Showing posts with label Congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Congress. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

President Bush Must Skip Communist Olympics

It's all the rage to say, "Our GOP has lost its way." It's quite beyond dispute, for the truth remains the truth.

Yet the stock recitation of selected symptoms -- spending, Iraq, Katrina, etc. -- omits a sinister affliction consuming the heirs of Lincoln and Reagan. The ravenous malady eclipsing our honor is this: Republicans coddle communist China.

No starker episode exhibits our anile need for a moral hospice before we slither into the dust bin of history than the one playing out before Americans' astonished eyes. Legacy building with the urgency of a dying Pharaoh staring at an unfinished Sphinx, George Walker Bush is bent upon being the first U.S. President to attend a foreign nation's Olympics. The nation in question is communist China, the shock troops of which are presently bludgeoning Tibetan Monks as if they were orange bathrobed baby seals. (One shudders at the prospect this Tibetan repression is the Chi-coms' sedulous sally into Olympic demonstration sports.)

Notwithstanding the Global Generation's remaining misanthropes' unsophisticated quibbling (i.e., me and mine), our Compassionate Conservative-in-Chief has eagerly RSVP'ed to the communist dictatorship's dramatic recreation of the Berlin Olympics. Given "The Decider's" resolve, hope dims we might disabuse his whimsy that watching a wobbling discus with the wanton butchers of Tiananmen Square can advance the sacred cause of human freedom. But we are duty-bound to the endeavor, lest as "history with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past" she finds us fallen from the ranks of honor.

Perhaps we could appeal to our President's historical sensibilities by reminding the Leader of the Free World that attending this evil regime's games will forever stain his legacy by depicting him as calloused to the subjugation of Tibet and sundry other communist abominations. Really, how would this generation of Americans esteem Franklin Roosevelt -- no slouch at setting Presidential precedents -- had he not let the cup of the Berlin Olympics pass from his nicotine stained lips and, instead, pursed them into a smirk with Der Fuerher for Leni Riefenstahl's lens.

Yes, this assumes Mr. Bush worries he may one day be regarded by posterity in the manner William Manchester recalled a discredited generation of sophisticated British "statesmen", save one:

"And as (Churchill's) debts mounted and his gloom deepened, England's indebtedness to Stanley Baldwin rose.in his final deed for the homeland, he joined Chamberlain in telling Tory MPs that if they felt they must deplore totalitarianism and aggression, they must not name names. It was important, he said, to avoid `the danger of referring directly to Germany at a time when we are trying to get on terms with that country.' Fleet Street cheered. So did Britain. These were men of peace."

In fairness, they were also the jackasses who paved a second road to Hell.

If such an appeal to history's verdict proves fruitless, we could remind our Commander-in-Chief communist China is:

Arming our enemies;
Engaging in espionage against us, including the use of cyber warfare;
Subjugating Tibet;
Abetting genocide in the Sudan;
Compelling a "One Child Policy" and forcing abortions amongst its people;
Committing predatory trade practices against us;
Denying their people's God-given human rights;
Subverting sovereign democracies;
Supporting their fellow dictatorships; and, generally,
Being an unsporting bastion of tyranny.

Could this partial recounting of the rogue regime's transgressions against our nation and others prove to the President that attending the communist Chinese Olympics will subvert the moral authority of his position as the Leader of the Free World -- a Free World which, along with the world's oppressed, will be watching and weighing his participation?

Could this enumeration of grievances against the Chi-coms help the Chief Executive glean that the President of the United States cannot attend these games as a passive spectator? (This is, after all, why the Chi-coms invited him.)

Could such a factual exposition convince Mr. Bush that attending their Olympics will reinforce our foreign policy "experts'" suicidal communist China "exception" and, in the event, make President Bush's political statement thus: "The United States is devoted to the self-evident truth every human being is endowed by their creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- except in communist China"?

Given these right reasons, would the President reconsider, for the sake of our free republic's sovereign citizens; and for the sake all the world's enslaved and oppressed who, yearning to breathe free, believe our nation remains their beacon of liberty and bastion of hope?

Thus ends our lesson in rhetorical questions.

Ever the political masochist, I once circulated a "Dear Colleague" letter to President Bush positing much of the above and requesting he not attend communist China's Olympics. Only a handful of brave souls signed my entreaty; undaunted, in September 2007 the missive flew. Certain I had affixed the correct address of Mr. Bush's taxpayer-subsidized housing, I am saddened to report he has not replied to this Congressional correspondence with the alacrity he did the Chi-coms' Olympic invite.

As the Year of the Rat scurries toward the opening ceremonies, however, I and my anti-communist ilk have not been idle. On April 1, I introduced H.R. 5668, which would bar any United States government official from attending the Beijing games' ceremonies. (Importantly, this legislation does not impact our athletes.) Oh, I know H.R. 5668 requires the President's signature or a Congressional over-ride of his veto to become law. Still, while it may not persuade the President to be "unavoidably otherwise occupied elsewhere in the world" during the communist Chinese Olympics, it will meet our moral imperative to our posterity, our country, and the cruel muse of History:

For when, once again, history's flickering lamp illumes our aged cheeks and strews her lengthening shadows across our fleeting existence, she will avow how the supporters of H.R. 5668 did "march always in the ranks of honor."

Pray she finds Republicans amongst them.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

McCotter Rocks the Hill With New Policy CD

April 7, 2008
By Emily Heil and Anna Palmer, Roll Call Staff

It Has a Good Beat. A CD of House Members speechifying in earnest tones might not be headed for the top of the Billboard charts, but Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.) is doing his rockin’ best to jazz up the Republican Policy Committee’s message.

On Friday, McCotter was distributing a bootleg version of a CD of the committee’s members giving speeches on not-so-sexy topics like health care, taxes and terrorism —all dressed up to look like a rock ’n’ roll album.

He tells HOH that the CD was an alternative to an “eight-foot stack of policy papers.”

“Hopefully, it’s much more conducive to thought and discussion,” he says. The CDs distributed last week were a preliminary version, he says, and he’ll present the final version to House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) this week. “You don’t give Murray the K the session tapes,” he tells us. (He’s referring to Murray Kaufman, the rock impresario who influenced bands including the Beatles, natch).

In the liner notes, McCotter credits each of the speakers with “vocals” on the album’s tracks. The liner notes for “Freedom Songs: The American Empowerment Agenda” also include old black-and-white photographs of people listening to the radio, with a superimposed logo featuring McCotter playing guitar, rock-god-style, behind the back. Elsewhere in the notes, the zany McCotter thanks the American people: “You are the blessed children of liberty and the hope of humanity,” as well as “staffs of hard-working roadies.”

Instead of trying to make too much sense of the album, HOH figures it’s best to simply take McCotter’s own advice and just, as he implores listeners, “dig it.”

CALLING ON THE GOVERNMENT OF CHINA TO END ITS CRACKDOWN IN TIBET



Mr. McCOTTER. Madam Speaker, we stand at a historic moment. In the stream of history, it is oftentimes overlooked as we circumnavigate around time, fate and circumstance the momentous era and the momentous deeds which must be undertaken. This is one of them.

I thank the Speaker for bringing this resolution. I thank her for bringing with it the moral weight of her opposition to Communist China's abysmal human rights record throughout her career in this Congress, and for uniting Republicans and Democrats behind it.

But at this moment, I am also reminded of someone who is no longer with us, someone from whom I learned very much. That man is the late Chairman Tom Lantos, a man who embodied the human spirit in its ability to triumph over evil. How many people in this Congress understood the moment when the tanks rolled into Budapest and the Soviets went into Hungary, that that was a seminal moment in the Cold War, that the desire to breathe free, of the Hungarian people, could not be quelled by tanks and could
only be quenched by freedom? And throughout the history of the Cold War, their example was emulated by others, including the Czechs in 1968, and of course the Poles, and that eventually brought down the Soviet Union.

Today, what may appear a resolution of the moment for a specific incident is not that. It is our generation's Budapest. It is this generation of Americans who get to witness the Tibetans trying to breathe free from beneath the Communist yoke of the Chinese regime. And as we Republicans and Democrats stand together today, we stand with them, and we send a clarion message to the Communist Chinese Government. They will be free. And as the Olympic torch goes from town to town and you see people gathering
together of all political persuasions and all walks of life to protest the abominable suppression of the Tibetans, let us remember that we here have come together to make sure that the torch of Lady Liberty still shines bright as a beacon of hope for all the world.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Rep. McCotter: America's Protected from Stealth Assault on National Security

WASHINGTON D.C. – Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), who was the first member of the U.S. Congress to oppose the proposed merger of communist China’s Huawei Technologies Co., Massachusetts based Bain Capital and 3Com - an American company which provides the Pentagon with security technologies - today responded to the failure to reach an agreement:

"While some called such national security concerns over the deal everything but right, the truth remains: the collapse of the Huawei deal is a victory for America's cyber-security and national security.

"But we must not be lulled to sleep by this lone victory in protecting America's cyber-security and national security. We must remain even more vigilant to ensure American national security is not for sale; and to stop communist Chinese stealth assaults on our national security."

McCotter was the first member of Congress to bring this issue to public attention and oppose it. In early October 2007 Congressman McCotter circulated a letter signed by his colleagues and subsequently sent to CFIUS. McCotter also continued to oppose the deal, despite communist Chinese inspired personal attacks in the media.

Ironically, just last week the Financial Times quoted the chief marketing officer at Huawei Technologies, Xu Zhijun, who said McCotter's opposition to the deal on national security grounds were "bullshit". The quote came out on the same day as several Chinese nationals were being held for spying charges for possibly selling military secrets to the communist Chinese government.

Nevertheless, the three companies withdrew their applications to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CIFIUS), because Bain and Huawei, who were trying to buyout 3Com, could not calm national-security concerns with the U.S. government panel. Specifically in question was 3Com's TippingPoint unit, which sells security software used by U.S. government agencies.

McCotter, the Republican House Policy Committee Chair who has been the leading opponent of unconditional engagement with communist China, added:

"They are testing us every day to no good end. So we must be unwavering in our support of liberty and national security against communist China's perpetual pressure. And let them make no mistake: as it did against the Soviet Union, liberty will prevail."

###

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

McCotter Asks U.S. Ambassador to Urge China's Chief Religious Persecutor to Implement Reforms

U. S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom scheduled to meet today with China’s Director for the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA)



Washington, D.C. – In a letter to U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, John V. Hanford III, Rep. Thaddeus G. McCotter (R-MI), Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, and Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-NC) joined additional House colleagues to express their concerns over the Ambassador’s meeting scheduled today with Ye Xiaowen, communist China’s Director for the State Administrations for Religious Affairs (SARA). The letter urges Ambassador Hanford to insist that communist China implement reforms to end the religious persecution of its citizens, and immediately release its prisoners of conscience.

"As Director of SARA, Ye has implemented, overseen, and assisted authorities in carrying out communist China’s systematic policy for discrimination, harassment, imprisonment, torture, and execution of Chinese citizens practicing their faith outside the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) dictates," the letter states. "Recently, under Ye’s leadership, communist China has increased its persecution of Chinese religious believers."


For "the best interest of the United States and religious freedom around the world," the letter encourages Ambassador Hanford to insist that SARA and communist China end their practice of:


**requiring all house churches to register with the government;

**prohibiting the public expression and practice of religious beliefs (as established in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which China is an original party);

**restricting the printing and distribution of the Bible and other religious literature;

**restricting religious education for children under the age of 18 years; and

**designating religious groups as cults and thus causing them to become targets for government-sponsored violence, torture, and execution.

"While these reforms are urgently needed, simple promises from Ye and the communist Chinese Government will likely do little to stop communist China’s state-sponsored discrimination, harassment, imprisonment, torture, and execution of the Chinese people for practicing their religious faith," the letter states. "To hold communist China accountable for their persecution, please request that they allow impartial international or United States’ observers to verify the steps taken or not taken by their government."

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Even Stimulus Didn't Help Approval Ratings

It is a solid step toward preventing a national recession. Interestingly, however, after the passage of this bi-partisan legislation which returned tax dollars to American families, the public gave Congress a record low approval rating. Let’s hope some members don’t re-think their commitment to civility and bi-partisanship.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

McCotter Statement on Passage of Economic Stimulus Package

WASHINGTON D.C. – Congressman Thaddeus G. McCotter (MI- 11), Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, today issued the following statement after attending the president’s bill signing ceremony of H.R. 5140, the Economic Stimulus for American People Act of 2008 at the White House:

"Today Congress and the President banned together and passed bi-partisan legislation which returns to taxpayers their hard earned money to help them through this difficult economic time."


"This is a bi-partisan economic growth package, not a government growth package. It will strengthen family budgets across the country, especially in Michigan where we have suffered economically far longer and more painfully than the nation as a whole."

"Of course, this bill is but a step in the right direction, and more must be done to bolster America’s economic opportunities and prosperity."

The economic stimulus package, H.R. 5140, provides a temporary relief to jump start the economy. It required a two-thirds majority vote for passage in the House. It gained Senate approval last week.

The bill provides rebates of $300 to $1,200 for an estimated 130 million American families. Tax relief is also included for small businesses, and housing assistance. It is expected to provide over $152 billion back into the economy this year. Over 4.5 million Michigan residents will qualify for rebates. Michigan has the nation’s highest unemployment rate in the nation, teetering at 7.5 percent, with 383,000 unemployed workers.


###

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Liberty Alliance: Championing Liberty and Dignity in our Human Community

U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter,
Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee


The poster-child of failed hopes, today’s United Nations (UN) is a global Tammany Hall lethal to the liberty and dignity of our human family.

First, the UN’s membership is stacked against free people. According to Freedom House, of 192 UN member states, 89 are “fully free” and 103 are not. Thus, a solid majority (54%) of member states know liberty directly threatens their survival, which requires the suppression of their own peoples and, through their UN membership, the entire human community.

Yet, since 1945, the U.S. has been the UN’s largest annual contributor. In 2006, American taxpayers forked over $423.5 million in dues (or 22% of the UN’s regular budget) and over $5.3 billion in total to the UN. Still, we and all free people remain the UN’s tyrants’ favorite targets.

Two statistics gauge this dysfunction: Only 46% of the UN’s members are free nations; but the UN’s top ten financial contributors are all free nations.

In our global age, wherein a world condensed by an internet cannot endure half-slave and half-free, we can no longer rely on a debased UN for collective security. With our survival at stake, all free nations must prudently diminish their participation in the UN; and unite in the cause of human dignity and liberty.

We must create a Liberty Alliance.

Transcending the “Community of Democracies,” the Liberty Alliance must be founded upon the self-evident truth all human beings are endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and it must be steeped in the wisdom extending liberty to the enslaved will ensure liberty for ourselves.

The Liberty Alliance’s members must free nations. Observer nations must domestically expand their people’s liberty before admission as members. Importantly, member nations diminishing their people’s liberty must be demoted to Observer status and, when necessary, expelled from the Alliance.

The governing structure of the Liberty Alliance shall be determined by its member nations with the objective being the maximization of transparency, equity, and democracy in accordance with the effective expansion of human liberty and dignity. The Alliance, in President Truman’s words, “must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.” Thus, through diplomatic, political, economic, and cultural initiatives, the Alliance will empower and emancipate individuals, communities, and emerging free governments from dictatorial rule. Further, the Alliance must not have a military component; and must never infringe upon a member nation’s rights.

The Liberty Alliance’s headquarters shall be sited on the free soil once scarred by colonialism, communism, fascism, world wars, and the Holocaust – Eastern Europe, where, cradled in the intrepid human sprit, liberty’s lamp triumphantly pierced these benighted recesses of evil.

Finally, the Liberty Alliance would not invite the Free World to exit the UN. The U.S. and all free nations should remain in the UN to keep a wary eye on liberty’s enemies. But we must stop paying through the nose to get kicked in our assets. Instead, we and other free nations will pay the UN just as much as does a free-loading tyrant. Free nations’ monies and personnel spared from the UN shall be dedicated to the Liberty Alliance.

Discombobulated global sophisticates will decry the Liberty Alliance as undesirable and impossible. They are overwrought and wrong. Within the Alliance, Americans and all free peoples will remain cemented and steeled by the harmonic bonds of liberty, comity, and duty; and, like our greatest generations of all free nations, we, will not bend, we will not break in our reasoned faith in a future graced by free nations.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Congress Thaddeus McCotter Interview by Jill Warren on Big Red Tent TV

Big Red Tent TV promotes Republican candidates and issues and political news. In this interview, host Jill Warren interviews Congressman Thaddeus McCotter about his core principles and his vision for conservative leadership.


Saturday, September 8, 2007

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter speaks to the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County Fashion Show

This Afternoon I spoke to the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County in Annapolis, Maryland, at their Fashion Show Fundraiser. Here is video of my speech. Enjoy.





Thursday, September 6, 2007

Fighting the Spin on Petraeus Report...Rep. McCotter on Hill Tube

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) said he's fighting the spin on the upcoming Petraeus report



Thursday, August 30, 2007

Battle of "The Bums"

During their mutual month-long August recesses, wherein public confidence in each has plummeted to record lows, the American Congress (“Our Bums”) is denouncing the Iraqi Parliament (“Their Bums”) as “do nothings.” Further, despite American military progress on the ground in Iraq, Washington claims Baghdad’s failure to meet political benchmarks will doom General Petraeus’ plan for victory.

The premise of this claim is absolutely backwards.

Along Iraq’s bloody path to freedom, the greatest obstacle has been the average Iraqi’s wary neutrality in the battle between the United States’ “Coalition of the Willing” and the insurgents. Today, a nihilistic insurgency has been revealed to offer average Iraqis nothing but subjugation and extermination; in stark contrast, General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy is delivering both the eradication of the insurgents and localized reconstruction efforts – i.e., a palpable hope for security and prosperity. Consequently, the true measure of political progress in Iraq is NOT found in its national Parliament; the true measure of political progress in Iraq is occurring in local tribes, towns and provinces where Iraqis are choosing liberty instead of the insurgency.

This Iraqi “election for freedom” is not an intrinsically military development. It is fundamentally a political development complementing and speeding military progress; and hastening the day such individual and local “grassroots” political wins collectively dictate political progress in Baghdad.

Let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how in representative democracies Parliaments and Congresses do not dictate to sovereign citizens; sovereign citizens dictate to Parliaments and Congresses. Thus, in Iraq each citizen in his or her respective tribe, town and province must inform and consent to federal laws being enacted, implemented, and honored; and, when this consent is individually granted in sufficient numbers, Iraq will complete its transformational emancipation from tyranny to liberty.

Further, let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how we cannot abandon Iraq’s fledgling democracy – or any democracy – under terrorist attack. The War for Freedom must be won through ideological, political, economic, diplomatic and – as an ultimate resort – martial means. If the U.S. abandons Iraq’s democracy, we will also abandon our and the entire free world’s inherited legacy of and professed commitment to freedom. If this betrayal of ourselves and the Iraqis occurs, our enemies will be empowered and we will be ideologically disarmed in the face of the enemy. If not liberty, what political principle will a discredited and defeated U.S. promote to turn the Middle East’s oppressed away from Al Qaeda’s extremism?

Come September 15th then, Americans must focus on the true measure of political progress in General Petraeus’ initial strategic assessment – tribal, local, and provincial support for liberty instead of the insurgency; and we must do so cognizant of the truth expressed and proven by prior generations of Americans who, in times of national trial, preserved and promoted our nation’s revolutionary experiment in human freedom: The only way to ensure liberty for ourselves is to extend liberty to the enslaved.

Of course, it would help too, if the collective bums in both the Iraqi Parliament and the American Congress remembered all power in a democracy is vested in its sovereign citizens, not its subservient government.

United States Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter is the Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee and one of “Our Bums”