FJM Blog

By Herman Cain

“Memorial Day is supposed to be a time to remember and honor those who have given their lives for this nation and its founding principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is also a welcome break from the constant political theater in Congress disguised as public policy, which dishonors our military heroes and heroines.” – Herman Cain (Memorial Day article May 2007)

In 2007, the political theater consisted of congressional hearings to grill the oil executives because gasoline prices were skyrocketing. Those hearings produced absolutely nothing.

In 2009, the hearings to nowhere have been targeted at the automobile company executives, which have not stopped the inevitable bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors. But the taxpayers got to spend billions of dollars (courtesy of our Democrat-controlled Congress) to delay the inevitable.

In this case, the hearings produced an absolute waste of taxpayer money.

In 2007, the “new direction” Democrat-controlled Congress was trying to force President George W. Bush to establish a date of certain withdrawal from Iraq, which most veterans and military personnel viewed as a dishonor to those who serve and those who had given their lives for this country.

In 2009, the “new direction” Democrat-controlled Congress with a newly elected Democratic president is trying to force socialism down the throats of the people of this country on a fast track. Consider the evidence:

1. Government control of the major banks in this country
2. Government control of the automobile industry
3. Government control of the largest mortgage companies (Fannie and Freddie)
4. Government control of the largest insurance company (AIG)
5. Government control of the failing Medicare system
6. Government control of the failing Social Security system

All of this government control is supposed to be temporary. The income tax withholding of 1943 and the loans from the Social Security fund in 1969 were temporary. This is 2009 and they are still temporary.

The Democrats have also proposed control of the entire health care system, and an unprecedented expansion of government to regulate the air. They call it “cap and trade”. It’s just another tax, and another way to suffocate the U.S. economy, just as the tax code suffocates job creation in our country.

President Obama inherited a national debt of $9.5 trillion, a recession and two wars. However, he and the Democrat-controlled Congress have accelerated the spending and the buildup of the national debt, all in the name of a “crisis”. Consider the facts:

• $750 billion in TARP spending (President Bush spent the first half)
• $787 billion spending “stimulus” bill
• $1.8 trillion fiscal 2009 projected deficit
• $18.5 trillion projected national debt in 10 years (Double the current debt)
• $56 trillion in federal unfunded liabilities (Medicare and Social Security)

Regardless of which political party has controlled Congress or the White House, there has been no attempt to resolve the unfunded liabilities problem. It’s a mess.

Financial disaster is eminent.

This is a dishonor to the fallen heroes and heroines of this nation. They did not die for a bankrupt country, or the United Socialist America. They died because they believed in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Let’s not forget what they died for, and what we must fight for.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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By Star Parker

Four Republicans – Sens. Coburn and Burr and Reps. Ryan and Nunes – have fired the first salvo in the great health care reform debate.

They’ve introduced the Patients’ Choice Act. Now, although we have a pretty good idea of what Democrats have in mind, we await crystallization of their ideas into legislation.

The difference of approach of the two parties on health care rides on the same basic question that divides the country and the parties on everything else. Are the problems we’re facing today the result of too much government intervention in our economy and our lives or not enough?

The Patients’ Choice Act reflects Republican thinking that health care costs are out of control and, as result, not affordable for many, because of too much government. It allows Americans to take direct control of their health care expenditures by giving families and individuals cash in the form of a tax credit ($5,700 and $2,300 respectively) to buy insurance and set up a Health Savings Account.

Democrats will take things in the opposite direction. Rather than controlling costs and access through more competition and consumer control, they see it coming from more government and regulation – mandates on employers to provide insurance, fines if they don’t and using those funds to finance a new subsidized government plan.

And central to cost control are government bureaucrats defining what procedures may be used and determining what physicians will be compensated.

I’d suggest two considerations in assessing whether today’s runaway costs and inefficiencies are the result of too much government or not enough.

First, we already have massive government involvement in health care. Practically half of all health care delivered today comes directly from government programs – mainly programs begun in the 1960s: Medicare, Medicaid and then later the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Only 35 percent of health care is paid for through private insurance. Eighty-seven percent of it is paid for by third parties – either government or employers. In 1960, 60 percent of Americans’ health care expenditures were out of their own pocket. Today it is 12 percent.

So massive growth in health care spending and cost escalation correlates directly with increasing government involvement in this marketplace and decreasing consumer control over their own expenditures. Does this tell you something?

Second, to see government health care at work, we don’t need to look at Canada or Great Britain or Cuba. Fifty-nine million Americans already have it. It’s called Medicaid.

Medicaid was passed in 1965 to cover health care for poor Americans. It is a pure entitlement. If you qualify, you are covered. Government, both federal and state, pays.

Bureaucrats define what is covered and how much physicians will be paid. And, as result, there is a huge gap between being covered and actually getting health care.

On average, 40 percent of physicians won’t accept Medicaid patients. They are paid less than what it costs them to provide the care. In a survey done last year by Merritt Hawkins, a health care manpower firm, 65 percent of physicians said reimbursements from Medicaid were less than their costs.

Merritt Hawkins did a survey this year of physicians of different specialties in 15 different cities on acceptance of Medicaid patients. In Washington, D.C., for example, which has the highest incidence of children living in poverty in the country, only 63 percent of surveyed physicians in family practice will accept Medicaid patients.

A federal district appeals court ruled just a few weeks ago, affecting Alabama, Florida and Georgia, that state Medicaid programs can’t be forced to pay if they disagree with a doctor’s decision regarding care. In this particular case, Medicaid officials disagreed with the amount of nursing care prescribed by a physician for a teenager who suffers seizures.

A study cited by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a physician and health care expert at the American Enterprise Institute, showed Medicaid patients 50 percent more likely to die after heart bypass surgery than patients with private coverage or Medicare.

Move the whole nation onto a new government health care plantation?

No thanks. I’ll take freedom and personal responsibility.

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By Jeffery Temple

Our nation came about from a rebellion against colonial rule.

Now, 233 years after that independence was declared, the Obama Administration is poised to accelerate a trend to once again place Americans under the thumb of foreign authority.

President Obama has nominated Yale professor Harold Koh - a self-described “transnationalist” - to be his top legal adviser at the State Department.

According to Koh in a 2006 Penn State Law Review article, “Transnationalists believe that U.S. courts can and should use their interpretive powers to promote the development of a global legal system.”  Koh can therefore be expected to favor some international laws over our own, all to the detriment of American sovereignty.

International treaties, old and new, will likely provide the most convenient means of introducing such foreign intervention.  The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are unratified treaties likely to receive renewed attention from the Obama Administration.

It’s expected that the White House will push for Senate ratification of these disregarded treaties, bringing the United States under their mandates.

LOST, in defining rules for the use of the world’s oceans, would thwart U.S. military power. Consider the growing piracy threat.  LOST would prevent U.S. forces from apprehending suspect ships - pirate or otherwise - once they cross into “the territorial sea of its own State or of a third State.” Instead of increasing safety and justice, criminals are protected while our ability to protect our national interests is undermined.

Instead of simply promoting equal gender rights, Dr. Christine Hoff Sommers of the Independent Women’s Forum notes that CEDAW “mandates government intrusion.”  She adds that the treaty “requires federal coercion of matters that have constitutionally and historically been left under state control, including family law and education.”  CEDAW also strongly advocates for abortion and promotes the decriminalization of prostitution.

The ICC - signed with reservations by President Bill Clinton and rescinded by President George W. Bush - could assert foreign jurisdiction over U.S. servicemen and civilians, exposing them to a court former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said is “unaccountable to the American people, and that has no obligation to respect the Constitutional rights of our citizens.”  It would also likely deny Americans rights the Obama Administration wants to give alleged terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay.

Nonetheless, Koh advocates heeding foreign laws and judicial rulings that modify rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.  In a 2003 speech at Berkeley, Koh said, “We need these institutions, even if they cut our own sovereignty a little bit.”

Koh would not be the only person in the government promoting transnationalism, nor would he be the highest-ranking one.  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has advocated using foreign law as a guide, and fellow Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also favors reaching across the pond for legal guidance.

At Ohio State University this past April, Ginsburg asked, “Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad?”

The answer: Foreign judiciaries played no role in crafting our Constitution, nor have they taken an oath and sworn to uphold our Constitution, nor have they sent men and women to die in defense of our Constitution, nor are they appointed or confirmed by anyone accountable to the American people.

The concept of surrendering our liberties and rights to international treaties and foreign judges is a direct assault on the American people.  Our government has a primary responsibility to protect the American people, not the interest of some autonomous world authority.

In pushing a transnationalist agenda, the likes of Koh, Kennedy and Ginsburg are promoting a liberal utopia by selecting foreign laws they prefer and it diminishing our Constitution in the process.

In taking the oath of office, President Obama swore to uphold the Constitution.  It’s time to live up to that promise.

#  #  #

Jeffrey Temple is a research associate for the Project 21 black leadership network.  Comments may be sent to Project21@nationalcenter.org.

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From TownHall.com

By Linda Chavez

Listening to President Obama this week as he tried to defend the decisions he’s made on closing Guantanamo, you have to wonder what he would do without George W. Bush to kick around. Obama has yet to offer an acceptable plan to deal with the 240 remaining detainees at Guantanamo when he closes the doors on the detention facility. His fellow Democrats have been so frustrated with his lack of clarity that many of them have now voted, along with Republicans, to deny funding for closing Guantanamo until he comes up with a real plan. But he’s hoping the rest of us will forgive his lack of a workable policy and remember; it’s all Bush’s fault anyway.

The longer President Obama is in office, the less presidential he appears. In a speech at the National Archives on Thursday, Obama wrapped himself in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but he spent much of his time playing politics. “We are cleaning up something that is — quite simply — a mess,” Obama whined, describing the Bush policies as a “misguided experiment that has left in its wake a flood of legal challenges that my administration is forced to deal with on a constant basis.”

The underlying message of the speech was: Don’t blame me; blame Bush. “I knew when I ordered Guantanamo closed that it would be difficult and complex,” he said. But where’s his empathy for how difficult and complex a decision his predecessor faced in opening Guantanamo in the first place?

It’s instructive to remember the conditions President Bush faced when he opened the detention facility. We were a nation at war with a stateless enemy committed to acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. Three thousand Americans had already been killed on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attack against Americans in history, and we weren’t sure when the next attack would come.

(Read more)

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By Armstrong Williams

As quickly as a sense of optimism settled into the market as witnessed in part by the surge in the stock market in April and the announcement of a few positive economic data points, the reality of our economy and the financial crisis is weighing on us once again. But, neither Congress nor the Administration is up to the task of fixing our financial crisis. Much of the leadership that is now reviewing, amending, legislating, and regulating proposals to fix the problems was responsible for creating the environment that incubated all the elements of the crisis. I agree that others have shared a similar view before, but what does this really mean?

Congress is not up to the task because they do not understand the issues they are trying to fix. Like the rest of the American public, Members of Congress and other government officials lack the most fundamental financial education – let alone an education that empowers them to understand and regulate the complex financial structures created on Wall Street. It would be enlightening to have Members and leadership in the Administration take a basic financial education assessment to test their ‘financial IQ’. It would be surprising if their performance was much different than the general public’s.

Of course, there is no such evaluation that serves as the national standard or one that is part of every American’s education in public classrooms. To me, this is a testament to and evidence of the magnitude of the financial illiteracy issue in America. In fact, ‘financial literacy’ really only formally appeared on the government’s radar last year when President Bush formed the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy. However, don’t be lulled into thinking that there is now a shared vision and strategy to make financial education a national priority. This is the government after20all and we can only move as fast as the obstructionists, lobbyists, unions, special interest groups, and Members allow – regardless of the consequences in the short and long-term.

More importantly, is Congress really smart enough to fix this issue? Can Congress view the nation’s financial and economic problems through the lens of problem solvers as opposed to lawyers and politicians trying to win a point?  Can we really expect Congress to have the expertise across the spectrum of financial concerns that are plaguing Americans across the country to effectively craft meaningful legislation? It is no different than every April 15th when we are reminded how ineffective and inefficient our tax code is. Help me understand why we have tax laws that are so complex that beyond the most basic returns, we need to pay a professional to navigate the complexities of the code – for fear of excessive penalties and punitive audits. Help me understand why the American consumer is fearful of the IRS when essentially no Americans are given an education or foundation in personal finance. Help me understand why there is any debate of whether or not to make financial education mandatory in schools – immediately. It is no wonder that most American struggle to effectively manage their finances and plan for the future when the roadmap doesn’t exist or the one we are given is more confusing and treacherous than the road ahead.

But all of this is understandable. Congress is good at what they do. Many Members of Congress are attorneys who are rewarded with handsome hourly rates to make the most simple of answers undecipherable or too convoluted to be meaningful. Is there any chance that the credit card companies, banks, and other financial institutions learned from your ways as they buried their abusive financing and credit terms in the fine print? Why in the world is it ok to allow the most important information to be subordinated to the marketing fluff? Why do you allow this to happen? Be honest, do you really understand these issues yourselves? It is hard to imagine that you do when you allow fees, penalties, interest rates, etc. to be so excessive that it snuffs any hope of financial security, independence, and freedom from the victims of these predatory and abusive practices. It is hard to imagine that if you understood the gravity of the situation that there is any debate or any delay – on either side of the aisle to legislate financial education as a requirement in every classroom in America.

Part of the problem with Congress is that most of its members are lawyers.  Lawyers are not trained to efficiently solve business and financial problems.  Lawyers are usually paid by the hour so it is in their interest to make issues more complicated than necessary.  Try to read a simple real estate contract if you disagree.  Businessmen generally try to solve problems in the most efficient and profitable manner possible. Lawyers are also trained to be adversarial so they win or lose in the courtroom.  Most economic and financial issues are not zero sum games.    The object is not to win a point but to come up with a solution that creates the greatest value for all the participants.

Perhaps, Congress, the lack of financial education is why we are the most indebted industrialized nation, why our financial literacy rates are abysmal, and why so many people struggle to save effectively for retirement. You can offer money, tax cuts, grants, and subsidies to individuals, but you will never fix the problem of financial illiteracy this way. You will only throw good money after bad. In fact, like many people who do not understand the financial problems before them and become frozen from fear – when their bills pile up, they become overextended, and bank accounts run dry – you bury your heads in the sand as though the problems will go away. When will you lead by example?

So Congress, show the American public that you have the financial acumen to provide the leadership and to craft legislation that will be meaningful and effective – and not create a solution more complex than the problem like our tax law. Show us that you understand that simply crafting more regulations for the financial services sector will not fix the most threatening problem to America’s long-term financial health: the lack of financial education.

The last thing America needs is a fatal blow of piling reckless spending upon reckless investing. Across the board Americans are being starved of financial education, and our economy is showing all of the advanced symptoms.

www.armstrongwilliams.com

“The Armstrong Williams Show” is broadcast daily on XM Satellite Power 169 from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

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A friend of mine sent this to me today. I found it so profound I thought I’d share it with you.

By J. Lee Grady

Despite the proliferation of iPhones, Blackberries, e-mail and social networking Web sites—not to mention Starbucks locations—many Christian men, if they are honest, will tell you they are lonely. They may Twitter several times a day to co-workers; they may have occasional golf buddies; they may even grab coffee with colleagues from time to time. But so many men who attend church regularly are friendless.

This was made real to me last weekend when I spoke to a group of men at a large charismatic church in Rochester , N.Y. I was talking about three different types of relationships we need: (1) “Pauls,” who serve as spiritual fathers; (2) “Barnabases,” peer-level encouragers who support and challenge us; and (3) “Timothys,” younger men we inspire and mentor.

I asked the guys in Rochester to write down the names of the men in their lives who fall into each category. When the session was over, one man went home to his wife and announced that he couldn’t write down one name in any of the categories. He had no meaningful relationships. Other men I spoke to that night admitted that they don’t have mentors and have never been transparent with a male friend about personal problems.

Men are disconnected. And we wonder why the American church is dysfunctional?

Secular psychologists can tell you why men struggle to build close relationships with each other. But we rarely address this issue in the church—and as a result many men who love God live in painful isolation. I’ve identified the three biggest barriers to healthy male bonding:

#1. Macho stereotypes. The macho myth says a real man is a rugged individualist: strongly independent, emotionally detached, covered in body armor without visible weaknesses. The macho myth tells boys they must never cry—even when they are in pain—and that when they become adults they cannot be intimate with their wives or tender with their children. The macho myth says they must maintain dictatorial power and control in relationships, even if abuse is necessary.

Yet when we look at Scripture we see that Jesus Christ radically challenged the macho culture promoted by the religious leaders of His day. The Pharisees looked down on women, stayed aloof from children, and celebrated their own importance while refusing to touch the needy. Jesus, on the flip side, empowered marginalized women, held babies in His arms, touched lepers and told a parable about a father who embraced and kissed his wayward son. Jesus destroyed the macho myth by demonstrating that the strongest masculinity is gentle and approachable.

#2. Fear of homosexuality. In my travels I’ve noticed that men in other countries feel perfectly free to be affectionate. Men in Africa hold hands; in Latin countries they kiss each other on the neck. Sociologists say male affection was once more common in this country—but it waned around the same time awareness of homosexuality increased. Nowadays, many straight men are afraid to offer a consoling embrace to a friend lest it be viewed as a sexual advance.

That’s tragic for many reasons, mostly because all human beings need affection to thrive. There are men today in their 60s and 70s who still crave the affection their emotionally-repressed fathers never gave them. So they live in shells and suffer in silence.

Many guys turn to homosexuality as a substitute for the healthy, non-sexual male affection they should have received. (Then the devil is all too eager to convince them they were “born that way.”) The church could offer genuine healing to guys who struggle with sexual identity issues, but it will require us to offer fatherly or brotherly affection without fear.

#3. The competition trap. Let’s face it: Guys are so insecure and so work-oriented that we rate each other and ourselves solely on performance. Whether on the fourth-grade playground or in the corporate boardroom, we are so obsessed with the game that we can’t let any other guy get ahead. We have to win, so every other male becomes an obstacle to our goal.

Male pride is the single biggest reason we can’t get close to our brothers. It’s the reason a Christian guy with a porn addiction can’t be honest enough to call a friend and share his ugly secret. It’s the reason some pastors can’t admit their marriages are suffering. It’s the reason successful businessmen end up drinking on weekends instead of finding a support group. A big, fat ego stands in the way.

Jesus showed us how to deal with male pride. Right before He went to the cross He gathered His male followers together for the Passover, stripped off His clothes and put on a slave’s towel. Then He proceeded to wash His disciples’ smelly, dusty feet. When He finished the job He told His men they should treat each other the same way.

The current epidemic of moral failure among men in the church today is directly tied to our lack of healthy, honest relationships. The only way to reverse the trend is to reintroduce men to the servant Savior—who was so humble that he took off His macho armor and became vulnerable.

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