“The Same Old Things That Have Never Worked”

With those words President Obama dismissed free market solutions proposed by Republicans and signaled his support for government imposed solutions to real or imagined problems in our nation. What he really dismissed were individuals like you and me making our own decisions and being personally responsible for our lives. He dismissed individual freedom in favor of a few “enlightened” individuals making decisions for us. His is a belief that a few bureaucrats and politicians can make better decisions than you and I can in regard to our medical care, our retirement needs, what kind of food to eat, what kind of car to drive, and how much money we should earn.

Barack Obama, like countless would-be dictators before him, believes that if only we would let him do what needs to be done without being impeded by the Constitution, he can and will create a new society. He promised to transform America into an equal and just society, one that is radically different than that of the vision of our Founders. Our President is a utopian and he views barriers to his actions such as the rule of law as obstructions to creating his utopian society. As Mark Levin has written in his book, Ameritopia, “A heavenly society is said to be within reach if only the individual surrenders more of his liberty and being for the general good, meaning the good as prescribed by the state. If he refuses, he will be tormented and ultimately coerced into compliance for conformity is essential.”

As the often quoted, yet unknown author wrote, “Free men are not equal and equal men are not free.” Indeed, to insist that all men (and women) are exactly the same—with equal talents, skills, drive, risk-tolerance, and abilities—would be to deny obvious reality. All men are equal in the sight of God and in a free society, they are equal under the law, but otherwise each individual is totally unique. Individuals are not movements or groups or classes or even races—they are distinctive, unique beings created by God. There was never an individual before them, nor will there be someone after them that will be exactly the same as they are.

There are three aspects of American government—the executive branch, the judicial branch and the legislative branch. The executive—our president—is an individual with all the flaws and imperfections of every other man. All he brings to office is his talents, beliefs, and energy. The most important element is his philosophy of government and his understanding of human nature. Everything else is of much lesser importance. If he understands the fallen state of human nature and thus the importance of limiting government power he will succeed. If he looks upon himself as someone whose job it is to engineer the behavior of individual citizens instead of as a public servant who is to humbly serve them and to operate under the law, he will fail his oath of office and fail the trust of the American people. If he seeks to gather more power to himself instead of seeking to give the individual more power, and autonomy he will fail.

Similarly, the legislative branch of government will succeed only if they remain true to the understanding of the Founders view of limited government. If a legislator views himself as a boss instead of a public servant, he will have violated the trust of those who elected him (or her). Each time a legislator seeks to do something for the “people” he is depriving individual citizens of their right to make free choices as to what they want to spend their money on and who they wish to freely donate to. When a legislator seeks to give away money that is not his to enhance his re-election prospects he has himself become corrupted. When he engages in “log rolling,” i.e. agreeing to dole out money for special projects in another Representative’s District in return for that Congressman’s vote for pork spending in his District, he is guilty of dishonesty. Worse yet, his actions run totally counter to the vision of the Founders who sought citizen legislators who sacrificed to serve their fellow man and who scrupulously sought to live by both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.To do otherwise a Representative serves no one but himself.

A judiciary who views themselves as more than arbitrators of determining right and wrong and the Constitutionality of issues before them has gone beyond their Constitutional mandate. They have become unelected super legislators who re-write legislation and find new unwritten meaning in existing laws. When they issue edicts of taxation they have become potentates who have done violence to the Constitution itself. Those judges who substitute their own views for the law and rely on laws outside the United States have broken their oath of office.

All three branches of government are subject to corruption as all men are subject to corruption. That is the reason the Founders sought to limit the power of government over the lives of individual citizens. When left to their own devices, and given vast power, men will always seek to gain power over the lives of others and to enrich themselves.

Government is and always will be a dangerous public institution. The more power government has, the more your freedom and mine is in danger. And the more involvement government has in the economic sphere, the less fair and honest and productive the economy will be. There is no possible way or reason for you and I to believe that a few men and women in government, in any branch, can make economic decisions affecting our lives better than we can.

The free market is the most fair, the most just, the least corruptible segment of our society when government does not interfere. It is not perfect, but it is far, far more fair and just than any branch of government can ever be. The President is subject to his own failings and shortcomings and he is just one person who cannot possibly weigh fairly and make just decisions affecting every American in a positive way. The less influence he and the bureaucracy of government have over your life and over the lives of all Americans, the more fair, just and mutually beneficial economic choices will be.

Congress is only slightly more fair in its makeup and decision making process than the President. At its worst it is a mobocracy that acts in a self-serving, emotional manner, substituting its limited knowledge and views for the millions of independent choices that responsible American citizens make each day. Democracy is never as fair and just as the free market. Just 51% of the votes by flawed legislators is not an equitable substitute for the free market.

What is the free market? It is simply tens of millions of individual citizens making free choices how and when to spend their money, how and when to save their money, and how and when to give their money to others free of interference from government. That is a true free market. The opposite of a free market is government interference in the form of subsidies, regulations and taxes taking money from its citizens. When a relatively few politicians and bureaucrats make decisions how and when to spend your money instead of you making those decisions fairness, honesty, and productivity are not served. It’s no more complicated than that.

Tyrannical rule by a judiciary is even worse than decisions made by a legislature. In that case a few un-elected officials appointed by politicians, who too often have no commitment or understanding of the Constitution, make laws instead of ruling on the meaning of those laws. When judges seek to engineer social objectives that they believe to be good, they have gone outside the law. Such actions are nothing less than tyranny of the Court and they punish all Americans.

When President Obama derides free market solutions by saying that we want to “…try the same old things that have never worked before” he is simply ignorant of economic reality. Only freedom works. In fact, statism—rule by a few—has never worked. Socialism has and always will be a dismal failure. Social engineering schemes like Social Security and Medicare and Obamacare always fail. They are financially unsustainable structures as are all socialist ventures. Politicians love to create socialist institutions that make millions of voters dependent upon them for their needs of retirement and of health care. Such institutions fail to provide security, provide low quality services, and diminish your individual freedom. And the more dependent voters are, the more they can be manipulated and coerced into giving away even more of their hard won liberty.

The more independent and self-reliant and God fearing voters are, the more they will cling to liberty and eschew reliance on government. Such voters realize that government cannot guarantee anything. Any institution that takes from you to give back to you will always disappoint. God-fearing Americans know that security only comes from God and that any human construction is subject to failure.

Freedom has a foundation. Free societies exist only when there is a consensus of faith in God. The United States of America is not a Christian nation if Christian nation means the official church of the nation. That’s what the nations of Europe are where there is a state church. Today Europe is comprised of very secular states even though they are officially Christian nations. In stark contrast, the United States still has a large and strong group of Christians who strive to live their faith. It is the faith of millions of American Christians that creates and sustains a national consensus of traditional moral values. The weaker that consensus becomes, the more tenuous the commitment to the moral values of our Founders. When the moral foundation of a nation crumbles, self-restraint declines. The fact is that Faith is necessary to the exercise of self-restraint. One cannot believe in God and seek to follow him without striving to emulate Christ. That kind of self-restraint is absolutely essential to the creation of a free society. Without self-restraint, freedom turns into license and license devolves into chaos. At that point, the intervention of government power is necessary to restore order, but as government power grows, individual freedom dies.

Individual freedom cannot exist without economic freedom—your right to decide how to spend and donate your money, your right to choose what to buy and whom to buy it from, your right to offer for sale your goods and services at whatever price and in whatever form that you believe will be attractive to other free citizens. Our President has it backwards. Socialism is and always will be a dead end road to economic misery, inequality, and servitude. Economic freedom is the proven path to prosperity which offers hope and opportunity to every American. It is the American dream in action.

Easter?

Easter—what’s the big deal? It’s just another Sunday. It’s just some sort of religious event. It’s what those Christians celebrate. So what’s the big deal? I don’t go to church, I believe in God, but for me and for my generation, I just don’t see church going or the Easter celebration as a big thing. I’ve got lots going on in my life and there are lots of things that I find more interesting or worthwhile than going to church, even on Easter. It’s just not a big deal to me as it was to my parents or to other folks. If going to church works for them, fine, but it’s not what I’m looking for. In fact, it seems kind of old fashioned to me. After all, this is modern society and thanks to science we have more knowledge of things today than ever before. We are the most informed, most knowledgeable generation in the history of the world. The Bible may be a nice book and all that, but my facts come from science and my reality is my friends, my family, and my job. C'est la vie, as the French say.

Really? Is that all there is to life, to your life? It’s just the here and now that count? Your purpose is just to live life day by day without any thought to why you might be here or what will happen to you after your short life is over. Yes, I said short life. When you get to be 68 years old, as I am, you realize just how short life really is. You also begin to understand how all those things you thought to be important, like living for the here and now and gaining possessions, are so unimportant. Of course you cherish your family and your friends, but you are still an individual, a person who will live his or her 70 or 80 or 90 or even 100 years and then you will die. In fact, you will, in the earthly sense, be dead forever. Those 70 or 80 or 90 or 100 years aren’t much compared with eternity.

Eternity, that’s what Easter is about. It’s about where you will spend eternity. For all the scientific achievements that man has accomplished, he cannot create life. In fact, he can’t even come within a country mile of creating life. And any fool knows there is always a starting point. There is a beginning. God and the book he inspired, the Bible, is all about that beginning. It provides answers for the reason for life, your life. Rather than live a shallow existence for the here and now, God provides us with a real purpose for our life. Man brags about his intelligence and his accomplishments. God offers wisdom, hope and love. Intelligence is not wisdom and cold science is a far cry from hope and love.

The Bible is a fascinating book. It reveals the story of the creation of life by God. It’s a story of the fall of man, who sought to be like God, and a love so great that God created a plan to reconcile himself to fallen, sinful man. It was a costly, painful plan that God executed. He sent his own Son, Jesus, to live a humble life on this earth and to do it without sin. The God who created life and created the universe loved us and loves us so much that he was willing to lower himself to be one of us so that he could save us from our own folly. Science advances, but human nature does not. One would have to be blind to look around the world, or even into our own hearts and believe that we are perfect, without sin. What silliness. The great King David of the Old Testament wrote in Psalm 51:5, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” In fact, all the great leaders of the Old Testament—Abraham, Moses, David, were guilty of great, public sins. These were the men that God personally chose to lead his people and yet they were great sinners—guilty of lying, of killing, of adultery and much more. And then when Jesus came he hung out with prostitutes, tax cheats, and those who comprised the underbelly of society. What is the message here?

God’s message, the message that we need to understand is that everyone, from kings and presidents to those in jail suffer from the same affliction—sin. As “wise” King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 7:20, “Certainly, there is no one so righteous on earth that he always does what is good and never sins.” This is the critical understanding of the Bible. It runs throughout the Old and New Testaments. As Paul said in Romans 3:23, “Because all people have sinned, they have fallen short of God's glory.” Only a fool would believe that he is somehow better than every other human being ever born, that he is without sin. It is only by God’s grace that we can and are rescued from our sins.

And this brings us to the importance of Easter and its meaning for you and for your life. Beginning with Adam all men (and women) rebelled from God. They rejected him and that’s where all our troubles began. They sinned and they passed their sinful ways along to you and me. We took the wrong path and there would be no hope for you and me without God’s plan of reconciliation. By Jesus living that perfect life that you and I are incapable of, and by his painful death of the cross where the innocent died for the guilty, he gives us hope of recapturing the perfection of the Garden of Eden. He took my sins and your sins on Himself so that we don’t have to live without hope, but can rather look forward to death as the gateway to a perfect life that is far, far beyond any pleasure or joy that we have on this earth. It won’t last 70 or 80 or 90 or 100 years, it will last forever. Its value is priceless. And we know we have the guarantee of living forever with the Lord because Jesus rose in triumph over death on Easter Sunday. That’s the important meaning of Easter.

It’s not just another Sunday or just another day of the week. It is a commemoration of the greatest event that ever took place in the history of the world. It illuminates the meaning of life. It clarifies everything.

Here we are focusing on our few years on this earth, but if we don’t pay any attention to the eternity we will spend on the other side of our passage through death, we will have missed the entire story. Don’t miss the full story. Fill your life with hope and joy and purpose by embracing the wonderful message of Jesus this Easter. That’s my prayer for you.

My wife, Kathi, and I wish you and yours a wonderful, joyous Easter celebration.

Of Turkeys and Integrity

On Tuesday, March 13 many newspapers led with a headline similar to that printed in The Washington Times—“Justice Halts Voter ID Requirement in Texas.” Citing a belief that the law was unfairly and illegally targeting Hispanics with the intent of suppressing their vote, the Civil Rights Division of the US Justice Department blocked Texas’ new photo identification requirement for voting. The case, along with a similar case in South Carolina, now moves to adjudication before the Federal Courts. Most, but not all, Democrats oppose taking steps to protect the integrity of the voting process by states requiring photo identification cards, even if those cards are available for free. These laws already exist in a number of states like Indiana. The Civil Rights Division of the US Justice Department has no power over Indiana because Indiana is not covered by the Civil Rights Act, but both Texas and South Carolina are covered by that act.

Those Democrats that oppose such efforts to true the vote claim that it is an attempt to harken back to the bad days of Jim Crow and poll taxes. They say it is a racist effort to suppress the minority vote. They call supporters racists.

The truth of the matter is that the national Democrat machine (that bears a strange resemblance to the Chicago Daly machine) opposes photo voter ID cards because it makes it much harder to steal elections. In the presidential election of 1960 both Illinois and Missouri went for John F. Kennedy by razor thin margins. It is now widely known that these razor thin margins were provided by voter theft in Cook County Illinois and Saint Louis County Missouri. Had there been an accurate vote count in both states, Richard Nixon would have been president, but election fraud made it possible for John F. Kennedy to serve instead. Voter theft is a reality, but it should never be accepted as the norm.

There is only one reason to oppose steps to protect the integrity of the election process and that reason is to encourage voter fraud. As J. Christian Adams documents in his book, Injustice, the Civil Rights Division of the United States Justice Department is an active participant in discouraging the integrity of the vote. The Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is not only full of radical activist attorneys, but they also lack integrity and competence, according to Adams.

The Washington Times wrote of the decision to block the new Texas voter protection law, “Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said he was using the federal government’s power under the Voting Rights Act to block the state’s law.” Who is Thomas Perez? He is the same person who blocked prosecution of the New Black Panthers who intimidated voters outside a voting booth in Philadelphia, by carrying a heavy baton and verbally threatening white voters. The intimidation was documented by FOX News on video tape, so there was no doubt of the intimidation of white voters by these men dressed in combat fatigues. The case was dismissed by the DOJ after these same men who were charged with a civil rights violation by the Bush DOJ and did not show up for the trial. The only step necessary to convict was to ask for a judgment against them, but instead Thomas Perez dismissed the case. Why did he dismiss a clear cut case of voter intimidation that only required a simple motion for conviction?

Here is what happened according to first hand witness, J. Christian Adams…

“Tom Perez would make the argument explicitly, testifying to the Civil Rights Commission that Rule 11 and similar local court rules mandated the case be dismissed. This was a direct attack on the four lawyers on the case, for Rule 11 is an ethical obligation that attorneys don’t bring frivolous claims.”

In other words, his argument, according to Adams, was that the action by the DOJ under Bush to convict the New Black Panthers of voter intimidation was a frivolous case. This is the slanted mindset of Tom Perez who has arranged for the DOJ to sue South Carolina and Texas in an attempt to block implementation of a voter fraud law that will require all voters to show a government issued photo ID in order to vote.

The truth is, as Adams documents, that the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ simply doesn’t care about the integrity of the vote, they only care about advancing their radical left agenda.

Adams relates in his book the approach the radicalized Civil Rights Division of the DOJ proclaimed in regard to Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act which requires that ineligible and dead voters be purged from the voter rolls in each state.

“…I was present at a brown bag luncheon for the Voting Section in November 2009 when Deputy assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes glibly proclaimed that the DOJ would no longer enforce Section 8.

Why?

Fernandez answer was that such enforcement would create a “barrier to the ballot box.”

A more accurate and honest answer would have been that such enforcement would have made it much more difficult to commit voter fraud and steal the upcoming election. Adams continues, “Ironically, her instructions to enforce some laws but not others were precisely what Obama, his current Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez…had accused the Bush DOJ of doing…”

Adams book documents many more cases of ignoring laws that do not fit into the radical agenda of the Civil Rights Division of the US Justice Department as well as clear evidence of attorneys in the Division ignoring the law and allowing corruption of the voting process.

Sadly those in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ have absolutely no commitment to honesty, fairness, and equal justice under the law. They do not have the character or the integrity to attempt to enforce the law equally and fairly across the board and to adhere to the laws as written.

The current attempt to block Texas and other states from ensuring the integrity of the ballot box is contemptible. The reality is that the actions of the DOJ subvert the rule of law and encourage voter fraud.

Today you must have to have a valid photo ID card to buy cigarettes, to purchase liquor, to get food stamps, to obtain over-the-counter drugs such as Sudafed, and to cash a check. It doesn’t have to be a driver’s license. It can be any government issued photo identification card and virtually all individuals that have reached the age of majority have one. If they don’t have one, they can get one for free from their state.

Even the liberals know the importance of photo identification and the fact that every citizen has access to one. Ward 9 Councilman and former Mayor of the District of Columbia, Marion Barry, gives away free turkeys at Thanksgiving to his constituents. Guess what the good Councilman requires turkey recipients to provide before he gives them a turkey for Thanksgiving? You guessed it, a government issued photo ID.

The attempt to protect the integrity of the vote is being thwarted by corrupt politicians and government appointees who fear that an honest vote will not provide the political outcome they seek. It is rank hypocrisy that encourages voter fraud. Fairly losing an election is one thing. Stealing an election is a direct attack on the democratic process. Hopefully, federal judges will force a return to the law and away from the selective enforcement of the law. Banana republics, Hugo Chavez, and Vladimir Putin rely on voter theft to maintain power, but Americans should be able to count on fairness, honesty and the rule of law to preserve our Republic.

Oil: The Key to American Prosperity Today and Tomorrow

President Obama likes to go around and brag about the fact that oil and gas production are up under his presidency. It’s a half truth. Yes, oil and gas production are higher than in the last Administration, but it’s in spite of President Obama and his Secretary of [Less] Energy, Dr. Steven Chu. While oil and gas production are up overall, the fact is that oil and gas production in areas over which the President has control, i.e. offshore and on federal lands, is down 14%. It is only on private lands where the Presidenthas limited power to stop oil and gas production that production is up. And even there, he is doing his best to stop the explosion in oil and gas production through fracking. While the President touts the fact that oil and gas production are up, his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is suing to stop oil and gas production through fracking. To add icing on the cake,he has blocked the Keystone pipeline, reducing American’s access to oil even further. Three times the Keystone pipeline has been vetted and approved for construction, passing all environmental hurdles, but still the President blocks its construction. Whether it is because he wants to reduce oil supplies and raise gas prices as he has previously stated on the record or whether it is to appease his radical environmental allies in an election year, the result is the same. All Americans suffer and those at the bottom of the economic ladder suffer the most.

Dr. Chu has said that he wants the price of gasoline and diesel to climb to European rates of $8 or more per gallon. If that happens it will sound the death knell of American prosperity. Green energy is a liberal fantasy. It’s not a market product and neither it nor oil deserve subsidies. Subsidies only punish the consumer and force him or her to buy products and services they don’t freely choose or to pay higher than market rates for the products and services they want.

Let me add one quick aside in regard to subsidies. In Washington speak reducing an increase in spending is a spending cut. Similarly, tax breaks are now subsidies. In fact, those in government incorrectly refer to tax deductions for your contributions to charity as government subsidies. The implication of that kind of thinking is nothing less than dangerous. The clear implication is that all wealth belongs to the government. Just as a reduction in an increase is not a cut (it’s still an increase), and a reduction in taxes is not a subsidy, it is just less taxes being paid. A subsidy is a cash payment by government to a corporation. There is no other accurate and honest definition. So be wary of news articles about cuts and subsidies.

Now, let’s move on to liberal fantasies about energy. What is it with liberals? They think that by passing a law they can force the scientific development of new fuels and energy sources that would not otherwise occur in the free market. They are living in a dream world. Passing such laws (and they do it frequently) not only displays their engineering and scientific ignorance, they make as much sense as passing a law repealing the law of gravity.

Higher oil prices mean higher gasoline, diesel and heating fuel prices. Such price raises punish all Americans, especially the young and the poor. Higher oil prices mean that you will pay more for the milk you drink, the chicken you eat, the vegetables you buy, and the frozen foods you purchase. Higher oil prices mean that you will pay more for the clothes you wear, the hardware you buy at Home Depot, and the items you purchase at each and every store. Transportation costs are a major contributor to the price of all goods you purchase. So raising the price of gasoline by suffocating the production of oil and gas doesn’t just affect your bill at the pump, it affects every aspect of our economy. In addition, it curtails the freedom that Henry Ford gave Americans when he developed the mass production of automobiles. While there were at one point more than 400 American manufacturers of automobiles, none produced an automobile that was within the reach of the average American until Henry Ford came along. He didn’t invent the automobile, he invented the process of mass production that brought the Model T Ford within the reach of virtually every American. And, in doing so, he paid the highest wages in America. At one point an American could purchase a running Model T Ford for under $150. The free market drove Henry Ford to find a way to place automobiles within the reach of all Americans. It is only through the free market that we will find other energy sources at competitive prices. Subsidies are a fools game that solve nothing and reduce the standard of living of all Americans.

Sadly, today’s liberals have no respect for average Americans and they don’t care about individual freedom for Americans. Frankly they look down their nose at the hard working, church going, stand up American who loves his nation. They really believe (like Rousseau, Hitler, Lenin and Mao before them) that a chosen few can make better decisions about what you should wear, what you should eat, what you should drive, and even what you should believe than you do. They actually believe that a few really smart (but sadly not necessarily wise) people can make better decisions than tens of millions of Americans about what to buy, where to buy it, what to pay for it, where to live, and what to drive than they can. It’s a mind boggling concept that has been tried over and over and over again without success throughout history, but liberals still cling to the fantasy that if only they have more power they will create a more fair and more just society where everyone will prosper. In reality what happens when any collection of sinful, frail human beings have more power is more corruption, less prosperity, and less freedom for all. It’s what the Founders understood and what they tried to guard against the most when they wrote the United States Constitution.

The core source of theliberals intent to raise gasoline prices, diesel prices and force Americans to ride mass transit and live in ant hills springs from their love affair with European socialism. They see themselves as the benign wielders of more and more power over your lives for the good of the people. Autocrats throughout history have portrayed themselves as the defenders of the people, while taking more and more power from individuals and making their lives more miserable. Constricting our energy supplies is, as they would say, being done for our own good. They may even believe it, but you and I know better.

Oil is the key to American prosperity today and tomorrow. Oil and gas fracking have placed energy independence and inexpensive fuel within our reach if Obama and the government will just get out of the way. Newt Gingrich says we can get gasoline prices down to $2.50 per gallon, but even Newt is understating the opportunity that we have as Americans. If we open up public lands to oil and gas exploration (and yes, it can be done without damaging the environment) there is no reason that gasoline prices should not fall to less than $1.50 per gallon.

Opening up the production of oil will not only lower energy prices, it will create millions and millions of new, high-paying blue collar and white collar jobs. It should be something the unions are four square behind. And in fairness, they do support the Keystone oil pipeline, but their blind allegiance to Obama and his radical policies hamstrings them from becoming true allies of prosperity. The public unions now dwarf the power and size of unions in the private economy. They call the shots and with the government types ideology comes first.

Economist Steven Moore, writing in the Wall Street Journal, put it plainly: “…President Barack Obama insisted that ‘we can't just drill our way out of’ our energy woes. Actually, we can…” In his article, Mr. Moore draws a comparison between California, a state that used to be one of the nation’s top producers of oil, and upstart North Dakota that has embraced oil production through the fracking process. While the Democrats in California have destroyed a once prosperous state, North Dakota has become a powerful and prosperous state with budget surpluses, high paying jobs, and a bright economic future. For example, Willston, North Dakota has become the oil boom capital of the United States. This once sleepy town of less than 15,000 has doubled in size. There is a housing shortage, and the unemployment rate in North Dakota is 3.3%. McDonalds is not only paying $18 per hour for starting jobs, but even offering a starting bonus. The Bakken Field in North Dakota may contain as much as 40 million barrels of oil. The Marcellus Shale deposit covers roughly 60% of Pennsylvania and extends into New York, Maryland and other Eastern Seaboard states. To put it quite simply the United States has more than 100 years of known oil and gas reserves. That is just known reserves. Who knows how much more oil and gas deposits are still out there?It’s an unknown. It was initially thought that the Bakken oil field might have up to 4 billion gallons of oil, but the estimate has grown to about 10 times the original estimate and just recently they discovered new shale deposits at a lower depth. North Dakota alone now has more known and recoverable oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. California in contrast has choked off access to known oil reserves and soon, very soon they will be asking the federal government to bail them out. California will be the new Greece, but ten times worse. It’s all caused by reckless spending, and bad choices like shutting off access to oil and gas production.

The Bakken field is the primary reason oil and gas production has grown over the past few years, frankly to the chagrin of our President and the anti-scientific, self-styled intellectuals in his Party. Russia has truly vast oil and gas resources, but today our reserves are nearly as vast as all of Russia. By exploiting these reserves, drilling off the East Coast, expanding drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and opening up just ten square acres in the ANWR region of Alaska the United States can become energy independent and prosperous in just a few short years. It’s all within our reach if the politicians and the federal government will just get out of our way.

Sadly, it’s the last thing President Obama wants. He has been brainwashed by out of touch, out of reality Marxist professors who have convinced him that the free market doesn’t work. The free market and the law of supply and demand is just as valid as the law of gravity, yet, for ideological reasons this president rejects that reality. He suffers from the delusion that American prosperity has been gained off the backs of the poor and minorities both here at home and around the globe. He rejects the idea that America is or ever was a special nation blessed by God. He scoffs at the idea of American exceptionalism and at the idea of the United States as the land of opportunity where any American can go as far and high as his talents, hard work, and God’s blessing take him.

Turn on the oil spigot Mr. President! Open up your eyes and your mind to the greatness of America. Quit punishing the young and the poor because you are captive of a strange and radical ideology that seeks for America to become less than it has been in the past and that it can be in the future. Make this the land of opportunity again by getting out of the way of free people making free decisions about how they want to run their own lives. Quite kicking away the ladder of opportunity for the poor and minorities who wish to share in the American dream.

Come on Mr. President! Wake up and smell the roses. Give thanks for being born an American. Provide proud leadership of the greatest nation in the history of the world. Let the world know that America’s best days are yet ahead of us. Embrace liberty and freedom for all Americans and rejoice in the genius of the American free enterprise system that has provided more opportunity and more prosperity to more people than any other system in the history of the world. Marvel at the generosity of the American people and their noble character. You are a young man who has been greatly blessed by those who founded this nation and those who came after. Get back on track or go down to ignominious defeat as a failed president.

It’s your choice. Either lead or get out of the way. Americans are an independent people who cherish their freedom. They don’t suffer fools in public office lightly. You have driven our nation into the ditch. It’s time to return to proven values and proven principles as enumerated by our Founders or else it’s time for someone else to drive. What will it be Mr. President?

Of Sluts, Apologies, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech and Shame

My, my, my, what a tangled, convoluted, public discussion we are having today about a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It reminds me of stream of consciousness rambling by people we have all encountered. They start talking about one topic, meander through a few more topics and end at a point so distant from the original subject that you have no inkling how to respond.

If you can possibly recall, this discussion started with Obamacare and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issuing a ruling that all institutions that provide health insurance must pay for contraceptives. This ruling infringes on freedom of religion in the United States and violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution that reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

When the federal government tells a Christian College that its medical insurance coverage must include paying for the cost of contraceptives for unmarried women, it is prohibiting the free exercise to religious beliefs. It is telling that College or other religious institution that it must violate what it believes to be immoral, i.e. sex outside of marriage. It is telling Christian business owners that they must violate their religious beliefs.

Because Obamacaremandates participating in Obamacare by all institutions, businesses and individuals (another Constitutionally questionable endeavor which shall not be discussed here) it now insists that the First Amendment of the US Constitution be ignored. In short, the government is demanding that religious individuals and organizations must violate theirbelief in a higher law, God’s Seventh Commandment…

You shall not commit adultery.

This is the issue at stake. President Obama, who recently reiterated his allegiance to Christianity at the National Prayer Day, is insisting that the Obamacare law takes precedence over the United States Constitution.

This should be the end of the story. But, it’s not.

When the Catholic Church and Christians all across America rose up in righteous outrage over this infringement on their rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the Democrats and the White House realized they were in trouble, deep political trouble. They had made a major miscalculation.

What to do? What to do? The solution, change the narrative? Fuzz the issue. And, of course, blame the Republicans.

On February 16, 2012, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the contraceptives mandate by Secretary Sebelius. The Democrats were allowed to provide witnesses and they scheduled one to give testimony. However, at the last moment they withdrew that person from testifying and asked that Sandra Fluke testify. The first witness had been fully vetted in regard to his expertise, a typical process for Committee witnesses. Sandra Fluke could not be vetted in time to testify, so Congressman Darrel Issa, Chairman of the Committee denied her the opportunity to provide testimony and she did not testify.

The Committee hearing was largely ignored by the news media because they did not wish to highlight the fact that the Obama Administration had trampled on the First Amendment. Since the Democrats were unsuccessful in having Sandra Fluke testify, they decided to hold a rump Committee hearing. Essentially it was a staged political event which was, of course, widely covered by the compliant news media.

It was at this sham Committee hearing that Sandra Fluke spoke. To use the word testify would be to greatly stretch the concept of testimony. Congressional hearings require that those who testify provide first hand, personal testimony, and are not allowed to provide hearsay reporting. But that, of course, is what Sandra Fluke did as we now know.

Who is Sandra Fluke and why, if she wanted free birth control, did she seek out a Georgetown University Law School, a prominent Catholic institution? The answer is that this 30 year old has a long record of radical left activism. Ms. Fluke served as President of “Students for Reproductive Justice” and according to Cathy Ruse, former Chief Counsel of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, “…made it her mission to get the school to give up one of the last remnants of its Catholicism.” Ms. Fluke’s “testimony” before this sham Committee was a political speech at best and had absolutely nothing to do with the question as to whether the ruling by Kathleen Sebelius was Constitutional or unconstitutional. It was in short a political stunt and her “facts” turned out to be less than accurate. But, of course, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS, ABC, NBC accepted her statements without questioning the accuracy of her statements. Ms. Fluke complained that having to buy your own contraceptives was too great a burden on her and her many (unidentified) women friends, costing them $3,000 over the three years of law school. Just for the record, a quick investigation by the folks at The Weekly Standarddetermined that the cost of a popular contraceptive at a drugstore near the Georgetown University campus was $297, less than 10% of the amount cited by Ms. Fluke. But again, what does the cost of condoms have to do with the Constitutionality of Kathleen Sebelius issuing a regulation that all religious institutions pay for something that they deem to be immoral. That is still the point of this discussion that the left wing media dutifully ignore.

At this point the story becomes even more bizarre. Normally Rush Limbaugh is quite eloquent and artfully crystalizes issues, i.e. the Constitutionality of the Sebelius ruling. However, in this case, Rush’s eloquencefailed him. When I listened to him discuss the bogus Democratic hearing at which Ms. Fluke spoke, he ran off the rails. I knew it at the time. It’s OK for Ed Shultz at CNN to call conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham a “slut” but the same rules don’t apply to conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh. In fact, Rush was wrong when he called Ms. Fluke a prostitute. There is no evidence or reason to believe that she sold herself to make money. Rush was just plain wrong and he gave aid to the Democrats in taking this discussion far, far away from the topic which is whether the Sebelius ruling violated the First Amendment of the Constitution. I apologize for keep repeating the issue, but this story has so many twists and turns that it’s easy to get lost.

As to whether Ms. Fluke is a slut, who knows? A slut is a woman of low character who is sexually promiscuous according to my dictionary. Frankly, I think it’s likely that she would meet that definition, but I don’t have any proof that is the fact. Call me old school, but I do find it shocking that an unmarried woman would talk openly of her adulterous activities, even complaining that someone else should be paying for her immoral behavior. Bill Bennett has bemoaned the fact that today there is no shame in America. He is, of course, right. God’s Ten Commandments have been replaced by a secular code that boils down to, if it feels good, do it. This code of relativistic values is a cancer on our nation. It has destroyed marriages, broken up families, sentenced children to lifelong poverty, encouraged disrespect for the law, coarsened our society, and undermined our public institutions.

Sadly, it was just a quick hop, skip and a jump by President Obama from speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast and calling Ms. Fluke and then holding her up as an female icon for our nation. How embarrassing that the President of the United States and a self-identified Christian would encourage and defend the behavior of a young woman who lives an openly adulterous life? Is this the kind of character we want as the President of the United States? But, of course, the President acted because it was good politics and took the discussion further off the issue as to whether the Obamacare ruling by Kathleen Sebelius violated the First Amendment of the Constitution which is the issue at hand.

But let’s keep this stream of consciousness public discussion going, shall we? Now the issue is, according to the mainstream media and the Democrats, about whether Rush Limbaugh should be thrown off the air. Calls have been made to stations, to advertisers, and petitions signed demanding that Rush not only apologize, but be thrown off the air. Well, I can’t see into Rush’s heart, but I am, as a Christian, required to take his apology at face value. It wasn’t one of those “I’m sorry that you are offended by what I said” fake apologies you hear so often from politicians.

The essence of Christianity is about forgiveness, not retribution, not getting even. Yes, God is a just God and he can’t let us into heaven as unjust human beings, but he executed a plan to have his son Jesus(who lived a perfect life)take all our sins on himself, so that he could impugn righteousness to us. It’s not that Christians don’t sin and even do the same things that Ms. Fluke says she does. It’s the fact that they know such activities are wrong and ask God for forgiveness and more importantly, receive forgiveness.

But now I’m getting far off the topic which is whether or not the ruling by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is Constitutional. It’s the last thing the media wants to talk about. The last thing the Democratic Party wants to talk about. And certainly the last thing President Obama wants to talk about. So they won’t because there is no integrity left in the mainstream news media.

All I ask is that the next time you hear the name Sandra Fluke you think about one thing and one thing only—the total disregard for the United States Constitution by the Administration of President Barack Obama.

Stark Contrast

The 2012 election offers a stark contrast in political philosophies, the same stark contrast that existed between the vision of the Founders and that of the British monarchy at the time of the American Revolution—more government and less individual freedom versus less government and more individual freedom. Today’s Republican Party stands for limited Constitutional government and maximum individual freedom, and today’s Democratic Party under the leadership of President Barack Obama stands for more government and less freedom. That is the bottom line choice of the 2012 elections and the ramifications of the choice that will be made by the voters in November will decide if the United States of America will return to its roots of limited government, or whether we will continue down the road to more and more government that leads inevitably to tyranny.

The election is not about which candidate is nicer or kinder or works harder, but about the philosophy of that presidential candidate and indeed all candidates for federal office. It should not need to be said that expanding the role of government means less individual freedom, because for more than 150 years Americans learned about the priceless principles of America’s Founders. Sadly, that is no longer true today. Our children’s history text books, teachers, and professors simply do not tell the truth about the history of America or the principles of our Founders. The Founders are pictured as privileged few who created a society that benefited them at the expense of others. Great American leaders like Washington, Adams, Coolidge and Reagan are mocked, while those who have expanded government and reduced individual freedom like Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Obama are praised.

President Obama dismisses the idea of America as an exceptional nation because he does not believe it. He sees America as just another nation that has prospered due to luck and the belief that prosperity was gained through the oppression of minorities and by exploiting the wealth of other nations. He cannot explain why millions and millions around the globe wish to become Americans. He ignores the fact that the flow of illegal immigrants comes from the South to the North into the United States rather from the US to Latin America. Our President rejects the idea that America is the land of opportunity and that every American has the opportunity to succeed or fail based on his hard work and the blessings he receives from God. Obama simply does not understand what US Senator Jim DeMint understands about the history of our nation when he writes in his book, “Now or Never”…

“The American vision was founded in the Judeo-Christian belief that mankind is inherently sinful and must be constrained internally by a fear of God and externally…by societal incentives that motivate people to improve themselves and serve the common good. The secular European vision was founded on the belief that mankind is inherently good and perfectible if society is properly planned and managed.”

This is the dividing line between today’s liberals in the Democratic Party and conservative leaders in the Republican Party. One direction leads to a return to the values and principles of the Founders who created the United States of America and the other direction leads to a collectivist state where our lives are and our wealth become tools of the liberal elite.

The implications of this choice are truly dramatic.

The means of control over our lives are more government regulations and higher taxes. Unbelievably some argue that you can have more regulations and greater freedom. Some argue that Socialism is not incompatible with individual freedom. It would be easy to laugh at such silly arguments were it not for the fact that millions and millions of Americans have been brainwashed into believing such irrational nonsense in our schools and via our left wing news media. It’s not that the young people in our schools aren’t just as smart at previous generations or that men and women who get their news from the major news sources aren’t intelligent. It has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence; it has everything to do with wisdom. It is, as the late William F. Buckley, Jr. said, “It’s not that they aren’t smart, it’s just that so much of what they know isn’t true.” That’s a kind way of saying that Americans have been lied to over and over and over again.

The 2012 choice is between government spending within its means and taking a minimum of dollars from Americans, a sure and steady path to prosperity, stability, and a better future for our children and grandchildren, and government continuing to spend money we don’t have that will burden our children and grandchildren for decades to come. No family or nation ever spent its way into prosperity. No nation ever survived without a strong, stable currency.

The 2012 choice is between traditional moral values as personified in the Ten Commandments, and the new morality that has brought about broken homes, shattered marriages, a more coarse and violent society. The attacks on Christianity and freedom of religion have their origin in the rejection of moral values that oppose sex outside of marriage, faith in God as the creator and ruler of the universe, the killing of babies and virtually any activity that gives pleasure to the doer, regardless of the consequences. After all, it was Illinois State Senator Barack Obama that strongly supported legislation that provided for a second doctor to be called in to finish the job if an abortion was botched (i.e. the baby was born alive). In the liberals universe abortions and death panels are simply tools to cull out the people who may burden society unnecessarily. They not only reject an all-powerful, almighty and loving God, they seek to be Gods themselves, just as the Devil promised in the Garden of Eden.

The 2012 choice is between addressing manufactured counterfeit crises designed to increase the role of government in your life (obesity, climate change, health care, etc.) and the real crisis of financial collapse and moral implosion. Liberals twist and distort science to achieve their goals of more control over our lives. For liberals, climate change is a holy doctrine that all Americans must bow to even though the science does not support their outrageous claims. They ignore the fact that Americans have a longer lifespan than virtually any other country in the world, demanding that we eat what they deem appropriate. They scream health crisis even though health care in the United States is far better than any other place in the world. They ignore the reality that their spending has created a debt that is unsustainable, demanding even more deficit spending that puts our nation at the mercy of creditors like Communist China.

The 2012 choice is between a president who understands that his role as Commander and Chief means protecting the United States from foreign enemies, and one who believes that the United States is responsible for all the problems in the world and if we will only apologize and unilaterally disarm, we will have peace. It’s a choice between a president who believes in peace through strength and one who thinks the road to peace depends on the weakness of America. One road leads to a secure America, the other leads to more wars, and more attacks like 9/11.

Which direction will American voters take in 2012? Will they return to the Founders principles of limited Constitutional government built upon a foundation of faith and an understanding of human nature, or will we take the road that leads to collectivism? Will the torch of American freedom continue to burn bright as a beacon to the world, or will it be extinguished by an alluring attachment to a false utopia?

The victory of the tiny thirteen colonies over the most powerful nation in the world can be explained only as a miracle of God. There is no other cogent explanation. Our Founders put their faith in God and although their earthly might was negligible, they triumphed, risking all—their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Since that beginning, Americans have faced threat after threat—from other nations, from the cancer of slavery, from the Soviet Union, and yet we have been preserved and sustained as we turned to God for help. This crisis, this election will determine if future generations live in freedom or as slaves to the state. The generations that preceded us fought to save America and were not found wanting. Can we be counted on to do the same? We will learn the answer to that question on November 6, 2012.

Punishing Young Workers

I have a company with about 35 employees. While we have a goodly number of older employees like me, we also have quite a few younger employees, some just out of college. Both single and married, these hard working, enterprising young people are in their early, full time employment years. Because they come with little or no experience, they start on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, just as their parents did. Regardless, they are energetically working their way up the ladder of success, as they define success. These young employees mirror millions of other young people in America of both sexes, all races, and with various God given skills and abilities. It’s an exciting time for these young people, especially because they have been blessed to be Americans. They know from their parents and from their grandparents that the United States is the land of opportunity where anyone can climb the ladder of success, regardless of their background, if they work hard, take risks, and their efforts are blessed by God. It is this freedom to go as far as you choose with your education, and then find a job that fits you. It’s what the founders might have called the pursuit of happiness.

As Americans we grow up thinking that this kind of freedom and opportunity exists for people all across the globe, but sadly that’s not true. It’s not just in countries where a dictator runs the show that opportunities like those that exist in the United States are denied. No, the soft socialist countries like those in the European Union—England, France, Germany, Italy, etc.—don’t give their citizens the opportunities to achieve and succeed like we do in America. The stories of men and women who achieved success from the most meager and even desperate circumstances in the US are too numerous to recount. It is a vital part of our American legacy.

Sadly today, the federal government, at the direction of President Barack Obama, is hell bent on a course that threatens to bring an end to the opportunity to be upwardly prosperous in our land. This war includes punitive taxes, stifling regulations, and the topic of this blog, needlessly expensive energy—electricity, gasoline, diesel, coal, fueloil, and nuclear power.

Expensive energy kills jobs and puts people out of work. It hurts everyone, but it hurts the poor and young workers the most. It hurts the poor because when you are poor and trying to work your way up the economic ladder, the percent of money you spend on gas for your car and fuel for your home is much higher than it is for those more prosperous. In fact, high energy costs are one of the largest impediments to upward economic mobility for the working poor.

For a young person who is relatively new to the marketplace, high energy costs cause great pain. Discretionary income and financial assets are generally at a minimum for the new worker in his first full time job. And when he or she gets married and then has children the problem only increases. If the couple needs housing, they are forced to live further from their place of employment to get a home that is adequate for their growing family. The price of the home costs more for a number of reasons, one of which is the cost of energy that brings the materials to build the house. Higher gas costs increase the amount that must be spent by the company and the workers to get to the construction site. But that’s only the beginning. Since young married couples have to live farther away to afford housing, their personal cost of transportation to their job increases when gasoline prices go up.

None of this seems to be on the radar screen of the Obama Administration. Or (and I hope this is not the case), they just don’t care about the poor or the young. President Obama stubbornly refuses to open up drilling that would dramatically reduce the cost of gasoline, the cost of fuel oil, and even the cost of natural gas. That latter item—natural gas—is a strange case. On the one hand, he takes credit for the development of natural gas coming from shale and, on the other hand, his Department of Environmental Protection (EPA) is suing to stop exploration and production of natural gas from shale.

The sad truth is that this President has no interest or desire to lower the price of energy. His intent and desire is to raise the cost of fuel. While he sneeringly mocks Republican Presidential candidates who want to lower the price of a gallon of gas from nearly $5.00 to $2.50 or less by allowing full and total exploration and production of our vast oil, coal, and gas reserves, he pursues an intentional program designed to drive Americans into smaller and smaller and more expensive cars. He seeks to move Americans from homes in the suburbs to anthills—small condominiums where people are concentrated together. His is a recipe for a less prosperous America that is no longer the land of opportunity, but instead a weak, European socialist state.

He is punishing young workers to satisfy his dream of a socialist America where a few chosen elite decide where you will live, how much prosperity you will be allowed, what kind of car you will drive, and even what kind of food you will eat. The poor will no longer have an opportunity of climbing the economic ladder. Instead the poor will become permanent wards of the state that can be countedupon to deliver their votes on election day. Obama and his socialist friends think of them and of you and I as the little people who need guidance and direction in order to live lives that they choose for us.

By intentionally driving up energy costs, he is interfering with the free choices of millions of individual Americans and substituting for their choices those of a few bureaucrats and politicians who know better than we do how to live our lives. The dream of the Founders is slowly dying as those who despise America and everything it stands for seek to create their utopia. But it will never be enough. They will continue to regulate, control, and stifle individual freedom and individual choices until the lamp of liberty has been snuffed out entirely. That is the way of tyrants. Socialists like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez and their followers may seek utopia, but the end result is always the same—tyranny.

Whether the intentions are good or bad, it makes no difference. As has been said, if your house burns down, it doesn’t matter if it was caused by an arsonist or a fool with matches, the result is the same. If we continue down the path of Obama, the end result for our children and grandchildren will be tyranny, nothing less. It all comes down to the outcome of the 2012 election.