Political Football

Learn Listen Lead - a video from a visit Dr. Miller-Meeks made to an assembled group in Muscatine – Pre-Primary 2010.

A short bio of our candidate for Congress:

Dr. Miller-Meeks is the 4th of 8 children, raised in a military family (father was career Air Force).  At 15 she was burned in a kitchen fire and required a lengthy hospital stay.  It was there she decided she wanted to become a doctor.  Because of the amount of school she missed, she chose to opt out of finishing high school and went directly to a junior college in Texas near where her father was stationed.

She matriculated from Junior College to College when she found a nursing program that would help pay for her undergraduate degree.  She saw nursing at night as a way to pay for medical school during the day.  This nursing program was offered by the US Army, so she enlisted as a private at 18.  She served 6 years active duty including time in Korea, where she picked up a Masters in Education because there were no “long distance” pre-med classes offered at that time. Dr. Miller-Meeks left active duty to complete Medical School, graduating in the top of her class.  She remained in the Army Reserves until 1998, retiring with rank of Lt. Col. 

Dr. Miller-Meeks met her husband of 27 years while she was a nurse at Walter Reed Army Hospital.  They have two college aged children and live in Ottumwa where she had practiced in a medical partnership for 12 years.  Her husband Curt, was also in the Army and retired a few years later after serving a state-side deployment after 9-11.  He also retired as a Lt. Col. in the Army Reserves.

Mariannette has also taught in the Medical Hospitals at both the University of Iowa (where she did her residency in Ophthalmology) and at the University of Michigan.

In 2006 she was named the first women President of the Iowa Medical Society.  On November 2, 2010 we hope she will be elected to become the first women representing IOWA in the US Congress.  We need her in WASH DC!!!

We are organizing and will publish more clips in the next week so you can help us spread the word about this great Congressional candidate in IOWA – CD2, so you can “meet her” through these videos.

Check out the CD2 map below to see if you are in CD2 or have friends and family there, email me at cjhawki@machlink.com if questions.

Everyone seems to be wringing their hands over the weak economy.  The price of gas goes up with every oil spill or pipe line break and Economists hover over jobs reports and love to tell us the stock market is rising.

When will the cycle of bad economic trends break?  I’m not understanding why it’s that hard to figure out.  We have heard for the last two years that small businesses are the engine of today’s economy in the USA, right?

I’m reading an article about a proposed speech from the head of the AFL-CIO saying he will accuse business (therefore Republicans) of “economic treason”.

Trumka’s charge is centered on his anger at private sector business and corporations for sitting on capital — as much as $2 trillion by some estimates — instead of spending it to expand and create jobs, and at insurers for proposing rate hikes.

HOW DARE THEY SIT ON THEIR MONEY!!!  If this wasn’t so scary it would be funny.  Union leadership has hurt American Business, all the while unions could and should play an important partnership with business.   This is just nuts.

Business DOES NOT INVEST IN AN UNCERTAIN BUSINESS CLIMATE.  Eli Goldratt has a saying:

Tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I’ll perform.

That is a scientific fact.  Like gravity  the way business works  is predictable, if you understand the principles involved.  But now we have a President who indicates he can’t push through some policy of his (Cap and Tax) he threatens to “legislate by fiat” through the EPA.  If he can’t get a bill past this Democrat controlled Congress, Folks, it’s a BAD BILL.

Unions are trying to get “card check” passed, as well as “fair share”.  Both of those will hurt the very businesses that employ union workers.  Card Check’s formal name is the lovely sounding “Free Choice Act”, which is opposite its name!  This act removes the use of private ballots for Union votes and more (your union boss can see how you voted).  I’m still trying to figure out who gains free choice when a secret ballot is removed, but hey, that’s just me.

Today in Obamaland

Fair Share has been pushed in the last three legislative sessions in Iowa, I probably wrote about it if you search this site, yeah I’m pretty sure I did…  Fair Share is a bill that will require workers in jobs where unions exist, to pay union dues whether they want to belong to the union or not. 

Today, states that allow workers to decide if they want to pay union dues or not, are considered “business friendly” and are aligned with what is called “right to work” status.  That status is a key element  reviewed in a state’s model before a business decides to move or incorporate in that state.  Not sure what’s fair about Fair Share, but it’s bad for economic development.

It’s interesting for all it’s “fairness” and the fact that the Iowa House and Senate have been Democrat (as well as the Gov) for the three sessions… Fair Share has not passed because at least 5,6 Democrats blocked it.  It’s just not good legislation.

One thing that really made me sick, is the GM bailout.  NO ONE would want to see one of our biggest car manufacturer fail. 

Detroit’s auto workers remain among the highest paid manufacturing workers in the world – paid sometimes even when they don’t work,” NBC’s chief investigative correspondent Lisa Myers said. “That’s right. Under union contracts, thousands of laid-off workers receive 95 percent of their salary for doing nothing, for up to two years.”

more here

But this takes the cake!  While unions spend tens of millions of Dollars of worker’s dues to elect Democrats (95-98% was the last number I saw) union leaders now want the tax payer to bail out pension plans that are in trouble.

At issue are multi-employer pension plans, in which companies across an industry pay into a single pension pool. The plans are predominately run by unions and for years have distinguished themselves by poor management

more here

Finally about those Insurance Company bad guys.  When I read this I just shook my head.  a snip of that is posted below

Although the law’s big expansion of coverage under the law won’t take place until 2014, several new benefits go into effect starting later this month. Lifetime dollar caps on coverage are abolished, and plans must allow parents to keep their children on the policy up to age 26. Many plans will also have to guarantee coverage for children regardless of a medical condition, and provide preventive care with no cost-sharing for the patient.

Let me get this right.  Just because lifetime dollar caps are abolished and plans have to guarantee coverage they didn’t before – they CAN NOT raise their prices?  The government is now all knowing.

She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law.

Sounds like Chicago THUG politics to me.  Listen there are bad players in every business – but government is a business too and we are the shareholders.  Is there any wonder, now, that the majority of union workers now work for the government, not private business?  We are in a deep mess folks.

So, there you are.   The Economy would be fine if Policies didn’t SUCK.

In Representative Loebsack’s world, his “representation” of IA-02 seems to have started just a few months ago when Dr. Miller-Meeks charged out of the Republican primary with an over whelming victory.  But hey, we haven’t heard from him except for some very pretty (expensive) franked (I paid for it) mail, and now a TV ad showing smiling people at a Town Hall (that he has not conducted in 2010).

Miller-Meeks was a serious contender in 2008, and actually won the debate they had on KCRG…  I can’t remember how many times he said “Mariannette’s right”, or “she’s correct” or other words agreeing with her points.

Where he defeated Dr. Miller-Meeks convincingly in 2008 at the polls with Bush and Obama’s help (not to speak of the second “500 year flood” to hit Iowa in the last 15 years) Mariannette is gaining traction in the last weeks as Loeby is losing it.  He’s so overtly shifting to the right, even the Quad City Times is noting it:

CEDAR RAPIDS — U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack is rethinking his position on ending the Bush tax cuts and might be willing to consider a Republican proposal to extend them for two years.  read more HERE

DON’T BELIEVE IT FOLKS, he votes however the SPEAKER tells him to vote.

Continuing an old theme of mine (learning from HISTORY as to not repeat bad things…) some HISTORY:

We, sadly, can learn from Castro HERE… a snip of it posted below…

HAVANA – Cuba announced Monday it will cast off at least half a million state workers by early next year and reduce restrictions on private enterprise to help them find new jobs.   …..

Currently the state employs 95% of the official workforce.

95%!!!  That’s where we’re heading.  I am so sick of people thinking they have a right to Health Care or a job - I know a lot of well meaning people believe in some or all of this - but it’s unsustainable.

Dame Margaret Thatcher said it best – “Socialism is fine, until you run out of other people’s money.” 

HERE The government of Spain is trying to make the county competitive again in the global marketplace, and UNIONS are striking AGAINST that effort.  And Spain’s experience in Green jobs:

The study’s results demonstrate how such “green jobs” policy clearly hinders Spain’s way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil.  more HERE

Vote Miller-Meeks for Congress!!!

The November elections seem like a long time from now but also seem to be right around the corner and we’re not ready; we haven’t done all we could to ensure victory.  With the reports of a 10 point lead for a generic Republican over a generic Democrat – a tsunami seems inevitable, but projecting victory is just that – a projection.

The larger question is if we do win, if we do take one or both houses of the national (or state) legislatures, what do we do?  How do we keep ourselves from executing the same over-reaching program that doomed us after the 1994 elections?  I disagree with some congressmen that want to investigate the Obama White House.  I don’t see a way around anything but a two party system, both sides have their problems with leadership.  Is it possible for Republicans to “get anything done” if we do win in November?

In any case these are my priorities for the next Congress in no specific order.

Find a way to repeal and re-write the Health Care Bill.  No bill should be so large that a congressman can’t read and understand it.  This law seems to have been written by lawyers for bureaucrats. Over 100 new agencies?  wow.  What should stay?  Portable health care that YOU own not provided by your employer.  Portable across state lines too. 

As Dr. Miller-Meeks (my candidate for the CD2 Congressional seat in Iowa) says, “We don’t say the Auto Industry is broken when everyone can’t afford the high end car we want to own”.  There should be a menu driven plan that starts by protecting us from catastrophic illness, then deductibles as we can afford them.  The only support the government should provide is a pool of money for high risk Americans.  No one should be denied insurance because of a pre-existing condition.  However, insurance companies should not be “made” to cover 100% of Americans.  At some level the government should step in and help with that steeper cost.

Speaking of agencies, we should take a look at the Department of Education and the TSA.  Since they were enacted, has there been improvement?  I like the idea that I think Paul Ryan promotes – every bill that adds cost to the budget must have a sunset clause and reviewed to see if it did what it said it was going to do.  Education has not improved in my opinion, since the Department of Education was established.

No job should exist in the goverment that can’t be jobbed out to the private sector.  Jobs in the private sector create revenue.  Jobs in the government just cost us more money in the long run.

Our Veterans returning from combat should be given all the medical treatment they need. 

Amnesty?  We can’t deport 12 million illegal aliens.  Again, I agree with Dr. Miller-Meeks when she said we should not hire the 15,000 new IRS workers to parse through our personal files, but increase the number of people working on immigration to improve the fast track to citizenship.  We need workers and they would pay taxes.  And build the damn wall between the US and Mexico.  It won’t stop but it will reduce.

Keep the unions from enacting Card Check, Fair Share, what ever it’s called.  Stupid-ass laws, get a grip, how stupid is this?  “Employee Free Choice Act” is actually a bill that REQUIRES that Union votes are NOT private.  This is simply to provide intimidation and is clearly in support of unions.  What a stupid and misleading name.  Unions would also be able to collect more dues to donate to more democratic candidates. Fair Share is only “fair” to union bosses, not even the unions themselves.

We need to elect people to represent us that have comment sense, not vendettas.  We need to work together to make this country strong again.  We are lazy, don’t take care of ourselves or plan for the future.  The people who believe “Health Care is Free” need to be taught a lesson in business.  The people who believe the US Treasury is a bank account that will never run out of money need to understand it already has run out of money.  The people who believe economic stimulus plans that pay for government jobs need to explain to me how that does more than push that debt down the road for someone else to pay.

Dr. Miller-Meeks not only “gets it” but has a common sense approach that can calm the waters not stir things up more.  Take a look at her website and if you agree with me, send in what  you can to support her campaign.

VOTE MILLER-MEEKS on NOVEMBER 2