaten so far. They will not find a cure for cancer. They will not find any of the wonderful cures that America has found under freedom. it is kind of interesting, is it not?

A person does not have to be a wealthy person to understand how very, very important it is to have a free enterprise system in which people go out and take a risk and having taken a risk, they develop a system that saves lives by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, by the millions.

Mr. Speaker, I see my friend, the gentleman from Maryland has come to the floor and I would be happy to yield to him if he wants me to yield.

Alexander J. Madison  -  July 13, 2009

Barack Hussein Obama is not a stupid man.  Regardless of how and why he was accepted to Columbia and Harvard Law School, he apparently was intelligent enough to achieve passing grades.  (I say apparently, because no one has actually seen his college transcripts).  It is also true that he is not a slothful man.  Through his well-rehearsed,   savvy, and populist political rhetoric and demeanor, he has been able to inspire left leaning Americans to follow and support him with great enthusiasm.  The type of enthusiasm that has been decidedly missing from conservative American circles for the past 20 years.

But if history’s scars have taught us anything about national leaders and politicians, it is that intelligence and cunning do not necessarily equate to wisdom.  And Barack Hussein Obama has yet to demonstrate that he possesses even the vaguest ability to produce wise and reasoned judgments.

   
You are not wise if you claim to be a constitutional law professor, yet do not comprehend the basics of the Constitution.   Where, pray tell, in the US Constitution does it allow for the federal government to seize private companies, such as GM and Chrysler, and then have the president’s underlings decide which auto dealerships are allowed to stay in business?  Where does the Constitution permit the Feds to create a government run health insurance entity -that will surely undercut private providers - in order to “keep them honest and help keep prices down”?  Toss in a career-long hostility to the Second Amendment, and it becomes obvious that Obama subscribes to the nebulous “living breathing document” school of constitutional study.

You are not wise if you neither understand nor appreciate America’s standing in the world, as a beacon of freedom and righteousness; and the enemy of evil.  In his travels, Obama has never once failed to apologize for America to people who are either envious or disdainful of our nation.  He apologized in Turkey for America’s “strained relations” with that country and with islam in general.  He apologized in Cairo for the US flat lining Saddam and establishing an Iraqi democracy in the Middle East.  He apologized during his campaign in Berlin for “our actions around the world that haven’t lived up to our best intentions”.  He apologized at the recent G8 summit in Italy for America causing fictitious ‘global warming’.  And perhaps most egregiously – standing the Monroe Doctrine on its ear, he apologized that the United States has “not always stood as it should” in Latin America, while attempting to justify his jaw-dropping support for reinstating a Hugo Chavez sidekick back into the Honduran presidency.

You are not wise if you do not understand the nature of our enemies and rivals, or the history of nation-states.  Promoting unilateral nuclear disarmament that will sacrifice our arsenal for leftist, politically correct “peace in our time” may put a smile on Vladimir Putin’s face, but it is dismantling the leverage that generations of patriotic cold warriors constructed.  De-funding missile defenses and advanced space-based weaponry may be the cause of Champagne celebrations in Beijing, Pyongyang, and San Francisco, but it will leave our military in a position of inferiority for the first time in decades.  And coddling terrorists by handing them US Constitutional rights on the battlefield may please the ACLU and Bill Ayers, but it a policy of national suicide.

So how do conservatives fight this onslaught of misguided, unwise, and dangerous policies?

1.  Conservatives must reject ‘political correctness’!  It was the GOP’s and John McCain’s politically correct instincts that prevented them from exposing Obama’s radicalism during the campaign.  The best they could cough up was that Obama’s policies seemed “socialistic”. Balderdash.  Obama’s policies then and now are rank marxist constructs.  Obama has never had anyone other than far left radicals for mentors.  Even when the MSM handed the McCain camp the anti-American, racist Jeremiah Wright on a silver platter, they refused it.  McCain gave some sorry excuse about not wanting to impugn a man’s religion.  What does hate for Israel and America and gross distortions of US history have to do with a man’s religion?  Conservatives must be willing to point out that everything Obama stands for goes directly against the grain of our Constitution, our history, capitalism, and common sense.  When Obama nominates a racist “wise Latina” for the Supreme Court, conservatives have the obligation to point out that racism and defeat her, instead of excusing it.  The radical Latino groups that threaten conservatives by vowing to work against them have no intention of EVER supporting a conservative.  John McCain’s Spanish language Amnesty ads, which aired throughout the SW during the campaign, earned him absolutely nothing but scorn from Latinos, as evidenced by his precipitous drop of support in comparison to George Bush.   And keep in mind that in 2000 and 2004 George Bush was dead set against “amnesty”. Instead of dismissing out of hand the research that conservative bloggers uncover - because afterall they’re just bloggers - patriotic politicians need to assign staff to monitor these efforts and chase hard after the facts (while dismissing the chaff).  If they had done so in 2008, Barack Obama would still be a harmless back bencher in the US Senate. 

2.  Conservatives must fight relentlessly to block Obama’s marxist agenda.  The most effective way to resonate with the American people is to fiercely defend the constitution while advocating American Exceptionalism, local control, tradition, and rejection of the nanny state.  We must consistently draw attention to the deficiencies of the existing federal bureaucratic cluster-f*ck and the horror stories it produces.  If the democrats can trot out “victims” of the – you name it – insurance industry, second hand smoke, the mining industry, big pharmaceuticals, etc, then surely conservatives can find scads of genuine victims of the IRS, the EPA, OSHA, Medicare, and  judicial activism.  No compromises on the socialist fantasy called ‘Cap and Trade’.  No compromises on a health bill that expands the reach of the federal government in any way, shape or form.  Conservatives must work tirelessly to expose and deflect Obama’s myriad plans to neuter our military - with everything from repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, to slashing our Missile Defenses, to canceling funding for our best fighter jet, to unilateral nuclear disarmament. If Obama “wins” these legislative battles, the consequences must rest solely on the shoulders of the president and his cohorts Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.  Giving these plans the legitimacy of “bi-partisan” cover is a recipe for conservatives to remain in the wilderness.

3.  Conservatives must offer Conservative solutions. There is no lack of great ideas to address the pressing issues of the day.  The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Club for Growth, and dare I say the Falcon Party all have some excellent ideas to move America forward towards liberty, security and prosperity. And there is no lack of data to support jettisoning the FALSE pressing issues such as ‘global warming’, gays in the military, and amnesty for illegal aliens.  Instead of a 2nd or 3rd stimulus plan that wastes trillions, advocate slashing capital gains and corporate tax rates to be the most business friendly nation on earth.  Instead of regulating coal out of existence for the ruse of saving the planet, advocate fast tracking nuclear power and clean coal plant permits, with donations of federal lands to build them on. Instead of letting Obama pick the winners and losers of the emerging “green” technologies, advocate tax incentives to further their development and demonstration. Instead of surrendering to the siren song of socialized, federally run healthcare, advocate the elimination of regulations that force insurance providers to include things like abortion and mental health services for those who have no desire to have this crap in their policies.  Instead of dangling federal dollars over the heads of state/city run schools to have them standardize per the wishes of federal bureaucrats, advocate the elimination of the Department of Education altogether; and refund all the billions of dollars to the states that are currently being collected, skimmed, and then returned with sticky strings attached. Instead of drastically cutting dollars out of the defense budget to pay other government expenses, advocate the elimination of  25% of the federal government departments and personnel. Americans will be shocked at the amount of useless, expensive, anti-constitutional nonsense that exists in the federal leviathan, if conservatives take the time to fully illustrate it.
  
With the confidence our founders had in capitalism, individual liberty, private property, and constitutionally limited government, conservatives must move forward to challenge and destroy the entire premise of government hyper-activism that has led us to where we are today. And with Obama now in the oval office, this activism, better known as marxism, threatens to take America from a free enterprise superpower to a sickly vassal state. America is worth saving – and only a return to conservative governance can spare her from this decline.

Wisdom is what our founding fathers had.  And they created a constitutional republic.  Cunning is what Saul Alinsky had, and what David Axelrod, Hillary Clinton, Bill Ayers and Barack Obama have.  And their efforts to tear down this republic will fail when conservatives stand proudly on the shoulders of America’s giants and reclaim our heritage.

by Charley Reese

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton- picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.

No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a SPEAKER, who stood up and criticized G.W. Bush ALONE for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.

Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto.

REPLACE THE SCOUNDRELS

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility. (and all should be convicted of dereliction of duty as defined by their oath of office, and in some cases outright treason.)

I can’t think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in IRAQ, it’s because they want them in IRAQ.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess. The election is not that far away!

It is time to go to work.

Barack Hussein Obama has prevailed in the 2008 presidential election.  Obama not only carried all the ‘blue’ states that John Kerry won in 2004, he also flipped several ‘red’ states, such as Colorado, Nevada, Florida and Virginia, delivering a crushing electoral defeat to John McCain.  And the blame falls squarely on the GOP for allowing this Marxist to become president of the United States.

  It has been interesting and amusing to read the numerous ‘post mortems’ from conservative and liberal pundits alike.  Yet not one of the post mortems has identified the real reason McCain got clobbered.  It was not because of Sarah Palin, as many liberals claimed.  Palin was the only thing that kept McCain in the game.   It was not because middle America suddenly decided they like leftist solutions as opposed to conservative solutions.  McCain offered few such solutions himself.

  The reason Obama prevailed was because the GOP allowed a false narrative about Obama to stand – a narrative painting BHO as a moderate, reasonable, and competent legislator.

  First things First

  John McCain, for all his problems – deep distrust amongst conservatives, an unpopular Bush occupying the Whitehouse, an ill timed “fundamentals of the economy are strong” gaffe, and a less than stellar campaign team – could have put himself in a strong position to win with a single, courageous act: Opposing the socialist “bailout”.  What would have been proof of a genuine free market Maverick, willing to stand and fight big spending socialism, instead turned into a Monty Python skit.  McCain first ran with his instincts and stated he did not like the idea of a taxpayer bailout, then swiftly reversed himself – deciding it was his golden opportunity to “lead”.  He declared a phony “suspension” of his campaign and flew back to Washington to loudly promote this boondoggle.  By doing so, not only did he look contrived and silly, McCain ended up on the exact same side of the issue as Nancy Pelosi, George Bush, Harry Reid, the GOP leadership and Barack Obama.   And by being on the same side as Obama, his subsequent claims of prudent fiscal stewardship versus Obama’s ‘tax and spend’ liberalism rang exceedingly hollow.

  This episode cost McCain dearly.  After chipping away at Obama’s lead all summer, after the negative publicity surrounding Obama and Jeremiah Wright, and then introducing Sarah Palin to America during the Republican National Convention, the wind was at McCain’s back.  Palin hit a home run in her speech, and McCain appeared quite clever for selecting her.  The conservative base was starting to mobilize.

  Then President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson announced a financial ‘crisis’ to the world; and McCain (and the GOP leaders) crumpled like a cheap suit.  Granted, there were other footprints on his John Thomas, such as the Spanish language ads touting his amnesty plan, his foolish call for the feds to usurp individual mortgages, and his cringe producing knocks against “big oil”; all which helped erode conservative enthusiasm.  But the “bailout” debacle was the big one.  McCain not only missed the opportunity to side with the people (70% strongly opposed), but he tied himself closer to Bush at a time when Bush’s approval rating slumped from bad to worse.  Within 10 days, the polls dramatically shifted from McCain up from 2 to 8 points, to an Obama lead, which was never relinquished.

  That was John McCain’s main contribution to his loss (other than being John McCain), but the entire GOP, including the RNC, McCain’s advisors, the NRCC, the NRSC, and other various Republican organs failed as well.  They not only failed to win, but more importantly, they failed to prevent a dyed in the wool, radical Marxist from ascending to the presidency.  How?  By not telling America that Barack Hussein Obama IS a dyed in the wool, radical Marxist!!!  It is a nearly unforgivable crime to have failed to “put country first” and do everything in their power to keep this slippery and dangerous subversive from winning.

  Had they exposed Barack Obama for who he really is, instead of bowing to the winds of political correctness and decorum, Obama and his democrat allies would have been beaten like ugly, red-headed stepchildren.  Instead, they allowed Obama to dictate the narrative of his own life, knowing full well that the MSM was going to support him 100%.  The ads that the GOP did run mentioning Bill Ayers were sporadic, and mostly ineffectual, because they never followed up on why it mattered.  They never explained to the public that Bill Ayers is STILL a radical Marxist in every sense of the word, and was such when Obama ‘palled’ around with him.  They never explained that Obama and Ayers pushed anti-American, radical education “reform” together.  They never wove it into the larger story line of Obama’s entire life – a life full of radical associations, and his own Marxist activities.  And they failed to clearly demonstrate how that radicalism is setting Obama’s agenda this very day.  It was an EPIC FAILURE on the part of the GOP!

  The Real Story

  Talk Radio has a massive audience, but it is a self selecting audience.  Apolitical and swing voters generally do not tune in, and most liberals don’t either.  The only way for Obama’s real narrative to have reached the masses who don’t hang onto Rush’s every word, and who don’t spend their time reading Red State and Free Republic, was for the GOP hierarchy (including McCain) to raise hell about it.  It was the only way the MSM was going to mention it.  Instead we witnessed the spectacle of the RNC and McCain campaign scolding those in the Republican Party who tried to run such ads.  And when a very brave congressman, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), appeared on Chris Matthews’ program and declared her suspicion that Obama may hold anti-American views, the NRCC pulled her funding and she was treated like a pariah in the party.  Not one GOP leader rushed to her defense.  It was a prime opportunity for Republicans to tell the world WHY Obama’s views should be considered un-American.  Instead, they cut and ran, just like they did from every Obama controversy.

  No matter how many uppercuts talkers such as Mark Levin, Rush, Hugh Hewitt, and Savage delivered to Obama’s chin, and no matter how much dirt the rightwing blogosphere uncovered, the powers that be in the Republican Party refused to join the fray, leaving the MSM to counter and gloss over anything negative about Obama that seeped into the national dialogue.

  The Republicans have lost their nerve.  Worse, they have lost their revulsion to socialism and Marxism and have devolved into politically correct, overfed capons.   No other explanation suffices to illustrate their frightened, AWOL status on the following subjects:

• Obama’s mentor for roughly 10 years in Hawaii before he moved off to college was a man named Frank Marshall Davis.  Obama reveals “’Frank” as his respected mentor and adviser in Dreams of My Father, and recalls him fondly – nights of reading poetry together, drinking booze, and learning about the plight of blacks in America.  Frank Marshall Davis was a radical Marxist and racist - and a pedophile.  (Read all about Frank on Wikipedia here and in more detail from American Thinker here).

• Obama, in his first book “Dreams”, bluntly stated that once in college he actively sought out radicals as his friends.  Quote:  “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”   How many of these radical and Marxist friends did the MSM seek out for interviews?  Absolutely ZERO.  (Read “Obama’s Socialist Roots Run Deep” here).

• Obama was a member of the New Party in the early to mid 1990s.  The New Party was a group of radical leftists founded in order to unite the Communists, the Socialist Workers Party, Community Organizers, and other various fringe groups into a more effective political party.  There are photographs of Obama proudly standing with its leaders and articles in their publications celebrating his state Senate victory, and his membership in the NP.  (More at Newsbusters here and Human Events here).

• Obama’s African father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was a card carrying Marxist.  Though as a child Barack did not know his father, once older he began serious correspondence with him.  And he subsequently dedicated his first book to this man in 1995.  Obama Sr., amongst other things, advocated the “communal ownership of land and the forced confiscation of privately controlled land”, nationalizing foreign owned properties in his native Kenya, and “no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay”.  Pure Marxism, and a heavy influence on Obama Jr.  (PrestoPundit has a good primer on Sr.’s marxism here.)

• Obama’s very own mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was also a dedicated leftist her entire life.   Obama credits her with having the most influence on his young life, saying “”the dominant figure in my formative years… The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics.”  She has been described by her friends as a “fellow traveler” – code word for communist.  (Townhall.com has more here).

• Obama married Michelle Robinson.  While Michelle can certainly be charming, she had to learn on the campaign trail to not portray America as a greatly flawed and depressing country – which of course only her husband could fix.  Twice she stated she was “for the first time proud of my country” before such nonsense reached the media and she was forced to backpedal and whitewash.  Her admonition for women to reject careers in “corporate America” in favor of “community service” reeks of class warfare.  Her Princeton college thesis is pathetic race victim pablum sprinkled with hackneyed socialism. (Slate dissects it brutally here.)

• For twenty plus years Obama (later joined by wife and kids) sat in the pews of Trinity United Christian Church, home of his “great friend and mentor”, Pastor Jeremiah Wright.  Everyone is familiar with Wright’s racist and anti-American rants that received some media coverage back in June.  However, the larger story is that Rev. Wright and his ‘church’ are devoted adherents to Black Liberation Theology.  Black Liberation Theology is a particularly noxious and ardently Marxist worldview.  And Barack chose this institution willfully and continues to heap praise on it, despite being forced to finally toss the good Reverend under the bus during his campaign.  (Much more on BLT here and here).

• Barack Obama traveled to Kenya in 2006 as a sitting US Senator and campaigned (illegally so) for socialist presidential candidate, Raila Odinga.  Odinga was defeated, but due to his post election agitation, riots ensued and more than 1500 Kenyan citizens were murdered.  Kofi Annan brokered a power sharing agreement to stop the violence and Odinga was appointed Prime Minister.  This is a man who was so enamored with Fidel Castro that he named his first born son Fidel in his honor. (Newsweek’s sanitized essay on Odinga here, and the real Obama/Odinga story here from the Washington Times).

• Obama, as we have found out from the unrepentant terrorist himself since the election, was much more than just “neighbors” with Bill Ayers.  According to Bill, they are “family friends”.  That Obama was blatantly lying about the extent of their relationship is inarguable.  But even the relationship that was ‘on record’, as political allies in Chicago politics, and allies in getting their education ‘agenda’ realized through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, was highly exploitable.  For starters, Ayers may have quit advocating bombings, but he never once stopped advocating Marxist dogma, especially as it applied to education in America.  And Obama was in lockstep, going so far to give a glowing review of Ayers’ 1997 book, A Kind and Just Parent, praising the Marxist gibberish as “a searing and timely account of the juvenile court system”.  It has also been shown that there is a very real possibility that Ayers either edited or co-wrote Obama’s ‘Dreams’ book.  (NR’s Stanley Kurtz has more on the Obama/Ayers working relationship).

• Obama has an ongoing relationship with Code Pink, the Marxist, anti-war outfit most famous for protesting outside of Walter Reed military hospital and at military recruitment offices.  Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans was a principle Obama ‘bundler’ during the campaign, raising tens of thousands of dollars, and arranging events for Obama.  Even after Evans stormed the stage at a Palin speech and was arrested, the MSM refused to report on the links and friendship with Barack Hussein Obama. (FreeRepublic covered this topic best, here, here, and here).

The above close associations are only a partial list, for brevity’s sake.  But there are many others, including radical islamist and former black panther Khalid al-Mansour, a man identified by civil rights leader (and Obama supporter) Percy Sutton as ‘sponsoring’ Obama during his Harvard days.  Obama denies knowing him, yet al-Mansour and Sutton told the media the opposite.  Also, “close friend” Rashid al Khalidi, Black Liberation soulmate and anti-semite Louis Farrakhan,  his self described “spiritual advisers” such as the Marxist priest Father Pfleger and Reverend James “house niggers” Meeks, official campaign artist and Marxist propagandist Shepard Fairey, and Communist Party USA board member Tim Wheeler, who was honored by Obama with his own blog on the official Obama/Biden campaign website; all remained virtual unknowns.  It goes on and on.

So what prevented the GOP and the McCain campaign from exploiting the history of Barack Obama and telling the true story about his politics and worldview?  Shouldn’t the urge to prevent such a radical from gaining the presidency of this blessed nation have outweighed any fear of being labeled racists and fear mongers by Obama’s cheering section in the MSM?  Only a fool or a leftist could have been comforted by Obama’s attempts to sound notes of moderation during the general election.  

There was a reason that Obama received endorsements from North Korea’s official news outlet, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, the Communist Party in the US (CPUSA), France’s Socialist Party,  The New Black Panther Party, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the radical Palestinian party Hamas, British communist MP George Galloway,  Libyan dictator Momar Kaddafi,  Calyspo Louie’s Nation of Islam, Nicaraguan communist Daniel Ortega, and virtually every radical, leftist, socialist and Marxist organization in existence.

Yet the GOP leaders watched in silence as conservatives in the blogosphere and talk radio documented these endorsements and associations and tied them to his voting record and his current policies.  Policies that include radical gun control, giving out welfare and calling it tax cuts, pushing for surrender to the islamists in Iraq, lifting all restrictions on abortion, pushing an education policy right out of Bill Ayers’ handbook, using Marxist Saul Alinsky’s tactics for polluting the election process, threatening US sovereignty with global UN tax proposals and unfettered illegal immigration, his call for a powerful “Civilian National Defense Force”, his promises to gut missile defenses and many other high tech military systems, a radical energy agenda aimed at curbing fictitious “global warming”, and his proposal for nationalizing health care.

Fellow conservatives, next time you find yourself enraged about a far reaching, socialist Obama policy which erodes and undermines our military capabilities, our free market economy, our sovereignty, or our Christian heritage, be sure to thank the leaders in the Republican Party.  When it was time to stand and fight with us and expose the Marxist candidate to the American people, they chose the poisonous ‘safety’ of political correctness instead; to their eternal shame and to our nation’s catastrophic detriment.

To our fellow American countrymen,

Today, we invite you to join us on a journey to form a political alliance that will reshape our history and steer us back to the wisdom of our founding principles. If your blood runs a patriotic red, white & blue; if you wish to see the Federal Government function within its constitutional limitations; if you are tired of politically correct platitudes and policies that defy common sense; and if you reject the creeping socialism that both major political parties have embraced, please take a few minutes to learn about the FALCON Party and our agenda for America’s future.

We are not asking for money or oaths of allegiance. We are not even requiring you to leave the party to which you currently belong. But we are asking you to join us in this fight for America’s soul. We are seeking friends, supporters and allies who share the values of our heritage, values that were reflected and imbedded into our national character by a group of inspired patriots at our country’s founding. 

For those who want to be organizers on the state or local level, we can certainly use your talents. For those who are, or wish to be, modern day pamphleteers in support of our conservative, pro-America agenda, we will give you an additional platform (or at least a link to your blog). For those that just want to stop by our website (www.falconparty.com) and offer moral support at this time, we welcome the encouragement. Any level of effort in between is also appreciated. Our goals are your goals. They are ambitious, but realistic. We intend to nominate candidates for national office by the 2012 presidential election year cycle. We intend to become a preeminent voice of conservatism in the years to come. We are not just a political party, but also a think tank, an advocate for American Exceptionalism, and a place to gather for those interested in US history, the foundations of our Republic, and our place in the world today. 

We are not ‘neo-conservatives’, ‘paleo-conservatives’, or ‘third way’ conservatives; we are simply conservatives - American patriots who believe in fighting our enemies both foreign and domestic, slashing the unseemly bureaucracy that usurps our God given freedoms, and restoring the constitutionally proscribed powers between the federal government, the States and the people. 

Why FALCON, you may ask? Our party was founded by rock ribbed, Reaganite conservatives who are more than disenchanted with the direction of the Republican Party. We are not intending to sabotage the genuine conservative members of the GOP. We will continue to support them with our voices and our alliance. By being an open party ourselves, we anticipate many GOPers will sign up for FALCON, yet retain their Republican membership for the time being (we anticipate the same for Libertarians and Constitution Party members). 

Our name, FALCON is an acronym, and represents Fealty to America, Liberty, Conservatism, Optimism, and Nobility.

There are numerous issues that must be urgently addressed to keep the United States from decaying into a ‘formerly great country’. America cannot afford to lose its economic or military superpower status, especially as we see unfriendly nations and alliances rising to challenge us in every facet of human endeavor. 

For decades now, the socialists in our country, the Democrats, have worked to limit individual freedom - the catalyst for our greatness, grow the federal government’s reach and scope well beyond its constitutional limits, and coddle our enemies – from the USSR, to Cuba, to the Sandinistas to this latest wave of Islamic jihadists. While the GOP is generally more sensible and conservative than the Democrats, they have resigned themselves to co-opting much of the Democratic Party platform. We intend to stop the nonsense, and re-establish conservative principles and governance across the board. Some issues requiring immediate attention include:

China: 

While the GOP leadership blindly encourages the hyper-industrialization of China at the expense of our national security and industrial base with ignorant tax and trade policy, we propose to treat China as they treat us – as adversaries. China has aligned itself with every unsavory regime across the globe, has peddled weapons to most, and has extremely aggressive military and corporate espionage programs. It is time to call out their malfeasance and well past time to stop relying on this communist country for Treasury bill purchases to keep our system afloat. It is beyond dangerous, and must end.

Bankrupting Bureaucracy: 

The good news is that the Bush Tax cuts (famously opposed by one John McCain) have spurred economic growth and record receipts into the federal Treasury. The bad news is that spending on foolish and unconstitutional programs continues to lead us towards insolvency. Instead of fundamentally reforming Medicare, the GOP led the charge to add hundreds of billions more in outlays for prescription drugs. Instead of gutting the Department of Education, the GOP worked hand in glove with the Democrats to grow this ineffectual monstrosity. Instead of demanding responsibility from the CIA and the FBI and tearing down the walls of communication to improve our intelligence gathering, they added another onerous layer of bureaucracy known as the Department of Homeland Security, which has given us ‘random’ airport screenings of little old ladies. FALCON estimates that 40% to 60% of what the federal government currently does can and should be eliminated.

Taxation:

 We have heard both parties talk about ‘tax reform’ for decades. Yet nothing ever gets accomplished. The GOP lowers marginal rates one year, then the Democrats (or Republicans) raise them the next. All the while, the tax code grows more unwieldy. There are solid, viable proposals for both a flat income tax and a national sales tax. While significantly different, each offers serious reform and simplification and a move away from penalizing the most productive sectors of the economy. It is time to send the vast majority of IRS employees and tax consultants into a productive line of work.

Global Warming: 

The GOP is in the process of nominating a candidate, John McCain, whose policy on so called ‘climate change’ is nearly indistinguishable from those of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And by all indications, a growing segment of GOP leadership - from President Bush to Newt Gingrich to the RNC - are jumping on this bandwagon….all for the biggest hoax in history. ANWR and the US coastal waters should be humming with the sound of oil rigs, and refineries and power plants should be sprouting like mushrooms across the fruited plains. Instead, we get hot air from Washington and energy bills that ban the incandescent light bulb.

Sovereignty: 

The key to survival as a nation is to not hamstring ourselves with this festering push for ‘globalism’ in the name of altruistic endeavors. We must reject the Law of the Sea Treaty that gives the United Nations control of the world’s oceans. We must secure our borders to allow only those we invite to enter this country and swiftly remove all who have illegally gained entry. We must reject a WTO that has the power (recently demonstrated) to dictate US corporate tax policy. The states and the people created our federal government with limited authority. There is no room whatsoever for supranational entities having any authority over US citizens or our elected representatives, period.

Military Power: 

We fully support the eradication of Islamic terrorists and terror harboring regimes that threaten the United States. But we need a military that can easily win the skirmishes, such as the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, while simultaneously retaining the power to crush the threat of hostile nation states, including a budding China-Russia alliance. The budget for defense spending has spiraled downward since the Reagan years; from over 6% of GDP in 1986 to only 3% by the year 1999. For fiscal year 2009, the highest estimate - including the costs for the Iraq and Afghan theatres - is 4.7%. For comparison, during the height of the Vietnam War, defense spending was 9.4%. Defending our nation is one of a handful of constitutionally enumerated responsibilities for the federal government, and FALCON will fight for an immediate return to Reagan era defense budgets.

These are just a few of the issues that confront us all as citizens of this great republic. Conservatives must come together now and turn this ship around. Despite the seriousness of the task before us, we must do so with good humor and cheer, not pessimism and foreboding, because it is truly an honor and privilege to work for the renewal of our nation; the greatest God has ever placed on this earth. It is our turn to do the heavy lifting that so many generations of Americans did before us, and hand off to our posterity what Washington, Madison, Jefferson and Franklin handed to theirs. We intend to ally ourselves with other great conservative organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, the Eagle Forum, the Center for Security Policy, and many others to affect this change. Learn more at our website and contact us to get involved in the next phase of the Reagan Revolution. The country cannot afford to wait

God Bless the good old USA.

Sincerely,

Alexander J. Madison.
(www.falconparty.com)

Philosophy

America

The US Constitution is the finest and most enlightened governing document in the history of nations.  The blessings of the Almighty were present as the men from the various former colonies crafted a system of republican rule that struck the fundamental balance between God-given individual freedoms, the autonomy of the States, and the necessity of a limited, but strong triumvirate federal government.  The FALCON party recognizes not only the brilliance of our Constitution, but also the solemn duty to abide by its provisions.  The Founders provided a mechanism to change the stipulations held within the Constitution, and the Congress, the Executive Branch, the Courts and the States can not add or subtract from it, except through the Amendment Process.

The preservation of this nation is our paramount duty.  Evil has always been and will always be.  We will allow no nation to threaten us with impunity.  Our military strength must always be capable of defeating multiple, simultaneous threats, whether those threats are from the belligerence of another nation, multiple nations allied together, terror organizations, or any combination thereof.  We shall maintain the strength sufficient for any adversary to desire peace instead of war, and to vanquish any foolish enough to choose war.  We shall strive for peaceful and cordial relationships with other nations who seek peaceful and cordial relations.  But we will never turn a blind eye to despotism, tyranny and communism and will continue to prod such regimes to offer freedom to their peoples and inspire peoples living in such states to demand it.

America is the “last, best hope” on earth, and we can never allow the Europeanization to spread to our shores.  Unfettered political correctness, socialism, militant secularism, feminism and the consolidation of power into the hands of bureaucrats have neutered most European nations to the point of impotence.  By protecting and restoring the rights of the individual and protecting and restoring the sovereignty of our nation, we intend to prevent the decline into moral and political relativism that has infected far too many nations.

Liberty

We believe that the Constitution, as written and amended, is the best bulwark to guarantee our citizens’ liberty.  Unfortunately, politicians from both major parties have colluded over the decades to erode certain freedoms that are guaranteed and protected.  The perfidy includes such things as ‘handgun bans’ in cities or towns in violation of the 2nd Amendment, restrictions on free speech under the banner of ‘campaign finance reform’, judges allowing property to be seized for the sake of higher tax receipts, and the enhancement of criminal penalties via “hate crimes” legislation.  These are but a few examples of unconstitutional ‘law’ taking precedence over the supreme law, the Constitution.  Our country has a federal government created by the people and the states; and it is imperative that the proper perspective and constitutional balance be restored and the overreach fostered by each branch of the federal government be permanently reversed.

The United States of America has been the most significant and consistent facilitator of good in the world.  Not only are we blessed with a system of government that has allowed our citizens to pursue individual ambition, opportunity, and faith, we have also risen as a nation in opposition to the dark forces that have enslaved or threatened to enslave millions of humans across the globe.  Though it has never been America’s goal to be the savior of western civilization, that daunting challenge has been thrust upon us on several occasions; most recently by the rise of Islamic radicalism.  We shall defeat such radicalism and eradicate the threat it poses to the United States and our national interests.

We honor our Military personnel - past, present and future - for the sacrifices they make on our behalf.  We shall remain the land of the free and the home of the brave, because of the brave.

Conservatism

Only one political philosophy is compatible with the maintenance of a Constitutional Republic, and that philosophy is conservatism.  FALCON understands that “limited government” does not simply mean advocating lower taxes than what the Democrat Party proposes, but also entails a significantly smaller footprint for the necessary bureaucratic institutions, and the complete elimination of the unnecessary and unconstitutional bureaucratic institutions.  In addition, we must fight the natural urge of career politicians and political parties that deem it to be the federal government’s job to address every conceivable ill in society with more legislation.  Recent federal forays into issues ranging from steroid use in professional sports, to the sub-prime mortgage ‘crisis’, to the unprecedented wasteful spending after Hurricane Katrina, to the massive shakedown of American tobacco companies demonstrate that neither major party understands the constitutionally mandated limitations on federal power.

Our intention is to restore those limitations.  We understand that there are issues that were not foreseen and could not have been foreseen by the drafters of our Constitution.  In such cases, it is important to understand the guiding philosophy of the founders, and certainly that guiding philosophy did not include a heavy handed federal leviathan, capable of micro-managing the affairs of the people and the States. 

Conservatism is also about self preservation as a nation.  And as a party, FALCON will fight all attempts to hand authority to supra-national entities that have no constitutional basis for dictating policies of our government or inhibiting the freedoms of our citizens.  We will also fight any attempts to sign treaties that place our national interests below that of other nations.

Optimism

We do not observe the existing situation in the world and within our borders and declare that everything is wonderful and heading in the right direction.  On the contrary, many situations call for an immediate course reversal.  If we did not recognize the dangers and pitfalls of past bad policies and many of the current bad policies, FALCON would not be in existence.  So why the optimism?  Our optimism comes from multiple sources, and will keep us standing and fighting for this great nation, regardless of current circumstances. 

First is our faith in the Good Lord.  The problems we face today are in most cases no worse than problems faced by our forefathers.  Yet through prayerful reflection, thanksgiving, and supplication to the Almighty, and the willingness to work hard and sacrifice, they made it through the challenges they faced.  So we move forward knowing that God is not only just, but also favors those who stand against evil.

The American people have shown through their actions, time and again, that tough obstacles can indeed be overcome when the outcome is in the balance.  Rugged individualism is one of the hallmarks of the American character and when such rugged individuals are presented with the facts of a dire situation, they will work together to steer a new course, then go about their lives when the work is done. 

Finally, we draw optimism from the notion that conservatism itself is always the better option for governance.  And to that end, we intend to cut through the media noise and political party rhetoric and take our case straight to the American citizenry, and leave the bitterness, obfuscations and timidity to the current political powers.

Nobility

The nobility we refer to is not that of historical European society or birthright, where the elite, the powerful, and the wealthy were given the reigns power.  Rather we refer to the nobility as defined by doing things which are noble in purpose, character, spirit and moral standing.  The founding of our nation was a noble endeavor.  Our growth from 13 colonies to the most prosperous and free nation on earth was a noble endeavor.  And our task at hand, to purge the creeping socialism and to re-energize the people to demand a truer path of conservatism and constitutionalism is a noble endeavor.

Many examples of the nobility of the American statesman have been recorded, from George Washington to George Walker Bush, but we reprint this from Benjamin Franklin at the 1787 Constitutional Convention as one of our favorites, from the man dubbed “The First American”:

“In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the Contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection.- Our prayers, Sir, were heard, & they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth- that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move-that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that Service.” 

 THE FALCON PARTY PLATFORM

In The Site Content Pages

Fellow citizens,
Welcome to the new home of the Falcon Party web site.

Now more than ever in this day and time we the people are responsible for the character of their Government. If that body is ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, which it is, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.
If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.

“So, as we begin, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.” (Ronald Reagan)

Thank You, and may God Bless America
Note: The FALCON Party website will be up and running soon. In the meantime, for more information please contact

 ajmadison1787@yahoo.com or webmaster@falconparty.com