Politics Is NOT A Dirty (Unholy) Word
[I write this and future “Letters” simply in the hopes of encouraging the body of Christ. It is meant as merely the observations of someone who at this point has been a Christian for 35 years.. This first one is rather long but I hope you’ll take the time to read it through. I look forward to your feedback]
Since I started this blog site, until now, I have not shared what initially motivated me 22 years ago to be concerned about issues of public policy. In the fall of 1987, I was attending a special 3 month retreat on Christian worldview. One day, we were shown the video “Silent Scream” in which a former abortionist showed, through a sonogram image, what it was for him to abort a child. As I watched the scalpel enter the womb and see the baby wiggle to try to get away from the obvious danger it faced, I remember getting out of my seat and moving to the back of the room. I was stunned. It was the first time I was shown the absolute horror that is an abortion. After I caught my breath, I asked myself, “Why have I never been told about this before during the 14 years I had been a Christian up to that point.?” I believe it was the Holy Spirit who in that moment made me realize that not only had I never heard the word “abortion” ever mentioned in the churches I had attended, but in the evangelistic ministry that I had been a part of for 12 years up till then, on those very rare occasions when the subject was broached in conversation, the unsaid inference was always, “Well, that’s what Catholics get concerned about. WE are evangelicals who are concerned about the most important thing, seeing people come to Christ.” While I could not disagree that helping as many as possible to hear the gospel message was very important, I also realized for the first time that the killing of unborn babies was not just a “Catholic” issue but an issue for every American who valued the sanctity of human life, especially for evangelical Christians.
As I look back over the many years I’ve been a Christian and the many churches I have visited or been a member, I am struck not just by the rarity it has been to hear abortion presented from the pulpit let alone be a part of the ministry of a church, but also by the rarity it is just to hear of any subject of note and contention in our society mentioned during a worship service. It is as though when a person steps into the doors of a church, he is to only think “spiritual” and to leave the issues of the “world” outside. Today, many are leaving EVANGELICAL churches (the Southern Baptists were said on Monday that 2/3 of their youth are leaving when they become adults!) and I believe it’s in part because they are not being taught how the Scriptures speaks to what is happening in the world they live in outside the church building. For instance, when they hear nothing on any regular basis about abortion because the leaders assume that having told them “it’s wrong” once is enough, they are not prepared for the often convincing pro-abortion rhetoric they will hear if not before college for certain while they are in college. Furthermore, much of the present economic crisis is rooted in Americans spending beyond their means, something that Scripture clearly teaches against. The very popular concept in our society today that those who make a lot of money are just greedy is often rooted in the class warfare notion being promoted by liberal lawmakers who seek to exploit the sinful man’s envy of his/her neighbor – a definite breaking of the tenth commandment (Ex. 20:17).
By the church not addressing these and other issues head on, I am convinced that believers mistakenly get the idea that they should not be concerned about what goes on “in the world.” Just the other day, a long time believer said that he is too busy to read anything about public policy issues. I believe that too many Christians have that very wrong idea that “politics” is not a subject we who are Spiritual need to be concerned about. I think this mindset is reflected in how for many years now less than 30 percent of evangelicals are said to vote in major elections. Besides shunning a basic civic responsibility that we have as “salt” in our society to stand up for biblical values and against the tide of decadence that our country continues to be swept up in, we surrender our country to those who are slowly but surely leading our country down a road of destruction – socially as well as economically. I believe that as citizens of a country blessed by God more than any other, we have stewardship responsibilities before God as Christians that one day we will each be held accountable.
In seeking to draw “seekers,” I believe too many churches are afraid of speaking on subjects that may be controversial.(Did you know that Billy Graham himself never spoke on abortion for that reason, though he did speak up about nuclear disarmament? Go figure.) But, my friend, all truth is God’s truth, and we deceive those very “seekers” we say we are interested in by fashioning a gospel they can find acceptable. How can we forget that the gospel is probably the most controversial subject in our society that increasingly belittles people of faith? Even some who are members of our churches may not feel comfortable hearing the Scripture speak truth about certain subjects. Do we refrain from boldly speaking Biblical truth on whatever the issue might be simply to maintain their fellowship? Not if we are to be faithful to Scripture and to God who calls us to declare all truth. (I actually once got a pastor excited about doing discipleship (!) in his church but when he announced his intentions the following Sunday, he got so many people upset (!) that the week after he rescinded his intentions!)
The main reason I started this blog is to present views on the key issues in our country that I believe are more in line with a Biblical Christian worldview on the issues of our day and which stand in contrast to what we are likely to hear from the major media sources. That is why I often post articles by Chuck Colson because his writings have consistently presented such a worldview. I have not felt versed enough in Scripture to try to present Biblical teaching on some of these subjects, as I believe any pastor should be able to do. (Posting #4 – “An Economic Manifesto” – is a summary of a message given by the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, a great pastor who regularly preached on the issues of the day and in fact, through his church, had a very effective ministry addressing the key issues of the day.) I hope, however, in upcoming “Letters” to make attempts at presenting such teaching on my own. I feel the need to provide a place where believers can come and find insights on the critical issues of the day that can equip them to discuss those issues with others.
And yet, as I try to assist believers (and non-believers) in this way, I long to hear the Scriptural view on the issues of the day clearly presented from our pulpits. I think our Church leaders have a responsibility to equip believers to adequately and confidently engage our culture on whatever the issue from a Christian worldview. I believe it is time the Church stop being hesitant to speak out with clarity on the Biblical perspective on issues that are critical to our nation continuing to be “under God” and for our continuing to live as a free people. “Politics” is defined in the dictionary as “the science of government.” As government dictates more and more the way we live our lives as its policies will always reflect certain values, we desperately need to be be calling for Biblical values to define and guide our nation as it has effectively done in the past. I am, of course, not talking about the Church endorsing certain politicians or a political party. I simply but firmly believe that far from being excluded from our discussions as Christians, matters of public policy (ie, politics or government) need to be a subject regularly addressed Biblically and forthrightly rather than excluded or treated with indifference as some kind of "unholy" subject. I believe indifference from our pulpits feeds indifference in the pews and that that will only cause us to fail to be wise stewards as citizens of our country.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
#37 - "National Suicide"
[Note: (1) The past few days, the media has focused much on the life of the late Senator Edward Kennedy. While I agree we should applaud anyone who is involved in public service, especially for almost 5 decades, I think that we need to be careful to consider the overall emphasis of his or her years of service. I’d like to remind you that the record of accomplishment the Senator is being lauded for, while in the guise of helping the less fortunate among us, is basically one great government program after another that has enlarged the scope of government’s involvement in our lives and more importantly of government making us citizens more and more dependent on it for our “general welfare” (a phrase ironically found in our Declaration of Independence). And I have to mention that he was a pro-abortion Catholic, which I believe is hypocritical; (2)please check this site on Sunday for the first of a series of special postings – “Letters to the Christian Church” - that I plan to present from time to time; and (3) as always, I invite you to please check out the editorial cartoons (as well as the articles) at Worldmag.com They truly prove that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”; and (4) please check this site for a special "Letter to the Church" posting.]
I’ve been told that people like to have something to laugh about and so, because I rarely can put a humorous spin on the subjects I address on this blog, I will try to present at least one thing to hopefully bring a smile to your face with each posting. Here’s this one:(from Mickey's Funnies.com);">"In Florida they use alligators to make handbags. Isn't it wonderful what they can train animals to do these days?"
- the following book review is taken from an article written by Cal Thomas, dated August 25th, and posted on the Worldmag.com website
In his article, Cal Thomas previews a book to be released next week entitled, "National Suicide: How Washington Is Destroying the American Dream from A to Z." It is written by an investigative reporter, educator, and columnist named Mark Gross. In his book, the author summarizes, as Publisher’s Weekly describes it, “a fiery A-Z compendium of government greed, chicanery, and plain incompetence …[and]enjoys a good rant, but his criticisms are sound and well-supported.” Of course he lists some of those outrageous pork projects [almost a thousand in the stimulus bill that became law earlier this year] – such as the “$107,000 to study the sex life of the Japanese quail; $150,000 to study the Hatfield-McCoy feud [!]” He goes on to point out even bigger expenditures such as the "Alternative Minimum Tax," which he says is ‘based on an accounting lie,’ will cost taxpayers $1 trillion over the next 10 years. America, he writes, spends $700 billion a year on various welfare programs, amounting to $65,000 for each poor family of four, yet we still have the poor with us. "Both political parties, Gross charges, secretly encourage illegal immigration (the Democrats for votes, the Republicans for cheap labor) and then reward the immigrants’ children with automatic U.S. citizenship.”
Gross further sites such things as: (1)1,000 duplicate programs that waste billions; ;">(2) President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education program, “has left behind a lot of misspent money: $24 billion per year, according to Gross, even as primary and secondary education ‘continue to spiral downward;’” and weight:bold;"(3) 1,399 government programs handling disappearing rural areas. [Sure sounds like a bunch of pork barrel projects to buy votes back home.] “Gross does more than just list government’s sins. He offers a solution on ‘How to Better Govern America.’ If ever there was a must-read for people who are sick of the way government operates, this is it.” In his article, Cal Thomas asks us to consider these and many other examples of government mismanagement of our precious national tax dollars in light of the projected budget deficit. “The Obama administration forecast a 10-year budget deficit projection of more than $7.1 trillion, but when confronted with figures from the pesky and bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, the administration was forced this week to raise that projection to approximately $9 trillion. That’s 9,000,000,000,000 dollars. [For most of us who think a $1,000 deposit in our checking accounts is a large amount and a $1,000 credit card balance is too much, $9 trillion is a figure that is almost beyond comprehension. It is certainly beyond defensible. To borrow a phrase used in another context by the House leadership, it is un-American.”
I didn’t know whether or not to break out laughing or screaming when it was reported that our local(just elected last fall) Congressman here in Central Florida, Alan Grayson, (who has voted 98% of the time in support of President Obama and Democratic Party proposals) actually said that we must remember that some of that deficit was what was inherited from the Bush administration. He failed to mention, though, that still inexcusable, that was about $4 trillion dollars accumulated over 8 years whereas the President has added $5 trillion dollars in just his first 8 MONTHS in office. And that doesn’t even include the so-called healthcare reforms he is proposing that he still has not determined how to pay for its $1 trillion plus price tag. That is what I call “chutzpah” of the highest order!
I’ve been told that people like to have something to laugh about and so, because I rarely can put a humorous spin on the subjects I address on this blog, I will try to present at least one thing to hopefully bring a smile to your face with each posting. Here’s this one:(from Mickey's Funnies.com);">"In Florida they use alligators to make handbags. Isn't it wonderful what they can train animals to do these days?"
- the following book review is taken from an article written by Cal Thomas, dated August 25th, and posted on the Worldmag.com website
In his article, Cal Thomas previews a book to be released next week entitled, "National Suicide: How Washington Is Destroying the American Dream from A to Z." It is written by an investigative reporter, educator, and columnist named Mark Gross. In his book, the author summarizes, as Publisher’s Weekly describes it, “a fiery A-Z compendium of government greed, chicanery, and plain incompetence …[and]enjoys a good rant, but his criticisms are sound and well-supported.” Of course he lists some of those outrageous pork projects [almost a thousand in the stimulus bill that became law earlier this year] – such as the “$107,000 to study the sex life of the Japanese quail; $150,000 to study the Hatfield-McCoy feud [!]” He goes on to point out even bigger expenditures such as the "Alternative Minimum Tax," which he says is ‘based on an accounting lie,’ will cost taxpayers $1 trillion over the next 10 years. America, he writes, spends $700 billion a year on various welfare programs, amounting to $65,000 for each poor family of four, yet we still have the poor with us. "Both political parties, Gross charges, secretly encourage illegal immigration (the Democrats for votes, the Republicans for cheap labor) and then reward the immigrants’ children with automatic U.S. citizenship.”
Gross further sites such things as: (1)1,000 duplicate programs that waste billions; ;">(2) President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education program, “has left behind a lot of misspent money: $24 billion per year, according to Gross, even as primary and secondary education ‘continue to spiral downward;’” and weight:bold;"(3) 1,399 government programs handling disappearing rural areas. [Sure sounds like a bunch of pork barrel projects to buy votes back home.] “Gross does more than just list government’s sins. He offers a solution on ‘How to Better Govern America.’ If ever there was a must-read for people who are sick of the way government operates, this is it.” In his article, Cal Thomas asks us to consider these and many other examples of government mismanagement of our precious national tax dollars in light of the projected budget deficit. “The Obama administration forecast a 10-year budget deficit projection of more than $7.1 trillion, but when confronted with figures from the pesky and bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, the administration was forced this week to raise that projection to approximately $9 trillion. That’s 9,000,000,000,000 dollars. [For most of us who think a $1,000 deposit in our checking accounts is a large amount and a $1,000 credit card balance is too much, $9 trillion is a figure that is almost beyond comprehension. It is certainly beyond defensible. To borrow a phrase used in another context by the House leadership, it is un-American.”
I didn’t know whether or not to break out laughing or screaming when it was reported that our local(just elected last fall) Congressman here in Central Florida, Alan Grayson, (who has voted 98% of the time in support of President Obama and Democratic Party proposals) actually said that we must remember that some of that deficit was what was inherited from the Bush administration. He failed to mention, though, that still inexcusable, that was about $4 trillion dollars accumulated over 8 years whereas the President has added $5 trillion dollars in just his first 8 MONTHS in office. And that doesn’t even include the so-called healthcare reforms he is proposing that he still has not determined how to pay for its $1 trillion plus price tag. That is what I call “chutzpah” of the highest order!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
#36 - A Hero’s Legacy
By Chuck Colson, August 24, 2009
[NOTE: (1) Yesterday, the government’s “Cash for Clunkers” program finally ended. I can’t understand why I only heard on conservative talk radio what was so obvious about the whole thing: it was a government giveaway of our tax dollars. In other words, all of those huge discounts that people got for trading in their old cars came out of the pocket of every tax payer. It was simply more “stimulus” money that the government spent to help the auto industry (assuming of course that the auto dealers do finally get the money that’s owed them). If the free market was allowed to work, the AUTO DEALERS would have been required to give their customers the deals to get rid of their 2009 models (as they usually do anyway) to clear their lots for the 2010 models. (Isn’t the timing of this program interesting?) Furthermore, you have to ask how many of those getting those new cars are actually able to buy them without using credit and going into further debt. Is having Americans go into greater personal debt really going to help them in the long run when people buying homes and other consumer goods they could not afford part of the problem that got us into the economic mess we are in? Did you hear that soon the government will be offering “Cash for Clunker Appliances?” Isn’t the government so cleaver in distributing the money of many into the pockets of a few? Hmm, sounds like …. ;(2) I want to take this time to comment on the President’s involving himself into that incident of the African-American professor being arrested by the white police officer, what the President called a “teachable moment.” So, just what did that incident teach all of us: (a) the entire incident had nothing to do with racial profiling, as any citizen who acted as belligerently as that professor did to any police officer should expect he might be arrested, (b) the professor saying “don’t you know who I am” spoke of elitism and an appeal to being shown favor is something we definitely need to discourage, (c) the President admitting that he didn’t know all the facts and then saying the police officer “acted stupidly” illustrates how we shouldn’t prejudge people as he did, and (d) the President’s excusing himself by saying in effect that he merely chose the wrong words is a good example of how we don’t admit a wrong by defending or trying to explain away our actions. (I find it noteworthy that the same man who had a hard time admitting his own mistakes is always quick to admit the mistakes of the United States when he is visiting other counties – whether those in Europe or South America.)] ; and (3) I agree in this article with Mr. Colson. If I had to pick one foreign leader - past or present- that I hold in highest regard, it is William Wilberforce. It speaks volumes about our media and our public education that I doubt if very few Americans have ever heard of this great man. I encourage you to read anything you can about William Wilberforce, some material of which Mr. Colson lists at the end of this article.]
Today marks the 250th birthday of William Wilberforce, the Christian statesman who, for 18 arduous years, led the crusade against the abominable British slave trade. And I can think of no better gift I could give my listeners than to tell you about some of the traits that made Wilberforce a man who profoundly changed history—and whose legacy so profoundly shaped my life.To speak of Wilberforce is to speak of biblical worldview in action. When Wilberforce, one of the youngest members of Parliament, came to Christ, he contemplated leaving office and becoming a clergyman. Thankfully, William Pitt, who went on to be Great Britain’s youngest prime minister, convinced him otherwise. In a letter to his dear friend, Pitt wrote: “Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple and lead not to meditation only, but to action.”
And indeed, for Wilberforce, Christian faith meant action. He could not stand idly by and see the imago Dei of each person, the image of God, abused. His fiercely unpopular crusade against the slave trade ravaged his health and cost him politically. He endured verbal assaults and was even challenged to a duel by an angry slave-ship captain. And when the French Revolution began, what had been merely an unpopular position became a dangerous one. As cries of liberty, equality, and fraternity erupted across the Channel, Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists who believed so strongly in human equality were suddenly viewed with suspicion by the British people. Nonetheless, Wilberforce persevered year after year. Writing about whether to give up the fight, Wilberforce notes, “a man who fears God is not at liberty” to do so.
But Wilberforce’s worldview led him to engage in more than just the issue of slavery. He fought for prison reform. He founded or participated in 60 charities. He convinced King George III to issue a proclamation encouraging virtue, and reinstated The Proclamation Society to help see such virtue encouraged. He cared for God’s creation, founding the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. And he championed missionary efforts, like founding the British and Foreign Bible Society.
I believe that as we come to understand the depth of our own Christian worldview, it forces us not into a life merely of contemplation, but to one of action. We cannot know God more without being moved to love others more—and to care passionately about justice, mercy, and truth.That’s one reason I’m so eager to tell you about a new initiative we’ll be launching in the spirit of Wilberforce this September: The Colson Center for Christian Worldview. This online center will be a dynamic, searchable database not only of my works, but of the writings of history’s great Christian thinkers. With audio, video, curricula, and communities, it will help believers dig deeper into their faith—and, like William Wilberforce, develop and live out a more robust Christian worldview.I’ll be talking more about The Colson Center for Christian Worldview in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, visit BreakPoint.org for more information and links to resources about my hero, William Wilberforce.
Further Reading and Information:
A Practical View of Christianity - William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity - Kevin Belmonte
Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery - Eric Metaxas
Amazing Grace (DVD)
Who Was William Wilberforce?: Finding Real Christianity - Kevin Belmonte | BreakPoint Online | August 1, 2006
A Model for Engagement: Wilberforce and 'The Better Hour' - Chuck Colson | BreakPoint Commentary | February 19, 2008
The Spirit of Wilberforce: Worldview in Action - Chuck Colson | BreakPoint
[NOTE: (1) Yesterday, the government’s “Cash for Clunkers” program finally ended. I can’t understand why I only heard on conservative talk radio what was so obvious about the whole thing: it was a government giveaway of our tax dollars. In other words, all of those huge discounts that people got for trading in their old cars came out of the pocket of every tax payer. It was simply more “stimulus” money that the government spent to help the auto industry (assuming of course that the auto dealers do finally get the money that’s owed them). If the free market was allowed to work, the AUTO DEALERS would have been required to give their customers the deals to get rid of their 2009 models (as they usually do anyway) to clear their lots for the 2010 models. (Isn’t the timing of this program interesting?) Furthermore, you have to ask how many of those getting those new cars are actually able to buy them without using credit and going into further debt. Is having Americans go into greater personal debt really going to help them in the long run when people buying homes and other consumer goods they could not afford part of the problem that got us into the economic mess we are in? Did you hear that soon the government will be offering “Cash for Clunker Appliances?” Isn’t the government so cleaver in distributing the money of many into the pockets of a few? Hmm, sounds like …. ;(2) I want to take this time to comment on the President’s involving himself into that incident of the African-American professor being arrested by the white police officer, what the President called a “teachable moment.” So, just what did that incident teach all of us: (a) the entire incident had nothing to do with racial profiling, as any citizen who acted as belligerently as that professor did to any police officer should expect he might be arrested, (b) the professor saying “don’t you know who I am” spoke of elitism and an appeal to being shown favor is something we definitely need to discourage, (c) the President admitting that he didn’t know all the facts and then saying the police officer “acted stupidly” illustrates how we shouldn’t prejudge people as he did, and (d) the President’s excusing himself by saying in effect that he merely chose the wrong words is a good example of how we don’t admit a wrong by defending or trying to explain away our actions. (I find it noteworthy that the same man who had a hard time admitting his own mistakes is always quick to admit the mistakes of the United States when he is visiting other counties – whether those in Europe or South America.)] ; and (3) I agree in this article with Mr. Colson. If I had to pick one foreign leader - past or present- that I hold in highest regard, it is William Wilberforce. It speaks volumes about our media and our public education that I doubt if very few Americans have ever heard of this great man. I encourage you to read anything you can about William Wilberforce, some material of which Mr. Colson lists at the end of this article.]
Today marks the 250th birthday of William Wilberforce, the Christian statesman who, for 18 arduous years, led the crusade against the abominable British slave trade. And I can think of no better gift I could give my listeners than to tell you about some of the traits that made Wilberforce a man who profoundly changed history—and whose legacy so profoundly shaped my life.To speak of Wilberforce is to speak of biblical worldview in action. When Wilberforce, one of the youngest members of Parliament, came to Christ, he contemplated leaving office and becoming a clergyman. Thankfully, William Pitt, who went on to be Great Britain’s youngest prime minister, convinced him otherwise. In a letter to his dear friend, Pitt wrote: “Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple and lead not to meditation only, but to action.”
And indeed, for Wilberforce, Christian faith meant action. He could not stand idly by and see the imago Dei of each person, the image of God, abused. His fiercely unpopular crusade against the slave trade ravaged his health and cost him politically. He endured verbal assaults and was even challenged to a duel by an angry slave-ship captain. And when the French Revolution began, what had been merely an unpopular position became a dangerous one. As cries of liberty, equality, and fraternity erupted across the Channel, Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists who believed so strongly in human equality were suddenly viewed with suspicion by the British people. Nonetheless, Wilberforce persevered year after year. Writing about whether to give up the fight, Wilberforce notes, “a man who fears God is not at liberty” to do so.
But Wilberforce’s worldview led him to engage in more than just the issue of slavery. He fought for prison reform. He founded or participated in 60 charities. He convinced King George III to issue a proclamation encouraging virtue, and reinstated The Proclamation Society to help see such virtue encouraged. He cared for God’s creation, founding the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. And he championed missionary efforts, like founding the British and Foreign Bible Society.
I believe that as we come to understand the depth of our own Christian worldview, it forces us not into a life merely of contemplation, but to one of action. We cannot know God more without being moved to love others more—and to care passionately about justice, mercy, and truth.That’s one reason I’m so eager to tell you about a new initiative we’ll be launching in the spirit of Wilberforce this September: The Colson Center for Christian Worldview. This online center will be a dynamic, searchable database not only of my works, but of the writings of history’s great Christian thinkers. With audio, video, curricula, and communities, it will help believers dig deeper into their faith—and, like William Wilberforce, develop and live out a more robust Christian worldview.I’ll be talking more about The Colson Center for Christian Worldview in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, visit BreakPoint.org for more information and links to resources about my hero, William Wilberforce.
Further Reading and Information:
A Practical View of Christianity - William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity - Kevin Belmonte
Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery - Eric Metaxas
Amazing Grace (DVD)
Who Was William Wilberforce?: Finding Real Christianity - Kevin Belmonte | BreakPoint Online | August 1, 2006
A Model for Engagement: Wilberforce and 'The Better Hour' - Chuck Colson | BreakPoint Commentary | February 19, 2008
The Spirit of Wilberforce: Worldview in Action - Chuck Colson | BreakPoint
Friday, August 21, 2009
#35- Killing Grandma
- by Eric Erickson, Macon City Councilman, Macon , Georgia
[Note: (1) This year, with the inauguration of our new President, I have read about a dozen books on public policy issues - whether about the environment, the War on Terror, the economy, healthcare, etc. And, I've read several books about the policies promoted by our President that didn't get much media coverage during the last election campaign. The more I’ve read about the direction the Democratic Party led national leadership is taking us, the more frightened I've become. In fact, when I tried to read a book of fantasy stories and a novel about a murder mystery, I had to put them away because I decided that they were not near as scary as the REAL LIFE things that are being promoted in this country! By the way, I get all my books (and most of them have been written within the past year or so) from my public library and so I encourage you to check out what YOUR library has available. Ones I’ve read recently include “Catastrophe!” that analyzes every major domestic and foreign policy emphasis of the Obama administration – yikes! The book “America Alone” looks closely at what the state is of countries in Europe (that many liberals want us to model ourselves after) as well as Asia, and to read of the trouble even China and Japan are in is alarming. The book I am reading now, “Meltdown” talks about the national policies that have brought about the present economic crash, and the explanation is not what you are used to hearing. (This book makes me wonder why the subject of economics is not required of every person graduating high school.) And if you want to understand the values behind the policies that our President is promoting, I encourage you to read “The Audacity of Deceit.” So forget that scary mystery you might be reading. There are any number of books about what is happening in our country and the world that will scare you a whole lot more. (2) The following article I found online presents several quotes by the President and other Democrats in Washington as well as a description of the nature of “end of life: patients in Oregon that will give you an idea of why so many seniors are so afraid of Obamacare.]
ABC News reporter Jake Tapper summed up the situation best when he said, “[I]f the president finds himself at a town hall meeting telling the American people that he does not want to set up a panel to kill their grandparents … perhaps, at some point, the president has lost control of the message.” Sarah Palin won the health-care debate with her use of the phrase “death panels.” The national press corps, never having rushed to defend Republicans routinely accused of wanting to cut Medicare, starve children and jail people because of their skin color, raced to defend Democrats against Palin’s charge. Democrats ran away from their “end of life” solution just as quickly.
No one thinks Democrats want to “pull the plug on grandma,” as President Obama put it. The Democrats’ health-care proposals do not mention “euthanasia,” “assisted suicide” or “death panels.” Nonetheless, many seniors are worried, not because of “Republican scare tactics,” but because of the Democrats’ own rhetoric regarding “end of life” planning. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat-W. Va., said in March that as part of responsible healthcare reform people must recognize they would not be able to get every treatment they wanted. The government would use a cost-benefit analysis to determine treatment options. Noted liberal writer Ezra Klein wrote that health-care reform would save money by making tough decisions about a person’s life. “We’re profoundly uncomfortable saying that a person’s life, or health, is not worth the price of a particular procedure,” he wrote, alluding to the need for panels of experts to make those decisions.
Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother and one of Obama’s health-care advisors, wrote in a January 2009 white paper that health care should be rationed in a way that “promot[es] and reward[s] social usefulness.” He said age could play a factor in determining who can and cannot access health-care resources. Emanuel also wrote, “[S]ervices provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens [in the body politic] are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” Obama addressed this too, saying, “Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. ... And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”
We see where this road we are now traveling goes out in the real world. Reporter Dan Springer reported in 2008, “Since the spread of his prostate cancer, 53-year-old Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., has been in a fight for his life. Uninsured and unable to pay for expensive chemotherapy, he applied to Oregon’s state-run health plan for help.” Oregon denied Mr. Stroup’s request and referred him to an assisted suicide specialist. We will spend money we don’t have to pay for health care, or we will prioritize who gets treatment. It is an inevitable fact of life that the more the government outlays to keep you alive, the more your life becomes subject to a cost/benefit analysis. The Democrats’ proposal would not require doctors or families pull the plug on grandma. The proposal would require that grandma, and others who bureaucrats deem have limited social utility, wither and die while people with greater social utility get treatment first. If the empowered bureaucrats are generous, they might throw in a one way ticket to Oregon to visit an assisted suicide specialist.
[Note: (1) This year, with the inauguration of our new President, I have read about a dozen books on public policy issues - whether about the environment, the War on Terror, the economy, healthcare, etc. And, I've read several books about the policies promoted by our President that didn't get much media coverage during the last election campaign. The more I’ve read about the direction the Democratic Party led national leadership is taking us, the more frightened I've become. In fact, when I tried to read a book of fantasy stories and a novel about a murder mystery, I had to put them away because I decided that they were not near as scary as the REAL LIFE things that are being promoted in this country! By the way, I get all my books (and most of them have been written within the past year or so) from my public library and so I encourage you to check out what YOUR library has available. Ones I’ve read recently include “Catastrophe!” that analyzes every major domestic and foreign policy emphasis of the Obama administration – yikes! The book “America Alone” looks closely at what the state is of countries in Europe (that many liberals want us to model ourselves after) as well as Asia, and to read of the trouble even China and Japan are in is alarming. The book I am reading now, “Meltdown” talks about the national policies that have brought about the present economic crash, and the explanation is not what you are used to hearing. (This book makes me wonder why the subject of economics is not required of every person graduating high school.) And if you want to understand the values behind the policies that our President is promoting, I encourage you to read “The Audacity of Deceit.” So forget that scary mystery you might be reading. There are any number of books about what is happening in our country and the world that will scare you a whole lot more. (2) The following article I found online presents several quotes by the President and other Democrats in Washington as well as a description of the nature of “end of life: patients in Oregon that will give you an idea of why so many seniors are so afraid of Obamacare.]
ABC News reporter Jake Tapper summed up the situation best when he said, “[I]f the president finds himself at a town hall meeting telling the American people that he does not want to set up a panel to kill their grandparents … perhaps, at some point, the president has lost control of the message.” Sarah Palin won the health-care debate with her use of the phrase “death panels.” The national press corps, never having rushed to defend Republicans routinely accused of wanting to cut Medicare, starve children and jail people because of their skin color, raced to defend Democrats against Palin’s charge. Democrats ran away from their “end of life” solution just as quickly.
No one thinks Democrats want to “pull the plug on grandma,” as President Obama put it. The Democrats’ health-care proposals do not mention “euthanasia,” “assisted suicide” or “death panels.” Nonetheless, many seniors are worried, not because of “Republican scare tactics,” but because of the Democrats’ own rhetoric regarding “end of life” planning. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat-W. Va., said in March that as part of responsible healthcare reform people must recognize they would not be able to get every treatment they wanted. The government would use a cost-benefit analysis to determine treatment options. Noted liberal writer Ezra Klein wrote that health-care reform would save money by making tough decisions about a person’s life. “We’re profoundly uncomfortable saying that a person’s life, or health, is not worth the price of a particular procedure,” he wrote, alluding to the need for panels of experts to make those decisions.
Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother and one of Obama’s health-care advisors, wrote in a January 2009 white paper that health care should be rationed in a way that “promot[es] and reward[s] social usefulness.” He said age could play a factor in determining who can and cannot access health-care resources. Emanuel also wrote, “[S]ervices provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens [in the body politic] are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” Obama addressed this too, saying, “Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. ... And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”
We see where this road we are now traveling goes out in the real world. Reporter Dan Springer reported in 2008, “Since the spread of his prostate cancer, 53-year-old Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., has been in a fight for his life. Uninsured and unable to pay for expensive chemotherapy, he applied to Oregon’s state-run health plan for help.” Oregon denied Mr. Stroup’s request and referred him to an assisted suicide specialist. We will spend money we don’t have to pay for health care, or we will prioritize who gets treatment. It is an inevitable fact of life that the more the government outlays to keep you alive, the more your life becomes subject to a cost/benefit analysis. The Democrats’ proposal would not require doctors or families pull the plug on grandma. The proposal would require that grandma, and others who bureaucrats deem have limited social utility, wither and die while people with greater social utility get treatment first. If the empowered bureaucrats are generous, they might throw in a one way ticket to Oregon to visit an assisted suicide specialist.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
#34 - Angry Mobs
[Note: (1) It was reported yesterday that those who support the President’s Health Care Reform proposals are spending at least 3 times as much on media ads as are those opposed. So it is disingenuous of the President and his supporters to only focus on those opposed to the proposals. (2) The President fails to mention that one of the counter proposals to his drastic reforms is to address the great shortage of doctors in this country (and a cause for the rationing that does take place) by tort reform. The reform being proposed would penalize people who sue doctors frivolously and thus raising the malpractice insurance rates for all doctors and driving many of them out of practice or causing them to order unnecessary medical tests in order to protect themselves from lawsuits later. It should be noted that the President is himself a lawyer and that much of his political contributions come from trial lawyers. and (3) While it is encouraging to see the impact that those who have been showing up at town meetings as informed and alarmed citizens, it is disappointing that we are so far not seeing a significant number of younger, and especially college age citizens, also protesting the President's proposals. After all, THEY will be the ones who will be most harmed as THEY will feel the FULL consequences of these proposals more than today's seniors. ]
Protesting and Civil Discourse – Chuck Colson, August 11, 2009
The left-leaning media has, as far as I’m concerned, hit a new low. Case in point: August 7, Friday. Paul Krugman writes a column in the New York Times blasting angry protesters showing up at town hall meetings across the country. By a very twisted process of reasoning, Krugman ended up likening those who oppose the government overhaul of the health care system to racists. I can’t even find the right words for the outrage I feel. This is the kind of rhetoric that does nothing but inflame already heated passions and opinions. Now maybe Krugman is simply trying to do what other backers of the President’s health care plan are trying to do—silence the opposition. The Speaker of the House, in fact, has written that these protests are un-American. The White House has opened a tip line on its website so people can report so-called “misinformation” about health care reform efforts. And now Krugman sees racism behind the protests.
Have some of the protests gotten out of hand? Sure. Shouting down congressmen and senators is counterproductive and disrespectful. There’s no room for that kind of behavior in civilized, democratic debate. But while the media hyperventilates over shouting matches and ascribing nefarious motives to the protesters, I can tell them a thing or two about angry protesters. I remember very clearly being virtually barricaded in the White House during the Vietnam War, surrounded by 150,000 students. Now they were angry—and dangerous. They were turning buses over that we had stationed to try to keep them away from the White House fence. There were FBI reports that some had bombs in their possession. I myself nearly missed a gasoline can that had been ignited and thrown into the road. This was much more like a revolution in a banana republic than a protest. I recall that soldiers of the 82nd Airborne were stationed in the Executive Office Building basement, just in case. I couldn’t get home at night because we couldn’t get the car through the crowd. Most of us stayed in the White House that weekend.
I was always struck at the time, however, by the very sympathetic press coverage of the protesters. They were seen really as just idealistic young people working for peace against a very unpopular, mistaken war. I’m an expert in angry mobs. And at least what I’m seeing on television right now pales in comparison to the 1960s and ‘70s. Sure, some of the protesters are being uncivil and disruptive—which is wrong. As I said Monday on BreakPoint, there is plenty to protest when it comes to the proposed and so-called health care “reforms.” And if you speak out—and you should—you should do so respectfully and with civility. Don’t get angry or get into name calling. And let the other side say their piece. Free expression is essential to a free society. This is what distinguishes us from tyrannies. And people who have these deep convictions about the truth must be permitted to air them—the hysterical rants from the Upper East Side of New York or inside the Beltway notwithstanding.
Further Reading and Information
The Town Hall Mob Paul Krugman | New York Times | August 7, 2009
Apply Heat: Health Care Reform Chuck Colson | BreakPoint Commentary | August 10, 2009
Rejecting Apathy: The Church and American Civilization Chuck Colson | BreakPoint Commentary | August 7, 2009
Protesting and Civil Discourse – Chuck Colson, August 11, 2009
The left-leaning media has, as far as I’m concerned, hit a new low. Case in point: August 7, Friday. Paul Krugman writes a column in the New York Times blasting angry protesters showing up at town hall meetings across the country. By a very twisted process of reasoning, Krugman ended up likening those who oppose the government overhaul of the health care system to racists. I can’t even find the right words for the outrage I feel. This is the kind of rhetoric that does nothing but inflame already heated passions and opinions. Now maybe Krugman is simply trying to do what other backers of the President’s health care plan are trying to do—silence the opposition. The Speaker of the House, in fact, has written that these protests are un-American. The White House has opened a tip line on its website so people can report so-called “misinformation” about health care reform efforts. And now Krugman sees racism behind the protests.
Have some of the protests gotten out of hand? Sure. Shouting down congressmen and senators is counterproductive and disrespectful. There’s no room for that kind of behavior in civilized, democratic debate. But while the media hyperventilates over shouting matches and ascribing nefarious motives to the protesters, I can tell them a thing or two about angry protesters. I remember very clearly being virtually barricaded in the White House during the Vietnam War, surrounded by 150,000 students. Now they were angry—and dangerous. They were turning buses over that we had stationed to try to keep them away from the White House fence. There were FBI reports that some had bombs in their possession. I myself nearly missed a gasoline can that had been ignited and thrown into the road. This was much more like a revolution in a banana republic than a protest. I recall that soldiers of the 82nd Airborne were stationed in the Executive Office Building basement, just in case. I couldn’t get home at night because we couldn’t get the car through the crowd. Most of us stayed in the White House that weekend.
I was always struck at the time, however, by the very sympathetic press coverage of the protesters. They were seen really as just idealistic young people working for peace against a very unpopular, mistaken war. I’m an expert in angry mobs. And at least what I’m seeing on television right now pales in comparison to the 1960s and ‘70s. Sure, some of the protesters are being uncivil and disruptive—which is wrong. As I said Monday on BreakPoint, there is plenty to protest when it comes to the proposed and so-called health care “reforms.” And if you speak out—and you should—you should do so respectfully and with civility. Don’t get angry or get into name calling. And let the other side say their piece. Free expression is essential to a free society. This is what distinguishes us from tyrannies. And people who have these deep convictions about the truth must be permitted to air them—the hysterical rants from the Upper East Side of New York or inside the Beltway notwithstanding.
Further Reading and Information
The Town Hall Mob Paul Krugman | New York Times | August 7, 2009
Apply Heat: Health Care Reform Chuck Colson | BreakPoint Commentary | August 10, 2009
Rejecting Apathy: The Church and American Civilization Chuck Colson | BreakPoint Commentary | August 7, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
#33 - Rejecting Apathy
[Note: (1) AS EVERY FRIDAY, please check the editorial cartoons on the Worldmag.com site;(2) In case you missed them, postings #30-32 are all about the ongoing debate about the proposed healthcare reforms. It is safe to say they will not be the last word on the subject for a good while; and (3) If you are looking for a good movie, I suggest you check out "Saint Ralph" that came out several years ago. Also, please go to my youth blog, www.stan4youth.blogspot.com for my posting yesterday of the life lessons (yes, life lessons)that I believe the movie teaches, especially if you are a Christian. Enjoy!]
The Church and American Civilization - By Chuck Colson|, August 07, 2009
"As I travel around the country, I try to take the pulse of the evangelical world. And I find myself increasingly appalled at the mood I am encountering. Many Christians, once motivated by protecting the sanctity of life, religious freedom, and traditional marriage, seem inconsolable—as if the fight is over and there’s nothing we can do about it. But embracing this attitude is a certain prescription for disaster."
"I received last month a newsletter by Don Reeverts of the Denver Leadership Foundation. In it he gives the following quote, often attributed to an 18th-century Scottish writer:‘The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence...from bondage to spiritual faith...from spiritual faith to courage...from courage to liberty...from liberty to abundance...from abundance to selfishness...from selfishness to complacency…from complacency to apathy...from apathy to dependency...from dependency back to bondage.’"
These are sobering words. This question of where America is in the cycle should be extremely important for Christians. That’s because I firmly believe that culture is nothing but religion incarnate—that when we see a culture losing its moral footing, it’s because believers have failed to bring Christian truth to bear in society. We haven’t been, as Calvin put it, making the invisible kingdom visible. So what stage are we in? Reeverts thinks we are entering the stage of apathy. And I hate to say it, but I agree. I am finding growing apathy among believers. Apathy manifests itself in how people dress, how they talk, how they care for each other—and how concerned they are about the great issues of the day. It resembles what the Greeks called acedia, a languidness, a torpor, in which we stop caring about anything. Apathy inevitably leads to dependency. And once we become dependent on Big Brother, we are back in bondage. Can anybody really watch the dramatic growth of governmental power and not be alarmed?
"For the fact of the matter is that the more government acts as God, the less people depend on the one true God. Your congressmen and senators are home now for summer recess. Have you contacted them? Are you angry about what’s happening in this country today? Things like the elimination of the conscience clause for medical professionals, or embryonic stem cell research, or the advance of gay “marriage,” or threats to religious liberties, or government making life-and-death decisions in health care? If you’re not upset about those things, you’ve succumbed to apathy already. I can’t imagine anybody sitting at home, comfortably watching us slip into a state of dependency without getting outraged, and then without expressing that outrage."
"If we value our liberties, if we believe in the most fundamental principles upon which our civilization is based, then we owe it to our God and to future generations to speak out. Institutions aren’t going to change the course of America; but great movements have changed the course of the nation and will again. And what better network to fuel a movement than the Church? Rejecting apathy and trusting in God, firm in our belief in human dignity and our God-given liberties, the Church can ignite a fire in this country. Do we get it? I pray that we do."
Further Reading and Information:
Links to Organizations Fighting for the Family, Sanctity of Life, and Religious Freedom
Take Action: Contact Your Congressman
Take Action: Contact Your Senator
The Church and American Civilization - By Chuck Colson|, August 07, 2009
"As I travel around the country, I try to take the pulse of the evangelical world. And I find myself increasingly appalled at the mood I am encountering. Many Christians, once motivated by protecting the sanctity of life, religious freedom, and traditional marriage, seem inconsolable—as if the fight is over and there’s nothing we can do about it. But embracing this attitude is a certain prescription for disaster."
"I received last month a newsletter by Don Reeverts of the Denver Leadership Foundation. In it he gives the following quote, often attributed to an 18th-century Scottish writer:‘The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence...from bondage to spiritual faith...from spiritual faith to courage...from courage to liberty...from liberty to abundance...from abundance to selfishness...from selfishness to complacency…from complacency to apathy...from apathy to dependency...from dependency back to bondage.’"
These are sobering words. This question of where America is in the cycle should be extremely important for Christians. That’s because I firmly believe that culture is nothing but religion incarnate—that when we see a culture losing its moral footing, it’s because believers have failed to bring Christian truth to bear in society. We haven’t been, as Calvin put it, making the invisible kingdom visible. So what stage are we in? Reeverts thinks we are entering the stage of apathy. And I hate to say it, but I agree. I am finding growing apathy among believers. Apathy manifests itself in how people dress, how they talk, how they care for each other—and how concerned they are about the great issues of the day. It resembles what the Greeks called acedia, a languidness, a torpor, in which we stop caring about anything. Apathy inevitably leads to dependency. And once we become dependent on Big Brother, we are back in bondage. Can anybody really watch the dramatic growth of governmental power and not be alarmed?
"For the fact of the matter is that the more government acts as God, the less people depend on the one true God. Your congressmen and senators are home now for summer recess. Have you contacted them? Are you angry about what’s happening in this country today? Things like the elimination of the conscience clause for medical professionals, or embryonic stem cell research, or the advance of gay “marriage,” or threats to religious liberties, or government making life-and-death decisions in health care? If you’re not upset about those things, you’ve succumbed to apathy already. I can’t imagine anybody sitting at home, comfortably watching us slip into a state of dependency without getting outraged, and then without expressing that outrage."
"If we value our liberties, if we believe in the most fundamental principles upon which our civilization is based, then we owe it to our God and to future generations to speak out. Institutions aren’t going to change the course of America; but great movements have changed the course of the nation and will again. And what better network to fuel a movement than the Church? Rejecting apathy and trusting in God, firm in our belief in human dignity and our God-given liberties, the Church can ignite a fire in this country. Do we get it? I pray that we do."
Further Reading and Information:
Links to Organizations Fighting for the Family, Sanctity of Life, and Religious Freedom
Take Action: Contact Your Congressman
Take Action: Contact Your Senator
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
#32 - Wrong Big Picture, Dangerous Fine Print; But Otherwise Obamacare Is Swell
James C. Capretta & Tevi Troy, August 10, 2009, National Review Online
[Note: This is a long article but it gives a lot of detail about the dangers of the proposed healthcare legislation. If you are looking for specifics, it will be worth your time to read this through.]
There are only two problems with the emerging Democratic plan to reform health care in the United States: the big picture, and the fine print.
From a macro perspective, the bills now moving through House and Senate committees call for a combination of employer and individual mandates to force more, though not all, Americans to purchase federally set levels of insurance coverage. Some Americans — mainly those without full-time jobs — would be eligible for a new entitlement to discounted premiums. The federal government would try to tell doctors and hospitals what constitutes appropriate medical practice. The bills would pay for their insurance subsidies with significant new taxes, mainly on work and entrepreneurship, as well as some benefit cuts in Medicare. The bills would also create a new government-run insurance plan that would be available to many working-age people and would likely constitute the first step toward a single-payer system.
That’s the broad vision of Obamacare, which is bad enough because of what it will mean for the quality of American medical care over time. There are only two ways to allocate health-care resources: with a market or with government regulation. The Democratic vision firmly rejects consumer choice and a decentralized marketplace in favor of near-total federal-government control of health care. In time, that will mean cost control in the form of waiting lists, less innovation, and reduced quality. But the fine print is likely to be just as alarming to Americans as this big picture is. The bills are chock-a-block with government intrusion into medical practice, limits on personal freedom, costly requirements that will stifle the private economy, massive and expensive government bureaucracy, taxes, fees, and fines.
It’s apparent that Democratic leaders in Congress and the Obama administration would like to keep these details out of the public spotlight, which is why there is an odd disconnect between the timeline for the legislation’s consideration in Congress and the timeline for its implementation. President Obama has of late been spending much of his energy arguing that it is absolutely urgent that both chambers of Congress pass a bill this summer so that a final bill will get to his desk by October. Why? Why, because “the time is now.” And the status quo is unacceptable. And we’ve never been this close before.
Never mind that in the bills as now written, nothing would actually happen for more than three years. Indeed, no uninsured American would get health insurance under the Democratic bills until 2013 at the earliest. In fact, the CBO has estimated that the number of uninsured Americans will increase in 2011 and 2012, before the bills’ major provisions go into effect. And of course 2013 is safely after the next presidential election, just in case anyone’s keeping track. This is about political momentum. The administration and Democratic leaders in Congress understand that the more people learn about what these bills would actually do to American health care, the less the public will like them. Consider just this small sampling of the bills’ details:
Severe limits on the purchase of private insurance. The House Democratic bill would make it illegal for Americans to buy health insurance from a company outside of the new structure. It’s the government-approved system or nothing.
Government-controlled market access. In the bill approved by Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, states would have the authority to limit the number of insurance offerings provided to consumers in “exchanges,” which are the government-run agencies that oversee consumer enrollment in insurance plans. Qualified insurers seeking to offer coverage to “exchange” participants may or may not get to do so. It would be up to government bureaucrats, who could deny market entry to an insurer for apparently any reason. It’s entirely predictable that this broad authority will be abused to benefit politically connected providers — at the expense of consumers.
The “commissioner.” House Democrats would hand over vast powers to a new “Health Choices Commissioner,” the head of the new bureaucracy charged with regulating basically all health insurance offered in America. The commissioner would become the choke point for all major health-care-policy decisions, such as what constitutes qualified insurance or employer compliance with the federal mandate to offer coverage. States would even be required to enter into agreements with the commissioner regarding the operation of their Medicaid programs. Vast power and little accountability: It’s a recipe for unresponsive bureaucracy, arbitrary rulemaking, meddling, and even more paperwork.
Penalizing work. In both the House and the Senate HELP bills, full-time work is heavily penalized. For the most part, the unemployed and part-timers are entitled to subsidized insurance. But full-time workers get no such subsidy. Their employers must offer them coverage or face severe penalties, and the workers have no choice but to take it, because otherwise they would face severe penalties themselves. This burden will be especially hard on low- to middle-income Americans who don’t sign up for job-based insurance today because they can’t afford it.
Funding abortion and abortion providers. Both the Senate HELP and House Democratic bills fail to exclude abortion from the services that constitute “qualified” insurance — which means, as a practical matter, abortion would be a required “covered benefit.” [The House Democrats have voted down amendments prohibiting abortion funding. Furthermore, Congress is ready to give the secretary of Health and Human Services and other governmental bodies the authority to mandate abortion coverage.] Thus, federal taxpayers would be forced to pay for abortions, and everyone would be forbidden to get insurance that does not cover abortion, even if he is spending only his own money.
Raising premiums with taxes on health benefits. The House bill creates something called a Health Care Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund (CERTF), which would be funded by fees on insurance providers. But insurers won’t pay these fees themselves; they will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. President Obama pilloried Senator McCain for proposing “for the first time in history . . . taxing people’s health-care benefits,” yet that is essentially what House Democrats are looking to do in their bill.
Deep Medicare cuts for beneficiaries living in low-cost areas. House Democrats are determined to force seniors out of the private-insurance program of Medicare, called Medicare Advantage (MA). According to the Congressional Budget Office, their bill is likely to work as planned: Some 5 million MA enrollees would get pushed back into the traditional government-run program, with its lower benefits and higher cost-sharing. This would happen because the House bill bases MA payment rates on the estimated regional cost of covering someone in the traditional program; those living in lower-cost areas would see their payment rates drop, making the traditional program look more attractive.
This approach worsens the unfair regional disparities that exist today. For instance, this year, the MA payment rate in Portland is only $819 per month, while Miami’s is $1,238 per month. The House bill would widen this gap by cutting Portland’s MA payments by 26 percent, since Portland is a low-cost region with a culture of judicious use of health services. Meanwhile, Miami, which is rife with Medicare fraud and abuse, would get only a 2 percent cut in its MA payment rate. Medicare beneficiaries in Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Albuquerque, and other low-cost cities would get hit almost as hard as Portland’s beneficiaries. This runs precisely counter to the notion, popularized by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker and heartily embraced by the Obama administration, that we should try to replicate, or at least reward, areas that provide more efficient health care.
Undermining entitlement reform. Section 1901 of the House bill would repeal a trigger intended to alert Congress and the broader public to the financing problems in the Medicare program. Under current law, the HHS secretary must propose Medicare program adjustments to eliminate projected funding shortfalls when the Medicare trustees forecast excessive program reliance on subsidies from the Treasury. Repealing this provision is one more indication that Democrats are not serious about addressing the explosion of entitlement spending, which will push U.S. fiscal policy off a cliff in relatively short order.
More government-run health care. So much attention has been focused on President Obama’s push for a new government-run insurance plan that many people do not realize that the Democrats are also seeking the largest expansion of Medicaid in the program’s history. Medicaid spending is already on track, along with Medicare, to push federal finances to the brink. Between 2009 and 2035, the CBO expects combined spending for these two programs to increase from 5.3 to 10 percent of GDP. But that’s apparently not enough: The House bill would add 11 million more enrollees to Medicaid, bringing total enrollment to about 71 million and adding more than $80 billion in new spending to the budget in 2019 — on top of the $426 billion that the program will already cost under current law.
These bills are a massive overreach by the Democrats, who see this year as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have something like a New Deal or Great Society moment. Most Democrats believe strongly in total governmental control of health care, and they are determined to try to achieve it now, regardless of the fiscal and political consequences. So they press on, even as every day brings new revelations of the incoherence, hubris, and excesses of their plan. It might work; the legislation might pass. Then again, it might not, as a restless public is becoming increasingly alarmed at what is emerging from Washington. A government takeover of health care seems not to be what the public wants — meaning that the Democrats may find themselves advocating bad policy that is unpopular to boot.
Mr. Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a health-policy consultant, was an associate director at the White House Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004. Mr. Troy, a visiting senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a health-policy consultant, was deputy secretary of health and human services from 2007 to 2009.
[Note: This is a long article but it gives a lot of detail about the dangers of the proposed healthcare legislation. If you are looking for specifics, it will be worth your time to read this through.]
There are only two problems with the emerging Democratic plan to reform health care in the United States: the big picture, and the fine print.
From a macro perspective, the bills now moving through House and Senate committees call for a combination of employer and individual mandates to force more, though not all, Americans to purchase federally set levels of insurance coverage. Some Americans — mainly those without full-time jobs — would be eligible for a new entitlement to discounted premiums. The federal government would try to tell doctors and hospitals what constitutes appropriate medical practice. The bills would pay for their insurance subsidies with significant new taxes, mainly on work and entrepreneurship, as well as some benefit cuts in Medicare. The bills would also create a new government-run insurance plan that would be available to many working-age people and would likely constitute the first step toward a single-payer system.
That’s the broad vision of Obamacare, which is bad enough because of what it will mean for the quality of American medical care over time. There are only two ways to allocate health-care resources: with a market or with government regulation. The Democratic vision firmly rejects consumer choice and a decentralized marketplace in favor of near-total federal-government control of health care. In time, that will mean cost control in the form of waiting lists, less innovation, and reduced quality. But the fine print is likely to be just as alarming to Americans as this big picture is. The bills are chock-a-block with government intrusion into medical practice, limits on personal freedom, costly requirements that will stifle the private economy, massive and expensive government bureaucracy, taxes, fees, and fines.
It’s apparent that Democratic leaders in Congress and the Obama administration would like to keep these details out of the public spotlight, which is why there is an odd disconnect between the timeline for the legislation’s consideration in Congress and the timeline for its implementation. President Obama has of late been spending much of his energy arguing that it is absolutely urgent that both chambers of Congress pass a bill this summer so that a final bill will get to his desk by October. Why? Why, because “the time is now.” And the status quo is unacceptable. And we’ve never been this close before.
Never mind that in the bills as now written, nothing would actually happen for more than three years. Indeed, no uninsured American would get health insurance under the Democratic bills until 2013 at the earliest. In fact, the CBO has estimated that the number of uninsured Americans will increase in 2011 and 2012, before the bills’ major provisions go into effect. And of course 2013 is safely after the next presidential election, just in case anyone’s keeping track. This is about political momentum. The administration and Democratic leaders in Congress understand that the more people learn about what these bills would actually do to American health care, the less the public will like them. Consider just this small sampling of the bills’ details:
Severe limits on the purchase of private insurance. The House Democratic bill would make it illegal for Americans to buy health insurance from a company outside of the new structure. It’s the government-approved system or nothing.
Government-controlled market access. In the bill approved by Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, states would have the authority to limit the number of insurance offerings provided to consumers in “exchanges,” which are the government-run agencies that oversee consumer enrollment in insurance plans. Qualified insurers seeking to offer coverage to “exchange” participants may or may not get to do so. It would be up to government bureaucrats, who could deny market entry to an insurer for apparently any reason. It’s entirely predictable that this broad authority will be abused to benefit politically connected providers — at the expense of consumers.
The “commissioner.” House Democrats would hand over vast powers to a new “Health Choices Commissioner,” the head of the new bureaucracy charged with regulating basically all health insurance offered in America. The commissioner would become the choke point for all major health-care-policy decisions, such as what constitutes qualified insurance or employer compliance with the federal mandate to offer coverage. States would even be required to enter into agreements with the commissioner regarding the operation of their Medicaid programs. Vast power and little accountability: It’s a recipe for unresponsive bureaucracy, arbitrary rulemaking, meddling, and even more paperwork.
Penalizing work. In both the House and the Senate HELP bills, full-time work is heavily penalized. For the most part, the unemployed and part-timers are entitled to subsidized insurance. But full-time workers get no such subsidy. Their employers must offer them coverage or face severe penalties, and the workers have no choice but to take it, because otherwise they would face severe penalties themselves. This burden will be especially hard on low- to middle-income Americans who don’t sign up for job-based insurance today because they can’t afford it.
Funding abortion and abortion providers. Both the Senate HELP and House Democratic bills fail to exclude abortion from the services that constitute “qualified” insurance — which means, as a practical matter, abortion would be a required “covered benefit.” [The House Democrats have voted down amendments prohibiting abortion funding. Furthermore, Congress is ready to give the secretary of Health and Human Services and other governmental bodies the authority to mandate abortion coverage.] Thus, federal taxpayers would be forced to pay for abortions, and everyone would be forbidden to get insurance that does not cover abortion, even if he is spending only his own money.
Raising premiums with taxes on health benefits. The House bill creates something called a Health Care Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund (CERTF), which would be funded by fees on insurance providers. But insurers won’t pay these fees themselves; they will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. President Obama pilloried Senator McCain for proposing “for the first time in history . . . taxing people’s health-care benefits,” yet that is essentially what House Democrats are looking to do in their bill.
Deep Medicare cuts for beneficiaries living in low-cost areas. House Democrats are determined to force seniors out of the private-insurance program of Medicare, called Medicare Advantage (MA). According to the Congressional Budget Office, their bill is likely to work as planned: Some 5 million MA enrollees would get pushed back into the traditional government-run program, with its lower benefits and higher cost-sharing. This would happen because the House bill bases MA payment rates on the estimated regional cost of covering someone in the traditional program; those living in lower-cost areas would see their payment rates drop, making the traditional program look more attractive.
This approach worsens the unfair regional disparities that exist today. For instance, this year, the MA payment rate in Portland is only $819 per month, while Miami’s is $1,238 per month. The House bill would widen this gap by cutting Portland’s MA payments by 26 percent, since Portland is a low-cost region with a culture of judicious use of health services. Meanwhile, Miami, which is rife with Medicare fraud and abuse, would get only a 2 percent cut in its MA payment rate. Medicare beneficiaries in Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Albuquerque, and other low-cost cities would get hit almost as hard as Portland’s beneficiaries. This runs precisely counter to the notion, popularized by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker and heartily embraced by the Obama administration, that we should try to replicate, or at least reward, areas that provide more efficient health care.
Undermining entitlement reform. Section 1901 of the House bill would repeal a trigger intended to alert Congress and the broader public to the financing problems in the Medicare program. Under current law, the HHS secretary must propose Medicare program adjustments to eliminate projected funding shortfalls when the Medicare trustees forecast excessive program reliance on subsidies from the Treasury. Repealing this provision is one more indication that Democrats are not serious about addressing the explosion of entitlement spending, which will push U.S. fiscal policy off a cliff in relatively short order.
More government-run health care. So much attention has been focused on President Obama’s push for a new government-run insurance plan that many people do not realize that the Democrats are also seeking the largest expansion of Medicaid in the program’s history. Medicaid spending is already on track, along with Medicare, to push federal finances to the brink. Between 2009 and 2035, the CBO expects combined spending for these two programs to increase from 5.3 to 10 percent of GDP. But that’s apparently not enough: The House bill would add 11 million more enrollees to Medicaid, bringing total enrollment to about 71 million and adding more than $80 billion in new spending to the budget in 2019 — on top of the $426 billion that the program will already cost under current law.
These bills are a massive overreach by the Democrats, who see this year as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have something like a New Deal or Great Society moment. Most Democrats believe strongly in total governmental control of health care, and they are determined to try to achieve it now, regardless of the fiscal and political consequences. So they press on, even as every day brings new revelations of the incoherence, hubris, and excesses of their plan. It might work; the legislation might pass. Then again, it might not, as a restless public is becoming increasingly alarmed at what is emerging from Washington. A government takeover of health care seems not to be what the public wants — meaning that the Democrats may find themselves advocating bad policy that is unpopular to boot.
Mr. Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a health-policy consultant, was an associate director at the White House Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004. Mr. Troy, a visiting senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a health-policy consultant, was deputy secretary of health and human services from 2007 to 2009.
Friday, August 7, 2009
#31 – My Letter to My Democratic Congresswoman
[Note: The following is a letter I sent by email to the Congreswoman representing me. I share it as an example of what so many are not expressing to their representatives all across the country. I encourage you to click on the web connections (always) on the right side of this blog and share your thoughts with your Congressional representative. Remember: They work for us. We owe it to them to let them know when they are doing a bad job of doing so. P.S. - I will be sending similar comments on to my U.S. Senators. Also, be sure to check the political cartoons (and other articles) at Worldmag.com]
"Dear Congresswoman Kosmas,.
Thank you for your reply but I do have some questions:
1. If the Congress' efforts are supposed to create more jobs, why are we seeing a net increase in unemployment?
2. Of the jobs created, how much did each job cost in terms of the trillion dollars plus that has been spent to "stimulate the economy" and that has placed our nation in debt that future generations will be paying indefinitely?
3. In what specific ways has Congress' efforts made our economy more "competitive?" Who are we out competing as a result?
4. Of course we need health care reform. But the reform needed is not a "crisis" as the President keeps referring to it if as many as 80% of Americans are satisfied with it, especially compared to what the rest of the world is experiencing, particularly in Europe? I've never heard of Americans going to any other country to get better health care but people everywhere are coming to the United States. The reforms needed are specific changes in the system, not a full-scale overhaul that involves the government running the system. It's interesting that just at this time the US Postal Service says it’s near so much debt it may need to decrease its services. Is that what we can look forward to when the government also gets involved in our nation's healthcare?
5. How can you expand health care to so many more Americans BEFORE you increase the number of health care workers, which has been dangerously shrinking for years? Please be honest, there is just no way to do that without either raising the taxes of all Americans or rationing further what health care already has to be rationed?
6. The kind of changes your Party is promoting are so drastic it takes 1,000 pages to explain. If you all don't have time to read all the details, how do you expect the American people to sign off on it?
Yes we need healthcare reform, but we need it to be done right even if it takes awhile. Certainly there is no need to push for such changes as you all are proposing so quickly unless this is the only way YOU ALL can get your way before we decide we need new leadership next fall.
No, I'm not part of any right-wing conspiracy but just part of a growing number of Americans who are alarmed at the direction your party is taking this country. We want things to be done right because WE are the ones who will be paying for mistakes done AS WELL AS the generations to come who will be left with the costs of all that is being proposed.
Congresswoman, your oath is to uphold the US Constitution, which nowhere gives the government permission to be our healthcare provider (let alone run car companies and banks). I would also ask that you add to that oath a promise to do what doctors pledge to do, which is to DO NO HARM (to the American people, those living now and the generations to come).
Sincerely yours,
Stan M. Yonashiro
Dear friend, make no mistake. What you are hearing about the reaction the President and his Party's representatives are receiving are from Americans like myself who are increasingly aware of where the Democratic policies put in place in just the short time of this administration are taking this country. And they are very upset. You might be thinking that public policy issues in our country should not be of concern to Christians. We should only have our focus on winning others to Christ. This is what I was implicitly led to believe about abortion the first 14 years I was a believer until the film "The Silent Scream" woke me to the unspeakable horror of knowing that taking the life of unborn children was codified in American law. I suddenly realized that this was not a Catholic issue but a human rights issue and not something that modern day Good Samaritans could just close their eyes to. In a similar way, this country was formed by people who staked "their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" and which is every day being defended by men and women who deserve to return home to a country that was worth their risking their lives for. To sit by and watch our country be steered into what are clearly wrong directions - not just on public policy issues but on moral issues such as the sanctity of human life and the definition of our institution of marriage - is not standing watch at our post on the home front and being found AWOL to our civic responsibilities. I for one refuse to forfeit this great country that I love to those who would transform it into anything but a nation under God. Our country has already strayed too much from those values that once made us great and as Christians we have a responsibility before God to be faithful of the stewardship of this great land that has been entrusted to us.
Of course, I believe in the primacy of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in God's calling on each of our lives as Christians. But besides being the "light" of Christ to the world, we are also called to be "the salt of the earth." (Matthew 5:13-16). We cannot be so focused on helping people enter the Kingdom, to be about things of Heaven, that we are derelict in our responsibility to be as well as to stand for and help to preserve those things that are good and right in our society.
"Dear Congresswoman Kosmas,.
Thank you for your reply but I do have some questions:
1. If the Congress' efforts are supposed to create more jobs, why are we seeing a net increase in unemployment?
2. Of the jobs created, how much did each job cost in terms of the trillion dollars plus that has been spent to "stimulate the economy" and that has placed our nation in debt that future generations will be paying indefinitely?
3. In what specific ways has Congress' efforts made our economy more "competitive?" Who are we out competing as a result?
4. Of course we need health care reform. But the reform needed is not a "crisis" as the President keeps referring to it if as many as 80% of Americans are satisfied with it, especially compared to what the rest of the world is experiencing, particularly in Europe? I've never heard of Americans going to any other country to get better health care but people everywhere are coming to the United States. The reforms needed are specific changes in the system, not a full-scale overhaul that involves the government running the system. It's interesting that just at this time the US Postal Service says it’s near so much debt it may need to decrease its services. Is that what we can look forward to when the government also gets involved in our nation's healthcare?
5. How can you expand health care to so many more Americans BEFORE you increase the number of health care workers, which has been dangerously shrinking for years? Please be honest, there is just no way to do that without either raising the taxes of all Americans or rationing further what health care already has to be rationed?
6. The kind of changes your Party is promoting are so drastic it takes 1,000 pages to explain. If you all don't have time to read all the details, how do you expect the American people to sign off on it?
Yes we need healthcare reform, but we need it to be done right even if it takes awhile. Certainly there is no need to push for such changes as you all are proposing so quickly unless this is the only way YOU ALL can get your way before we decide we need new leadership next fall.
No, I'm not part of any right-wing conspiracy but just part of a growing number of Americans who are alarmed at the direction your party is taking this country. We want things to be done right because WE are the ones who will be paying for mistakes done AS WELL AS the generations to come who will be left with the costs of all that is being proposed.
Congresswoman, your oath is to uphold the US Constitution, which nowhere gives the government permission to be our healthcare provider (let alone run car companies and banks). I would also ask that you add to that oath a promise to do what doctors pledge to do, which is to DO NO HARM (to the American people, those living now and the generations to come).
Sincerely yours,
Stan M. Yonashiro
Dear friend, make no mistake. What you are hearing about the reaction the President and his Party's representatives are receiving are from Americans like myself who are increasingly aware of where the Democratic policies put in place in just the short time of this administration are taking this country. And they are very upset. You might be thinking that public policy issues in our country should not be of concern to Christians. We should only have our focus on winning others to Christ. This is what I was implicitly led to believe about abortion the first 14 years I was a believer until the film "The Silent Scream" woke me to the unspeakable horror of knowing that taking the life of unborn children was codified in American law. I suddenly realized that this was not a Catholic issue but a human rights issue and not something that modern day Good Samaritans could just close their eyes to. In a similar way, this country was formed by people who staked "their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" and which is every day being defended by men and women who deserve to return home to a country that was worth their risking their lives for. To sit by and watch our country be steered into what are clearly wrong directions - not just on public policy issues but on moral issues such as the sanctity of human life and the definition of our institution of marriage - is not standing watch at our post on the home front and being found AWOL to our civic responsibilities. I for one refuse to forfeit this great country that I love to those who would transform it into anything but a nation under God. Our country has already strayed too much from those values that once made us great and as Christians we have a responsibility before God to be faithful of the stewardship of this great land that has been entrusted to us.
Of course, I believe in the primacy of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in God's calling on each of our lives as Christians. But besides being the "light" of Christ to the world, we are also called to be "the salt of the earth." (Matthew 5:13-16). We cannot be so focused on helping people enter the Kingdom, to be about things of Heaven, that we are derelict in our responsibility to be as well as to stand for and help to preserve those things that are good and right in our society.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
#30 - Rationing Healthcare
[Note: Praise God, after almost 3 weeks, I’m back at maintaining this blog. Three weeks ago this Thursday, lightning here in Orlando blew out several fuses to my phone connection. It not only took out my phones but also my computer modem. It wasn’t until last Wed. that a modem was finally delivered and it wasn’t until last night, thanks to the help of my good friend, Dan Lum, I was able to get the modem to work correctly. (Thanks again, Dan. I’m blessed to have friends like you to be there when I need them.) There are things I could say about Justice Sodomayer and the incident with the African-American professor and the officer and the President, among other subjects that have been in the news during these weeks. But I will save them for another time.
But right now, the national debate over the President’s healthcare proposals is MOST critical and the subject that deserves our careful attention and reaction in the weeks ahead. While he and the Democratically controlled Congress could choose to force us to accept this (at least) 1,000 page – unread, for sure, by our congressional reps as was not the stimulus bill passed of about the same length earlier this year – you just have to ask why such a huge entitlement is being forced upon us along with the crippling consequences it has for our country’s economy and society for now and for the generations to come. I don’t believe that all of this is inevitable IF we-the American people- say “NO!” to our representatives loudly enough before they return from their recess after Labor Day. If you’ve never contacted your representatives, now might be a good time to start, for all our sakes and the many who will come after us.
If you haven’t noticed, THERE ARE LINKS ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS BLOG TO CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES.
Who Lives, Who Dies? By Chuck Colson| Published Date: July 27, 2009
In a world of rationed health care, what standards should we use to determine who lives and who dies? That depends on your worldview.
Maybe the single biggest issue in the debate over health-care reform is cost. By “cost” most people mean how we are going to pay for the president’s and Congress’s proposals. But there’s a more important question of cost when it comes to health-care reform—that is, the price paid by the most vulnerable among us. In a recent New York Times magazine article, ethicist Peter Singer explains “why we must ration health care.” Singer, a brilliant writer and a master logician, begins by pooh-poohing the idea that “it’s immoral to apply monetary considerations to saving lives.” After all, Singer is right when he says that “we already put a dollar value on human life.” Mattresses aren't as fire-resistant as they could be because government officials have decided that it would be too expensive to save those additional lives. Still, Singer couldn’t resist the temptation to play God. He rejects the idea that the “good achieved by health care is the number of lives saved.” In his utilitarian calculus, the “death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities.”
How? Through the use of a “quality-adjusted-life-year,” or QALY. Say, for example, that people prefer living five years disability free to living 10 years with quadriplegia. Then, Singer reasons, when it comes to rationing health care, we ought to treat “life with quadriplegia as half as good as non-disabled life.” Believe me, he is not kidding. What’s even more telling are the considerations Singer says we should not take into account—for instance, whether a patient is a mom or a dad. Thinking about a patient’s children, he says, “increases the scope for subjective—and prejudiced—judgments.” As abhorrent as Singer’s ideas are, they are coldly consistent with utilitarian thinking that now dominates medical ethics. As early as the 1990s, Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the president’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, envisioned “not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” Why? Because, he claimed, they are “prevented from being or becoming participating citizens
I’m sorry, but this is the same logic the Nazis used to exterminate the physically and mentally handicapped. The only viable alternative to this horrific utilitarian and materialist vision is the imago Dei: the Christian belief that man is created in the image of God. Being created in the imago Dei endows every person with dignity—a dignity that is not derived from the majority’s opinion (or a government definition) about the quality of their life or their contribution to society. In the absence of this belief, every decision about the allocation of health care—and indeed about any area of life—becomes an occasion for the young and strong to impose their will on the old and weak. The word for this is “tyranny.” And all the hand-wringing and rationalizations about the need to overhaul the health-care system shouldn’t distract us from the very real danger of nationalizing health care and granting government the power to decide whose life is worth living. I say leave it to the family and the doctors as it is today.
Further Reading and Information
Why We Must Ration Health CarePeter Singer | New York Times | July 19, 2009
Is Justice Enough? Ends and Means in Bioethics Ezekiel Emanuel et al. | Hastings Center Report | November 1996
A Religious Scientist?: Dr. Francis Collins Picked for NIHChuck Colson | BreakPoint Commentary | July 13, 2009
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