One Nation Under God

This is a repost of an article I wrote:

-by Bryan Baumgart

“You do well to wish to learn our arts and way of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ.” –George Washington.

There has been a lot of debate lately, over the separation of church and state. Public schools refuse prayer at graduation, athletic teams are prohibited from praying before games, the ten commandments are removed from parks and public settings and even the pledge of allegiance squared off with the ignorance of American atheists. Many argue that our Constitution calls for the segregation of church from state…but does it?

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people, peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The Constitution grants us a freedom OF religion, not a freedom FROM religion. (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion) Our founding fathers drafted the first amendment to protect them from a government that would force a national religion on the people, such as what was done to them in England. (Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise thereof) The founding fathers intended us to be able to practice any religion, any time or place, with no exceptions. To take it a step further, (Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech). Our founding fathers knew that the right to express oneself is very important and cannot be denied. Is prayer not a form of speech and expression? Is religious assembly not a form of symbolic speech, also protected by the First Amendment? In John Stuart Mill’s essays “On Liberty” he wrote, “The whole world has no more right to stifle the voice of one person, than that one person would have the right to stifle the voice of the rest of the world.” Yet the masses are fed with propaganda claiming that our Constitution was meant to keep separate, what our forefathers desired as one.

Our founding fathers attended schools and universities that were founded on religion, and they practiced and built our nation on these same religious foundations. We must insist on a return to the original interpretation of these American guidelines and values.

Harvard University (Est.1636) educated founding fathers such as John Adams, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams. The requirements to attend Harvard were: 1.) “Let every student be plainly instructed and consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” 2.) “Everyone shall so exercise himself in reading the scriptures twice a day that he shall be ready to give an account of his proficiency therein.”

Yale University (Est.1701) educated founding fathers such as William Johnson, William Livingston and Noah Webster. Yale was known as “A school for liberal religious education”. The requirements to attend Yale included “Seeing God is the giver of all wisdom, every scholar, besides private or secret prayer, shall be present morning and evening at public prayer.”

Princeton University (Est.1746) educated 87 founding fathers including James Madison and Benjamin Rush. Princeton’s founding statement read, “Cursed be all learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.”

One hundred and twenty three of the first 126 colleges founded in America were founded on Christianity. I can accept the notion that one should not be forced to pray or practice a religion in this free country of ours, but I also feel that someone should not be denied the right or forced to NOT pray or practice their religion when they want, in this country.

The first law on public education ever passed in America was passed in 1642 in Connecticut and Massachusetts. It is called “The Old Deluder Satan Act”. This act read, “It being one cheife project of that old deluder, Sathan, to keepe men from the knowledge of the scriptures, as in former times, keeping them in an unkowne tongue…”

Founding father Edward Kendall wrote on an education law in Connecticut in 1690 which read, “This court observing, there are many persons unable to read English tongue, and thereby incapable to read the holy word of God.” This was a concern because if we the people could not read and know scripture, then government could pass a law (such as abortion) that would contradict the word of God, and the people would not know enough to stop this from happening.

In 1789, under Article Three of the Northwest Ordinance, our founding fathers made the teaching of religion and morality a requirement to become a state in the U.S. This was the case for most of the state constitutions. Article Three was passed right in the middle of the time that the First Amendment was being deliberated. Therefore, unless our founding fathers were hypocrites, it doesn’t seem likely that the First Amendment would really call for the separation of church and state.

Founding father Gouverneur Morris (who wrote up our U.S. Constitution) stated, “Religion is the only solid basis of good morals, therefore, education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man toward God.”

Fisher Ames of Massachusetts (who proposed the original wording for the First Amendment) stated, “Why then, should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble. The reverence for the sacred book, that is thus early impressed, last long.”

Founding father Noah Webster wrote the dictionary along with many other great accomplishments. His early dictionaries included accounts of his life in which he professes his religion, and even turns his soul over to God at the time of his death. His elementary spellers (the first spellers for American schools) came out in the 1780’s and remained the standard of American schools for 150 years. These spellers included bible versus on the inside of the covers, and parables as grammar lessons. Webster stated, “The Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed. The Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”

Webster also wrote a History/Civics book in which he states, “Our citizens should understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.” His advice to students included, “The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.” He concluded, “The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his apostles. This is genuine Christianity; to this we owe our free constitutions of government. There are only two powers which are sufficient to control men and secure the rights of individuals, these are the combined force of religion and law, and fear.”

Jedediah Morse, yet another founding father (known as “The Father of American Geography”) stated in a geography book he authored, “Religion is the basis and reason for our freedom, and if we lose religion, we lose our freedom.” He spoke of personal experiences and stated, “When ever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.”

Samuel Adams (known as “The Father of the American Revolution”) and John Adams held similar views. A book of letters between the two leaders (now located at Harvard University) includes statements, such as, “the youth must be educated in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.”

Thomas Jefferson (while president) authored the plan of education for Washington D.C. schools and placed the Bible and Watts hymnal as the primary reading text in Washington D.C. public schools. Jefferson stated, “The studious perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens.”

John Quincy Adams learned lessons from “The New England Primer” (the first textbook of the U.S.) All three versions of “The Primer” included an alphabet with Bible sayings, a list of Bible verses to memorize and a shorter catechism with some very tough questions on Christianity.

Daniel Webster appealed to the Supreme Court for three days on why a school in Philadelphia should not be allowed to teach morality without religion. The Supreme Court ruled in Webster’s favor. The court stated, “Why may not the Bible and especially the New Testament, be read and taught as a divine revelation in the schools? Its general precepts expounded, and its glorious principles of morality inculcated? Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?”

James Madison claimed, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us.” We did not heed the warnings of our founding fathers. We have reinterpreted what was intended, and now we are paying the price, evident in the declining morals of society! Crime has risen and offered evil a place to breed. Our only hope is not to push on forward, but to return to the basic roots that our founding fathers had intended.

Presidential proclamations throughout the years have candidly mentioned God and invoked His blessings on the country.

The history of these proclamations continues to this present day with President Obama's continued invokations of Jesus and his faith. Including: "I found myself drawn not just to work with the church but to be in the church. It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.” Obama continues to cite scripture in his speeches both foreign and domestic. For example he spoke of Jesus' sermon on the mount at Geogetown University to make a case for his economic policies. In a speech given in Cairo, Obama told the crowd that he is a Christian and mentioned the Islamic story of Isra, in which Moses, Jesus and Mohammed joined in prayer.

President Bush’s State of the Union address in 2003, where he stated, “Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to humanity.”

The founding documents of America acknowledge God from Virginia’s first charter to the Manifesto of the Continental Congress. Every State Constitution acknowledges God and also argues that God is the basis of our freedom and our laws.

As John F. Kennedy stated in his Inaugural Address, “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God.”

Thomas Jefferson, whom the Supreme Court has credited with the “separation of church and state” metaphor, exhorted, “[It is] God who gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a Gift of God?”

The opening of the Constitution of ALL 50 States!

Alabama 1901, Preamble. We the people of the State of Alabama, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the following Constitution ...

Alaska 1956, Preamble. We, the people of Alaska, grateful to God and to those who founded our nation and pioneered this great land ...

Arizona 1911, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Arizona, grateful to Almighty God for our liberties, do ordain this Constitution...

Arkansas 1874, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Arkansas, grateful to Almighty God for the privilege of choosing our own form of government...

California 1879, Preamble. We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom ...

Colorado 1876, Preamble. We, the people of Colorado, with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of Universe ...

Connecticut 1818, Preamble. The People of Connecticut, acknowledging with gratitude the good Providence of God in permitting them to enjoy ...

Delaware 1897, Preamble. Through Divine Goodness all men have, by nature, the rights of worshipping and serving their Creator according to the dictates of their consciences ...

Florida 1885, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Florida, grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty ... establish this Constitution...

Georgia 1777, Preamble. We, the people of Georgia, relying upon protection and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish this Constitution...

Hawaii 1959, Preamble. We, the people of Hawaii, Grateful for Divine Guidance .. establish this Constitution ...

Idaho 1889, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Idaho, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings ...

Illinois 1870, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Illinois, grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy and looking to Him for a blessing on our endeavors ...

Indiana 1851, Preamble. We, the People of the State of Indiana, grateful to Almighty God for the free exercise of the right to chose our form of government ...

Iowa 1857, Preamble. We, the People of the State of Iowa, grateful to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed, and feeling our dependence on Him for a continuation of these blessings ... establish this Constitution...

Kansas 1859, Preamble. We, the people of Kansas, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious privileges ... establish this Constitution.

Kentucky 1891, Preamble. We, the people of the Commonwealth are grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties...

Louisiana 1921, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Louisiana, grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties we enjoy ...

Maine 1820, Preamble. We the People of Maine .. acknowledging with grateful hearts the goodness of the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe in affording us an opportunity ... and imploring His aid and direction...

Maryland 1776, Preamble. We, the people of the state of Maryland, grateful to Almighty God or our civil and religious liberty...

Massachusetts 1780, Preamble. We...the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging with grateful hearts, the goodness of the Great Legislator of the Universe... in the course of His Providence, an opportunity ..and devoutly imploring His direction ...

Michigan 1908, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Michigan, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of freedom ... establish this Constitution...

Minnesota, 1857, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Minnesota, grateful to God for our civil and religious liberty, and desiring to perpetuate its blessings...

Mississippi 1890, Preamble. We, the people of Mississippi in convention assembled, grateful to Almighty God, and invoking His blessing on our work...

Missouri 1845, Preamble. We, the people of Missouri, with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and grateful for His goodness .. establish this Constitution...

Montana 1889, Preamble. We, the people of Montana, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of liberty establish this Constitution...

Nebraska 1875, Preamble. We, the people, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom .. establish this Constitution...

Nevada 1864, Preamble. We the people of the State of Nevada, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom establish this Constitution...

New Hampshire 1792, Part I. Art. I. Sec. V. Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience...

New Jersey 1844, Preamble. We, the people of the State of New Jersey, grateful to Almighty God for civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing on our endeavors...

New Mexico 1911, Preamble. We, the People of New Mexico, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of liberty...

New York 1846, Preamble. We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings...

North Carolina 1868, Preamble. We the people of the State of North Carolina, grateful to Almighty God, the Sovereign Ruler of Nations, for our civil, political, and religious liberties, and acknowledging our dependence upon Him for the continuance of those...

North Dakota 1889, Preamble. We, the people of North Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty, do ordain...

Ohio 1852, Preamble. We the people of the state of Ohio, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings and to promote our common...

Oklahoma 1907, Preamble. Invoking the guidance of Almighty God, in order to secure and perpetuate the blessings of liberty ... establish this...

Oregon 1857, Bill of Rights, Article I. Section 2. All men shall be secure in the Natural right, to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their consciences...

Pennsylvania 1776, Preamble. We, the people of Pennsylvania, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and humbly invoking His guidance...

Rhode Island 1842, Preamble. We the People of the State of Rhode Island grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing...

South Carolina, 1778, Preamble. We, the people of the State of South Carolina grateful to God for our liberties, do ordain and establish this Constitution...

South Dakota 1889, Preamble. We, the people of South Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberties ... establish this...

Tennessee 1796, Art. XI.III. That all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their conscience...

Texas 1845, Preamble. We the People of the Republic of Texas, acknowledging, with gratitude, the grace and beneficence of God...

Utah 1896, Preamble. Grateful to Almighty God for life and liberty, we establish this Constitution...

Vermont 1777, Preamble. Whereas all government ought to... enable the individuals who compose it to enjoy their natural rights, and other blessings which the Author of Existence has bestowed on man...

Virginia 1776, Bill of Rights, XVI ... Religion, or the Duty which we owe our Creator ... can be directed only by Reason ... and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian Forbearance, Love and Charity towards each other...

Washington 1889, Preamble. We the People of the State of Washington, grateful to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for our liberties, do ordain this Constitution...

West Virginia 1872, Preamble. Since through Divine Providence we enjoy the blessings of civil, political and religious liberty, we, the people of West Virginia... reaffirm our faith in and constant reliance upon God...

Wisconsin 1848, Preamble. We, the people of Wisconsin, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, domestic tranquility...

Wyoming 1890, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Wyoming, grateful to God for our civil, political, and religious liberties ... establish this Constitution...

As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the U.S. Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world's law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with a full frontal view - it is Moses and he is holding the Ten Commandments!

As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.

As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see the wall, right above where the Supreme Court judges sit, a display of the Ten Commandments!

There are Bible verses etched in stone all over the Federal Buildings and Monuments in Washington, D.C.

James Madison, the fourth president, known as "The Father of Our Constitution" made the following statement "We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

Patrick Henry, that patriot and Founding Father of our country said, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ".

Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a paid preacher, whose salary has been paid by the taxpayer since 1777.

Fifty-two of the 55 founders of the Constitution were members of the established orthodox churches in the colonies.

Thomas Jefferson worried that the Courts would overstep their authority and instead of interpreting the law would begin making law....an oligarchy....the rule of few over many.

The very first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, said, "Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rulers."

How, then, have we gotten to the point that everything we have done for 220 years in this country is now suddenly wrong and unconstitutional? If people who believe in our core values don't start fighting back, then those values may be permanently removed from our public and governmental lives.

The Mount Soledad cross is our Normandy, the Pledge of Allegiance our Gettysburg, the sanctity of marriage our Yorktown, the Boy Scouts our Iwo Jima, child pornography laws our Verdun. If we lose these battles (and that day is coming very soon if we don't act), then America as we know it is over. If we tear down all public crosses and the Ten Commandments, remove God from our money and the Pledge of Allegiance, destroy the moral stand of the Boy Scouts, pervert the 4,000-year-old institution of marriage and allow the proliferation of child pornography, then let no man dare say "God bless America" when the next terrorist attack happens.

Senator Johanns: Obama's Acting Like U.S. Is USSR

Proud to have Senator Johann's representing my state!!!  Couldn't have said it better myself Senator!


By Melanie Hunter - March 1, 2012

Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) said Wednesday that President Barack Obama is acting like the U.S. is the Soviet Union in ordering that all health-care plans must cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, but that when those plans are provided by religious institutions that have a religious objection to those things the insurance company must offer them for free.

“The president has said he offered an accommodation," said Johann's in a speech on the Senate floor. "The accommodation is that: Whoa! Lo, and behold, this is going to be free. Now, I’d like to know what legal authority he relies upon that the president could ever order anyone to offer a service or an item free.

“He has no such authority," said Johanns. "This isn’t the Soviet Union. This is the United States of America. We don’t believe that for a moment. Of course, you are going to be paying for this through your insurance premiums. Well, my hope is that we will read our Constitution, and we will stand as a united front, upholding religious freedom which is being violated by this mandate,” the senator added.

Johanns was speaking in support of an amendment by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would have allowed any employer not to include coverage sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients in an insurance plan if it violated the employer's religious faith to do so.

The amendment failed in a 51-to-48 vote on Thursday.

Killing Babies No Different From Abortion, Experts Say

Hey!  What do you know...I agree that there is no difference!  I do however, OPPOSE killing babies pre or post birth! 

Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has taken a lot of heat lately for what the left refers to as "rhetoric".  Santorum has stated the decline of morals in society is related to the collapse of the family.  This serves as proof that Santorum is correct in his assessment that as we loosen our morals and laws to convenience our personal lives, there is no telling how far we will go! 

In Scandinavia, it has led to the end of "marriage" and now the majority (over 60%) of children are born out of wedlock.  The morals of Scandinavian society have declined to a point where bestiality is now such a norm, that animal brothels can be found in Sweden and Denmark. 

In the United States, 41% of births occur out of wedlock with a whopping 72% of black children being born outside of marriage!  Children of unmarried mothers of any race are more likely to perform poorly in school, go to prison, use drugs, be poor as adults, and have their own children out of wedlock.

Is it any wonder that when we open the doors to killing babies BEFORE they are born, there is talk of acceptance of killing babies AFTER they are born?  Even current President obama supports the killing of babies after birth who have survived abortions (known as infanticide).

Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.

Thursday 01 March 2012 - By Stephen Adams

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.

The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.

“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”

As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.

The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”.

They also argued that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth, for example citing that “only the 64 per cent of Down’s syndrome cases” in Europe are diagnosed by prenatal testing.

Once such children were born there was “no choice for the parents but to keep the child”, they wrote.

“To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”

However, they did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others – their fundamental point was that, morally, there was no difference to abortion as already practised.

They preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”.

Both Minerva and Giubilini know Prof Savulescu through Oxford. Minerva was a research associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics until last June, when she moved to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Melbourne University.

Giubilini, a former visiting student at Cambridge University, gave a talk in January at the Oxford Martin School – where Prof Savulescu is also a director – titled 'What is the problem with euthanasia?'

He too has gone on to Melbourne, although to the city’s Monash University. Prof Savulescu worked at both universities before moving to Oxford in 2002.

Defending the decision to publish in a British Medical Journal blog, Prof Savulescu, said that arguments in favour of killing newborns were “largely not new”.

What Minerva and Giubilini did was apply these arguments “in consideration of maternal and family interests”.

While accepting that many people would disagree with their arguments, he wrote: “The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.”

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he added: “This “debate” has been an example of “witch ethics” - a group of people know who the witch is and seek to burn her. It is one of the most dangerous human tendencies we have. It leads to lynching and genocide. Rather than argue and engage, there is a drive is to silence and, in the extreme, kill, based on their own moral certainty. That is not the sort of society we should live in.”

He said the journal would consider publishing an article positing that, if there was no moral difference between abortion and killing newborns, then abortion too should be illegal.

Dr Trevor Stammers, director of medical ethics at St Mary's University College, said: "If a mother does smother her child with a blanket, we say 'it's doesn't matter, she can get another one,' is that what we want to happen?

"What these young colleagues are spelling out is what we would be the inevitable end point of a road that ethical philosophers in the States and Australia have all been treading for a long time and there is certainly nothing new."

Referring to the term "after-birth abortion", Dr Stammers added: "This is just verbal manipulation that is not philosophy. I might refer to abortion henceforth as antenatal infanticide."

Your Share of Fannie, Freddie Losses: $1,300.00

Total funds requested, minus the dividends paid, work out to about $1,300 per American household.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Feb 29, 2012 - By Jack Hough

Fannie Mae said Wednesday it lost $2.4 billion during the fourth quarter of 2011 and $16.9 billion for the full year.

It has had worse years, remarkably. Fannie lost about $60 billion in 2008 and $72 billion the following year–two of the 10 largest corporate losses ever. Sibling Freddie Mac is responsible for a third, a $51 billion loss in 2008.

Fannie Mae was established in 1938 to promote home ownership by making federal funds available to lenders. In the 1950s and 1960s, it transformed into a profit-seeking corporation, with the goal of purchasing mortgages and selling them to investors, thereby replenishing funds to banks for fresh loans. Freddie Mac was created in 1970 to spur competition.

Recent losses for both agencies stem from the U.S. housing bubble that peaked in 2006. House prices fell nationwide by more than one-third since mid-2006 by one measure, the S&P/Case-Shiller index. Price changes vary by market, but for the country as a whole, homeowners erased the gains made since 2003.

Millions of homeowners defaulted on their mortgages, leaving Fannie and Freddie saddled with bad loans. Both reverted to government control in 2008.

Fannie and Freddie were once profitable, but the money they have lost dwarfs what they made in good years. During the three years leading up to the house price peak, Fannie reported annual profits of between $4.1 billion and $6.3 billion, and Freddie, $2.1 billion to $2.9 billion. During the five years since, Fannie lost a cumulative $163 billion, and Freddie, which hasn’t yet reported fourth quarter results for 2011, $91 billion.

Both Fannie and Freddie pay dividends to the Treasury Department as a condition of their government sponsorship, but both have regularly requested larger sums than they have paid. For example, Fannie said Wednesday that it paid $2.6 billion in dividends to the Treasury during its fourth quarter, but that it would soon submit a request for $4.6 billion to offset losses.

Fannie says it requested a total of $116 billion from the Treasury since the fourth quarter of 2008 and paid about $20 billion in dividends. Fannie requested $72 billion and paid $15 billion.

Total funds requested, minus the dividends paid, work out to about $1,300 per American household. That includes both owners and renters.

Liberals DON’T Believe in Separating Church and State

March 1, 2012 - by Gary DeMar

A lesbian is attacking the Catholic Church because a priest denied her communion at her mother’s funeral. Liberals are outraged that the church would act like a church. Liberals denounce churches when they speak out on social issues, but these same liberals don’t have any problem poking their noses into the jurisdictional business of the church when something the church does rattles their personal sense of perverted justice.

Liberals keep coming back to the claim that they are for separating church and state as long as they get to make the rules as to what this means and how the principle is applied. They argue that this is a constitutional provision. We aren’t a ‘theocracy,’ they continually remind us. Hogwash. Liberals want to dominate every sphere of society, including what churches teach.

Anyone familiar with the Constitution knows the words “separation of church and state” are not found in the Constitution. While the phrase was made popular in an 1802 letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a group of Baptists, it was not unique to him.

Keeping the civil and ecclesiastical spheres jurisdictionally separate is a biblical idea that Protestant Reformers Martin Luther (1483–1546), John Calvin (1509–1564), and other expounded up. There are laws that apply to church government and laws that apply to civil government. For example, while murder is wrong in both church and state, only the state has the jurisdictional authority to punish a murderer since it has the power of the sword (Rom. 13:1–4). On the other hand, the state does not have jurisdiction over the church in the areas of church doctrine and discipline.

If a church member sins, the church has the jurisdictional authority to discipline that person, to the point of removal from the assembly (1 Cor. 5:1–13; see Matt. 18:15–18). The sin in Corinth was of a consensual sexual nature, “that someone has his father’s wife” (v. 1), similar to homosexuality which the Bible condemns in a number of places (Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:24–27; 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 1 Tim. 1:8–10). Removing someone from the assembly by definition includes barring that person from the Lord’s Table, or in Roman Catholic parlance, from receiving “Holy Communion.”

Barbara Johnson, a self-admitted lesbian who is living with another woman and engaging in sex with her, is living in open sin. The church has every right to bar her from taking Communion. I don’t know if the church has officially excommunicated her, but if it hasn’t, it should begin the process to make it official. Paul writes, “clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump” (1 Cor. 5:7). He goes on to say, “I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person . . . not even to eat with such a one” (v. 11).

I will agree that the barring should not have taken place during a funeral. If there is any rebuke to the church it’s not for handling this discipline issue earlier, first, privately, and second, with a formal and public excommunication . The church might extend the procedure to Nancy Pelosi as well, a pro-homosexual and pro-abortion congresswoman who openly flaunts her support for these sins.

Fannie asks gov't for almost $4.6B after 4Q loss

Never learning from mistakes, the obama administration continues to shell out our taxpayer money to failing companies, taking away any incentive to improve.  After Fannie's 3rd quarter loss of $5.1 billion, we again bailed them out with an additional $7.8 billion dollars.  Now they lose $2.4 billion in the 4th quarter and we get to bail them out with another $4.6 billion!!  Fannie had lost $1.3 billion in the 2nd quarter btw.  Total tab for Fannie Mae so far...a whopping $117.2 billion dollars and counting!!!  Fannie Mae has now reported losses in 17 of the past 18 quarters!!!  (the only quarter they reported a profit was due to a one-time payment from Bank of America.)

As for Fannie's evil cohort Freddie Mac, we see a similar story.  Loss after loss, bailout after bailout.  Freddie's 3rd quarter loss...$4.4 billion and a bailout of $6 billion dollars worth of taxpayer money.  Brace for their 4th quarter loss...it's coming!

So far...bailouts of the two is approaching $200 billion dollars worth of taxpayer money.  Time to dissolve the two money sieves!  Let's protect taxpayers and get the government out of the free market!!!

By Derek Kravitz - 2/29/2012

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mortgage giant Fannie Mae said Wednesday that it lost money in the fourth quarter and is asking the federal government for nearly $4.6 billion in aid to cover its deficit.

Washington, D.C.-based Fannie said it lost roughly $2.4 billion in the October-December quarter, stung by declining home prices. Revenue was about $4.5 billion.

The government rescued Fannie and sibling company Freddie Mac in September 2008 to cover their losses on soured mortgage loans. Since then, a federal regulator — the Federal Housing Finance Agency — has controlled their financial decisions.

Taxpayers have spent more than $150 billion to prop up Fannie and Freddie, the most expensive bailout of the 2008 financial crisis. The government estimates that figure could top $259 billion to support the companies through 2014 after subtracting dividend payments.

Fannie has received more than $116 billion so far from the Treasury Department, the most expensive bailout of a single company.

Fannie's bailout money totaled roughly $16.4 billion in 2011 after accounting for dividend payments. That's up from about $7.3 billion in 2010 but down from about $32.5 billion in 2009.

Fannie officials say losses have increased in recent quarters for two reasons: Some homeowners are paying less interest after refinancing at historically low mortgage rates; others are defaulting on their mortgages.

"While economic factors, such as falling home prices and high unemployment, produced strong headwinds for our business again in 2011, we continued to grow a very strong new book of business as we have since 2009," said Michael J. Williams, Fannie's president and CEO.

When property values drop, homeowners default, either because they are unable to afford the payments or because they owe more than the property is worth. Because of the guarantees, Fannie and Freddie must pay for the losses.

Fannie's $2.4 billion loss for the fourth quarter takes into account $2.6 billion in dividend payments to the government. That compares with a loss of $2.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010.

In November, Freddie requested $6 billion in extra aid — the largest request since April 2010 — after it reported losing $6 billion in the third quarter.

Fannie Mae and McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac own or guarantee about half of all mortgages in the U.S., or nearly 31 million home loans. Along with other federal agencies, they backed nearly 90 percent of new mortgages over the past few years.

Fannie and Freddie buy home loans from banks and other lenders, package them with bonds with a guarantee against default and sell them to investors around the world. The companies nearly folded more than three years ago because of big losses on risky mortgages they purchased.

The Obama administration unveiled a plan one year ago to slowly dissolve the two mortgage giants. The aim is to shrink the government's role in the mortgage system, remaking decades of federal policy aimed at getting Americans to buy homes. It would also probably make home loans more expensive.

The firms' regulator, the FHFA

Exactly how far the government's role in mortgage lending would be reduced was left to Congress to decide. But all three options the administration presented would create a housing finance system that relies far more on private money. ..

Why do Americans spend more on healthcare? Because they can

By Christopher J. Conover - February 25, 2012

Americans have the highest health spending on the planet. Why? Because they can afford to do so. What few people realize is that the United States has increased its standard of living vis-à-vis its biggest competitors despite rising health expenditures (figure 1.6c).

It may seem trivial to observe that Americans spend more on healthcare because they can afford it. But it gets to the heart of an important question: Why are we so preoccupied with rising health costs in the first place? From the standpoint of the average American’s welfare—measured in terms of their standard of living—what really matters is how much they have to spend on everything else once healthcare has been purchased. We can approximate this standard of living by simply subtracting national health expenditures from the rest of GDP and then dividing by population. To make these comparisons, I have relied on Penn World Table estimates of GDP per capita, which have been carefully constructed to produce a standardized metric of living standards that allows for meaningful comparisons across countries and over time. That is, in these comparisons, a 2005 dollar has equivalent general purchasing power across each of the years and countries shown.

In the United States, real (inflation-adjusted) healthcare spending per capita has been rising faster than real GDP per capita for as long as we can measure it (back to 1929). Consequently, healthcare absorbs a growing share of GDP. But the same has been true for all our major competitors for as long as we can measure it (back to 1960). For purposes of discussion, I’m defining the nation’s major competitors as the rest of the countries in the G7 (Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, and Canada) since these represent our major industrialized trading partners. Countries such as China and India surely will grow in importance in the decade ahead, but right now their standard of living is far behind that of the United States.

The United States for many decades has enjoyed a far higher standard of living than in the rest of the G7. In 1960, non-health GDP per capita in Japan was 62 percent lower than in the United States. The rest of the G7 also lagged behind the United States, though by not quite as much (ranging from 43 percent lower in Italy to 19 percent lower in Canada, the country whose standard of living came closest to that of the United States). This should come as no surprise: the United States emerged as the world’s strongest industrial power after World War II, an advantage that could easily have been predicted to persist only 15 years later.

But here’s what may surprise many readers: in real dollar terms, the U.S. margin of advantage in non-health spending increased between 1960 and 2007 for every single G7 country except Japan. Moreover, even since 1980, this U.S. margin of advantage increased for every country except the UK (which saw a minuscule decline in this metric). This means that even countries which experienced a lower growth rate than the United States in real health spending per capita lost ground to the United States in their real non-health standard of living. How could that be? The absolute increase in real U.S. GDP per capita was more than enough to absorb the absolute increase in its real health spending per capita during the same period.

A concrete illustration will make this clearer. From 1980-2007, U.S. health spending per capita grew by 4.3 percent a year. In Germany, this increase was only 2.5 percent a year. One might suppose that this large difference in health spending growth rates would have allowed Germany to catch up with the United States in terms of its non-health GDP per capita. That is, if Americans were spending more on healthcare, they must be spending less on everything else. But that’s not what happened. Between 1980 and 2007, the difference between U.S. and German health spending per capita grew by more than $3,000 (i.e., Americans spent $528 apiece more than Germans in 1980, but by 2007, this difference had grown to $3,078). Had non-health GDP per capita grown by identical amounts in each country, this would have reduced the U.S. non-health standard of living by more than $3,000 vis-a-vis Germany. But the rise in U.S. GDP per capita instead was so large that it not only covered the $3,000 in added health spending, but increased the U.S. margin of advantage over Germany in non-health spending by nearly $4,000! This illustrates the enormous power of a growing economy: Americans literally were able to have their cake and eat it too.

This is a critically important truth: the United States spends more on healthcare in large part because it can afford to do so. And unless the United States suffers a sharp decline in its GDP growth compared to its competitors, this pattern can persist for many decades. Even today, the margin of advantage I have been describing remains so large that even for Canada (where the U.S. margin of advantage is smallest within the G7), the United States could afford to increase its health spending by 50 percent without entirely eradicating Americans’ higher non-health standard of living relative to Canadians.

A rich country has to spend its income in some fashion. Would critics of the U.S. health system feel better if all the extra income that found its way into the healthcare system had instead been devoted to buying pet food, lottery tickets, or fancier cars? Put another way: which would you rather be? The country that spent more on healthcare because its booming economy gave it the means to do so? Or the country whose growth in healthcare was constrained by lower economic growth? This is not to argue that we cannot and should not find ways to get rid of avoidable health spending where feasible. But it puts into perspective where the United States really sits relative to its competitors. The United States is not doing nearly as badly as some critics have alleged. Moreover, these figures raise serious questions about whether we really wish to go down the same path as other European social welfare states.

My Story...

I don't fit the stereotype of your upper-class, wealthy Republican. My parents (and extended family) were all very devout Republicans. Many in my family have served in the armed forces including three cousins (Navy), uncle (Vietnam, Navy Seal UDT), and grandpa (WWII Army vet). I grew up in a small town in a large, devout Catholic middle-class family. My mom was a hard working stay-at-home mother of six children with a college degree in nursing. My dad attended trade school and worked several manufacturing jobs after high school. He took over the family oil business (almost 100 years now) and worked hard to start several other small local businesses.

I'm very proud of my parents. My mom taught me the importance of faith and morals. My dad instilled the importance of hard work and pride in accomplishment. The importance of reputation and how easily it could be damaged. My parents are the type of people that never complained about not having as much as someone else. They didn't ask for handouts, instead choosing hard work, dedication, and saving to get ahead in life. My parents have always been very involved in serving others and charity work. They role modeled the importance of "serving others" but made clear that it was WRONG to live off of someone else's hard work or charity if you were capable of doing without or taking care of yourself.

I don't have ties to corporate America but my dad is a small business owner, employing a number of people in the small town I grew up in. He feels the burn of insurance costs on small businesses and the burden is intensified by the cost of his own personal health insurance (family) as type one diabetes was a reality that my family lived with...also known as a "pre-existing condition" to the insurance companies (four family members).

My family was involved with charity work and fundraisers as long as I can remember, but MORALS ALWAYS CAME FIRST. When my parents found out that the money they raised for the Juvenile Diabetic Foundation by putting on an annual charity horse-show each year was being used to fund embryonic stem cell research in an effort to find a cure for diabetes, (which creates a demand or incentive for abortions), they immediately began doing the charity horse show for the Nebraska Chapter of Right to Life. They wanted a cure for my brother and sister, but not at the risk of giving up their morals.

As for myself, I was a member of the Nebraska Chapter of Teens for Life and worked with many charities. My political views tended to be more conservative but naive. My political theories or even moral beliefs had not truly been tested yet. When I went off to college I read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, and Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn and even subscribed to Ad Busters Magazine. I learned it is difficult to avoid the indoctrination that comes at you from all directions at college.

As time went on and I learned more and more about government corruption. I didn't trust government and with the help and guidance of a good friend, I began my crusade against the establishment starting with my local government. First an initiative and referendum petition aimed at removing an overnight parking ban that the city government enacted to profit off of local college students. After city hall violated city codes and state statutes by changing the wording of my petition on the ballot to confuse voters, I demanded the issue be placed on the ballot for the next election "the correct way" as required by law. I called many meetings with the mayor and city council but they refused to budge stating, "You're just a punk college kid, who are you to come in and change OUR laws?"

After the councilman from my ward of the city refused to take my requests seriously, I took out a recall petition to remove him from office. The petition was successful and forced a special election. The councilman took the matter to court to try and stop the election from going forward but the judge decided in my favor.

I became a Notary Public for the state of Nebraska and I also became certified to register voters and went around the campus registering students to vote. My next item on the agenda that I was excited about...a petition to remove the four wards that divide the city. The city adopted the four wards to separate the college from the rest of the city, in an attempt to limit the influence of the college and its students on the city and its government.

I also battled city police and came to the aid of several students on various occasions who had been arrested or ticketed when police entered their residence without warrant. I encouraged students to fight the city police in court. I used my position as an editor on the college paper to keep check of the city police by publishing illegal activities the police were involved in. On more than one occasion, judges in county court sided against the police for overstepping their bounds.

By my senior year of college, I had become jaded with government and authority. I read the teachings of Emma Goldman "The Queen of Anarchy". I read Henry David Thoreau's essays on Civil Disobedience and I engrossed myself with John Stuart Mill's "Essays On Liberty".

I also began to study the United States Constitution more closely, and read The Federalist Papers of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay along with other historical documents on our revolution and Bill of Rights. I delved deeper into US history and read Thomas Paine's "Common Sense". I began to see where we came from and why we are where we are today.

I believed and still do today, in what our forefathers intended for us in our Constitution. I began to see just why each Inalienable Right was so important to our freedom and must be protected. I began to see the failures of socialism which I had once embraced. How it eventually falls to the ever-present corruption within the government. How it destroys the incentive to work harder than you have to and how it promotes mediocrity because human nature doesn't drive us to do more than we have to do if we don't have anything to show for it. I adopted the philosophy of "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he'll eat forever."

I began to see that although corporations need to be monitored, it was actually government involvement (crony capitalism) that caused most of the problems. I learned that bigger government is NOT the answer! Forfeiting rights and freedoms to our government is NOT the answer. They are inalienable meaning they weren't given to us by our government so our government can not take them away from us.

I learned that "we the people" do a far better job of taking care of our poor and needy through charity and volunteering than our government does or ever could. That "forced charity" by our government is not the answer!

I moved to California and worked for the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce. I participated on the Government Affairs Committee and the Education Committee. I helped small businesses by joining an Ad-Hoc Committee and PAC set up to battle a slow growth initiative brought forth by a local group of citizens. I helped put together a book on how the city government and school district works in an effort to help educate voters. I learned a lot from my boss at the Chamber who took part in the recall of Governor Gray Davis and the election of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I decided to battle the credit card giants on a little known but illegal practice involving the creation of credit not backed by anything more than a "promise to pay". Credit accounts created by you and I. Making it impossible for the banks to provide requested debit information when credit accounts are created as required by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

For most that know me, they know how passionate I am about politics and my country. Some might believe that my passion for politics started AFTER my time in college; quite the contrary.

My passion for politics started when I was just seven years old. My earliest memories involve sitting around the living room with family at my grandparents house the Christmas after Kay Orr had just defeated Helen Boosalis to become the first female Governor of Nebraska (first female Republican Governor ever)! I was hooked! During high school I was selected to attend several leadership camps including Christian Leadership Institute and Hugh O'brian Youth Leadership Institute (HOBY). Around my junior year of high school I was selected by my local chapter of The American Legion to be my school's representative to Cornhusker Boys State, where I spent a week learning first hand about our government and how it works. Even working on legislation that could be introduced to our State Legislature and possibly become law. In college I found myself taking political science classes as electives and challenging City Hall with initiative and referendum petitions and recall elections.

After having children and moving back to Nebraska, I continued my career as a marketing director at a large biomedical company in Omaha. Eventually my wife and I decided to serve others by becoming Family Teachers (aka: house parents) at Father Flanagan's Boys Town. We lived with, took care of, and helped over 50 at risk teenagers over the course of 6 years. During my residence at Boys Town I ran for and was elected as a Trustee to the Village of Boys Town. I also started my own company "2-B Associates" in which I acted as the middle man procuring government contracts for civilian businesses. Eventually I took a position in administration with Boys Town and because my evenings and weekends were no longer occupied with work, I once again became involved with local politics. I began work on my Master's degree in Leadership from Bellevue University and I joined the Omaha chapter of the Nebraska Federation of Young Republicans where I was elected to and served on the Executive Committee. I also joined the Douglas Country Republican Party (Omaha) and was elected to the Central Committee to represent my Legislative District. I also serve on the Executive Committee and the Media/Communications and Social Media Teams for the DCRP, and am a member of Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom. I served as a delegate to the Douglas County Republican Convention (2012) and led my caucus (LD10) as caucus chair. I was elected to the State Republican Party's Central Committee (NEGOP), reelected to the County Party's Central Committee, and as a delegate to the Nebraska Republican State Convention (2012).

As for my future plans...stay tuned...tbd... =)

(updated 6/11/2012)

REPORT: Federal Aid Pushes Up College Tuition Rates

I cried foul when the obama administration decided to usurp control of yet another aspect of the American economy (Student Loans).  Soon after, he revealed intentions that included ignoring the repayment terms agreed to by borrowers, and instead allowing borrowers to repay loans on a "pay what you can afford" basis (rather than what they themselves had agreed to).  In typical "ignore personal accountability" obama fashion, he also stated his intention to ignore the repayment terms altogether, by cancelling them entirely after 20 years. 

My first reaction...Did we learn nothing from the mortgage crisis?!  Anyone can accurately predict that in an effort to decrease risks, banks will become very selective in making school loans in the future.  You can also predict that the government will step in in the name of "social justice" and force banks into making these risky loans (knowing full well that they won't be repayed and the taxpayers will again be forced into another bailout).  The excuse will be the same.  Just as they wanted to increase home ownership among the low income, they will suggest they want to grant equal opportunity at educational advancement to the lower income.

The excuse given by obama for this overreach by the federal government?  Tuition rates are spiralling out of control.  I am proud to say that I accurately predicted at that time (my friends remember the mass email I sent out), that obama's motives would achieve just the opposite outcome!  That colleges and universities would seize on the opportunity to hike tuition rates, knowing full well that the government would guarantee loans to cover tuition no matter what the cost!

FEBRUARY 24, 2012 - By JACK HOUGH



Why College Aid Makes College More Expensive 

"New research shows how federal spending on higher education can backfire."

Federal aid for students has increased 164% over the past decade, adjusted for inflation, according to the College Board. Yet three-quarters of Americans and even a majority of college presidents see college as unaffordable for most, and that sentiment has been steadily spreading, the Pew Research Center reports.

Also SeeThe ABCs of Dodging Mutual Fund Fees The Surprising Truth About Positive Earnings Surprises How Families Can Get $3.5M in FDIC Coverage.

Two new studies offer clues on why. One measures the degree to which some colleges reduce their own aid in response to increased federal aid. The other suggests federal aid is helping to push college costs higher.

Recipients of federal Pell Grants have, by definition, limited means to pay for college, so they are likely to qualify for grants and price breaks given out by schools, too. But schools view a student's sources of federal aid before deciding how much to give on their own, rather than the other way around. The result is a crowding out effect, where some schools give less as the government gives more.

Lesley Turner, a PhD candidate at Columbia University, looked at data on aid from 1996 to 2008 and calculated that, on average, schools increased Pell Grant recipients' prices by $17 in response to every $100 of Pell Grant aid. More selective nonprofit schools' response was largest and these schools raised prices by $66 for every $100 of Pell Grant aid.

Aid from schools over the past decade has increased about half as fast as federal aid, according to the College Board.

Perhaps worse for students than a crowding out effect is the Bennett Effect, named for William Bennett, who 25 years ago as Secretary of Education wrote for the New York Times, "Increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions."

If subsidies puff up buying power and shift prices higher, as economics courses teach, could federal aid for college help create an affordability problem? After all, the federal government began spending more on college aid with the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the full funding of Pell Grants in 1975. Since 1979, tuition and fees have tripled after adjusting for inflation. That's much faster than the increase for real estate and teacher pay.

There have been mixed findings on the Bennett Effect in recent decades, with some studies finding a dollar-for-dollar relationship and others, none at all. Determining why college costs are rising is a difficult task, after all. Stephanie Riegg Cellini of George Washington University and Claudia Golden of Harvard take a new approach, focusing on for-profit schools. Some of these are eligible to participate in so-called Title IV aid programs (named for a portion of the aforementioned Act) and some not.

After adjusting for differences among schools, the authors find that Title IV-eligible schools charge tuition that is 75% higher than the others. That's roughly equal to the amount of the aid received by students at these schools.

Studies like these suggest that if one goal of government is to make college affordable, aid should become more thoughtful instead of merely more plentiful. And the total cost of federal spending on college isn't fully known. That's because spending on loans dwarfs that on grants. Student loans recently eclipsed credit card debt.

With credit cards, borrowers pay high interest rates to make up for their lack of collateral. Many many student loans have subsidized rates; others have low rates based on the assumption that a college education is a good financial risk for lenders.

If costs outpace the ability of graduates to find jobs with good pay, and repayment rates on these loans slide, taxpayers could end up feeling the crunch.

Refuse Obamacare's State Health Exchanges:

excerpts from my dcrp post:

The DCRP's statement on the issue is that beginning to implement part of obamacare "just in case" is NOT the answer. Other organizations such as Americans for Prosperity and The Platte Institute for Economic Research agree.

Heritage Foundation scholar Ed Haislmaier warns that, "States should refuse to create any type of ObamaCare-compliant Exchange and send back all federal ObamaCare grants."

There should be discussion on how best to go about preventing/limiting the effects of obamacare on Nebraska if the Supreme Court rules the wrong way. As far as we know, this discussion currently is NOT taking place and we simply would like to encourage it, as opposed to beginning implementation of obamacare before the Supreme Court has even ruled on the case.

Nebraska is not the only state refusing to implement these health exchanges before the Supreme Court rules on the matter.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signed Executive Order 10-12 in August 2010 that prohibited all executive department and state agency participation in federal health reform unless required by law or directed by the governor’s office. Florida Governor Rick Scott decided to wait for a Supreme Court ruling before continuing with implementation. Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell currently is planning not to comply with law after the Florida court ruling that PPACA is unconstitutional.  Add Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to the list as well!

As Peter Suderman of the blog "reason.com" points out, "States whose legislators oppose last year's health care law have a number of reasons to refuse to participate in implementing its requirements, particularly when it comes to the exchanges. Refusing to play ball with the federal government ensures that the federal government will have to take responsibility for the complex details of the law's implementation. Given that Missouri's residents voted overwhelmingly last year to reject one of ObamaCare's key features, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, it's clear enough where the state's voters stand. Finally, there's the constitutional question: Shouldn't states currently challenging the law's constitutionality—like Missouri—steer clear of implementing it?"　

So where should the discussion start on how to go about opposing the implementation of obamacare?

Do we start with the example of Texas and affirm Nebraska's Sovereignty under the 10th Amendment, designating that all compulsory federal legislation that requires states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties, or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding, be prohibited or repealed?
We could join 16 other states that have considered measures to create an "Interstate Freedom Compact," joining forces across state lines to coordinate or enforce opposition; four states now have enacted laws. We could encourage participation in the compact from all 27 states currently challenging obamacare in court.

We could take a lesson from Catholic Bishops and refuse to enact a law that oversteps federal boundaries, challenging the President to flex his muscles and battle a majority of the Union. Several states considered bills that propose the power of "nullification," seeking to label the federal law "null and void" within the state boundaries.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "In response to the federal health reform law, now known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and separate state reform initiatives, some members of at least 45 state legislatures have proposed legislation to limit, alter or oppose selected state or federal actions. In general many of the opposing measures, in 2010 and 2011 focus on not permitting, implementing or enforcing mandates (federal or state) that would require purchase of insurance by individuals or by employers and impose fines or penalties for those who fail to do so. The seek to keep in-state health insurance optional, and instead allow people to purchase any type of health services or coverage they may choose. They also contradict or challenge specific policy provisions contained in the 2010 federal law."

There are plenty of other options discussed here.

And that's what this is all about…to get discussion rolling rather than throwing up the white flag!!! Let's take the lead!!!

Not Enough “Rich” to Cover the Deficit

Barack Obama would have us believe that if the "rich" would just pay their fair share our economic woes would disappear. History tells us that the opposite approach – lowering the tax burden on everyone, including higher earners –  is the real path to economic growth and higher tax revenues.

With all of Barack Obama's overblown rhetoric about the "rich" paying their fair share, what effect (other than making it more difficult for job-creators to add to their staffs) would higher taxes have on reducing deficits?

• Those earning more than $10 million per year earned a total of $240 billion in 2009. That would fund federal government operations for a mere 18 days.
• If every dime earned by taxpayers making over $1,000,000 was paid in taxes, it would still not cover the federal deficit.
• Even doubling federal income taxes for every taxpayer would fall short of a balanced budget by $400 billion.

So, let's sum up. The rich don't have the money to bring order to our budget chaos, nearly half of all "taxpayers" pay no federal income taxes at all, and a large number receive more in refunds than they had withheld in taxes.

What is the answer?

The only remaining solution is to drastically scale back Obama's Solyndra-type projects, hack away at waste in government, eliminate redundant federal bureaucracies and take a meat cleaver to whole programs that the federal government should leave to private industry.

Read the article in the Daily Mail.

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/39534 

IRS: Not enough rich to cover the deficit

August 5, 2011 by Don Surber

Soak the rich, eh?

They do not have the money.

A report from the Internal Revenue Service found that the rich — 8,274 people with incomes of $10 million per year or more — earned a total of $240 billion in 2009.

Even of you confiscated every dime they earned, you would barely have enough money to cover government spending for 24 days.

Of course, about a quarter of that money already goes to the federal government for federal income. So make that 18 days.

Another 227,000 people earned $1 million or more in 2009.

Millionaires averaged taxes of 24.4% of their income — up from 23.1% in 2008.

They, too, did not earn enough money to come anywhere close to covering the annual deficits that are $1.5 trillion a year.

Barack Obama was the first president to sign a budget with a $1 trillion deficit into law.

In fact, all the taxpayers — including the ones who get a refund check bigger than the withholding taxes they paid — have the money.

From Reuters: “Total adjusted gross income reported on tax returns, measured in 2009 dollars, was $7.626 trillion, down from $8.233 trillion in 2008 and $8.989 trillion in 2007. Total adjusted gross income was up only slightly from the $7.475 trillion reported in 2001, when there were 10 million fewer taxpayers. Adjusted gross income is the amount on the last line of the front page of a Form 1040 tax return.”

Individual tax collections totaled $1,175,422,000,000 in 2009 — or 15.4% of all income.

Doubling federal income taxes for everyone would still leave us $400 billion or so shy of balancing the budget.

We must cut. We cannot afford to buy everything we want.

Hal Daub Quote on Capitalism & Charity:

"You have to have jobs to have profit, and you have to have profit to have charity." - Hal Daub, DCRP Elephant Remembers 2012.

Why the UK Is Ditching Socialized Medicine

By Arnold Ahlert · Tuesday, February 21, 2012

There is more than a little irony attached to the Obama administration's determination to pursue socialist, EU-style "solutions" to America's problems, even as the European Union is coming to grips with the bitter realities such socialism produces. And while Greece and its financial problems receive some media coverage in the United States, there is a much bigger story flying under the mainstream media radar: in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has introduced a bill seeking to partially privatize the National Health Service (NHS). Why? Because the British government is "hoping to avoid a Greek-style financial meltdown."

The system's defenders are upset. The Times of London is reporting that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is in the eye of the storm. "Andrew Lansley should be taken out and shot," said an unnamed "Downing Street source." "He's messed up both the communication and the substance of the policy." The source further contended that Lansley was "a disaster" and "a law unto himself." The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing also want the bill withdrawn, as do members of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, the Royal Medical Colleges, including the Royal College of GPs. Unions, including the Royal College of Midwives, want to "kill the bill" as well, while Labor Party leader Ed Miliband accused Mr. Cameron of failing to listen to the experts.

Cameron refuses to back down, insisting there's too much bureaucracy in the system, and that it interferes with patient care. "If we were as good at treating cancer as the average European country, we would save 5,000 lives a year," he contended. He further noted that reform will create "a fair system that stops the private sector from picking off contracts and the public sector from providing an inflexible monopoly." Yet he insisted that "health care for all, free at the point of use, unrelated to the ability to pay" will remain the animating features of the system.

Such euphemisms are at odds with reality. Last November, the NHS's Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire, running at a loss of $8 million a year on revenues of $143 million, was given over to Circle, a private health care company. Circle was brought in to cut bureaucracy and improve efficiency, and it is the first private company to take over an entire British hospital. Earlier this month, an NHS "watchdog" at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) ruled that a breakthrough drug used to extend the lives of men with late-stage prostate cancer was too expensive to be included in the system. NICE makes calculations based on the "cost of the drug to the NHS according to the number of men likely to be treated." NICE will pay for some end-of-life drugs for rare diseases. But the current, though unofficial, threshold for QALY (quality-adjusted life year) drugs has been $80,000 for renal cell carcinoma. "Therefore the £63,200 ($101,000) cost per QALY for abiraterone would still not be deemed a cost effective use of NHS resources," said a NICE statement.

Such rationing -- and it is rationing -- is nothing new. A 2011 report revealed that independent medical providers were experiencing a growing number of patients choosing to pay for their own care after having treatment delayed or denied altogether by an NHS primary care trust (PCT). A survey of 101 influential industry figures revealed that 34 percent believed "budgetary pressure in the NHS" was the principle cause. At the annual meeting of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) earlier this month, members contended that they were "increasingly being asked to make decisions based on financial rather than clinical reasons and to ration their care," further noting that such rationing "was on a scale that had never been seen before across both acute and non acute NHS services."

Last November, such rationing reached a scandalous level. A study by the Co-operation and Competition Panel (CCP) revealed that Primary Care Trust (PCT) heads were imposing arbitrary spending caps, denying patients treatment for procedures such as hip replacements and cataract removals -- and that waiting times for services were being deliberately extended "so that patients would go private or die before they were seen" to slash costs. Secretary Lansley was furious. "For too long, Labour turned a blind eye to unfair practices within the NHS which harmed patients," he said. "No right-thinking person could possibly understand how anyone could delay a patient's treatment unnecessarily. If patients need treatment, they should get it as soon as possible, and where they choose."

"As soon as possible" is yet another euphemism. Brits have a legal right under the NHS Constitution to start their hospital treatment -- within 18 weeks after a referral by a GP. Yet referrals require diagnoses, and the wait for those is increasing as well. The Guardian reports a 92 percent increase compared to last year in the number of people waiting more than the NHS's recommended six-weeks for a diagnostic test at an NHS hospital. In other words, even under optimum conditions, people suffering from afflictions such as heart disease and cancer will face more than a five-and-a-half month wait before getting the treatment they need.
Such waiting times have their consequences. A London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine study released last June revealed that British women have the lowest breast cancer survival rate among Europe's richest nations. Furthermore, cancer survival rates in general continue to lag behind other EU nations, despite ten years of efforts to improve them. And for some cancers, such as lung cancer, the gap is actually widening.

All of the above is what is currently driving David Cameron towards outsourcing medical services to private providers. He has convened a healthcare summit taking place today, and he is currently under attack for not inviting several of the professional medical societies and other health workers to the meeting. In a bit of unintended irony, left-wing newspaper The Guardian has a headline claiming the Health and Social Care Bill currently under consideration will spell the end of "health care services as we know it." Shadow Health Minister (the opposition party's counterweight to the acting Health Secretary) Andrew Gwynne is apoplectic, noting that no national healthcare standards could lead to "variations in every part of the country in terms of what care you actually receive," that Brits "could even find ourselves in the horrendous situation of people having to pay for services that are completely free in other areas," and that reform will take the country back to the "failed free-market ideology of the 1980s..."

Better to be equally miserable, apparently.

UK healthcare costs are currently $194 billion per year and consume 18 percent of the UK's budget. The projected "cuts" in spending for 2013 that have people up in arms? As of now, a $6 billion increase in spending to $200 billion. Much of the animus likely stems from the fact that Britain has grown used to massive amounts of healthcare spending that can no longer be sustained: between 2000 and 2010, the NHS budget doubled in real terms. Furthermore, British debt as a percentage of GDP was almost 80 percent in 2010.
Which brings us across the pond, so to speak, where America's debt level reached 102 percent of GDP last year, long before the full effects -- and true costs -- of our own stab at government-run healthcare have yet to be realized. Joseph A. Morris, a former Reagan White House lawyer who now serves on the board of the American Conservative Union, explains what Americans should infer from Britain's travails. "Europe's message to the world is no longer that the socialist dream of the cradle-to-grave welfare state is an easy achievement," he said. "Rather, it is the shouted warning that it is a fool's paradise. The bills are coming due and the only real alternatives -- serious financial reform of government or national bankruptcy -- are not pleasant."

The president isn't listening. The total dismissal of such "unpleasantness" was epitomized by Mr. Obama's release of a $3.8 trillion budget, a document so unserious that Senate Leader Harry Reid won't even bring it up for a vote this year. As for the "revenue-neutral" healthcare bill this administration has long touted, the Heritage Foundation found $700 billion in additional, guaranteed costs. As for "unanticipated costs" (progressive-speak for costs that should be anticipated)? If a large number of businesses choose to cancel coverage and dump their employees into the public exchanges, another one trillion dollars could be added to the cost of the bill. Furthermore, it must be noted that one part of it, the CLASS Act, has already been dumped, due to its fiscal unsustainability.

So why would we continue to pursue such an approach to healthcare, even as the latest cautionary tale from the European Union emerges? Sally Pipes, an American health policy expert who leads the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco put it best. "They [President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi] are ideologues," said Pipes. "They don't care whether the system really works or not. They have an ideological goal in mind." One this troika seems doggedly determined to pursue, even if it drives the country bankrupt in the process.

That's not ideology. That's insanity.

Nearly Half of Americans Don't Pay Income Tax

Talk about living at other's expense!!!  I have always hated the term, "living off of the government".  No you aren't!  We ARE the government...you are living off of US!!!

Chart of the Week: Nearly Half of All Americans Don’t Pay Income Taxes

Rob Bluey: February 19, 2012

This year’s Index of Dependence on Government presented startling findings about the sharp increase of Americans who rely on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid or other assistance. (See last week’s chart.)

Another eye-popping number was the percentage of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, which now accounts for nearly half of the U.S. population. Meanwhile, most of that population receives generous federal benefits.

“One of the most worrying trends in the Index is the coinciding growth in the non-taxpaying public,” wrote Heritage authors Bill Beach and Patrick Tyrrell. “The percentage of people who do not pay federal income taxes, and who are not claimed as dependents by someone who does pay them, jumped from 14.8 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009.”

That means 151.7 million Americans paid nothing in 2009. By comparison, 34.8 million tax filers paid no taxes in 1984.

The rapid growth of Americans who don’t pay income taxes is particularly alarming for the fate of the American form of government, Beach and Tyrrell warned. Coupled with higher spending on government programs, it is already proving to be a major fiscal challenge.

“This trend should concern everyone who supports America’s republican form of government,” Beach and Tyrrell wrote. “If the citizens’ representatives are elected by an increasing percentage of voters who pay no income tax, how long will it be before these representatives respond more to demands for yet more entitlements and subsidies from non-payers than to the pleas of taxpayers to exercise greater spending prudence?”

 

‘National Popular Vote Compact’

As discussed at the DCRP Central Committee meeting last night, there is a real (and extremely dangerous) movement known as the 'National Popular Vote Compact'.

The agreement is aimed at circumventing the Electoral College Process, thus taking away the input of states guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution under, Article II, Section 1 which states, "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….".

The idea involves a compact between member states promising their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote, thus rendering the Electoral College Process irrelevant. In order to accomplish this goal, the compact requires 270 electoral votes which could be accomplished through as little as 11 states, rather than the 38 required to amend the U.S. Constitution.

The compact has already been encacted by eight states and D.C., garnering a total of 132 electoral votes (California, D.C., Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont and Washington). Almost half way there!!!

Why is this dangerous?

• Non-member states become irrelevant
• Small states such as Nebraska and Iowa become irrelevant.
• Large liberal cities such as NY, Chicago and L.A would decide our elections for us.
• Guarantees candidates would ignore non-member states.
• Deliver's non-member states to the mercy of large liberal cities.

The compact was unanimously opposed by the NEGOP at the State Central Committee meeting on Saturday. It guarantees Nebraska's irrelevance. It guarantees the Democratic Party's dominance. It saddles the country with the same liberal policies that have destroyed and continue to hold down the same large liberal cities that would control the country.

But the compact is already being pushed at the state level. State Senator Ken Haar (D), introduced LB 583 last year and it currently sits before the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee chaired by Senator, Bill Avery (D).

And Iowa was afraid their caucus would become irrelevant? Candidates would skip non-member states all together!

read more ('National Popular Vote Compact')http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

and more (Objective Conservative)http://objectiveconservative.blogspot.com/2012/01/republicans-go-on-record-opposing.html

read more (LB 583 – 2011)http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalpopularvote.com%2Fresources%2Fbills%2FNE-LB583-Bill-2011-Haar.pdf&ei=xzMgT8zoGKiGsAKY3O3CDg&usg=AFQjCNEBeZd0A0ON6JoO9vxM_oJpRNLhTw


I had a good friend of mine who happens to be a liberal democrat ask why he would oppose something like this? I think the answer is pretty evident here:

Because disregarding the Constitution would be destructive to the country that I hope you love?

Want a picture of the future under that reality? Take a look at the government's website on unemployment:

(Dept. of Labor) http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

Notice the states with the highest unemployment are all those blue states that harbor those large liberal cities. In fact, most are the very states that have already adopted the "National Popular Vote Compact". Gee...why could that be? Because they have no money and no jobs, and this way they can put a government in place that will "take care of them" by taking the wealth from the other states (like us) and giving it to them. Remember, they don't need us anymore, they don't owe us anything, but they have to keep those member states happy because they control the elections!!! Soon...Nebraska and the rest of the nation will all be without jobs or money and look just like those other blue states that lead the nation in poverty and unemployment.

Unemployment of "NPVC" member states: (all blue liberal states btw)

California: 11.1% (50th)
D.C.: 10.4% (47th)
Hawaii: 6.6% (13th)
Illinois: 9.8% (44th)
Maryland: 6.7% (15th)
Massachusetts: 6.8% (16th)
New Jersey: 9.0% (38th)
Vermont: 5.1% (4th)
Washington: 8.5% (34th)



Best states for employment: (red states)
1.) N.Dakota (3.3%)
2.) Nebraska (4.1%)
3.) S.Dakota (4.2%)
6.) Iowa (5.6%)
7.) Minnesotta (5.7%)
8.) Wyoming (5.8%)
9.) Utah (6.0%)
10.) Oklahoma (6.1%)
* (all but 8 of the top half are RED states)

Now take a look at cities with the highest poverty rates. As you can see, most are cities in blue liberal states, but more importantly...let's take a look at specific cities that have a long history of being ran by democratic leadership:

http://by106w.bay106.mail.live.com/mail/InboxLight.aspx?FolderID=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000005&InboxSortAscending=False&InboxSortBy=Date&n=1375334856
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly a third of the residents in Detroit, Michigan, and Buffalo, New York are living beneath the poverty line, the highest rates among large cities in the entire country. Detroit hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1961. Buffalo started putting a Democrat in office back in 1954, and it hasn't stopped since. Cincinnati, Ohio(third on the poverty rate list), hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1984. Cleveland, Ohio (fourth on the list), has been led by a Democrat since 1989. St. Louis, Missouri(sixth), hasn't had a Republican since 1949, Milwaukee, Wisconsin(eighth), since 1908, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania(ninth), since 1952 and Newark, New Jersey(10th), since 1907. The only two cities in the top 10 that I didn't mention (Miami, Florida, and El Paso, Texas) haven't had Republicans in office either -- just Democrats, independents or nonpartisans.

Lastly let's check out the best and worst states for business:

http://www.chiefexecutive.net/media/usbestandworststates/2009/

Best States:
1.) Texas
2.) North Carolina
3.) Florida
4.) Georgia
5.) Tennessee
(Red States with conservative economic policies)

Worst States:
1.) California
2.) New York
3.) Michigan
4.) New Jersey
5.) Massachusetts
(Blue States with liberal economic policies)

So...in summary...Why would someone who is a liberal or democrat want to oppose circumventing the Constitution like this?! Well...besides the fact that the Constitution was set up to protect us all (not just conservatives)...you also may wish to oppose this if you wish to keep your job and live above the poverty line!!! Being a liberal is only fun while there is wealth to redistribute. Once everyone is drug into poverty...it becomes much more difficult to live at other's expense!!!

"Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?" -- Milton Friedman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A

"Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?" -- Milton Friedman

Here is a pretty interesting interview from him on Donahue:

Donahue asks: "When you see around the globe the mal-distribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in undeveloped countries … when you see the greed and the concentration of power, did you ever have a moment of dou...bt about capitalism and whether greed is a good idea to run on?"

Friedman responds, "Is there some society out there that doesn't run on greed? Do you think Russia or China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy; it's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are the worst off, it is exactly in the kinds of society that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system."

Mr. Donahue: "But it seems to reward not virtue so much as ability to manipulate the system."

Friedman says, "And what does reward virtue? Do you think the communist commisary rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? Do you think American Presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? I think you are taking a lot of things for granted. Just tell me where in the world you're going to find these angels who are going to organize society for us? I don't even trust you to do that!"

Bias and bigotry in academia

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=181357

July 19, 2010
Pat Buchanan

A decade ago, activist Ron Unz conducted a study of the ethnic and religious composition of the student body at Harvard.

Blacks and Hispanics, Unz found, were then being admitted to his alma mater in numbers approaching their share of the population.

And who were the most underrepresented Americans at Harvard?

White Christians and ethnic Catholics. Though two-thirds of the U.S. population then, they had dropped to one-fourth of the student body.

Comes now a more scientific study from Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford to confirm that a deep bias against the white conservative and Christian young of America is pervasive at America's elite colleges and Ivy League schools.

Wake up! This is the reality of what Christian students face in the secular world of academia.

The Espenshade-Radford study "draws from ... the National Study of College Experience ... gathered from eight highly competitive private colleges and universities (entering freshman SAT scores: 1360)," writes Princeton Professor Russell K. Nieli, who has summarized the findings:

Elite college admissions officers may prattle about "diversity," but what they mean is the African-American contingent on campus should be 5 percent to 7 percent, with Hispanics about as numerous.

However, "an estimated 40 percent to 50 percent of those categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants," who never suffered segregation or Jim Crow.

To achieve even these percentages, however, the discrimination against white and Asian applicants, because of the color of their skin and where their ancestors came from, is astonishing.

As Nieli puts it, "Being Hispanic conferred an admissions boost over being white ... equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1,600), while being black rather than white conferred a 310-point SAT advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points."

"To have the same chance of gaining admission as a black student with a SAT score of 1100, a Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have 1230, a white student a 1410 and an Asian student a 1550."

Was this what the civil-rights revolution was all about – requiring kids whose parents came from Korea, Japan or Vietnam to get a perfect SAT score of 1600 to be given equal consideration with a Jamaican or Kenyan kid who got an 1150? Is this what it means to be an Ivy League progressive?

What are the historic and moral arguments for discriminating in favor of kids from Angola and Argentina over kids whose parents came from Poland and Vietnam?

There is yet another form of bigotry prevalent among our academic elite that is a throwback to the snobbery of the WASPs of yesterday. While Ivy League recruiters prefer working-class to middle-class black kids with the same test scores, the reverse is true with white kids.

White kids from poor families who score as well as white kids from wealthy families – think George W. Bush – not only get no break, they seem to be the most undesirable and unwanted of all students.

Though elite schools give points to applicants for extracurricular activities, especially for leadership roles and honors, writes Nieli, if you played a lead role in Future Farmers of America, the 4-H Clubs or junior ROTC, leave it off your resume or you may just be blackballed. "Excelling in these activities is 'associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds on admissions.'"

Writes Nieli, there seems an unwritten admissions rule at America's elite schools: "Poor Whites Need Not Apply."

For admissions officers at our top private and public schools, diversity is "a code word" for particular prejudices.

For these schools are not interested in a diversity that would include "born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, lower- and middle-class Catholics, working-class 'white ethnics,' social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children or older students just starting into college and raising children."

"Students in these categories," writes Nieli, "are often very rare at the most competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League."

"Lower-class whites prove to be all-around losers" at the elite schools. They are rarely accepted. Lower-class Hispanics and blacks are eight to 10 times more likely to get in with the same scores.

That such bigotry is pervasive in 2010 at institutions that preen about how progressive they are is disgusting. That a GOP which purports to represents Middle America, whose young are bearing the brunt of this bigotry, has remained largely silent is shameful.

Many of these elite public and private colleges and universities benefit from U.S. tax dollars through student loans and direct grants. The future flow of those tax dollars should be made contingent on Harvard and Yale ending racial practices that went out at Little Rock Central High in 1957.


Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of seven books.