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Below is a photo I took Wednesday while on Free New York’s Grover Cleveland Tour.  The scene is from Father Conway Park in the First Ward, overlooking the Buffalo River.  Click the photo for a large view.

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The current ads running on TV from the health care unions and hospital associations make we want to puke.  They do identify one real cause of the funding problems, the involvement of HMO’s and government insurance, without advancing a real solution.

The solution is to get the government out of health care entirely.  Instead, we seem to be on a path to socialized health care for all that will lead to shortages and long service waits.  Many Canadians utilize our hospitals in Buffalo because the wait is very long for many procedures in Canada.

There is very little cost accountability with our current system of 3rd party payers for services.  It will only get worse if universal health care becomes law.

The most offensive line in the currently running TV ads is “our hospitals need help, not cuts.”  People need to get rid of the entitlement mentality.  It reminds me of the line from Gerald Ford:

“The government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.”

There is only one sure way to keep costs down, that is through free-market competition without government involvement.  All of the money currently being sucked up by government and the insurance industry for health care is actually making the true cost much more expensive than it needs to be.

Really now, did anyone expect anything different? 

With little fanfare, the Erie County Legislature took the first step towards extending the extra three-quarters of one percent to the local sales tax.

By an 11-4 count, lawmakers Thursday afternoon approved sending a home rule message to the state Assembly and Senate that supported keeping the sales tax at 8.75 percent - the highest in New York. The extra three-quarters of one percent that was added to the sales tax two years ago was due to expire on Nov. 30.

A responsible Erie County Legislature would cut spending and lower taxes.  Not this legislature, especially not its leader.

“It is the responsible thing to do,” said Legislature Chairperson Lynn Marinelli, D-Tonawanda. “It continues the fiscal stability in Erie County.”

Fiscal responsibility means keeping spending within reason, not raising taxes to keep increasing spending.

There were 4 responsible legislators who voted no; Cindy Locklear (D) and the three Republican legislators.  Kudos to them!

Michele Iannello, speaking like a typical politician, tries to have it both ways.

Michele Iannello, D-Kenmore, said the tax is necessary to fund the county’s quality of life priorities.
“I ran on creating fiscal stability in Erie County,” she said. “It would be very irresponsible of me not to vote to extend that tax.
“I’ll continue to work on reforms to cut spending so that we can hopefully get rid of some of that sales tax.”

Source: Sales tax likely to stay at 8.75% - Business First of Buffalo: and the Tonawanda News

This asshat, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., a Southern Baptist minister, advocates using drugs/hormones to treat pregnant women if it is determined that the child will be born gay. You would think a minister would know better than to play God.

There is no way to absolutely determine the sexual orientation of an unborn child. There are cases of genetically identical twins that result in one being gay and the other straight.

What would be next? Determining your unborn child might have disciplinary problems and using proactive medical treatment on the fetus? Don’t be mislead by the “Dr.” in front of this jerks name, he has a doctorate degree in philosophy, not medicine.

But now the picture is quite different. Many homosexual activists recognize that the discovery of a biological marker or cause for homosexual orientation could lead to efforts to eliminate the trait, or change the orientation through genetic or hormonal treatments.

Tyler Gray addresses these issues in the current issue of Radar magazine. In “Is Your Baby Gay?,” Gray sets out a fascinating scenario. A woman is told that her unborn baby boy is gay. This woman and her husband consider themselves to be liberal and tolerant of homosexuality. But this is not about homosexuality now; it is about their baby boy. The woman is then told that a hormone patch on her abdomen will “reverse the sexual orientation inscribed in his chromosomes.” The Sunday Times [London] predicts that such a patch should be available for use on humans within the decade. Will she use it?

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

— Winston Churchill

The picture says it all!

Ron Paul threatens the establishment.  How does he do that?  He does it with values and principles that don’t waiver for special interest groups.  He does it with a plan to restore integrity to government.  He does it because he understands the importance of freedom and liberty.

What happens when the candidate whom most people claim can’t win then wins an online poll?

Well, they pull his name off the Web page and declare a favorite the winner!

That happened at Pajamas Media, a website that conducted a month-long online presidential candidate poll. When Congressman Ron Paul of Texas won the first week, the Pajamas folks checked and said they found spam voting going on, several people voting over and over again. This happened to others, too; Barack Obama, for instance. But Obama stayed on. Ron Paul got nixed . . . despite, after the system was allegedly fixed, the Congressman still winning that week’s polling.

Ron Paul may be a Republican, but he’s his own caucus, in a sense, often standing alone in Congress. He’ll vote against a bill for no other reason than he judges it to be unconstitutional. Imagine! Most legislators don’t give a fig about the Constitution or limited government. That’s why Ron Paul’s a true outsider.

In his upcoming campaign for the GOP nomination, he won’t need to just pretend to run against Washington. He’s been the odd man out there for a long time.

A “dark horse”? Well, let’s call him a horse of a different color. Which may explain why a lot of people want to see his campaign stopped at the starting gate. The last thing people who like the status quo want is this dark horse running out front.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Technorati tags: Ron Paul, Paul Jacob, republican, libertarian, presidential candidate, 2008, Constitution, freedom, liberty, values, principles, establishment, status quo

Three more reasons to demand school choice.  Government run monopolies do not work, despite massive amounts of our money being spent.

Buffalo’s academic reform initiative took a hit Thursday when three more city schools were added to the state’s list of badly underperforming schools.

Since none of the 13 Buffalo schools already on the list were removed, the city now has 16 of its 60 schools under registration review and in danger of eventually being closed by the state.

Source: Buffalo News

I promised more photos of the Grover Cleveland Tour and I won’t disappoint.

You can view the slide show of the tour conducted by Tim Tielman of Wednesday, March 14, 2007. Guest of honor on the tour was George Cleveland, grandson of Grover Cleveland. The tour was a kickoff for a fundraiser held later that evening at the Sonoma Grille. The fundraiser is to benefit the creation of a Grover Cleveland Library and Museum, hopefully in the now closed Fairfield Library on Amherst Street.

Click here to watch the slideshow.
Phtotographs and the slide show © 2007 Michael Rebmann