Last week, a number of large companies (including John Deere, Caterpillar, 3M and AT&T, just to name a few) came out with statements indicating that Obama & The Dems' new health care law will raise their non-cash expenses, hit their earnings, and affect their stock prices by making it more costly to provide prescription drug coverage to retired workers. Obviously, that's not the sort of thing that Obama & The Dems really want to hear. So what do they do about it? On Friday, democrat congressman Henry Waxman (pictured) fired off a letter to several of these companies demanding that they appear for a House subcommittee hearing in April in order to explain why they made those statements last week (link below).
Folks, this is outrageous, pathetic and, frankly, un-American. In this country, we have a little piece of law that is completely unique in the entire course of human history -- It's called the First Amendment. It permits individuals and companies to freely criticize government and the laws that government enacts. And when the government's controlling party imposes adverse consequences upon you for criticizing a policy or law of that party -- such as hauling you in to be verbally accosted and harassed at a congressional hearing -- then what is likely to result is a complete chilling of free speech (since who in their right mind would really want to be taken to task by a congressional subcommittee). Explained another way, Obama & The Dems apparently figure that if they put the screws to these companies for saying something negative about one of their policies, then other companies and individuals will think twice in the future before they say anything negative about Obama & The Dems' policies.
This is a direct assault on perhaps the most fundamental right that he have as Americans (and I believe one of most natural rights shared by all human beings) -- The right to freely express yourself. This assault on the First Amendment by Obama & The Dems should be condemned from all sides. If only this had been the first time that we've seen this sort of thing from these people.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Democrats-threaten-companies-hit-hard-by-health-care-bill-89347127.html
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