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OBAMA MAKES UNILATTERAL $500 BILLION POWER GRAB: Largest Fascist Business Takeover in US History! (Guest in Mountain Time)
Obama plans to use the U.S. government's enormous buying power to 'encourage' (force) private companies to 'help' (conform to Fascist State standards) them do business with government according to Obama's unilateral whims.
Under the Obama plan, any of the nonconforming businesses currently doing a half trillion dollars with the U.S. government would be DISQUALIFIED from being a U.S. vendor anymore, a.k.a. possibly go bankrupt! (See New York Times article below.
And just what are the prerequisites to being 'allowed' to stay in business? They would have to comply to Obama's arbitrary standards regarding each company's environmental and health plans and their level of wages and benefits offered to their employees.
How on earth can Obama get away with this? New draconian, overreaching rules for a half trillion dollars in government contract business? With no vote of Congress?
Since about 25% of all U.S. workers are employed by companies that have contracts with the federal government, American business is now on its knees before 'king' Obama whose administration officials see their plan as a way to remake current U.S. business into the image of their social policies! Where's the vote? Where's Congress? Where's the Supreme Court? Where are the checks and balances with what appears to be the largest Fascist business takeover in U.S. history?
Conducting Talk Show interviews on this outrage is former Congressman Bob Beauprez who says of the new Obama business takeover, "Karl Marx would be very proud of the enormous power grab and abuse of government power to bring the private sector to its knees. Just when I think the Obama Administration can't possibly come up with yet another egregious idea, they go and surprise me."
ABOUT YOUR GUEST, BOB BEAUPREZ:
Bob Beauprez is a former dairy farmer, community banker and member of Congress who has spent his entire life working to leave Colorado a little better than he found it.
He was born and raised on a third generation family farm in Lafayette, Colorado. Bob's grandfather emigrated from Belgium in 1907 and founded a general livestock farm specializing in draft horses. Bob's father took over the farm and developed a nationally renowned Hereford beef cattle breeding herd and transitioned to dairy cattle in the 1950s.
The daily regime of chores, field work and milkings taught Bob a disciplined work ethic that would serve him well throughout his life.
After graduating from the University of Colorado in 1970, he went into partnership with his parents and brother, Mike, in the family farming operation. He managed the dairy herd, eventually marketing their cattle throughout the United States with cattle on every continent except Australia.
During that time, Bob pioneered the use of embryo transplant technology to increase the quality and marketability of the family herd. He also served eight years on the National Holstein Association Board of Directors, including five years as Chairman of the Genetic Advancement Committee. He later also became an industry spokesperson and international judge of Holstein cattle.
The dairy herd was dispersed in 1990 and Bob managed the development of the real estate for his family, eventually becoming part of a 1,500-unit residential golf course community. At the same time, Bob and his wife, Claudia, purchased controlling interest in a small community bank. As President, CEO and Chairman, Bob expanded the bank from one to 13 locations and grew its assets from $4 million to more than $400 million in twelve years.
Bob served as President of the Colorado Independent Bankers Association and was on the Board of the Independent Bankers of America.
While running the bank Bob was politically active as the chairman of the Boulder County Republican Party, and later as Colorado State GOP Chairman. He retired from the bank to run for the new 7th Congressional District in 2002, winning the nation’s closest Congressional election that year by 121 votes. After one term, in 2004, he was reelected by more than 30,000 votes.
While in Congress, Bob served on the Ways and Means, Transportation, Veterans Affairs and Small Business Committees. He was also Vice-Chairman of the Highways and Infrastructure Subcommittee and a member of the Republican Leadership Whip Team.
In 2006, Bob Beauprez was the Republican nominee for Governor in Colorado.
Since 2007, Bob has published a monthly e-magazine called A Line of Sight (http://www.alineofsight.com/), a public policy and opinion resource on current political issues. Then, in 2009, he authored his first book: A Return to Values: A Conservative Look at His Party. He is also Vice-Chairman of The John Hancock Committee for the States (http://www.hancockcommittee.org/).
Bob married his high school sweetheart, Claudia, in 1970. They have three sons and one daughter, as well as three grandchildren. Bob and Claudia have returned to their agricultural roots recently by purchasing a ranch in the Colorado Mountains near the Wyoming border. They are developing a buffalo breeding herd in partnership with their son Jim. Bob continues to stay politically active, guest hosting on various radio talk shows, doing numerous media interviews nationally, and maintains a busy public speaking schedule.
THE NEW YORK TIMES/ February 26, 2010
Plan to Seek Use of U.S. Contracts as a Wage Lever
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The Obama administration is planning to use the government’s enormous buying power to prod private companies to improve wages and benefits for millions of workers, according to White House officials and several interest groups briefed on the plan.
By altering how it awards $500 billion in contracts each year, the government would disqualify more companies with labor, environmental or other violations and give an edge to companies that offer better levels of pay, health coverage, pensions and other benefits, the officials said.
Because nearly one in four workers is employed by companies that have contracts with the federal government, administration officials see the plan as a way to shape social policy and lift more families into the middle class. It would affect contracts like those awarded to make Army uniforms, clean federal buildings and mow lawns at military bases.
Although the details are still being worked out, the outline of the plan is drawing fierce opposition from business groups and Republican lawmakers. They see it as a gift to organized labor and say it would drive up costs for the government in the face of a $1.3 trillion budget deficit.
“I’m suspicious of what the end goals are,” said Ben Brubeck, director of labor and federal procurement for Associated Builders and Contractors, which represents 25,000 construction-related companies. “It’s pretty clear the agenda is to give big labor an advantage in federal contracts.”
Critics also said the policy would put small businesses, many of which do not provide rich benefits, at a disadvantage. Furthermore, government officials would find it difficult to evaluate bidders using the new criteria and to determine whether one company’s compensation package should give it an edge, said Alan L. Chvotkin, executive vice president of the Professional Services Council, a coalition of 340 government contractors.
From his earliest days in office, President Obama has called for an overhaul of government procurement policy, citing the contracting scandals of the previous decade involving cost overruns and no-bid contracts.
“The president made it clear that he is committed to reforming government contracts to save taxpayers money while protecting workers and the environment,” a White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said. “The administration is currently gathering data and examining the best ways to do this.”
Two of Mr. Obama’s allies — John Podesta, the Clinton administration chief of staff who headed the president’s transition team, and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union — have repeatedly pressed the president to use procurement policy to push up wages and benefits.
In testimony last year to the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Podesta said that 400,000 workers employed under federal contracts — like cafeteria workers, security guards and landscaping workers at federal buildings — earn less than $22,000 a year, the federal poverty line for a family of four, assuming just one paycheck in a household.
“We have a president who is talking about bringing more people into the middle class,” Mr. Stern said. “The government should expect contractors to obey the law, and at the same time contractors should not be building a poverty economy, but should be trying to build a high-road economy.”
The officials briefed on the plan said it was being developed by officials in the Office of Management and Budget, the White House Office of Legal Counsel, the Treasury, Justice and Labor Departments and the vice president’s Middle Class Task Force.
Even as business groups press the administration for more details, they are denouncing the plan, tentatively named the High Road Procurement Policy. The Daily Caller, a conservative Web site, reported Feb. 4 that the plan would “heavily favor government contractors that implement policies designed by organized labor.”
Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor at the United States Chamber of Commerce, called the plan a “warmed-over version” of President Bill Clinton’s regulations that sought to bar federal agencies from awarding contracts to companies with a record of breaking labor, environmental or consumer laws. President George W. Bush vacated those regulations soon after taking office.
“We strongly opposed the Clinton blacklist regulations,” Mr. Johnson said, “and this appears worse than that.”
On Feb. 2, Senator Susan Collins of Maine and four other Republican senators sent a letter to Peter R. Orszag, director of the White House budget office, saying, “We are concerned that the imposition of these requirements, during a time of significant economic turmoil in the private sector and tight federal budgets, could have serious, negative consequences, especially for our nation’s small businesses.”
One signer was Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who was one of the two main sponsors — the other was Senator Barack Obama — of a bill that sought to increase the transparency and accountability of federal contracting by requiring the government to create a data base of all federal contracts. President Bush signed it into law in 2007.
David Madland, director of the American Workers Project at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group founded by Mr. Podesta, argues the new policy could lower government costs, instead of raising them.
Many low-wage employees of federal contractors receive Medicaid and food stamps, he said. Citing studies conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and by academic researchers, he said that contractors that pay their employees well have greater productivity and reliability, while contractors with a record of labor law violations do shoddier construction work. “This policy is good for workers, it’s good for taxpayers and it’s good for high-road businesses,” Mr. Madland said.
He said that one study done by the state of Maryland found that after the state began requiring bidders to pay a living wage, the number of bidders per contract rose by a third on average. Some higher-wage companies said they began seeking government bids because the new policy leveled the playing field.
One federal official said the proposed policy would encourage procurement officers to favor companies with better compensation packages only if choosing them did not add substantially to contract costs. As an example, he said, if two companies each bid $10 million for a contract, and one had considerably better wages and pensions than the other, that company would be favored.
Some supporters of the new procurement policy — and even some opponents — say Mr. Obama could impose it through executive order. They assert that the president has broad powers to issue procurement regulations, just as President John Kennedy did in requiring federal contractors to have companywide equal employment opportunity plans. But some opponents argue that legislation would be needed because an executive order may collide with laws that require federal contractors to pay the prevailing regional wage for the type of work being done. The executive order, they fear, would call for higher wages.
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
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