"Let's Give Up on the Constitution"

As 2012 fades and 2013 - with its fiscal cliff, new taxes and further divisiveness - dawns, the sorry state of the country is captured in the headline of this post - a headline which appeared in yesterday's Sunday edition of the New York Times. That is, the US should abandon its Constitution.

Writing on the Times' OpEd page, Louis Michael Seidman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University and author of the forthcoming book “On Constitutional Disobedience,” sees the real problem facing America as being the US Constitution itself.   “No one blames the culprit:" he writes, "our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.”

This is not a joke.  The piece was presented to Times readers not on April Fools Day; it was printed on the crest of a new year - a year in which the federal government will reach even deeper into our pockets, our homes and our lives.  It is the absurd conclusion of the progressive saw that "old, dead, rich white men" are the cause of all of America's ills.   Seidman continues:

Imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress — reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country. Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action.

Going further, Professor Seidman appears to think that the divisiveness engulfing the country today is the fault of the Constitution:

What has preserved our political stability is not a poetic piece of parchment, but entrenched institutions and habits of thought and, most important, the sense that we are one nation and must work out our differences. No one can predict in detail what our system of government would look like if we freed ourselves from the shackles of constitutional obligation, and I harbor no illusions that any of this will happen soon. But even if we can’t kick our constitutional-law addiction, we can soften the habit. 

Addiction?  As though adherence to law and principles are a drug.  The internal logic is distorted and frightening   

Seidman's analysis of what ails this county, and its publication in the nation's best known journal, should be coldly sobering to all Americans.  The US Constitution is neither a Democratic nor a Republican document.  It, along with the Declaration of Independence, define this nation and people, our aspiration and our laws.  If we are facing challenges, if we are divided, perhaps it is because we have failed to pay enough attention to the Constitution.  

How did this nation, born from a passion for Liberty, law, responsibility and independence, descend to this?  And why did we allow that descent to occur and continue to occur precipitously over the past four years and the four to come?

Welcome to 2013.  Good help this country.
  

British (non-)Humor

Leave to the land of Monty Python and John Cleese to take matters to absurd conclusions.  For starters, the United Kingdom  

• Has a mayor in London who wanted to prevent children from watching Olympic shooting events.
• Has a pollice force that arrested a man for finding a gun in his yard and turning it over to the police.
• Imposed a prohibition on the use of starting pistols at races lest children get frightened by the noise

Now, the people of a once powerful country are proposing to take the protective cocoon of the Nanny state further by doing Cleese's silly walk toward banning kitchen knives.  Yes, you read correctly: kitchen knives.  According to a report from the BBC quoting research published in the British Medical Journal:

No longer. . .

[The] researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all. ...The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime. ...Home Office spokesperson said there were already extensive restrictions in place to control the sale and possession of knives. "The law already prohibits the possession of offensive weapons in a public place, and the possession of knives in public without good reason or lawful authority, with the exception of a folding pocket knife with a blade not exceeding three inches. ...A spokesperson for the Association of Chief Police Officers said: "ACPO supports any move to reduce the number of knife related incidents, however, it is important to consider the practicalities of enforcing such changes."

No starting pistols or kids watching shooting events.  Arrest someone for finding a gun and immediately turning it over to the police.  Now, proposals to ban long, pointy, sharp edged things. . .  Lunacy!

A once proud and defiant nation descends into drivel and meaningless symbolism.  I'll write later about what effect the banning of guns has had on crime in Britain (and could have in the United States).  For now, it is clear that Britannia no longer rules the waves - just the private lives of its citizens.  In a Monty Python sort of way.

The Orwellian World of Obamacare

A legacy of having worked in the health care industry is a subscription to the New England Journal of Medicine, an august paper of all manner of things medical.  Admittedly, two-thirds of what appears in the NEJM is well over my head (due in no small measure to the plethora of unpronounceable medical terms).  Still, there are articles on health care policy that attract my attention and sometimes my amazement.

Take for example the December 19th issue and an intriguing piece "Religious Freedom and Women's Health — The Litigation on Contraception" by Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, J.D.  Jost leads off his article sensibly enough:

Health policy experts widely agree that health care should not merely be sickness care; rather, it should actively prevent disease and preserve wellness. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains an entire chapter dealing with prevention and public health. The ACA also improves private and public insurance coverage of preventive care. 

Excellent - and one aspect of Obamacare worth preserving.  Indeed, I was privileged to work with a brilliant physician who was, and remains, a strong and articulate advocate for turning health care on its head and pay more for health instead of dealing with illness.  Proactive rather than reactive medicine.

The very next sentence in Jost's piece reads: "One preventive care requirement, however, has caused a major headache for the Obama administration. Indeed, it has provoked charges that the administration is waging 'a war on religion.'"  Preventive care???

The result of a disease left untreated?

Jost continues with a brief review of the Affordable Care Act's requirement to provide "women's health service" including FDA approved contraceptive services.  He reviews the objections and suits filed by various religious organization claiming that application of the requirement to their organizations violates the First Amendment.  Those suits have been joined by non-religious businesses as well as governors of seven states.  Jost sorts through the arguments; but it is the juxtaposition of preventive care with pregnancy that I found both amazing and troubling.

Follow the "logic":  Preventing disease and promoting wellness are good and therefore contraceptive services (including the "morning after" pill) are disease prevention measures.  Ergo, being pregnant is a disease or at minimum a form of being unwell.  Wow!  Since when did being "with child" become bed-mates with diabetes, heart disease or cancer?  Most pregnancies are the predictable results of a completely voluntary act: sex.  So, just as, say, advocating better diets and an active lifestyle to reduce the occurrence of Type II diabetes, how about advocating abstinence as a "cure" for pregnancy?  Never mind...

In the Orwellian world of Obamacare, pregnancy is now a disease and babies - children - are the debilitating results of a disease left untreated.  Treatment, of course, needs to be provided by tax payer dollars to everyone regardless of religious belief, the First Amendment be damned.  How on earth does any person with a shred of sense wrap their heads around this?  

'We Are Not Going to Do Anything'

So here we are, folks, at the edge of the so-called "fiscal cliff."  Rather than face the hard reality of curbing the nation's spending habit, all the talk has been about taxes - who (as in millionaires vs the less fortunate $400K or $250K per year earners) and by how much.

The Republicans "caved" a bit by agreeing on higher taxes for top wage earners.  President Obama, believing he has some sort of mandate from the election last month, said no.  House Republicans pushed ahead with their own "Plan B" legislation only  to hear Harry Reid say "We are not going to do anything," adding "We are not taking up anything they are working on over there."

The Senate Majority Leader won't even consider taking the House's bill to vote.  What does that tell you?

It tells me that bipartisanship is a charade; a magical potion sold to the electorate by the President and Senate Democrats.  When an opportunity to do the minium - scheduling a vote on a Republican crafted bill - bipartisanship is seen as it truly is: an empty slogan.

Watching Washington, it seems to me that more often than not, bipartisanship is what Democrats deem it to be, not what we - the citizenry expect it to be.  The President won't compromise (heck, he hasn't said anything meaningful at all about cutting spending) and Senator Reid won't even consider "anything they are working on over there."

So, we're not going to do anything - except tumble off the fiscal cliff.  At least that's something.

“Lately I Am Seven”

Our younger daughter whose name is Ellen is the mother of two small children, our grandchildren.  Small, innocent children - a girl almost four and a boy almost two. Bright, sweet children who smile easily and laugh without restraint.  Children who are helpless and therefore trusting. 

Two days ago, I posted Ellen's thoughts about Newtown, Connecticut, her childhood home.  Today, she wrote more intimately of her memories as an innocent, trusting seven year old at Sandy Hook Elementary School:

Lately I am Seven

For Sandy Hook and All of Us

Lately, behind closed eyes, I am seven again. 

I am elbow-height to my teacher. 

She writes beautifully and with red ink. 

I wait for directions so I know how, 

but for now I go ahead and fill in my name. 

In the hallway, I walk when the person in front of me walks. 

For the length of the corridor I drag my finger in the space between the rows of glazed wall tiles. 

It lulls me into a daydream, interrupted by doorways and low-hanging art projects. 

The boy in front of me stops. 

I stop. 

We go again. I don’t wonder when or where. 

I just run my finger and wait to be told we have arrived.

I know that sound: that is Mrs. Klein’s shoes clicking down the hall. 

She works in the office and every day

she clickity-clacks with her high-heels throughout the school, 

bringing papers and messages here and there. 

As the sound passes by, I glance to my side: there she goes. 

Right again.

Lately, these days, I close my eyes and see those halls. I can’t stop myself.

It is all there, in front of me, 

the details—revived from the dormant depths of my memory—amaze me.

I learn they have been carried with me, quietly, all of these years.

In my mind’s eye, I picture a self that doesn’t worry about germs. Or what’s for dinner. 

Or real estate or the price of gas. 

Instead, with eyes closed, I worry about remembering to have my mom to sign that form tonight. I must not forget. I am given many colored sheets of paper to bring to my parents to read. They are all equally important, but this one I must return with me. I don’t want to get in trouble or disappoint.

A drink at the porcelain water fountain is a satisfying act of independence.

I have no idea how helpless I am.

Liberal Magazine Makes The Case for More Guns

Writing in the December 2012 issue of The Atlantic, an avowed gun control advocate has made the case for more guns along with more gun control. The article is surprising having been published in what most see as a liberal journal.  The article is well-balanced and worth reading.  Some key points:

Photo Courtesy The Atlantic

According to a 2011 Gallup poll, 47 percent of American adults keep at least one gun at home or on their property, and many of these gun owners are absolutists opposed to any government regulation of firearms. According to the same poll, only 26 percent of Americans support a ban on handguns. ... [But] these gun-control efforts, while noble, would only have a modest impact on the rate of gun violence in America. Why? Because it’s too late. There are an estimated 280 million to 300 million guns in private hands in America—many legally owned, many not. Each year, more than 4 million new guns enter the market. [Emphasis added.]

There is no practical way a democratic society can seize all the guns out there.  Besides, the Supreme Court in 2008 affirmed the right of private citizens to own guns.  The author of the article, Jeffrey Goldberg, a staff writer for The Atlantic, goes on to observe:

Which raises a question: When even anti-gun activists believe that the debate over private gun ownership is closed; when it is too late to reduce the number of guns in private hands—and since only the naive think that legislation will prevent more than a modest number of the criminally minded, and the mentally deranged, from acquiring a gun in a country absolutely inundated with weapons—could it be that an effective way to combat guns is with more guns? Today, more than 8 million vetted and (depending on the state) trained law-abiding citizens possess state-issued “concealed carry” handgun permits, which allow them to carry a concealed handgun or other weapon in public. Anti-gun activists believe the expansion of concealed-carry permits represents a serious threat to public order. But what if, in fact, the reverse is true? Mightn’t allowing more law-abiding private citizens to carry concealed weapons—when combined with other forms of stringent gun regulation—actually reduce gun violence? [Emphasis added]

A concealed carry permit holder faced the shooter at the Clackamas Town Center earlier in the week.  He drew his weapon but did not take the shot, fearing that if he missed he may hit an innocent by-stander.  The 22 year old man is now conflicted: he wanted to protect life but by not taking the shot, he may have caused others to die.  People with licenses to carry guns are responsible and bad guys fear them more than they fear the police.

Goldberg expands on his last point:

Today, the number of concealed-carry permits is the highest it’s ever been, at 8 million, and the homicide rate is the lowest it’s been in four decades—less than half what it was 20 years ago. (The number of people allowed to carry concealed weapons is actually considerably higher than 8 million, because residents of Vermont, Wyoming, Arizona, Alaska, and parts of Montana do not need government permission to carry their personal firearms. These states have what Second Amendment absolutists refer to as “constitutional carry,” meaning, in essence, that the Second Amendment is their permit.) Many gun-rights advocates see a link between an increasingly armed public and a decreasing crime rate. “I think effective law enforcement has had the biggest impact on crime rates, but I think concealed carry has something to do with it. We’ve seen an explosion in the number of people licensed to carry,” Lott told me. “You can deter criminality through longer sentencing, and you deter criminality by making it riskier for people to commit crimes. And one way to make it riskier is to create the impression among the criminal population that the law-abiding citizen they want to target may have a gun.” [Emphasis added.]

Gun-related deaths and injuries in countries with prohibitions on gun ownership are often cited as reason for the US to place a ban on guns.  Nevertheless,

Crime statistics in Britain, where guns are much scarcer, bear this out. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, wrote in his 1991 book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, that only 13 percent of burglaries in America occur when the occupant is home. In Britain, so-called hot burglaries account for about 45 percent of all break-ins. Kleck and others attribute America’s low rate of occupied-home burglaries to fear among criminals that homeowners might be armed. (A survey of almost 2,000 convicted U.S. felons, conducted by the criminologists Peter Rossi and James D. Wright in the late ’80s, concluded that burglars are more afraid of armed homeowners than they are of arrest by the police.) [Emphasis added.]

 Goldberg's conclusion:

...I am sympathetic to the idea of armed self-defense, because it does often work, because encouraging learned helplessness is morally corrupt, and because, however much I might wish it, the United States is not going to become Canada. Guns are with us, whether we like it or not. Maybe this is tragic, but it is also reality. So Americans who are qualified to possess firearms shouldn’t be denied the right to participate in their own defense. And it is empirically true that the great majority of America’s tens of millions of law-abiding gun owners have not created chaos in society.

Yes, regulations are needed. . .to put more guns into responsible hands. 

"Nothing Bad Happens Here"

Before leaving Newtown for Oregon in 1998, friends gave my wife a going away party.  Among the several small gifts was a blanket with familiar landmarks of Newtown woven through.  It has draped on the sofa in our family room since we arrived in Portland - warming us on chilly evenings and opening questions from friends which we answered eagerly, telling them about the wonderful town.

Newtown is where our children grew up - from kindergarten at Sandy Hook School until they each left for college.  My wife was on the Sandy Hook School PTA and its treasurer for a while.  As most of the homes had wells, each Thursday she conduct a fluoride "swish and spit" day at the school.   Sandy Hook was - is - a school where the Principal and teachers warmly welcomed the kids and the kids embraced them with in return.  Newtown was an ideal place to raise our family. Peaceful.  Bucolic. Charming.  Warm.  Amid the old buildings, farms, churches, friendly people and gentle countryside, I often thought "nothing bad could happen here."

On Saturday, one of our daughters, now a mother of two, wrote the following:

I grew up in Newtown and attended Sandy Hook School for five years. Every day I would board my school bus with my Trapper Keeper in hand and travel the long, winding roads that denied me any sense of direction until I moved to the Big Apple for college. My bus passed horses and cows and ducks in ponds. It passed homes that predate the birth of George Washington. 


Newtown - the town we called home

After several miles it would come to Sandy Hook, a few blocks wherein I began my first years of piano lessons, where fantastic mansions house businesses, and where one could (though no longer) find the Red Brick General Store, a nineteenth-century relic whose door handle and wooden threshold were worn almost to disrepair from decades of people entering in. The bus would turn right up the hill, and right again into the driveway of Sandy Hook School, whereupon large green footprints of the Jolly Green Giant were painted.

As students, we participated joyfully in our First Grade Show, in a school-wide production of the Nutcracker, in the annual Pancake Breakfast With Santa, in the springtime school fair (a craft from which still can be found in my parents’ home: a little mouse made from my 6-yr old fingerprints).   

A good day at school could mean it was School Store day, where, at tables in the lobby, one could buy triangular pencil grips and tiny erasers to add to our collections. It could mean having music AND gym on the same day, and those rubbery waffles being served in the lunchroom; or spending “free time” in library shimmying around and hilariously shocking each other with static electricity, and getting to erase the blackboard at the end of the day. A bad day might have seen a lost lunch ticket and a rained-out recess; or time spent lying on the leather bed in the nurse’s office with a stomach ache, waiting for mommy to take us home. 

What happened yesterday was something that Newtown had never feared because, in Newtown, such events were thought to be an impossibility. It has occurred to me that I might never again have to explain where Newtown is when asked where I grew up; it is my hope that those who ask will have read many stories like this.

Looking at the blanket that my wife was given brings us warmth but now also renews our tears. Something bad did happen in Newtown.  May God bring strength and peace to our friends, parents, children and the community we once called home.

 

The Slaughter in Newtown

The news stories are still coming in about the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, CT.  Twenty-seven dead, most of them children.  Small children.

My two daughters attended Sandy Hook Elementary when we lived in lovely Newtown from 1985 through 1998.  We still have friends in Newtown - a village, really, with all the postcard charm of a typical New England town.  We know the streets, the driveway, the school.  The teachers and especially the principal during my children's years there were exceptional.  I have no doubt that they still are.  We considered ourselves blessed to live in such a lovely town - peaceful, friendly, filled with bright, talented children and engaged parents.  Our tears and torn hearts are with them.

A few days ago, I blogged about the killings here in Portland, OR.  The point of that blog was, in essence, that there are too few guns in America.  You see, Connecticut law protected the shooter by insuring that no law-abiding citizen - teacher, aide, parent - could stop him. The law created the "psychopath free-fire zone" that opened the door to children dying at the hand of a deranged, sick individual.  Not unlike the "gun free zone" at the mall in Portland.  These laws and restrictions leave good people helpless while evil people wreck havoc and misery.

My wife and daughters are sick with the news coming from Connecticut. 

From 1,000 Points of Light to 1

George H.W. Bush (the "good Bush") spoke about empowering private, charitable organizations providing assistance to the poor and needy, referring to them as "a thousand points of light" which extend the tradition of religious and other non-profit organizations rising to help fellow Americans.

Charitable organizations depend on donations from private citizens to do their work.  For nearly 100 year, taxpayers have been able to deduct their donations on their tax return - an implicit acknowledgement by the Federal government of the importance of these organizations and the benefits they extend.  While the limit on deductions is targeted at "high-income earners" (echoing Obama's constant refrain that the "rich pay their fair share"), it is these people who are the most generous in providing donations to non-profits. 

Under the Obama administration, the government may turn its back on these non-profits by scaling back the deductions.  Typical of the hubris of the administration, top White House aides have pressed non-profits to line up behind the president’s plan for reducing the federal deficit and averting the year-end “fiscal cliff.”  In other words, play by my rules or get hosed.

It seems that Bush's 1,000 points of light may be slowly extinguished save one.  The Federal government. 

On Guns, Signs and Common Sense

Here in Oregon yesterday, a man entered a shopping mall killed two people, severely injured another before taking his own life.  He used what has been described as an assault rifle.  The shopping mall - Clackamas Town Center mall - is reported to be a self-proclaimed "Gun Free Zone."  According to reports (we rarely visit the center), there are signs posted at the entrances to this effect.  

Oregon shooting victims Steven Forsyth and Cindy Yuille

How effective was the mall's "Gun Free Zone" policy?  Absent the remote possibility that the gunman was illiterate, neither the policy nor the signs were much of a deterrent.  Why on earth would the mall's owners, manager or tenants expect them to be?  Someone deranged enough to want to kill - randomly kill, in this case - is not going to stop short and rethink his game plan because there are signs telling him  not to bring his gun into the mall.  

Of course, Liberals are jumping all over this incident with demands that guns be outlawed entirely.  That makes as much sense as the mall's policy and signs: prohibiting guns will have no effect on those determine to have them and use them to commit mayhem or crime.  By the same logic we should ban automobiles because cars kill.

The real effect of the mall's no gun policy was to prevent law abiding, gun-carrying citizens from entering the premises.  Had someone with a concealed carry license been in the vicinity when the shooter attacked, the outcome may - repeat may - have been different.  Acting lawfully, one armed citizen may have deterred or perhaps even prevented this horror.  Steven Forsyth and Cindy Yuille may have lived.

The Cato Institute published a white paper last February entitled Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens (you can read the white paper at the link or download it in PDF format).  The paper uses a collection of news reports of self-defense with guns over an eight-year period to survey the circumstances and outcomes of defensive gun uses in America.  Among its observations:

Outside of criminology circles, relatively few people can reasonably estimate how often people use guns to fend off criminal attacks. If policymakers are truly interested in harm reduction, they should pause to consider how many crimes — murders, rapes, assaults, robberies — are thwarted each year by ordinary persons with guns. The estimates of defensive gun use range between the tens of thousands to as high as two million each year. [Emphasis added.]

Cato provides an interactive, state-by-state interactive map showing defense gun use across a wide range of categories.  The paper's authors observe:

...opposition [to gun ownership] is typically based on assumptions that the average citizen is incapable of successfully employing a gun in self-defense or that possession of a gun in public will tempt people to violence in "road rage" or other contentious situations. Those assumptions are false. The vast majority of gun owners are ethical and competent. That means tens of thousands of crimes are prevented each year by ordinary citizens with guns.

Oregon is a "right to carry" state, including licensed concealed carry.  The signs at the Clackamas Town Center mall didn't stop an evil man; they stopped good men, and women, who carry guns.  Too many signs.  Too few guns.  Too little sense.  Two innocent people dead.

Investigate the laws of your state.  Apply for a concealed carry license.  Get a gun.  Learn how to use it correctly and safely.  Pray that you will keep it always in its holster.

Let's Go Kill Baby Seals!

In an outrageous post to the New York Times Opinionator blog titled "Can Neuroscience Challenge Roe v. Wade," William Egginton, Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, argues that science has no role in the development of public policy, particularly on matters involving essential human rights. 

At issue are the initiatives in several states to end or restrict abortions, especially late term abortions, based on the human fetus's ability to feel pain.  Eddington argues the impossibility that a fetus is capable of feeling “reflective” pain.  Neuroscience suggest that a fetus can feel pain which forms the basis of the proposed laws and, by extension, that the fetus is truly a person.  Eddington argues that this science is inadmissible, even should the conclusion be that a fetus can experience pain.

His argument is that such pain is not reflective pain.  "Reflective pain" means experiencing pain in the manner of a mature human.  The core of Eddington's argument is that as fetal pain is not reflective pain, then whatever pain the fetus may feel does not count as pain - and certainly not as a pretext to grant personhood status to the fetus which would undermine Roe v. Wade. 

A pro-choice advocate on vacation?

Now isn't that interesting position to take?  The experience of pain should be dismissed when it is not experienced in the same way a mature person would.  This begs the question, of course, about when the "reflective" pain experience kicks in?  At birth?  One day after birth?  One month?  One year?  Of course, there are so-called ethicists who argue for the legitimacy of "after birth abortions." That's after birth as in completion of the full gestational cycle resulting in a live, healthy baby. 

By this reasoning (a word which is clearly inappropriate in this context), there is nothing to prohibit the killing of baby seals.  Never mind their cute, doe-eyed looks or mournful sounds as the club or axe cracks their skulls.  They don't feel reflective pain - lacking self-awareness, no animals feel pain in the manner of "mature human beings."  Or, go shoot puppies and kittens.

Cruel words.  Crueler acts.  Let me be clear: cruelty to any animal is wrong - evil - and should be roundly condemned.

Except, in the view of Eddington and others, when that cruelty is directed toward an "animal" in the form of a infant human - whether in the womb or, apparently for some, out.  I am often perplexed at the pro-choice (read: pro-abortion) advocates stridently defending both Roe v. Wade while, at the same time, pleading for animal rights.  Poor seals.  Poorer humanity.

Reflect on that.

The Goodness that is the United States

Take a moment to look closely at the accompanying map.  It depicts on a county-by-county basis the results of November's Presidential election.  It shows in varying shades of red and blue, the percentage by which President Obama and Mitt Romney carried each county.  The map is both interesting and hopeful in a subtle yet profound way.

The Red (Republican) counties clearly dominate the Blue (Democrat) counties - and deep Red is more prevalent than deep Blue.  Barack Obama won a second term on the backs of high population counties in the East, Midwest and West.

I was reminded of this map last night while watching Paper Clips, a movie about the good people of Whitwell Tennessee. 

The Paper Clip Project grew out of a study of the Holocaust at the Whitwell Middle School.  When a student asked "how big is six million [the number of Jews killed] really," the teachers decided to see if they could collect paper clips - six million of them.  They did and in the process created a Holocaust museum and memorial to the six million Jews and five million others - Catholics, homosexuals, the handicapped who were similarly incinerated.  Eleven million paper clips and an old box car used to transport Jews to the concentration camps.  Whitwell, a town of around 1,500 in what is commonly referred to "fly over country" was changed forever.  

"Fly over country" - Red counties - where the people, in the patronizing words of our President, "cling to their guns and Bibles."  What was supposed to be derision is really a complement.  These are good people; folks who understand goodness and redemption better than many elitists in the Blue states.

The map also reminds me of the people I have met in the small towns in Eastern Oregon. As an avid cyclist, I undertook my first sojourn into these small communities with mild apprehension.  "Rednecks and nabobs" were my expectations. Clad in gaudy Lycra on a bike with skinny tires, I expect to be laughed at...or worse.  

Hardly.  Venturing into the coolness of the only bar and burger joint in town with a couple of friends sweaty and weary after a 100 mile ride, we heard the distinctive click of billiard balls.  Three cowboys were shooting pool.  We swallowed hard and within thirty seconds were greeted warmly and with admiration.  Rural America where people are polite, reserved, hard-working and respectful.

The great essayist and thinker G. K Chesterton understood the differences between those who live in big versus small communities.  "The man who lives in a small community," he wrote, "lives in a much larger world.  He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of man. ... In a large community we can choose our companions.  In a small community our companions are chosen for us."  One must get along.  In a small community, one cannot walk away; one is forced to look inside, deeply inside, and adapt.  Or live in isolation.

The people of Whitwell, Tennessee, in the small towns of Oregon and across the Red counties - the ones who cling to their guns and Bibles - give me hope for and immense pride in America.

Obamacare: Doing Less with Less

With up to thirty million newly insured under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) couple with programs to increase access, delivery of health care services will face increased demand.  Most of have read about the impending physician shortage - which many industry professional belief will lead to a two-tiered system of medical delivery.  Medicare patients how can afford it will opt for "concierge services" from their primary physician.  For a fee of $1,500 to $2,000 per year, these patients will gain same-day or next day services in addition to personal consultation by phone and online.  Of course, not everyone can or will opt for concierge service, leaving the remainder of patients to find medical care elsewhere.  This will place huge demands on the remaining Medicare providers - many of whom will stop accepting Medicare patients or, as some fear, stop practicing entirely.

As if that weren't bad enough, Obamacare has already triggered layoffs at hospitals around the country.  Faced with $800 to $900 billion in Medicare cuts over the next ten years, hospitals have already begun to tighten their belts.  Consider the following:

• Louisiana State University has announced it will layoff 1,500 positions at its seven hospitals to trim $150 billion from its operating budget.
• Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina announced it will reduce its workforce by 950 by June of next year.
• Orlando Health System is cutting 400 jobs immediately.

These are just the beginning. In 2013 alone, hospitals are expected to shed 93,000 jobs - all due to Obamacare.  The jobs being cut include all manner of positions, with nursing and other professional staff hit the hardest.

These cuts are already placing strains on medical providers and patients throughout the country.  It will get worse.  Expect long wait times to see a doctor and even longer lines for specialists and in-hospital procedures.  And, in order to control costs, you can expect procedures to be evaluated on a cost-effectiveness basis of which your age, general health and lifestyle will be factored in.  If you're too old, smoke and have (yes) pre-existing conditions, you may not get that operation or expensive new drug.    

It's called rationing - not the rationing of supply and demand as a natural balancing mechanism of a free market, but rationing determined by centralized, anonymous bureaucrats in Washington.

As the bumper sticker says, If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it's free!

Cleaning the GOP Garage

by Melissa Flores

The garage is the last place on earth you want to clean. Let’s be honest. Most of us neglect garage-duty, not necessarily because of laziness but due to the uncertainty of not knowing how to bring order to the agglomeration that collects there. These days, garages are equally about vehicles and storage for sundry household items that have no permanent place inside your living space. Hence every garage has at least a few if not umpteen items that defy organization.

After the elections, the GOP is cleaning its house. Brave souls have ventured into the GOP garage to get a handle on some issues that Republicans haven’t traditionally championed. It’s not that we haven’t taken ownership of these issues; we just haven’t found a place for them in the usual Conservative conversation. One issue that has turned up consistently in the post-election rehash is immigration. This bulky beast of a box has yet to be unpacked and framed within the Conservative narrative.  Believe me, others have tried, with great opposition coming from both Democrat and Republican houses - but with no success. Perhaps, it is immigration’s time? Many Republicans are conceding that future elections may be won or lost in part by how this issue is framed. My prayer is that Conservatives win the race to define the situation accurately and move forward to much-needed reform.

My husband and I recently attended the Maryland GOP Fall Convention in Ellicot City, Maryland. We were pleased to learn that immigration was one of three seminars offered during the educational portion of the convention.  The questions that arose throughout the seminar were telling of the varied perceptions amongst Conservatives. Cries of “Deport!” and for “Compassion!” came from a somewhat divided room – a microcosm of the party at large. Some sentiments came with audible emotion. Alex Nowrasteh, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute enlightened us with a close look at the data.  Mr. Nowrasteh was able to cut through the complexity with his informed perspective. As light was shed, shades of misconception were brightened and in some cases, erased. After entertaining the data he proffered, I feel there is hope for effective and beneficial reform if we are willing to better educate ourselves on the matter.

Whether or not you take an Arizonian approach, support open immigration, or are somewhere in between, is immaterial for the purpose of this post.  My intention is to ask you to think seriously about immigration, considering the data that is informing some great Conservative thinking. Here are some pertinent facts presented by Mr Nowrasteh: 

• Our current law is largely anti-immigration.
• Half of all unauthorized immigrants enter the country legally on tourist visas and overstay.
• There are currently 18,000 border patrol personnel – more than ever. Illegal crossings have leveled off while the budget for border control continues to climb.
• There are three ways an immigrant can gain legal residency: 1. Highly skilled 2. Family based (Do you have family already legally living, here?) 3. Refugee
• Employment-based immigration green cards are limited to 140,000 per year split amongst different skill levels.
• Only 5,000 green cards are set aside for workers holding less than a college education.
• Only 7% total of employment-based immigration green cards can go to any one country (meaning a long waiting lists for legal entry).
• The waiting period for a green card looks something like this: Skilled/educated - 6 months; Family member already here - 6 months; South African computer programmer - 6 years; 35-year old Indian computer programmer - 35 years. The typical wait for a qualified candidate is 10 years.
• President Obama has deported far more illegal immigrants than prior administrations. His deportations for the last recorded year were just shy of 400,000 – topping George W. Bush’s tally. This destroys the myth that the Democrat Party sympathizes with the plight of the illegal immigrant.
• From 2006 – 2010, net immigration from Mexico was zero. The same number of illegals are leaving as are coming in due to the weakened US economy. This is a first since we began measuring 100 years ago.
• About a million unauthorized immigrants have left because of our bad economy, not enforcement.
• Mexican immigration has probably peaked and will stabilize or level off. The average Mexican woman used to have seven kids. Today it’s 2.2.
• Legalized immigrants are traditionally known for their entrepreneurial efforts and excellent will to thrive and contribute to our economy.

The more difficult it is to obtain legal residency in the United States, the greater our illegal immigrant problem will become. Can we agree something needs to be done to make it easier to obtain legal residency? Bear in mind there is a difference between residency and citizenship.

What say you? How should this conversation begin?  And, importantly, as Conservatives, how do we want it to end?

(Melissa Flores is a speaker, radio host on He's Alive Radio and a Minister at World Lighthouse, an inter-denominational church in Grantsville, Maryland. Melissa blogs at http://melissaflores.org/)

Words vs Actions

My recent post entitled "Barack Obama - A Misunderstood President" generated some offline push back about my conclusion: "Is President Barack Obama misunderstood? Is he a radical posing as a patriotic progressive; a socialist posing as a liberal? It pains me to say that. Increasingly, I believe he is."

CTU teachers at the Midwest Marxist Conference

None of us want to believe that.  As Conservatives, we are automatically inclined to give the benefit of the doubt.  Short of President Obama saying "I am a Socialist," we are inclined to hope for the best.  Yet policies and action are often the best indication of a man's worldview.

No where is the disconnect between words and actions more evident than among teachers and, specifically, teacher unions.  The rhetoric that teacher union's primary concern is "the children" and "quality education" mask some harsh realities.  And no where is this more evident than Chicago.  In an article titled Marxist Ties of the Chicago Teachers Union Exposed, Vicki Alger of The Independent Institute reports on the close ties between the Chicago Teachers Union and We Are Many, a Marxist activist organization in the city.

Ms Alger notes that the CTU was a featured component at a Marxist conference recently: 

“What the CTU Strike Teaches Us about the Fight for a Better World” was a featured theme of last month’s Midwest Marxist Conference, held at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. (Document link was available here, but apparently the Chicago Socialists site is down. As of this posting, the document can be accessed here.)

The conference notice insisted, “Chicago teachers…refused to give in to Rahm Emanuel’s attack on labor and public education. Instead, they built solidarity with community activists against racism and inequality.”

Never mind, of course, that Chicago is in dire financial shape (what major American city isn't?).  Under the cloak of "the children," the CTU is trying to push back school choice and privatization. Why? Because CTU members want to continue to feed off the municipal gravy train. 

The average Chicago teacher earns $76,450, nearly a third more than the typical private sector worker in the surrounding Cook County. Teachers can retire at age 60 with an annual pension equal to 75 percent of their highest average salary.

In this proletariat gone mad, this means a teacher who retired in 2010 after 30 years of service receives a starting annual pension of $60,000 with continuous annual raises. Who pays for this generosity? Mostly private-sector workers for whom retirement at age 60 is a Utopian pipe dream.

Several obvious questions arise. . .  Why does the Chicago Teachers Union need to affiliate with a Marxist organization?  Marxists believe in a Utopian state of their own design - never mind want the rest of the people want.  Does the rank and file of the CTU support this radical Marxist view?  And, moreover, why should any city or its citizens give in to demands for salaries and benefits that are already so far out of line with the private sector?

Assess people through their actions.  Words are cheap. 

Why work?

The chart shown nearby illustrates the country we have become.  Welfare spending amounts to $168 per day for every household in poverty whereas median income for alll American households amounts to $137 per day. 

Under President Obama’s FY13 budget proposal, means-tested spending would increase an additional 30% over the next four years.
We have become nation of takers funded by debt and sure-to-increase taxes (forget the "millionaires and billionaires" claim - higher taxes are coming to all of us). 

The full article can be found here. 

Pelosi's Archbishop Steps Up!

Newly installed Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, who leads the archdiocese where House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi live, and the US Catholic bishops announced on Thursday that they are calling on Catholics to pray the rosary every day and to fast and to abstain from eating meat on Fridays as part of a pastoral campaign aimed at preserving liberty, the right to life and the institution of marriage in the United States of America.

“The well-being of society requires that life, marriage, and religious liberty are promoted and protected,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said on a special webpage produced for the campaign. “Serious threats to each of these goods, however, have raised unprecedented challenges to the Church and to the nation.”

Bravo! Now, if only other Catholic Bishops and clergy would follow through - along with ministers of every Christian denomination.  The Rosary and fasting may be specifically Roman Catholic but protecting life, marriage and religious liberty is non-denominational.

Obamacare: Reality Bites

An article over at the Heritage Foundation's The Foundry clearly outlines the unintended conseuqences of the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare. 

That is, businesses are limiting either the size of their workforces or cutting their hours to turn them into part-time emplyees.  Both actions reduce the costs employers will face under Obamacare rules.  To quote the article:

Obamacare requires all businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to provide health coverage for their workers or pay a $2,000 penalty for each employee after the first 30 workers. The employer mandate creates incentives for businesses to avoid higher costs by, for example, hiring part-time employees instead of full-time employees, since businesses will not be penalized for failing to provide health insurance to part-time employees….Businesses can also avoid penalties by keeping the number of employees under the mandate threshold of 50, which further discourages creating new jobs.

Now, I am sure Obamacare's proponents will blame "greedy fat cat businessmen" for denying the "basic human right of healthcare coverage" to their employees.  And, many will nod their heads seeing the apparent sense of that dumb argument - oblivious to the costs.  If unchallenged and left to stand as it is, I predict the administration will change the rules and force employers to provide insurance without exception, regardless of the costs to the employer or the public it serves.

Lost in all this debate over Obamacare is the fact that few people in the United States - very few people, in fact, are denied medical treatment.  The rich and the poor have access to the same hospitals and the same doctors and the same medicines.  Few people of any social or income scale are denied access to medical care.

Yes, I know the foregoing runs counter to the prevailing narrative.  And, I agree that the cost of medical care are high and can exhaust a person's or family's ability to pay.  These are serious issues.

But Obamacare will exhaust the country's ability to pay and will lead to rationing.  I will write more about that in a later post.  But situation has not been helped by the President and the Affordable Care Act.  It has been made worse.

Christmas Tree Banned

The forces of secularism advance. Could someone explain why this is happening?  Insane.

Seriously.  What good is done by the owners of the extended care facility taking this action?  The claim is that the tree is a "religious symbol."  Okay. . .  And the point is what exactly?  No one objects except the facilities owner and management.  (Read the full story here.)

 

So here's the logic:  An icon that represents what has become a secular holiday is declared to be religious (not even an attempt at the Holiday Tree silliness) and must come down.  Never mind what the residents want; management is simply too cowardly when faced with political correctness. 

The activists and atheists attacking Christmas and its representations are really attacking Christianity.  Their goal is to remold America into a secular society where religion and faith are no longer in public view anywhere.   Their attacks will in time migrate from direct public displays to indirect endorsements of Christmas, such as FCC licenses for broadcasters who put any Christmas music with religious overtones ("Hark the Herald Angels Sing") over the "public" airwaves. 

This is complete insanity.  No one, whether religious or not, should stand silently by and let these people go unchallenged. 

Barack Obama's Brain Trust

Well, hardly a brain trust.  More like getting the "talking points" straight with your homies. 

This series of tweets has been making the rounds.  Jennifer Bendery covers the White House for the Huffington Post (aka the Puffington Post).  What a cast!  Extra lengths of duct tape needed. . .

jennifer bendery@jbendery

Just passed Al Sharpton walking into the WH.

4 Dec 12

jennifer bendery@jbendery

Also, Al Sharpton is so unbelievably tiny now. I actually gasped when I saw him pass by just now. Hope he's ok.

4 Dec 12

jennifer bendery@jbendery

Rachel Maddow is now in the West Wing. How do I know this? I just walked in with her.

4 Dec 12

 jennifer bendery@jbendery

Never met Maddow until now. We kind of look alike, esp today. My intro: "Are you my long lost sister?" Her: "Glad we both got the memo."

4 Dec 12

jennifer bendery@jbendery

Maddow, heading into West Wing, said she was here for a "hippie cabal." Asked if I was coming. NO, DAMN IT, I WASN'T INVITED.

4 Dec 12

jennifer bendery@jbendery

So... in the last hour, I watched Rachel Maddow, Al Sharpton and Lawrence O'Donnell all walk into the West Wing. MSNBC love fest?

4 Dec 12

jennifer bendery@jbendery

WH spox: “This afternoon at the White House, the President met with influential progressives...."

4 Dec 12

jennifer bendery@jbendery

WH spox says Obama mtg with Maddow, other progressives to discuss importance of extending the Bush middle-class tax cut.

4 Dec 12

Ed Schultz@WeGotEd

On my way to DC to visit with the President on fiscal cliff...Nancy Pelosi joins me tonight on the Ed Show..

4 Dec 12