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Networks Ignore Push for Repeal of DOMA October 7, 2009

Posted by Daniel Downs in Barak Obama, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, family, gay politics, marriage, media bias, news, politics.
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Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York introduced a new threat to traditional marriage on September 15 – a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

News of Nadler’s plan to introduce the Respect for Marriage Act broke late last week, but ABC, CBS and NBC all failed to report this latest push for forced acceptance of same-sex marriage. Although the health care reform debate has gobbled up media attention for weeks, the networks’ silence on the fundamental issue of how the federal government defines marriage is odd.

Nadler’s bill would overturn the 1996 law signed by President Bill Clinton that defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

A September 15 press release issued by Nadler’s office claimed the bill has 91 original co-sponsors. Nadler stated in the release, “With a President who is committed to repealing DOMA and a broad, diverse coalition of Americans on our side, we now have a real opportunity to remove from the books this obnoxious and ugly law.”

Not all Democrats agreed with Nadler. The Washington Blade reported on September 11 that Rep. Barney Frank, an openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts is not supporting Nadler’s effort to overturn DOMA. “It’s not anything that’s achievable in the near term,” Frank said. The New York Times reported September 15 that Speaker Nancy Pelosi “also indicated this year that repealing the law would not be a top priority.”

ABC, CBS and NBC failed to take interest in the story, even with the added twist of intra-party (and even intra-administration) division over the bill. None of the networks have discussed this issue since President Obama’s inauguration, despite his repeated calls during the 2008 campaign to repeal DOMA and despite a 54-page brief filed in support of DOMA by his Justice Department in June.

The brief, filed in the California case Smelt v. United States that challenged DOMA, outraged gay rights activists because, as reported by the Washington Post, it “appeared to equate same-sex marriage with incest and pedophilia” and the lawyers referred to marriage between a man and a woman as “the traditional and universally recognized form.”

Importance of DOMA

DOMA did not simply define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. It banned the federal recognition of same-sex marriages. It also protects states from being forced to recognize same-sex marriages that took place in other states.

“DOMA is the only federal law that protects marriage as the union of husband and wife, and guarantees voters in Georgia or Wisconsin that a handful of judges in Massachusetts will not be able to impose gay marriage on their state,” noted Maggie Gallagher, president and founder of the National Organization for Marriage.

Bryan Fischer, director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, focused his criticism of Nadler’s efforts on the issue of states’ rights.

“People in state after state have made it clear that they do not want either Congress or activist judges tampering with the time-honored institution of marriage,” he stated in a September 15 press release. “People who care about the institution of marriage and care about their own state’s Tenth Amendment right to decide this issue for themselves should be outraged at this frontal assault on the cornerstone of American society and on the democratic process itself.”

Not Ignored in Print

While the networks have ignored DOMA, the editorial boards of The Washington Post and The New York Times urged the administration to overturn the law as soon as possible.

The Justice Department brief filed in June that supported DOMA inspired the Times’ Frank Rich to write on June 28, “Obama’s inaction on gay civil rights is striking. So is his utterly uncharacteristic inarticulateness. The Justice Department brief defending DOMA has spoken louder for this president than any of his own words on the subject.”

James Kirchick, assistant editor of the New Republic and a contributing writer to the Advocate, questioned Obama’s commitment to same-sex marriage. “When it comes to same-sex marriage, the movement can’t count on support from the current president,” Kirchick wrote. “Obama’s stance on gay marriage is virtually indistinguishable from that of John McCain,” he later charged.

The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart gave Obama more cover in his June 21 editorial. “The first substantive comment on gay and lesbian equality since he took office was the Justice Department’s noxious brief in Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer v United States of America, and it fueled suspicion that the president was backpedaling on his promises.” Capehart later urged gays and lesbians to look to Congress to achieve their “big victories, such as the repeal of DOMA and the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy.”

On August 18, the Post reported that “the Obama administration distanced itself” from the Justice Department’s June brief regarding DOMA.

A follow-up brief filed August 17 in the Smelt v. United States case did not contain the language that had inflamed gay rights activists. But as reported by the Post, “Senior trial counsel W. Scott Simpson embraced findings by researchers and prominent medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association, in saying ‘that children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents.”

DOMA, the administration’s defense of it and the subsequent backing away from the defense, were not discussed on ABC, CBS, or NBC..

The networks habitually refused to cover DOMA-related news, as indicated by this year’s lack of coverage and also their refusal to report Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s firm 2008 statement of support for the repeal of DOMA.

This of course, is not to say that the networks refuse to cover news related to gay rights. Networks promoted same-sex marriage through the constant airing of Prop 8 protest footage in the days following the 2008 election.

Networks’ Disservice

ABC, CBS and NBC committed a grave disservice to the American public by refusing to cover the issue of DOMA. The repeal of such a law has serious implications for society and culture.

Networks repeatedly proved their liberal bias. But at least in that, viewers knew something occurred and had the opportunity to seek out supplemental information. In the case of DOMA, viewers most likely haven’t realized the very definition of traditional marriage is at stake.

By Colleen Raezler, Culture & Media Institute

Source: Culture Links e-Newsletter, September 15, 2009

Analysis of AMA Health Care Reform October 6, 2009

Posted by Daniel Downs in news.
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In a letter to President Obama and Congress, AMA President J. James Rohaback outlined seven tasks the American Medical Association deems necessary to make health care affordable and accessible to the general public. He wrote

* Provide health insurance coverage for all Americans.

* Enact insurance market reform that expands choice of affordable coverage and eliminates denials for preexisting conditions.

* Assure that health care decisions are made by patients and their physicians, not by insurance companies or government officials.

* Provide investments and incentives for quality improvement, prevention and wellness initiatives.

* Repeal the Medicare physician payment formula that will trigger steep cuts and threaten seniors’ access to care.

* Implement medical liability reforms to reduce the cost of defensive medicine.

* Streamline and standardize insurance claims-processing requirements to eliminate unnecessary costs and administrative burdens.

Several implications stand out in the above points:

1) The lack of any special interest issues like the public option, i.e. guaranteed provision for tax-paid abortions, demonstrates its appeal to the general public.

2) Its lack of “granny killing” statement doesn’t mean they don’t approve of it. The most said about counseling the elderly toward an early death (“granny killing, death committees, etc.) is that criticism of it is sad or dishonest. All politicians and abortionists say much the same about any criticism of their agendas.

3) Nevertheless, if the above were the extent of the federal heath care reform, the general public would support it. The proposal bureaucratic reform is far from being beneficial to the general public and the medical profession.

4) The medical profession and medical insurance stand to gain billions of redistributed health care tax dollars. It’s true, many Americans will benefit some, non-workers will benefit more, and the medical establishment and their investors benefit most of all.

To support the last point, consider what the AMA wants in the federal legislation. First, they want the federal government to provide health care insurance to all, which means increasing taxes whether as medical taxes or increases in cost of government-mandated insurance. Besides being a financial problem, it presents a legal problem as well. The federal government has no right or authority to provide health care. China or Cuba may such authority written in their national Constitutions but our Constitution does not. It is a right and authority only citizens in individual states actually possess.

Making health care more profitable underlies market reform (point 2), investment and incentives (point 4), repealing the Medicare physician payment formula (point 5), medical liability reform (point 6), and streamlining and standardizing claims processing (point 7).

Market reform along with taxpayer investment and incentives means more services to more customers for a lot more money.

Charging less than “market” rates or fees is a bad deal to any health care capitalist, even in an increasingly socialist “market.” That is why repealing the government fixed “market” pay rate formula must end. Who cares about the elderly on a fixed income, let the taxpayers pay.

Eliminating frivolous lawsuits is not a bad idea. What is truly bad is when physicians damage lives, lawyers get most of lawsuit claims, and damaged people pursuit of happiness is severely diminished. The type of legal reform needed is better screening and investigation of cases by which unwarranted claims are eliminated and due process in favor of the harm is thoroughly defended. If we have to pay for insurance, let the benefactors of our invested money and taxes pay up. If they would go bankrupt, it would only prove a better system of social insurance is needed maybe one without federal government’s involvement.

Good business practice always results in streamlining and standardization. I won’t hold my breathe for government to produce heath care efficiency or standardization. The tax code alone is proof of the impossible. Heck with tax code, some say Medicare is a bureaucratic mess.

The more positive points of the AMA reform list include:

1) “Eliminat[ing] denials for preexisting conditions.” Although this is mentioned under market reform, it is only marketable under government provided health care system. It is a welfare market reform, which means is marketable only to providers and voters.

2) “Assure that health care decisions are made by patients and their physicians, not by insurance companies or government officials.” This is probably the best part of the special interest proposal of AMA. Humans are not cars and medical insurance appraisers have no legitimate place in medical treatment. They do have a right to predetermine what they will or will not cover generally, but their involvement in medical treatment of patients is unconscionable.

Here again, the issue of insurance company profitable versus payout reveals the flaw in the system.

There are at least two identifiable solutions: (1) Government provided health care. Legally creating such a system requires a Constitutional amendment. It is requires Americans to adopt a more completely national socialism system of governance. The implication here is that federal legislative involvement in health care is illegal because by doing so Washington bureaucrats exceed the limits allowed by the supreme law of the land. Without a constitutional amendment, only the states have any legal authority over health care. (2) Another way to resolve the problem is to reform political economy so that all working Americans and their families could afford to insure themselves. This is a moral or ethical issue that does not require the adoption of national socialism but would require moral application to adjustments of the various markets including wage rates and an end to the myths of capitalism that are used for the benefit of relatively few.

For example, a few large national or international corporations who dominate 80% of any market in the USA tend to eliminate a whole lot of Americans from pursuing the American dream. Because this is the reality of many, if not most markets, the American Dream is more myth than real possibility for a majority of people under such a political economy.

U.S. News’ Erbe Equates Conservative Christians with Radical Terrorists September 25, 2009

Posted by Daniel Downs in Christians, God, abortion, culture war, liberals, media bias, morality, news, politics, religion, secularism, terrorism.
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In her September 21 article, Colleen Raezler reported the following:

Bonnie Erbe, contributing editor to U.S. News and World report and host of PBS’ “To the Contrary” recently compared conservative Christians to terrorists.

A soon-to-be published study in the journal Reproductive Health that found states with a high level of residents who subscribe to conservative religious beliefs also have high teen birth rates sparked Erbe’s September 18 observation that Christianity and radical Islamic terrorism share distinct similarities.

Erbe did not find this conclusion “surprising,” and noted that “most of these ‘religious’ states are also so-called red states.” From there she bashed red states as uneducated and poor, and argued that those factors combined with “increased religiosity tend to intertwine and build on each other.” Erbe offered as proof the following example:

It’s been widely reported that Middle Eastern terrorists talk suicide bombers into committing murder by explaining to them that they will be heroes in heaven, their after-life reward will be that they are treated like kings and have all the advantages that elude them here on earth. These promises are believed by people with no money, no education, and nothing to hold onto but their religious beliefs.

So “red state” residents – poor, uneducated and with “nothing to hold onto but their religious beliefs” – are on a par with Islamist terrorists.

What’s not surprising is that Erbe, who has argued in the past that abortion is a “good decision” in a recession and that religiosity “clouds” common sense would look so poorly upon those who ultimately take responsibility for their actions.

I can understand Erbe’s financial need to make a living. Like many of her comrades in journalism, I can also understand why brain in liberally warped. What I cannot understand how she can make such baseless claims while assuming her liberal audience is uneducated and ignorant about terrorists and Christians. One would think a professional media communicator would at least do some research or be honest in her criticism of those groups.

The facts are most modern terrorist and many high-profile mass murderers have college degrees educated people. The father of international terrorism has a degree in engineering. This Egyptian-born murderer was none other than PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. So his protege, Atta, who led the 9-11 terrorist attacks again. America should not forget the teenage domestic terrorists who mass murdered many of their fellow student at Columbine High School were from home with educated parents of high middle class income. The the father of one was a government official.

Like terrorists waging war against the perceived evil empire that threatens their futures, Christians also fight against the corruption moral relativism promulgated by the secular institutions and those who dominate them.

Christians, however, do not have a religion mandate to do violence, Their weapons are truth, morality, and love. Christian hate the life devastating consequences of the commonplace deception in the service of corrupt special interest and life destroying evil.

Death is not a good thing. It is not good when innocent lives are destroyed by foreign terrorist in their fight against an evil government. It is not good when a nation sanctions the killing of unborn children often to save oneself from the inconvenience of having responsibility of raising a children. That is not to say some women have been confronted the decision to end the life of their unborn in order to live.

It is the secularists who are actually most like the terrorists who kill the innocent without just cause. Collectively, they have produced a culture of corruption and death. While they glory in death, so do Islamic terrorists. They are themselves willing to die for their cause. Secularist like Erbe are more willing for the innocent to die for their glorious cause.

When ignorant secular professionals like Erbe spew their venom against opponents of their standards of injustice, they only reveal how poor, blind, and hopeless they really are. They need to discover the liberty that only our nation’s God and Redeemer gives. Only the Creator could possibly repair such screwed up people. He is an expert in social, psychological, and genetic engineering.

Source: Culture Links

Emulating the European Model: Prescription for Failure September 24, 2009

Posted by Daniel Downs in Barak Obama, Chrisitanity, culture war, liberals, multiculturalism, politics, religion, secularism, statism.
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To say the Obama administration is enamored of the European model would be an understatement—it positively adores it. That’s why the “Change You Can Believe In” crowd is in full gear trying to mimic their economic system, the most visible example of which is its health care program. If only the European model were worth emulating. Sadly, the record is not encouraging.

Every time there is a worldwide economic downturn, the Europeans lag the Americans in recovery. Quite simply, the more market-oriented the economy, the quicker the recovery; European-style socialism trails the U.S. is rebounding precisely because government is anything but nimble. So why the attraction?

What drives the Obama administration to mimic the European model is not its record of achievements; rather, it is the belief that private institutions are not to be trusted. From its opposition to school vouchers to its embrace of a public plan for its health care program, the administration prefers the public sector to the private sector, hands down. It does so in large part because it lusts to take command, whether it be in the form of social, sexual or economic engineering.

Father Knows Best has given way to Government Knows Best. And by creating economic public policies that make men and women more and more dependent on government, the engineers control their destiny, as well as their vote. It does so, unfortunately, at the expense of self-reliance and self-government. As Dennis Prager wisely observes, “the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.” Regrettably, government now dwarfs the individual, the result of which is a diminution in our ability to hold the state at bay.

Statist policies naturally incline toward expansion. Make no mistake about it, the encroachment of the state on civil society is real, the result of which is the creation of a precarious situation for all private institutions. That would include, certainly, religious entities. European observers of all political leanings are quick to point out how genuinely secular those societies have become. The pace of this deracination has quickened, the effect of which has been a movement away from religious indifference toward genuine hostility. Atheism hasn’t been so fashionable since the Enlightenment.

Every statist regime in history has been anti-religious. The church, of course, is rightly seen as a bulwark to the reach of the state. This explains the animus: secularists of this hyper-politicized sort cannot settle for neutrality—they are out to sunder religious traditions and institutions. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that these secular saboteurs are busy flexing their muscles in the U.S., as well as in Europe.

I wrote Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America as a wake-up call. The open assault on our Judeo-Christian ethos has been operative for decades, but never before have we approached a tipping point: we have now reached that stage. The stakes are high as our cultural future hangs in the balance.

From the politically correct programs that mark multiculturalism—a love fest for every civilization save our own—to the sexual libertines who see in Christian sexual ethics a roadblock to genital liberation, we are up against it. Scatological art exhibits are bad enough, but when paired with expressions of Christian bashing, they cross the line many times over. It’s been a long time, of course, since Hollywood found itself capable of portraying Christianity in a positive light, and the fury unleashed against Mel Gibson for making “The Passion of the Christ” underscores the politics involved.

Secular saboteurs show a particular fondness for using the law as a club to stamp out Christianity, torturing out of all recognition the original intent of the Framers; the First Amendment provisions regarding religious liberty have been hit the hardest. Secular elements within the Democratic Party have become bolder and bolder in their disdain for people of faith, driving Catholics out of the party in droves. Perhaps most distressing, the radical secular agenda has penetrated Catholicism, as well as the mainline Protestant denominations, disfiguring them in ways not previously thought imaginable.

In short, Christian bashing is in vogue. That this is happening in a nation which is approximately 80 percent Christian shows the power of a loosely organized, but totally determined, secular minority, and a collapse of will on the part of a sizeable segment of the Christian population. Only a coalition of religious conservatives, across faith lines, can reverse course. Fortunately, as evidenced by the coalition that rallied around Proposition 8 in California, there is reason for optimism.

By Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Is Statesmanship Possible in Contemporary Democracy? September 23, 2009

Posted by Daniel Downs in American history, democracy, moral relativism, politics.
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Everyone complains of the lack of leadership in Israel, but no one to my knowledge goes to the root of the problem, namely, the senility of contemporary democracy. Let me explain.

In the youth of democracy, when democracy had just overcome monarchy, liberty took precedence over equality. Alas, in the old age of democracy in which we live, equality takes precedence over liberty. In its youth, democracy was “normative,” still influenced by religious and aristocratic values. In its senility, democracy is “normless,” preoccupied with security. The individual’s right to the “pursuit” of happiness has metamorphosed into a right to happiness—now prescribed by government standards or entitlements—a far throw from Jeffersonian democracy.

Jeffersonian democracy was based on self-government. What made self-government possible for Jefferson is the primacy of reason linked to man’s moral sense. What prevails today is the primacy of the emotions, so evident in modern psychology which obscures the difference between noble and base emotions along with the moral sense. Divorced from reason and the moral sense, all lifestyles become equal. Moral preferences are merely matters of taste, like one’s preference for this or that flavor of ice cream. Hence there is no place for honor and deference; all is dissolved to moral equivalence, and this is why statesmanship is not possible in contemporary or normless democracy.

I define statesmanship as the application of philosophy to action. But philosophy in normless democracy has become a household term. There are now competing philosophies of dieting, dating, and interior decorating. What Socrates died for — the love of wisdom — has become the possession of every Jill, Jane, and Jodi. True, universities still boast of “professors of philosophy,” but one should not confuse a professor of philosophy with a philosopher. At a national convention of philosophers I attended there were about one thousand present. The number amazed me. The highlight of the event was a resolution condemning the Vietnam War.

If wisdom means knowledge of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, the quest for such knowledge is short-circuited in a normless democratic era when every college student “knows” that “everything is relative.” Relativism so permeates the mentality of this era that one person’s opinion regarding the True, the Good, and the Beautiful is now deemed as valid as another’s. Since opinion has replaced wisdom, politicians consult opinion polls and manipulators of public opinion.

Actually, opinion polls hardly reach the level of opinion. They record people’s offhand responses — typically a “yes” or a “no” — to simplistic questions concerning complex public issues. Poll are often used by adversarial groups to generate public opinion via the media. The influence of the media has propelled democracy into a post-democratic era. Even the etymological meaning of democracy as the rule of the people is obsolete. To speak of democracy as the rule of the people via their elected representatives no longer fits reality.

Democracy has succumbed to “mediacracy.” The spin doctors of the media, facilitated by enormous fundraising campaigns, recently made an unknown person of dubious background president of the United States. The dominant and most expensive medium is of course television. One no longer needs to be even the shadow a statesman to achieve the highest office.

Television fosters showmanship, not statesmanship, which, to repeat, is the application of philosophy to action. Political philosophers in the past made moral judgments. TV journalists pose as morally neutral. In the old age of democracy, however, moral neutrality has degenerated undergone into moral reversal. This requires a psychological analysis of egalitarianism.

The primacy of egalitarianism in normless democracy is actually a manifestation of resentment against noble values. As this resentment develops, it turns into moral reversal: evil becomes good, and good becomes evil. This development leads to stupidity. Here’s an example.

Caroline Glick of The Jerusalem Post addressed some 150 political science students at Tel Aviv University, where she spoke of her experience as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Division during the Iraq war. Any mind uncorrupted by relativism would favor the U.S. over the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Yet the general attitude of her audience was expressed by a student who asked, “Who are you to make moral judgments?” Now ponder this exchange between Glick and a student who spoke with a heavy Russian accent:

Student: “How can you say that democracy is better than dictatorial rule?”

Glick: “Because it is better to be free than to be a slave.”

Student: “How can you support America when the U.S. is a totalitarian state?”

Glick: “Did you learn that in Russia?”

Student: “No, here.”

Glick: “Here at Tel Aviv University?”

Student: “Yes, that is what my professors say.”

Ms. Glick spoke at five liberal Israeli universities. She learned that all are dominated by moral relativists. Their relativism, if consistent, would render them neutral in the war waged by Arabs against Israel. But some academics identify with Israel’s enemy. This is a manifestation of moral reversal. How should statesmen deal with this phenomenon? None denounce academics for moral reversal—which is really moral treason. Thus, in the specious name of academic freedom, professors are free to corrupt youth and undermine their own freedom while their country is confronted by the sworn enemies of freedom.

Universities, citadels of reason, now include towers of stupidity. Academic freedom has become a license for professors to sacrifice their intellects. This is Normless Democracy, where nihilism renders statesmanship impossible.

Let’s come back to the surface of politics. Television has a way of thwarting statesmanship. “Live” television compels national leaders to react immediately to international crises or risk public disapproval. A president has little time to reflect, to consult and consider alternatives. While the public is being inundated by live TV coverage of some crisis, he must respond to the importunities of reporters. This encourages spin, really mendacity. Spin diminishes the rationality associated with Jeffersonian democracy.

To appreciate the power of the mediacracy, the mere fact that its mandarins can select which events shall be televised and which shall be ignored determines what people deem “newsworthy” or important. Since the notion of importance implies that some things are more important than other things, the media’s selection of events cannot but shape people’s political and moral attitudes, which in turn will influence the agenda of politicians.

Moreover, how any crisis is portrayed by the media, and who their reporters interview about a crisis, is indicative that we are living in a post-democratic era in which TV mandarins, politically unaccountable to the people, play a decisive role in opinion-making, hence in policy-making. Under such conditions statesmanship is more ardently to be wished for than expected.

Another obstacle to statesmanship in Normless Democracy is hedonism. The democratic preoccupation with immediate gratification hinders statesmanship. Alexis de Tocqueville goes to the heart of problem in his classic Democracy in America. He attributes modern hedonism to democracy’s equality of conditions, which makes it possible for everyone to strive for physical comfort: “The effort to satisfy even the least wants of the body and to provide the little conveniences of life is uppermost in every mind.” This “passion for physical comforts,” he writes, “is essentially a passion of the middle classes; with those classes it grows and spreads … From them it mounts into the higher orders of society and descends into the mass of the people.”

Countering this desire for immediate gratification is religion. “Religions,” he says, “give men a general habit of conducting themselves with a view to eternity.” What thrives in democracy, however, is not religion but skepticism. Hence Tocqueville, actually a friend of democracy, warns its partisans: “In skeptical ages it is always to be feared … that men may perpetually give way to their daily casual desires, and that, wholly renouncing whatever cannot be acquired without protracted effort, they may establish nothing great, permanent, and calm…. [Accordingly], in those countries in which, unhappily, irreligion and democracy coexist, philosophers and those in power ought to be always striving to place the objects of human actions far beyond man’s immediate range.” Unfortunately, Tocqueville’s “philosophers” have disappeared, and the mortals in power are not statesmen.

Now, if statesmanship is virtually impossible in a Normless Democracy or in a post-democratic era, may this not also be said of Jewish statesmanship?

From an August 31, 2009 emailed transcript of the Eidelberg Report aired on Israel National Radio. Prof. Paul Eidelberg is also co-founder and President of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy.

Health care petition signed by 1.3M delivered to Congress September 15, 2009

Posted by Daniel Downs in Barak Obama, Congress, health care, legislation, socialism.
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Southern Baptist ethics leader Richard Land joined other radio talk show hosts Sept. 9 in presenting to members of Congress a petition signed by more than 1.3 million Americans opposed to current health care legislation.

Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) and host of “Richard Land Live!” and the others delivered the copies of the petition to Rep. John Boehner, R.-Ohio, the minority leader in the House of Representatives, and other members of Congress at a Capitol Hill news conference. All the talk show hosts are with Salem Radio Network.

The petition, which is believed by organizers to be the “largest public policy petition ever delivered to the Congress,” expresses concern about legislation that would move the United States toward government-run health insurance. It calls for freedom to choose health care providers, “patient-centered” care, government aid for the truly needy and insurance that will transfer with a person when he changes jobs.

The number of petition signers “shows that there is tremendous grassroots opposition and concern to a government takeover of a major portion of American health care,” Land told Baptist Press after the news conference.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R.-S.C., said at the news conference his office considers one phone call representative of at least 100 people, meaning the signed petitions represent at least 130 million Americans, he said. The boxes of signed petitions were delivered to the outdoor news conference on gurneys taken from an ambulance.

The delivery of the petitions came about six hours before President Obama was scheduled to deliver a nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress urging support for health care reform. The congressional health reform effort, backed by the White House, faced increasing opposition across the country over the summer.

After the news conference, Land said of his desire for Obama’s speech: “I would hope the president would say, ‘You know, I campaigned as a post-partisan president, and so, in that spirit, I am going to scrap what is obviously a plan which does not have the broad support of the American people, and I am going to back to the drawing board with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Congress, and we’re going to come up with a plan that will get the consensus support of the American people.”

In a nine-page analysis released in early August, the ERLC said it is certain a House bill approved in three committees “will lead to diminished health care for most Americans, less choice, higher taxes and unprecedented government intrusion into every level and aspect of society, from business, to education, to marriage, to individual liberty.”

The House version is the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, H.R. 3200.

The ERLC believes health care reform is needed, Land has said, but it is opposed to the measures approved by House and Senate committees. Those proposals would drive other insurers out of business, cause many people to lose their current insurance and control what private plans do, according to the ERLC.

A key concern also is that the House bill explicitly permits funding for elective abortions, which has sparked strong opposition from Land, the ERLC and other pro-life groups. Obama has denied the House bill would underwrite abortions, but pro-lifers have said the president has misrepresented the congressional proposals. Committees in both the House and Senate rejected efforts to exclude abortion funding from health care legislation.

Land has said Obama could easily resolve the matter.

“If, as the president alleges, abortion is not to be considered a covered procedure in any government option, what’s the problem with specifically saying so by excluding it in the legislative language? I would encourage President Obama to pick up the phone and call his party’s leaders in the House and tell them to drop their opposition to specifically excluding abortion as a covered procedure in any proposed legislation,” Land said.

The petition presented by the talk show hosts states: “I, the undersigned citizen of the United States, petition the U.S. Congress to stop any increased role of the government in my health care decisions. I also petition the U.S. Congress to protect my right to choose my own doctors and hospitals without delay or denial, to obtain care that is patient-centered, and to have health insurance that is personal, portable and best suits my needs.”

In addition to Boehner and DeMint, other congressional members, all Republicans, speaking at the news conference were Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Reps. Eric Cantor of Virginia, Mike Pence of Indiana, Tom Price of Georgia, Pete Sessions of Texas and John Shadegg of Arizona.

Source: Baptist Press, September 9, 2009

Paying for Health Care Reform September 10, 2009

Posted by Daniel Downs in Barak Obama, Democrats, Income, Medicare/Medicaid, capitalism, economy, health care, news, politics, taxes, welfare.
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During one Town Hall meetings, President Obama said people like himself could pay for health care reform. That is, high-income taxpayers can afford high tax rates to help fund universal health care.

Thomas Jefferson held a similar view. He was critical of industrious citizens getting rich while others citizens were going without. He believed the wealthy should assist the less fortunate to achieve a livable income.

The difference between the views of Obama and Jefferson is not apparent. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference in their views. Obama adheres to a form of contemporary liberalism that has embraced the values of humanism, egalitarianism, and welfare socialism. Although Jefferson was more liberal than many of his day, he was nevertheless a rock solid natural law proponent. His values were characterized by traditional moral values, entrepreneurial capitalism, and natural rights equality. Stated more simply, Obama tends towards being a big government socialist while Jefferson was oriented toward being a limited government capitalist.

To Jefferson, the term capitalist meant entrepreneurs of small businesses including farms, repair shops, small manufacturers or craftsmen, merchants, and the like. Today, the term capitalism certainly includes owners of small businesses, but, in practice, most modern politicians favor a big business view. Internationalists, like Obama and most federal politicians, give their allegiance to supporting national, international, and especially Wall Street business. However, Jefferson, as did Adam Smith, opposed big business as a threat to independent “capitalists”. One reason was that they regarded big business as quasi-governmental entities, and so do many financial experts today.

The point is this: Obama, as representative of the Democratic Party, wants the more wealthy to pay for their welfare based benefits program for middle and lower income citizens. The obvious problem is high income citizens live off the productivity of lower income employees, taxpayers, and consumers. This is what early Americans like Thomas Jefferson were critical of. Why? As expressed by John Locke, property and productivity belonged to the property owner and worker. In other words, the means of production belonged to all Americans equal to their need and capacity.

Taxing for the limited functions of government was and is the necessary cost to security property and life as well as to maintain the freedom to pursue as much happiness as possible. Taxing for redistribution from the haves to the have-nots was regarded as robbery just as the low wage living was regarded as slavery.

One could argue that most businesses already pay their employees health care. They also pay into Medicare as well as into group health care. Employees pay a small portion of the health insurance costs. Why pay them higher wages?

The only reason to pay employees higher wages would be for them to pay 100 percent of the cost. This is true of all other government-initiated social safety net programs including social security, welfare, and ESEA (now called No Child Left Behind), and S-CHIP. Without poor wage earners, all of those programs would not be needed and would be more difficult to justify.

Those social safety net programs were all good ideas, but all became means to enlarging federal powers over American lives. Except for Social Security, most of those programs never produced the results that were sold to American citizens. Corporations whose revenues are in the multi-millions and billions often get welfare subsidies. Are not the bank and manufacturer bailouts a form of welfare? After billions of taxpayer funding, the ESEA program still has not closed the educational gap between children of poor families and others; it still has resolved the huge school drop out problem; add it still has not made American children’s globally competitive in math and science. One would think that over 40 years or 3 generations Americans would have achieved this goal. Then there is S-CHIP (State Children Health Insurance Program) that never has been used strictly to help the children of poor families. Why? Because the agenda of liberal bureaucrats always has been to complete the goal of making the middle class welfare dependents or good socialists.

Democrats justify their health care reform based on the millions of Americans without adequate health care. The majority of the uninsured are the working poor. Why are the working poor without health coverage? They are without health coverage for one of four reasons: (1) Their employers cannot afford to pay for heath care. (2) They cannot afford to pay their portion of their employers’ group plan. (3) Their spouse has sufficient family coverage. (4) They simply do not want to give any more money to insurance companies. Yet, every working American does pay into Medicare/Medicaid.

After paying for retirement age health care, the state often takes all of the possessions of those who paid into Medicare for years just for cashing in on the supposed safety net. That seems more like a big brother scam and not a safety net.

Maybe, Bernie Madoff’s real crime was learning and practicing the art of his liberal big brother.

The answer to the health care problem is not the enlargement of government or government run health care. It is reforming the political economy. If as President Obama, Jim Wallis, and others claim, the rich can afford to pay more taxes for health care reform, they could afford to pay better wage rates so that all American could purchase health care they and their families want. The cure for making health care affordable (reducing costs and increasing earned income) would solve many other societal problems tied to America’s political economy.