Arkady's Thoughts

After Ben Nelson sold his principles down the river I posed a theoretical question on FaceBook of whether or not the entire Senate is broken. In a clip below, MS NBC, spends two minutes discussing special interest payoffs, sweetheart deals and special breaks for privileged groups.  I have no idea what is more stunning, the fact that MSNBC is actually reporting this or that our Senators are brazen enough to pull this off.  After the 17th Amendment some 80 years ago the policies and responsibilities of Senators dramatically changed.  Because Senators are now elected by the people they no longer have a responsibility to the country, but to the forces that elect them.  This in turn prompts Senators to ensure that they get re-elected or in the worst case slap their name on a piece of federally funded property thereby establishing their prominence for ages to come.    Has this gotten completely out of control?  ObamaCare in it's current version is ext...

Steve Crowder's new video shows a chilling tale of a once prosperous and mighty city brought down to it's knees.  What is particularly interesting about Detroit is the general misconception about it's demise and if you were to ask the average American or perhaps even yourself - why is Detroit hurting - the typical answer would probably be:  struggling car companies.  While an explanation to something as complicated as to what can destroy an entire city is never one sided and often requires careful examination, there is a great deal of information to suggest that the struggling car companies may just be a small component of Detroit's fiscal and social ruin.  Crowder does a great job of tackling some of the key aspects of Detroit's failure and he pulls no punches on what he believes is the only and obvious culprit, government.  Not just any government, but liberal dominated government and the myriad of problems associated with leftist agendas including powerful ...

Dan Mitchell of CATO focuses on big government spending, deficits and debt.  His closing words should be the benchmark by which you need to judge ALL politicians, both future and present.   As we have discussed previously many times the exponential rate of borrowing and spending will bring this country to a financial day of reckoning, remember the source of these problems is a federal government well exceeding it's intended size and function.   My only personal point to mention that in today's case our deficits/debt is most likely the very thing that will do us in.  We are reaching a point where servicing the debt is becoming a serious liablity and if we tip the point of equilibrium where interest payments on the debt chew up most of the tax income - we are toast.  Of course as Dan accurately points out we would not be in this mess if spending was curtailed.  Obviously the current Constitution does not do a good job, so we need to consider an am...

Yes, I have written about this before and yes it may even start to sound like the blogger who cried wolf, but for those that are listening the warning signs are piling up.  The latest came two days ago in a quiet legislative session where the House quietly mustered another bill to raise the debt level.   Surprisingly Republicans have once again formed together and opposed all spending increases in a tight 218-214 vote, Senate will most likely approve.  However the AP report does contain information that is especially frightening.  Republicans who helped supply votes to increase the debt ceiling just last year _ unanimously opposed the legislation, which is required to issue new debt to pay for federal operations and deposit up to $50 billion into the Social Security trust funds. You see that?  This is the same fund that our honest government is claiming exists, the same government that sends out a pretty envelope to every American each year showing them fanc...

Bernie Sanders (video below) is a socialist who truly and honestly wishes for central control of virtually every industry in this country at every cost.  He will even soil the very essence of the Senate violating a long standing tradition of allowing the bill to be read until completion unless anonymous consent is achieved, which today it was not!  Even though Sanders somehow stumbled into our good graces by standing against Ben Bernanke while supporting an Audit of the Fed, but his motivation and thinking process are completely on the polar opposite of most Americans.  The video below illustrates that he disrupts the reading illegally (based on a faulty precedent in 1992), but is pushing the mantra of the Obama administration - crisis.  Sanders states with full confidence that "everyone knows" we are in a crisis and finds the Republican tactic shameful.  Let us examine that. First of all, no poll currently exists that supports ObamaCare and no poll exi...

If you recall previously, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma threatened to read the entire Senate version of the bill, but he has chosen to do so with the proposal from Bernie Sanders.  Sanders decided that on top of the existing 2,000 pages he was going to add another 300+ pages implementing a single-payer system.   Considering that Harry Reid already had to forfeit both the public option and the Medicare expansion this appears to be just a giant waste of time.  Considering that none of the senators and certainly NONE of the house members actually read the bill they passed it would seem prudent to do so in the Senate, but it is peculiar that Coburn chose the silly amendment instead of the actual bill.  Most likely this is a warning sign to the Democrat majority that any attempt to shove a massive takeover of health care will be met with stiff resistance.  As far as the single-payer system on the Senate floor right now, well it would appear that Coburn is simp...

ObamaCare has taken an interesting twist with Lieberman's vote coming in as the Medicare expansion comes out.  Although expanding Medicare's broken infrastructure to people aged 55 and up would have been catastrophic the remaining legislation raises a lot of questions.  With no more public option and no more Medicare expansion, what will this bill accomplish?  The cost appears to be the same and the plans to cut Medicare advantage to the tune of hundreds of billions and taxation upon the medical industry for hundreds of billions more.  So what is the deal? In a previous article discussing the estimated cost of the ObamaCare at 2.5 trillion  an idea was put forth that the existing financial debacle is the primary mover behind ObamaCare.  With virtually every progressive idea stripped out of the current version of the Senate bill, what else is left other than a mechanism to raise revenue?  Those that will get coverage, will only get coverage due to Med...