Free Republic

Do you think Congress should vote on bills without reading them? How about voting on bills that don’t even exist yet, except in fragments? The Senate Finance Committee is poised to vote on a massive health care reform bill on Tuesday allegedly authored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). A glaring, outrageous, unreported fact is that the bill’s actual text has been kept secret. No one actually knows what’s in it – not even the senators who will be told to vote for it.

There seems to be little outrage as the US, a country where free enterprise is supposed to reign, moves to nationalize losses without even contemplating reform. We are at another moment when those of a bullish persuasion, whose financial muscle memory was developed under former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, are determined to put lipstick on the pig at every opportunity. As soon as any facet of each financial minicrisis ends -- whether that be in certain subprime lenders, certain Alt-A lenders, certain monoline insurers or certain banks -- folks act as though all is well, even as financial institutions...

A freedom-focused grassroots organization has issued a nationwide alert about a plan in Congress that would require credit card companies, eBay, Amazon, Google and other companies to report what you buy to the federal government. FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey said the privacy implications are "breathtaking." "This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week," he said. "Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon and Google Checkout," he said....