However, Proposition 74-increasing the amount of time it takes for teachers to gain tenure from two to five years-and Proposition 75-requiring unions to obtain their members' permission to use any portion of union dues for political donations-were initially very popular, earning 61 percent and 57 percent approval, respectively.

These two measures threatened the power of unions and would have substantially weakened the Sacramento political machine. So the machine responded with total war.

It was the most expensive special election in history, costing by some accounts more than $300 million. Unions alone spent more than $100 million in advertising and voter mobilization efforts. The result: all eight ballot initiatives were defeated, including the four backed by Schwarzenegger. Despite their initial popularity, propositions 74 and 75 lost by ten points or more. Propositions 76 and 77 were beaten by even larger margins.

A Los Angeles Times op-ed by broadcaster John Ziegler aptly summed up the result. It was t.i.tled "How the Liars Won":The entire special election was dictated by 30 second TV ads. . . . The vast majority of the commercials-which, for merely a couple of hundred million dollars, took over our television sets for the final weeks of the campaign-treated the truth as a mere technicality and the facts as just an obstacle to a goal apparently inspired by Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis' famous mantra, "Just Win Baby."

. . . In general the news media seems to have created a matrix through which we were supposed to view all political discourse with such extreme cynicism that it is presumed that no one is telling the truth. So if one side claims that 2 + 2=4 and the other claims 2 + 2=100, there appears to be a consensus that the real answer must be somewhere in the middle. Ask yourself who prevails in that scenario? Obviously, it is the liars who win big because the truth, by its very nature, cannot be exaggerated.

Of course, we've already learned just how little the truth matters to the secular-socialist machine.

BRIBERY AND PAYOFFS OF THE SECULAR-SOCIALIST MACHINE.

The governance of a machine is always infused with lies and corruption.

The machine that currently runs Washington, D.C., is no exception. Having promised honest and accountable government, the administration picked a Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, who failed to pay his taxes. Then, Obama's officials announced grandly they will do no business with companies that fail to pay their taxes.

Similarly, it made perfect sense for Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate committee overseeing mortgage lenders, to take a sweetheart deal from a mortgage lender. After all, if you're going to work hard to get power, shouldn't you get something back for your troubles?

After people become corrupt, it's natural for them to bribe others in the same manner. That's why rule-breaking, writing payoffs into legislative bills, and fawning over special interests is the modus operandi of the secular-socialist machine.

The machine uses government resources to enhance its power, pay off allies, and buy off others. We've seen political machines in America in the past, mostly at the munic.i.p.al level. But the modern era is even more dangerous due to the emergence of a huge government in Washington with enormous power and resources. This has enabled secular socialists to use payoffs and special favors on a grand scale in order to construct a national political machine. And in order to maintain their machine, secular socialists have to pillage government a.s.sets to reward their friends and allies.

This machine is now running the country. The only question is whether it will become permanent, or the American people will dislodge it.

ONCE, WE WOULD HAVE CALLED IT A SCANDAL.

A prime example of the machine in action can be seen in the automobile bailout and in the ensuing bankruptcy proceedings for Chrysler. Although the Democrats and the mainstream media tried to treat this extraordinary intervention as routine, it wasn't. In fact, there was a time when we would have called it a scandal.

In 1921, for example, oil tyc.o.o.n Harry Sinclair gave several prize head of cattle and around $269,000 to President Harding's secretary of the interior, Albert Fall. In return, Sinclair got the exclusive rights to drill in an oil field in Wyoming. Sinclair's no-bid contract exploded into the Teapot Dome scandal, the most notorious example of political corruption in America prior to Watergate.

Now, consider the Chrysler bankruptcy. Between 2000 and 2008, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union gave $23,675,562 to the Democratic Party and its candidates while giving just $193,540 to Republicans. In 2008 alone, the UAW gave $4,161,567 to the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama.

In return, in a rigged proceeding in which the federal government disregarded bankruptcy law in order to engineer a desired political outcome, the unions were made the primary beneficiaries of the Chrysler bankruptcy. The Obama Treasury Department strong-armed Chrysler's creditors into a deal in which the UAW was given 55 percent ownership of the company while Chrysler's secured creditors-investors who normally receive priority in bankruptcy proceedings-were left with just 29 cents on the dollar. These secured creditors included the state of Indiana's teacher pension fund which, according to Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, lost at least $4.6 million in the bankruptcy.

As rotten as it was, the Chrysler bankruptcy was just a prelude to the General Motors bankruptcy, again brokered by the Obama administration. And once again, the big losers were the bondholders, who included subst.i.tute teachers in Florida and retired tool and dye supervisors in Michigan. Holding $27 billion in GM debt, they are receiving a 10 percent stake in the new company. In contrast, the UAW, which is owed about $20 billion from GM, is walking away with 17.5 percent of the company and a cool $9 billion in cash.

According to a Barron's magazine a.n.a.lysis, while the bondholders will be lucky to recover 15 cents on the dollar, the UAW can expect to recover up to 60-70 cents on the dollar-four to five times what the bondholders will receive. As the magazine noted, "Never has an American union done so well at the expense of shareholders and creditors."

Bankruptcy was once a legal process in which an insolvent company, an impartial judge, and creditors cooperated in good faith to make the best of a bad situation. Under the secular-socialist machine, the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies became a naked opportunity for political patronage.

In the end, the losers weren't just the secured creditors and the taxpayers who footed the bill for all these bailouts, but the rule of law itself.

COERCIVE TACTICS OF THE SECULAR-SOCIALIST MACHINE.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of President Obama's first year in office is the machine's brazen willingness to use the power of the state to coerce and intimidate his opponents while rewarding his political allies.

A perfect example was the investigation launched by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services into the insurance company Humana for having the gall to send its members a letter describing how the healthcare bill would negatively affect their benefits.

Another stunning example was reported by FOX News' Andrew Napolitano, who had to hide the name of the people and the inst.i.tution involved because of threats made by the administration. Napolitano revealed that in spring 2009, a major bank that had accepted a relatively small amount of TARP money wanted to return the money to the government. The Obama administration, however, refused to accept it and threatened "adverse" consequences if the bank's chairman pursued the matter. This report is particularly troubling considering the administration's attempts shortly thereafter to convert TARP recipients' preferred stock into common stock, which would give the government voting rights on the banks' management or policy.

Finally, who can forget the administration's war against FOX News? As opposition grew to their efforts to nationalize healthcare, administration officials began calling on other news organizations to shun FOX for producing, as then-White House communications director Anita Dunn put it, "opinion journalism masquerading as news." The White House even refused to provide guests to FOX News Sunday for having the temerity to fact-check a.s.sertions made by administration officials. Other news organizations, rightly concluding they could be the next target, refused to ostracize FOX, and the administration eventually backed down.

This wasn't the first time Team Obama tried to intimidate a news program. In August 2008, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to call and email a Chicago radio station-WGN AM-to protest the appearance on the station of conservative journalist Stanley Kurtz, who had been investigating Obama's ties to former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

HOLDING THE CONSt.i.tUTION HOSTAGE.

Perhaps the worst example of the machine's intimidation tactics is President Obama's unconst.i.tutional use of the Environmental Protection Agency to blackmail Congress into pa.s.sing his cap-and-tax energy bill.

In summer 2009, the House of Representatives narrowly pa.s.sed the job-killing cap-and-trade energy tax bill. But because the bill needed sixty votes, including those of senators from coal producing states, it was obviously going nowhere in the Senate.

So at the end of 2009, the administration tried to bully the Senate into pa.s.sing the bill. They cited a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The Bush Administration had refused to do so, realizing it would create a mora.s.s of new regulations and bureaucracy. But as the UN's annual climate change conference began in Copenhagen on December 7, Obama's EPA chief, Lisa Jackson, announced the EPA now considers six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, dangerous to the environment and public health, and that the EPA would begin drawing up new regulations to arbitrarily reduce them.

The announcement deliberately coincided with the climate change conference, which aims to establish an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, the president cannot implement a treaty by himself; he needs the approval of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate. So the EPA's announcement was actually a threat to circ.u.mvent the Senate's const.i.tutional prerogatives. Obama was indicating he would commit the United States to carbon-cutting goals reached at Copenhagen, and if the Senate refused to approve a carbon-cutting treaty or to pa.s.s cap and trade, Obama would simply use the EPA to regulate carbon whether the Senate likes it or not.

Senator John Kerry, a co-sponsor of the Senate cap-and-trade bill, aptly summed it up: "The message to Congress is crystal clear: get moving."

This is a breathtakingly anti-democratic and unconst.i.tutional arrogation of power by the president. Even Democratic senator Jim Webb warned Obama in a public letter that "only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country."

But for a president trained to value the acquisition of power above all else, why let the Const.i.tution obstruct that goal?

THE MACHINE'S MILLIONAIRE BACKERS

Finally, no overview of the secular-socialist machine would be complete without acknowledging its key source of funding: a clique of left-wing millionaires operating outside the Democratic Party.

A "shadow party," as David Horowitz and Richard Poe coined it, was enabled by a rapid influx of money from a few rich liberals united in their opposition to George W. Bush and their frustration with the Democratic establishment's ineffectiveness and lack of ideological purity.

Horowitz and Poe's book The Shadow Party, along with Matt Bai's The Argument, detailed the modus operandi of this new power center. By funneling money through interlocutor organizations to left-wing groups, these benefactors created an alternative structure that compliments the Democratic Party while pushing it to the Left. Conveniently, this method allows the donors to avoid compliance with campaign finance laws that regulate political parties.

This funding enriched established far-left groups like ACORN and People for the American Way. But it also helped to create new liberal "message machines" like the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, organizations that quickly grew to dominate the Democratic Party, scooping up its resources and volunteers.

Having aided the Democratic victories in the 2006 mid-term elections, this shadow party was also instrumental in the overwhelming fundraising and organizing success of the Obama campaign, creating a ready network of volunteers and financing to defeat Hillary Clinton and then John McCain.

A small group of far-left tyc.o.o.ns presides over this entire effort: George Soros, Peter Lewis, Herb and Marion Sandler, and Stephen Bing.

Soros, who declared in 2003 that defeating President Bush was "the central focus of my life," is the key figure. Through his various organizations, he finances an array of domestic and international left-wing causes. A major supporter of international efforts to curtail gun rights, Soros funds the International Action Network on Small Arms, which is pushing for a UN arms treaty to regulate international weapons sales. The Bush administration opposed this anti-democratic power grab, but the Obama administration has vaguely indicated openness to it.

Soros also finances marijuana legalization campaigns, contributing over $15 million through his organizations to such efforts, including ballot initiatives in several states. Furthermore, he was a big supporter of campaign finance reform. There's some irony in that; Soros backed the McCain-Feingold Act, touted as a way to remove the corrupting influence of money from politics. Yet, since the act's approval in 2002, Soros himself has donated tens of millions of dollars to political action committees (PACs) and other advocacy organizations that can circ.u.mvent the act's restrictions.

Soros first united with the other big money families to flex their muscle in the 2004 presidential election, when Soros, Lewis, and the Sandlers donated more than $20 million to America Coming Together (ACT), a PAC supporting Democratic candidate John Kerry. ACT marshaled an impressive army of activists and volunteers who went door-to-door to turn out the vote for Kerry. According to Bai, it was also the first time such a small group of people had invested so much money in a single campaign.

Frustrated by Kerry's narrow loss, the left-wing money families redoubled their efforts. Influenced by former Clinton lawyer Rob Stein, who explained to them how conservative think tanks and policy journals ostensibly help shape the Republican message, they set out to create not just a parallel voter turnout organization, but also an alternative "messaging machine" to the Democratic Party.

The funding families formed a new organization, Democracy Alliance, to channel cash to liberal organizations. Soros, Lewis, and the Sandlers alone provide about 40 percent of the alliance's funding.

Democracy Alliance gives tens of millions of dollars in grants to far-left organizations. But it's impossible to know exactly who has received how much, since the alliance prohibits grant recipients from revealing its funding. This makes the alliance a major source of undisclosed and unaccountable political influence.

Despite this veil of secrecy, we know some organizations that have received Democracy Alliance funds, though not the precise amounts of the grants. According to the Capital Research Center, these include the aforementioned ACORN, as well as Media Matters for America, the Center for American Progress, the Sierra Club, Air America, and People for the American Way.

All these organizations are active supporters of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda. All are now part of the secular-socialist machine.

CHAPTER FIVE.

The Secular- Socialist Machine's Health Bill Disaster With David Merritt, Vice President of National Policy for the Center for Health Transformation Nothing captures the corruption of today's secular-socialist machine better than the Democrats' takeover of the healthcare system. It's hard to imagine a more destructive course of action than the one they pursued: using fast-paced votes and procedural tricks to pa.s.s trillion-dollar bills no one had read; scheming to pa.s.s bills without actually voting on them; dismissing deep public opposition; relying on secret negotiations among a handful of staff and politicians; bullying opposition with bare-knuckled threats; and resorting to backroom deals to buy support.

This process was a tragedy, because improving healthcare for all Americans is one of our country's most pressing priorities. The healthcare system has become an anchor on virtually every aspect of society, including personal health, the quality of care we receive, and the availability and cost of insurance.

* Health insurance premiums skyrocketed 87 percent between 2000 and 2007, while wages grew only 20 percent over that period.

* Weighted down by healthcare costs, employers are dropping employees' coverage, with only 59 percent of individuals now receiving employer-based health benefits, down from 64 percent in 2000.

* More than 7,000 Americans are killed annually by preventable medication errors, and nearly 100,000 Americans are killed every year by preventable medical errors.

* Sixty-four percent of adults are either overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of obese children has tripled since 1980.

* Diabetes is a major factor in killing more than 220,000 Americans every year.

Democrats were right to try to fix the health system, whose deficiencies threaten America's future. We need reform so that every American has more choices of greater quality healthcare at lower cost. Everyone-policymakers, doctors, hospitals, employers, individuals-must work together to accomplish this goal.

But Obama, Pelosi, and Reid didn't choose this path of inclusion, cooperation, and expertise. They saw the large Democratic majorities in Congress and a Democratic White House as an opportunity to expand the power of the secular-socialist machine by growing government. This was their moment to build another Great Society-a permanent expansion of the welfare state that would reduce ever more Americans into government dependence and bind them to the Democratic political machine. That's just what they tried to do when the president signed health reform into law on March 23, 2010.

SECULAR SOCIALISM IN THE HEALTH BILL.

The destructive, corrupt, and thuggish path the Left followed on health reform perfectly captures the extremism of the secular-socialist machine.

The Left had to resort to this corrupt process because Americans won't willingly approve a "reform" that ma.s.sively increases government power, erodes individual freedom, and redefines citizens' relationship to our government. Obama's healthcare reform will do all those things: it is impossible to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars and reduce the role of government. Instead, you get new bureaucracies, more regulation, more complexity, and less control of your healthcare, just as the Left planned.

Just look at H.R. 3590. That's the bill that Senate Democrats pa.s.sed on Christmas Eve-and the one the president signed into law. In 2,409 pages, the word "shall" appears 4,231 times. That's nearly two federal requirements, directives, or bureaucratic powers per page. The law has the word "tax" 208 times-and not once to cut taxes. The word "require" appears 198 times, usually referring to the people who are required to do something-not government. It adds 159 new federal agencies, offices, and programs to what is already the largest department in the federal government. Among the new offices is the Personal Care Attendants Workforce Advisory Panel and four duplicative offices on women's health (see pages 1089-1109). Women's health is obviously important, but is it necessary to have four new offices within the same federal department? Just to make things even more bureaucratic, there will be a new Coordinating Committee on Women's Health to oversee the four offices. And that's not all; here are some of the other "vital" new offices, councils, groups, and programs created by the healthcare bill:* Grant program to establish state Exchanges (Section 1311(a)) * State-based American Health Benefit Exchanges (Section 1311(b)) * Exchange grants to establish consumer navigator programs (Section 1311(i)) * Private Purchasing Council for state cooperatives (Section 1322(d)) * Program to determine eligibility for Exchange partic.i.p.ation (Section 1411) * Federal Coordinated Health Care Office for dual eligible beneficiaries (Section 2602) * Interagency Working Group on Health Care Quality (Section 3012) * Program for use of patient safety organizations to reduce hospital readmission rates (Section 3025) * Consumer Advisory Council for Independent Payment Advisory Board (Section 3403(k)) * Grant program for technical a.s.sistance to providers implementing health quality practices (Section 3501) * Program to develop independent standards for patient decision aids for preference sensitive care (Section 3506) * National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council (Section 4001) * Demonstration grant program to promote research-based dental caries disease management (Section 4102) * Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (Section 4305) * Planning grant program for state and local healthcare workforce development activities (Section 5102(c)) * Public Health Workforce Loan Repayment Program (Section 5204) * Grant program to provide mid-career training for health professionals (Section 5206) * Commission on Key National Indicators (Section 5605) * Board of Governors for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Inst.i.tute (Section 6301 (b)) * Standing methodology committee for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Inst.i.tute (Section 6301(d)) * Elder Justice Coordinating Council (Section 6703) * Multi-state health plans offered by Office of Personnel Management (Section 10104(p)) * Advisory board for multi-state health plans (Section 10104(p)) * Interagency Access to Health Care in Alaska Task Force (Section 10501) And what will all these new federal agencies and programs do? They will regulate, they will issue rules, they will dictate. They will empower bureaucrats to decide what care you can receive, who can give it to you, and when you can get it.

Just look at the "essential health benefits" mandated by the law (Section 1302), which contains federal requirements for every private insurance policy sold in the United States to meet a certain minimum set of benefits or coverage. Individuals and businesses usually make these decisions, but under this bill, the federal government will decide. For example, if you are a single male with no children, the legislation still requires you to have maternity benefits and well-baby and well-child care coverage. You don't want or don't need that coverage? Sorry, you have to pay for it anyway.

The legislation signed by the president contains this and countless other expansions of government control. For example, the president pushed for, and Harry Reid included, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a new bureaucratic body of government appointees explicitly charged with reducing healthcare spending not just in Medicare, but in the private market as well.

The larger question is this: does anyone believe federal bureaucrats can effectively manage the largest, most complex sector of our economy? Let's face it, the federal government could not get "Cash for Clunkers" right, and that formula was simple: 1) buy a car, 2) file paperwork, 3) dealer gets paid.

Despite limitless examples of government failure, the Left expect tens of thousands of new bureaucrats to run healthcare efficiently. And the argument that this bureaucratic system won't reduce the range of your private healthcare choices is so preposterous that it's hard to believe many Democrats actually believe it.

RATIONING CARE.