Response to Darlene

Number one, if you read my post, you should have noticed that I said I did make mistakes. My problem with Palin is she does not know how to be anything but a comedic sideshow. She is about herself and not the country. She needs to be who she is, not some made up politician. The problem with people who defend her is that they never look at what is being said, which was, she is an example of politicians not being able to admit to mistakes. The mistakes that were done over the last 10 years and more. Darlene look beyond the idea of defending the individual or party. The country is in trouble and until people begin to admit past mistakes and correct them we will just sit here looking at narrow issues. You were more concerned with Ms. Palin and defending her. Ms. Palin is the problem. Her misuse or misspelling is a symptom.The problem is people in power not owning up to mistakes and correcting them. Also as a side note, she mispronounced the word, "refudiate" on FOX just a few days before. You can either try to defend the problems we have or move them forward. Your choice.

Some advice for Sarah Palin and all Politicians

Sarah Palin is the poster child for politicians,  instead of trying to do the best for people, they are trying to always look good in people's eyes. Ms. Palin sent out a text and misspelled the word, repudiate. She spelled it refudiate. Now I have the same ability to misspell a word as the next person. I try to use spell check to keep the errors to a minimum, and I try to make sure that the word I use is placed correctly. Ms Palin and the majority of politicians fall down, when they try to cover up the error. All this does is compound the first mistake. Sarah, do yourself a favor and just admit that you are trying to impress people by using big words and stick to the simple ones. (the, and, as etc.) Repudiate means to reject with disapproval. Sarah I repudiate your theory of, first, you hit the wrong key. Then, I repudiate the notion that you are taking William Shakespeare's license to change the English language, because it is a living thing. Please don't cause poor William to roll over in his grave, with you, comparing yourself to him. Do us all a favor and admit, you made a mistake. People do this. Then they go one step further and admit they were wrong.

Sarah Palin

I was just watching a video of Juan Williams talking about Sarah Palin on FOX. He stated that she was not on the same level, intellectually, with President Obama. The FOX commentators, said Oh, Oh, like this is somehow, false. Let's face the facts that Ms Palin is all about herself and making money. I have no problem with her going on book tours or doing reality TV, just please be honest about what you are doing. She quit as governor of Alaska, to make money. She tried to act as if this was to help the people of Alaska. Ms. Palin reminds me of the old time, slick, hucksters, that try to sell you something that is of no value. She is not capable of being anything more then she has been or is now. If being asked about what magazines she reads is considered a "gotcha" question, how would she ever stand up under the scrutiny that our presidents receive?

Happy Holidays to everyone

I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. This blog is actually a dream for me. I love politics and history. Since 1960, when I was eight years old, politics has been a passion that I read, watch and follow every day. I remember the party conventions that summer, giving us Richard Nixon against John Kennedy. My family was and remains to this day Democrats. I on the other hand went to the Republican Headquarters and picked up a Nixon and Lodge button, I wore it, proudly, right through the election. My mother said that is when she determined, " There is something wrong with him." I had the political bug and now I am taking the time to turn my passion into something more concrete. Please join me as a follower and take a moment to comment. I may disagree and say so in my comments, however I will always endevor to respect your right to talk about issues. This is a place for your voice and my voice to be heard. That is why I titled it America's Voice. Your voice is important and I plan to let it be heard.

Health Care continue

Please name me another industry that you do not know the cost before hand. You go to the hospital and have no idea how much you will pay out of pocket. The insurance company will let you know. They come between you and your doctor. They determine what they will pay and what they won't pay. People die because of that. You defend the idea (which I also support) that our country has and continues to have a policy that we can determine another countries destiny through war, and killing of innocent people, yet you can support corporations that will kill innocent people by denying them proper medical care for the sake of profits. You want people to have a choice to purchase insurance or not, even though their costs when something happens, falls to the rest of us. What about my liberties and taxes being used for something I already have?
This is just a beginning of my responses and my quest for health care. I will respond on other issues over the next few days. One thing I will say to you is, thanks for caring enough to respond. We need more open and fair debates about issues, this is what will make us a stronger nation.

Health Care

I guess all I can say is that I wish some of your anger at "socialistic ideas" such as universal health care could also go towards the health care industry. The concept of universal health care is simple. We all pay into a pot and with low administrative costs we have our medical costs paid for. Instead we pay into a pot for insurance companies and they keep 20% or more for profits. The uninsured we pay for in increased costs and increased taxes. Why not share the costs universally and we all share the benefit. What are our police, fire and other city, county and state services. Do you get a bill from the fire department if your house burns down. How does it steal our liberties when health care is available to all. Oh, wait that should only be for the ones that can afford it. You are right it is an emotional and moral issue. As far as individuality is concerned, if you do not have insurance and go to the emergency room, because of an accident, who pays. I do. You do. So your argument is to let people chose whether to pay or not. That's what we have now and guess what it only works for the insurance companies. We pay premiums and when we need health care, we pay deductibles, co pays and any other charges the insurance companies decide not to cover.

Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You!

One Voice Can Change a Room - Obama

Universal Health Care

I have been thinking about the need for universal health care since the ruling by a federal judge last week. The appeal process will take a while and I am confident that eventually the Supreme Court will rule in favor of the Commerce clause. That being said we still need to go further and have universal health care in this country. Health care companies had a 56% increase in profits in 2009, while they chopped over 2.7 million people from their coverage. Total profits for 2009 were in excess of 12 billion dollars. CEO bonuses ranged from $4 million  for Well Point to $38 million at Etna. The top six companies had $3.4 billion in profit for 3rd quarter 2010. These numbers just go on and on. The health care companies are making more money spending it on less people and the CEO's are getting paid more. This isn't about companies making a decent profit, this is about companies gouging and even killing people all out of greed. More opinion too follow.

Continue response.

You referred to Alex Sink and her banking abuses. I will at this point, for full discloser, acknowledge that I retired from Bank of America. I did not know Ms. Sink personally, however I knew of her. I disagreed and continue to disagree with several BofA policies and will address this in the future. Sink was the head of BofA of Florida, her title being President of Florida Operations at Bank of America, Late in 2003 brokers in New York were involved with after hours trading in mutual funds. They were under Banc of America. That was not a misprint. Banc of America is the investment part of Bank of America. When Bank is used, these are FDIC products and by federal law there had to be a difference between the two. Sink directed the retail banking operation in Florida. The brokers work for a separate division and not in an area that Ms. Sink had any dealings. So, there was and is a difference between them. You need to be careful when using broad strokes to paint a picture. Look at facts. This is not easy. I will talk more about where we agree later today, but again, thanks to Danny and Jessica for having the courage to state opinion and discuss issues.

Continue response.

I am going to now shift gears to your comments concerning Rick Scott. Jessica could have revised her remark about Scott in this regard, is he a criminal or an incredibly stupid CEO. Either way he has, in my opinion, no qualification to be our Governor. You asked if she, "heard" about the fraud, like it was a story made up to discredit him. The facts are, Hospital Corporation of America, of which Rick Scott was CEO admitted to fourteen felonies and paid the federal government over $600 million. They paid $17.5 million to states in Medicaid fraud. They also paid out over $2 billion in civil suites. This amounted to the largest fraud settlement in United States history. The felonies HCA admitted to include, systematically over charging the government, illegal deals with home care agencies and physicians, fraudulent billing of Medicare and other health programs, kickback for doctors and home health care agencies for referring patients to HCA and gave "loans" to doctors that were never intended to be repaid. I will touch on Alex Sink in my next response.

Continue response.

Congress tried to pull the Executive branch back somewhat, when in 1973 they established the War Powers Act. This set down rules by which the President would have to notify Congress in writing, that an armed conflict has been entered into by American troops. It also states that Congress then has to authorize this conflict within 60 days for the troops to continue. All of this is nothing more then a legal CYA for Congress and the President. Distasteful to Americans, yes, illegal. no.This is the same laws used in our current conflicts. I next want to touch on the Vietnam conflict. You mention Laos as something that we did not even acknowledge. What about Cambodia. We lost more troops there and killed more civilians there, then in Laos. In Vietnam we lost over 58,000 men and women. Civilian casualties in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were over 2.5 million people. What a waste. One thing that is important for me to say, though, is I do not agree with our leaders, but I support our troops. These are the finest men and women our country has to offer and we have in the past and continue today  watch them die, for political and economic reasons. I will continue in another post.

Response to Comments from Danny

Danny let me start by saying that I totally support your opinions and this is why I wanted to establish this blog. I will take exception though to some of the facts that you used. First I am going to focus on the war part of your response. I have not and will not support the wars that we have entered into in Iraq and Afghanistan, however Congress is within their rights to authorize these actions. If you look at the Constitution Article 1 Section 8, this the article that addresses among other things the right to declare war by Congress, the last paragraph gives them a broad opening to make laws to carry out the way that this is done. Now lets see how Congress has accomplished this. The so called Quasi-War against France in 1798 was the first time they authorized war. This was done to protect American commerce from French intervention. It has been used several times since, including the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, when North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked, (reportedly) the U.S.S. Maddox and President Johnson asked for the power to go to war to  protect and assist members of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty. I will continue in next post.

This is why we need a new voice.

The shift of power will continue until politicians determine, the right way to proceed is the will of the people. They do not hear because we are not speaking loud enough and often enough. People vote for different reasons, not many of them dealing with the facts or by having knowledge of the issues. They will hear a 30 second sound bite and base their opinion and vote on that.

The fight has always been political.

The fight that you see today is what has been going on from the beginning. The retention of power supersedes the good of the country in many cases. All of the items I mentioned before were as partisan then as they are today. It would be great if the Republicans and Democrats could work together for the good of everyone put they want to get reelected and retain the power.

Why Fight?

Here is why we fight. Everything we have ever achieved in our history has come at a cost and that means we had to fight. In order to get civil rights, unions, social security, medicare-medicaid, minimum wages and even proper work conditions we, the average people had to fight. We fight first with words, then with votes and finally with fists. Now is the time for our voices to be loud and clear. We need to use the phase made popular by Peter Finch in the movie, "Network". "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore." Our politicians need to understand the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, is "We the People", not just the wealthy. I feel the time has come to stand as one and take our country from the greed, that has driven us to this point. It is time to lead the world again, that can only happen if we take ownership of our government.

What will the Democrats and President Stand up for?

Yesterday I asked about the Republicans, today the Democrats. I voted for President Obama because there was a difference in what he proposed and the other party proposed. Today I feel as if my vote was wasted. The tax cuts, especially for the wealthiest Americans should not be extended. This will cost us at least 700 million dollars over the next few years. I want the President and the Democrats to fight. I want my voice to be heard and not drowned out by the elites in America. President Obama keeps drawing a line in the sand and when the Republicans and conservative Democrats cross the line, he moves it back and tells us this is where the fight will begin. Quit moving that line, Mr. President, and stand for the average American. This is what I voted for.  What did you vote for?

What will Republicans stand up for

Let me see if I understand this. The Republican party wants to decrease the federal deficit by keeping tax cuts we can not afford. This is like buying a new car after you lose your job. We increase what we have to pay each month even though we just cut our income. This sounds like the same tune that we have listened to before. Lets cut our income, start two wars, start new programs and then worry about paying for it down the road. Then lets blame the other party when the economy collapses. Wow, and how smart are the people that voted to put them back in control.

This is Your Blog.

This is going to be a way for Americans to voice their opinions on all subjects. It is simple to raise questions and to seek solutions. The difficult problem is finding a venue to speak without fear of retribution. I may not agree with your point of view, but I will always respect you and your opinion. This is a place you can come to agree or disagree and be heard either way. This is a place to come where we can find common ground and hopefully a voice that can translate into action. This is a place to find solutions and then speak to our Representatives, to have that voice heard. My only rule for this blog is to have respect for everyone. Disagree but with respect and without malice. Become a follower. Become a speaker. Become a leader. This is the American way.  Remember one voice CAN change the world. Be that Voice. This is America's Voice.

Getting started