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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (24201)	1/6/2010 11:43:50 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

The C-Span Lie? See Eight Clips of Obama Promising Televised Healthcare Negotiations lvrj.com EDITORIAL: Broken promise Health care takeover to be completed in secret Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama pledged to have the most transparent administration in history, and that his commitment to openness would compel Congress to embrace sunshine over secret dealmaking in reforming health care. "We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies," Mr. Obama said at one event. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi function within a branch of government that's outside the president's control. They have no intention of following traditional procedures, let alone being transparent, when they try to reconcile the differences between their respective 2,000-page health care bills. There will be no formal House-Senate conference committee. They're going to lock out minority Republicans -- and the public to boot. "We hope to get a bill done as soon as possible," said Jim Manley, one of Sen. Reid's spokesmen. That means keeping you in the dark. Yes, the House and Senate versions of the legislation are available to the public, and plenty of pundits and policy experts have spent the past month dissecting the bills. What Americans don't know -- and what they won't get to see -- is how far Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi will go to get what they want. Taxpaying voters will be cut off from the decisive debate on a monstrous increase in consumer costs and federal authority. Can senators and representatives defend the economically impossible concepts they embrace -- more health care, lower costs -- in spontaneous, free-flowing discussions? Or will they simply push forward a slip of paper with the dollar amount needed to secure their support, as Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., already has? Last week, C-SPAN Chief Executive Officer Brian Lamb, seizing on the president's 2008 promises, wrote Sen. Reid, Rep. Pelosi and Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, urging them to "open all important negotiations ... to electronic media coverage. The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety." In a Nov. 2 floor speech, Sen. Reid said, "And as we head for the finish line, one of the most important parts of this process is transparency." Clearly, Nevada's senior senator has changed his mind about openness. Perhaps he can explain why to Nevada voters later this year. The president has been conveniently silent on one of the signature issues of his campaign. That's not change we can believe in. He must demand the negotiations be public.

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (24201)	1/6/2010 1:56:58 PM
From: longnshort	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Malkin: Darkness reigns: Obama and the Vampire Congress By Michelle Malkin • January 6, 2010 09:45 AM michellemalkin.com michellemalkin.cachefly.net It’s official. The Hill reports this morning that the Dems have formally agreed to bypass the formal conference committee process to ram the government health care plan through for Barack Obama: “Aides said the agreement was reached during a Tuesday evening meeting at the White House with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and the top two Democrats from each chamber…After huddling among themselves at 10 a.m. Wednesday morning, House leaders will return to the White House for a 2:30 p.m. meeting with the president and Senate Democratic leaders.” Behind closed doors. It’s the Vampire Congress way. Tell Washington and blinky Nancy: Let the cameras in. Take action and sign the petition here. Via Naked Emperor News: Count the lies… *** Obama and the Vampire Congress by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2010 Meet the Beltway bloodsuckers. They convene in the dead of night, when most ordinary mortals have left work, let their guard down, or are lying asleep in bed. Pale-faced and insatiable, the nocturnal thieves do their nefarious business in backrooms and secret chambers. Their primary victims? Taxpayers, the free market, and deliberative democracy. Democrat leaders have been promising the most ethical, transparent, open, and engaged administration for years. Instead, they have delivered a bleak and creepy legislative environment that could double as a Twilight movie set. House Democrat leaders forbade debate on all but one amendment not authored by themselves. Skulking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rammed the government health care takeover package through under cover of darkness before Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Senate Finance Committee killed a GOP amendment that would have required Demcare to be available online for 72 hours before the committee voted. Reid and his Volterra–style henchmen cut last minute Cash-for-Cloture deals behind closed doors. And now House and Senate Democrat leaders are reportedly preparing to cut dissenters out of the reconciliation process by bypassing the formal conference committee. In Hill parlance, this legislative short-cut is called “ping-ponging.” A better game analogy: Dodgeball. With mounting opposition from both conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats, President Obama’s water-carriers must use every trick in the book to speed the final merging and passage of the bill before the end of the month. The hypocrisy reeks stronger than rotting garlic. In 2006, House Democrats asserted that “House-Senate conferences are a critical part of the deliberative process because they produce the final legislative product that will become the law of the land.” That same year, Harry Reid railed on the Senate floor against informal deal-making that circumvented the conference committee process – and he attacked the use of manager’s amendments to avoid public scrutiny: “Of course, nobody can see the managers’ amendment. It is composed of over 40 amendments. How could anyone vote for a piece of legislation such as that — a managers’ amendment with 42 separate amendments? Now, these amendments were not put in a conference committee. People complain about that. But at least in a conference committee, you have people working together, sticking things in…Here, you have one person making a decision as to what is going to be in the managers’ amendment. There is no way to know what is in it.” But four years later, it was Reid who snuck his 383-page manager’s amendment – stuffed with payoffs, special breaks, and concessions on health care – into the Senate hopper on the Saturday before Christmas break. Four years later, it is Reid stifling the open, collaboratively conference committee process he so fiercely championed. Where’s Barack Obama? As a candidate, he promised repeatedly to broadcast legislative negotiations on C-SPAN “so that the American people can see what the choices are” and “so that the public will be part of the conversation and will see the choices that are being made.” But the most transparent presidential administration ever is shrugging its shoulders. On Tuesday, White House spokesmen Robert Gibbs pooh-poohed C-SPAN’s request to allow electronic media coverage of the Demcare negotiations. Instead, Gibbs thinks Americans should be grateful for what they got last month: “The Senate did a lot of their voting at 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning on C-SPAN.And I think if you watched that debate — I don’t know — I wasn’t up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning for a lot of those votes, but I think if the American public had watched…you’d have seen quite a bit of public hearing and public airing.” And if you missed the middle-of-the-night broadcasts, tough noogies. Team Obama’s contempt for meaningful transparency has been on display from Day One. A year ago this month, President Obama broke his vaunted open government pledge with the very first bill he signed into law. On January 29, 2009, the White House boasted that Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act had been posted online for review. Except: Obama had already signed it – in violation of his “sunlight before signing” pledge to post legislation for public comment on the White House website five days before he sealed any deal. From the stimulus to the health care takeover to holiday bailouts for bankrupt financial behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it’s been all backrooms and blackouts ever since. The Prince of Darkness at 1600 Pennsylvania is perfectly happy with his Vampire Congress. Wraiths of a sunshine-evading feather flock together