Obama Risks $100 Billion If Catholic Hospitals Close

By EDWARD MORRISSEY, The Fiscal Times - March 1, 2012

Perhaps Barack Obama assumed that religious leaders would simply offer a token protest to his new mandate for religious organizations to provide free birth control, even when contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization violate the core doctrines of their faith. The president might have had reason to expect that Catholic bishops wouldn’t put up much of a fight, considering their support for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as ObamaCare, from which Health and Human Services derives the authority to dictate their coverage requirements to employers.

Obama has enjoyed significant support from Catholics, the largest religious group in the country, winning the Catholic vote by nine points in 2008 and relying on their support to pass the PPACA. However, the Catholic bishops have united against the Obama administration after the imposition of the mandate, along with leaders of other religious denominations. Richard Land, who leads the largest Southern Baptist organization in the U.S., proclaimed solidarity with Catholics and pledged to go to jail before submitting to the HHS mandate.


Evangelical leaders Chuck Colson and Timothy George declared this the moment when Christian organizations would have to choose between Caesar and God. Jewish theologian and scholar Meir Soloveichik signed a joint statement of opposition in The Wall Street Journal, along with Colson and Bishop Donald Wuerl – a statement noting that stories "involving a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew typically end with a punch line,” but that they consider this to be no laughing matter.

The strongest statement of opposition came this week from President Obama’s home town of Chicago. Francis Cardinal George sent a message to parishioners in the archdiocese that the Catholic Church would shut down its various institutions in the community before violating the core doctrine of Humanae Vitae by providing contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients to its employees, free or otherwise. In a lengthy missive, George remarked that Catholic bishops are fighting for a separation of church and state, and that the mandate represents an unprecedented arrogance in Obama’s attempt to have government define the boundaries between faith and works.

“Liberty of religion is more than freedom of worship,” George wrote, noting that even the Soviet Union allowed people to go to church, “if you could find one.” The HHS mandate emulates the Soviet experience, George argued, in declaring that only places of worship demonstrate the free exercise of religion protected by the Constitution, and not “schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and the works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith.” If the Obama administration insisted on enforcing its mandate on Catholic organizations, George concluded, then "two Lents from now” their listing of Catholic hospitals and health-care institutions would be empty.

What would that mean to the U.S., and to Obama's health care reform mandate? Put simply, it would create a disaster for the delivery of health care in the country, and rapidly escalate the public costs of health care.

The Catholic Church has perhaps the most extensive private health-care delivery system in the nation. It operates 12.6 percent of hospitals in the U.S., according to the Catholic Health Association of the U.S., accounting for 15.6 percent of all admissions and 14.5 percent of all hospital expenses, a total for Catholic hospitals in 2010 of $98.6 billion. Whom do these hospitals serve? Catholic hospitals handle more than their share of Medicare (16.6 percent) and Medicaid (13.65) discharges, meaning that more than one in six seniors and disabled patients get attention from these hospitals, and more than one in every eight low-income patients as well. Almost a third (32 percent) of these hospitals are located in rural areas, where patients usually have few other options for care.

Compared to their competition, Catholic hospitals take a leading role in providing less-profitable services to patients. They lead the sector in breast cancer screenings, nutrition programs, trauma, geriatric services, and social work. In most of these areas, other non-profits come close, but hospitals run by state and local governments fall significantly off the pace. Where patients have trouble paying for care, Catholic hospitals cover more of the costs. For instance, Catholic Health Services in Florida provides free care to families below 200 percent of federal poverty line, accepting Medicaid reimbursements as payment in full, and caps costs at 20 percent of household income for families that fall between 200 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty line.

Imagine the impact if these hospitals shut down, discounting the other 400-plus health centers and 1,500 specialized homes that the Catholic Church operates as part of its mission that would also disappear. Thanks to the economic models of these hospitals, no one will rush to buy them. One in six patients in the current system would have to vie for service in the remaining system, which would have to absorb almost $100 billion in costs each year to treat them. Over 120,000 beds would disappear from an already-stressed system.

The poor and working class families that get assistance from Catholic benefactors would end up having to pay more for their care than they do under the current system. Rural patients would have to travel farther for medical care, and services like social work and breast-cancer screenings would fall to the less-efficient government-run institutions. That would not only impact the poor and working class patients, but would create much longer wait times for everyone else in the system. Finally, over a half-million people employed by Catholic hospitals now would lose their jobs almost overnight, which would have a big impact on the economy as well as on health care.

Some may doubt that the bishops would create this kind of havoc and disruption, and perhaps President Obama believes Cardinal George and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to be bluffing. However, Obama may want to read St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and his Principle and Foundation of faith, which informs Catholics on the priority of salvation. The first task of mankind, according to St. Ignatius, is to serve God and “save his soul,” and “other things on the face of the earth” should be used only as long as they serve that purpose. When they become a hindrance to salvation, St. Ignatius warns to “rid himself of them.”

If Obama insists on forcing the Catholic Church to fund and facilitate access to products and services they believe imperil their own souls and those of others, the bishops will simply stop employing people in these religious organizations – and once those doors close, they may never reopen.

GOP Wants BLS to Report the Real Unemployment Numbers

Counting only those Americans who are actively looking for work, the jobless rate is 8.3 percent, but counting those who stopped looking for work within the last year, the rate is 9.8 percent. And counting all of the above, plus those who settled for part-time jobs, the rate is 14.9 percent. 

March 09, 2012 - Fox News

While the Labor Department reports a surge in private-sector hiring and the nation's unemployment rate holding steady at 8.3 percent, a closer look at the numbers paints a less flattering picture of the country's post-recession growth.

The latest report for February shows lingering economic disparities among different segments of the population. And, as has been the case for decades, the unemployment rate used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not tell the whole story.

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Counting only those Americans who are actively looking for work, the jobless rate is 8.3 percent, just like it was in January. But counting those who stopped looking for work within the last year, the rate is 9.8 percent.

And counting all of the above, plus those who settled for part-time jobs, the rate is 14.9 percent.

"Everybody who has friends knows it's higher," Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., told Fox News.

Hunter is pushing legislation that would require the Bureau of Labor Statistics to broaden its definition for the unemployment rate. He wants the department to count those who stopped looking for work as well, which would put last month's rate at 9.8 percent.

"We just want to know what the truth is, because we can't make good policy here unless we know what the actual unemployment number is," Hunter told Fox News on Thursday, ahead of the latest labor report release. "It's not 8 percent -- anybody who's out there in the real world knows that. We need real numbers, not D.C. numbers."

The report continues to show subsets like white college grads faring the best in the slow-to-recover economy.

Black workers still face a 14.1 percent jobless rate. The rate for Hispanics is 10.7 percent.

Education level is a huge factor. While those with a bachelor's degree or higher have a 4.2 percent unemployment rate, those with less than a high school diploma are looking at 12.9 percent unemployment.

Youth unemployment, for those between 16 and 19, is 23.8 percent. Black youth unemployment is 34.7 percent.

As a whole, though, the economy showed sustained growth. Employers added 227,000 jobs in February, keeping up one of the best hiring streaks since the recession.

The Obama administration on Friday said the report shows the economy is going in the right direction.

"Today's employment report provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression," Alan Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement. "It is critical that we continue the economic policies that are helping us dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the recession that began at the end of 2007, including measures to help the sectors that were most severely harmed by the bubble economy that misdirected investment and created too few durable jobs."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/09/jobless-stats-reveal-disparities-as-economy-starts-to-recover/#ixzz1ol0Rnaqu

UN Guilty of Violating Human Rights

The United Nations is all about human rights. They are constantly sticking their nose in the business of nations around the world in their effort to protect and preserve human rights. In many instances, they are justified in their actions, but there have been times when they stepped in when they shouldn’t have.

Last week the United Nations held their annual conference on the Status of Women. According to their official website, the Commission on the Status of Women is:

“Dedicated exclusively to the promotion of gender equality and the advancement of women. Every year, representatives of Member States gather at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and advancement of women worldwide.”

Members of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) planned on attending the conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York. As they were going through UN security, they were stopped and detained for a short time.

When the UN security officers searched their backpacks, they found pro-life material including a petition calling for the UN to stop sexualizing children and copies of the pro-life video 180. According to Wendy White of C-FAM:

“The officers looked at their literature, saw one that was a petition calling on the U.N. and others to stop sexualizing children, and they were not happy with it, and then each of the guards said We can’t let this material through. The backpacks and pro-life literature were confiscated.”

It was pointed out that UN does not allow leafleting on UN property and although the group declared they had no intentions of doing so, all of their material was confiscated by security before they were allowed into the conference. However, C-FAM members observed that no other organization was treated in the same manner that they had been treated. To this White commented:

“However, the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

When the group left the conference, their confiscated materials were returned to them only after they complained. It was obvious to the group that UN security singled them out because of their pro-life and pro-child stands and even though the UN is all about human rights and freedom of information, they won’t tolerate any of those rights and freedoms if they are in disagreement with the liberal policies of the UN.

Therefore, one is lead to conclude that the only human rights and freedoms the UN defends are their own.

Read more: UN Guilty of Violating Human Rights - Godfather Politics http://godfatherpolitics.com/4103/guilty-violating-human-rights/#ixzz1okwenH8I

What Public Employee Unions are Doing to Our Country

March 2012 - William McGurn

MANY SCHOLARS ARE better versed on the history of public employee unions than I am, but there is one credential I can claim that they cannot: I am a taxpayer in the People’s Republic of New Jerseystan. That makes me an authority on how public sector unions—especially at the state and local level—are thwarting economic growth, strangling the middle class, and generally hijacking the democratic process to serve their own ends rather than the public.

Now in my experience, when one says the words “New Jersey,” people for some reason think it is a laugh line. Perhaps you know us from The Sopranos or Jersey Shore. You might think that such a state has nothing to teach you. If so, you would be very wrong. New Jersey offers something that can profit the entire nation: We are the perfect bad example.

As conservatives, of course, we believe in virtue. We like to point to policies and practices that work—low taxes and light regulation for the economy, a strong national defense to keep us safe from foreign attack, and social policies that favor community over government. These are all valuable. But the bad example has its honored place as well: It’s how we illustrate our warnings.

As parents, for example, selling virtue only takes us so far. To make our point when we see a character trait we don’t care for in our kids, we’re far more likely to say something like, “You don’t want to grow up to be like Uncle Bob, do you?”

This is the reason Governor Chris Christie’s reforms have had such resonance. Almost anywhere he points, he has before him an example of how New Jersey’s bloated public sector is hurting growth, limiting the efficiency of government services, and squeezing middle class families. How many state governors and legislators might be more inclined to do the right thing if before they acted they first said to themselves, “We don’t want to be like New Jersey, do we?”

These days, when conservatives get together to discuss the debilitating role played by government workers, we reassure ourselves with statements by FDR and labor leader Samuel Gompers about the fundamental incompatibilities between a union of private workers working for a private company and a union of government workers laboring for our city, state, or federal governments. We also trace the line of expansion to various events, including John F. Kennedy’s executive order that opened the path for collective bargaining for public employees at the federal level.

I don’t want to rehash that today. Today I want to talk about the situation as we find it, and suggest that the first step toward a cure is to diagnose the illness accurately. This means changing the way we think of public sector unions. And in what I have to say, I will concentrate on public sector unions at the state and local levels.

It’s not that I don’t consider the unionization of federal workers to be an issue. Plainly it is an issue when the teachers unions represent one of the largest blocs of delegates at Democratic conventions, when the largest single campaign contributor in the 2010 elections was the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, when union money at the federal level goes at an overwhelming rate to Democratic candidates, and when the Congressional Budget Office tells us that federal employees earn more than their counterparts in the private sector. Nonetheless, I believe that the greater challenge today—to state and city finances, to democratic representation, to the middle class—is at the state and local level. This is partly because state and city unions have the power to negotiate wages and benefits that their counterparts at the federal level largely do not. More fundamentally, it is because we cannot reform at the federal level without correcting a problem that is bringing our cities and states to bankruptcy.

When I say we need to change our understanding, what I mean is that we have to recognize that public sector unions have successfully redefined key relationships in our economic and civic life. In making this argument, I will suggest that the elected politicians who represent us at the negotiating table are not in fact management, that our taxing and spending decisions at the city and state level are in practice decided by our public sector contracts, and that when you put this all together, what emerges is a completely different picture of the modern civil servant. In short, we work for him, not the other way around.

Who is Managing Whom?

Let me start with the relationship between government employee unions and our elected officials. On paper, it is true, mayors and governors sit across the table from city and state workers collectively bargaining for wages and benefits. On paper, this makes them management—representing us, the taxpayers. But in practice, these people often serve more as the employees of unions than as their managers. New Jersey has been telling here. Look at our former governor, Jon Corzine.

You Hillsdale folks are a genteel sort. When you speak about the unions being in bed with the Democratic politicians, you mean it metaphorically. In New Jersey, we take it to Snooki levels: Mr. Corzine once shared a home with the New Jersey leader of the Communication Workers of America, Carla Katz. Back when he was running for governor, he was asked whether that relationship would compromise his ability to represent the taxpayers in negotiations with outfits such as CWA. “As the governor,” Mr. Corzine responded, “you represent eight-and-a-half million people. You don’t represent one union. You don’t represent one person. You represent the people who elected you.”

That’s the way it ought to be. In real life, it turned out that during heated negotiations over a contested CWA contract, Mr. Corzine and Ms. Katz had a long email chain—subsequently published by the Newark Star Ledger, despite the governor’s legal attempts to keep them private—in which she pressed him on the union issues.

But it wasn’t just the CWA. Scarcely six months after he was elected, Governor Corzine appeared before a rally of state workers in Trenton in support of a one percent sales tax designed to bring in revenues to a state hemorrhaging money. Not cutbacks, but a tax. Naturally, Mr. Corzine’s solution was the one the public sector unions wanted: Get the needed revenues by introducing a new tax.

The twist was that there was someone in the New Jersey government who understood the problem—who understood that a new sales tax wouldn’t do much to fix New Jersey’s problems, and that the only way to get a handle on them was to get state workers to start contributing more to their health care and pensions.

These were the pre-Chris Christie days, so the author of this bold proposal was the Senate president, Stephen Sweeney. Mr. Sweeney is not only interesting because he is a prominent and powerful Democrat. He is also interesting because in addition to his political office, he represents the state’s ironworkers. And what Mr. Sweeney proposed for the public sector unions was something private union members such as his ironworkers already paid for. It was also common sense: He knew that if New Jersey didn’t get a handle on its gold-plated pay and benefits for its government employees, it would squeeze out the private sector that hires people such as ironworkers.

If the leader of an ironworkers union could realize that, surely so could a governor who had earlier served as a high-powered executive for Goldman Sachs. But Mr. Corzine was having none of it. Instead, he told the crowd of state workers: “We’re gonna fight for a fair contract.”

The question is, whom was he planning on fighting? Wasn’t he management in these negotiations?

Six months later, Governor Corzine proved this was not simply a slip of the tongue. When workers at Rutgers University were planning to unionize, he turned up at their rally. This was too much even for the liberal Star Ledger, which—in an article entitled “Jon Corzine, Union Rep?”—noted that Mr. Corzine’s appearance at the rally raised the question whether he truly understood that “he represents the ‘management’ side in ongoing contract talks with state employees unions.”

Manifestly, the problem is not that Mr. Corzine and other elected leaders like him—mostly Democrats—do not understand. In fact, they understand all too well that they are the hired help. The public employees they are supposed to manage in effect manage them. The unions provide politicians with campaign funds and volunteers and votes, and the politicians pay for what the unions demand in return with public money.

In New Jersey as elsewhere, most leaders of public sector unions are not sleeping with the politicians who set their salary and benefits. They are, however, doing all they can to install and keep in office those they wish—while fighting hard against the ones they oppose. And until we recognize the real master in this relationship, we will never reform the system.

The Tail Wagging the Dog

My second point relates to my first. Not only have the public unions too often become the dominant partner in the relationship with elected officials, but the contracts and the spending that goes with them are setting the other policy agenda. In other words, even when we recognize that the packages favored by public employees are too generous, we think of them simply as spending items. We need to wake up and recognize that in fact these spending items are the tail wagging the dog—that they set tax and borrowing decisions rather than follow from them.

Take the case of Northvale, a small, affluent town of about 4,600 people at the northeast tip of New Jersey. Its median income is about $99,000, comfortably above both the New Jersey and national levels, and its budget is $21.8 million. Of this, $13.2 million—or nearly two-thirds—goes to the schools. The lion’s share of that, of course, goes to salaries and benefits.

Northvale’s school budget is voted on in the spring. That’s part of the scam, because turnout for these elections is much lower than it is in November for the regular elections. With lower turnout, it’s easier for teachers and other interested parties to dominate the elections. Thus the great bulk of Northvale’s budget is not determined in the regular elections, or by the mayor and city council. Effectively, it is determined by the education lobby and school officials—who in turn are chosen in elections involving only 20 percent of the electorate.

From the other one-third of the budget, Northvale has to run its police force and fire department, remove snow, arrange for garbage pickup, and so on. That means there is not much discretionary spending left. Even when voters rebel—last spring Northvale voters overwhelmingly repudiated the budget—they are frequently ignored, and the back door system ensures there is little in the way of accountability.

But there are consequences: This dynamic helps explain why, in the decade before Chris Christie was elected governor, the property taxes of New Jersey residents went up 70 percent.

Mr. Christie is not in charge of local spending. But he understands that this is part of an exceptionally unvirtuous circle. So he’s made some changes. Last year, for instance, with the help of allies such as Mr. Sweeney, he pushed a reform through the legislature that required public workers to start contributing to their health care and up their contributions to their pensions. It’s not nearly the same percentage as their counterparts in the private sector, but it’s a start.

Mr. Christie also put through a property tax cap that forces cities to go to the people for a vote if they increase property taxes by more than two percent. And just last month, he signed a bill that will allow towns to move their school budget votes to the November ballot—not only saving money, but also ensuring that more citizens vote, not simply those who have a vested interest.

At the same time, Mr. Christie has begun to campaign against abuses using language that people can understand. His most recent target is the practice of awarding six-figure checks to public employees who are allowed to accumulate—and cash out—unused sick pay. In New Jersey these payments are called “boat money,” largely because retired government workers often use the money to buy pleasure boats when they retire. Across the state, cities have liabilities of $825 million because of these boat checks.

And what’s been the opposition’s response? Instead of agreeing to reasonable cuts, the Democrats keep thumping for a millionaire’s tax. New Jersey being New Jersey, the millionaire’s tax aims at people making far less than a million dollars. But even if it didn’t, it’s hard to see how driving millionaires out of the state will help it meet its huge and growing unfunded pension liabilities.

To summarize my second point: You and I make spending decisions the way all households do. We take our income, and we live within our means. In sharp contrast, public employee unions have introduced a whole new dynamic: They negotiate pay and benefits in contracts we can’t rewrite. When the revenues to meet these obligations fall short, they push to raise taxes to make up the difference.

The Corruption of Public Service

That leads me to my third and final point: If I am right that the public employee unions are in fact the managers in the relationship with politicians, and that public sector spending is driving tax and borrowing policy, the inescapable conclusion is that you and I are working for them.

That’s not how we usually understand and speak of public service. Traditionally, the idea of a public servant is someone who is working for the public, with the implication that he or she is sacrificing a better material life to do so. But can anyone really define today’s relationship this way? Especially when health care and pensions are included, government workers increasingly seem to live better than the people who pay their salaries. How many of you walk into some local, state or federal office these days and leave thinking, “The men and women here are working for me”?

In some ways the change has been driven by larger changes in union life. From one out of three workers at its high point in the 1950s, today fewer than one out of 14 private sector workers belongs to a union, and the percentage continues to drop. Conversely, the unionization of government employees continues to grow, to the point where public sector union members now outnumber their private sector counterparts for the first time in American history.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Fred Siegel notes that public sector unions have become a vanguard movement within liberalism. And the reason for that is it’s the public sector that comes closest to the statist ideals of McGovern and post-McGovern liberals. And that is, there’s no connection between effort and reward. You’re guaranteed your job. You’re guaranteed your salary increase. There’s a kind of bureaucratic equality.

“This vanguard,” Siegel continues, “becomes in the eyes of many liberals the model for the middle class. Public-sector unions are what all workers should be like. Their benefits are the kind of benefits everyone should get.” So instead of the private sector defining the public, the public sector is thought to define the private.

As public employees unionize, their dues—often collected for the unions by the government—fund a permanent interest constantly lobbying for bigger government. To pay for this bigger and more expensive government, they advocate for higher taxes on those in the private sector. Only when they are threatened with layoffs are they inclined to compromise, and sometimes not even then. That is what I mean when I say that we work for them.

Where to Go From Here

One of the few silver linings of our tough economy today is that it is forcing tough decisions. Big city mayors and governors are having issues with their public employees, because we’ve reached a point where we simply cannot afford business as usual. With a sluggish economy—and fewer taxpayers—the problems that have piled up are becoming too difficult to ignore.

Across the nation we have governors and mayors trying to solve their public employee problems with varying degrees of seriousness, from Chris Christie in New Jersey to Jerry Brown in California to the great experiments going on in the Rust Belt—in Indiana, which has done the best, and Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan. Only Illinois, led by Democratic Governor Pat Quinn, has opted for business as usual with a mammoth tax increase that is now being followed up, in today’s typical way of Democratic governance, with tax breaks for large companies threatening to leave Chicago because of the tax burden.

In most of these places, there’s probably little we can do about the contracts that exist. What we can do is bring in new hires under more reasonable contracts and pro-rate contributions for existing employees. Even marginal changes can have a big impact, as Wisconsin found out when Governor Scott Walker’s collective bargaining reforms for public workers helped restore many of the state’s school districts back to fiscal health.

My father was a federal employee, as an FBI agent. I spent some time as a government worker in the White House. I also know many fine and devoted people on the public payroll who work hard, are good at what they do, and earn everything they get. But there are also those who work without results. I believe Americans are a generous people who can recognize the difference. We need to restore our public sector to a place where those in charge can make those distinctions and allocate rewards and resources accordingly.

In the meantime, I think the best thing we can do is speak honestly. That is what Mr. Christie is doing in New Jersey. His style isn’t for everyone. Yet his popularity suggests that Americans appreciate a politician willing to talk about the reality of public employee unions today—and the unreasonable costs they are imposing on our society.

We’ll never return to the ideal of public service until the rest of us start speaking honestly as well.

Refusing to Implement State Exchanges Would Kill Obamacare

Sections 1311 and 1322 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act authorizes Federal subsidies to State run insurance exchanges. But due to a "massive legislative defect" created by sloppy Democrat bill writers working in haste to force this odious legislation upon America, there is NO provision for the Federal government to make essential subsidy payments to Federally established exchanges. In the absence of a State insurance exchange and with NO CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORIZATION to fund Federal exchanges, any State that REFUSES to form an exchange will effectually ensure that within its State boundaries, ObamaCare cannot be implemented!

Here's why: ObamaCare offers "premium assistance" – tax credits and Federal taxpayer dollar subsidies – to households purchasing coverage through new State health insurance exchanges. Democrats knew this assistance was essential to hide much of the law's cost and reduce the vast premium hikes Americans will face after ObamaCare goes into effect in 2014. If consumers had to directly absorb the full cost of nationalizing one sixth of our economy, the already strong support for repeal would skyrocket!

So ObamaCare authorizes premium assistance in State-run exchanges (Section 1311) but in a glaring failure, not Federal ones (Section 1321). In other words, a State refusal to create an exchange will act as a clear mechanism to block much of ObamaCare's spending and paralyze implementation of the law.

The problem is, many States think they are going to get a pot of federal gold to fund these "State exchanges" and help take enrollees off their Medicare rosters. Guess what? Just the opposite! Cost estimates are skyrocketing, there's NO MONEY (just deficit spending): they are (surprise, surprise) already running BILLIONS and BILLIONS over budget in Obama Funny Money!

In a recent budget hearing, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House tax-writing committee questioned why Obama administration spending estimates for State insurance subsidies for the exchanges were up by $111 billion from a year ago.

Obama's fiscal 2013 budget request, released Feb. 13, projected that subsidies for low-income and working-class people to buy individual policies through the State exchanges would total $478 billion through 2021. But the administration pegged the cost at $367 billion over the same period in its fiscal 2012 budget proposal.

Kathleen Sebelius of HHS could not explain the huge increase, saying the estimate appears in the Treasury Department's budget. According to Congressional experts, the increase "cannot be explained by legislative changes or new economic assumptions, and therefore must reflect substantial changes in underlying assumptions" about the way the subsidies would work. Or is that NOT work?

Ranking members on both sides of the aisle queried whether the Obama administration believes insurance premiums would be more expensive than Treasury's earlier predictions, or if more workers would lose coverage through their employers than expected.

Medicaid systems, meanwhile, are in disarray. The exchange subsidies and Medicaid are related because people who seek insurance through the exchanges will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid if they earn poverty-level wages or are unemployed. Welcome to the ObamaCare fast track to universal coverage / single payer / 100% government run socialist healthcare!

Changes Congress has made to the healthcare law since it was enacted in 2010 were supposed to militate against this pressure, and contain Medicaid enrollment and costs. But Kentucky, New Hampshire, Kansas and Louisiana have moved aggressively toward mandatory managed care during the past six months in order to address rapidly expanding state Medicaid budget burdens. Other states, including Florida and Georgia, are poised to move quickly down the same path. These dramatic policy shifts in the name of "integration" and cost savings are already causing major controversy and public outcry, provider and service disruptions, and reductions in quality of care. THERE IS NO TIME TO WASTE! YOU NEED TO TELL THE STATES – STOP OBAMACARE COLD!

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)