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Romney Forsakes Fundamental Piece of the Republican Party Platform

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

(COLUMBIA, SC) When faced with a question of protecting human life, on the issue of the personhood of the child in the womb, Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was the only candidate to back down. This question, as part of a presidential discussion held on Monday in South Carolina, saw the first contrast between Republicans vying for the nation’s highest office on the issue of abortion and the federal government’s role in protecting innocent human life.

A question from Princeton professor Robert George noted that Congress retains the authority to recognize the personhood rights of the preborn. George queried former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on this assertion.

“Many people today say that we need to wait for Roe vs. Wade to be reversed before Congress can do anything about protecting life in the womb. However, Section 5 of the 14th Amendment expressly authorizes the Congress, by appropriate legislation, to enforce the guarantees of due process and equal protection contained in the amendment’s first section,” said George. “Would you, as President, propose to Congress appropriate legislation pursuant to the 14th Amendment to protect human life in all stages and conditions?”

Michelle Bachman, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain responded in the affirmative. Romney, on the other hand, suggested that a federal personhood measure “would create…a constitutional crisis.” He added, “That’s not something I would precipitate.”

Instead, Romney lobbied for a continuation of the strategy of altering the makeup of the Supreme Court. “I would like to see that Supreme Court return to the states the responsibility for determining laws related to abortion,” he said.

The week’s second presidential candidate forum is scheduled for Wednesday at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California where candidates will have a chance to further clarify their positions. Will Romney adapt to this question to reflect President Reagan’s position, and that of the Republican Party?

Reagan issued his Personhood Proclamation on January 14th, 1988 in which he said:

“The unalienable right to life is found not only in the Declaration of Independence but also in the Constitution that every President is sworn to preserve, protect, and defend. Both the 5th and 14th Amendments guarantee that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”

Reagan continued, “This sacred legacy, and the well-being and the future of our country, demand that protection of the innocents must be guaranteed and that the personhood of the unborn be declared and defended throughout our land.”

The Republican Party Platform—which Reagan’s pro-personhood ideology has helped to shape—also reads, “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn children.”

“Far from a ‘crisis,’ personhood restores the protections for the preborn that were intended by our founding fathers and the drafters of the 14th Amendment,” said Keith Mason, President of Personhood USA. “Roe v. Wade has no basis in constitutional law. It was a tribunal of nine men in 1973 that unleashed the current ‘constitutional crisis’ upon our nation.”

Personhood USA is a grassroots Christian organization founded to establish personhood efforts across America to create protection for every child by love and by law. Personhood USA is committed to assisting and supporting Personhood Legislation and Constitutional Amendments and building local pro-life organizations through raising awareness of the personhood of the pre-born.

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Constitution Day: Is the Constitution on Life Support?

Posted on September 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

By John W. Whitehead

For all intents and purposes, the Constitution is on life support and has been for some time now.

Those responsible for its demise are none other than the schools, which have failed to educate students about its principles; the courts, which have failed to uphold the rights enshrined within it; the politicians, who long ago sold out to corporations and special interests; and “we the people” who, in our ignorance and greed, have valued materialism over freedom.

We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document. However, in America today, the government does whatever it wants. And the few of us who actively fight to preserve the rights enshrined in the Constitution do so knowing that in the long run, we may be fighting a losing battle.

A quick review of the Bill of Rights shows how dismal things have become.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind and protest in peace without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. Yet despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Students are often stripped of their rights for such things as wearing a t-shirt that school officials find offensive. Likewise, local governments and police often oppose citizens who express unpopular views in public. Peace activists who speak out against the government are being arrested and subjected to investigation by the FBI, while members of the press are threatened with jail time for reporting on possible government wrongdoing and refusing to reveal their sources.

The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against the government. In fact, in 2011, the Indiana Supreme Court broadly ruled that citizens don’t have the right to resist police officers who enter their homes illegally, which is the law in most states.

The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” Today’s military may not as of yet technically threaten private property. However, with the police increasingly posing as military forces—complete with weapons, uniforms, assault vehicles, etc.—a good case could be made for the fact that SWAT team raids, which break down the barrier between public and private property, have done away with this critical safeguard.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits the government from searching your home without a warrant approved by a judge. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has been all but eviscerated by the passage of the USA Patriot Act, which opened the door to unwarranted electronic intrusions by government agents into your most personal and private transactions, including phone, mail, computer and medical records.

The Fifth Amendment is supposed to ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without following strict legal codes of conduct. Unfortunately, those protections—especially as they apply to Muslim-Americans—have been largely extinguished in the wake of 9/11.

The Sixth Amendment was intended not only to ensure a “speedy and public trial,” but to prevent the government from keeping someone in jail for unspecified offenses. That too has been a casualty of the war on terror. Non-citizens suspected of connections to terrorists or terrorism can now be labeled as “enemy combatants” and be held indefinitely without charge, without a court hearing and without access to a lawyer. Not only have non-citizens been held in such a manner but so, too, were American citizens who were captured on American soil.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. However, when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution, that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears.

The Eighth Amendment is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, by sanctioning torture, including the use of waterboarding as a benign form of legalized torture, the Bush administration not only violated U.S. laws and virtually every international treaty against torture but raised the bar on what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.

As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.

Thus, what little hope remains rests with what Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Chris Hedges refers to as the modern rebel, “someone who is perpetually alienated from power, someone who is different from a revolutionary in the sense that you are always alienated from centers of power… I think that in order to maintain a democratic system you need large movements in society committed to issues of justice and truth. To put pressure on the power elite, to make sure that those issues are honored by institutions and by people who hold positions of power.”

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about the Institute is available at www.rutherford.org

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High Noon at the UN

Posted on September 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought”

President Obama joins the campaign against the Palestinian UN initiative in spite of his belief that the UN is the quarterback of international relations, in defiance of his closest advisors – UN Ambassador Susan Rice, Director of Multilateral Affairs Samantha Power and Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett – and irrespective of his support of Palestinian claims and his assumption that the Palestinian issue is the root cause of Middle East turbulence and the crown jewel of Arab policy-making.

However, President Obama operates within the Federalist system which precludes an omnipotent president, and significantly constrains his maneuverability. It accords Congress – a bastion of support of the Jewish State – power equal to that of the President, domestically and internationally. The clout of Congress grows in direct correlation to the weakness of Obama, whose popularity plunged from 65% in January 2009 to 39% in August 2011. Obama is aware that House and Senate Democratic leaders, such as House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, Ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee Howard Berman, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and former Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Robert Menendez, would suspend foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, should the Palestinians proceed with their UN initiative. The President is cognizant of the fact that their support is critical to his reelection aspirations in November 2012.

Moreover, the US Congress constitutes the most authentic representative of the American people, who – especially upon the tenth anniversary of 9/11 – consider Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims as part of the terrorist threat, view the UN as a role-model of ingratitude and treat Israel as a special, capable, democratic and unconditional ally.

The US campaign against the Palestinian initiative at the UN is driven by the American People’s and Congress’ identification with the Jewish State, and by their mistrust of the UN and the Palestinians. According to a May 26, 2011 CNN poll, 82% of Americans consider Israel an ally and a friend, compared with 72% in 2001. 67% support Israel, while only 16% support the Palestinians, who are as unpopular as Iran (15%) and North Korea (17%). According to a February, 2011 Gallup poll, 68% consider Israel an ally; the April 2011 Rasmussen Report shows that most Americans oppose foreign aid to Arab countries but support foreign aid to Israel; a September 2010 Rasmussen Report indicates that most Americans are willing to defend militarily only five other countries – Canada, Britain, Israel, Germany and Mexico; and the April 2010 Quinnipiac Polling Institute determines that 66% expect Obama to improve treatment of Israel.

According to a February, 2011 Gallup poll, 62% of Americans think that the UN is performing poorly, compared with 30% in 1953. A February, 2011 Rasmussen Report determined that only 27% of likely US voters regard the UN as an ally of the US, while 15% consider the UN an enemy and 54% are undecided.

Congressional attitudes toward the UN reflect public resentment of anti-American bias in the UN, a home court for anti-US countries in general and Islamic and rogue regimes in particular, even though the US funds 22% of the UN budget. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, recently introduced the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act, which would cut off US contributions to any UN entity that grants membership, or any other upgraded status, to the Palestinian Authority. According to Ros-Lehtinen, “UN obsession with castigating Israel — from the Human Rights Council and the Goldstone Report and the Durban conferences to the multitude of UN bodies created for the sole purpose of condemning Israel — has eliminated UN credibility…. The UN’s most infamous anti-Israel act came in 1975, when the General Assembly voted to declare that ‘Zionism is racism.’”

Will Israel leverage the US attitude toward the UN and the Palestinian Authority, or will it persist in the policy of indecisiveness and retreat, which was initiated by the 1993 Oslo Accord?

This article was originally published in “Israel Hayom” Newsletter on September 12, 2011. Yoram Ettinger also publishes The Ettinger Report.

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Women Continue to Lose Jobs in the Public Sector

Posted on September 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

(Washington, DC) A new analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), finds that women employees lost 81 percent (473,000) of the 581,000 jobs lost in the public sector since December 2008. Many of these jobs were lost at the local and state level where women in the public sector are most likely to be employed as elementary and middle school teachers.

At the local level between December 2008 and July 2011, the number of women in public sector employment decreased by 4.7 percent while the number of men decreased by only 1.6 percent. At the federal level in the same period, women employees saw a decrease of 3.2 percent in their ranks while the number of men employed actually increased by 5.3 percent, possibly due to increased employment in areas such as homeland security and civilian employment in the Department of Defense.

Women employed at the local level in the public sector are most likely to be elementary and middle school teachers, teacher assistants, secondary school teachers, and secretaries and administrative assistants. Men employed at the local government level are more likely to be police and sheriff’s patrol officers, elementary and middle school teachers, secondary school teachers, janitors, and firefighters.

Due to the recession and the dwindling of economic stimulus funding, state and local government budgets have decreased, resulting in layoffs. While the private sector gained 17,000 jobs in August, the public sector lost an equal number resulting in a zero jobs gains last month.

“The American Jobs Act proposed by President Obama will ensure investment in the country’s infrastructure and education,” said Jeffrey Hayes, senior researcher at IWPR. “The boost in funding will help women employees in the public sector, in turn allowing them to invest in their families, their communities, and in the economy overall.”

The President’s proposal includes a $30 billion investment in education to prevent the layoffs of up to 280,000 teachers while keeping more law enforcement officials and firefighters on the job. By allowing districts to use the money for longer school days or years and to support after school activities, working parents might benefit from knowing their children are being cared for in a safe and instructive environment.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) conducts rigorous research and disseminates its findings to address the needs of women and their families, promote public dialogue, and strengthen communities and societies. IWPR is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that also works in affiliation with the women’s studies and public policy programs at The George Washington
University.

(Underlined emphasis above was added by the editor.)

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Ohio Right to Life Society Urges Members to Protect Healthcare Freedom

Posted on September 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

On 6 September, the Ohio Right to Life Society official announced its strong support for Issue 3. By voting yes on Issue 3, Ohioans will preserve their freedom to choose healthcare coverage free of abortion funding and healthcare rationing. The Ohio Right to Life Board of Trustees voted unanimously to endorse the effort against mandated healthcare under Obamacare.

When successful, Issue 3 will enact the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment, which provides that in Ohio no law will compel any person, employer or healthcare provider to participate in a healthcare system and that no law should prohibit the purchase or sale of healthcare insurance.

Recent reports indicate that Obamacare would mandate $50 million each year to be devoted to school-based health centers, which may offer contraception and abortion services. Obamacare also demands that $250,000 per state be devoted to “Personal Responsibility Education”, a program required to teach contraception.

Passage of the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment will protect Ohioans from such requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and further defend innocent human life.

Ohio Right to Life supports any effort to stop Obamacare as it currently exists and views Issue 3 and the enactment of the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment as an opportunity to do just that. The organization looks forward to engaging their statewide membership and 50 affiliated chapters in a united grassroots effort across the state to vote YES on Issue 3 this November.

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Obamacare Suggests Government Knows Best – Not the Consumer

Posted on September 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

By Mary Taylor
Ohio Lt. Gov. and Insurance Director

Obamacare is so complex that only a few of its impacts have been widely publicized. In fact, many of the law’s far reaching mandates and requirements are still being defined by Washington bureaucrats. But as you look closer at some of its lesser known provisions, one thing becomes clear: the authors of Obamacare are more concerned with a government takeover of health care and less worried about you the consumer and the increasing cost of health insurance because of this law’s mandates. Here are just three of the major market changes – among many – that all Ohioans should understand.

First, the law’s heavy-handed mandates force insurance companies to include coverage for many benefits and services you may not want. Say for example, you do not have any children. Under Obamacare, you would still have to carry insurance that covers pediatric, maternity and newborn care even though you do not need it. Such mandates remove consumerism from the process and replace it with a one-size-fits-all approach. By requiring consumers to buy services they do not want or need, costs will rise significantly.

Second, Obamacare limits the deductible amount a consumer can choose to pay each year. Today, similar to car or home insurance, health insurance can be purchased with high deductibles or low deductibles impacting the monthly premium you pay. Obamacare limits high deductible plans leaving consumers with fewer choices. These restrictions, however, have not yet been clearly defined by Washington bureaucrats who could make them even worse.

Third, Obamacare squeezes the rating rules for insurance carriers in Ohio forcing some to pay higher premiums. This means you will no longer pay premiums for health insurance based on your choices and lifestyle as much as you do today. For example, insurance companies can currently rate an individual on a wide array of factors such as health status, occupation, and tobacco use. Because there are so many factors, there is more competition among insurance companies resulting in more options and lower costs for consumers.

But when Obamacare is fully implemented there will be only four rating factors permitted under law. Those are age, family status, geographic location and tobacco use. By narrowing the playing field, consumers will have less control over their health care costs based on the decisions they make compared to today’s laws. And because choices are no longer rewarded, insurance companies will be forced to treat everyone the same resulting in skyrocketing premiums for many low-risk, health conscious consumers.

Simply put, these changes all have one theme in common – government knows best. In other words you the consumer do not know how to buy insurance for yourself; you need the government to tell you what you must purchase. There is no consumer-driven, market-based approach when Obamacare is fully implemented. Choices will be limited, mandates will be increased and costs will continue to rise but at a much faster pace. The intent behind the law seems clear. Obamacare is government telling you what you must have – it is not a solution that provides you with the health care options that you want and need.

Mary Taylor is Ohio’s 65th Lieutenant Governor. She was sworn into office on January 10, 2011, the same day Governor John R. Kasich named her to serve as the director of the Ohio Department of Insurance and to lead CSI Ohio: The Common Sense Initiative to reform Ohio’s regulatory policies.

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Legal Brief Details Flaws in Pro-Lesbian Custody Ruling

Posted on September 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

By Thomas McFeely

NEW YORK (C-FAM) Pro-family legal experts have mobilized in defense of a Chilean father at risk of losing custody of his three daughters, courtesy of a decision by an international human rights tribunal.

Jaime López Allende has had sole custody of his daughters for the last eight years, has been an exemplary father, and is the girls’ preferred custodial parent. This didn’t matter when the transnational Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) ruled on a claim filed against the Chilean government by ex-wife Karen Atala, a Chilean judge who broke up their marriage to pursue a lesbian relationship.

The IACHR concluded Chile’s courts impermissibly violated the American Convention on Human Rights by denying Atala custody because of her “sexual orientation.” The commission’s non-binding decision is now before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has authority under the American Convention on Human Rights to issue binding rulings. On Sept. 8, the Alliance Defense Fund submitted a carefully-researched amicus legal brief to the Court detailing four fundamental flaws in the IACHR’s findings.

First, the ADF brief argues, the Inter-American Court would undermine national sovereignty and “most certainly exceed its competency” by intervening in a matter that Chilean courts handled in full conformity with that country’s legal procedures. The ADF brief also addresses an IACHR request that the Court order Chile to punish the judges who ruled against Atala. “Such overreach is breathtaking in its audacity and patently wrong in so many ways,” the brief comments. “That the Commission would do so … indicates that the Commission must have been overcome by a reckless ideological impulse, in service of which all other principles must be cast aside.”

Second, the amicus brief points out that “sexual orientation” isn’t even mentioned in the American Convention on Human Rights. Moreover, there is neither a substantial body of international legal precedent nor consensus within the international community that the ill-defined concept of “sexual orientation” should be a protected human-rights category.

The third critical flaw in the IACHR decision is that Chilean courts “determined that Karen Atala was an unfit mother for reasons unrelated to her sexual orientation,” the ADF legal brief notes. Judges did consider aspects of Atala’s personal life that suggested she was an inappropriate custodial parent, such as her role in breaking up the family, her subsequent inability to maintain a continuous relationship and her insistence on utilizing her daughters as unwilling pawns in her high-profile political activism as a “lesbiana publica.” But this consideration didn’t violate Atala’s “right to privacy,” as concluded by the IACHR, since similar conduct by a heterosexual parent automatically would be regarded as highly relevant in determining whether granting that parent custody was in the best interests of the parent’s children.

Finally, the ADF brief asserts, even if the Court finds that Atala’s human rights were violated, it’s still bound to reject the IACHRs’ custody finding. That’s because it’s settled international law that the children’s best interests trump all other factors, and the facts incontrovertibly establish Allende as a superior custodial parent.

“An individual’s sexual orientation must remain a neutral factor in all custody determinations, and should not give rise to a ‘supercategory’ or preferential treatment,” the ADF brief concludes. “To do so would be in direct violation of long-standing international principles placing the best interests of children above all other considerations.”

The Court is currently hearing arguments about the Atala case. Other pro-family groups from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, Chile, Mexico, Argentina and Jamaica have said they also intend to submit briefs in support of Allende.

Thomas McFeely writes for C-FAM. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

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Why ‘Christian’ Persecution?

Posted on September 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

By Raymond Ibrahim

Some are asking why my new monthly series, “Muslim Persecution of Christians,” wherein I collate and assess some of the atrocities committed by Muslims against Christians, does not include the persecution of other religious minority groups; others are suggesting I broaden my scope to include all minorities, for instance, homosexuals.

Of course other minority groups—essentially any religion other than Islam (or even the wrong kind of Islam, e.g., Shi’ism, Sufism)—experience persecution in the Muslim world. Accordingly, others qualified in the particulars of the various religions and civilizations persecuted by Islam are encouraged to collate and comment on them, monthly or otherwise.

That said, a series documenting the persecution of Christians under Islam is necessary for several reasons:

First, most religious persecution in the Muslim world is by far directed against Christians. Several reasons account for this, for starters, sheer numbers: from Morocco in the west, to Pakistan in the east, and throughout most of Africa, wherever Muslims make a majority, there are more Christians than other religious minorities; this tends to be true even along Islam’s periphery, like Indonesia, which also has a significant Buddhist and Hindu presence.

These large numbers are not simply a reflection of proselytization, but the fact that much of what is today called “the Muslim world” stands atop land that was seized by force and conquest from Christians, whose descendants still remain, sometimes in large numbers, such as Egypt, where the indigenous Copts make millions (unlike the Jews, who managed to make it back to their ancestral homeland, these Christians are already on their homeland and have nowhere to go).

Moreover, by collating and tracing the same patterns of abuse regarding all things intrinsically Christian—people, churches, crosses, Bibles—one can better highlight and articulate the issue as a distinct phenomenon, which it is.

It is true that Muslim aggression and violence knows no bound and is regularly directed against all non-Muslims in general. But it is equally true that the wider the scope, the more the net catches, the more generic the anecdotes become, the more they are liable to be dismissed by the mainstream as a product of non-ideological factors (from poverty to politics)—even though that is not the case.

On the other hand, by focusing on one group, one phenomenon, one can more clearly and unequivocally connect the dots, present a more focused case.

For example, while Muslim animus for Israel is interconnected to Muslim animus for Christians and others, it should be, and is, highlighted as a distinct phenomenon to be acknowledged and rectified. Were one to lump Israel with the rest of the “others” on Islam’s hit list—Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sufis, homosexuals, et al—without giving it any special attention, focus would be lost on the particulars of its fight, its history, and all the other aspects that make its conflict singular.

Accordingly, even though connecting the various manifestations of Muslim aggression is useful, particularly as it provides the big picture, when certain arenas reach a fever pitch, there is no wrong that they be highlighted separately, say, through one monthly report.

There are, of course, practical issues to consider as well: a document collating all Muslim aggression and persecution would not only be too cumbersome and long to read, but redundant; better simply to visit Jihad Watch for a comprehensive survey of Islam’s daily doings.

Finally, one needs to be knowledgeable of the history and civilizations of the peoples being persecuted in order to do them justice, to demonstrate historical continuity, show past precedents, connect the dots, etc. And while I’m intimately acquainted with the particulars of Muslim-Christian interactions—historically, theologically, even personally—I’m less so with the particulars of, say, Muslim-Buddhist interactions.

I therefore leave it to others to highlight the various minority groups’ plights—ideally not merely by listing the various anecdotes, but by demonstrating continuity for that particular group’s history with Islam.

This article was first published by Jihad Watch on September 9, 2011. His works are also available at the Middle East Forum.

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The Truth About Obama’s Jobs Bill

Posted on September 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

By The National Inflation Association

Last Thursday evening, President Obama gave a speech to a joint session of Congress discussing the jobs situation here in America. The purpose of Obama’s speech was to convince the American public and their elected representatives in Washington to support Obama’s new $447 billion ‘American Jobs Act’, which has a cost that is 49% larger than the $300 billion act most people were expecting. NIA believes this bill will do nothing to reduce unemployment in America and that it is nothing but another stimulus bill in disguise that will add to our budget deficits.

Obama’s bill proposes a $4,000 per employee tax credit for businesses that hire somebody who was previously unemployed for 6 months or more, at a cost of $8 billion. At the same time, Obama wants to extend emergency unemployment compensation (EUC), which allows Americans who have exhausted standard unemployment benefits that last for 26 weeks to continue receiving them for between 20 and 53 additional weeks. EUC benefits are set to expire at the end of 2011 and continuing them through the end of 2012 will cost U.S. taxpayers $49 billion.

It is totally absurd for Obama to give employers money to attempt to hire people he is simultaneously paying to stay out of work. What makes this even more outrageous is that employers have an incentive not to hire recently laid off workers, when only those unemployed for 6 months or more will bring them a $4,000 check. If this bill is passed it will make the unemployment situation in America far worse than it already is.

NIA has heard from members who own farms and have positions on their farms available, but can’t find anybody interested in working for them and filling the available positions. Every time they hire somebody to work on their farm, the worker purposely does a poor job and tries to get fired. Their sole purpose of getting a job is to convince their local unemployment agency that they are trying to find employment so that they can keep receiving unemployment benefits, when in reality they are trying to take advantage of the system. Continue reading →

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Obama on Jobs: Missing “Rigid” Ideas

Posted on September 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

By Cameron Smith

Currently, there are almost 600 bills before Congress that contain the word “job.” Politicians have talked about “job creation” nonstop. Oddly enough, this rhetoric demonstrates that those political leaders are listening to what concerns Americans, primarily their economic future.

Their responses fall into two fundamental categories: Those who believe that the government creates jobs and economic growth, and those who believe the private sector accomplishes those ends. The former believe that substantial government spending charges the economy in troubled economic times while the latter tend to believe an unhindered marketplace will correct itself.

After listening to President Obama’s “jobs speech” to Congress, Americans should have little doubt that the President believes the government has a central role in job creation and a virtually unfettered control over the economy.

President Obama led off by stating that government needs to ask whether “[it] can restore some of the fairness and security that has defined this nation since our beginning.” Remember, this is the same nation that Ben Franklin admonished should not give up “essential liberty to purchase … temporary safety” lest it “deserve neither liberty nor safety.” This is a nation where meaningful opportunities for all are prized above equal outcomes. The President’s sentiment is troubling, not because “fairness” and “security” have suddenly become vices, but because government imposition of those virtues is radically different than the average American’s concept of them.

The President even acknowledged that “the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs … has made this economy the engine and the envy of the world.” But he also qualified those remarks by suggesting that Americans share “a belief that we’re all connected, and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.”

The President is correct that there are some things Americans can only do together as a nation, and even more convenient for the President, Americans have agreed on those tasks. The Constitution provides a number of express powers where states and individuals, through the federal government, work together for the common welfare. Conversely, the same Constitution prevents the federal government from interfering in the lives of individuals, their communities, and their states where powers are not granted to the federal government. These constitutional restraints do not mean the American tradition of helping each other is dead but rather that the tradition has meaning because it comes from the hearts of the American people rather than by government compulsion.

Regrettably, President Obama has a different perspective on the limits of government. During the speech, the President asked, “[w]hat kind of country would this be if [Congress] had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do?” The “rigid ideas” that limit government action are found in the Constitution. The President would do well to remember that those ideas were enshrined by those who knew the threat of powerful oppressive government to free society, the countless Americans who shed their blood to protect them, and a people who have agreed to amend them only 27 times over more than 200 years.

When the President of the United States takes such a jaundiced view toward fundamental restraints on the federal government, Americans should be outraged. The Constitution’s limits on government are there SPECIFICALLY to prevent the federal government from becoming too powerful. Even when they are not convenient, those limits are extremely important.

Parts of the President’s plan for stimulating the economy make sense. Stabilizing and reducing costs for Medicaid and Medicare as well as authorizing free trade agreements are music to the ears of many Americans. Unfortunately, these are conspicuously absent from the American Jobs Act which the President called on Congress to pass.

Many components such as new unemployment benefits and “shovel ready” infrastructure projects are simply another chorus of an all-too-familiar tune. Rather than engaging in common sense tax reform, the President’s tax credits fail to reduce the overall tax burden on job creators by borrowing against Social Security and putting conditions on the types of workers those businesses must hire to obtain the credits. To be sure, America needs a real infrastructure plan for the future, and tax reform has been put off for too long. But the President’s political “Hail Mary” falls far short of meeting those requirements.

The President also failed to mention the $450 billion cost of his plan. While he assured America that “everything in [his] bill will be paid for,” the White House summary of the American Jobs Act states that “the President will call on the Joint Committee [on Deficit Reduction] to come up with additional deficit reduction necessary to pay for the Act and still meet its deficit target.”

Relying on the highly divided “supercommittee” to come up with another $450 billion in cuts on top of the $1.5 trillion already assigned seems highly unlikely.

Even if that substantial cost could be offset, the Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.3 trillion deficit for 2011 alone. Should Congress could find a way to “pay for” the President’s proposals, they would almost certainly be doing so with money the American people do not have.

With unemployment at more than nine percent, Americans definitely need jobs. They also need representatives and a President who understand their limits.

[Since Smith wrote this article, President Obama has proposed paying for his jobs bill by “closing the corporate tax loophole and asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.” In other words, he wants the rich to pay for government screw ups. It’s federal government monetary policies that aid the development of financial bubbles and busts. It is the federal government that has increases the national debt to unsustainable levels. If enough Americans buy Obama’s tax increasing strategy, the middle class will end up paying for it through increased prices on goods and services, which is also known as trickle-down inflation.]

Cameron Smith is General Counsel for the Alabama Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets, limited government and strong families, which are indispensable to a prosperous society.

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