Politics Archives - Page 1253 of 1715

Janet Jackson ‘Felt Like a Prisoner’ in Marriage to Muslim

October 16, 2017/in Culture War, Must Read, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad Watch

Islamic teachings command such a relationship. My latest in PJ Media:

Janet Jackson’s now-estranged Muslim husband Wissam Al Mana, according to insiders, “swept in at just the right time” when they first met in 2010, and Jackson was at a low point in her life. Al-Mana “bailed her out and whisked her away to the Middle East.” Soon, however, Jackson began to feel “like a prisoner” in the marriage. Al Mana wanted “a traditional wife who stuck with Muslim traditions,” and Jackson began to chafe in the role.

That’s not surprising. Jackson felt “like a prisoner” because that’s exactly what Islamic law expects of “a traditional wife who stuck with Muslim traditions.” South Carolina Muslim cleric Muhammad Sayyed Adly recently said that the man owns the woman and that women should be “as prisoners in your hands or in your house.”

Adly is no “extremist.” A manual of Islamic law certified by Al-Azhar, the foremost authority in Sunni Islam, as “conforming to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,” stipulates:

[A] woman may not leave the city without her husband or a member of her unmarriageable kin accompanying her, unless the journey is obligatory, like the hajj. It is unlawful for her to travel otherwise, and unlawful for her husband to allow her to. (Reliance of the Traveller m10.3)

As a traditional Muslim wife, Jackson could also have expected to be beaten if she got out of line. This is because the Qur’an says:

[M]en have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. (4:34)

Nowhere, of course, does the Qur’an teach that a woman can beat a man under any circumstances.

The Qur’an also likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills:

Your women are a tilth for you, so go to your tilth as you will. (2:223)

It declares that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man:

Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as you choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her (2:282).

It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls (those “your rights possess”) also:

If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if you fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly, then only one, or one that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice (4:3).

The Qur’an has more that oppresses women. It rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter:

Allah directs you as regards your children’s inheritance: to the male, a portion equal to that of two females (4:11).

It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4).

Islamic law stipulates that a man’s prayer is annulled if a dog or a woman passes in front of him as he is praying. This is because Muhammad’s favorite wife, his child bride Aisha, is depicted in a hadith (a report of Muhammad’s words and deeds) saying:

The things which annul the prayers were mentioned before me. They said, “Prayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey and a woman (if they pass in front of the praying people).” I said, “You have made us (i.e. women) dogs.” I saw the Prophet praying while I used to lie in my bed between him and the Qibla. Whenever I was in need of something, I would slip away, for I disliked to face him. (Sahih Bukhari 1.9.490)

Another hadith depicts Muhammad saying that the majority of the inhabitants of hell are women:

I looked into Paradise and I saw that the majority of its people were the poor. And I looked into Hell and I saw that the majority of its people are women. (Sahih Bukhari 3241; Sahih Muslim 2737)…

Read the rest here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

UK: Muslim accused of honor killing 19-year-old woman

Texas: Muslim who joined ISIS first became religious and started spending more time at the mosque

All 9 federal refugee resettlement contractors support Oct. 18th #NoMuslimBanEver rally

October 16, 2017/in Featured, Policy, Politics, Taxes, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Ann Corcoran

That is a rally partially sponsored by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to be held in Washington, D.C. this coming week. (As of this writing they have 847 confirmed planning to attend, here.)

I told you about it here when the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was pushing its groupies to attend.

Curious about whether the other eight federal refugee contractors (some receiving nearly all of their funding from the US Treasury)*** were involved, I asked in that post if anyone knew.

I got my answer just now at twitter when the lobbying arm of the refugee industry (Refugee Council USA) put out this message:

So who are the members of the refugee lobbying consortium. Here they are:

***Check out those logos, below are the nine contractors. Where is Congress? Shouldn’t there be a law that if you take most of your funding from taxpayers, you shouldn’t be marching in the streets against the President and us!

Think about it! All nine contractors (the Catholic church included!) are telling their people to march against the President and for CAIR!

Why don’t they just take good care of the refugees they are being paid to care for!

LOL! I’m on a roll today, energized by Ms. Wolfe!

RELATED ARTICLES:

US immigration population hits record 60 million, 1-of-5 in nation – Washington Examiner

City Mayors shirking responsibility regarding Refugee Admissions Program

JW: US Dept. of State says they have NO records on refugee travel loans/repayment (really?)

Australian Socialists march, want detainees admitted to Australia

VIDEO: The Truth About Hollywood

October 16, 2017/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics, Video/by Dr. Rich Swier

Paul Joseph Watson published a YouTube video titled “The Truth About Hollywood” on Oct 15, 2017.

Watson states:

More and more people are beginning to feel jaded by popular culture.

Pop culture is defined as, “modern popular culture transmitted via mass media and aimed particularly at younger people.”

Hollywood has become the global trader in pop culture. Pop culture is miles wide but an inch deep. What has pop culture done for any culture? That is the question that parents, when they take their children to the movies, must ask themselves. What is the social redeeming value of the movie I am paying for? How does it benefit me, the parents, and our children?

QUESTION: What is the value system of pop culture?

ANSWER: It has none.

Pop culture and Hollywood are void of values, morals, responsibility and the worst voice of any culture or society. Values are derived from a moral society built upon long standing and proven beliefs and laws that hold the family in high esteem. Hollywood’s pop culture must tear down these beliefs, laws and the family.

Watch Watson’s short description of Hollywood:

We Hear You: The IRS, the Rich, the Nanny State, Republicans, Trump, and Tax Reform

October 16, 2017/in Economy, Policy, Politics, Taxes, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Signal

Editor’s note: As you probably noticed, The Daily Signal has made tax reform a focus of our coverage and commentary. Here is some of what you’ve had to say on the topic in recent weeks. Be sure to write us at letters@dailysignal.com—Ken McIntyre

Dear Daily Signal: Regarding Rachel del Guidice’s story about the family of ranchers in North Dakota, I am a land surveyor and I get involved in forced sales because they need a survey to transfer property (“Tax Reform a ‘Big Deal’ to Mom Who Wants to Keep Ranch in the Family”).

I watched a farmer lose the farm he spent his childhood helping his parents build. They had over 400 acres, and when the government was finished they had 125 acres. The government set the value at $16,000 per acre because much of the surrounding land was sold as 5-acre tracts, never considering the capital investments to develop that 5-acre lot. When they sold, the land brought only $3,000 per acre, it’s proper value.

Talk about chasing your tail. And the attorneys told them it would cost just as much to fight the government in court. Hard to compete when the opposition sets all the rules and declares all the values. The government is not about doing the right thing; it is about gaining revenues so politicians can buy votes to stay in office and send along that criminal enterprise share to the elites. They will use whatever means possible.

You either pay the government or you pay that attorney friend of the government. All that matters is that they claim enough that they get their share. Washington has become a criminal enterprise. Extortion is their game, a game that includes being poverty pimps and accounting thugs.—Robert Joseph Shannon

If we were to return to a constitutional taxation system and forcing a runaway federal government to live within its means, we wouldn’t have this problem. A “progressive” income tax is one of the 10 planks of the communist manifesto.—Richard Ely

I’m a tax CPA. I can come up with ideas to satisfy most concerns. As a staunch conservative, and one who recently paid out some estate (death) tax, I am actually not for elimination of it, as charity is a huge benefactor in estate planning.—Jim Fisher

This is a simple proposition: The estate/death tax amounts to double taxation. Anyone think that having to pay double taxes up front is fair or appropriate (aside from our communist/socialist/leftist comrades)? Of course not. The capital gains tax punishes everyone, and is again another form of double taxation.

Taxes to federal, state, and local entities should be based on a once-a-year assessment of income, without all the loopholes, etc. The government should downsize and live within its means (tax revenue) and eschew any further loans.—Derek Dubasik

Could someone please tell me why the government taxes an individual when he or she dies? Isn’t this a double tax on the property the individual had? Don’t people pay taxes on the income they make each year? How about the equipment they buy during that year? The land that is bought, is it not taxed each year by the government?

I’m curious because when my father-in-law passed in 1987, he was a teacher at a Christian university who had written some study guides. He was not classified as being rich, he was faithful to give unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s and unto the Lord that which was the Lord’s.

He was worth $750,000. We met with his lawyer after the funeral, and he told us everything was being handled by the firm: his savings and checking accounts at the bank for personal use, his accounts for his book income. All of which he already had paid taxes on. His house, the land it sat on, his car (a 1975 Dodge), his clothes, furniture, and lawn tools were all listed to be taxed by the government again, because he died.

We received a registered letter a short time later with a check for $35,000, which we had to pay taxes on, and a list of the worth the government had placed on everything.

So it is not just the rich who are hit twice with a tax, it is every person who dies.—Paul Newnum

Dear Daily Signal: About Rachel del Guidice’s report, “Conservatives Call for Tax Reform to ‘Put Small Businesses Back at Heart of Economy’”: You are what you say—or tweet. We could believe in tax reform for small business if the evidence was pro-small business. It’s not.

The bill passed in the House by Speaker Paul Ryan repealing the Affordable Care Act showed no tax reform for health care, no tax reform for the middle class, only tax benefits for the superrich.

So excuse us progressives if we don’t believe tax reform will enhance middle class workers in any way, aside from sabotaging affordable health care through removing the tax penalty for not enrolling in any health program, and the unwarranted shift of $800 billion from states’ Medicaid funding to fat cats who don’t need it.

Consistency isn’t Trump’s strength, but we must believe what our “lying eyes” see—not small business tax reform by Republicans.—Bill Lemoine

Laws are equal for all citizens with the exception of tax law, which punish more the ones who produce more, simply because they have more. If every citizen pays the same amount of tax, there would be no overspending, open budget, waste, poor administration of resources, socialism or communism, permanent welfare, lazy people, Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Obama, Hillary, or the Democratic Party.—Felipe Solanet

Dear Daily Signal: So, Mr. President, how many jobs are created by the middle class (“Trump: Rich Would Pay Same or More Under Tax Reform”)? Just asking. Time to ante up and fulfill all your campaign promises. Otherwise you are just another political blowhole being sucked into the swamp you pledged to drain. Don’t doubt me. Facts are stubborn things.—Jim Fuscaldo

It’s about time. Just because you live on dividends, it does not mean you’re wealthy. My dad was killed at 35; we lived on dividends from family savings. We paid the highest tax rate possible on $50-a-week income. We need a tax that treats everyone equal, as long as the source is legal.—Elaine Whitmore Cary

“The wealthy” is too vague a term for me to get my head around. Wealth is so relative. Living in the Northeast earning over $250,000 a year, you feel like you can barely keep all the plates spinning. That same figure out in central Idaho would be a fortune. No one pays $15,000 a year in local property taxes for their domicile on a few acres in central Idaho, but try owning a few acres in New Jersey and it’s a whole different thing.—Vladimir Petrovich

Ideally, there should not be an income tax on the people at all; it violates the Constitution as written. But since there is one, it should be equal across the board for everyone and businesses should all have the same tax rate. Otherwise we could consider it favoritism.—Taryl Gibson

Dear Daily Signal: Taxes have been out of control for a long time (“Tax Reform Will ‘Help Everyone,’ Small Business Owner Says”). When a citizen has to hire professionals to fill out a “simple” tax return, something is wrong.—Jann Leger

Yes, if Congress ever gets it done. Abolish the IRS, have a flat tax. No one has what it takes to make that happen, so the richest and the poorest continue to win on taxes and the middle class pays.—Diana Vanvleet

Dear Daily Signal: Regarding Fred Lucas’ report, I agree that tax credits are a bad idea, even though the philosophy of credits was famously championed by Ronald Reagan (“Trump Says Tax Reform Could Create ‘Millions and Millions of Jobs’”).

I cannot see the IRS as being capable of handling welfare, and taxes are not the place for social engineering. It would work better to increase the personal deduction, remove all other deductions, and just charge a flat tax after that.

It is automatically progressive; you make more, you pay more. But it removes the incentive that so many high earners have for hiding income. For instance, the rental properties we own are worth more as a tax shelter than as an investment. If we pay off the loans, our income soars and we are screwed with taxes.—Bill Tanksley

Around 75 to 100 percent of the corporate tax rate is paid by workers through lower wages . The variation depends on the type of corporation, size, and so on. The personal income tax is a direct cut into American pockets, so how does lowering it not leave people with a bigger paycheck?

This would cause less favoritism through a simpler tax code and more fairness for small businesses and middle class Americans. Especially when most of the deductions, tax credits, and such are traded with a lower rate. The compliance cost and the sheer amount of evasion is already high.

Revenue neutrality is only 0.9 percent above baseline for the corporate tax cut.—Rune-André Tørresdal

Mr. President, we the people don’t wish to be disappointed by our government concerning tax reform either. We already enjoyed that surprise with Sen. John McCain concerning health care reform. If I was the president or a senator, I wouldn’t count on McCain not doing his maverick routine once again.—Cathy Ann Turner

God bless President Trump! There are far more of us with him than are not with him. The media lies, and that’s the simple truth.—Claire Montaina Larson

Didn’t Trump also state that he was going to build a wall and Mexico was going to pay for it, and he was going to fix health care and no one would be without, and he was going to be too busy working to play golf? Sheep, keep on sheeping.—Chris Ori

Dear Daily Signal: You don’t value what you don’t pay for, is my thought in reading Rachel del Guidice’s report (“Paul Ryan Calls for Tax Reform, Letting Americans ‘Keep More of Your Own Money’”). Our tax system is the greatest teacher of irresponsibility we have. The 47 percent not paying taxes are plundering our country. The only fair outcome is to have everyone pay the same percentage of income tax.

Our socialist Congress can’t or won’t see that they are ruining America. They want their cut of the robbery more than they want to protect America.

Leaving the means of the successful in their own hands is the only intelligent way to lift the general welfare. This step of enlightenment and away from disrespect of personal property is before us.—Michael Watson

House Speaker Paul Ryan calls for tax reform? What does he think his president has been calling for? Ryan is a politically deaf RINO. Get rid of him at the midterm. Give us a flat tax, and take away that congressional power over those of us who they are supposed to be serving.—Aubrey Yancey

We don’t need tax reform. We need to dump the entire IRS code. We don’t need an income tax. A consumption, or sales, tax is what is needed. I would much rather pay taxes on what I spend than what I earn.

HR 25 and SB 19 (the fair tax legislation in Congress) would rid us of the IRS and the lobbyists who have created the onerous tax code we now suffer with. It would benefit lower-income families with the prebate on the “necessities of life,” it would eliminate the corporate tax, it would eliminate the inheritance tax, it would eliminate filing taxes with the IRS.

There would no longer be 50 percent of the nation not paying their taxes. Read the plan before you criticize.—Robert Davis

Dear Daily Signal: Too many of our lawmakers in the House and Senate have been there way too long and think they have forever to get things done (“Conservative Leader Says Congress Must Make Good on ‘Bold’ Tax Reform”). They should have retired years ago. Term limits in Congress is the only way things will change.

Tax reform is so overdue. Don’t even consider the European or Canadian way of taxing. Get Obamacare repealed and get a basic tax reform pushed through as you know you will never get Democrats’ acceptance.—Bonnie Clarke

A flat tax is a mistake. We really should have some type of progressive tax rate that imposes higher taxes on individuals and institutions that benefit greatly from public resources. How many companies would survive without access to an educated workforce?

Wealthy and successful European nations have high sales taxes/VAT taxes, which are regressive but seem to get the job done. I think the deduction for mortgage interest payments should be eliminated completely. It disproportionately benefits the wealthy and large borrowers, and promotes excessive investment in homes by those who are able to afford it.

It will be interesting to see what the Republican majority in Congress comes up with; they did such a good job with the repeal of Obamacare. But Trump promised us “the biggest tax cut ever,” so I have no doubt that is coming very soon. I’m not sure how they will square that with reducing the deficit, but I’m sure the Republican majority will figure out that part too.—John Levin

I wouldn’t mind a flat tax of 7 percent for individuals and corporations—and this includes welfare, which is income. Only deductions would be mortgage interest (legal residence) and contributions. We also need to eliminate government waste and reduce the deficit.

Do we really need the energy and education departments? State issues, so move them to the states. Eliminate red tape. Read former Sen. Tom Coburn’s book “Back in Black.” Interesting. We need more Dr. No’s in Congress.—Tony Jenkins

Dear Daily Signal: Unless the “reform” consists of implementing a flat tax or some form of the fair tax, first proposed by the advocacy group Americans for Fair Taxation, I don’t want to hear about it (“Trump’s Treasury Secretary Says Tax Reform Will Happen Within the Year”).

Anything else is just more of the same: The government confiscating far too much of our hard-earned money to finance its ever more grandiose, ever more controlling, ever more irresponsible, delusional, and dangerous socio-political ambitions.

The fact that Marc Short, the White House director of legislative affairs, is touting another allegedly “bipartisan” congressional effort and saying he thinks Democrats are “excited for tax reform as well” is hardly reassuring to anyone with a brain and even a modicum of historical perspective. This latest attempt at tax reform may —if it ever gets off the ground—leave us slightly less enslaved. But slaves of the state we still will be.—Dale Allen Steinke

Dear Daily Signal: Regarding Adam Michel’s commentary, “Republicans Just Made Tax Reform More Difficult,” if our brave young soldiers waited for the perfect time to storm the hill, we would still be sitting on the beaches of Normandy. Grow a pair and move now, as we voted you the power to make bold moves.

As “Old Sarge” would say, “If you storm that hill, young men, you may get shot; but if you don’t, I certainly will shoot you.” The meaning of this story is move forward or we voters will certainly give you the ax.

We are bone-tired of your campaign double talk and excuses. We have itchy voting fingers. That isn’t thunder you hear all over America, it’s conservatives turning over every stone looking for honest conservatives to primary you cowards. To hell with you RINOs. We will find some true conservatives to take a stand if you will not.—Malcolm Harbison

As an extreme liberal, I can find little in Adam Michel’s commentary article on tax reform that I can disagree with. It certainly would be better than the current chaos the Trump administration is causing.

And no, there is nothing even socialistic about the Democrats’ agenda. Even extreme liberals like me do not even approach the classic definition of socialism: a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.—John Roberts

So there you have it. The GOP insists on playing by the rules (revenue neutral) and gets nothing done, while the Democrats move mountains with lies, fraud, bribery, extortion, and intimidation. So we will keep ratcheting left until we all are told to wear the hammer and sickle.—Anthony Alfero

Spending our hard-earned dollars was never the problem. Spending our hard-earned dollars on waste, special interests, and corruption is and was the problem. There has to be an expose on how the Senate and House govern themselves.

Exempting themselves from Obamacare is just the tip of the iceberg. Many consider themselves elitists: smarter, richer, and with more influence and control than you or I. And in many ways, they are just that. The rules and laws members of the House and Senate have passed to govern themselves are a disgrace. Reform taxes, please, but look to how any new tax laws will affect them and their cohorts.—Maureen McKenna

Congress is not about Democrats or Republicans; we have been taxed beyond human endurance to support illegal aliens, refugees, and welfare, and to make the majority of Congress richer, by taxing hardworking citizens. Enough is enough.—Charlie Pena

COMMENTARY BY

Ken McIntyre

Ken McIntyre, a 30-year veteran of national and local newspapers, serves as senior editor at The Daily Signal and The Heritage Foundation’s Marilyn and Fred Guardabassi Fellow in Media and Public Policy Studies. Send an email to Ken. Twitter: @KenMac55.

A Note for our Readers:

Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.

Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.

The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.

Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.

Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.

You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.

Please make a gift to support The Daily Signal.

SUPPORT THE DAILY SIGNAL

McConnell Wants to Ditch the Blue Slip for Judicial Nominees, and He’s Right

October 16, 2017/in Courts & Law, Featured, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Signal

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., supports an important step toward fixing the backlog of judicial nominations that are piling up in the Senate.

McConnell told The Weekly Standard that blue slips—the practice of asking senators from a nominee’s home state for their opinion before the Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing—should no longer be used to bring a confirmation to a crashing halt.

Instead, they should be treated as “simply notification of how [a senator is] going to vote, not as an opportunity to blackball.”

Soon after, however, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, stated that ditching the blue slip is his call to make, not McConnell’s.

Grassley did not refuse to ultimately change the practice, but he wasn’t enthusiastic about McConnell’s plan. Grassley’s spokesperson indicated that, at this point, the chairman would respond to “abuses” of blue slips on a “case-by-case basis.”

Blue slips have a long history, dating back to 1917. As part of the process for evaluating a judicial nominee, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee would ask senators from the nominee’s home state to select “I approve” or “I object” on a blue slip of paper.

The rationale was that home state senators may be more familiar with a nominee and have better insights into his or her suitability for a judgeship.

Except for a brief period in the 1960s and ‘70s, blue slips were never used as a way to veto nominees. Unfortunately, some Democratic senators have recently refused to turn in their blue slips in an attempt to prevent or delay the confirmation of conservative judges.

McConnell’s proposed change would be welcome news for David Stras, Michael Brennan, and Ryan Bounds—three nominees to federal appeals courts who have been waylaid by Democrat senators seeking to block their confirmations.

While the blue slip tradition remains in limbo for now, it’s not the only problem judicial nominees face. Once they are voted out of committee, many nominees have languished without a vote by the full Senate.

Fortunately, McConnell also made clear that confirming judicial nominees will be a top priority going forward. He said, “I guarantee they will be dealt with … [r]egardless of what tactics are used by Democrats, the judges are going to be confirmed.”

Judicial nominees aren’t the only ones waiting for a vote, but McConnell further explained, “Priority between an assistant secretary of state and a conservative court judge—it’s not a hard choice to make.” Federal judgeships are, after all, lifetime positions.

To date, the Senate has confirmed only seven judges, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Meanwhile, 53 nominations are still pending, and the president is sending more nominees to the Senate each month, working to fill more than 160 vacancies.

At bottom, the Senate needs to get to work holding hearings and confirming these roughly five dozen nominees.

Whether Grassley gets on board with McConnell’s plan or deals with the Democrats who are stonewalling nominees on a “case-by-case basis,” he needs to take steps to ensure the president’s highly qualified nominees are confirmed to the bench expeditiously.

COMMENTARY BY

Elizabeth Slattery

Elizabeth Slattery writes about the rule of law, the proper role of the courts, civil rights and equal protection, and the scope of constitutional provisions such as the Commerce Clause and the Recess Appointments Clause as a legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read her research. Twitter: @EHSlattery.

Tiffany Bates

Tiffany Bates serves as legal policy analyst in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: @TiffanyHBates

A Note for our Readers:

Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.

Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.

The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.

Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.

Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.

You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.

Please make a gift to support The Daily Signal.

SUPPORT THE DAILY SIGNAL

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Colorado Baker Asked to Make ‘Birthday Cake’ for Satan

October 16, 2017/in Courts & Law, Policy, Politics, Video/by The Daily Signal

The Christian baker in Colorado who was sued for declining to make a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding reception received a strange request last month: Design and bake a cake celebrating Satan’s birthday.

“I would like to get a quote on a birthday cake, for a special event,” the email request to baker Jack Phillips, sent Sept. 30 and exclusively obtained by The Daily Signal, reads. It continues:

It is a cake that is religious in theme, and since religion is a protected class, I am hoping that you will gladly bake this cake. As you see, the birthday cake in question is to celebrate the birthday of Lucifer, or as they [sic] are also known Satan who was born as Satan when he was cast from heaven by God.

The request for Phillips to quote a price for the cake also asks for an “upside down cross, under the head of Lucifer.”

The incident exemplifies the complexity of government laws mandating that those in creative occupations violate their religious beliefs in serving clients or customers.

This is a danger that lawyers for Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, say they’re raising before the U.S. Supreme Court, which in June agreed to take the baker’s case.

Phillips gained nationwide attention after declining to make the wedding cake for the gay couple, and eventually being found guilty of discrimination by a Colorado state agency and the courts.

Phillips has told The Daily Signal and others that his Christian faith not only doesn’t allow him to design and make cakes celebrating same-sex unions, it prevents him from designing cakes that involve such elements as witchcraft or explicit sexuality.

“The request for Jack to make a cake celebrating Satan proves the danger of using these kinds of laws to force people in the artistic profession to create artwork that violates their beliefs,” Jeremy Tedesco, a senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

“The request from the Satanists is essentially the same as the request that Jack Phillips received from the same-sex couple to create a cake that violates his beliefs, because in both instances, the requester can say the law covers my request. For the Satanists, they’re going to say it’s religious discrimination for you to say no to a cake that I’m requesting because of my protected status.”

Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization, represents Phillips in his case.

Lawyers told The Daily Signal that Phillips received a second Satan-themed cake request by phone this month, this time asking that Satan be depicted smoking a joint.

The case dates to 2012, when the same-sex couple, David Mullins and Charlie Craig, got a marriage license in Massachusetts and asked Phillips to design and bake a cake for their reception back home in Colorado.

Lawyers for Mullins and Craig, who are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a complaint against Masterpiece Cakeshop with the state of Colorado, alleging Phillips’ refusal to make the cake violates the state’s public accommodation law.

Administrative Law Judge Robert N. Spencer ruled against Masterpiece Cakeshop on Dec. 6, 2013, concluding that Phillips discriminated against the couple “because of their sexual orientation.”

Phillips’ lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom have appealed the ruling through courts in Colorado and now to the Supreme Court.

Phillips received the email request for the Satanist cake, published in full below, on Sept. 30. His lawyers would not comment on how Phillips handled either request.

The individual emailing the request, whose name was redacted by Alliance Defending Freedom, appears to have targeted Phillips because of his Christian beliefs. The email reads:

I thought I would seek you out, to bake this cake since you appear to be a very moral person since you refused to bake a cake for same sex couples. And since religion is a protected class, I hope you will be willing to bake this cake, so my small group of religious friends can celebrate the birthday of Lucifer this coming November, just a few days after Halloween.

The request may end up helping Phillips’ cause, rather than hurting it.

“If we’re going to live in a world where these kinds of laws can be used to force people like Jack Phillips to create cakes that violate his beliefs about marriage, we’re also going to have to live in a world where people can be forced to create cakes celebrating Satan,” Tedesco said, adding:

It’s very easy to get caught up, and people do get caught up, in the idea that the case is just about a Christian cake artist who doesn’t want to create cakes supporting same-sex marriages, but the issue is much broader than that. If the government has the power to force Jack to create cakes and engage in artistic expression that violates his beliefs, it has that power over all of us. That’s why you can be for same-sex marriage, but you can also be for, and should be for, Jack Phillips to prevail in this case.

Oral arguments in the Supreme Court case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, are scheduled to take place Dec. 5, with a decision expected next year.

Credit: Alliance Defending Freedom.

A Note for our Readers:

Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.

Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.

The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.

Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.

Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.

You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.

Please make a gift to support The Daily Signal.

SUPPORT THE DAILY SIGNAL

This College Professor Is Under Siege for Challenging Transgender Orthodoxy

October 16, 2017/in Culture War, Education, Policy, Politics/by The Daily Signal

A Boise State University professor recently learned what happens when you challenge left-wing social narratives on college campuses.

Scott Yenor, a tenured professor, has been under siege on campus after publishing articles with The Heritage Foundation and The Daily Signal about feminism and the transgender movement.

In those articles, Yenor explained the similarity in philosophy between the early feminists and modern transgender movement and how they aim at undermining traditional family values.

He wrote in a Daily Signal article on Aug. 2:

Transgender rights activists are seeking to abridge parental rights by elevating the independent choices of young children. Respecting the sexual and gender “choices” of ever-younger children erodes parental rights and compromises the integrity of the family as an independent unit.

In response, students, activists, and even staff members at Boise State are now waging a relentless campaign to get Yenor fired or shut down.

A petition to have Yenor fired—which has now gained thousands of signatures—has been passed around on campus. Activists have posted flyers attacking him, and some have called for other faculty to come out and officially condemn him.

Despite these calls, Boise State has said it will not fire Yenor, according to The College Fix.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy sailing for Yenor, who continues to be lambasted and isolated.

In an interview with The Daily Signal, Yenor explained how the crusade against his work and others that challenge left-wing orthodoxy on campus is undercutting free speech at our colleges and universities.

The result of the reaction to his work, Yenor said, is that “there has been a very chilling effect on not only my speech, but those who would speak in defense of me both on the substance, and on the principle of academic freedom.”

The blowback came in earnest, according to Yenor, when the School of Public Service posted his article on its Facebook page. The dean received immediate negative reactions and anger from students and LGBT activists.

The dean, Corey Cook, then posted a statement on Facebook saying that while Yenor had a right to publish, his work violated the university’s aspirations of diversity and civility.

This didn’t stop the waves of attacks that would soon come upon Yenor.

The campaign against him became a “cause célèbre” for the new student diversity and inclusion hire, Francisco Salinas, according to Yenor.

In August, Salinas wrote an article condemning Yenor and tying his work to the recent events in Charlottesville and to Nazism.

And at an Aug. 29 faculty senate meeting, Boise State professor Lynn Lubamersky said that while she believes in free expression, she thinks that because of the opinions expressed in The Daily Signal article, Yenor “violated clear policies that govern our institution, our statement of shared values, and the State Board of Education policy regarding academic freedom and most important, our concern for our students.”

“The majority of our university is made up of women and transgendered people,” Lubamersky continued. “[Yenor’s] public statements published with the byline: Boise State University (BSU) professor of political science, a real violation of the rights of women and transgendered students.”

Lubamersky said:

When someone expresses bigoted, homophobic, and misogynistic views as a representative of a university, I think that we do have the right and responsibility to at least make a statement that we do not share these values and they are not represented of our university.

Since Yenor published the Daily Signal article in August, he received a constant stream of criticism and calls for his work to be shut down.

“The position seems to be that anyone who would do research in areas that don’t affirm the contemporary views, should be shut down,” Yenor said.

Boise State student Ryan Orlando called for his school to “part ways” with Yenor in an article he penned for The Odyssey.

“There are a multitude of morally reprehensible notions in Yenor’s writing which constitute a dangerous ideology that warrants separation from the university,” Orlando wrote.

“In our belief, this is hate speech, and it’s alienating a lot of folks in this Boise State community,” said Joe Goode, a member of the Boise State Young Democrats, according to KTVB.

“We want to show that our university stands for more than hate, we are a community of equality and inclusivity.”

While he has received withering personal attacks over his research, Yenor said that few have engaged with the ideas or have seriously attempted to refute his arguments.

Yenor said the personal attacks don’t bother him, but he worries about the long-term impact on people worried that their views will not be argued with, but simply attacked on campus.

“That’s been one of the most disappointing things,” Yenor said. “Everyone in academia could live with having a debate about ideas, but a debate has to start with an understanding what the other person is arguing.”

“It strikes me that there has really been, first of all, no effort to first understand what I’m arguing, and second of all, to get anywhere beyond name-calling and labeling,” Yenor said.

Yenor said only a handful of students have come out to publicly defend him or even make the simple argument that he should be allowed to speak on his views without getting fired, though he has received a lot of private support.

Yenor said he’s made new friendships, especially among those who privately share his views or actually want to understand what he has to say.

Nevertheless, he said he now feels like an “alien” on campus.

“There’s a kind of feeling that there’s a mob,” Yenor said. “And you don’t run across a mob.”

What’s been worst about all the flak he’s received on campus, according to Yenor, is this larger impact on speech.

While Yenor said he will not back down about writing about gender and other areas that he studies, he is worried about what the attacks mean for free speech and others who are afraid to have their careers derailed.

“The problem with what is happening is that the idea that I’m in violation of the campus civility policies is intended to have a chilling effect on my speech and the speech of anyone who would agree with me,” Yenor said. “That is the bottom line with how I’m being injured.”

This, according to Yenor, will damage institutions of higher learning.

“What is primarily at stake in my case, I think, is the development of a culture of victimization on campus or a social justice framework for understanding education,” Yenor said in a follow-up email.

The article has been corrected to reflect that the quotes from the Aug. 29 faculty meeting were from Professor Lynn Lubamersky.

COMMENTARY BY

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: @JarrettStepman

A Note for our Readers:

Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.

Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.

The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.

Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.

Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.

You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.

Please make a gift to support The Daily Signal.

SUPPORT THE DAILY SIGNAL

EDITORS NOTE: Emphasis has been added to this column by Mr. Stepman that was not in the original op-ed.

The Scandalous Truth about Obamacare Is Laid Bare

October 16, 2017/in Culture War, Healthcare, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Taxes, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

A government program that is ruined by permitting more choice is not sustainable.

by Jeffrey A. Tucker

It’s not just that Obamacare is financially unsustainable. More seriously, it is intellectually unsustainable, even though this truth has been slow to emerge. This has come to an end with President Trump’s executive order.

What does it do? It cuts subsidies to failing providers, yes. It also redefines the meaning of “short term” policies from one year to 90 days. But more importantly–and this is what has the pundit class in total meltdown–it liberalizes the rules for providers to serve health-coverage consumers.

In the words of USA Today: the executive order permits a greater range of choice “by allowing more consumers to buy health insurance through association health plans across state lines.”

The key word here is “allowing” – not forcing, not compelling, not coercing. Allowing. Why would this be a problem? Because allowing choice defeats the core feature of Obamacare, which is about forcing risk pools to exist that the market would otherwise never have chosen. If you were to summarize the change in a phrase it is this: it allows more freedom.

The tenor of the critics’ comments on this move is that it is some sort of despotic act. But let’s be clear: no one is coerced by this executive order. It is exactly the reverse: it removes one source of coercion. It liberalizes, just slightly, the market for insurance carriers.

Here’s a good principle: a government program that is ruined by permitting more choice is not sustainable.

The New York Times predicts:

Employers that remain in the A.C.A. small-group market will offer plans that are more expensive than average, and they will see premiums increase. Only the sickest groups would remain in the A.C.A. regulated risk pool after several enrollment cycles.

Vox puts it this way:

The individuals likely to flee the Obamacare markets for association plans would probably be younger and healthier, leaving behind an older, sicker pool for the remaining ACA market. That has the makings of a death spiral, with ever-increasing premiums and insurers deciding to leave the market altogether.

The Atlantic makes the same point:

Both short-term and associated plans would likely be less costly than the more robust plans sold on Obamacare’s state-based insurance exchanges. But the concern, among critics, is that the plans would cherry-pick the healthiest customers out of the individual market, leaving those with serious health conditions stuck on the Obamacare exchanges. There, prices would rise, because the pool of people on the exchanges would be sicker. Small businesses who keep the more robust plans—perhaps because they have employees with serious health conditions—would also likely face higher costs.

CNBC puts the point about plan duration in the starkest and most ironic terms.

If the administration liberalizes rules about the duration of short-term health plans, and then also makes it easier for people to get hardship exemptions from Obamacare’s mandate, it could lead healthy people who don’t need comprehensive benefits to sign up in large numbers for short-term coverage.

Can you imagine? Letting people do things that are personally beneficial? Horror!

Once you break all this down, the ugly truth about Obamacare is laid bare. Obamacare didn’t create a market. It destroyed the market. Even the slightest bit of freedom wrecks the whole point.

Under the existing rules, healthy people were being forced (effectively taxed) to pay the premiums for unhealthy people, young people forced to pay for old people, anyone trying to live a healthy lifestyle required to cough up for those who do not.This is the great hidden truth about Obamacare. It was never a program for improved medical coverage. It was a program for redistributing wealth by force from the healthy to the sick. It did this by forcing nonmarket risk pools, countering the whole logic of insurance in the first place, which is supposed to calibrate premiums, risks, and payouts toward mutual profitability. Obamacare imagined that it would be easy to use coercion to undermine the whole point of insurance. It didn’t work.

And so the Trump executive order introduces a slight bit of liberality and choice. And the critics are screaming that this is a disaster in the making. You can’t allow choice! You can’t allow more freedom! You can’t allow producers and consumers to cobble together their own plans! After all, this defeats the point of Obamacare, which is all about forcing people to do things they otherwise would not do!

Freedom or coercion: these are the two paths.

This revelation is, as they say, somewhat awkward.What we should have learned from the failure of Obamacare is that no amount of coercion can substitute for the rationality and productivity of the competitive marketplace.

Even if the executive order successfully liberalizes the sector just a bit, we have a very long way to go. The entire medical marketplace needs massive liberalization. It needs government to play even less of a role, from insurance to prescriptions to all choice, over what is permitted to be called health care and who administers it.

Freedom or coercion: these are the two paths. The first works; the second doesn’t.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. He is founder of Liberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, economics adviser to FreeSociety.com, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of the Molinari Review, an advisor to the blockchain application builder Factom, and author of five books, most recently Right-Wing Collectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty, with a preface by Deirdre McCloskey (FEE 2017). He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press.

Unlikely that today’s refugees will be like yesterday’s self-reliant immigrants to America

October 15, 2017/in Culture War, Immigration, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Ann Corcoran

Reader Bob Enos sent us his thoughts after reading Ms. Wolfe’s paean (in Foreign Policy) to grandpa (in which the author takes the opportunity to, like all good Leftists, use hot button words to describe RRW). See my post here with a link to “journalist” Lauren Wolfe’s opposition to the idea of “assimilation.” (You may be able to get the Foreign Policy article the first time without registering.)

In 2015, Enos spoke about refugees. Last time I checked this video had over 61,000 views. Read about it and watch it here:

Enos tells us this:

The article penned by Ms. Lauren Wolf – a New York liberal presumably of Russian Ashkenazi Jewish extraction – for Foreign Policy magazine was yet another piece of revisionist history designed to obscure a 27 year-old change to immigration policy that the American public neither understood nor asked for.

In her fantasy depicting Russian Jewish immigrants as ethnic culturists fiercely holding on to cultural identity in contrast to the American “melting pot,” she conveniently omits the major difference between then and now: the concept of the “public charge.” Her ancestors entered the United States, as did mine, with three pre-conditions in place. One, they were represented by American citizens acting as sponsors – often a rabbi or parish priest. Two, private, unsubsidized housing had been arranged ahead of time. Three, the new immigrants had jobs arranged for them ahead of time. The concept was a simple one: entrance to the United States is a privilege, not a right. Freedom of opportunity provides the means to support oneself, to “sing for your supper,” and to pose no burden to your new home country.

The Immigration Act of 1980 abandoned the 100+ year-old standard of the public charge – at least for refugees.

This is the story of my paternal grandparents, Manuel and Maria Ignacia, from the island of St. Michael, in the remote chain of archipelago islands called the Azores, 1,000 miles off the coasts of both Europe and America in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Portuguese language was spoken in the home. My grandfather worked full-time in the Glenwood Stove factory, and part-time for a local Jewish merchant and landlord, Mr. Steinberg, who rented apartment and sold home furnishings to “green horns” fresh off the boat. My grandparents were Roman Catholic, but Mr. Steinberg’s religion meant nothing to my grandparents. “Mr. Steinberg is like a god to us!”, my grandmother exclaimed, more than once.

Once my grandparents learned the ropes from Mr. Steinberg, they began investing their savings in their own tenement houses and became landlords. During World War II, they bought a meat market, selling what my “vo-vo” (Nana) called “midnight meat” – black-market meat sold out the back door, in the middle of the night, to circumvent rationing restrictions during the war. I’d often thought that, had my grandmother been born in the US about 50 years later, she would have been running General Motors.

Now, to the assimilation part of the story. As in many Portuguese homes in the area, there were four portraits adorning the living room walls. First, a portrait of Jesus Christ. Second, the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. The church is at the center of family life in traditional Portuguese households. Third, a picture of Cardinal Umberto Medieros, the Archbishop of the Boston Diocese, the first Archbishop of an American Catholic diocese of Portuguese extraction. And last, a portrait of President John F. Kennedy.

One running quip was that Portuguese men preferred smoking Winston cigarettes and drinking Carling-Black Label beer, because the packaging contained the colors of the American flag.

Once, as a teenager, I asked vo-vo if she and voo-voo (grandpa) ever thought about returning home for a visit. She laughed at me; “Ai, cuzao (don’t ask)! Go where? Sao Miguel? Whadda you talkin’ about? I know what it looks like! THIS is our home!”

Enough said.

My grandparents never became citizens. I don’t know why. They were proud of the United States and grateful to be here. It could be that, Portugal having been ruled by a repressive military dictatorship for many years, my grandparents simply distrusted government. They never had a bank account. My grandmother accepted public assistance only once. A bureaucrat from city hall called her at home. Vo-vo was a widow by now. Vo-vo was asked if she would like 100 gallons of home heating oil for free. “Sure,” she replied. When my parents learned of this, they were mortified. They asked her, “why did you take that?” She laughed, “I didn’t ask for nothing. I didn’t call them, they called me!” Of city hall, she said they were idiots.

Both of my grandparents died in nursing homes, one at a time. They financed their nursing home stays with their own money. They came to the US with no money. They died in the US with no money. They left no money to bequeath; only mementos of sentimental value and memories. What they did leave, the really important stuff: opportunities for their progeny to thrive in the greatest land of opportunity the world has ever known.

Our family has been, and continues to be, grateful for the opportunities this wonderful social experiment called the United States has provided us. Today, my grandparents have one grandchild who is a retired Wall Street executive, one grandchild who is chief financial officer and treasurer for one of the most important technology companies in America, and a great-grandchild who graduated with honors from Yale University, and is an associate at the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

This story, my friends, is one that, sadly, is largely lost on the current crop of refugees, in my opinion.

And for those of my fellow Americans who insist that the current crop of refugees will blend in and thrive, no different than previous immigrant waves, I refer you to the caveat of every legitimate stock broker and investment advisor: “past performance is no guarantee of future returns.”

This post is filed in my Comments worth noting/guest posts category.

See another guest column by Mr. Enos about the issue of refugees and the public charge, here.

A refugee designation is the most desired form of entry to the US for wannabe immigrants because it is the only category where the immigrant is legally (there may be migrants receiving illegally) allowed to receive welfare within weeks of arrival. In fact, the major job of the resettlement contractors is to get their assigned refugees enrolled at local welfare offices ASAP.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Lancaster, PA where we are told that the Amish welcome one and all

Uptick in Mediterranean rescues as more attempt to get to Europe from Libya

Open Borders bigwigs to descend on Boise, Idaho

Comment worth noting from St. Cloud, MN

November 4, 2017: A date that will go down in infamy? [+Videos]

October 15, 2017/in National Security, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Defend The Border

If you have not heard, you will soon. November 4, 2017 is the date for the hard left to start planned protests similar to the “Arab Spring,” and culminate with President Trump and Vice President Pence leaving office. At the forefront will be ANTIFA, BLM, and every communist group you can imagine.

The United West started investigating these idiots almost a year ago. They have metastasized into a serious problem because of the support of the left and the main stream media. In their mind they have political momentum and they do, so this November protest could get out of hand.

Sadly, most cops in the lefty cities have been suppressed by their leaders and therefore, the protestors rule the day. Crazy!

In an effort to comprehensively brief you on the destructive nature of this attack on America we are providing some very important intelligence for your review. Please take the time to carefully read and understand the goals of ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter, Refuse Fascism and the other outright, deadly, communists groups.

Important Research on November 4th (click on links below)

One of the main organizing web sites for a national protest modeled after the massive protests that took down many Arab regime’s in the Middle East — https://refusefascism.org/
Quick overview of the event — http://heavy.com/news/2017/09/november-4-2017-protests-anti-trump-plans-refuse-fascism-what-is-happening-antifa-event/
Anonymous Web Site explains the event — http://www.anonews.co/antifa-november-4th/
Good Article – http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/23/inside-the-lefts-plans-to-occupy-trump-215518
Must Read – This is the political plan designed by one of the movement’s leaders – http://revcom.us/a/503/andy-zee-presentation-at-refuse-fascism-august-5-en.html
Must be aware of this group – “By Any Means Necessary” — http://www.bamn.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/bamnpage/

MUST WATCH – Andy Zee – philosophical leader of “Refuse Fascism” speak on the need to remove Trump/Pence and Christian Fascists.

HELPFUL VIDEO

Do not under estimate these people.

It is imperative that serious Americans prepare for what may come on November 4th, 2017, a very deadly and dangerous movement that has the potential to further destabilize the United States of America.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from the website of Refuse Fascism.

The Humanitarian Hoax of Socialism: Killing America With Kindness

October 15, 2017/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Linda Goudsmit

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The distinguishing feature of fascism, communism, and Islamism is totalitarian centralized government. All power is vested in a central government and all aspects of life are controlled by its foundational ideology whether secular or religious.

In contrast, the United States is a federal republic that has a power sharing arrangement between its three branches of government. What distinguishes the governing structure of the United States is decentralization of power and the separation of Church and State. The U.S. government was designed by our Founding Fathers to specifically deny totalitarian rule to any political party or particular religion.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the United States and codifies the framework of our government. Interpretation of the Constitution and tensions between the m,federal government, state governments, and individual rights are integral to American politics and fluctuate according to the political party in power. Government agencies and institutions were designed to function as non-partisan components of the bureaucratic whole.

Probably the greatest source of political tension is the disagreement over the role of government in American life. In totalitarian governments there is no private property. The State owns all means of production and the people are basically employees of the State. There are two classes of people – the ruled and the rulers (masters and slaves). The decentralization of power in America and the individual freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution allowed private ownership of the means of production where people own, operate, and work for private businesses. Private ownership incentivized a strong extremely productive middle class and by WWII the United States of America was the most powerful country in the world. Our enemies were not happy.

It is the existence of private ownership and a strong middle class that provides the greatest defense against totalitarian rule which is precisely why enemies of the United States are determined to destroy the middle class and private ownership of means of production. This is where socialism enters the picture.

Ayn Rand

Socialism is a soft sell. As Ayn Rand famously said,

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism – by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

Ayn Rand also compared socialism and fascism saying,

“The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.”

The humanitarian hucksters selling socialism in America deceitfully market it as the system that empowers the people by providing public ownership of the means of production. They disingenuously insist that the workers own the means of production without mentioning that the State manages the property. The State has the power in socialism – not the individual. Cuba and Venezuela are primetime examples of the outcome.

Fascism, communism/socialism, and Islamism are all totalitarian systems that have been or continue to be enemies of the United States. Theoretically all promise their adherents social justice and income equality provided by their centralized governments. Here is the problem – the application of fascism, communism, socialism, and Islamism exposes them as tyrannical and oppressive for all except the elite ruling class.

So why do people choose the fiction of the promise instead of the reality of the application? Why do people ignore the words of real people who have escaped the tyranny and oppression of totalitarianism?

The answer is that centralized governments are an escape from freedom. Their cradle-to-grave care appeals to the most dependent, regressive, and emotional parts of ourselves at the expense of our adult strivings for individual rights freedom and liberty. The government mommy and daddy control the infantalized citizens.

Decentralized governments provide freedom and appeal to the most independent rational adult parts of ourselves. Decentralized governments offer adult independence and freedom but require adult responsibility. The enemies of America did not go quietly into the night after WWII. They were determined to infantalize America and offer cradle-to-grave socialism to destroy the middle class.

America’s enemies understood that the U.S. would have to be defeated from within. They launched a deliberate effort to reverse traditional American strivings for adulthood, freedom, and independence in an effort to infantilize the American public and move the country toward socialism. Cry-bulliies on campus who now require safe spaces to protect themselves from unwelcome ideas are a glaring example of the success of the effort. The infantilized students at UC-Berkeley have similarly declared free speech dead on campus – opposing ideas apparently too threatening to their fragile egos.

Left-wing radical socialist Barack Obama, the quintessential humanitarian huckster, politicized every American government institution during his two lawless terms. Activist judges, activist lawyers, activist politicians, activist teachers, activist curriculum developers, activist administrators, activist IRS CIA FBI CDC. Activists are not just a bunch of out-of-control college students, they are men and women in positions of power intent on destroying American democracy and replacing it with socialism.

Activists are a broad seemingly disparate genus joined by their activist ideology. The reason they are so dangerous is that they embrace a lawless ends justifies the means mentality. So, now the country is confronted with whole institutions that lawlessly pursue a political agenda that is antithetical to American democracy. The censorship and disabling of accounts on social media is a particularly disturbing phenomenon.

In his famous 1961 farewell address President Eisenhower warned America against the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex. He advised the public to “guard against the grave danger that public policy itself could become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Eisenhower understood how the increasing power of the military-industrial complex could threaten the decentralized power sharing arrangement of the U.S. government. His words echoed the words of English aristocrat Lord Bertrand Russell in his 1952 book The Impact of Science on Society. Eisenhower’s words were a warning, Russell’s words were a promise of the new world order and one-world government.

Both men anticipated the power of the scientific-technological elite. Both could imagine industry (means of production) being consolidated into the hands of fewer multi-national conglomerates. But neither could have imagined the application of science and technology in a digital age of information wars where the manipulating and censoring of information could direct public opinion worldwide and destabilize governments including our own. The Internet and the World Wide Web did not exist in their time.

Neither men could have imagined the globalist elite being in control of the means of production AND a weaponized politicized worldwide information industry. Globalism is the clear and present danger to the United States of America today. It is the existential threat of the expanded military-industrial complex capable of creating a worldwide echo chamber that controls public opinion completely.

The left-wing radical socialist Barack Obama opened the doors for the globalist elite by soft-selling socialism to America. Globalism requires socialist nations that manage the means of production to be internationalized into their new world order of one-world government.

Eisenhower’s parting hope for America that our democracy “survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow” will be dead.

After 241 years of decentralized government and American freedom the world will be returned to the dystopian existence of masters and slaves because a willfully blind American public was seduced by Barack Obama, the quintessential humanitarian huckster, deceitfully promising hope and change for America. The Humanitarian Hoax of Socialism will have succeeded in killing America with “kindness.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Goudsmit Pundicity.

After Nationalists’ Surprise Showing in Germany, is Austria Next?

October 15, 2017/in Culture War, Elections, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by Selous Foundation For Public Policy Research

With days to go before the balloting in the parliamentary elections, the issue of immigration dominates political debate. In 2015, as Germany’s Merkel was admitting refugees from Syria, whose ranks would reach one million, Austria received 90,000 asylum requests. In 2016, that number was 42,000. Inarguably, this flood of immigrants played into the hands of the Freedom Party. Its longtime charges that a tide of non-European Muslims will drain the welfare system, cost Austrian jobs, and drown the culture clearly resonate more than ever.

By John Gizzi

Freedom Party (FPO) leader Heinz-Christian Strache (left) and Sebastian Kurz of the People’s Party, OVP

The defeats of nationalist leaders Marine LePen of France and Geert Wilders of the Netherlands earlier this year afforded evidence that nationalism—also known as right-wing populism—was running out of steam in Europe.

But this attitude began to change on the evening of September 24. That’s when German voters, as widely predicted, re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel and her CDU-CSU (conservative) Party. But in a surprise move, voters gave an unexpectedly high 13.4 % of the vote to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party—which emphasizes a hardline on illegal immigration, an exit from the European Union, a revisionist (and more positive) narrative of Germany’s Nazi past, and a closer relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Making the AfD showing all the more impressive is that the party is barely four years old—the “baby” of the nationalist parties that now bewilder political prognosticators and alter the political playing field of Europe.

All eyes are now increasingly focusing on neighboring Austria and its national elections October 15.

As it was in Germany, an escalating migration and refugee crisis, relations with Eastern European neighbors such as Hungary, and a national government that seems distant and aloof from the people are major factors setting the stage for the political drama now unfolding in neighboring Austria.

And the beneficiary is the Freedom Party (FPO), the voice of Austrian nationalism for more than a generation. According to a just-completed Unique Research/Haute and Austrian TV poll, the Freedom Party is drawing a strong 25 percent of the vote—not far behind the two major parties, the center-right OVP (People’s Party) being at 34 percent and the center-left SPO (Social Democratic Party) 27 percent.

Haider’s Legacy Today

If the five-year-old AfD is the “baby” of European nationalist parties, then the Austrian Freedom Party is surely their “father.”

Founded first in 1949 as VdU (Verband der Unabhangigen) and renamed in 1955 as FPO (Freedom Party) by onetime Minister of Agriculture and former SS officer Anton Reinthaller, the Freedom Party was initially a vehicle for former Nazis to reintegrate into the postwar political system. Seemingly doomed to single-digits in national elections, the FPO evolved into a party with two strands: near-libertarian, small-government party akin to Germany’s small Free Democratic Party, and a second strand of hard-core extreme members with much nostalgia for the German “Third Reich” of the Nazis.

If the Freedom Party had a defining moment, it was in 1986 when the charismatic (and controversial) Jorg Haider took over as its leader. Haider moved the FPO to its present status as a hard-liner on illegal immigration, a booster of a positive redefinition of Austria’s Nazi past, a proponent of more direct democracy such as U.S.-style initiatives, and an advocate of breaking up the state-run TV monopoly.

In 1989, the FPO scored big in state elections in Carinthia and made Haider governor. Haider became a more turbulent public figure with each passing year. In 1999, the FPO reached its high point in a national election (27.7 percent of the vote) and actually placed second in number of parliamentary seats.

The third place OVP agreed to a coalition with the FPO but Haider—who under normal circumstances would have become chancellor—abjured a role in government amid widespread international censure. Haider also stepped aside following the threat of sanctions by the European Union against the Austrian government over the participation of an extreme-right party in a Western EU member-state.

Among Haider’s incendiary actions and statements were to greet former Waffen-SS as “decent comrades” and to praise the Hitler government for a “decent employment policy” in a television interview.

(During an interview with this reporter in December 1994, Haider insisted his remarks about employment were in jest and were subsequently twisted by “the state-owned TV network.” He likened his tough stand on illegal immigration to that of California’s then-Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who had just won a landslide re-election after embracing an initiative to deny state services to non-citizens).

Haider would finally break with the FPO in 2004 and launch an insurgent party (BZO) of its own. In 2008, he died from injuries in an automobile crash.

Nearly a decade later, much of the agenda sculpted by Haider lives on in the present FPO leader, Heinz-Christian Strache. Under Strache, the old Haider insurgents of the BZO have come back to the FPO and, in an effort to shed its identification with Nazi sympathizers the party has had a major outreach to the extreme right in Israel (although Strache and his party have never been welcomed by the Netanyahu government).

Strache has also studied and praised the American “Tea Party” movement and considers as “good friends” France’s LePen, the Netherlands’ Wilders, and German AfD leader Frauke Petry.

Strache also brought his party closer to Putin. In December, he went to Moscow to sign a cooperation agreement with Putin’s United Russia Party and vow its opposition to Western sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine.

A “shoulder-to-shoulder” relationship between Vienna and Moscow, said Strache, would help bring peace to Syria.

Can Sebastian Kurz Stop the Freedom Party?

There is a sidebar in modern Austrian history that works to the advantage of “outsider” candidates and parties: the incestuous nature of the two major parties.

For 44 of the past 72 years, Austria has been governed by a “grand coalition” of the Social Democrats and the People’s Party. For much of that time, the party chieftains divided patronage at the federal, state and local level through a system called “Proporz.”

“It was a recipe for corruption and nepotism,” observed columnist Tony Barber of the Financial Times, “[T]his political establishment looked tired and out of ideas.”

That’s what the voters appeared to be saying. In the parliamentary elections of 2013, the major parties got an aggregate total of 50 percent of all votes cast—down from 79 percent cast for the “Big Two” parties in 2002.

Earlier this year, nominees for the ceremonial office of president of Austria failed to even make the run-off. The top vote-getter in the first round of the race (35.1 percent) was Freedom Party nominee Norbert Hofer, with Alexander van der Bellen of the Green Party placing second with 21.3 percent. (In a subsequent run-off that had to be re-run because of irregularities in the casting of some ballots, van der Bellen narrowly staved off Hofer.)

Inarguably, this flood of immigrants played into the hands of the Freedom Party. Its longtime charges that a tide of non-European Muslims will drain the welfare system, cost Austrian jobs, and drown the culture clearly resonate more than ever.

Aware of this, the People’s Party turned to a different kind of leader in this election: Sebastian Kurz, foreign minister and former immigration minister, and 30 years old.

Kurz endorses most of Strache’s anti-immigration agenda and is regarded by many commentators as the “soft-spoken Strache” who has moved the OVP considerably to the right of the political spectrum.

Kurz eschews the labels of “left” or “right” and makes statements designed to appeal to different political factions in a populist manner. As immigration minister, he targeted “people smugglers” and tried to reduce economic incentive for refugees to “flood” Austria. He favors U.S.-style tax cuts as well as increased public spending to jump-start Austria’s moribund economy.

But Kurz also eschews the tough, beer-hall rhetoric on immigrants that is a staple of Strache’s rallies. Moreover, he is a strong booster of the European Union, in sharp contrast to the Eurosceptic Freedom Party.

Given the People’s Party’s first-place showing in the polls at this time, the nomination of the “Austrian Macron” appears to have been a shrewd move. But a “Chancellor Kurz” may be forced to form a coalition with the Freedom Party rather than his party’s traditional ally, the Social Democrats headed by outgoing Chancellor Christian Kern.

“In this way, an extreme right-wing party which endorses xenophobic, nativist and anti-EU rhetoric would become part of the Austrian government again – a government which would probably move Austria closer to the ever more authoritarian policies of [Prime Minister] Victor Orban of Hungary,” says social scientist Ruth Wodak, professor at Lancaster University, UK, and author of “The Politics of Fear. What Right Wing Populist Discourses Mean.”

The Freedom Party sharing power after eleven years will be a much-reported story from Austria—and a defining moment in the saga of whether nationalism is here to stay in Europe or is just a passing fad.

John Gizzi

John Gizzi is the White House correspondent and chief political columnist for Newsmax. He is also a contributor to SFPPR News & Analysis of the conservative-online-journalism center at the Washington-based Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research..

Trump Pulls the Plug on Private Toll Roads, Centerpiece of Infrastructure Plan

October 15, 2017/in Economy, Policy, Politics, Taxes/by Selous Foundation For Public Policy Research

Trump’s reversal on public-private partnerships (P3s) came suddenly to most folks, even inside the beltway, given that Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao was still pushing tax incentives to attract private investment as the core of the Trump infrastructure plan as of August 30. Now the focus becomes how to pay to fix the country’s infrastructure, absent P3s and tolls. While our focus should be on building freeways NOT tollways, let’s start by taking a look at the gas tax and why it hasn’t kept pace with the needs of the driving public; could this be due to political gas tax diversions combined with taxpayer distrust?

By Terri Hall

It’s big news for taxpayers, but for the special interests who have been pushing public-private partnerships (P3s) and toll roads as the way to fund $1 trillion in upgrades to America’s infrastructure, not so much. Maybe President Donald Trump realized the political consequences. In any event, he officially pulled the plug on P3s as the centerpiece to his infrastructure plan.

The president said simply, “They don’t work.”

Trump mentioned it in a meeting with members of the House Ways and Means Committee as he met with lawmakers to discuss tax reform. Citing the failure of the Interstate-69 P3 contract done under then-Governor of Indiana Mike Pence, the state recently had to sever the contract, take over the project, and issue its own debt to get it finished.

Interstates like I-69 were conceived as thoroughfare-legs to facilitate the NAFTA Superhighway to enhance global trade routes in North America through the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

There were a host of problems relying on P3s and federal incentives to attract private investors. First, only projects that generate some sort of revenue attract private investors — hence ‘toll roads’. Second, giving out further federal tax incentives was likely to benefit projects that were already underway, not generate new investment. Plus, the feds have been generously doling out taxpayer-backed loans and bonds to guarantee the private investors’ losses and the track record of failure is well-documented.

P3s also give private investors exclusive, long-term monopolies designed to extract the highest possible toll from the traveling public, while requiring taxpayers to foot the bill for most potential threats to private entity’s profits. For instance, such contracts contain non-compete provisions that limit or prohibit the expansion of free routes surrounding the privatized toll lanes, deliberately slow speeds on the free routes and increase speeds on the toll lanes, force taxpayers to pay the private operators for any uncollectable tolls, and most P3 contracts used public funds to subsidize them (including every single P3 toll project in Texas).

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

To read Terri Hall’s full column please click here.

Terri Hall

Terri Hall is the founder of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF), which defends against eminent domain abuse and promotes non-toll transportation solutions. She’s a home school mother of ten turned citizen activist. Ms. Hall is also a contribuutor to SFPPR News & Analysis of the Conservative-Online-Journalism Center at the Washington-based Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research.

The Numbers Are in: Social Security Robs the Working Poor

October 14, 2017/in Culture War, Economy, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Taxes, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

The Social Security Administration’s own numbers reveal that a private investment pays more than Social Security.

by Tom Eddlem

Back in 2011, investment guru Warren Buffett famously complained in the New York Times that his secretaries were paying higher federal payroll tax rates than he was:

Our leaders have asked for ‘shared sacrifice.’ But when they did the asking, they spared me…. what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income – and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.”

Buffett used some creative accounting for his numbers; he used only “taxable income,” which means he didn’t count all the deductions his employees were using to write off their income taxes. For middle-class workers making about $75,000 per year, that’s typically a heavy percentage of their income. Moreover, for the tax rates Buffett claimed applied to his assistants, they must have been paid in the range of $200,000 per year or more.

Despite Buffett’s accounting trickery, there was a level of truth to his complaint: the burden of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes does fall almost exclusively upon the poor and middle classes. And Buffett acknowledged this fact in his New York Times op-ed:

The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.”

The Questionable Benefit of Paying Those Heavy Taxes

Buffett was correct to claim the poor and middle class pay heavy payroll taxes for the Social Security program. But do the poor and middle classes receive benefits from Social Security compared to the “investment” the federal government requires they make?

The Social Security Administration’s website now allows its “customers” to enter income numbers over a career and pull out a precise benefit level. So it’s relatively easy today for anyone to contrast private investments with Social Security benefit levels with an unprecedented level of precision. (This author has run the numbers several times before in the past few decades using the SSA’s PIA calculator application.)

While it has long been known that middle class and wealthy people do not profit by “investing” their money in Social Security compared with a private retirement fund, the impact of Social Security upon a worker trapped in a minimum wage job throughout his career has been left uncalculated – until now.Thus, the following question can be answered authoritatively:

Is it possible for a minimum wage worker to do better putting his money into Social Security than if he were allowed to invest his money in a private fund earning interest at the same rate as the S&P 500?

And the answer is this: No, it’s not possible. In every conceivable scenario, the private fund pays more than Social Security to the minimum wage worker.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Consider the case of a person who works 50 weeks per year, 40 hours per week at the legal minimum wage, beginning in 1970 and retiring at the end of 2017.

Only the Old Age and Survivors’ Assistance proportion of the Social Security tax can be added to the private fund, not Disability Insurance or Medicare, which in 2017 is 10.6 percent of total income (out of the 15.3 percent total tax imposed upon the self-employed). The worker must purchase a term insurance policy with a private fund to cover the “survivors” part of the risk in the Social Security program, and (to keep things fair) a 0.75 percent “management fee” is deducted from the retirement account annually.

Most couples in that salary range are actually two-income families.

At the end of his career, the minimum wage worker ends up with a retirement fund of $262,551.02 from the wages he otherwise would have paid into the Social Security “trust fund.”

From this account, a person could safely withdraw just over seven percent per year, with the fund replenishing itself in perpetuity without losing value – meanwhile, the S&P has grown at just over 11 percent annually, and inflation has been a little less than four percent during the same last 50 years. That’s an average monthly income of over $1,500, adjusted upwards for inflation over time, it is far more than the $974.00 that the Social Security Administration’s website claims it will pay its customers.

The numbers favor a private account even if one uses favorable circumstances for receiving Social Security, with a single income earner in a two-couple household where the spouse gets half the Social Security benefit of the wage-earner. The spousal benefit increases the monthly Social Security payment to $1,461.00, while the private fund remains the same at $1,579.68.

And this scenario is highly unlikely: A couple with just one worker making the legal federal minimum wage is a rarity; most couples in that salary range are two-income families. In a two-income minimum wage family, the private fund pays $3,159.36 versus a $1,948 monthly benefit from Social Security. In every family scenario, whether single, married with one income or married with two incomes, the difference is that Social Security is cheating poor retirees out of several hundred thousand dollars in benefits (see table below).

Single or Married, Alike

All three family scenarios assume a 2017 bull market with earnings of 10.62 percent increase in S&P 500-based private fund for 2017 (based upon YTD as of August 23). But what if the retirement date is at the bottom of a 2008-level stock market crash? Even in that scenario (in calendar year 2008, nearly 37 percent of the S&P 500’s value was erased by the bear market), every possible permutation of family arrangement makes more total money from the private fund than from Social Security. Whether single earners, two-income couples, and one-income couples, all make more than Social Security in a private fund.

There’s only one artificial scenario that could be constructed where Social Security could claim to be of partial benefit to a poor family. If:

The minimum wage worker retires at the bottom of a 2008-style recession, and
One were to count only monthly payments (not discounting a death benefit of the value of $166,588.62 in the recession-reduced private fund), and
It is a single-income married family.

Then, Social Security pays a slightly higher monthly benefit. Over a typical benefit lifespan – 256 months for women and 215 months for men – Social Security’s monthly payments make up for nearly two-thirds of the death benefit in a private fund.

When the leftist mainstream media reported about Warren Buffett’s column, they focused exclusively upon the income tax proportion of the tax burden. They ignored how Buffett’s column acknowledges that Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes are not “contributions” to a “trust fund” to care for workers, akin to private sector 401k plans, but are instead regressive taxes imposed upon the working classes.

This admission belies a political establish core tenet of faith that goes back to the New Deal, that Social Security serves as an investment to protect poor and middle-class workers and is not as a general revenue tax. Buffett’s essay busted that myth by correctly claiming that Social Security impoverishes working people with general revenue taxation.

But even if one assumes Social Security taxes are an “investment” made by the poor for their retirement like a 401k plan, the numbers provided by the Social Security Administration itself reveal it’s still a financial rip-off for the very poorest of the working poor.

Tom Eddlem

Thomas R. Eddlem is a freelance writer who has been published in more than 20 periodicals, and a high school history and economics teacher. He’s the author of Primary Source American History, available on TeachersPayTeachers.com and his blog is located at teddlem.blogspot.com.

Department of Health and Human Services: ‘Life Begins at Conception’

October 14, 2017/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Healthcare, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

In a stunning turn of events President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has declared that life begins at conception.

The 2018-2022 DHHS draft strategic plan reads:

Mission Statement

The mission of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is to enhance the health and well-being of Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services.

Organizational Structure

HHS accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception.

Readers may share their thoughts on each part of the draft strategic plan.

Download the HHS DRAFT Strategic Plan FY 2018 – 2022 – PDF

The Federalist’s Harvest Prude reports:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just released their 2018-2022 plan, which unequivocally states that life begins at conception and deserves protection. In the introduction it says,

“HHS accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception.”

The draft mentions conception five times total. The overwhelmingly pro-life stance in the draft is welcome news to many.

The debate over the personhood of unborn children has been a central issue of the abortion debate. Ever since Roe v. Wade in 1973, pro-life advocates have been trying to establish constitutionally protected rights for the unborn. In the ruling’s majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that Roe v. Wade would collapse if “the fetus is a person.”

In support of the HHS’s draft, author and bioethics expert Wesley J. Smith wrote, “life ‘beginning at conception’ … is a fact of basic biological science.”

Read more.