Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Clambake - Harris - Wrap Up

I want to say "wow." The series of clips of the Harris interview, as amateurish as they are, has gotten a lot of attention. Even my mother got into the act, though I am sure she was being reserved in her comments for public consumption. She has taken me to task in the past for calling people "spineless" and "gutless" without offering any clinical proof. These are respected people in the community, she would say. Remember, your son is named after you...be nice for his sake, is another one usually followed by the standard motherly if-you-can't-say-something-nice-about-someone...

C'mon, mom! Give me your best shot! Lemme have it with both barrels...like this guy:


In my post I didn’t say that I disagreed with Harris on his stance, but I did find it suprising that a candidate who is portrayed to be on the opposite end of the conservative spectrum from incumbent Gilchrest would support more government involvement in health insurance.
First I have to thank the blogger for noticing the interview. And I was, indeed, refering to his (or her) post.

The blogger takes exception to being called a left-wing blogger. All I can say is that anyone who doubts Andy Harris' conservative bonafides must be, in my book, a leftwinger, a liberal, not a conservative. "...opposite end of the conservative spectrum from incumbent Gilchrest..."? Gilchrest isn't even ON the spectrum. He doesn't know where the spectrum is. He's lost it, up in a closet somewhere. you know, behind all the winter accessory odds and ends that come tumbling down on you everytime you are looking for something up there.

Anyway, for my mother's sake, I'll let Mr. Harris speak for himself on the health care issue. From my standpoint, his position rings true. I can't wait for the first Harris-Gilchrest debate!

In other matters, I do want to let it be known that I have a short video interview of Michael Swartz, author of BlogNetNews' Number One Maryland blog. If anyone wants to see it, please contact Mr. Swartz or visit his blog The Monoblogue, and leave a comment!

7 comments:

Marc Kilmer said...

On the health care issue, I'm still a little confused by Harris's stance. His talk about removing mandates and letting the free market work is great. However, the kind of stuff he's talking about is what you'd expect a state legislator to say. Since he's running for federal office, there is a different set of health care issues to deal with.

Mandates and the variety of anti-market restrictions are put on at a state level. There is federal legislation that would kind of end this, but that's not what Harris was talking about.

Furthermore, the original Romney plan wasn't as great as Harris makes it out to be.

Even though his health care positions need clarification and perhaps some broadening, he's much better than Gilchrest.

Mike Netherland said...

Hi Marc! Thanks for the comment! What Harris was addresing was a claim in a ...not conservative blog... that he supported the current health insurance law in Mass.

As you point out, conservatives are justifiably suspicious of such plans and should get politicians to clarify their positions.

That's what I did and I think, that's what Harris did, to the degree to which I am qualified to ask questions.

I haven't looked at his position paper on Health Care which I believe he has posted on his web site. Maybe that's the place to start.

Marc Kilmer said...

Thanks for the clarification. The Massachusetts plan is a bad idea (to toot my own horn, I did an analysis for the Maryland Public Policy Institute here on it: http://www.mdpolicy.org/research/pubID.138/pub_detail.asp), but it seems to be the "flavor of the month" for many GOP politicians looking to "do something" on health care. The fact that it's crashing and burning in Massachusetts will likely erode its support among the GOP pretty quickly, though.

Harris knows his stuff when it comes to state level health care issues, though. I didn't see anything on his website about federal health care issues, though, but it's fairly early in the campaign.

Two years ago, for instance, Rep. John Shadegg introduced a good bill that would go a long way towards helping to make health insurance more affordable by allowing people much wider choice for health insurance coverage (see the bill details here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR02355:@@@L&summ2=m&). Notably, Gilchrest wasn't a cosponsor.

Mike Netherland said...

Wow! Someone who actually knows something about healthcare! OK...I just signed up with the Maryland Public Policy Institute.

Do you hang out with Bob Moffet from Heritage? He's a smart guy when it comes to health care policy, too.

Marc Kilmer said...

Thanks for signing up. We Maryland free market folks need to stick together (all seven of us).

I met Bob Moffet in Annapolis when we were both testifying about a health care bill. He's a sharp guy and knows much more about health care policy than I. I'm still trying to figure my way around the byzantine rules and regulations that Maryland has placed on health care in this state.

Anonymous said...

Oh, go ahead and put it on. People need a good laugh.

Anonymous said...

Send American Way Leaders To Congress
Joe Arminio
August 8, 2007


According to State Senator Harris, the big news is that Congressman Gilchrest has been moving away from the Republicans—away from the Right—and toward the Democrats. But this simplistic view reveals more about Harris than about the complex agenda of Gilchrest.

To make sense of the Republican primary in the First Congressional District, a vital digression is order. There is this movement afoot to transfer power from the American people to multinational bureaucracies and corporations. Big business is hardly all bad, but today the globalists, those who would, one day, close down the republic and subordinate us to unelected, multinational corporate elitists, and those who go along with the globalists knowingly or not, have become a strong force. The globalists and their helpers are not easy to identify; they call themselves liberals, moderates or conservatives, as always, but watch out, for they undermine the independence of America, that is, rule for, by and of the American people.

Politics is no longer one-dimensional (left-center-right); it is now two-dimensional or a matrix, that is, there is the conventional or traditional dimension—are you on the left, center or right?—and the new dimension, are you for the independence and sovereignty of the country (nationalist) or not (globalist)?

It turns out that Gilchrest supports an unusually broad array of globalist policies. He advances globalist (and neoconservative) trade policy. Hence his long standing support for job-killers such as NAFTA and CAFTA. What did the 18th century economist Adam Smith and Karl Marx both say about this kind of trade? It would dissolve the nation-state. Also Gilchrest advances globalist, radical environmental policy, insofar as he champions the Delmarva Conservation Corridor. The language of the Corridor is eerily similar to the language of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, and the Convention, among other things, promotes the “global commons” at the expense of individual countries ruled by their respective peoples. The incumbent deserves praise for protecting native Chesapeake Bay oysters but his tilt toward globalist environmental notions threatening sovereignty and private property rights outweighs such good. Those who promote globalist trade do not typically also promote the UN environmental agenda; those who promote the UN agenda do not typically also promote globalist trade; Gilchrest gives us bad policy from both camps.

Yet another globalist (and neoconservative) measure Gilchrest promotes is UNESCO, which, among other things, is subverting American schools and nurturing “world citizens” who are easy prey of multinational corporate interests.

There is another big point about Gilchrest. Why has he been silent about the build up of a North American Union? 26 of his colleagues in the US House have found the courage to sponsor legislation opposing this foul proposed merger of the United States, Mexico and Canada. Special interests—unelected bureaucrats and corporations--would evidently rule the new Union. Speaking about this North American Union, why has Harris been silent about it, too?

Harris is right that Gilchrest is breaking ranks with the GOP as a whole on such matters as Iraq, and taxes and spending. But breaking ranks on Iraq is not necessarily bad. And why use the GOP as a whole as a benchmark for taxes and spending? What is certainly troubling (and not pointed out by Harris) are the votes in ’02, ’04 and ’06 that Gilchrest cast in lockstep with the GOP, which neoconservatives dominate, to raise the federal government debt by 50% from $5.8 Trillion, in 2001, to $8.9 Trillion, today. (Gilchrest also voted before 2002 to increase the debt.) What is even more troubling is the silence of Gilchrest (and Harris) about the immediate severe threat the public and private debt is posing for the economy and how comprehensive emergency measures must be taken, lest the public suffer greatly and become more vulnerable to the globalists.

On the issues of gun ownership and family values, Gilchrest has always been, in the traditional sense, left of center. But his positions on such things—and anyone else’s for that matter—ought to be related to all other positions, especially those affecting America’s independence. I may disagree with someone who is left of me on guns and the unborn. If that other fellow is not a globalist, he and I are, at the end of the day, still Americans. If I encounter someone who is a globalist, that is another matter, even if he were an avowed pro-life and 2nd Amendment man.

Harris, meanwhile, has done some good in Annapolis. But he does not bring vital clarity to this race, failing to warn us about the globalists in general and to protect us from their policies. As reflected in his campaign web site, he is silent on, among other things, the true economic plight of the country, the North American Union, present trade policy, the Delmarva Conservation Corridor and UNESCO. What is more, Harris aids the globalist (and neoconservative) agenda on immigration. Although he would bar illegals, he has said nothing about reversing changes to the law, beginning in 1965, that have allowed far more legal immigration to occur than we can assimilate and that have created explosive population growth typical of Third World countries.

One hopes Harris is not a neoconservative. Perhaps he has received bad advice. Neoconservatives tend to be right of center on guns and the family, which, I feel, is good, yet, on balance, do more harm than good where sovereignty and the relationship between the people and corporations are concerned, advancing a number of globalist policies. They narrow discourse and would have us believe politics is only one-dimensional, namely, left-center-right. Above all, it can be shown that they have deviated from American Way* (nationalist) policies, which made American great, and which a long line of Republicans, including Lincoln, McKinley, Roosevelt, Coolidge, Taft and Eisenhower and the Reagan vision, and some Democrats, more or less upheld.

What we desperately need are more American Way leaders in Congress.

* “American Way” policies are defined, explained and traced through history in the new book The Decline And Fall Of The American Way.

Editor’s Note: Dr. Joe Arminio is a Republican candidate for Congress in Maryland’s First Congressional District, and author of the new book The Decline And Fall Of The American Way, including A Plan For America’s Recovery. The campaign website is
www.joearminioforcongress.org, and press office is at 301.274.4150.