Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) gave a speech today at the Kill The Bill Rally in St. Paul in which she entreated Americans to refuse to comply with the Obamacare law on health care if the Democrats use the Slaughter Rule to “deem” the Senate bill passed without actually voting on it. Bachmann said that if such tactics are used, “then the bill is illegitimate, and we don’t have to lay down for this. It’s not difficult to figure out.”

The money lines come at the 20:00 mark of the video below…

(Hat tip: Breakdown of America.)

Bachmann’s rhetoric is the hottest to date, but her call for civil disobedience is only one of a large number of examples of conservative legislators seeking official rejection of Obamacare across the country. Here in Louisiana, for example, state sen. A.G. Crowe has authored S.B. 26, the Louisiana Health Care Freedom Act, which would seek to nullify Obamacare on a host of grounds as violating state and federal law and provides, in pertinent part:

B. Prohibitions from mandated coverage; exemptions from payment of penalties.
(1) No law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer or health care provider to participate in any health care system or health insurance plan.
(2) An individual or employer may pay directly for lawful health care services and shall not be required to pay penalties or fines for paying directly for lawful health care services.
(3) Except as provided in Paragraph (D)(2) of this Section, no health care provider shall be required to pay penalties or fines for accepting direct payment from a person or employer for lawful health care services.
C. Right to purchase private health insurance; freedom to contract.
(1) The purchase or sale of private health insurance from a private health care system shall not be prohibited by law or rule.
(2) A health care provider may accept or refuse to participate in any health care program or health care insurance plan operated by any government entity and shall not be compelled to do so as a condition of licensure.

Crowe will be speaking to a luncheon gathering sponsored by the Louisiana Grassroots Network at the Great Wall Chinese Restaurant on College Drive in Baton Rouge this Thursday, March 18th at 12:00 P.M., describing the law on nullification and the effort to head off Obamacare at the state level. Lunch buffet is $20.00.

This from the Associated Press…

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (AP) — The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.

It’s time to start cashing them in.

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits – billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes – nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs – in the form of Treasury bonds – which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.

Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.

Social Security’s shortfall will not affect current benefits. As long as the IOUs last, benefits will keep flowing. But experts say it is a warning sign that the program’s finances are deteriorating. Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there’s concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits.

“This is not just a wake-up call, this is it. We’re here,” said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst with The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group. “We are not going to be able to put it off any more.”

For more than two decades, regardless of which political party was in power, Congress has been accused of raiding the Social Security trust funds to pay for other programs, masking the size of the budget deficit.

Whatever you might think of the current system of American health care, the fact of the matter is that the federal government has no resources to provide a solution if one involves spending more money. Not whether the solution involves growing the deficit, mind you. SPENDING MORE MONEY. We have no more money to spend on ANYTHING. Not on Social Security, not on education, not on farm subsidies, not on welfare – and not on health care. We are BROKE. Social Security is BROKE. Medicare is BROKE. Medicaid is BROKE.

The federal government is broke.

Moody’s today is warning that the U.S. government is beginning to approach danger of losing its AAA bond rating. Should that happen the cost of continued borrowing will be astronomical; we’re already staring as much as $800 billion in interest alone per year in the foreseeable future in the face.

These are ruinous numbers. Existing entitlement programs are going to have to be ended – not because they’re bad policies (most of them are), but because America cannot afford them.

Why? Because the federal government is broke.

When you’re broke, you can’t spend any more money. You also can’t print any more money without destroying what is already a bad economy. And you can’t tax that bad economy any more than you’ve already done, because you won’t get any additional revenue out of it.

What you absolutely cannot do is take over an entire sector of the economy, either through nationalizing it or through turning insurance companies which make an average profit margin of less than four percent already into subsidized, heavily-regulated monopolies.

You just can’t do it. You don’t have the money.

President Obama and the Democrats say they’ll pay for Obamacare by cutting $500 billion in waste out of Medicare. There is waste in Medicare, waste which could easily have been ferreted out by past presidents by launching sting operations to smoke out fraudsters and then bury them under federal penitentiaries – or better yet, by turning Medicare into a voucher program empowering individual seniors to use the leverage of the market to come up with solutions which work best for them. Instead, Obama is cutting Medicare Advantage, a program which actually works and provides for better health for seniors. But from some of the president’s statements he doesn’t appear to want that – he’d rather just slip some of those seniors a pill and let them fade away so the government doesn’t have to pay for them anymore.

Here’s the problem, though. Kill off the seniors you’ve got, and you’ll find there are just a lot more of them on the way. American life expectancy continues to rise, and probably will for the foreseeable future unless Obamacare completely ruins the health care system.

But because Social Security is broke, and the American people know it, and also because the private retirement accounts of so many Americans were damaged when the stock market nose-dived in 2008, a great many of those seniors the president seems happy to write off will still be in the workforce – assuming their jobs don’t disappear as the economy continues to collapse. They’ll also continue working because the devaluing of the currency our current debt levels – and the growth in that debt Obama’s trillion-dollar deficits will produce – make inflation inevitable, and their retirement income won’t give them the buying power they’ll need to live. So denying them health care won’t save the expense the Democrats think; rather than writing off a bunch of retirees and laying claim to 55 percent of their estates through the Death tax, what they’ll actually be doing is destroying productivity by taking experienced workers out of the workforce.

But on top of this, Obama’s minions in the House purport to sweeten the noxious Senate bill by adding some 2,300 pages or more worth of “reconciliation” language, to include even more entitlements like a federal takeover of the student loan industry which is certain to generate runaway inflation in higher education (the current availability of Pell grants and subsidized student loans has already run costs through the roof) and likely break state governments’ ability to provide four-year educational degrees for average students. In no reasonable scenario can this action produce long-term savings, meaning the government is spending even more money that it doesn’t have when cutbacks on current student loan subsidies are what is required given the dire straits we’re in.

I could go on. The fact is, the resources do not exist for a larger federal role in health care, and it is the height of insanity for it to attempt to effect one.

After all, the federal government is broke.

It seems the weekend take from Matt Damon’s new Bush-Lied-People-Died Iraq vehicle Green Zone was just $14.5 million. That’s not a particularly good number for Universal Pictures, which budgeted $130 million for production and sunk another $100 million for distribution on top of that.

Studio executives tell Time Magazine, whose film critic thought Green Zone was just swell, that they’ll be enthralled with only losing $110-120 million on the film.

That’s probably a very optimistic expectation.

The top-grossing film about the modern Middle East was The Kingdom, which was a shoot-em-up action vehicle starring Jamie Foxx that was more patriotic than political. That flick did just under $50 million at the box office. The rest of the gaggle – Syriana, In The Valley Of Elah, Lions For Lambs, Rendition, Stop-Loss and others – did far less. Even this year’s Best Picture award-winner The Hurt Locker, which is much less political than the bulk of the rest, sits at only $26 million, though by the time its numbers are finally tabulated it’s likely to have turned a profit off DVD sales.

Hollywood has lost an absolute fortune on Iraq War movies in the past seven years. Why? A number of reasons, but a primary one largely being that the American people simply don’t trust Hollywood on politics. The American people see Hollywood as a symbol of cultural decay far more than an elite to be emulated – and when dingbats and dopeheads like Lindsey Lohan, Alec Baldwin and Ed Begley, Jr. constantly harangue the public about left-wing politics in between rehab sessions, beating up the help and making sex tapes, the mood of the country toward its entertainment industry increasingly hardens. We’re simply not interested in what they have to say. We know they’re not smarter than we are, we know they’re no more educated than we are and we know they’re no more informed or in touch than we are. And we know they’re in over their heads when they try to tell us about big, real-life issues.

And since so many of the people of this country have family and/or friends engaged in the military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are simply in no mood to listen to their activities being criticized.

So we vote with our feet.

It’s not just Iraq – the fact is, The Hurt Locker is by all indications a perfectly balanced and even vaguely patriotic effort, though it still faces tough sledding among a public poisoned by previous Middle East war movies. Hollywood’s leftism as a whole has fouled a large segment of its market. Even some of the really good films in the last several years turn audiences off – a perfect example was Iron Man, an otherwise great movie which inexplicably wasn’t satisfied with Al Qaeda as villains and had to install above them an American businessman trying to make a buck as the ultimate bad guy. And of course there’s the latest version of this meme, Avatar, which took off-the-wall leftism over a cliff in going out of its way to insult the American private sector and its military. Talk to most people who have seen Avatar and you’ll hear amazement at the cinematography and creativity of its filmmaking, but few find the story a particularly intelligent or relevant one.

The 40 percent of America which is conservative is long past irritated at being preached to by what it sees as degenerate dunces. The 35 percent of the country which is moderate is now generally unimpressed as well. Thus when Hollywood makes “message” films, or even attempts to insert a message into what is supposed to be entertainment, all too often they’re in a position to reach only about 25 percent of the public which is liberal or on the far fringes of the political spectrum with enthusiastic support.

It’s bad business, and it’s symptomatic of an entertainment industry which long ago detached itself from the mainstream. Meanwhile, you have the example of Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ, which was an unapologetically traditional Christian film the film establishment laughed itself out of breath at – until the box-office numbers came in and Gibson blew away all expectations – showing that traditional, religious, center-right America will respond when it is presented with films coming from viewpoints with which it can identify. Great examples can be found in Nile Gardiner’s list of the Top 10 conservative films of all time, virtually all of which were smash hits at the box office. In fact, Movieguide.org has done a study indicating that pro-American, pro-capitalist and pro-religious films far outperform lefty movies even despite the box-office success of Avatar.

Ultimately, studio executives can count. Will the debacle of Green Zone finally sober the moviemakers into toning down their politics and focusing on entertainment? Don’t hold your breath. But eventually the market will force its players into compliance – and if Hollywood won’t address this issue, it might eventually lose its grip on the entertainment industry in an increasingly competitive global theater.

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”

-Patrick Henry

TheHill.com is reporting that the House Budget Committee tonight released a 2,309-page bill which purports to “reconcile” the differences between the House and Senate versions of Obamacare.

Early indications are that this “reconciliation bill” is far worse than either of its predecessors, but the word is that this bill, which includes a public option, government funding for abortions, a federal takeover of student loans, the controversial Health Choices Administration which Sarah Palin referred to as a “death panel,” monopoly Health Insurance Exchanges and other poison pills, is actually just a shell. The real “reconciliation bill” will come about as a result of the markup process in the House Budget Committee.

Of course, the Budget Committee is the one Rep. Charlie Melancon quit a week and a half ago to some controversy. Perhaps now we know why. If the bill is 2,309 pages now, heaven knows how grotesquely, obscenely garagnatuan it will be after it’s marked up by committee, and depending on what stays in this bill and what might be added to it this could easily have killed any chance he may have had of ever getting elected again.

Depending on what results from the markup of this bill, the outrage it will generate could well make past manifestations of voter anger seem like apathy by comparison. Should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her acolytes in the Democrat leadership couple this action with an attempt to force the Senate bill through via the Slaughter Rule – in other words, just deem the bill passed by voting on something else – it would indicate that the majority’s contempt for an American public which hardens in its opposition to this legislation and the sleazy process involved in attempting to pass it each day is complete. To force through such sweeping changes against the will of the people is to place the very fabric of the Republic at risk, and Pelosi and her cabal are wagering a lot more than just their majority status when the public has a chance to turn them out in November.

The Democrats had better be careful about what goes into this Reconciliation Bill, not to mention how they go about attempting to effect the passage of the Senate bill they say they’ll turn into law this coming week. Dangerous times are ahead, and the people in charge don’t seem to have the slightest indication of what could be coming.

Of course, we all know about Bart Stupak and his “gang” who are going to switch and vote “no” on Obamacare this time, but do you know about Nancy Pelosi’s other headache that could derail the bill?

If you recall from President Obama’s September healthcare speech to a joint session of Congress (and, really, who could forget?), Rep. Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” when the President said that Obamacare wouldn’t cover illegal aliens.  As a consequence, the President had the Senate version quietly remove the ability of illegals to buy health insurance from government-supported, health “exchanges” — even with their own money.  Since the whole idea of these “exchanges” is that they will eventually crowd out private health insurers, illegal aliens could eventually be effectively barred from purchasing health insurance of any kind.

Additionally, the Senate bill would bar legal, permanent residents from buying insurance from the exchange for the first five years.  Needless to say, the House Hispanic Caucus isn’t happy, not happy at all.  Of course, all this was initially for show to defuse the Joe Wilson controversy, and it was all going to be added back into the bill in conference committee.  Of course, in the Scott Brown era, there is no conference committee.

Democrats are anxiously awaiting the CBO report, which should come out tomorrow.  If the CBO “scores” the exclusion of illegals and/or the permanent resident clauses with a budget number, then they can be addressed with reconciliation.  This is widely considered unlikely.  It’s also unclear if the Senate would go along with this, and it’s also unclear if changing that part of the bill would cost Pelosi more votes in the House from somewhat moderate Dems who don’t want to be attacked for supporting illegal immigration.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez says he’s prepared to vote “no” on the Senate bill as a result, and the entire Hispanic Caucus is threatening to vote “no” if they don’t get what they want.  As if that weren’t enough, “immigrants’ rights groups” have planned a massive demonstration in DC on March 21 — which just so happens to be the day that Obamacare is likely to come up for a vote in the House.

So, if Obamacare can’t be “fixed,” what’s the other alternative for Pelosi and the President to prevent the Hispanic caucus from voting “no”?  Why, it’s to promise to take up “comprehensive immigration reform” next, natch.  That way, we won’t have any illegals, see?  All those bright-and-shiny-new U.S. citizens will then be able to get Obamacare.

If you think that the President is unpopular now, just wait until the Democrats push for a new wave of illegal immigration to the U.S., which is the effective result of legalization.  With unemployment already sky-high, what would happen if a huge wave of immigrants were to come to the U.S. looking for work?

There is no shortage of opinions out there on the likelihood of House passage of the Senate version of the health care bill (let’s ignore the “Slaughter solution” for the moment), but I wanted to think it through myself, and so I figured that I’d share my thoughts.  Here’s how I see the vote shaping up. 

If everyone but Gao were to vote the same way as last time, the bill would pass 216-215.  Of course, not everyone will vote on the Senate bill the way they did on the previous House bill.

To start off with, Bart Stupak is a definite “no” vote, and he had claimed to have a gang of twelve who voted for the bill last time but wouldn’t unless abortions are excluded from the plan.  However, Stupak admitted last night to National Review that Pelosi has already peeled off “one or two” of his pro-life Dems.  I do not believe that Stupak will stand alone, but his gang will probably be reduced to him and six others, by the time their arms are twisted enough.

Stupak and his six voting “no” would then put the bill losing at 209-222.  That would mean that, to pass the bill, Pelosi would need to persuade seven Democrats out of the 38 who voted “no” last time to switch and vote for the Senate bill.  It will be hard, but I think she can do this.  For starters, three are retiring and they probably want to be lobbyists or ambassadors at some future point in their lives.  Dennis Kucinich voted “no” last time, and continues to vehemently insist that he will vote “no” unless there is a “robust” public option added to the bill, but I find it hard to believe that he ultimately wants to go down in history as the deciding vote to kill Obamacare.  A couple of previously nervous Democrats who voted “no” have managed to escape a serious election challenge and their states’ filing deadlines have passed.  Finally, Pelosi probably had another two or three votes in her back pocket last time that she ultimately didn’t need and can now insist upon getting.

But if these numbers ultimately prove correct, Pelosi would also have to prevent any “yes” votes last time (other than Stupak’s gang) from switching to “no.”  That will be extremely difficult, as the bill is much more unpopular now and members realize that their careers are on the line.  Besides the seven votes I have down as switching on abortion, there are currently 63 Demcrats who voted “yes” last time who are currently publicly undecided.  Most of them just want to sit down with the President and be wooed with promises of future goodies, but some of them are publicly leaning “no” or even declaring that they plan to vote “no”, and Pelosi can’t lose a single one of them without switching another “no” vote to “yes”, making her math very, very difficult.

So why is Pelosi so cheerfully optimistic?  Because suicide bombers don’t blow themselves up without the promise of the 72 virgins afterwards.  The only way she has a chance is to convince her Democratic colleagues that the bill is going to pass, and the media are cheerleading her on of course, so they aren’t reporting how far behind she is in her vote count, because very few Democrats in tough districts want to vote “yes” on this bill, only to see it fail.  That’s the worst of both worlds for them.

Bottom line:  Pelosi has yet to publicly switch a single vote.  I don’t see any momentum building for her, only rah-rah pretensions.  It’s likely going to come down to one or two votes, but I still think the bill will fail.

UPDATE 3-14, 5:35 PM:  Maybe this is a better way to illustrate the incredible mountain that Pelosi faces right now.  All Republicans are voting “no,” so if 38 Democrats vote “no”, then the bill is defeated.  Right now, there are 35 Democrats who have said they are voting “no” or are leaning “no.”  There are 73 Democrats still publicly undecided.  If Pelosi loses 3 out of that undecided 73, the bill will fail.  Many of those 73 are making very negative statements about the bill and have strong reasons to vote “no”.  For the life of me, I cannot understand how the bill is trading at 64% on Intrade right now.  Sure, she can trade a lot of horses to get close, but I don’t see the bill getting across the finish line.

We liked it…

…though if we’re talking about videos and movies, we’ve got a big-time recommendation: watch The Goods, with Jeremy Piven. It’s a comedy – sort of a cross between Anchorman and Used Cars. The scene with Will Ferrell and his parachute is one of the funniest things we’re ever seen.

Scorecard

Latest News – Filing Deadlines

This past week, candidate filing closed in Arkansas, Nevada, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, and on Monday 3/15, Maine and Montana will see its candidate filing close as well. There were no last minute surprises, and only one candidate (Republican Bill Shuster in Pennsylvania) escaped without partisan opposition. After the filing deadline passes in Montana and Maine, 7 more states (including California) will see their filing deadlines close. By the end of this month, we will know all possible Congressional candidates in 223 of 435 House races and in 16 of 36 Senate races, and because of this flurry of activity, we therefore expect to see a few more last minute retirements before these filing deadlines pass.

 Latest News – Retirements

While two weeks ago saw a flurry of retirement activity, this past week was relatively quiet, with only two news items making the headlines: (1) the abrupt resignation of New York Democrat Eric Massa this past Monday, and (2) Georgia Republican Nathan Deal’s deciding to delay his resignation (he is running for Governor of Georgia) until a vote on healthcare reform has been taken.

 Latest News – Upcoming Primaries/Special Elections

So far, only Illinois and Texas have held primaries. Beyond that, there will be no other major statewide elections until May 4. However, while the 10 states’ holding primaries in May are worth watching, there are also three upcoming special Congressional elections scheduled in April and May which will test the extent of the “Obama plunge.”  All three vacant House seats were held by Democrats, and in two of those races (in Pennsylvania and Hawaii) the Republicans have strong challengers. We are currently focusing on the April 6 special election in a heavily Democratic district in Palm Beach and Broward Counties in South Florida which gave Obama 65% of the vote in 2008, and which made “butterfly ballots” and “hanging chads” part of the political vocabulary. According to the “Obama plunge” theory we’ve been mentioning, the race should end up with about a 50/50 result. And interestingly enough, the Democratic nominee, who normally would go on an extended vacation after winning the Democratic primary, has recently sent out a mailer warning voters that “Republicans and the Tea Party Want To Capture YOUR Congressional Seat !” This brochure also contains unflattering pictures of former VP Dick Cheney and 2008 Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin.

While the three upcoming House vacancies will be an good gauge of voter discontent in these moderately to heavily Democratic districts, the abrupt resignation of Eric Massa (Democrat, New York) will also require a special election in a Republican leaning seat that was captured by the Democrats in 2008. So far, no special election date has been set, but New York law requires that an election can only be held at least 30 days after the seat is declared vacant (Eric Massa resigned at the end of Monday, March 8). The Republicans have coalesced behind Corning Mayor Tom Reed (who was already running), while the Democrats are still looking for a candidate.

Latest News – Louisiana Senate Race

Incumbent Republican Senator David Vitter remains safely ahead in the polls. In a Rasmussen poll released this week, he leads Democratic Congressman Charlie Melancon 57/34%. This is identical to a 57/33% lead he had in February, and is similar to a January lead in the polls of 53/35%. Vitter is clearly helped by the high 62% disapproval rating President Obama has with Louisiana voters, as well as the 64% opposition voters here have against the Democrats’ healthcare reform plan. Has the 2007 prostitution scandal had an impact ? Yes and no. While Senator Vitter has a whopping 50 point lead with male voters, his lead among female voters is a tepid 46/43%. Which suggests that while there is currently a ceiling to Vitter’s support, it shouldn’t affect his numbers much as long as he maintains his lead with male voters.

John is a political consultant and blogger with JMC Enterprises with expertise in poll sample development and analysis, development of targeted voter files for phone canvassing or mail outs, campaign strategy and demographic consulting, among other things. See his site at WinWithJMC.com for more information.

“If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing. Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

- Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), recounting a conversation he had with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) about the former’s opposition to Obamacare on pro-life grounds.