Here we are … worried that the far-left liberal democrats are handing our nation over to the socialists.

• They are enlarging the size and scope of the government bureaucracy.
• They are creating a “shadow” government consisting of unelected and unconfirmed “czars” that seem to have the apparent power of cabinet-level government officials without any of the official responsibilities of office.
• They are attempting to raise our taxes on everything, but they do not call these government tribute payment taxes, they call the fees, assessments and other fancy words. And they do not collect these tributes through the IRS or employee withholding where you might see them quickly add up to a significant sum. They use proxy collectors such as your local and state agencies which must bear the brunt of the criticism. They use utility companies who simply collect the tribute on a monthly basis. In fact, some utility companies have become especially cagy with this process and now create their own profits out of “thin air” by adding surcharges for a possible nuclear plant decommissioning years into the future and other such nonsense. But to be honest, they attempt to explain the charges in the small print.

My Southern California Edison bill contains entries that are almost incomprehensible … transmission charges distribution charges nuclear decommissioning charges public purpose programs charge trust transfer amount competition transition charge franchise fees By way of explanation of the TTA, here is the definition of the Trust Transfer Amount (TTA) which appears in the fine print on page 2 of 6... "This reflects the Fixed Transition Amount (FTA) chargeable to residential and small commercial customers pursuant to state law and a financing order issued by the CPUC. The TTA is the property of SCE Funding Limited Corporation (LLC) and is collected by SCE solely as a servicing agent for SCE Funding LLC." I believe that franchise fees simply relates to additional taxes and the public purpose programs charges are the social do-gooder programs that the utility promotes in their own name – rather than making mention of the ratepayer’s generosity. I am still unsure what the competition transition charge is or how it is calculated. Ask questions and they will point to thick volumes of rules, regulations, tariffs and schedules.

• They are interfering with our freedom of mobility by creating crazy traffic schemes which are designed to force individuals into using government-created mass transit. That is except when they need additional revenue and lease the roads or transit system to a “favored” third-party which has demonstrated their ability to make things work by contributing large amounts of money to political parties, individual politician’s campaigns and to other designated uses required to obtain a “fair and impartial” hearing by a government official or bureaucrat.
• They are interfering with our freedom of choice. Mandating low-flow shower heads, restricted volume flush toilets which require two flushes to do the job properly and, of course, the use of the compact florescent light bulb.
• And they are dissing our friends and allies while courting our enemies and other assorted evildoers.

Now they want to enlarge their revenues by taxing all energy – everywhere it is generated, everywhere it is used and everywhere it cannot be found – all to solve the non-existent crisis of global warming.

They want to tap into your medical history, financial records, employment records – all to solve the cost-containment crisis  found in healthcare.

They want to control the actions of public and private corporations and determine what is proper and just compensation.

They want to re-distribute the wealth to impoverished Americans who have grown used to an entitlement culture as well as to impoverished countries for so-called “humanitarian” reasons. Not to mention extend citizenship to the illegal aliens, past and present, who make a mockery of our sovereignty by crossing our borders with impunity.

And, whatever is not directly regulated or controlled certainly can be “monitored” by the czars dealing with other various and sundry man-made crises.

My mistake …

I first thought that the far-left liberal democrats were doing this to aid and abet our enemies, both foreign and domestic. To weaken the United States’ economy and reduce the size, strength and mobility of our military in order to confer an advantage to an increasingly Marxist or despotic world.

But obviously I made a serious error in thinking that the far-left liberal democrats were working for Marxist dictators like those found in Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba or the Islamo-fascists located in and around the Middle-East.

Well I have discovered the real enemy – and it is so plainly obvious as to make me feel ashamed that I did not see it sooner.

It is the trial lawyers!

I have often joked that the democrats were the party of lawyers – getting through the courts that which they could not get through the vote.

My proof …

Consider Obama’s healthcare initiative. First it was about reforming healthcare services and delivery. When that didn’t fly, Obama and his people simply re-branded it to be about reforming healthcare insurance. A slight-of-hand which was barely noticed by the average citizen.

Consider that the preliminary draft of the House bill is over 1,000 pages and uses legalisms and referential language which can hardly be understood by our elected officials, their consultants, their counsel and others who attempted to read the bill in its entirety.

According to Obama, the bill – which was drafted before the change from healthcare reform to healthcare insurance reform – has simply-stated goals.

In Obama’s own words …

"Choice, competition, reducing cost, those are the things I want to see accomplished in this health care bill."

So, why I ask you is there nothing in the bill that:

• enlarges consumer choice and fosters increased competition by demanding that insurance companies compete on a national level instead of in their own comfortable state niches?
• reduces costs by imposing “tort reform” which restricts the astronomical costs of medical lawsuits?
• reduces costs by reducing the amount of malpractice insurance paid by “high risk” physicians in such medical specialties as neurosurgery and obstetrics? 
• recaptures significant amounts of money by actually penalizing those who engage in waste, fraud and abuse – and have done so for decades?
• reduces the cost of claims processing and it’s attendant folderol by dumping arcane medical coding schemes where the codes are owned and maintained by the American Medical Association?
• removes the overly-burdensome costs of “unionized” healthcare which mandates that salaries and benefits must be raised each and every contract period in order for the union leaders to justify their existence and to collect enough money to influence the politicians who allow the taxpayer’s treasury to be plundered.

Could it be that each of these areas severely impacts the livelihood of the lawyers who actually create the legislation, complete with exploitive loopholes and grandfathered exceptions? Or who must be retained in order to “interpret” the legalese for laymen and their “fight” for their rights in a court of law?

Or to provide another analogy – it is not the IRS who sponsors an overly complex tax code, but the legal and accounting profession who demand complexity in order to be gainfully employed. The government doesn’t object because administrative bureaucracy is where they make their money.

What is the answer?

It does not matter what the subject matter of the legislation may be, we need to demand single-purpose bills, written in plain English and which repeal all similar legislation previously passed. We need transparency and accountability – not the faux happy talk from Obama, but the real thing. Like publishing all government check data on the Internet.

But most of all, we need representatives that will do the people’s work rather than operate in their personal and political self-interest first. And the only way we can achieve this goal is to send a message. We need honest, ethical representatives instead of the self-serving martinets like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Maxine Waters, Bobby Rush, Charlie Rangel, Chuck Schumer – and the rest of the list boggles the mind.

And make no mistake about it, they were aided and abeted by their political friends on the other side of the aisle who shared in the spoils. They are all democans and republicrats and deserve to lose their jobs (if not incarcerated) for what they have done to America.

The guiding principles are simple, well-written and can be found in a readable form …

In the meantime, be safe, be well and take care of yourself and your family first.

-- steve

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OneCitizenSpeaking: Saying out loud what you may be thinking …