After returning from a number of weeks in Europe and Africa, your editor has some observations.
First, America is very important to the stability of the world but in Africa, what is happening in the United States is not of overall concern unless it affects their country. In Europe, there is more interest but not as much as you would expect.
Second, being born and growing up in the USA is a blessing. For example, in Tanzania, the average pay is $1 to $2 a day and unemployment is at 10.15% and overall the country is quite primitive compared to the USA.
Third, upon return, the unfair attacks by the mainstream media and the Democrats continue unabated on the Trump administration. The problem is that the President is easily distractible and he needs to focus on his policy agenda.
No Voter Fraud? Wrong, Check Out Dallas County
According to WFAA TV - a person named "Jose Rodriguez" (and it should be an Anglo name) signed perhaps hundreds of mail-in ballots. Yes, dear reader, voter fraud is occurring.
Comey Fired, Good Riddance
The firing was entirely justified, though admittedly not handled cleanly.
And the Democrats are going bananas, but just a few months ago were all in to fire Comey. Let's look at the quotes:
"Maybe he's not in the right job. I think that we have to just get through this election and just see what the casualties are along the way." Nancy Pelosi, House Minority leader.
Hillary Clinton's campaign manager (Robbie Mock) had also hinted that Comey might have to step down because of his bias against Hillary.
After Comey's letter, Senator Schumer, Minority Leader said, "I do not have confidence in him any longer."
Former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid had called on Comey to resign. Congressman Steve Cohen (D) even wrote an op-ed titled, "For the Sake of the FBI, Comey Should Resign."
Hypocrisy, your name is Democrats.
Free Speech Under Assault At Universities And Soon To America?
In the last few weeks the First Amendment rights are being obstructed by out-of-control students. First, United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was treated to the back side of many students at Bethune-Cookman University during her speech, Senator John Cornyn was disinvited for TSU's graduation due to student protests and this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is why we at TCR are concerned about the future of free speech in America.
Typically, what occurs in the USA, happens at our universities and then spreads to society when leadership in society switches.
So that's why we should be worried. Daniel Greenfield (columnist) recently wrote about these problems:
"There is a place in America where civil rights don't exist. The First Amendment doesn't apply. Neither does the Sixth Amendment. (Never mind the Second.) Not only Freedom of Speech, but Freedom of Association (NAACP v. Alabama) is under fire."
"The average college campus with its speech codes, thought policing, violent protests and kangaroo courts has no resemblance to anything else in the United States of America. Colleges are totalitarian states. And they are the blueprints of the left's plan for the entire country.
"Colleges have always been the training ground for the leaders of tomorrow. The blueprints for a new society begin there. If you wanted to know what leftist ideas would be going mainstream in a decade, you went to a fashionable college. The leftist idea that is going mainstream is a totalitarian state. Micro-aggressions, safe spaces, tone-policing, identity caste systems, no platforming and the end of truth aren't just some silly campus nonsense. They are the blueprint for the future of the United States.
"Today's campus is unsafe for America. Taxpayers have invested enormous amount of money into funding an educational system that rejects everything that makes our society work. If that does not change, then our society will be destroyed by the consequences."
Chairman Paul Simpson: More Broken Promises
The most unsuccessful Republican chair in Harris County GOP history is at it again.
Remember when Paul Simpson ran for chairman in 2014? He promised to not fund the party's day-to-day expenses on the backs of elected officials and candidates.
Well, forget that promise. On May 18, 2017, the party finance chairman in an email to our elected officials and judges requests them to pay "their full pro-rated share of $6,825.00 in 2017." They even offered them installment plans for their "assessment" of our officials.
And the money will be spent to build on the failure of 2016. So we are renting more regional headquarters, despite there being no proven reason as to why. They want to spend more money on their data system that in 2016 wholly failed to detect the loss coming for the GOP.
They want "to expand participation and engagement to non-traditional Republican voters," but in 2016 not many regular voters knew our ticket did have outstanding African Americans and Hispanics, because the HCRP never bothered to publicize that fact.
As one of our judges commented to us recently, "Simpson wants the judges to pay 100% of the Party's overhead. There is no indication in this finance plan that any of the money will be spent on advertising, social media, voter identification, or even GOTV. One would think there would be money for a meeting to collect ballot application signatures but that is not evident in the plan either."
For 2018 to be different than 2016, new vigorous, energetic leadership is needed.
Obamacare -- You Would Think It Is Working Boffo
By Bruce Bialosky, Contributing Editor
Now that House Republicans have passed a revision/repeal of Obamacare, the Left has turned convulsive. Predictions of bodies strewn on the streets and picked up on oxen-driven carts have been offered by elected officials who want us to take them seriously. Let us review the current state of health insurance in America.
What Obamacare did was six basic things:
- Provide that your child can be on your health insurance until the age of 26. I am not sure why this is so wildly popular, if it truly is. This is not Italy where young men live at home until they marry and get another woman to tend to their needs. We get our kids out and tell them to get a job.
- Elimination of pre-existing conditions. This is extremely popular and has whipped Americans into a frenzy being concerned that they will not be able to obtain insurance.
- Greatly expanded Medicaid. As we have discussed before, people being covered by Medicaid does not mean that have any greater access to medical care. It also created an open-ended entitlement that would eventually crush many state budgets.
- Screwed up the rest of Americans' health care coverage, throwing people off their existing plans, greatly raising premiums and deductibles.
- Took lifetime caps off the outlays insurance companies could have for a member's health care needs.
- Significantly raised taxes for everyone to pay for their plan and created rules for small businesses that seriously impaired growth and thus new jobs for Americans.
The big issue that Democrats are scaring people about are pre-existing conditions. The facts are that only 10% of Americans (about 18 million insured) could possibly have a concern about pre-existing conditions. Everyone else had no concern because that was not an issue for people who had insurance through their employer, Medicare, Medicaid or the VA.
When Jimmy Kimmel went through his heart-wrenching rant about his newborn's heart condition, he made multiple misstatements of fact. He stated his one-day old child would have a pre-existing condition which would disqualify him from insurance coverage. That child was covered by Kimmel's health insurance which was provided by Disney -- with about 170,000 employees. If Kimmel remained there, the child would be covered until he was 26 years old or maybe he would get a job at Disney and never have to worry about his pre-existing condition.
Obamacare set up a special program to cover people denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions. That program covered a little short of 115,000 people in 2013 which was its peak. It was predicted back in 2011 that up to 129 million people were exposed for having problems with health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. The statement then and the fear tactics now are just lies to make people scared of the Republican proposal.
If you were one of the few people who will be able to get to the point that you are rejected by an insurance company for pre-existing health conditions, then the new plan passed by the House provides a $130 billion high-risk pool to help cover these people. Remember possibly just 10% of Americans would ever start to be exposed to needing the high risk pool, and few will ever get to the point of having to use this final protective step.
The high-risk pool is designed specifically to segregate individuals with significantly high risk medical conditions. That is because having these people as members of the general insurance population is gravely distorting the cost of insurance for everyone else. The proposal, which is not a new idea, allows the vast majority of Americans to lessen their insurance costs and the co-pays. The idea is to mitigate these extreme increases in insurance costs that occurred in 2017 and are expected for 2018. It will also bring more companies back into markets (more competition) because they will be better able to project their outlays and control their losses.
Instead of creating a better marketplace Obamacare destroyed the marketplace for health care by making it impossible for insurers to predict costs. Without that they cannot properly price their product. Thus, Obamacare provided Americans little or no competition for their insurance dollars and created soaring costs. In addition, the individual mandate that was supposedly forcing everyone to buy insurance was a near complete failure.
Why are Democrats crowing about the supposed faults of the Republican plan (AHCA)? What had been foisted upon Americans was either failing or already failed. Except for adding millions of people to a questionable Medicaid system, nothing positive was done. If the program was working so well, why did the death rate increase in 2015? Obamacare should have decreased death rates with more people provided health insurance and thus health care, but that did not happen. Death rates are just one indicator of its success, but an important indicator.
On May 5th, the devilish duo behind Obamacare – Jonathan Gruber and Ezekiel Emanuel ran dueling dissertations in the Washington Post on how the Republicans are at fault for the problems with their dismal plan. If the Republicans only forced people to buy the health insurance they don't want on the exchanges, the plan would be saved. If Republicans only gave the plan more time –the 2017 massive premium increases were a one-time adjustment of costs. If they only threw more money at insurance companies to underwrite their losses. Aetna has pulled out of the Exchanges. Blue Cross in Maryland, Virginia and D.C. has already requested a 52%, 35% and 29% increase for 2018 respectively. Maybe, Gruber and Emanuel should read the newspapers and get closer to reality. Aetna has already lost $500 million since 2014 on their failed plan.
The Democrats are crowing about a plan (Obamacare) where they lied to Americans about the basics of their healthcare (you can keep your plan and your doctor), which has crushed the competitive marketplace for insurance and driven up its costs and out-of-pocket expenses.
The plan desperately needed an overhaul, yet, they voted unanimously in the House to keep this damaged plan that was spiraling down and potentially out of control.
Instead of attacking Republicans with lies and innuendos, they should be trying to help. It appears they would rather expose all Americans to a collapsing medical insurance creation of their own doing for their own perverse political purposes. Americans will figure that out and make them pay.
Bruce Bialosky is the founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition of California and a former Presidential appointee. You can follow Bruce on Twitter @brucebialosky.
Tune in to KTRH-740 Monday, June 19 at 7:45 AM
Listen in on Matt Patrick's show as the state of politics in America after the Virginia shooting is discussed on KTRH-740 on Monday, June 19 at 7:45 AM.
TCR on the Air
Red, White & Blue featuring TCR Editor Gary Polland and liberal commentator David Jones on Fridays at 7:30 pm on PBS Houston Channel 8, replaying Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 8, Monday at 11:30 pm on Channel 8.2 and on the web at www.houstonpublicmedia.org.
About Your Editor
Gary Polland is a long-time conservative and Republican spokesman, fund-raiser, and leader who completed three terms as the Harris County Republican Chairman. During his three terms, Gary was described as the most successful county Chairman in America by Human Events - The National Conservative Weekly. He is in his nineteenth year of editing a newsletter dealing with key conservative and Republican issues. The last sixteen years he has edited Texas Conservative Review. As a public service for the last 13 years, Gary has published election guides for the GOP primary, general elections and city elections, all with the purpose of assisting conservative candidates. Gary is also in his 15th year of co-hosting Red, White and Blue on PBS Houston, longest running political talk show in Texas history. Gary is a practicing attorney and strategic consultant. He can be reached at (713) 621-6335.
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