Friday, March 29, AD 2024 12:50am

$100 Million: Enough to Buy Landrieu Vote

Democrat Party Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana cast her vote for Harry Reid’s health care bill and became the biggest purchased vote in American legislative history.  She sold her vote for a cool $100 million in order to begin debate on the anti-life health care bill.

As of 24 hours ago Senator Landrieu was still wavering on whether to vote for the health care bill.  But in a dark smoke filled room away from the lights and cameras of the media a deal had been struck which bought the senators vote.  Surprising considering President Obama promised an open and lively debate throughout the entire process and he has failed miserably in delivering on this promise.

Lies, corruption, and blatant disregard for the American people, in this instance, the people of Louisiana was in full display as Senator Landrieu cast bought vote for the health care bill.  She was so brazen about selling out her soul for money the U.S. government does not have that she proudly declared, “And it’s not a $100 million fix. It’s a $300 million fix.”  Bragging that she was bought for $300 million.  Some have called it the great new Louisiana Purchase.

She is a Catholic and a graduate of Louisiana State University.  How the people of Louisiana voted for this amoral person is beyond me, but I believe she may not be reelected to a second term.  She is a member of New Orleans political family royalty and this may explain why she won a narrow victory.

If I were a Cajun or an LSU Tiger I would be deeply embarrassed of having her as the senator of the great state of Louisiana.  Keep this in mind when her seat comes up for election in 2010 and remember how she sold her vote against the wishes of the Louisiana people for an outrageous $100300 million.

_._

To read the article Sweetners for the South by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post on the corrupt senator from Louisiana click here.

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Elaine Krewer
Admin
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 1:30am

Tito, she didn’t vote for the health care bill itself, she voted on a “cloture” motion to begin DEBATING it, which is not necessarily the same thing. While it might be logical to assume that anyone who voted for the cloture motion is in favor of the bill itself, that could change at any time, especially if they start getting flak from their constituents.

You criticize Obama for not delivering the “open and lively debate” he promised; well, isn’t this exactly what we’re going to get with this cloture motion having passed?

restrainedradical
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 1:41am

“she sold her vote against the wishes of the Louisiana people for an outrageous $300 million.”

Am I missing something? I thought she got $300 million for Louisiana out of it.

Katharine Winterer
Katharine Winterer
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 5:43am

and she got $300 million for her vote, not $100,000!
Where in the ten commandments does it say that one can sell integrity if the price is high enough? Or is an honest politician a contradiction of terms? It’s said that the average payment in the house for a vote for health care destruction was $150 million. My how 30 pieces of silver has escalated.
Yes this was a ‘start debate’ vote but historically,
97% of bills getting through this hurdle, get passed!
I’m amazed at how quickly the Democrats have been able to destroy the country we love.

Paul Primavera
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 6:02am

To Elaine Krewer,

I don’t want an open and lively debate on the health care bill. I want it defeated along with Barack Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Joe Biden and every other liberal politician who legitimatizes (1) experiments on unborn babies for “medical research”, (2) extraction of the brains of unborn babies as a “right to choose”, (3) murder of the aged and infirm as some sort of “death with dignity”, (4) sanctification of sodomy as a “human right”, and (5) all the other madness they extoll as “human rights”.

One does NOT debate with the satanic legions of hell. One prays for their utter, total and complete defeat.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 7:33am

Paul, I’d rather it had never even been debated either, and were I one of Landrieu’s constituents I’d be disappointed in her decision as well.

However, the fact remains, this was NOT a vote on the bill itself and it’s premature to portray it as such. Even if historically 97 percent of bills advanced to this stage pass, there’s still that other 3 percent.

Needless to say, this bill is probably in the top 3 percent (or less) of most controversial bills ever and as such has a higher chance of still being defeated. Also, opening debate allows amendments to be offered, including pro-life amendments. Plus the Senate and House versions of the bill would still have to be reconciled in conference committee and voted on again. So this is NOT a done deal yet.

G-Veg
G-Veg
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 7:54am

At the risk of sounding like an apologist…

How is this payment for a vote different than the regular pork projects that constituents readily, and greedily, accept from their representatives? As a Pennsylvanian, I consider Rep. Murtha to be an embarrassment. He specifically called us racists and ignorant hicks and yet, he retained his seat. Why, because he continues to “bring home the bacon.”

Frankly, We the People are getting EXACTLY what we deserve in our legislators because we are the ultimate recipients of what is, in essence, bribery. I think we, and the people of LA, have given up the right to claim righteous indignation at the high price paid for this vote. Or, to steal a Casablanca quote: “I am shocked! Shocked! To discover gambling is going on!”… Or something like that.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 8:37am

he retained his seat. Why, because he continues to “bring home the bacon.”

I think that would be of interest to local politicos and for people in favored constituency groups, not to the general public. I think you will find that general public demobilization, not authentic public admiration, accounts for the degree to which incumbents are impregnable. Advertising costs for electoral contests are prohibitive. Also, Congressional districts in densely populated areas are either fairly uniform on certain variables or are seriously gerrymandered. The practical route to removal of the representative is a party primary, something which (I submit) seldom happens unless you alienate identifiable party factions or irritate some individual who can self-finance a run for Congress. An additional problem you have (where I live) is the culture of the press corps. They are often in the pocket of the legislator, and treat him boosterishly as an ‘area man’. Chaps like John Murtha get re-elected (by and large) because the self-selected class of people involved in electoral politics do not generate alternatives.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 8:53am

Biographical information on Landrieu indicates that she is 54 years hold, has drawn salaries from political office since she was 24, and has (apparently) had no other occupation since she was 32. She is a cut above Barney Frank, a 69 year old man who has held office since he was 28 and whose antecedent employment history consisted of the sort of part-time and seasonal positions you hold while a student. Still, she is a recognizable type. Jerry Springer explained his departure from electoral politics in Cincinnatti as follows, “if you’re doing this to put bread on the table, you’ll say anything.”

jh
jh
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 12:38pm

First let me make the point that Landrieu is not up for relection 2010. She just got put back into office last years. So while she is feeling heat the fact that 5 years is lifetime in politics is mitigating some of the influence of the people of the State. WHich to be honest is how the Founders intended it I guess

I was not pleased with this vote but as much as I have opposed Landrieu I don’t find her corrupt. The fact that she received something for the State in exchange for her vote does not strike me as corrupt. Though if I was her I would have held out for more!!

How she got in again (this is her third term) is a whole different story. She had a tough race 7 years ago. Her Repubican opponent this time ( a former well liked Democrat) ran a horrible race that many were not expecting. Still the race was closer than expected.

How Mary Landrieu will vote on this at the end is well up in the air. She is pretty cozy with Insurance companies that has made the left very mad at her.

One factor that might influence her is how her actions affect her brother Mitch Landrieu. Current Lt Governor of Louisiana. Mitch has gained some popularity after being defeated for Mayor of New Orelans (Lt Governor is a nice job not much controversy) He has his eyes on the Governor mansion after Jindal leaves. So that factor might be in play too

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 1:48pm

Though if I was her I would have held out for more!!

BAH! Can we please give the state and local governments a standard subsidy based on per capita income and population, let them build their own frigging public works, and put federal facilities where they serve to best perform institutional missions? The last reason in the world you want a military base at locus x is to make advertising fodder for Congressman Suckupthecash.

Tito Edwards
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 2:58pm

Elaine,

She did sell out her vote.

She could have easily defeated the bill without it having to be debated on the floor.

As far as President Obama’s promise of open view of the process, he has failed miserably. None of the behind the door negotiations were on C-SPAN as he claimed would happen.

restrainedradical
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 3:19pm

“Can we please give the state and local governments a standard subsidy based on per capita income and population”

That was my first thought but then I thought, “why give any money to the states and local governments?” Give it to individuals based on individual income and family size. Any state or local projects can be financed by state or local taxes.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 4:02pm

Give it to individuals based on individual income and family size. Any state or local projects can be financed by state or local taxes.

State-to-state variation in per capita income in considerable, with Mississippi’s about half that of Connecticut. A program of income redistribution necessary to counteract that would require the assessment and disbursement of ~22% of personal income each year. (Social Security implicates the assessment and disbursement of 5%, btw). The marginal tax rates necessary for such a project of equalization would make for a decidedly anemic economy, I would think. The ratio of state-and-local expenditure to domestic product is 0.17, so the necessary assessment and disbursement would be smaller. When I last checked, intergovernmental transfers amounted to about 3% of domestic product. You would not have to increase these much, just repartition them and remove the conditionality.

restrainedradical
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 6:46pm

Art Deco, I read your reply four times and I’m still not sure I’m understanding you correctly. I’m not advocating complete income equalization between the states (which I imagine your idea of state subsidizing wouldn’t do either), just some redistribution.

Gail F
Gail F
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 8:28pm

Voting for the cloture motion IS voting for the bill. If Democrats vote it down after the fillibuster-proof, 30 hours MAXIMUM “debate” that will follow, a lot of people will die of shock — me included. There is not going to be a debate. There will be the usual bunch of speeches and then they will pass it because they can.

American Knight
American Knight
Sunday, November 22, AD 2009 8:38pm

I know it is standard but where do the Constitution, the Ten Commandments or Church Teaching set up politicians to go to Washington to steal as much from everyone who does not live in your state?

It seems wrong to me, don’t you think?

I also think that giving scandal to Catholics isn’t helpful. If I was Christian and not Catholic I would see the behaviour of Landrieu, Pelosi, Biden and the rest of the devil’s rejects as a great reason to levy the label, “whore of Babylon” against the Church. Is that ignorant? Of course it is. But is it any more ignorant than being a pro-gay, pro-murder, pro-socialist Catholic?

Zak
Zak
Monday, November 23, AD 2009 9:36am

How is it stealing to secure more funding for Medicaid, a program the helps poor people to buy health care?

That’s as absurd as the notion that voting to allow debate renders one amoral. Where do you people get the idea that hyperbole is effective? It makes you look like nuts (this being the charitable explanation that you aren’t actually nuts). Thank goodness for some people with common sense like Elaine and jh.

American Knight
American Knight
Monday, November 23, AD 2009 10:17am

Zak: “How is it stealing to secure more funding for Medicaid, a program the helps poor people to buy health care?”

When one is coerced by threat of force to part with private property that is theft, no matter the reason. We can argue about the degree, context, etc. But is still theft.

Now if Medicaid was actually a program to help the poor have access to health care it may not be so bad. But it isn’t. Medicaid is self-perpetuating bureacracy designed to increase its constituency by making and keeping people dependent on it for access to basic, necessary services (including Family Planning). It is the modern day plantation and seeks to increase power by making more slaves. Do not confuse stated intentions with practical results.

Setting that aside, Let us assume that Medicaid is good for the poor of Louisianna. How is it just to acquire $100mil, which we don’t have, to purchase the cooperation of a Senator in order to legislate the murder of the pre-born? The poor we will always have with us, the preborn we won’t especially if we are forcibly caused to pay for their deaths. Maybe that is how we solve the problem of the poor – kill them before they are born! Does that make sense?

Michael R. Denton
Monday, November 23, AD 2009 10:30am

http://forthegreaterglory.blogspot.com/2009/11/louisiana-purchase.html

And yes, she comes up for election in 2014 next. Sen. Vitter from LA is up in 2010 and he will probably be re-elected, unfortunately.

Zak
Zak
Tuesday, November 24, AD 2009 10:18am

American Knight, have you ever, once, found a doctor of the church or a pope who has condemned taxation as theft? And what is your interpretation of Christ’s teaching about “rendering unto Caesar” which was given in the context of a discussion of taxation.

It is not yet determined whether the healthcare legislation will include any funding for abortion, so voting to allow debate isn’t legislating the murder of the unborn.

Regarding whether Medicare makes people slaves, I do think it’s an imprudent, if not absurd, means of argument. Here – “we’ll pay your son’s doctor’s bill when he has the flu so you don’t have to choose between that and food” doesn’t sound quite the same as “pick cotton in the field and if you don’t pick enough I will whip you.” There are certainly major flaws in the welfare state, but a slave plantation it is not.

American Knight
American Knight
Wednesday, November 25, AD 2009 1:49pm

Zak,

Taxation is a pretty general term. What kind of tax are we talking about? Income taxes are not beneficial in any way shape or form and they constitute a confiscation of wealth from the aggregate economy. People’s wages are income to the worker; however, they are an expense to the producer who pays those incomes. By taxing what is effectively, at a macro-level, an expense the government is stealing from the commonwealth of America. Taking that which does not belong to you is stealing, especially when it is illegal and without consent. Hence any type of income tax on the earnings of a natural person is not a revenue tax but rather an additional expense, hence a burden, on the aggregate wealth. Payroll taxes are especially pejorative because they raise the tax burden on the poor far more than anyone else and along with mandatory minimum wage laws create most of the unemployment for the least skilled, usually the poor and undereducated.

Federal money units fund Medicaid. These units are fabricated dollar units in the form of notes (debt) owed to the private, illegal Federal Reserve by the US Treasury on behalf of the people of the USA without our consent. The servicing of that debt is income taxes on natural persons (currently over 66% of income tax revenue and headed to 100% very soon). Therefore, it is a confiscation of the aggregate wealth of America in order to service a usurious debt burden based on nothing other than paper (or digital ledger entries).

While Medicaid allegedly provides for the poor, it is burdened with fraud and self-serving bureaucratic costs. It distorts the natural price system creating over production and service in some areas while creating shortages in others. The former attracts fraud and the latter raises costs and reduces service to the poor. Additionally, each dollar unit fabricated out of thin air dilutes the dollar value and raises the costs, which is a more severe burden on the poor.

By creating this unethical program and couching it in terms that are appealing to social justice the perpetrators of this fraud are robbing all Americans and doing the most damage to the least advantaged while making them think they are providing a benefit for them. This is unethical and immoral on so many grounds.

Adding to this crime, we now have an additional $300 million burden to secure the vote to proceed on a bill that includes the murder of the most innocent and vulnerable Americans. How much will it cost to bribe her to vote for the bill proper? It is also horrible that this bribe bought the vote of a Catholic Senator. Did she vote for the bill? No. No one has. Did she vote to discuss, which is an implicit vote for the bill? Yes. Does the bill include murder? Yes. Does the removal of the abortion-funding make this bill better? Yes, in that it will not be directly killing babies; but that does not make it good. It only makes the bill less bad and since abortion is one of the highest sins of our culture and our government, it is first on the list. Do not think the fact that the removal of abortion-funding has prominence means that this bill is not offensive to Catholic teaching in many other areas. It is a horrible bill that creates an apparatus for a secular (often hostile to Christians) government to have control over a large part of our economy and considerable if not total control over our lives.

To think that a government run by sinners and not only sinners but secular progressive sinners hostile to Christ, His Church and His people will use the power it has for our benefit is naïve at best and more than likely delusional.

Government has a specific and necessary function and it needs to be funded by taxes to perform those functions. Providing health care and taxing the incomes of natural persons does not fall under the legitimate authority of government and most certainly it does not fall under the authority of our government as established by the Constitution of 1789, properly amended.

Christ did tell us to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but He also warned us not to render to Caesar what is God’s. Our health and our lives belong to God and not to Caesar.

American Knight
American Knight
Wednesday, November 25, AD 2009 2:04pm

BTW – Zak, you have an incorrect view of what a slave plantation was like. Sure some slaves were physically abused and wipped and raped, etc. Horrible.

But that is a small percentage of slave owners who treated their slaves that way. Most slave owners considered their slaves as their property and a key factor in the plantation’s prodcutive capacity. So physical abuse would be the same as a farmer starving his ox or modern day farmer taking a sledge hammer to his tractor.

Slaves where actually physically rather well off becuase they were beasts of burden. Ratehr than most slaves suffering physical abuse what they were suffering was abuse of their human dignity.

People on Medicaid, food stamps and other government welfare programs are suffering the same abuse to their human dignity.

In fact one could say that African slaves suffered less attack on their dignity than the victims of the modern welfare state becuase at least the African slaves knew they were slaves. Also, since the slavery was more personal, human emotion often got the better of the master’s household. Some slaves were taught to read and write, some were offered a portion of the land to grow their own crops and even sell them. No social worker affords modern-day welfare-slaves that dignity. Some slaveowners even insisted that their slaves be taught the Christian faith – imagine a government worker reading Scripture to a Medicaid recipeint. Gimme a break.

Before anyone jumps on me for being a racist: I am Southern and I am also an immigrant to the Southland (by the Grace of God) from the lands that Christ walked so I am not exactly white and to my knowledge my family hasn’t owned any African slaves in the last couple of centuries if ever.

I am also not stating that ante-bellum African slavery was dignified. I am not. It was horrible. I am merely saying it is less bad than the modern day welfare-state slavery of blacks and North and South American Indians and poor whites.

My plantation analogy still stands. The difference is the plantation is nationwide and the master is the secular progressive government and the slaves are all sorts of different colors.

restrainedradical
Wednesday, November 25, AD 2009 2:33pm

one could say that African slaves suffered less attack on their dignity than the victims of the modern welfare state

I haven’t been taking American Knight seriously for a while now but this just blew my mind.

Before anyone jumps on me for being a racist: I am Southern and I am also an immigrant to the Southland (by the Grace of God) from the lands that Christ walked so I am not exactly white and to my knowledge my family hasn’t owned any African slaves in the last couple of centuries if ever.

Yes, because what determines whether you’re racist is your location, complexion, and whether your ancestors owned slaves.

Tito Edwards
Wednesday, November 25, AD 2009 2:38pm

All,

Be very careful in what you say in the commboxes.

You’ve been duly warned.

I don’t take PC-speak from anyone, especially on my post.

American Knight
American Knight
Wednesday, November 25, AD 2009 3:17pm

rr,

“I haven’t been taking American Knight seriously for a while now but this just blew my mind.”

Coming from you that is probably a compliment; however, I have taken your posts seriously – otherwise why should I bother responding? If we are searching for truth and debating how our Catholic faith informs our political and cultural involvement we should all take each other seriously. That comment is more a reflection on you than it is on me.

I share my views here becuase I want to know if I can defend them or if they have flaws. You and I may not agree on practical methods, but I would hope that we agree that we are called to inform our minds and actions with orthodox Catholic teaching. Unless a moderator, whose guest I am on here, tells my that I am out of line then I would appreciate it if you would respond sensibly to my posts, especially those you disagree with, or kindly ignore them.

“because what determines whether you’re racist is your location, complexion, and whether your ancestors owned slaves.”

No it doesn’t. But I post on here anonymously so I very few actually know me. I though some generic information may help move the focus on to the veracity of the argument instead of an attack on ‘a typcal southern racist descendant of slave owners’ approach. I feared that small-minded people may decide the post was racism directed at blacks because labeling anything that offends egalitarian political thought racist is a common and easy distraction. I actaully expcted better from you. You won’t dissappoint me again.

trackback
Saturday, December 19, AD 2009 12:13pm

[…] to make huge concessions to the state of Missouri and bought Senator Ben Nelson’s vote a la Mary Landrieu.  The vote seems headed to the floor with all 60 votes secured to impose on American’s […]

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