Ed Martin Update: Happy New Year – Open House Jan 2nd – Endings and Beginnings – Death Panels

• ObamaCare & Death Panels
• Open House January 2nd

Endings and Beginnings

First, a confession: I have never found New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day to be particularly satisfying holidays.  Perhaps this is because I find Christmas and the celebration of the birthday of Jesus so personally meaningful.

And, then there is always a kind of “pressure” to really celebrate New Year’s and make it soooo memorable.  This rarely worked for me – as evidenced in my current failure to really recall any of the New Year’s celebrations.  Even the college football bowl tradition seems so watered down (and the national championship game is just about played in February!).

I heard a local radio talk show say “And, like most dads in America who said this at one time or another: ‘New Year’s is amateur night! ‘”  This seemed very true to me too.

Finally, I never really found the end of the year, this big turning over of the calendar, to be the best time to take stock of the past year or to come up with new resolutions.  Somehow, the school year seemed better for these.  For these reasons, I never made a big deal about the New Year.

However, this year end seems different to me.  It really IS a kind of end for me and for our campaign for Congress.  After nearly 18 months of working together, we begin transitioning (this is code for “ending”) our campaign.  I cannot thank each of you and especially our legion of volunteers and the citizens of Missouri’s Third enough.  What a great experience and what success we had!  May we continue to build on it in 2011 and 2012.

I hope to see each of you at our Open House on Jan 2nd at Two Hearts Banquet Center from 3-6pm.

As to our campaign, we still have a few loose ends to tie up but we will be shutting most of our campaign operations down.  Our website will remain up but will go static.  Our Twitter and Facebook efforts will go quiet – at least as to the campaign.

For me, I will be back to work building my business (law) and fighting for conservative principles. I will be back at the helm of the Conservative Heartland Leadership Conference (we seek to educate about conservative principles in action).  In the new year, I will be speaking out on Obamacare and the truth of it as well as speaking out on Voter Fraud and the future of elections.

You can expect to hear from me every now and again from this email address.  However, I will be setting up shop in some new places on the Internet.  Please look for these over the next few weeks.

ObamaCare and “Death Panels”

You may recall that the original Obamacare bill included provisions that would allow for “end-of-life” counseling.  These provisions were cut from the bill after opponents expressed concern – correctly in my opinion – that this counseling was intended to prepare patients for inevitable rationing based on bureaucrats in Washington DC.

Medical professionals should be free to talk with patients about such matters, but the discussion is initiated by the patient and done within a climate where the patient can be confident that their physician has the patient’s best interests in mind.  That there would be an officially sanctioned, government funded end of life discussion is recognized by most people as ethically suspect, which is why many members of congress cautioned each other to downplay these provisions. Ultimately this subterfuge was found out and these parts of the legislation were struck.

What the left could not achieve by legislation, they are going to get by regulation.  The medical regulation bureaucracy in Washington DC is gearing up to do the very thing that the people’s representatives refused to allow by dint of law.  Consider this from the Wall Street Journal:

ObamaCare proponents derided fears of “death panels” as a product of tea partiers’ fevered imagination, and they lamented when Congress removed the provision that would have provided for end-of-life counseling that might coax the elderly away from life-sustaining but expensive treatments. Not to fear: The administration has resurrected that provision through regulations, and Medicare will now pay for such counseling as part of elderly “wellness assessments.” Yes, the “death panels” charge is somewhat crude, but combine cost-based rationing with end-of-life counseling and, well, here we are.

As the Food and Drug Administration conspires with the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to reduce the availability of medicines and provide bureaucratic pressure on physicians who accept Medicare and Medicaid patients to change the medical culture, we see a sterling example of big government in action.

The bottom line is that Federal bureaucrats are effectively thrusting upon the American people regulations too repellant to be accepted even by a congress utterly contemptuous of the will of the American people.

Right of center politicians are often hounded by their left-wing opponents for preferring private sector solutions over big government solutions.  They fail to understand the difference between “expensive” due to market forces and “unavailable” due to government fiat.

Open House January 2nd

We would love for you to join us on Sunday, January 2nd, from 3- 6pm at Two Hearts Banquet Center 4532 Lindbergh Blvd. (Lindbergh and Gravois) in South County for an afternoon that will fondly recall the fun and fellowship of this past year as well as provide a chance to look forward and discuss all the  opportunities that lay ahead.

Thanks for reading.  We will see you Sunday!
Ed

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