Obama declares war on people of faith

Republicans will suffer politically from their "overreach on family planning" in response to a minor mistake by HHS, says Susan Barnes-Gelt in the January round of Head On TV debates. Nothing minor here, replies John Andrews; Obama's mandate on religious institutions is a declaration of war. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over the Komen Foundation vs. Planned Parenthood, Iran's threat to Israel, Colorado legislative ethics, and the presidential race. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for February: 1. HHS MANDATE ON RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS

Susan: It took the Obama administration a week to acknowledge Secretary of HHS over-reached in requiring Catholic-owned hospitals and non-profits to include birth control in employee health plans. The compromise –already implemented by 24-states - calls on insurance companies to cover the cost. Good for Obama for addressing the problem.

John: Obama personally, not some cabinet secretary, broke his promise to Catholics about insurance regulations that would respect their religious objection to contraceptive drugs. Obama personally brutalized evangelicals with his mandate for their churches, charities, and schools, including the college where I work, to provide abortion drugs. He has declared war.

Susan: You’re at war on too many fronts – lacking the resources to battle Repub overreach on family planning. How is it that small government conservatives want to regulate individual choice and what happens in the bedroom. Keep it up. The R nominee is bound to get a couple thousand female votes.

John: Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists – one thing we all have in common is cherishing America as the land of the free, a place where government won’t trample our religious beliefs. But Obama on his left-wing power trip obviously doesn’t care. People of faith won’t let this one stand.

2. KOMEN FOUNDATION BOWS TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD

John: The issue of abortion raises two questions. Legally, when can a woman end a pregnancy? Culturally, how much do we value life at every stage? America has developed a culture of death since Roe v. Wade. The Komen Foundation knuckling under to Planned Parenthood proves it yet again. Really sad.

Susan: I’m puzzled when small government conservatives –adamantly opposed to government overreach, passionately support government’s role in the bedroom, free choice and a very blurred line between church and state. Shame on former Komen VP Karen Handel for politicizing a formerly worthy charity.

John: This was two private organizations, not government. Komen decided its work of saving lives by fighting breast cancer should not be entangled with Planned Parenthood’s work of taking lives by performing abortions. The liberal firestorm wasn’t about 1/1000 of Planned Parenthood’s budget, it was about perpetuating the culture of death.

Susan: No John. Komen’s disgraced VP – Karen Handel is an uber-conservative Georgia Republican who lost her bid for governor. Her single-issue platform? Anti-choice, targeting Planned Parenthood. Successful non-profits rely on political neutrality. Komen has done irreparable harm to its reputation and long-term viability.

3. ISRAEL AND IRAN

Susan: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu believes Iran is developing nuclear weapons. And the string of recent attacks thought the region - is an escalation that threatens Israel. State Dept officials believe Israel could attack Iran this spring, in order to stop Tehran from building a nuke. Time for diplomacy – on steroids.

John: The worst weakness of this weak president has been his non-resistance to Iran’s goal of nuclear blackmail. Equally bad is Obama’s moral and strategic blindness in treating Israel as America’s adversary, instead of our ally. Israel has stopped two other neighbors from going nuclear. If they strike Iran, we must support them.

Susan: Pul-eeeze! The President took out bin Laden, his key operatives; brought the troops home from Iraq, toppled a Libyan dictator and has strong public approval for winding down the irresolvable mess in Afghanistan. None of his potential Repub opponents has the foreign policy chops to take him on.

John: Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map, dominate the Middle East, neutralize Europe, destabilize Latin America, empower North Korea, and intimidate the United States. In the face of this threat, Barack Obama is the Neville Chamberlain of our time – indecisive, inept, timid, and weak. Thank goodness Netanyahu is strong.

4. PRESIDENTIAL RACE YET AGAIN

John: The roller coaster of Mitt Romney and his rivals, from Perry and Cain to Gingrich and Santorum, is like nothing I’ve seen in watching Republican politics since 1960. The weak leadership of Barack Obama is like nothing you Democrats have had in the White House since Jimmy Carter in 1980. This year is crazy.

Susan: Every month the R’s look for a candidate, President Obama gets stronger and stronger. Flavor of the month Santorum is forcing Mitt further to the right, making it tough for him to recapture the chameleon character he’s depending on in November. Can’t wait for Pawlenty to join the race.

John: Obama getting stronger? What planet is your pollster on? His numbers are poor, and the DNC trails the RNC in fundraising. Hence Obama’s sudden chumminess with the super PAC’s. Hence the vote-buying on foreclosures and student loans. Catholic and evangelical voters hate his mandate on abortion drugs. Even the black vote is soft.

Susan: With every Republican primary mudfest, Obama’s numbers get stronger. Right wing-nuts, forcing their potential nominees to debate birth control instead of job creation send key swing voters – center right independents – straight to Obama. Americans want to vote FOR the future. Not fight 19th Century social issues.

5. ETHICS CASE ROILS LEGISLATURE

John: Did state Rep. Laura Bradford have one too many that night? Did the Denver Police handle it badly? Those matters are soon forgotten. What we shouldn’t forget is how squeaky clean the Colorado General Assembly is, compared to legislatures in most other states. The ethics rules are uncomfortable, but they work.

Susan: Yes, Coloradans are lucky – our state legislators are cleaner than most, in spite of a toothless ethics code. I’d say it has to do with Colorado being a place where voters are uncomfortable with old-style backroom shenanigans. Sadly in the case of Rep. Bradford, Denver Cops were out of line.

John: Legislative ethics have teeth. I served there and saw members get bitten. Kudos to Speaker McNulty for invoking the process against his fellow Republican, Bradford, despite threats of a party switch. Democrats have done likewise. TABOR and term limits also help keep government clean. Corruption is less when power is limited.

Susan: Thank you John, for opening the garage-door of opportunity. Let’s talk Doug Bruce’s TABOR policy. The icon of the strangle-government movement is going to jail for cheating, lying and swindling. Doug Bruce’s story is a cautionary tale for lawmakers who operate outside the law.

How free are we really?

(Denver Post, Jan.29) So now we’ve heard the State of the Union according to Obama and the State of the State according to Hickenlooper. We’ve seen Gingrich’s debating prowess and Romney’s tax returns, Santorum’s sweaters and Ron Paul’s scowl. But how much does that really tell us about the shape America is in? If we’re not the land of the free, we’re nothing, right? Economists James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, and Joshua Hall, like a team of doctors taking your vitals before surgery – the operation in this case being the potential removal of elected officials across the land – bring grim news that Americans’ freedom to better ourselves economically has slid drastically in this decade. Hardly the change we hoped for. The authors’ “Economic Freedom of the World 2011,” a data-rich report from the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, BC, uses five indicators to rank 141 countries on how well they allow you and me to work toward affluence, keep what we earn, and use it as we choose, free from government interference. Since 2000, our country fell down the scale faster than almost any nation on earth.

Notice that this occurred under various combinations of unified and divided control in Washington. The unrelenting trend, with bipartisan culpability, has been “liberty yielding and government gaining ground,” as Thomas Jefferson warned. Notice too that the report’s data end in 2009. The humongous deficits and health-care takeover since then have only worsened our score.

America still ranks 10th in the Fraser global index (exactly where we place in another valuable economic-freedom scorecard just updated by the Heritage Foundation). But look who’s ahead of us: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, and tiny Mauritius.

Then blush to see the company we’re in among the getting-less-free-fastest club: only the Latin caudillo regimes of Venezuela and Argentina, and the North Atlantic basket cases of Iceland and Ireland, have regressed as badly as Uncle Sam did in recent years. No wonder big majorities are now telling pollsters they believe we’re in decline and will leave our kids a narrower horizon of opportunity.

But not all the tidings are bad. Colorado as a state, when ranked against our 49 sisters and the 10 Canadian provinces by another team of Fraser Institute scholars in “Economic Freedom of North America 2011,” trails only Alberta (the oil-rich neighbor whom Obama spurned with his Keystone pipeline veto), Delaware, Texas, and Nevada. We actually gained one place over the previous year, 2008 to 2009.

This result again, paralleling the experience in Washington, has been achieved even as party control seesawed at the state capitol. You can be sure that’s mostly because our Colorado constitution, unlike the federal constitution, has a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to restrain government growth.

And partisans on both sides shouldn’t forget that the North America scorecard (EFNA) has a two-year data lag exactly as the world rankings do. Hence it doesn’t reflect the Democrats’ “dirty dozen” tax increases in 2010, nor the Republicans’ sad 2011 performance with a state enabling bill for Obamacare and no effort to repeal Bill Ritter’s car tax – er, fee.

Fraser rates the 60 states and provinces on 10 criteria under the headings of size of government, takings and discriminatory taxation, and labor market freedom. If Colorado had passed Right to Work in 2008, we’d rank even higher. And that’s not just a bragging point. EFNA includes statistical proof that living standards rise in a state with almost 1:1 correlation to the rise of economic freedom.

Occupying the best cabin on a sinking ship counts for little, however. If the Canadians, Brits, and Aussies continue outdistancing the U.S. in that precious freedom Jeb Bush has called “the right to rise,” all of our red- and blue-state political cheering will be just so much white noise.

Candidates in stark contrast

Obama's goals and record will make a stark contrast with those of Mitt Romney or whoever the GOP nominates, says John Andrews in the January round of Head On TV debates. Hardly, scoffs Susan Barnes-Gelt: Romney's positions are vague and the overall Republican field is weak. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over the upcoming legislative session, policing in Denver, the Lobato school case, and the National Western Stock Show. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for January: 1. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEAR: HERE GOES

Susan: The economy is beginning to recover and employment is finally going in the right direction.  Obama will have a tough race this November, but so far – the Republican looks weak.  If Romney is the strongest in a weak field, your party’s in trouble.

John: Romney believes in a bigger economy for all to share. Obama believes in a bigger government for all to support. Romney believes in a stronger America for the world to respect. Obama believes in a weaker America for the world to push around. It’s a very clear choice. Advantage Romney.

Susan: We don’t know what Romney believes in because – despite numerous debates – he’s failed to articulate a vision for America. Bashing the president and reciting America the Beautiful while he lies about the number of jobs he’s created and brags about firing people, is not going to win an election.

John: What you just heard, folks, is the whole Obama campaign. Throw mud, discredit the challenger. At all costs, distract the voters from the incumbent’s record of failure. It’s time again for the Reagan question: Are we better off than four years ago? We’re not, so we need a new president.

2. WHITHER THE NATIONAL WESTERN STOCK SHOW?

John: I’ve enjoyed the National Western Stock Show for over 50 years. My son and his son have enjoyed it. It’s a Colorado treasure and a Denver economic powerhouse. The Stock Show must go on, no matter what. If we can bid for the Winter Olympics, surely we can preserve the National Western.

Susan: Yes the stock show is a Denver institution. And that’s where it belongs – in Denver - central Denver. However, the 2-week event needs to become part of year-round job generating campus. 21st Century management and vision must refresh the 160 year-old institution.

John: Just so the whole thing is done with voluntary financial contributions and good old free enterprise. When you say “year-round job generating campus,” I hear boondoggles and subsidies, taxpayers on the hook and special interests at the trough. Horses and cows at the trough, fine. Special interests, no.

Susan: 95 acres in the middle of town, used less than 3 months a year – primarily for special events – is a boondoggle. The National Western notwithstanding – we’re not a cow town anymore. The site needs to generate jobs, revenue and enhanced property tax – no taxpayer bailout, buyout or bond.

3. DOES DENVER NEED AN INDEPENDENT POLICE MONITOR?

John: As the father of a police officer, I am not objective about law enforcement. It’s a good thing – hard work, dangerous work. The dedicated people who do it deserve the benefit of the doubt. Denver’s independent police monitor and oversight board are needlessly adversarial to law enforcement. Why have them at all?

Susan: A handful of rogue cops, an ineffective internal review process and a series of abusive conflicts mean citizens don’t trust the police department. That’s why Mayor Hancock took the unprecedented step of bringing in a police chief from outside the department. Accountability is key.

John: To protect public safety, we grant government a monopoly of force. To prevent tyranny and protect liberty, we have watchdogs to watch the watchers. It’s a balancing act. But the outgoing police monitor, Rosenthal, lost the balance. His call to bring in the feds, an Obama administration that’s anti-police, is wrong.

Susan: Agreed. The police dept doesn’t need a federal investigation. On the other hand, the department has been rogue since Paul Childs was murdered in 2003, I expect the new chief and manager will clean things up. But an independent monitor can give them cover and reassure the public.

4. PRIORITIES FOR LEGISLATIVE SESSION

Susan:  It’s an election year for the state legislature, so we can anticipate a lot of posturing and empty rhetoric. However, Colorado faces big challenges - K-12 & higher ed funding; job creation, transportation, human services and infrastructure – to name a few.

John: Friction between, and within, the political parties makes that big agenda all the tougher this year, Susan. The top Senate Democrat, and two leading House Democrats, hope to take away GOP congressional seats. Hard feelings remain from the reapportionment battle. And bitter primaries may split the Republicans.

Susan: You’re right, John. A serious lack of leadership and vision plagues Colorado and the same lack of civility in the US Congress, is trickling down to state and local government. The unintended consequence of legislative term limits has created a revolving door for career politicians.

John: Take it from a senator who left because of term limits. The limit is a helpful safeguard against legislators settling in forever and getting captured by the system, at the expense of our liberties and our pocketbooks. If this legislature just concentrates on economic growth through free markets, I’m happy.   5.  Lobato & the schools – now what?

Susan:  In December a Denver judge determined Colorado’s school funding system was “irrational and inadequate.”  The state Board of Ed and the governor are appealing. If the ruling holds, the cost to state taxpayers will be enormous.  Though it’s tough to argue resources are adequate or equitable.

John: It’s called the Lobato case, and everyone watching better hope the Colorado Supreme Court overturns it. The ruling by Judge Sheila Rappaport points the state toward bankruptcy, and in pursuit of the impossible. Her idea of adequate school funding envisions every child above average. The constitution doesn’t require that.

Susan: The constitution requires fair and equitable. Of course you can’t legislate – or fund – equality. However, crumbling schoolhouses, insufficient digital equipment, furniture and books impact low-income districts and schools. Well-to-do districts and schools raise money from parents. Schools serving low income kids don’t have that option.

John: All the constitution requires is, quote, “thorough and uniform.” By no stretch does that justify the $3 billion budgetary hit demanded by teacher unions and rubber-stamped by the judge. America has doubled real dollars per pupil in government schools since 1970 with no gain in test scores. More spending is not the answer.

Grim reminder in Parker deaths

Have you observed two reoccurring events in the news?  First, there is murder followed by a suicide.  Is this the result of teaching and acceptance of evolution in our society?  If life is just a matter of chance and time, what difference does it make what I do?  If I am not responsible to a Creator God, than I can do anything I please. 

Second, the people left behind always express shock that their friend/relative was capable of such an atrocity.  However, such disclaimers ignore basic humanity for the perpetrator and the one making the claim.  Jesus said, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander" (Matt 15:19). 

Evolution conjectures that things are getting better and better.  The news of the day negates this theory.  If we are honest with ourselves, we will recognize the truth about our own deceitful heart.

My 2012 survival kit

(Denver Post, Jan. 1) “Let us eat and drink,” said the beautiful people at last night’s glittering parties, “for tomorrow we shall die.” Maybe they thought their insouciance fitting as 2011 ticked away, but they could not have thought it original. It was Obama’s favorite economist, John Maynard Keynes, the original Mr. Stimulus, who remarked coldly in the 1930s that in the long run we’re all dead. And Keynes was echoing the dissipated elites of ancient Israel 2700 years ago, says the prophet Isaiah. Fatalistic irresponsibility endures though nations rise and fall. Our fall may now impend, as 69 percent of those polled believe America is in decline and 57 percent expect our kids will live less well than we do. Yet you saw little evidence of that somber outlook in the prosperous holiday bustle at suburban malls and downtown theaters. A psychologist might call it cognitive dissonance. I’d call it either rank denial or good old American gumption. But which?

On this first day of a fateful election year the choice is entirely ours – and I choose gumption. Notwithstanding our fiscal and economic woes, political polarization, slumping demographics, nukes in Iran and North Korea, global jihad and sharia, the USA has the potential to come roaring back in 2012 and onward to 2020. It starts with deciding we can.

True, historians warn that great nations seldom make it to age 250, and we’re now 235. “Pessimism, materialism, an influx of foreigners, the welfare state, the weakening of religion, the love of money, and the loss of a sense of duty,” Sir John Glubb’s checklist for a country in decadence (from his 1976 book “The Fate of Empires”), fits us all too well. Our advantage, though, is that there has never been an America before.

Are we exempt from the undertow of history and the underside of human nature? Absolutely not. We do possess, however, resilient free institutions and an indomitable fighting spirit. From this fortunate combination – representing for our generation a trust to keep, not a charm to boast on or coast on – a victory for the United States over decadence and decline, against the odds, remains possible.

I’m no Pollyanna. Our state and nation are ill-led by Democrats and Republicans alike. Judges flout the Constitution, producing tyrannous rulings like Colorado’s Lobato school case, and making it unlikely the Supreme Court will annul the disaster that is Obamacare. The spiritual poverty in today’s public square would appall the pioneers who put “Nil Sine Numine,” nothing without the Spirit, on our state seal. We face a stormy year.

But like many Christian and Jewish conservatives, I enter 2012 with a survival kit of ideas and ideals that keep me buoyant, storms or not. Here on the shelf by my desk are wisdom-books giving timeless encouragement in the toughest times. Enemy attack, economic crash, electoral defeat? I hope and pray not. Still in such volumes as these, there is sustenance to persist regardless.

Of course my list of ten titles, compiled years ago for a friend, won’t match yours. But I do recommend compiling your own. It will ground you on bedrock and make 2012 go better. And what are the books on my shelf?

First is the Bible, alongside Chesterton’s “Everlasting Man” and Lewis’s “Mere Christianity,” for an anchor in eternity. Next, “The Federalist” for politics and Bastiat’s “The Law” plus Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” for economics. Weaver’s “Ideas Have Consequences” and Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative” diagnose America’s travails since 1945.

From literature, though a hundred come to mind, I complete my ten with Bolt’s “Man for All Seasons” and Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” epitomizing moral integrity. We’ll need a lot of that, and divine help besides, as beleaguered America turns the calendar page. Happy New Year.