Putting the "Limit" in Debt Limit

We are back exactly where we were last year, and the year before that. Once again we are bumping up against the debt limit, and Congress is considering raising or not raising the limit, or looking for what concessions they can get from the other party to get their way. In the end, the debt limit will be raised and business as usual will continue. In the past it has always been raised, and if things go on unchanged, it will continue to always be raised, which means that the nation's debt will continue to mount.

Right now our debt stands at 73% of GDP. On our current trajectory, debt will exceed 100% of GDP within 20 years, and could be 150% of GDP by 2038.

The debt ceiling as it exists now is not functioning to control the rate of growth of debt. As we rack up debt at ever-increasing rates, Congress just has to raise the ceiling more often, or raise it further. It has been suggested that we should simply do away with the debt ceiling, allowing the President to borrow as needed to achieve the spending approved by Congress. The Constitution gives Congress the power to authorize borrowing, and that authority should not be casually handed over to the Executive Branch.

Either way, there is a disconnect between revenue and spending. A responsible fiscal policy must look at the available revenue and set spending priorities to function with the money available. This is how a household or a business functions, and it is how the Federal Government must function as well.

The debt ceiling could be used in a way which would function as a true limit, constraining government spending and creating a link between revenue and spending. Instead of setting a dollar amount, the debt ceiling should vary on a fixed, predetermined schedule based on a percentage of GDP. This schedule should be designed to start out close to our current level of 73% of GDP, but in the coming decades, gradually bend that curve downward. Instead of growing the debt to 150% of GDP by 2038, we should reduce it to 60%. This would still be a larger dollar amount than we have today, but it would back us away from the brink of the debt spiral and financial collapse which we will certainly reach within our lifetime on the current course.

The real debt ceiling comes when interest on the debt outpaces economic growth, causing creditors to demand much higher interest rates, driving up the cost of servicing the debt, and ending our ability to continue spending money without any consideration of how we will pay it back. The choice is ours. We can control spending and debt now in a controlled, gradual way or it will be done for us in a much more painful manner in the not so distant future.

Health care is NOT a right

Yesterday President Obama, noted Constitutional scholar, proclaimed that

"For a long time, America was the only advanced economy in the world where health care was not a right but a privilege"

Let's get this straight once for all. Health care is NOT a right.

If health care was a right, that would mean certain things.

For one, it would mean that no one could be denied any treatment for any reason. Medicare denies treatment to millions of people every year. The new Independent Payment Advisory Board established by Obamacare exists to deny treatment to even more people. If health care is a right, they can't do that. If health care is a right, it can't be dependent on my ability or even willingness to pay for it.

In 2009, Obama claimed that we needed Obamacare to cover 46 million uninsured people. Last year, they estimated that it would actually only cover 22 million of those people. Last week Obama's own Department of Health and Human Services revised that number downward again. Now it will cover only 11 million people, leaving 30 million uninsured. This is why we are putting millions of people out of work, depressing the economy, and making insurance massively more expensive for those who already have it? Obama is declaring that he made health care into a "right" by insuring eleven million people in a nation of 309 million, leaving 30 million uninsured? If health care is a right, everyone must have it for free. Even countries like Great Britain which have national health care systems which liberals want to model do not treat health care as a right. They deny treatment to millions of people every year, allowing people to die due to government budgetary considerations, and leaving people on waiting lists for inordinate periods of time.

A right to health insurance is not the same thing as a right to health care. We could issue insurance policies to everyone in America tomorrow for essentially no cost. Unless there is actual health care, meaning available doctors, nurses, hospital facilities and staff, medication, and equipment, to deliver, what is the value of the insurance policy? Doctors are leaving practice, hospitals are shutting down, and hospitals which were being planned for construction are being cancelled, so providing insurance promising a product which does not exist is worthless. Think about it this way: imagine that a prominent Congressman by the name of Hairy Weed is convinced that too many Americans don't have a unicorn. Every American has the right to a unicorn, and they just don't have them. So Hairy prints 309 million coupons, each of which guarantee the bearer one unicorn. He distributes the pieces of paper to every American, and declares that he has made unicorn ownership a right! Does every American now have a unicorn? Government can promise every citizen a coupon for a unicorn, but it can't promise them a unicorn. Obamacare is no different. It promises every American a piece of paper entitling them to a product they can't deliver.

A second consequence of declaring health care to be a right is that those who provide it are enslaved to those who demand it. However you slice it, if I demand health care as my right, someone else must give up a part of their life to provide it. Tell me why I am entitled to that portion of another person's life?

If the government declares that everyone has the right to a house, it means that if someone doesn't have a house, the government must provide them with one. Now the government doesn't produce houses out of thin air. To provide the house, they have to take it from someone else. If houses are a right, I want my house! I'll make sure that I'm one of the people receiving a free house, and not one of those stupid suckers who they take the houses from. Similarly, if health care is a right, why should anyone pay for it? Let someone else pay for it, and give me my free meds. But how is it right for government to confiscate what that other person has earned to give it to me? If I go out and do that, it is called robbery, and they would put me in jail. If I get a government agent to do it for me, that makes is a compassionate social program.

A legitimate right is exercised, not demanded from someone else. I have the right to life. I exercise that right by living. I don't have to go take it from anyone, and no one has the right to take it from me. Government does not create rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant me the right to free speech, freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, or freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. God gave me those rights, and the Bill of Rights restrains the government from infringing on them. Health care is not a right, because if it was, government would not need to grant it to me. Health care is a product which I can choose to buy or not buy as I wish, but which no one else is obligated to give me.

Defunding Obamacare

Get ready for record levels of hysterical demagoguery.

Today the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution which fully funds all of the government, except for Obamacare.

If a bill does not pass both chambers of Congress and receive the President's signature by the end of September, the government will not be authorized to spend any more money, and all "non-essential" services will close down. This has happened seventeen times in my lifetime, and contrary to what the left would have you believe, the sun still kept rising and life went on, even without the all-present nanny state meddling in everyone's business.

The next month will determine if there is any remaining use for the Republican Party. They have a miserable track record for standing up under pressure to stop the erosion of liberty and the irresponsible piling on of massive generational debt. With the exception of sequestration, every confrontation in the past five years has ended with the Republican leadership caving, giving Obama all of the taxes and spending he wants in return for nothing. Democrats believe that all they need to do is paint Republicans as mean guys who want to shut down the government, starve people, and take away their medical care, and Republicans will immediately agree to any demands. They may very well be right.

But if there ever was a time to stand up to the Democrats and say "No!", this is it. Even the author of Obamacare, Democrat Max Bachus, says that the implementation of the massive government program is a "train wreck."

The state exchanges are not even close to being ready to open.

The Obama administration has delayed, cancelled, or altered more than half of the provisions in the bill.

The White House has granted exemptions to their cronies, ranging from campaign donors to labor unions to Congress. Getting out from the onerous restrictions and penalties of Obamacare is a perk. Congress should exempt the people they work for: all the American people, who overwhelmingly don't want Obamacare.

Obamacare is trampling on the religious liberty of Americans, forcing people to violate their beliefs by paying for abortion.

Employers are being forced to decide between cutting back their workforce or reducing their existing employees from full time to part time. Obamacare's job killing costs are the biggest factor in America's long-lasting high level of unemployment and economic doldrums.

Meanwhile, the two major selling points for Obamacare have proven to be false. Instead of driving insurance costs down, premiums and deductibles are through the roof. Many people will be paying twice as much next year as they did in 2009. And access to health insurance is also down. Millions of people who had coverage for years are losing it.

The FDA is rejecting life-saving drugs, not because they are not safe or effective, but because the government doesn't want to pay for them. Doctors are leaving practice, hospitals are closing, planned construction of new hospitals is being cancelled, and doctor shortages are growing. Doctors are refusing to accept Medicare patients because it is impossible to jump through the bureaucratic hoops and stay in business at the below-market rates paid by Medicare.

Obama claims that predictions of "death panels" have not come true. However, patients are now routinely denied lifesaving treatment based on government budgetary constraints. For example, an Obama administration bureaucrat refused a lung transplant to 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan, in spite of the fact that she would die without the new organ, and her doctors agreed that she was an ideal candidate for a transplant and could live a long, healthy life with new lungs. Government should not be making those life and death decisions.

Obama repeatedly promised that "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" and "If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance." Again, the reality of Obamacare fails to deliver on the promises of Obamacare, as employers drop insurance coverage due to the inflated costs caused by all of the new requirements, and doctors are forced out of private practice or forced to stop accepting insurance plans because Obamacare has made it economically nonviable.

Obama promised that he would not allow a bill which "adds one dime to the deficit." But the actual costs of the first ten years of Obamacare have already tripled the original CBO projections. Obamacare costs account for roughly three trillion dollars of new debt in the next ten years.

Polls consistently show that most people don't want Obamacare.

But Obama is bent on ramming Obamacare down the throat of a nation which does not want it. This week he said that people don't like it because they don't understand it, and when they see how swell it really is, they'll come around. Nancy Pelosi said that we have to pass it to find out what is in it. Apparently we are always a year or two away from people recognizing how wonderful Obamacare is.

There is only one thing which can stand in Obama's way, to prevent him from destroying America's medical system and imposing his top-down authoritarian leviathan. The Constitution gives Congress the power to fund, or not fund, any spending measure. The Government can't spend a penny unless the House of Representatives, elected by and representing the citizens of America, grant their approval. If the House does not vote to fund Obamacare, it will not be funded. Conversely, if Obamacare is funded, it will only be because Republicans in the House of Representatives ignored the will of the people they represent and voted to fund it.

Republicans should not proceed down this road if they are not willing to see it to the end. If they are going to cave on September 30, what is the point? Republicans hold all of the cards. They can win, if they have the will to win. This is the job they were sent to Washington to do, and if they aren't up to it, they should go home now.

Count on Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama to try to convince the public that the Republicans are shutting down the government. How does that make a bit of sense? The House passed a bill which fully funds the government, except for Obamacare. If the Senate or President refuse to pass that bill, how is it the fault of the House? If the Democrats shut down the government in their effort to force their takeover of the medical system on us, so be it. Republicans can do just fine without the government. I doubt that Democrats can say the same thing.

"Giving back"

Last week I bumped into an old friend who was working on some improvements to the bike trails near Harry Myer’s Park. It had been a couple of months since I had seen him, so I stopped to talk. We each talked about our kids, and then discussed his very successful business based here in Rockwall. Finally I asked him about the work he was doing on the trail. With a rather pained expression, he told me that he had volunteered for this project because he wanted to “give back to the community.”

As we talked, I continued to process that statement. If he needs to “give back to the community,” that presumes that his success was taken from the community. For every dollar he has earned, the rest of the community must be one dollar poorer. I needed some clarification, so I asked him why he felt the need to give back to the community. “Well,” he told me, “My business is for profit. I’m doing this for free.”

“Why does starting a profitable business mean that you are taking from the community?” The question took him aback, so I pressed on. “How many people do you employ?” He told me that he currently has fifteen full-time employees and a few students and interns part-time.

I picked up a shovel and started helping him load rocks into a wheelbarrow. “How much did your company pay in taxes last year?” He listed off the amounts they paid in sales tax, property tax, corporate income tax, and payroll tax, each one well into five-digit figures. All told, it was well over a hundred thousand dollars, and that didn’t count his own income taxes, property taxes, and the income taxes paid by all of his employees.

“How many customers patronized your business last year?” He pondered that for a moment, then responded, “Thousands. But I made a profit on them.” Finally we had gotten to the crux of the matter. Clearly he had fallen for the myth that profit is greed and altruism is the only pure motivation. “Which do you believe that your customers value more: your product or the money they paid for your product?” He looked puzzled. “I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. I suppose they value the product more. Otherwise, they wouldn’t bother to buy it.” I agreed. The fact that people freely decided to trade indicates that both parties are benefiting from the exchange. “The goods you produce enrich the lives of the people who buy them. You pay more than your share of the tax burden. And you created more than a dozen jobs which would not exist without you. So why do you feel guilty for making a profit”

“I guess I feel like I’m supposed to feel guilty. Are you saying I shouldn’t work on this bike trail?”

“Not at all,” I answered. “Building this trail is magnificent. I’m saying that running a successful, profitable business is noble and does not put you in debt to society. There are people who owe a debt to society, and ought to feel the need to give back to society. The most obvious are criminals. We say that they go to prison to ‘pay their debt to society.’ In fact, society doesn’t benefit much from their time in prison, apart from being protected from their criminal behavior. Our taxes pay for their free room and board, cable television, weight-lifting room, and law degrees preparing them to beat the system next time, but they spend years producing nothing in return for our resources they consume. A second category are government dependents who take from society in the form of welfare checks, food stamps, unpaid mortgages and student loans, and a host of other means of accessing the public trough. They receive something for nothing, which means that somewhere, someone is producing something only to have it confiscated without remuneration. Sometimes the first two categories even overlap, as seen in the vast array of fraud perpetrated in the welfare, Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment systems. Next comes the vast army of 4.1 million government bureaucrats who endlessly write regulations and produce nothing but draw a taxpayer-funded paycheck for meddling in other people’s business, suppressing productivity, destroying wealth, and hindering commerce. The final category is those who profit from cronyism, seeking special favors from government officials in exchange for campaign contributions or political pull. These looters are hard to distinguish from real producers, because they have all of the trappings of success, but careful examination will show that their profit does not come from voluntary free-market transactions. They are being carried just as much as the welfare recipient. All of these people benefit by taking from society and therefore ought to feel compelled to give back, but rarely do.”

“But doesn’t it show that I’m a good person if I want to give back?”

“No!” I told him emphatically. “It means that you are agreeing to their misplaced guilt, accepting their accusation that earning profit is an evil which must be atoned for. There is no virtue in saying that good is actually evil. All of these people who you are carrying want you to feel that way so that you won’t object when they demand more from you. More taxes, more freedom, more of your life.”

“Then why should I work on this bike trail?”

“Because it is consistent with who you are every day,” I told him. “You are a creative force, a producer, an innovator who brings life to this community. The purpose of your generosity is not to make up for your success. It is an extension of your success.”

Monkeying around with life

Recently at the Fort Worth Zoo I observed two baboons having a dispute. I’m not sure what the problem was between them. Perhaps it was over food or a female baboon or maybe they just irritated each other for some reason. They chattered angrily at one another and the larger primate began to beat its chest in an effort to physically intimidate the other. Then one baboon pooped in his hand and hurled the feces at the other one. I guess that is just how baboons resolve their differences. They don’t have the ability to form a coherent argument or state a rational position, so they throw poop at one another.

Last week, a similar scene played out in the gallery of the Texas Senate, as our duly elected legislators debated a bill to ban late-term abortions and raise medical safety standards at abortion clinics. Hundreds of abortion supporters packed the gallery, dozens of them smuggling bottles filled with urine, feces, paint, glitter, confetti, used tampons, and other projectiles they intended to use to disrupt the proceedings of the Senate.

Abortion supporters display the same level of discourse as the baboons at the zoo: when they don't get their way, they throw poop.

Some will point out that it is unfair to draw generalizations about all abortion supporters based on the action of a few dozen people. However, by definition, they all favor sucking human babies into garbage disposals. And that is just one of the less inhumane abortion procedures.

Even when abortion supporters are not using excrement as projectiles they have considerable trouble dealing with reality. Their primary argument against House Bill 2 is their claim that it would shut down nearly all of the abortion clinics in Texas. They are referring to an increase in the safety requirements to operate an abortion clinic, currently the most unregulated business in the medical industry. When a similar law was enacted in Pennsylvania, the same objections were raised. Opponents claimed that sixteen of Pennsylvania’s nineteen clinics would be shut down. Ultimately, exactly one clinic was closed, exposing the claim for the exaggerated demagoguery that it is.

Some abortion clinics need to be shut down. Pennsylvania abortionist Kermit Gosnell has recently made news with the appalling ways in which he abused the lack of accountability in the abortion industry. When Gosnell’s clinic was raided on February 18, 2010, investigators described the scene as “Filthy”, “Deplorable”, “Disgusting”, “Very unsanitary”, and “Horrendous”. They describe bloody floors and the stench of urine, as well as a flea-infested cat leaving its excrement on the floors. Patients who had been sedated hours earlier by unlicensed staff sat moaning on filthy recliners covered with bloody blankets. They compared the operating rooms to “a bad gas station restroom”. Surgical instruments were dirty, rusted, and obsolete. Fetal remains were haphazardly stored throughout the clinic in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even cat-food containers.

Contrary to what abortion supporters would have you believe, Gosnell was not the exception to the rule. Through years of lobbying, government regulation and oversight of the abortion industry has been reduced to nearly zero. Any kind of standard has been denounced as an attack on a “women’s right to choose”, resulting in a dangerous situation for women who wish to obtain an abortion. Clinics are rarely inspected, so even the meager requirements which still apply to them are unenforced and widely ignored.

House Bill 2 places new requirements on abortion clinics similar to what is required for a clinic which performs tonsillectomies. They must have adequate emergency equipment which can be the difference between life and death in cases where a patient has a reaction to a drug, suffers a perforated uterus, or experiences excessive bleeding. Clinic personnel must be licensed as they are elsewhere in the medical industry. And a doctor with admission privileges at a nearby hospital must be present, a precaution essential in saving the lives of women who suffer complications beyond the capabilities of the clinic.

House Bill 2 also will help, in a small way, to protect unborn babies, or at least those who are far enough along to be viable, by banning most abortions after 20 weeks gestation. At this point, a baby has been a living human, distinct from her mother, for nearly five months and in most cases could live outside of her mother, with the assistance of modern medical care. I hope that someday we will extend the same protection to all unborn babies, but this is a step in the right direction. This bill protects both unborn babies and their mothers. Shame on those whose best argument against this life-affirming legislation is to hurl poop.

At a definitive moment in the debate, pro-life and pro-abortion activists faced off outside of the Texas capitol. As pro-lifers sang “Amazing Grace”, the pro-abortion crowd tried to drown them out by shouting “Hail Satan.”  Occasionally even someone promoting the murder of innocent babies will inadvertently swerve into truth. The abortion debate is a spiritual battle, and in Austin the two sides stood in stark contrast. God loves life. Satan loves death. Which side will you stand on? Will you assert the “right” to take an innocent life as the cost of living as you wish? Or will you commit to exercising responsibility and self-control in your own life and extend grace to the lives around you, perhaps by adopting an “unwanted” child, taking in a pregnant teenager, or volunteering at the local crisis pregnancy center?

Hypotheticals

Since Saturday night, Facebook has been filled with liberals posting nonsense about the Zimmerman verdict. I guess that’s nothing new, other than the topic of the nonsense. But it is particularly silly nonsense. Many of them attempt to claim that the verdict was racially motivated by suggesting that the outcome would have been different if the people’s races were reversed.

Here is one example, word for word: “If a black man went into a white neighborhood and picked a fight with a white kid and then shot him, he would be on death row right now.”

I understand the concept of a role reversal, but let’s compare this hypothetical case to the real case of Zimmerman/Martin. Zimmerman is Hispanic and the neighborhood is racially mixed. Zimmerman lives in the neighborhood, so he didn’t “go into” the neighborhood. Trevon Martin does not live there. The jury spent two weeks looking at all of the evidence, including the best case that the prosecutor could put together, and was not convinced that Zimmerman picked the fight. The instructions to the jury said that if the jury determined that Zimmerman instigated the violent confrontation, his claim of self defense was not valid. So there is no connection between the hypothetical situation and the real one. All that can be concluded is that the poster believes that in a completely different situation, the jury would decide differently, based on the facts. That should be the case regardless of the race of any of the participants.

If a conservative made such an inapplicable hypothetical role reversal argument he would be laughed clear back to a remedial rhetoric class.

But the silliness goes beyond that.

Liberals keep saying that Zimmerman provoked Martin. How? By getting out of his car. In his own neighborhood. The nerve of some people! Zimmerman really had it coming. I’ll remember never to get out of my car in my own neighborhood, because I might be jumped by a thug, and if I defend myself it will be my own fault.

Liberals suggest that Zimmerman is a wannabe cop, which is somehow worse than being a wannbe gangsta.

One liberal said that the moral of the verdict is "You see a black kid, you shoot him".  Well, only if he jumped you, broke your nose, and is straddling you bashing your head on the concrete, as the only eyewitness in the Zimmerman case testified.

Others argued that the case demonstrates the problems with "Stand your ground" laws which say that a person whose life is being threatened does not have a duty to retreat before using lethal force to defend himself, as opposed to other states which only allow self defense when you have retreated until your "back is against the wall". Must I point out that Zimmerman's back was against the sidewalk?

Let’s be generous and assume that some liberal has successfully come up with a hypothetical situation which is equivalent except that the races are reversed. I don’t believe that there is a jury in this country which would convict someone who was walking in his own neighborhood, which is still legal last I checked, who defended himself while his head was being cracked against a sidewalk. In 2013, you might find one ignorant, racist individual here or there, although they are not all that common, and that one person might think that a black person couldn’t possibly need to defend himself from a white person. But you won’t get a jury made up entirely of such people. It is just not possible, particularly because the defense attorney has a say in the makeup of the jury. To convict a person of a felony requires a unanimous decision of the jury, and that just won’t happen today. To anyone who says that a black person is automatically convicted of killing a white person, I have two little letters just for you: OJ. You'll say that case was different. Yup. It wasn't self defense.

But again let’s be generous and assume that somehow the prosecutor has succeeded in stacking the jury with racists and they convict the hypothetical black man for shooting the white kid instead of just letting his head continue to be bashed into the sidewalk. That would be a wrong verdict, wouldn’t it? That is the whole point of the argument. The claim is that America is racist and a black man would be wrongly convicted in the same situation all because of his race.

Isn’t that an admission that the Zimmerman verdict was correct? A jury which is not racist would acquit the black man who defended himself. A just and colorblind jury should also acquit a white, Hispanic, Asian, or purple polka-dotted man who defended himself in the equivalent situation. So liberals, by your own hypothetical argument, the jury in the non-hypothetical Zimmerman case acted exactly as a just and colorblind jury should have acted. The creepy-ass cracker is not the one who injected race into the situation.

Labeling

The Associated Press, the largest news source in the world, says that they will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant” to describe someone who is in violation of America’s immigration laws, explaining that the term stigmatizes undocumented workers, carrying the connotation that breaking the law is somehow objectionable. They don’t want to label people.

According to one highly reliable source (1), AP is considering replacing the offensive term with “Undocumented Democrat.”

It occurred to me that there are other similar terms which also unfairly stigmatize lawbreakers.

For example, “Drunk driver” is a mean and nasty term. “Social commuter” is a much more positive description.

“Wife beater” is another phrase which unfavorably reflects on otherwise upstanding citizens. “Dominant spouse” is a preferable term.

And “child molester” should be replaced with “Youth stimulation specialist.”

(1) Jay Leno

I lift my lamp beside the golden door

A few decades ago elephants were in danger of being hunted into extinction in the savannahs of Africa because poachers were killing them for their tusks, which they sold for a large profit. It was clear that enforcing the laws against killing elephants was not practical because they couldn't field enough agents to cover the vast regions of Africa, and poachers could easily avoid the authorities. People around the world realized that the ivory trade only existed because of the demand, and paying high prices for ivory drove the poachers to meet that demand in order to reap a profit. Most nations responded by banning the import or sale of ivory. The market dried up, poachers couldn't sell their illegally obtained ivory, and elephant populations rebounded.

Similarly, we know how to stop illegal immigration in its tracks. The question is whether we have the political will to do it. The dirty little secret behind illegal immigration is that both parties benefit from its continuation. Democrats see illegal immigrants as a large pool of future Democrat voters, and build their power base on pandering to illegal immigrants to curry favor with Hispanic voters. Republicans depend on illegal immigrants as a pool of dependable low-cost labor. Without them, businesses would have to spend more money paying workers, paying their taxes, providing them with benefits, pensions, and health care, and all the other costs which they avoid by hiring illegal immigrants. In addition, Republicans have bought into the myth that we lose elections because we have failed to reach out to Hispanic voters, and that supporting amnesty is the only way to secure their votes. History refutes this argument, as Republicans won a significantly smaller portion of the Hispanic vote in 1988, after Reagan passed amnesty than they did in 1984.

The proposal being discussed by various Senators is only slightly different than other amnesty bills which have been tried or proposed in the past. It seems to be light on enforcement of our existing laws and heavy on rushing to wave a wand to legalize millions of people whose first act on American soil was to violate our laws. There is no reason to believe that this plan will result in border security being increased to the point where it effectively prevents most illegal crossings. The predictable result will be another flood of people coming across the border to claim the offer of amnesty and legal status to stay in the country. Obama's assurance in his State of the Union that they would have to go to the back of the line of people waiting to immigrate legally makes no sense. The line is in their home country, not in the United States.

So how could we stop illegal immigration immediately? Border security is the most common answer, and that is important from a national security standpoint as well as for the protection of our national sovereignty in controlling who enters and leaves the country. The American-Mexican border is nearly 2,000 miles long, and the American-Canadian border is another 5,500 miles. In addition, the United States has 12,000 miles of coastline. It is far too easy to tunnel under, fly over, swim or boat across these borders, so keeping millions of determined people out of the country is a futile effort.

We need to dry up the demand for illegal immigrant labor just as we did with the ivory trade.

The essential first step is having a dependable system to identifying and documenting legal workers. We have a system called E-Verify which is intended to allow employers to verify the legal status of their employees. But E-Verify has a lot of problems and is not accurate enough to be highly effective. In addition, it does not have an adequate way to positively identify the employee, making it vulnerable to fraud. The system needs to be improved to the point where it is 99.99% accurate or better, probably by incorporating some sort of biometric identification.

Once a robust E-Verify system is in place, employers have no excuse for hiring people who are not legally authorized to be employed in this country. It is already illegal to hire an "undocumented worker", but those laws are largely unenforced. We need to enforce those laws to the point where it is not economically advantageous to hire illegal immigrants. This means imposing stiff fines for a first offense and jail time for the executives of companies who commit subsequent offenses. An employer may hope to save $20,000 a year by hiring an illegal immigrant, so the fine per infraction should be several times that in order to ensure that the payoff is not worth the risk. I would suggest a fine of $50,000 per infraction. Employers could prove that they are in compliance simply by producing the E-Verify approvals for all of their employees. By aggressively enforcing these laws, demand for illegal immigrant labor would quickly dry up, and just as poachers no longer hunt elephants, the flood of people illegally entering the country looking for work would slow to a trickle.

The fact that illegal immigration continues at such a startling rate when it is within our power to stop it indicates that politicians of both parties want illegal immigration to continue. Until the political will to enforce our immigration laws exists, don't expect real solutions.

Blame people, not guns

It happens with amazing predictability every time some deranged individual goes on a murder spree: opportunists seize on the public’s very legitimate sense of the tragedy of the event and twist their righteous anger from being directed at the person who committed the act to instead target the inanimate object used by the killer. They seek to blame the lawless act of one evil madman on the freedom exercised responsibly by millions of Americans, and then to use the force of law to deprive people who didn’t commit the act of their freedom, ignoring the Bill of Rights which expressly prohibits the government from taking such action.

Such efforts generally include politicians holding up scary-looking rifles, which they invariably hold with their fingers on the trigger, pointed at their colleagues who respond with mindless admiration like a bunch of bobbleheads.

The conga line of gun grabbers have a number of mantras which they repeat endlessly.

“No one NEEDS an assault weapon. They have no legitimate sporting use.” Thus the “Bill of Needs” in the US Constitution says that government can impose whatever expedient and reasonable restrictions they wish. Anyone with a lick of historical perspective knows that the Bill of Rights is not about hunting or recreational shooting, but about limiting the power of the government to ensure that it never becomes tyrannical. Military weapons are exactly the weapons which the Second Amendment is intended to protect.

“If it saves just one life it is worth doing.” Which is why Senator Kennedy’s car is still legal? Or hammers, which after all, kill more people than rifles? Or the venerable tuna fish sandwich, weapon of choice for one woman who wanted to kill her husband last year? If you go down the list of mass killings, you have to go quite a ways to find one which used one of the weapons they want to ban. The worst mass murder in American history used box cutters. The second worst mass murder used fertilizer.

“The only purpose of guns is to kill people.” This is perhaps the most asinine one coming from an ignoramus whose freedom to spout such nonsense was bought by men with guns. Police carry guns, not to kill people, but to protect themselves. The mother who last week retreated from a home invader clear into her attic and then shot him with a .38 revolver didn’t use the gun to kill, but to protect herself and her family. Maryann Watkins didn’t use her .38 revolver to kill. She used it to stop an attack, and she did it without firing a shot. Did that gun serve a purpose? Of course it did! My Sig which I am licensed to carry most places I go serves its purpose every day. It has never killed anyone. It is an inanimate object which can be used for good or for evil depending entirely on the person wielding it. You want a good person with a gun nearby if you are in danger. The laws being proposed won’t affect the bad people, only the law-abiding ones. Criminals, by definition, don’t follow the law.

“We need to have an honest national conversation about guns.” I’m bringing the coercive power of the Federal Government against you, but we’re just chatting. Pay no attention to those ATF thugs behind me. We’ll only need them if you are… unreasonable.

“Common sense gun control is not a violation of the Second Amendment.” We’ll decide which guns you need, and we’ll let you have those. Because the Bill of Rights are really just favors the government does for the people when they feel like it. How would they feel about a law which says that they can exercise their First Amendment rights so long as they only express views selected from the approved list or observe only a government sanctioned religion? Don’t you think that the British government thought that taking away the colonists means of resisting their rule was a reasonable restriction? Fortunately, the Minutemen, ordinary citizens, farmers, tradesmen, and clergy, were armed and fought back.

The push for gun control is consistent with the rest of Obama’s agenda and goals. Not only does he push his agenda by demagoguery, threatening horrible things if we don’t give him the tax revenue, borrowing authority, spending, and power over our lives that he craves, he also seeks to create dependency on his benevolence. He wants as many people as possible to feel that they would not have a place to live, a car to drive, a phone to talk on, food to eat, medical care, or protection from criminals if not for his gracious provision. This is why Obama is so popular with single moms. Obama is the ultimate sugar daddy, provider, and protector, a substitute for the father that their family doesn’t have. That can’t work if we can protect and provide for ourselves, which is why married women don’t like Obama as much. They don’t need a father figure. If you refuse to submit to his dependency and instead strive to produce for yourself prepare to be demonized as selfish and immoral. That is how he justifies taking what you produce from you and giving it to someone else who didn’t earn it. Taking away your ability to protect yourself is an integral part of his statist utopian Leviathan.

The hypocrisy of the left extends to gun control as well. The President who lectured us about needing to contribute a little bit more while he was on a three-week $7 million vacation to Hawaii on the taxpayers dime will ram through laws targeting our ability to protect ourselves just weeks after he signed a law giving himself life-long Secret Service protection. You see, armed protection is only for the ruling elite.

Gun control advocates claim that a few small restrictions on our liberty will make us safer. Let’s examine that claim. What kind of restrictions would be necessary to really make us safe? Would even the most onerous restrictions provide safety? In prison, the inmates have no freedom whatsoever. They certainly have no right to a gun, or any other kind of weapon for that matter. They are locked in small cells for most of the day, told when to get up, when to go to bed, when to eat, when to use the bathroom, what to wear, and what to do. Their every move is watched. Their communication is monitored and the items which they are allowed to possess are extremely restricted. Their property, cells, and body is subject to search at any time. Body cavity searches are part of the regular routine. They have no liberty left to restrict. In spite of that, the murder rate in US prisons is 7.2 per 100,000, a higher rate than the national average of 4.8 per 100,000. Prison riots, in which prisoners take hostages, torture, rape, mutilate, and kill people, burn buildings, and generally wreak havoc, occur in spite of the total lack of freedom. This demonstrates that no amount of restriction on people’s liberty will keep bad people from doing bad things. The promise that “we can keep you safe” in return for just a small restriction on your liberty is a fool’s bargain. When one small restriction predictably fails to deliver the safety it promised, another small restriction will be required. And then another. And another…

Inmates in prison are not murdered because they are too free. They are murdered because evil people murder them. Neither are American citizens like the kids in Sandy Brook Elementary murdered because we are too free. The killer, not the weapon, is responsible for the murder. We need to do a much better job of dealing with crime through meaningful sentencing rather than revolving door prison policies. We need better ways of treating mental illness to keep insane people from committing acts of violence. Instant background checks would help keep criminals from getting guns. But no amount of government intervention will stop all violence. The root of violence is sickness in the human heart, and government has no jurisdiction over the heart. How many of the young men who have gone on killing sprees in recent years have had a father actively playing a positive part in his life? Answer: zero. You may remember the “DC sniper”, a young kid who looked to an older man as a substitute father figure. How would things have played out differently if his own father was the father figure in his life? Government can’t make dads raise their kids with sound and loving guidance, but you can make sure that YOUR kids have that kind of guidance. In the end, it is an issue of the evil in men's heart. Government can only deal with the external. It tries to regulate the external because it can’t change what is inside. The only one who can redeem a person’s heart and purge the evil from within is Jesus Christ. Pointing people to Him is far better than passing more laws.

Musings from the brink of the fiscal cliff

I couple of different people have asked me what I think about the “fiscal cliff” which has Washington all in an uproar these days. I do have a thing or two to say about it, so it seemed like a good occasion to break the long silence on my blog.

Before I get into my thoughts about how to deal with the current situation, let’s go back and review how we got here. This is essentially a manufactured crisis, a result of both Republicans and Democrats kicking the can down the road to the point where it can’t be kicked any farther. Three major events are set to happen around the end of December, 2012. Why then? Mainly because Democrats refused to deal with these issues until after Obama secured re-election. Like he did with Obamacare, whose most unpopular provisions take effect in 2013, three years after the law passed, Obama made sure to wait until he is no longer accountable to voters to enact the most onerous parts of his agenda. Republicans have gone along with this abdication of responsibility because they are deathly afraid of being blamed for government shutdowns or interruptions in government services. This fear is largely irrational, but nonetheless it has prevented Republicans from using a series of opportunities to achieve any progress towards fiscal responsibility. I expect the Republicans to cave again, and give Obama most of what he demands. I don’t think that Speaker Boehner has the courage or the strength of conviction to stand on principle. When it comes down to what is best for the country versus political expediency, he will choose the easy way out. You can count on it.

The first element of the “fiscal cliff” is the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Democrats want to make permanent the cuts for the middle income taxpayers, acknowledging for the first time in 12 years that George Bush did cut taxes significantly for the middle class. Republicans want to make all of the tax cuts permanent. This issue has come up twice before. The tax cuts were originally scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. Ending the tax cuts to higher income people is a cornerstone of Obama’s class warfare demagoguery. Obama has used devices like the “Buffett Rule” fraud to lead people to believe that the “rich” are “not paying their fair share” of the tax burden. His efforts were so successful that more than 90% of Obama voters answering an exit poll after the 2012 election agreed with the statement “The rich pay a lower tax rate than the middle class.” At the Democrat convention, one reporter asked many Democrat delegates what tax rate would be fair for rich people to pay. Most of them said that the top rate should be 25 or 30%. They didn’t realize that the top rate is already 35%, and Obama wants to raise it to 39.5%. The Democrat’s position is that unless the “rich” are taxed more, everyone will be taxed more. Republicans want rates for everyone to stay exactly where they have been for the past 10 or 12 years. Obama has said that allowing the middle class tax cuts to expire amounts to a “lump of coal” for Christmas. Obama wants to deliver a lump of coal to the very people who create most of the jobs and produce most of the goods and services that we all use. There is nothing “fair” about raising taxes on the 5% of taxpayers who already pay more than the rest of us combined. I don’t earn even half enough to be affected directly by that tax increase, but I do hope to earn that much someday, and punishing success and productivity through confiscatory taxation makes it harder for everyone to achieve success. Does anyone believe that the problem is that government simply doesn’t have enough money to spend? Seriously?

In addition to the Bush tax cuts, the AMT fix is about to expire. The Alternative Minimum Tax was passed in 1970 to make sure that 155 super-wealthy families could not use tax loopholes to dodge taxes altogether. However, the income amounts in the bill were not indexed to inflation, so with decades of inflation, it would now impact millions of taxpayers. Every year or two, Congress amends the tax so that it continues to apply to only the very highest income taxpayers. Congress could permanently change the law to index to wages, making the repeated patches unnecessary. But they don’t, because they use the tax to pad their long-term budget projections. The CBO uses the law as passed to project the budget deficit for the next ten years. Because the AMT is only changed for this year, they generate projections as if that tax would be collected for the following nine years, even though everyone knows that it will not be. It’s another form of cooking the books, like the Medicare “Doc fix” and arranging Obamacare to collect taxes for the first ten years while only providing benefits for six, to make the bill look like it is deficit neutral. Like the Bush tax cuts, the AMT patch expires at the end of 2012. Without a new patch, millions of families will be hit by a much larger tax than was ever intended.

Remember that the Social Security payroll tax will go up on January 1, 2013 as well. No one is talking about this regressive tax increase which affects every person with an income. When Democrats or Republicans tell you that we can't have a tax increase on lower income people, ask them if they are now in favor of keeping this years payroll tax rate permanently.

The second part of the “fiscal cliff” is an automatic, across the board spending cut. This is the result of a “debt ceiling” deal cut by Congress in 2011. Democrats promised a package of spending cuts in return for an increase in the debt ceiling, allowing them to continue their reckless spending binge. The spending and the debt happened, but not the spending cuts. The default spending cut specified in the deal was an across the board cut. When the deal was cut, no one thought that the default could ever happen. I think that the Republicans failed to think it through, because they would have realized that huge cuts to the military are a Democrat’s dream come true, and the threat of such cuts would give Democrats leverage to demand pretty much anything they wanted. Of course Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of the entitlement programs will be cut too, but that can be blamed on the Republicans. You’ve heard the line over and over: “Republicans threw the poor and downtrodden people under the bus to protect millionaires and billionaires.” Or “Republicans are balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.” Or “Republicans are holding the middle class hostage to the interests of the fat cats.” But Democrats have not offered up their own proposed spending cuts or suggested a way to reform entitlement to prevent them from going bankrupt. Instead they push us at an ever-increasing rate towards a fiscal collapse which will make Greece look attractive, never mentioning that government dependants will bear the brunt of that disaster.

The final component of the “fiscal cliff” is the debt ceiling, which we will reach in early 2013. Congress has raised the debt ceiling twice during Obama’s first term, but the ravenous appetite of the government knows no limit. Whatever money is available to spend, it will spend. In 2008, Obama called President Bush “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” for adding $4 trillion to the debt in eight years. Obama has added $6 trillion to the debt in four years. Obama has had months in which he racked up more debt than Bush did in the entire year of 2007. Obama’s demands include giving him the authority to raise the debt limit without the approval of Congress, allowing government spending to be even further out of control.

I think it is fair to say that Obama inherited a worse situation in his second term than he did in his first term. Who will he blame this time?

Obama’s proposal is to raise the top tax rate, pass a new stimulus package, eliminate the debt ceiling, and promise to cut spending later. You may remember that George HW Bush agreed to a similar deal, including tax hikes with the promise of spending cuts later. Twenty years later we are still waiting for Congress to make good on those promised spending cuts. We would be fools to accept another promise to cut spending later.

Obama claims that he has a mandate to raise taxes on the “upper class”, reverting to his standard class warfare rhetoric. America doesn’t have a class structure. This is not India where people are born into a caste where they will remain for life regardless of their merit, unable to improve their situation. Obama’s exploitation of dependency and resentment and his policies of redistribution destroy the opportunity which free market capitalism provides for anyone to achieve unlimited success. Rush Limbaugh called Obama “Santa Claus” because his party is based on giving away “free” stuff. I think that is slanderous to the jolly old elf. After all, Santa Claus is a producer, not a redistributer. He makes the toys, and they are his to give as he wishes. He doesn’t confiscate the toys from one group of kids in order to curry favor with other kids. Obama was re-elected, so it can be argued that he does have a mandate, but if you listen to what Obama voters said in the exit polls, his mandate is not for higher taxes on the producers, which didn’t even make the “top five” most important issues to Obama voters.

On the other hand, voters also re-elected a Republican majority in the US House of Representatives, and those people ran on a platform of lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, and less government dependency. So a majority of the members of the House of Representatives, where all legislation relating to taxation and spending begins, have a mandate to oppose tax hikes and spending increases, and to pursue pro-growth policies of lower spending, entitlement reform, and fiscal responsibility.

The government can’t spend a dime without the approval of the House of Representatives. The House could take a principled stand by passing a budget package which makes all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, reigns in spending significantly, reforms entitlements in a way which averts the coming bankruptcy of those programs, and eventually balances the budget. Harry Reid’s Senate, which has not passed a budget in three years, would declare the House bill DOA, and together with the White House demagogues, they would blame the Republicans for sending us over the fiscal cliff. Then, in 2014 they would retake control of the House and ram their entire tax and spend agenda down our throats anyway.

Or Boehner could do like he did in the past few fiscal showdowns: give Obama all of what he wants in return for a few insignificant concessions. In the debt ceiling negotiations, Boehner started off asking for $100 billion in spending cuts. He cut a deal, reportedly for $38 billion in spending cuts, but in the end it turned out to be something like $300 million in actual cuts, an utterly meaningless trifle in the context of a government which spends trillions of dollars every year.

Is there a better alternative to caving?

First of all, Republicans must make it clear that any solution must be in the form of a budget. Harry Reid’s Senate has refused to meet the most basic of their Constitutional obligations by passing a budget, which would make them accountable for their unhinged spending binge. Obama has argued for a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction, by which he means tax increases and spending cuts. But his proposals have included only tax increases and spending increases, with actual spending continuing to increase at a staggering rate. That is not a balanced approach. Tax increases should be off the table until Democrats agree on entitlement reforms and sweeping cuts to non-defense spending which will get us on track to balance the budget in a few years. Until they show us a budget which spends less in 2013 than they spent in 2012, we won’t discuss increasing taxes on anyone. Otherwise there is no reason to think that any additional money taken from the private sector will simply be spent in the public sector.

Second, the House should pass a tax reform package making the current rates permanent, and permanently cutting the 25% bracket to 22% and the 15% bracket to 12%. Obama and the Democrats, who claim to be the self-appointed champions of the middle class, should have no hesitation in reducing the tax burden of millions of middle and lower income workers. Send the package to the Senate and let them pass it or reject it. If they refuse, any tax increase which happens can only be because Democrats refused a middle-class tax cut simply because it did not punish the wealthy. Cutting taxes and removing the threat of an impending tax increase is the best thing we could do to revive the economy and end the Obama malaise, and in the long run, a growing economy with more people working and paying taxes and reinvesting their own money is the best way to reduce the deficit and balance the budget.

Finally, the debt ceiling should be changed from a fixed amount to be indexed to GDP. The ceiling should start out at its current percentage of GDP, with that percentage gradually decreasing over time to force a gradual reduction of our dependence on debt. This stops the debt ceiling from being a political football which must be dealt with over and over, and instead turns it into a predictable guard rail to get government spending back under control. Republicans need to understand that the debt ceiling is the ultimate leverage which Republicans have in this showdown. Howard Dean recently revealed, in an unguarded moment of honesty, that Democrats would secretly love the opportunity to raise taxes on everyone and return to Clinton-era tax rates, and they can barely contain their excitement at the prospect of cutting defense. But the debt ceiling is a direct threat to their very life blood -- an ample supply of other people's money to spend on their cronies, dependents, and special interest groups. The ability to deliver free goodies is the secret to Democrat's grasp on power, and a threat to that power is a dire threat to the very existence of the Democrat party. Republicans can get a lot of what they want by tying it to the debt ceiling. Remember that the producers of the Republican party could exist indefinitely and even thrive without the welfare state, but the government class and their dependents couldn't last a month without government handouts.

The term "Fiscal cliff" is intended to inspire fear, but the true disaster awaiting our nation is not reaching January 1, 2013 without Republicans giving in to Democrat's demands. The real catastrophe is what happens if we remain on our current course of spending unmoored to the realities of government revenue, borrowing more and more from China, promising more future benefits with no means to pay for them, eventually reaching a point where America’s obligations grow faster than our economy, destroying our creditworthiness and leaving us with high interest debt which we can never pay off.

Of course the best way to get the government back to fiscal sanity was to fire Obama, repeal Obamacare, and put in place a long-term plan reinstituting constitutional Government under law, implement free market reforms, low taxes, pro-growth policies, and individual liberty rather than government dependence. That didn’t happen, but there are still better alternatives than surrender or political suicide. It will require twisting the Democrat’s arms, and even holding the RINO’s feet to the fire, but if he’s not up to the job, Boehner should step aside and let a real leader lead.

Mega Ripoff

You all heard the hoopla about the "largest lottery jackpot in history." By the end, the media marketing frenzy had succeeded in driving the jackpot "value" up to a claimed $640 million. For a mere dollar you could buy a 1 in 175,711,536 chance at unimaginable wealth. The Supreme Court was hearing arguments about a case which will shape the future of America and either fundamentally redefine the nature of our government, making us into subjects rather than citizens, or retain the founders vision of limited government which respects individual sovereignty, but based on television coverage, you would think that the lottery was the only newsworthy event of the week. How many times can they ask people "what would you do if you win?" and why can't they find someone with better ideas than "I'd pay some bills?" What kind of bills do these people have?

Now that the results are in, we can evaluate the hysteria and determine if buying a ticket was a wise purchase.

Just looking at the numbers, a 1 in 175,711,536 chance at winning $640,000,000 is a good deal. The expected value of that purchase is $3.64, so the one dollar ticket price is a bargin. As they told us in every other sentence, this is the largest jackpot in history, so if a ticket was ever a good buy, it is now, right?

Wrong.

In spite of the widely touted jackpot value of $640 million, each of the three winners got "only" $105 million. While $105 million is still a huge amount of money, it is not anywhere near a record lottery payout, and it makes the numbers much less attractive. A 1 in 175,711,536 chance at winning $105 million is an expected value of less than 60 cents. Paying a dollar for those odds is like taking two quarters and a dime as change for a dollar. Add the expected value of the smaller prizes and the total is still less than 80 cents.

Since the last Mega Millions jackpot was won in January, more than $1,469 million has been spent on tickets. In return, the lottery paid out $105 million to three winners and a total of about $294 million in smaller prizes. The big winners are the state governments and the lottery commissions who raked in $670 million in profits and the Federal Government which collected more taxes than anyone won.

But surely the big losers were the ones who drove up the jackpot in the weeks when there were no winners? Once the jackpot got so high the odds tilted in our favor, right? Again, wrong. In the 4 days leading up to the Friday drawing, people spent $740 million on tickets to win a total of $609 million. Even with the biggest jackpot in history the lottery only paid out 83 cents for every dollar spent.

A few years ago the Consumer Federation of America and the Financial Planning Association published a survey which found that 21% of the population agreed with the statement "Winning the lottery represents the most practical way for me to accumulate several hundred thousand dollars." Last week that strategy worked for 3 people but failed for hundreds of millions. On the other hand, systematically investing 10% of your income in a diversified, tax sheltered diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds is very likely to result in accumulating several hundred thousand dollars, given adequate time.

Par for the course

I listened, along with the rest of the nation, in shock and horror as the news about events at Penn State University unfolded in the news. At every level, from the janitor, to the trainers, to the coaching staff, and all the way to the top levels, including the athletic director and president of a large, state university, faced with the choice between interceding on behalf of children who were being molested or covering it up to avoid upsetting the apple cart, people opted to protect themselves and their situation rather than protect the vulnerable and innocent children.

We were all shocked, disappointed, and maybe even disillusioned to discover that leaders in positions of trust and responsibility were so callous. How could a trainer walk out of the locker room, allowing the rape of a child to continue uninterrupted? There is not a jury in the country who would have convicted that trainer if he had smashed the skull of the rapist then and there. How, then, could he wait until the next day to mention it to anyone? How could agree to close ranks and not report the rape to the police, allowing untold other victims to endure the same violation? How could the coach and athletic director allow these things to continue for years?

Our culture would not accept that, right? We would rise up in outrage and demand justice, wouldn't we?

The verdict is in, years ago. The answer is no, we would turn a blind eye on such an abdication of responsibility if it allowed us to continue our lives undisturbed.

Ten years ago, Life Dynamics investigated the way Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation comply with the laws requiring them to report cases when they are made aware that a child is being sexually exploited by an adult. In more than 90% of the cases, these organizations, using tax dollars, chose to turn a blind eye to the plight of the victim, collect the $400 fee for the abortion, and allow the exploitation to continue. In many cases they actually facilitated the exploitation.

I would encourage you to read the report in the link above. I'm not going into all of the details here. But in short, Life Dynamics investigators called hundreds of abortion clinics operated by Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation, the two largest abortion providers in the country, posing as a 13-year-old girl who believes that she might be pregnant by her 22-year-old boyfriend. In all 50 states, such a relationship is illegal, and health care providers are required by law to report such criminal abuse to law enforcement or child protective agency. In more than 90% of the cases, abortion providers indicated that they were willing to hide the crime and protect the criminal by performing an abortion without notifying the child's parents. In many cases they advised the child to lie about her age or the age of her boyfriend, to give a false address so that her parents could not be notified, or even to cross state lines to evade laws requiring judicial approval in such cases. In more than 90% of cases, they agreed to provide contraceptives to the child, facilitating the continued exploitation of a child by an adult. In many cases they agreed to allow the adult boyfriend to pick up the contraceptives.

Can someone tell me how this is different from the coaching staff at Penn State who allowed a vile child molester to continue raping and exploiting children? The main difference is that Penn State is not a key constituency of the Democrat Party. When this report was released, where was the outrage in the media? Where was the angry outcry from the public? Where was the self-righteous indignation from the same talking heads who have been all over the Penn State case from the beginning? Why didn't heads roll at Planned Parenthood? Where were the investigations, arrests, and prosecutions? Did you even hear about the report? As a society, we closed our eyes, plugged our ears, turned away, and went back to sleep.

Sad to say, the failure to protect victims at Penn State was not the exception . It was par for the course. We need to do better. As Tim Henderson says, the key is to love people and go beyond the minimum required by law. This is a function of families and churches and neighbors and communities, not of government. Indeed, Penn State and Planned Parenthood are both government supported organizations, and looking to the source of the problem for the solution is an exercise in futility. The solution is found only in God's transforming work in the hearts of individuals through faith in Jesus Christ.

Questions for Warren Buffett

Do you remember when reporters used to ask tough, probing questions in an effort to get to the bottom of the issue of the day, rather than simply regurgitating the talking points they are fed? Today, however, the media unquestioningly repeats the President’s mantra as established fact, never bothering to raise the glaring questions to the source of those claims, Warren Buffet.

There are so many questions which need to be asked about Buffett’s claim that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does.

Mr. Buffet, who exactly is your secretary and what percentage of her income does she pay in Federal income taxes? What would her tax bill be if she hired your team of accountants and tax attorneys to fight the IRS on her behalf? How is your secretary’s income tax equivalent to your capital gains taxes paid on growth of money you have already paid income taxes on?

Mr. Buffett, if you believe that you should pay more in taxes, why did you spend the last decade fighting to avoid paying a billion dollars in back taxes?

Mr. Buffett, exactly how much do you feel you should pay in taxes, and why have you not voluntarily contributed that amount to the Federal Treasury? They do accept donations.

More important than probing into the untruthfulness and hypocrisy of Warren Buffett’s claim is a query into the flawed philosophical assumptions behind it.

Mr. Buffett, does a nation become more prosperous because of bigger government or more private sector investment?

Mr. Buffett, who is responsible for creating more jobs, you or your secretary? Who is responsible for creating more wealth, you or your secretary? Can you name one poor person who has brought prosperity to more people than you have? Can you name one government entitlement program which has produced more innovation, more goods and services increasing the mean standard of living more than you have by your investments in American corporations?

Mr. Buffett, your claim that the rich should pay higher taxes is being used by the President to support raising taxes to pay for his stimulus bill. Does the economy benefit more from you investing your money in growing, profitable businesses or from the government taking your money and distributing it to failing companies such as Solyndra? Do the companies you invest your own money in create more jobs than Solyndra? Which are the better criteria to determine which companies will most effectively use the money they receive to create jobs and boost the economy: a solid business model producing profitability and growth potential, or political cronyism?

Mr. Buffett, if the government confiscated all of your wealth and distributed it equally to every American citizen, giving every American roughly $127, how many jobs would we create with our $127?

Mr. Buffett, you are famous for earning a consistently high return on investment. What is the return on investment of the Federal Government?

Mr. Buffett, if the government confiscated 100% of your income from last year, would the deficit be reduced by even one one-hundredth of a percent?

Mr. Buffett, you have pledged to give 99 percent of your wealth to charity. Why do you think that money confiscated from you by the government will do more good for mankind than if you gave it to a charity of your choice?

Mr. Buffett, in a free market economy where buying and selling transactions are voluntary, the only way to make a profit is to produce goods or services which are worth more to the buyer than the price for which you sell them. Thus earning a higher income indicates that you have produced more value for more people than someone who did not earn as much. Why should producing more value be punished by higher taxes?

Mr. Buffett, did you invest your money in Solyndra? Why not? If you determined that Solyndra was not a good investment, why would you want the government to take your money and give it to Solyndra?

Mr. Buffett, the President's first stimulus bill spent nearly a trillion dollars and cost $412,500 per job created, and two years later, unemployment is higher than it was before the stimulus. Would you invest in a company which produced that kind of return on investment?

If not, why would you want to pay more taxes for the wasteful Federal Government to squander?