Vouchers for religious schools

A letter to the Tribune demands a response.  (Vouchers for religious schools, December 12)  I’m guessing the Tribune was sympathetic in that it printed the letter.

The letter touches on a very common issue, and one that is commonly misunderstood.

I pay thousands of dollars a year in property taxes.  Two-thirds of that goes for public schools.

When our kids were young, we wanted to send our kids to a private school, a religious one, but we couldn’t afford it.

Why should I have to pay twice for my kids’ education if I wanted to send them to a non-public school?

If the state were to give money to a religious school, that is a subsidy.  If the state were to give us a voucher to be used for any school, that is not a subsidy.  Unless, of course, I didn’t pay any property taxes.  But even renters pay them indirectly. 

Education is important for every person in our society.  Public education is one option but not the only one.  To demand that parents pay for both is not only not fair, it is tyrannical.  The state is not technically demanding that every child attend its schools, but it is making it exceedingly difficult for parents not to send them there.  That is not right.

An Open Letter to the American People

Congress just passed a bill that allows our government to continue spending money at its current rate for another two months. 

This is considered by most as being a good thing, because then the government won’t shut down, because it has run out of money.  Actually, it wouldn’t run out of money.  More like you left you wallet at home while at the store.  You have the money; you just can’t access it right that minute. 

They say that we would be defaulting on our debt if we didn’t raise the debt ceiling.

No.  We would be defaulting on our debt if we were going out of business.

But we are not. 

What they might not mention is that it’s not that there isn’t enough money to be had.  This is money that they want to borrow.

The government is in debt.  They are not interested in paying off the debt.  They are only interested in paying interest on that debt.

They don’t see a problem with this. 

Does anybody see a problem with this?

You wouldn’t do this. 

You wouldn’t advise anybody to do this.

Only very foolish people would do this, just keep going deeper and deeper into debt without any intention of paying off the debt.  Those people and our federal government.  You can add some state governments to that as well.

This means that an ever-increasing amount of any money they get will be used for interest payments, or, you could say, just totally wasted money.  Billions and billions of dollars every year. 

The Federal Reserve Bank, which for some unknown reason, has been given responsibility for the health of our economy, in their extraordinary wisdom, has been keeping interests rates as low as possible for years now. 

They say this is to stimulate the economy. It is also to hide the magnitude of the government debt as well as to lower the interest payments.

When I was a kid, it was common for people to retire and live off the interest on their savings accounts.  But since the government has gone off on its spend-as-much-money-as-possible agenda, the Fed has no interest in returning to normal interest rates.  Then we would be spending a trillion dollars a year just on interest.  Again, totally wasted money.

So the government has totally ruined a significant retirement option for millions of our people.

Why?

The short answer would be that they want(ed) to use the money for short-term political gain.  The more money they spend, which is often just given to people in some way, the more public favor they believe they will receive.  They can create new headlines to distract people from the longterm losses to our people.

I believe it is time to end this.  Long past time, and we need to do this now.

No more.

You may ask how we can do this.  What action can I take right now to change this?

And I would have to say I don’t know.

You can write the politicians, but I don’t even know if they will see the letters.  You can write the newspapers, but they won’t print the letters.

The place to start is public awareness.  Talk about this.  Every time you get in a political discussion.  Or start a political discussion with this issue.

If you meet candidates, tell them what you think.  Don’t just ask them what they think.  Tell them what you think and expect. 

The biggest problems in government right now are not specific bills but the culture.

Writing massive bills that are too big to read and discuss, where you have to vote for ten things you don’t like to get five things you do.  Drawing Congressional districts that almost ensure a particular party’s success.  Spending money that only increases the size of the federal government and the dependency of the American people on the government.

Oh, and spending money the government doesn’t have, so that it has to borrow money for pay for these things.  And that includes letting the Federal Reserve create money, but that’s another story.

All these things have gone on for too long with nobody apparently trying to stop it.  Oh, a few people have tried.  Rand Paul is one.  But he’s not trying hard enough, or the system is too entrenched for him to make any headway.  If you’re not in the majority party in the Senate, or the House for that matter, the leaders of those chambers won’t give you much attention.

So it’s up to us.  The people.  I’m sorry I can’t give you more things to do with a greater chance of success.  Maybe somebody reading this can do that.  I hope so.

 

 

The Court Called Supreme and Abortion

There is a case before the Supreme Court now that affects all of us.  On the surface, the case is only about abortion, but it deals with five important issues that concern all of us. 

The first issue is the question of what a Constitutional right is. 

There is talk that this case might overturn a previous Court ruling that not only made abortion the law of the land but also engendered the belief that abortion is a Constitutional right. 

At the time when our Constitution was written, the only rights anyone was talking about were unalienable rights, those spoken of in the Declaration of Independence, rights that precede and supersede government and that government cannot restrict or take away.  These, the Founders said, were given to human beings by God.

The Founders debated whether to include some of these unalienable rights in the Constitution itself.  They were concerned that people might think that these rights came from the government rather than from God.

They finally decided to add them as amendments to our Constitution, and the first ten became known as the Bill of Rights. 

So a Constitutional right would be an unalienable right, one that government cannot restrict or take away. 

Abortion is now legal, but is it a right, a Constitutional one at that?

This is the second issue: how do we know a right is a Constitutional one?

A Constitutional right would have to be an unalienable right, given by God. 

The thinking of the Court was that abortion was a part of some privacy concerns of the Fourth Amendment.  That would be limiting government intrusion into a person’s life.  Is a limitation or ban on abortion an intrusion into a person’s life?  Or are they prohibitions on wrongful activity?

If I were making bombs in my basement, do I have a right to privacy?  If I were aborting a baby, would I still have that right to privacy? 

One of the foundational rights of our country is the right to life.  When does a baby get that right?  When we decide?  When her mother decides?  Then how is that an unalienable right, if other people can decide when or if a person gets it?

That’s the basic issue of abortion.  Not the mother’s rights but the baby’s.

So then the question: how do we decide if an issue, a right, is a Constitutional right? 

I think we should be very careful before we assert that some new right is a Constitutional right.

I frankly doubt that, after 200-some years, anyone is going to discover a new right today that everybody would agree that this right comes from God.  And that’s what a Constitutional right is.

Should we decide these questions by taking opinion polls?  Are unalienable rights unalienable because a majority of nine people on a court say so?  It may not even be a unanimous decision.  Shouldn’t an unalienable right at least have some consensus in a country?  If half the country is opposed to something, can we really say that this right is unalienable, such that it can never be changed. 

Saying that these rights come from God suggests to me that the Founders were thinking of some external point of reference, like the Bible, because other religions don’t all agree with our understanding of unalienable rights, e.g. the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  You can’t really talk about God in a generic sense.  It would have to relate to a religion that the people were familiar with.  A religion is a common understanding of God.

Thirdly, the fact that something is legal doesn’t mean that it is right.

Lying is illegal if you do it in court while under oath, but in everyday life, there is no law against it.  Does that mean it’s alright to lie, if you haven’t taken an oath beforehand that you won’t?  I would say no.  I’m guessing some would disagree, saying it depends on the circumstances.

But we could probably agree that there are things that are right and things that are wrong.  But our laws don’t forbid everything that is wrong, and in some cases may specifically allow things we believe to be wrong.

So whether something is right or wrong is not determined by laws.  Laws only determine if certain behavior requires a public response to inhibit it, not whether something is intrinsically bad. 

Fourth, something isn’t a right, just because loud voices insist that it is. 

People seem prone to declaring rights that everyone is supposed to accept as inviolable ones.  Governments can endow the people with rights, and they can revoke them as well.  And asserting that something is a right does not make it one, and you should not expect that everyone is going to agree with you.    You can expect to be challenged.

Where does abortion fit here?

The public is divided.

And the last issue isn’t about rights but about equal protection.

The Fourteen Amendment to our Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. 

Does that mean that different abortion laws in different states constitute unequal protection under the law?

By that thinking, states shouldn’t make laws.  Only the federal government should, so every state has the same laws.

No, equal protection under the law means that the law will apply equally to all those affected by the law.  Because you can drive 75 in Montana does not mean that you can drive 75 in Illinois.  And it does not mean that Illinois must change its law to match Montana’s.  But it does mean that in each state, the penalty for breaking the law will, or should, apply to everyone equally.

Soon the Supreme Court will make a ruling on a recent abortion law. 

Just remember. 

The law and the ruling are about a lot more than just abo

finding answers to gun violence

Our local newspaper keeps printing editorials crying out for solutions to the problem of gun violence. 

I think the thing that we seem to be forgetting here is that the key word in gun violence is violence and not gun.

We had a man just a few days ago who killed 8 people with his car.

We are making a big mistake if we think that these events are not related, that a man mowing down people with his car is a different problem than people mowing down people with a gun.

The problem is not the abundance of cars, I mean, guns.  The problem is that we have people who want to hurt and kill other people, and they have no moral or mental constraints that prevent them from doing so.  Sure, if you take away all the guns, you will cut down on gun violence.   Though we laws against certain drugs, yet there seems to be little problem for people who want them to get them.  I suspect that would be the same for guns. 

You will probably see more car violence.  And in some cultures, the preferred method of killing people is bombs. 

Removing all the guns may reduce the number of total murders, but is that a win?  You may think so, but if you don’t deal with people’s hearts, turning anger and hatred into peace and love, then you are setting your sights too low.

And this is the real problem.

You can’t give peace to angry hearts and turn hatred into love without God. 

There.  I did it.  I said the G-word right out here in public. 

So-called secular countries are a new thing in human history.  Countries have always acknowledged God or a god in their lives.  We started off with the communist countries that denied the very existence of God.  Now the West joined in with secularism, that, while not necessarily denying God’s existence, it affirms that such belief is a private matter and not relevant to public life and policy-making.

But when we were not afraid to acknowledge God publicly in our country, that acknowledgement gave people pause in that they knew they were accountable to a Higher Power, that people were created in God’s image and thus worthy of respect, and there were God-given rules for life: the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.