Government Killed California

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Government Killed California

By Terence P. Jeffrey

Growing up in California in the 1960s, it was impossible not to believe you lived in the greatest place on earth.

California had spectacular coastlines and mountains, luxuriant valleys and stretches of perfect weather that carried on unbroken for months at a time. Natives who ventured from the state -- to other parts of the country or the world -- invariably returned to say it was a mistake to ever leave.

In that not-so-long-ago era, a pioneering culture still gripped the Golden State. People came to California not take things from government, but to make things of themselves.

The first European settlers to arrive in California were Franciscan priests from Spain, who traveled to the far edge of the world as they knew it, not to enslave native peoples, but to bring them Christianity. They were followed by hardy souls who crossed an entire continent to reach the Pacific. When these pioneers arrived, they built magnificent things. The Franciscans built churches. The gold-seekers ended up building the city of San Francisco around one of those churches.

Because it almost never rained during the growing season in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, where the soil would grow almost anything, the people built massive dams in the Sierras and directed water from there to channels that crossed and irrigated farmlands that otherwise would have been summertime deserts.

A group of California counties collaborated in raising private money to build a bridge across the Golden Gate -- and they did not build just any bridge, they built the most beautiful bridge in the world. Then they paid off its construction costs with tolls assessed only on people who crossed the bridge.

Not a single taxpayer in Massachusetts or Montana every paid a penny for the Golden Gate Bridge -- unless he freely crossed it and paid the fare.

As America's population grew and prospered in the 20th century, California outpaced its sister states.

From 1900 to 1910, her population grew by an astounding 60.1 percent, according to the Census Bureau. In the remaining decades of the 20th century, it grew by 44.1 percent, 65.7 percent, 21.7 percent, 53.3 percent, 48.5 percent. 27.0 percent, 18.6 percent, 25.7 percent and 13.8 percent.

After each Census, California won additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and gained greater influence over the nation's political destiny.

Then came the population count of 2010. Last week, the Census Bureau announced that for the first time since California became a state in 1850, it would gain no additional seats in the House.

Over the past decade, it turns out, next-door Nevada enjoyed the largest percentage population gain of any state, growing by 35 percent -- perhaps because it is the nearest place Californians can flee.

Who killed the California dream? Politicians did -- specifically, politicians who pushed a vision of big government that called for redistributing wealth and rewarding indigence while penalizing the hard work and calculated risk-taking that marked Californians of generations past.

In October, the Tax Foundation rated all 50 states by how their tax climate treated business. California ranked 49th. Only New York rated worst. The foundation also judged that California had the 48th worst individual income tax system and the 49th worst sales tax system.

With established businesses fleeing and new entrepreneurs choosing to go elsewhere, unemployment has been trending up in California for four straight years. It is now at 12.4 percent -- tied with Rust Belt Michigan for the second highest unemployment rate of any state.

The Census Bureau's 2010 Statistical Abstract says that from 2000 to 2008, 1,378,706 "domestic" migrants left California for other parts of the country. That was balanced by 1,825,697 "international" migrants (the Census Bureau does not distinguish between legal and illegal) who moved to California from other countries.

The Pew Hispanic Center, meanwhile, reported in September that 23 percent of the illegal immigrants in the United States -- or about 2,550,000 illegal aliens -- live in California and make up 9.3 percent of the state's workforce.

Unlike previous generations that migrated to California, these immigrants are not coming to a frontier, but to a welfare state. Whether they replace indigenous workers by taking their jobs or increase the burden of government on those workers by going on the dole, the illegal immigrant population is helping to build California's welfare state -- as are pensioned state-government employees and native-born Americans who have grown accustomed to government dependency.

In November, California's state Legislative Analyst's Office issued a budget report estimating that the state's government will face a deficit of about $20 billion per year for the next six years.

At the same time, it estimates that Medi-Cal (the state's version of Medicaid) will cost an average of about $20 billion per year (rising from $17.6 billion next year to about $24 billion in 2016). Currently, 7 million of California's 37 million people are enrolled in Medi-Cal.

There are now only 11 states, according to the 2010 Census, that are populated by more people than California has populating its socialized medicine system.

California's Legislative Analyst's Office assumed in its budget report that in the coming years California will continue to have a net outflow of "domestic" migrants. That was wise. Read more at www.cnsnews.com

 

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In Some States, New Laws May Not Be on the Books for Long

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In Some States, New Laws May Not Be on the Books for Long

By Scott Bauer, Associated Press

Madison, Wis. (AP) - Revamped gun measures and tougher rules for payday lenders are among the laws set to take effect around the country on Jan. 1. But some of them may not be on the books for long.

This January, the statutes will kick in just as freshly elected governors and legislators arrive for work. And if new GOP majorities succeed in getting legislation repealed, the result may be sudden U-turns on issues that were only recently debated.

Before the November election, Democrats controlled legislatures in 27 states, with Republicans in charge of just 14. But after the nationwide Republican sweep, the GOP will soon control 26, the Democrats only 17.  Control of others is split between the parties. The election also increased the number of Republican governors from 23 to 26.

With the switch in party control could come abrupt changes in the way some states handle government regulation, privatization and other matters.

Nowhere was the political shift more dramatic than in Wisconsin, where power in the Statehouse will shift wholesale from Democrats to Republicans. Already, incoming Republican Gov. Scott Walker and others would like to head off a law that makes it tougher for payday loan companies and auto lenders to do business in the state.

Until Democrats pushed the law through the Senate and House in 2010, Wisconsin was the only state that did not regulate those industries, and consumer advocates complained that lenders were exploiting poor people by charging exorbitant interest rates.

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle shepherded the bill into law. But Walker said the new regulations go too far, and that the outright ban on loans secured by an auto title isn't what many legislators want.

"My hope is we're able to go back to that common-sense middle ground" with lesser restrictions, said Republican state Rep. Robin Vos, co-chairman of the budget committee. The new law limits payday loans to a maximum of $1,500.

In New Hampshire, Republicans hope to shoot down a new gun law they say doesn't do enough to protect private property and gun owners' rights. Republicans captured the legislative majority from Democrats in the midterm election.

In the recent session, lawmakers gave residents the right to display a gun or other weapon to warn away a potential attacker. Republicans plan to replace it with a stronger version that was vetoed by Democratic Gov. John Lynch in 2006. The tougher law would allow gun owners to use deadly force when threatened, inside their home or anywhere else.

"Why should I have to run away?" said Republican state Sen. Jack Barnes, who said residents who feel threatened should be able to use whatever force necessary. "It's my house."

In a switch benefitting the Democrats, incoming Gov. Jerry Brown in California may undo part of his Republican predecessor's legacy on privatization.

Brown could stop the controversial sale of 11 state buildings -- including the Ronald Reagan building in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Civic Center -- for $2.3 billion. Outgoing Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sought the sale to help balance the state's budget.

As the state attorney general, Brown declined to defend the measure in court and asked that it be delayed. A court-ordered delay means the issue will be pending when Brown takes office Jan. 3.

A variety of other laws will take effect without any threat of repeal.

Alabama, which had fewer public ethics regulations than other states, will add new measures stemming from a major government corruption scandal that brought down Birmingham's mayor, Alabama's former junior college chancellor and three legislators. The new laws impose more restrictions on lobbyists and provide subpoena powers to the State Ethics Commission.

While other states have increased "sin taxes" and fees, Massachusetts will remove a 6.25 percent sales tax on alcohol in effect since August 2009. The repeal followed a major advertising campaign by liquor store owners and beer distributors.

California will try to rein in its rampant paparazzi. New laws dictate that those caught driving recklessly while chasing celebrities in the state can now be charged with a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $2,500 fine. Previously they were charged with a lesser infraction. The state will also downgrade marijuana possession from a misdemeanor to an infraction requiring no court appearance.

Delaware, Kentucky and Kansas will join many other states adopting tougher laws regulating cell phone use while driving.

Associated Press writers Norma Love in Concord, N.H., Phil Rawls in Montgomery, Ala., Christopher Wills in Springfield, Ill., John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., Steve LeBlanc in Boston, Randall Chase in Dover, Del., and Don Thompson in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this story. Read more at www.cnsnews.com

 

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Gallup: Belief In Religion Lows and Highs

Gallup: Belief That Religion Is Increasing Its Influence on American Life Hit 50-Year Peak After 9/11; Belief It's Losing Its Influence Hit 50-Year Peak After Inauguration of Obama

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Gallup: Belief That Religion Is Increasing Its Influence on American Life Hit 50-Year Peak After 9/11; Belief It's Losing Its Influence Hit 50-Year Peak After Inauguration of Obama

By Terence P. Jeffrey

One of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York begins to crumble in this photo taken Sept. 11, 2001 by the NYPD and obtained by ABC News. (AP Photo/NYPD via ABC News, Det. Greg Semendinger)

(CNSNews.com) - Since 1957—more than half a century ago--Gallup has been asking Americans whether they think religion is increasing or losing its influence on American life.

In all that time, the largest percentage of Americans who said they thought religion was increasing its influence on American life came in the first polling Gallup conducted on the question following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the largest percentage who said they thought religion was losing its influence came--less than eight years later--in the first polling Gallup conducted on the question after the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama.

In polling done Dec. 14-16, 2001 (the first Gallup survey on the question after the 9/11 attacks), 71 percent of Americans said they thought religion was increasing its influence on American life, and 24 percent said they thought religion was losing its influence on American life. (Two percent said they thought the influence of religion was staying the "same" and 3 percent said they had no opinion.)

That was the only time in 53 years of polling on the question that more than 70 percent of Americans had told Gallup they thought religion was increasing its influence on American life.

In polling done, May 7-10, 2009 (the first Gallup survey on the question after the inauguration of President Barack Obama), 76 percent said they thought religion was losing its influence on American life and 18 percent said they thought religion was increasing its influence on American life. (Two percent said they thought the influence of religion was staying the "same" and 3 percent said they had no opinion.)

Before Obama’s January 20, 2009 inauguration, only two Gallup surveys had ever shown as many as 70 percent of Americans saying they thought religion was losing its influence on American life. Both of these polls came in the Vietnam-War era in the early days of the Nixon Administration.

In a May 1969 poll, 71 percent of Americans told Gallup they thought religion was losing its influence on American life and only 14 percent said they thought it was increasing its influence. The next time Gallup asked the question—in January 1970—75 percent said they thought religion was losing its influence on American life and 14 percent said they thought it was increasing its influence.

The perceived influence of religion on the nation’s life rebounded sharply following the 9/11 attacks. In a poll Gallup conducted in February 2001, only 39 percent said they thought religion was increasing its influence on American life. That had jumped by 32 percentage points by the time Gallup did its next survey on the question in December of that year.

Since the early days of the Obama administration, peoples’ perception of the influence of religion on American life has rebounded slightly. In a survey conducted Dec. 10-12 of this year, 69 percent said they thought religion was losing influence and 27 percent said they thought it was increasing its influence.

The Dec. 101-12 poll surveyed 1,019 adults and its margin of error was +/-4 points.

The specific question Gallup asked is: “At the present time, do you think religion as a whole is increasing its influence on American life or losing its influence?”

When Gallup first asked the question in March 1957, 69 percent said they thought religion was increasing its influence and only 14 percent said they thought it was losing its influence. (Ten percent said then they thought religion’s influence was staying the “same” and 6 percent said they had no opinion.) Read more at www.cnsnews.com

 

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Man Claims Self Defense in Body-in-a-Suitcase Murder

The man who confessed to the body-in-a-suitcase murder, Hassan Malik, told police "she hit me first."

Send an email to Jeff Neumann, the author of this post, at jeff@gawker.com. Read more at gawker.com

 

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Texas Pastor Arrested for Robbing Parishioner's House on Christmas Eve

Sandy McGriff, pastor of Church of the Living God in Dallas, got caught apparently trying to pull a reverse Santa Claus—hauling away $10,000 in computers and furs—on a member of her flock on the day before Christmas.

McGriff was apprehended by police at about 5:30 p.m. at the home of one the members of her church after a neighbor reported a robbery. Officers saw McGriff walking out of the house's back door carrying two fur coats; they found a laptop and several purses in her Jaguar parked outside.

The victim, according to the Dallas Morning News, was ambivalent the whole thing:

On Saturday, the woman whose home was burglarized said she had mixed feelings about the incident because McGriff was her pastor. Agnew had known McGriff and her husband for about 10 years before joining their church. "She really seemed to be this woman who had a connection with God," she said. "I still really can't believe it."

But the Lord works in mysterious ways! According this kind of amazing video interview with McGriff shot by the Dallas Morning News, the whole thing was a misunderstanding: McGriff was in the neighborhood to pick up a pie someone baked her, got an inexplicable urge to drive by the victim's house, saw two strange men leaving it, and broke in to safeguard her parishioners' valuables lest the robbers return.

[Via Talking Points Memo.]

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This Year In Islamophobia

Nine years after Sept. 11, 2001, America saw perhaps its worst outbreak of Islamophobia since the attacks.

Experts wagered it came from the aimless fear and the anger people feel in times of economic crisis, exploited by certain politicians looking to give their party an advantage in the midterms and turned toward American Muslims.

Such an outbreak was possible in the days and months after Sept. 11's attacks. It never really materialized, experts say, in part because President George W. Bush stood up and told the nervous country that Islam is a religion of peace, and that American was not at war with Muslims.

He made no such appeal this year, and President Obama's pleas fell on deaf ears or, more accurately, ears that believe Obama himself is secretly, and sinisterly, Muslim.

Without further ado, then, is This Year in Islamophobia:

The 'Ground Zero Mosque'

When an imam — a known moderate imam who'd been sent by the U.S. government around the world on goodwill missions to Muslim nations — and a group of developers decided to turn the old Burlington Coat Factory building in downtown Manhattan into a community center and mosque, almost no one noticed. No one noticed for months, in fact, until all of a sudden, this summer, it exploded.

People like Pamela Gellar and Robert Spencer, who for years had been screaming about the dangers of Islam from the fringe, were suddenly front and center. Their assertions — that American Muslims are inherently dangerous, that the majority of imams are radical, that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a terrorist sympathizer — were suddenly being repeated by the mainstream, by Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and the like.

People said vicious things, calling the community center a shrine to terrorists and salt in an American wound.

The furor came to a head on Sept. 11, the ninth anniversary of the attacks, when protesters from both sides converged on the site, just a few blocks from Ground Zero itself and the memorial services being held. They screamed and chanted, and at least one man tore pages out of the Koran and scattered them throughout the street.

Then, as suddenly as it came, the furor died down to a few embers at the extremes. But the community center is still years and millions of dollars away from being a reality, and we can all expect more outrage to come.

The Koran Burner

When cultish Florida church leader Terry Jones announced that he would burn a pile of Korans in his front yard on Sept. 11, the media dug in and didn't let go. It became the biggest story of the week, with dozens of reporters and news crews camped out in front of Jones' church, while reporting that footage and even stories about such a bonfire could set off violent riots in the Muslim world and give recruiting fodder to terrorists.

So worried was the Obama administration that Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Jones personally to ask him not to burn any Korans. He eventually agreed to call off the event after a local imam told him that Rauf, the New York imam, had promised to move his community center, even though he hadn't. Jones never did go through with it.

The spectacle angered the "God hates fags" funeral protesters at the Westboro Baptist Church, who'd been burning Korans for years.

It also prompted copycats, like the man in Texas who tried to burn one of the holy books but was thwarted by a skateboarder, who described the incident thusly:

I snuck up behind him and took his Koran, he said something about burning the Koran, I said, "Dude you have no Koran," and ran off.

Sharia in Middle Tennessee

The opposition to a mosque near Murfreesboro, Tenn., started out scary — first with vandalism and then with an arson that claimed some of the mosque's construction equipment. But it quickly turned to farce, as opponents to the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro — which has been in town for 30 years and is now trying to expand — filed a lawsuit to try and stop it.

The lawyers for the opponents, partially funded by a Christian Zionist group, argued in county court that the mosque's permit for religious use should never have been approved because Islam, they claimed, isn't a religion. When the Justice Department filed a brief noting that the U.S. has recognized Islam since Thomas Jefferson's time, the lawyers claimed that the federal government couldn't be trusted because it had once condoned slavery.

The judge ruled that the mosque's construction could continue.

The Future

Violence has, fortunately, not spread past isolated incidents like the young man who slashed a Muslim cab driver in New York City.

But the story of Islamophobia in America is not over. Tensions between the Muslim community and federal law enforcement are growing, as the FBI continues to conduct undercover terror stings that some critics say amounts to entrapment. The new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has claimed that Muslim leaders are insufficiently cooperative with terror investigations and therefore is holding hearings on the "radicalization" of Muslim Americans. Other congressmen have promised to try to keep the hearings from targeting Muslims.

And so what happens next year, and the year after that — whether cooler heads continue to prevail in the end — remains to be seen.

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Can You Guess Which Street Is Mayor Bloomberg's?

Take a look at these two post-blizzard New York City streets, courtesy Brooklyn blog Sheepshead Bites—one impeccably plowed, the other, well, not so much. Can you guess which one Mayor Mike Bloomberg lives on? Bloomberg has been his usual lovable self ever since the storm hit New York on Sunday. "The world has not come to an end," he told people."The city is going fine." Sheepshead Bites blogger Ned Berke, who lives on the unplowed street pictured above, does not agree, at all: It must be pretty easy to urge patience when you're well taken care of. It must be pretty easy when every agency caters to your needs, paid for by our greenbacks. It must be pretty easy to shrug off our complaints, as if our contribution—in both taxes and the workforce—amount to nothing. As of now we have no roads, no buses, no trains. Businesses remain shuttered. The sick don't make it to the hospital. To his credit, Bloomberg later apologized for acting so callous, but not without a little lashing out: Mr. Bloomberg said he shared the anger emanating from snowbound neighborhoods. But he also showed some irritation of his own, saying people's perceptions were based largely on whether their own streets were clear. Yep. I'll bet they are. Original photos: [Sheepshead Bay] Send an email to Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com. Read more at gawker.com

 

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WikiLeaks and our obligations: Is it wrong to bear true witness?

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WikiLeaks and our obligations to the web of tellings

The principles of free speech, discretion and bearing witness come into conflict when considering a case such as WikiLeaks

Nicholas Shackel

'WikiLeaks has been defended as legally free speech, but for it to be ethical requires the legal freedom to be justified by the moral freedom.' Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

The question: Is it wrong to bear true witness?

Most of what we know, we know because someone told us. So we are all aware of the vital support given to us by the great web of tellings that surrounds us and we care a lot about the strength of that web. The ninth commandment (thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour) sounds right to most of us.

To give witness is to contribute a thread to the web of tellings on which we depend, a thread on which we will place weight. False witness is spinning a thread that will give way: an untruth, a half truth, an insincerity, a prejudice, a deception, an utterance born of malice.

Is it only neighbours we shouldn't bear false witness against? To me it seems wrong against others as well, but I can imagine circumstances in which lying about one enemy to another might be right. Anyway, it seems right to include as my neighbour anyone to whom loyalty is owed, and allowing the strength of the duty to vary with the strength of loyalty owed.

We might reasonably regard many of the governments involved in the WikiLeaks cables as distant neighbours and, given the extent of the cables involved, selective publication could be used to bear false witness, which on this principle would be wrong.

Careless gossip about our friends and family is obviously wrong, and it is no excuse – indeed, it makes it worse – if the gossip is true. Some things between us are for us, not for others: to give them away is to harm our relationship. Loyalty therefore requires discretion: confidences are to be kept, not told. Perhaps there is here a principle analogous to the ninth commandment: thou shalt not bear true witness against thy neighbour.

This doesn't sound quite right to me. What makes the telling wrong is not so much that the truth tells against (or for) your neighbour, but that they do not want it known, or that enemies can use it against them. On the other hand, some truths that tell against your neighbour ought to be told, and told by you, whether they want it told or not.

So the duty of discretion isn't simply not telling the truth against your neighbour. Rather, it must weigh with you that they do not wish it known or that enemies may misuse it, and this must be outweighed by other considerations before you tell. Remembering my earlier point about distant neighbours, WikiLeaks owes some degree of discretion. Discretion would count against the publication of cables more for their value as gossip than anything else, and also against indiscriminate publication.

WikiLeaks has been defended as legally free speech, but for it to be ethical requires the legal freedom to be justified by the moral freedom. Defence of the moral freedom can be based on the benefit to the audience, on free thought requiring free exchange of ideas and on autonomy and self-possession requiring free expression. When we defend free speech on these grounds we don't just mean that it's OK if people don't like what you say provided you are speaking rightly without error. We mean you should be free to speak wrongly and in error. But that means to defend a moral right to free speech is to defend the permissibility of saying what is morally objectionable and false.

So now we can see the problem: if these three principles (no false witness, discretion and free speech) are right, bearing false witness and indiscretion are both forbidden and permitted, which is a contradiction.

The Scottish philosopher William David Ross offered a way round this problem when he proposed that ethical principles of the kind discussed here are not absolute but, as he put it, prima facie. What he meant by this is that there is no general precedence among the principles but that what is ethical is determined by the balance of the prima facie principles as they apply in each specific circumstance.

If Ross is right (a question still hotly contested by philosophers), in arguing the rights and wrongs of WikiLeaks we are trying to balance prima facie principles of (among others) free speech, bearing witness and discretion. The principles conflict. There is no precedence between them and in this case how they balance is heavily influenced by questions over who is our neighbour and how close they are. Whose side are you on? How much discretion do you owe? How much indiscretion must we tolerate? The answers to these questions matter a lot and are hard to agree on. Granted our conflicting loyalties, we might still think we all owe something to civilisation and to that extent, while we should tell some truths about civilisation's failures, we also should be circumspect in indiscretions that give aid to barbarity. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

 

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Who's my brother's keeper, Barack? Hint: it's not the government

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Who's my brother's keeper, Barack? Hint: it's not the government

By Bryan Fischer

Politico ran a long piece today about President Obama's increased references to his "Christian faith." It's difficult not to think that this is raw political pandering on the president's part, given his ardent and quite public support of everything Muslim and the virtual invisibility of Christianity in his administration heretofore. He can read poll numbers like anyone else. He likely knows that 32% of all the votes cast on November 2 were cast by evangelical Christians, and that he'd better suck up to them right quick if he wants to have a prayer of getting reelected in 2012. The Democrats suffered a bloodbath at the hands of evangelical Tea Partiers this fall, and he's running scared. His handlers likely are urging him to at least pretend to be a devout Christian. Of course, they add, just be sure to ignore all those pesky verses about the sanctity of life in the womb, the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman, and the evils of homosexual behavior. We don't want you to be devout enough to take any of that stuff seriously. Hence his very public attendance at a worship service while on vacation in Hawai'i this week and his newfound fondness for quoting the Bible. Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, his favorite verse does not mean what he thinks it means, and if properly understood, would be more likely to make you a conservative than a socialist. The president is fond of reminding us all that we "our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper," a politically correct, gender neutral paraphrase of Gen. 4:9. This verse, the president says, is why he's a Democrat. In its original setting, the phrase is used by Cain just after he'd murdered his brother Abel. God speaks to Cain, and asks him where his brother is. Cain responds essentially by saying, "I have no idea, it's not my day to watch him." Literally, he says, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?" So these words are originally found on the lips of history's first cold-blooded killer and were part of a bald-faced lie to the Creator of the universe, spoken by a guy trying to dodge a homicide beef. If you're going to pick a Bible verse to be your mantra, I'd frankly recommend you start somewhere else. Be that as it may, the phrase has come down in modern parlance as a sort of variation on "Love your neighbor as yourself," or "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Okay, fine, let's go with that and accept for the sake of argument that this utterance represents one of the moral high water marks on the pages of Scripture. The question then becomes, "Who is my brother's keeper?" Answer: it's not government. The answer to the question, "Who is my brother's keeper?" is obvious. It's me. The brother is the keeper of the brother, not the government. Nowhere in the Bible will you find an admonition that government is to be anyone's keeper. I am to take care of myself, with God's constant help, and if I need outside assistance, it is to come from my family, my friends, and my faith community. Or to switch it around, if my brother needs help, he's supposed to get that help from me. Keeping my brother, even using the president's own favorite Bible verse, is not government's responsibility. It's mine. Democrats, including the president, are fond of trying abysmally to turn the Scriptures into a Marxist screed. It can't be done without prostituting the word of God. Regressives (my term for liberals, who want to take us back to the dark days of socialism) believe that compassion is giving away other people's money, and they believe in the involuntary transfer of wealth to get it done. But the involuntary transfer of wealth is just stealing. Conservatives, on the other hand, imbued with a biblical worldview, believe that generosity is giving away your own money, out of a heart of compassion inspired by the example and Spirit of Christ. Taking money from the pocket of one citizen at gunpoint and transferring it to the wallet of another citizen is theft, whether a thug does it or the government does it under color of law. And so the president's worldview is predicated on a gross violation of both the eighth and 10th commandments. The eighth commandment is blessedly straightforward and unambiguous: "You shall not steal." Just because government does it doesn't make it right. That just makes it legalized plunder, to use Frederic Bastiat's deft turn of phrase. The president's entire approach to the redistribution of wealth comes from Marx, not from the Bible. In fact, the 10th commandment prohibits class warfare of all kinds. "You shall not covet ... anything that is your neighbor's." But the entire mindset of regressives, including Mr. Obama, is based on a covetous, slavering, slobbering, trembling, itching greed for the possessions of others. It is accompanied by a dark, angry and thoroughly unchristian jealousy that some have more than others. That kind of greed comes from the pit of hell, not from the Father of lights. So Mr. President, you can have your favorite hacked-up Bible verse, just as long as you take it seriously. Let's get brothers back into the business of caring for brothers, and let's bind Big Brother down with the chains of the Constitution and the word of God and keep him out of our wallets and our families. (Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.) © Bryan Fischer Read more at www.renewamerica.com

 

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It’s cold, so it can’t be Global Warming

To the editor:  A massive snowstorm hit the Midwest over the weekend, followed by the coldest weather in decades. While in England residents are facing a winter reminiscent of the Little Ice Age. And, in Paris they had to close the airport because of heavy snow and cold weather.  All of this was happening while the UN Global Warming Group (I’m sorry, it is now called Climate Change) and environmentalists around the world thought they would be basking in an example of global warmth — Cancun, Mexico. Unfortunately, an uninvited guest, Mother Nature, sent them a message that she, not they, was in charge of weather on earth. She blew a cold wind that plunged Cancun temperature to 54 degrees, a 100-year low. Not to be dissuaded those in attendance said that this was proof that the world is headed for disaster because of man made Co2 gas emissions.  Like a bunch of vultures looking for their next meal, the environmentalists dismiss the roller coaster nature of historic climate change while seeking a redistribution of wealth to those countries that have lacked the initiative to build their own economies. They dismiss that in just the past 100 years Earth has entered four periods of warmth and cooling. And, if it hadn’t been for some global warming we would still be living in igloos on a sheet of ice. Marion Eggleton Medford Read more at www.southjerseylocalnews.com

 

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