Fleeced

Fleeced
by Dick Morris

Are you a little pissed off? Do you feel this country is going in the wrong direction? This book falls into the category of pundit books that may change your mind about the source of your discontentment as the once political advisor to Bill Clinton takes aim at Democrats He may bore you with a plethora of facts. Some of which you may challenge because you believe contrary pundit input. Some of which you may challenge because you do not find the fact to be directly or even remotely relevant to his case in point. But if there is one rule Morris holds to it is the one where he does not engage in any rivalry diatribe with other pundits, which really has him in a unique political analyst stature of which you may find enjoyable for a change. What I find puzzling is Dick Morris was Bill Clinton’s political advisor and you would assume he leans left. But oh-contraire! What never comes out in his book, unlike most other political pundit or political figureheads in exile is any personal agenda. What I find intriguing is Morris’s targeting seems to fall largely with the Democratic Party of which he enjoyed a high degree of success and notoriety.

Morris covers many different subjects spanning big government, big business, and unions where he demonstrates how Americans as individuals are being fleeced by an organized entity with its own sense of self. I only provide a commentary to a few of Morris’s subjects, simply because I have a sense of priority that one may rather call a sense of urgency.

Morris begins the book with a chapter on Barack Obama. The statistician he is, Morris provides a twelve-point list of reasons not to send Barack Obama to the White House. While there are numerous books on the doom that would fall on the United States during an Obama presidency, this book sums it up in one chapter. Below is the list of talking points of which I highly recommend that you go to the bookstore and read the narrative to fully digest and articulate to others the consequence of poor judgment before November 4, 2008.

1. Double capital gains taxes on stock and real estate sales
2. Increase FICA taxes by 14 points on all income over $100,000
3. Double taxes on dividends
4. Expand the inheritance
5. Weaken the PATRIOT ACT
6. Curb anti terror wiretapping
7. Extend health care insurance benefits to illegal immigrants
8. Give children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition at state universities
9. Expand the number of immigrants who can enter the United States
10. Weaken education standards, by making it illegal to base a teachers pay on the test results of their students
11. Expand health insurance so drastically that it forces us to ration medical care, particularly to the elderly
12. Expand the welfare state, dividing America between tax-payers and tax consumers.

Morris makes his case for wire tapping in an argument for terrorist surveillance. His argument is much like video surveillance and laws enacted in Britain. Quoting authorities he states “there is a difference between surveillance aimed at prosecution and that which seeks to “learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities”. For Information gathering alone, warrants are utterly beside the point. Quoting judge Richard Posner as saying once you grant the legitimacy of surveillance aimed at detection rather than at gathering evidence of guilt, requiring a warrant to conduct it would be like requiring a warrant to ask people questions or to install surveillance comers on city streets. Connecting the dots with the Obama chapter, to find the Democratic left media, and the Democratic Party, and specifically Barack Obama would make it a priority to remove an essential tool to our national security.

Morris discusses the Fairness Doctrine in draft form that is being pushed by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama where not only does the government control the content of what is broadcast on the airwaves it dictates who works there at each station based on there political orientation. Does that sound like socialism, or communism. or Nazism? It certainly does not sound like a free press. But one thing for sure is under a Obama presidency us Americans will never see it coming!

What’s coming you ask? McCain and Obama tried to push a bill through Congress to police for foreign lobbyists. Hillary Clinton led the effort to kill it. One can only conclude that this was due to her husbands special lobby interest in Dubai under the guise of a not for profit fund. Why a US Senator who is running for president has a husband so closely tied to Dubai is not drawn into question by the media is a good question that can be answered in the preceding paragraph. . Many foreign lobbyists lined up behind the Clintons with Hillary campaign run. In other material we are now learning since the Democratic Convention that Obama may have lately received as mush as $65M from foreign entities. This is all illegal under our current campaign finance law. If you wonder where it ends or why folks go to Washington to “serve their country” Clinton’s post administration advisors are on the take and earning a pretty dollar, you don’t have to look far when you read that Bill Clinton’s chief political strategist was on the lobbyist take for Central American trade bill. Penn is now a post Clinton lobbyist millionaire

Freddie and Fannie have found the personal integrity and agenda of prominent Democrats as in Christopher Dodd, and Charles Schumer to be in question. While he points this out here is what Morris missed. Forget about Obama’s association with radical leaders walking through life with spinning moral compasses. Lets look at his connection with Tony Rezko. While running as a reformer, Obama has had a 17-year relationship with an convicted Chicago con man now in prison for fraud, extortion, and money laundering. Rezko benefited from Obama’s role in the Illinois Senate by receiving millions in state funded housing.

Was the favor returned and is big business involved well consider this: A former Illinois bank official, now claiming whistleblower status, says bank officials replaced a loan reappraisal that he prepared for a Chicago property that was purchased by the wife of now-convicted felon Tony Rezko, part of which was later sold to next-door neighbor Barack Obama. In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document. Only in Chicago’s Hyde Park!!!! The questions are why is Barack Obama not brought up on charges for fraud? There is a thin veil… a very thin veil. But then why has the Senate ethics committee not even included this on their agenda? Look at the names mentioned in the preceding paragraph. One thing for sure, this goes to the very heart of our current credit crisis.

This book includes many chapters that show government and big business working in concert to fleece American citizens. We clearly understand that in 1999 the Democrats put America on that slippery slope ( I am now calling it the Rezko Slope)to easy money in the hands of those who can’t make responsible decisions. There is an old saying that once government gives away an entitlement, no subsequent administration can take it a away. I will also add that once government gets in bed with big business, it is the citizens that get screwed. In the six years of Republican rule, they made the problem worse. Why Morris’s indictment appears in this book to tilt against the left may lay with an overwhelming preponderance of fact. Morris is a fact and stat man. While Morris leads with a chapter that takes aim against Obama, many of the remaining chapters find Obama’s hand behind the scenes. This book could have been stronger in its indictment on the Democrats, and I give Morris credit for keeping the facts down the middle and his opinion to himself. Had I written it using the same facts with a little pointed narrative, you would see a cover that reads Obama’s Conspiracy by Paul Murphy. Reading this book and talking about it to as many people as you can before November 4, 2008, is paramount to arm Americans with the right intellect to avert Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi efforts in bamboozling America.