We did it again

Yesterday, the day after Election Day, I made a bet with myself that all elections not yet decided will go Democrat.  I can revise that modestly.  All the elections needed to retain the House and Senate will go blue.

Now I realized that we have elections that will take weeks to decide, but all elections must be certified by December 14.  So any election that doesn’t look right, there won’t be enough time to verify or contest the results. 

All ballots should be in and counted on Election Day.  Now we have races where we know exactly how many votes are needed to decide a contested race. 

You watch.  There will be a lot of elections that will defy all expectations, but you won’t be able to challenge them. 

Even now, with record high inflation, millions of unvetted people entering our country, fights in schools and education all across the country, the balance of power always, ALWAYS shifts, but now it’s close?  Any bets that the Democrats keep both the House and the Senate?

Electing our Presidents by the Popular Vote

I understand the push to elect Presidents through the popular vote.  I disagree with it, but I understand why they want this.  (Actually small states lose out, October 3)

I find it noteworthy that they are not attempting to reform the system through a Constitutional Amendment.  That would show whether the country as a whole was in favor of the idea. 

There is, however, one fatal flaw in their plan.  Fatal in the sense that they are willing to break the core principles of democracy in order to save it, or, to get what they want.

Under our current electoral system, voters essentially are voting for electors, not the President himself.  These electors have all agreed to vote for a particular candidate if he wins.

Under this new proposal, if the voters of a state chose the candidate with fewer overall votes than the other candidate, the state would then nullify all their votes and accept all the electors of the losing candidate.

I’m sorry, but that is simply wrong.

UNLESS

Every election, on that same ballot, you will need to ask the voters if they will agree to that.  Then you have that right.  But to get so many states to agree to this, and then allow this system to perpetuate forever is absurd and contrary to every principle of democracy they claim to uphold. 

How to fund public education better

Two-thirds of your property taxes in Illinois go for funding public education.  Not surprisingly, poorer areas don’t seem to get enough funding for their schools.  (Illinois criticized over school funding equity, October 3)

If they take money from wealthier areas to give to the poorer ones, then property taxes will go even higher.  You may say that the wealthy can afford it.  But property taxes aren’t based on your income.  Property taxes don’t take into account a person’s ability to pay for them. 

People retire or lose jobs and then live on fixed incomes or their savings, but property taxes just keep going up.  People shouldn’t have to move because of high property taxes.

I have proposed a solution to this for decades.

Let the state determine a per student allocation for public education.  Raise this through the income tax.  This must be kept separate from the general income tax in every way.  Local school districts would be allowed to raise additional taxes however they will.  This plan will reduce overall property taxes and equitably fund all our public schools.

We must also allow parents who send their kids to private schools a deduction on their taxes for their expenses up to the amount they would have paid for public schools.

Jesus and government policies

Years ago, it was commonly asked, What would Jesus do?  There were even bracelets with four little cubes on them with the letters – WWJD.  (what would Jesus do?)

The Church in America is divided over the fact that we have millions of people walking into our country looking for a better life.  Does this mean that our government should just take care of them? 

They are not legal immigrants whom we have vetted, and whom we have some idea how they will assimilate into our country.  Most do not speak our language.

Our government is $31 trillion in debt.  There are millions more refugees around the world, and billions of people less well off than any American. 

If you are a Christian, how much debt are you going into in order to feed, clothe, and care for needy people? 

Jesus did mention a few times about people selling their possessions and giving to the poor.  And the early Church did that for a while.  But the Bible also frowns upon being in debt. 

But actually the bigger problem is that we have no idea who is coming into our country.  We have apprehended known terrorists. 

Did Jesus mean that we should open our country up to anybody in the world who can get here, and we will take care of them? 

The fact is that the border situation is entirely out of control.  People can be bringing in deadly transmittable diseases.  There could be enemy agents seeking to wreak terror and havoc throughout our country. 

With all the government benefits that we are providing for them, any poor person can come here and be better off than they were at home, and they wouldn’t even have to work for it.

The job of our elected leaders is to take care of the American people above those of other countries.  Like your family takes care of your own children before you take care of the other kids on the block.  That doesn’t mean that you hate all the other kids.  You just hope your neighbors are taking care of their own kids. 

The role of our government is, among other things, 1) to form a more perfect Union.  We are more divided than at any time in our history, and the government is responsible for that.  At least they are doing nothing to slow that down.  2)  ensure domestic tranquility.  Our government is fomenting hate and division as it tries to indoctrinate our children to despise our country and by constantly focusing on race and all the bad things in our past so that we lose sight of all that is good in our country.  3) promote the general welfare.  This doesn’t mean giving people money; it means promoting policies that create jobs and help the people prosper, like not spending our public money irresponsibly. 

Our government is putting the needs and wants of the citizens of other countries over that of its own.  Our refugee program has gone far beyond people fleeing mortal danger but extends now to pretty much anybody wanting a better life.  And our government provides any person coming here with much better living conditions than if they had stayed in their own country, so two million people have come this year alone.

In the old days, people came here for the freedom and opportunities.  Now they come because we will take care of them.

The American people are the most generous people in the world.  We just don’t like our government borrowing money it won’t pay back, so we are now paying a trillion dollars a year just in interest.

We don’t like our government not thinking about the safety of our country by just letting the border stand wide open.  Everybody has doors on their houses.  With locks.  Many have fences around their property.  Not only are we letting whoever wants to to come in, but we will put them up in nice hotels at other people’s expense.  The government has no money but what it takes from other people.  That is not compassion.  That is irresponsible, reckless spending.

Compassion is when you give to others out of your own possessions and money.  It is not compassion to take somebody else’s credit cards and just doling it out so lavishly that you are drawing more crowds who want the same things.

 

 

 

Changing the Way We Elect our Presidents

There is a push today to change the way we elect our Presidents.  In the current system, a person can be elected President who does not receive the majority of all the votes of all those who voted. 

Our Founders, profound students of history, rejected both the idea of direct democracy for our country and the popular vote for the President.  We are a republic and not a democracy, and states elect the President and not individuals. 

Since the President is President of all the United STATES, they wanted to be sure that all the states had a voice in the process.  The only way to do that is by the Electoral College. 

In this new plan, states would give all their electoral votes to the Presidential candidate who got the most votes overall.  Meaning, that even if most of the people in your state voted for the other candidate, that is to say, most of the people in your state voted for the electors of the other candidate, they will simply nullify your vote and choose different electors. 

And somehow this is better.

I saw a map recently.  Maps That Put The World In Perspective - Explored Planet  It shows the United States in red and gray.  Probably 95% of the map is gray.  There are more people living in the 5% red areas than the 95% gray area.  In other words, people who live in cities will elect our Presidents, and those in rural areas and smaller towns, not so much if at all.

Our country is currently in the midst of a social and political upheaval.  Beware of any comprehensive, major moves to change big things, particularly through attempts to get around things our country was built on, like the Constitution. 

If this is so popular, pass a Constitutional Amendment.  That is how you’re supposed to change the system.  This plan will override the votes of the majority of the people in a state to get what they want here.  You’re creating a bigger problem than the one you want to fix.

So what do we do with thousands of people a day coming into our country?

Sometimes I see an article in the newspapers that seems so absurd, I feel like I have to say something, but then surely the average reader would have seen the absurdity of it, so there is no need for me to point it out.

But then when both Chicago papers say the same thing and more than once, somebody is failing to see the bigger picture.  (trib (Our immigration mess needs an overhaul, not DeSantis’ stunts, September 18) (Time Texas Gov. Abbott sends asylum seekers here to sow chaos, but Illinois is better than that, September 18)

Over 2 million people have entered our country in the last year outside of our visa program.  They just walked right in.  Millions more if you go back a few decades.  We used to call them illegal immigrants, but they have been taught to claim asylum, so that practically speaking, most of them are going to get to stay here.  Court dates are now years away, and most don’t come back to court anyway. 

Most of these have crossed the border through Texas and Arizona.  The border states have asked for help from the federal government for decades to do something to stem the flood of people coming into their states.  And the federal government has done nothing. 

The rest of the country is essentially oblivious to all of this.  It doesn’t affect them directly, and the news media give it very little attention.  Oh, they may show a few short videos of people crossing the border, but they don’t show the impact on the state in which they are entering.

What do you do with thousands of people a day who are entering your state and expecting people to take care of them?

Some governors of the border states have started shipping some of them to areas that seem the least concerned about this massive influx of human beings. 

And so many people are calling all this a stunt, a cheap political trick close to an election. 

A stunt?  A trick?  Hell, no! 

Congress and many politicians around the country don’t see any problem with millions of people whom we don’t even know who they are just walking into our country.  They complain about a couple hundred migrants being dropped off at their door.  Like, what are we supposed to do with them?

I am as compassionate as anybody about the plight of poor, disadvantaged people, but if you don’t see a problem or two here, then you shouldn’t be making our laws or writing editorials in newspapers. 

Sometimes I think we should just annex Mexico and half of Central America.  We would need to give them 10-20 years before granting full statehood, but I think it’s something to consider. 

Whatever Congress decides to do, I think shipping migrants to certain key places around the country may be the only way to get Congress to act.

Deciding How to Vote in the Upcoming Election

I don’t like to talk about political parties.  It draws lines in the wrong places. 

I like to talk about ideas and policies.  Ideas and policies should be discussed on their own merits apart from political parties and labels.

In less than two months, we are going to have another election.  If you watch television or read newspapers, you can easily think that this election is and should be decided on the basis of one issue: abortion.

I think we should take a broader look at what this election is all about.

If you think babies are disposable like a litter of puppies or kittens, when unborn children can be killed for any reason up until the time they are born, then, by all means, yes, you need to vote Democratic.  Republicans can’t always get the details right, but they believe abortion cheapens human life, and they think our society has enough of that.

In the last year, we have had 2 million people enter our country illegally.  Yes, many of them claim to be refugees, but then they have been taught to say that, and practically speaking, almost all illegal immigrants are here to stay.  Sure, many of them are nice people.  The problem is that we don’t know who’s coming.  No background checks, no medical exams.

If you have a problem with any of this, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe that a country has the responsibility to know who is coming into it to live and whether they have any serious diseases or evil intents, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

We are having the highest inflation in 40 years, due to our government spending trillions of dollars it doesn’t have.  We are also spending a trillion dollars a year just to pay interest on our federal debt.  That is like burning a trillion dollars a year.

If you have a problem with that, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

Our federal government is $31 trillion in debt, and that debt is growing rapidly, and the government is not even trying to stop it.

If you have a problem with any of this, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

Violent crime and general lawlessness is out of hand in our country.  Police are demoralized and understaffed all across our country.  Criminals and other violent people are less worried about the repercussions of their crimes.

If you have a problem with that, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

The federal guidelines for sex education in our public schools normalizes all sexual behavior and encourages your young children to question and explore their sexual behavior and gender at the youngest ages.  Schools and politicians want to facilitate any gender transitioning and will do this without the knowledge and consent of the student’s parents if necessary.

If you have a problem with schools sexualizing your children, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you like the United States being energy independent, and where we don’t have to buy energy from unfriendly or unreliable sources, and heating, electricity, and gas prices being affordable, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you are proud to be an American, if you think the United States is the greatest country in the history of the world, if you believe in the American Dream, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe that society should be color blind, that people should be judged on the quality of their character and not the color of their skin, then you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe the best qualified people should get the job, you going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe in God, the Ten Commandments as our rule of life, if you believe our rights come from God, then you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe in the freedom of speech, where you are able to express your opinions freely, where we can openly talk about touchy subjects, where we can disagree and not be considered hateful, then you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe in the right to be armed, to protect your life, your property, and your freedom, you’re going to have to vote Republican.  

In Illinois, the state is essentially bankrupt.  It is on a trajectory of exponentially increasing debt due to the pension clause in the State Constitution.  This will force every increasing tax burdens to pay for this. 

If you think this problem should be fixed, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you live in Illinois, you will be asked to vote on a Constitutional Amendment to support workers’ rights.  What they’re not telling you is that this Amendment was written primarily for government employees more than private ones. 

In Illinois, if you think politicians are enriching themselves and using government workers to solidify their control by enriching them all at taxpayer expense, then you’re going to have to vote Republican.

Years ago, choosing candidates to vote for was often a difficult task.  Politicians have made voting a lot easier today.

 

 

Extremism

We describe our political parties as right and left.  If I were on the left, I would complain about that, because right has another meaning than simply pointing in a certain direction.

Those on the right are routinely called extremists.  They are not merely right, but far right. 

Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President in 1964, is often cited even today as the epitome of extremism.  His acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention is still quoted today:  “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

And, of course, Barry Goldwater is not the primary target here that we are being warned about.

But let me tell you what I find extreme today in politics.

I think it is extreme when we allow anybody who shows up at our border into our country.  No background checks, no medical exams.  Then we put them up in hotels and give them public money to live on.  Did they ask anybody if they should do this?  We have allowed over 2 million people to come into our country this year alone, but one party insists, they encourage, people from all over the world to just come in, and we don’t know who they are.  And nobody cares, and nobody wants you to know about this.

I think it’s extreme that so many people think they have a right to kill their unborn babies, and they will loudly and threateningly protest this in the streets.  Remember the protests in front of the houses of the Supreme Court justices?  A right?  In America, our rights come from God.  You think God regards human life as disposable?  The other rights are only what is legal or things the government decides to do.  Government can’t create rights, because government can just as well eliminate that right.

I think it’s extreme that there is no limit to government spending.  We are now $31 trillion in debt, and nobody cares.  At least one political party.  We spend a trillion dollars a year just to pay interest on that debt.  That’s essentially wasting a trillion dollars a year.  That’s insane. 

And I think it is extreme to erase the very idea of sex and replace it with gender identity.  The same people who have been insisting for the last two years to follow the science now want to deny science to normalize what can only be described as an aberration of the highest sort.

And these are the people who criticize the other party for being extreme.

microaggressions

Reading a newspaper is an exercise in self-restraint and time management.  Most times the headlines tell me all I need to know, including how much time I should spend on the article.

Today we had Finding a haven – and microaggression – in greater Bronzeville.  (September 11)

I did read the first three paragraphs, but it didn’t hold my interest.

The title did, which is why I am writing.

The key word here is microaggression.  Note the first part – micro.  That means something that is really, really tiny.  Things that normally we would just overlook.  But today people are looking for reasons to be offended.  That’s sad.

If you want a perfect world, you will have to wait for heaven. 

But wait.

I hear they discriminate there.  They don’t just let everybody into heaven.  Then it wouldn’t be heaven, would it?

We live in America.  The freest country in the history of the world.  With freedom comes messy.  The fact is that not everybody is going to like you.  For whatever reason.  If you want to make sure that nobody is able to express any displeasure with another person, you can simply cut those freedoms in half.  And hire a lot of people to go around looking for and punishing those offenders, and then you find your economic freedom diminished too through ever-increasing taxes. 

Our country’s moral code used to be the Ten Commandments.  There are prohibitions against stealing, killing, adultery, lying, and coveting.  If we did none of those things, our society would be a lot better off than it is now.

Micro-aggressions, selfishness, unkindness, and spite didn’t make the list.

The Workers' Rights Amendment

So the Tribune prints two letters in favor of the Workers’ Rights Amendment with none opposing, suggesting that any sound person would support this.  (I support Workers’ Rights Amendment, Fearmongering over amendment, September 11)

In general, workers’ rights are good.  What is not mentioned is that this Amendment also covers public sector workers.  Private sector employers always have both feet in reality.  They know just how much they can afford to pay workers.  Public sector employers have no such limitation.  They have no sense of money or fiscal responsibility.  Going into ever-deeper debt is always good political policy.

Our state is essentially bankrupt.  It’s forbidden by law I believe to actually say so.  Its pension clause, also a Constitutional Amendment, guarantees that all our taxes will continue to grow exponentially. 

This proposed Amendment is another safeguard against any possible reforms to Illinois’ financial crisis and mismanagement.

 

The Workers Rights Amendment

In the November election this fall, the Workers Rights Amendment will appear on the ballot in Illinois.  If you don’t live in Illinois, you should be aware of this, because it may come to your state.

On the surface, it sounds like a wonderful idea.  It champions the idea that workers should have the right to organize in order to negotiate their working conditions.  Sounds fair.  I worked in union shops much of my life.  I like unions.

The problem is with unions of government employees.  The workers theoretically have that same right, but who are they negotiating their conditions with?

Private sector employers are bound by fiscal reality.  They cannot pay what they can’t afford.  Government no longer sees that as a problem.  They will make promises well beyond their revenues, or what they can afford, and then borrow the money as long as they can before they have to raise taxes again, and they will say, well, people voted overwhelmingly in favor of workers rights. 

They didn’t tell the voters the full ramifications of what they were voting for.

In 1970, Illinois passed a provision in its state Constitution that is currently bankrupting the state, a clause about government pensions.  The state promised money they couldn’t afford.  Now there is pressure on state taxes, income and property, to pay for mounting pension debt. 

In typical government fashion, they want to make a blanket ironclad rule that applies to everybody without telling you about the cases where this could be a real problem. 

I am afraid this Amendment will pass, because people see the good but not the whole picture.  Like telling everybody that everybody has a right to a higher education.  Sounds good until you figure out how to pay for it.

In reality, this is people in government taking advantage of the system to enrich themselves and fellow government workers who will then work and contribute to keep those first people in office so they can further enrich themselves at the public’s expense.

Sex Education in Public Schools

The Federal Government wants to be involved in the sexual education of your child.  They have written their standards for this education, and Illinois was one of the first states to adopt them.  If you live in other states, you might want to see where your state stands on this issue.  The Federal Government didn’t write them for itself. 

This doesn’t mean that every public school in Illinois will use them, but you should assume they do until proven otherwise.

You should know what they are, and if you know parents of children in public education, if you care about any of them, you might want to talk to them about this.

The new standards tell our kids that there is no such thing as normative sex.  Vaginal, anal, and oral sex are all equal sexual relationships.  So essentially kids have to try them all to see which they like best.  I would expect that biology would at least suggest that sexual organs are reproductive organs, but in fact they are merely pleasure tools for instant gratification.  If by chance a pregnancy occurs, no worry, we have an answer for that.

They are taught that sex was “assigned” at birth, and, really, they shouldn’t have done that.  Only you know what gender or sex you are. 

They are conflating gender with sex.  Maybe not all at once, but that’s the goal.  Boys can have vaginas, and girls can have penises. 

By the end of second grade, they want to diminish the value of the nuclear family by equating it with every variation and combination of adults.  Essentially, the idea is to affirm that a nuclear family is not necessarily something they should strive for or even want to have.  It is not better than other forms of family.  There are other options just as good.  So begin thinking about them.

They will also know the meaning of gender and gender identity, but it’s not your parent’s idea of gender.  Gender and biology are distinct from each other.

By fifth grade, they will learn to “distinguish between sex assigned at birth and gender identity” and “how they may or may not differ.”

They will “define sexual orientation” and “differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity.”  And they will also learn “the range of ways pregnancy can occur.”  No need to limit your thinking to the traditional way.

The entire idea of male and female, man and woman, is outdated.  The concept of marriage between a man and a woman is just stereotypical and harmful to portray that as the ideal.

But actually the worst part of all this is that children are essentially being asked to choose a gender identity and sexual orientation long before they have ever even given any thought to whether they want children of their own, and before they even reach puberty and they see how they respond to the opposite sex. 

I consider that criminal child abuse. 

Oh, school districts can opt out of the program.  I have learned from a former health teacher in middle school in Illinois that the administration hid much of this information from the parents, so they did not know what they were getting when they opted in for the program.  You might want to check on that too.

Another look at religion and government

A reader of a local newspaper had a strong reaction against Darren Bailey, the Republican candidate for governor.  She felt that Bailey was injecting his religious beliefs into public policy. 

This reader is an abortion advocate, and she cites the Talmud as justification for her beliefs.  So essentially her religion formed her opinion on a public policy issue, and she is doing what she thinks Bailey should not.

We use the word ‘religion’ often when discussing politics, but I don’t think we fully understand what religion is.

Yes, a religion is a system of beliefs about God.  But that is a very narrow understanding of it.

A religion is a worldview.  It’s an all-encompassing description of life, what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, what is truth, what is false, what are the rules, are there any rules.

The fact is that everybody has a worldview.  Every country has a worldview.  It’s a system of beliefs that guide how it governs itself.

Religions are worldviews that include God as being a part of reality, actually a major part of reality. 

Our country is trying to impose a worldview on everybody that doesn’t include God.  And a lot of people are having a problem with that.  The reader’s worldview says that preborn babies are nothing.  The Bible puts an enormous value on preborn children.  Not only are they created in the image of God, but their whole future lives are already seen in God’s eyes.

So who is trying to impose whose worldview on the rest of us?  She thinks that this only affects individual women facing an unwanted pregnancy.  But it doesn’t.  It’s a total devaluing of human life that can translate into, for example, violence toward other people, because we don’t see them as being in the image of God.  Life is disposable.   

Worldviews affect everything, from what should be taught in our public schools, the role of government and government spending, the propriety of private property, and the value of human life.  It’s hard to teach our kids the value of human life apart from religion. 

Science can’t tell us the value of a human life.  All it can say is that life is an accident of nature, and the only purpose to life is to reproduce.  Life is also about the survival of the fittest, and all the countries that have embraced atheism have killed millions of their own people because they didn’t fit into their scheme of things, and they have been the most intolerant of those people who did believe in God.

We have representative government, and people who have a religious worldview have as much right to representation as any one else.  If there are differences of opinion, then let’s talk about them and try to understand why other people think the way they do. 

 

Climate Change: cause and cure

The climate is the most serious problem in the world right now.  Even more serious than racism.  I think.  But I’m white, so I could be wrong.

The single most important cause of climate change is carbon dioxide.

The recommended solution for this is to upend the entire world’s economy and reduce most of the world to poverty and starvation. 

Meanwhile, nobody is talking about the simplest way to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 

Plant trees.  Trees use carbon dioxide for food and release oxygen as waste.  What a deal!

If this is the crisis this is, then we cannot rely on just one means of tackling the problem: the elimination of fossil fuels.  We must do everything possible.

Like, plant a billion trees. 

I remember years ago when I was attending college in the city and was sent to a clinic in Evanston.  I got off the train, and immediately I was struck by the freshness of the air.  Trees make a significant, noticeable difference. 

My question is: if this is so serious, why is nobody, nobody, talking about doing this?

Our earth went through a mini-Ice Age from around 1000 A.D. to 1500 A.D.  When all that ice was melting, and everyone was experiencing record hot temperatures and rising sea levels, I wonder if people were worrying. 

 

Hate the Haters

Sometimes I think our society has gone completely stupid.  We are constantly looking for things that people have said that we can construe to be wrong or hateful, and then we try our best to publicly shame them and ruin their lives.

We bemoan the current hatred in our society, but then we don’t try to alleviate it.  We look ourselves for people to hate and destroy.

Recently it was reported that the Republican candidate for governor in Illinois compared abortion to the Holocaust 5 years ago, and for this he must be publicly shamed and denied his run for office.  This was considered front page news.

Again, as is done so often, we see a three second clip of something and act as if that is the entire story.

Bailey compared the Holocaust to abortion and thinks that abortion is worse, or something like that.  I have no doubt that what he was talking about was that we have already killed over 62 million preborn children so far, and we are rioting in the streets to make sure that we have the right to continue doing this without any constraints. 

We know the Holocaust was pure evil, and Bailey does too.  He didn’t mention the Holocaust in order to minimize it, but to associate with what he considers another evil.

We can see the pictures of the Holocaust and read the books.  A whole nation was intent on the destruction of another people entirely because of their ethnicity.

Abortion is different.  We don’t have pictures of all the aborted babies.  They don’t have names.  Their lives are considered of little value because they are small, and, in many cases, not even fully formed.

These killings happen one at a time.  Like the murders in Chicago that happen day in and day out don’t get the same attention as when somebody kills a bunch of people at the same time.

We routinely get a dozen murders every week in Chicago, but they are mostly killed one at a time, so they matter less.  Less outrage.  Less news.

Those of us who believe in the Bible know that God values human life before it is born.  He has called people into His service before they were born, and our entire lives are known to Him before we are born.  Forgive us for valuing what we believe God values.

But this letter is less about abortion as it is about our quest to demonize people at every opportunity.  We need people to be angry at, to vilify, to contrast with our own virtue, because we know all the right things to be angry about.      

We hate the haters, and somehow that is supposed to make society better. 

The dumbest, most inconsiderate, unproductive, evil thing that Congress does

We often hear the call for bipartisanship in Congress.  We are told that we need to compromise and work together to solve our problems.  And when things don’t get done, we blame politicians for putting party and politics over a genuine concern for our country.

The latest bill before Congress shows where the real problem is.  (Dems report ‘uniformly positive’ reaction to climate, tax, health bill, July 29)

This bill is 725 pages long and covers taxes, energy, environment, prescription drug prices, and health care assistance.  And those are only the things that the Sun-Times mentioned. 

Compromise is, say, we are debating a speed limit bill.  You want 65 and I want 55.  A compromise would be 60.  Compromise is not voting for what you don’t want to get what you do.

How will Congress debate this bill?  How do you debate a bill that is 700 pages long and covers at least 5 totally different subjects?  You can’t, and they know this.  And that is why they do that.

They don’t want these things to be debated.  They negotiate these things in private offering incentives for votes.

This bill should be broken down into at least 5 parts and debated individually.  They know that half of this will never get passed unless they put it with something that they know has to pass.  That is corrupt, unconscionable, and criminal.  It’s a breach of the public trust.

 

 

 

why not replace lost rain forests?

Everything is on fire.  At least that’s what the Tribune says.  (Everything is on fire.  It doesn’t have to be.  July 29)

The article notes that Congo has the world’s second largest rain forest, and Congo is happy to destroy what they can of it to make life better for them in the short run.  The world’s largest rain forest, in Brazil, has been suffering the same fate for decades. 

These rain forests have a very positive effect on the world’s climate, so their loss or even their partial loss hurts all of us.

If their loss has a measurable negative impact on the rest of the world, then it is incumbent on the rest of the world to start planting trees.  Billions of them.  All over the world. 

I hear that this climate thing is a crisis.  Why am I not hearing calls equally loud to plant trees? 

Someone told me that planting trees won’t make a difference, yet everybody is trying to get everybody to do their part.  If the efforts of individuals are important in the fight to save the climate, then surely the efforts of governments to plant billions of trees will have a major impact. 

When I don’t hear of or see the calls to plant trees, I wonder if there really is a crisis or if our leaders really believe there is.

Another Look at Gay Marriage

There are concerns today that the Supreme Court will nullify the right of gay people to get married.  The Court doesn’t think you should apply the Constitution to controversial issues that were never in the minds of those who wrote it or any of the later Amendments.  If people think this is a right, then Congress can make a law saying as much.

But the issue should really be called same-sex marriage and not gay marriage.  Nobody cares or asks whether a person is gay before they get married.  The issue is whether two people of the same sex can have a relationship that can and should be called a marriage.

This is a new thing in human history, and is it a right as well?  This whole matter has raised the question of what exactly is a marriage in the first place.  Is marriage just a word that we give to a relationship where people love each other and decide to live together, and we give that a legal status so they can have visitation rights and other privileges only defined for family members.?

Why is the definition of marriage even important?  Who cares?  What difference does it make?

A healthy society needs to reproduce at least enough people to maintain its population.  When reproductive levels fall too low, societies shrink.  They get older, and that places financial stress on that society, because it has to take care of the elderly with relatively fewer people to pay for it.  With the advances of modern medicine, we have a vastly increasing senior population, and we have a shrinking pool of workers able to support them.  Our society has been below replacement value for a long time now.

That was the main point of marriage, the creation of biological families.  And, of course, marriage was encouraged prior to the fact of having any children.  After they had children was too late to start asking those questions.  No, not all marriages end up that way, but we won’t know that until after the marriage. 

A society also needs to encourage the things that make for an optimal upbringing of these new generations to become productive members of society.  Historically, marriage has been about the relationship of a man and a woman, not only because that is how children are created, but because this couple also united to raise them until the children could take care of themselves.  Unlike animals, these children required an enormous amount of time and energy to make all this happen.  Marriage was to ensure that the two adults involved would work together to do that. 

Parents are like lifelong one-on-one tutors, mentors, role-models, and caregivers but at no cost to society.  So it is in society’s interest to encourage people to get married and have children. 

But do people need to get married to have children?  Technically, no.  But having children as a single parent is a very difficult undertaking.  It’s one of the leading causes of poverty, and these children are at a greater risk for all kinds of adverse outcomes.  So it is in the interests of society that children grow up in a two parent household.

We do know that same sex couples cannot create children.  Same-sex couples often want to have their own children, but in order to do that, they have to remove one of the child’s natural parents from its life.  That is not good, and we shouldn’t pretend that it is.  We also know that role models are important in a child’s life, but in same sex couples, should we then try to limit them to having only same sex children?  And how would we do that?

We stretch the meaning of family today to include any number of different arrangements, but biological ties still remain the ideal.  The rest are simply adjustments to a breakdown in that, for whatever reason, usually a death.  Because a healthy society requires new generations of contributing members, the health of families is a proper and important concern of society.

When we legalize same-sex marriage, we are also normalizing it, and we are telling our children that same-sex marriage is just as good as regular marriage, and homosexual relationships are just as good as heterosexual ones.  Our public schools are even encouraging children today, long before they have ever given any thought to whether they want to have children of their own or if sexual relationships have any meaning apart from personal pleasure, and even before they have reached puberty, to decide what gender they want to be and what sexual orientation. 

Some will say that this is only a matter of self-discovery, but they are encouraging children to experiment with all the various possibilities and decide now the entire course of the rest of their lives.  They are being taught that one way is not better than another.  And they are teaching sex apart from even loving relationships.  It’s just something that gives you pleasure, and you need to decide which way you like best, and that will define whether you are gay, straight, and any of a number of other possibilities.

In recent times, after our country threw off its religious associations which stigmatized homosexuality, people were more open about these kinds of relationships, and certain problems developed.  They were in undefined relationships with no legal status.  So visitation rights were non-existent.  Inheritances were non-existent.  Some areas created a legal status for these relationships, so they could be listed as family or next of kin.

Which is fine.

But the goal was not legal status, though they wanted that.  Heck, it was never really about privacy either.  We were told that what people do alone in their homes doesn’t affect you and needn’t concern you.  People should be free to love whomever they will.  But that was not it.

It was about something more.  It was about equality, just like ‘separate but equal’ was deemed inherently unequal.  A separate category was deemed as second-class status, and that was unacceptable.

But we have to ask what equality means. 

To use a rough analogy: if we call a bicycle a vehicle, then is a Schwinn equal to a Ford Explorer, since they are both vehicles, and should they have equal access on a highway?  To limit Schwinns to a narrow strip on the side of some roads is discriminatory and unequal, and that becomes wrong.

Equality can mean equal status.  There were civil unions that were created to provide legal status and rights to same-sex couples, but that was not enough.

But what was wanted was equality in value, such as one is as good as the other.  There is no preferred choice.  Like chocolate and vanilla.  One is not right and the other wrong.  It’s all just a matter of personal preference.  And they will insist, this preference is built into our very natures. 

Not only is it to be deemed equal, but you better damn well like it too.  Otherwise, we will put you out of business if you don’t.

Our presumed secular society will no longer stigmatize same-sex relationships, however they are named, but equality is a term that is misleading and inaccurate, particularly when we talk to our children about this. 

These kinds of relationships are best left for adults to consider, after people are fully aware of the ramifications of committing their lives to people of the same sex.

But, no, same-sex marriage is not a Constitutional right.  You can’t decide or determine what the Constitution or any of its Amendments means in situations totally unlike anything that those who wrote them would have even thought about when they were written.  This is a matter left to our legislative bodies.  This is a totally new thing in history, and we need to talk about it.

 

 

 

saving our democracy

I appreciated reading Arne Duncan’s thoughts on saving our democracy.  (Democracy won’t save itself, July 27)  It’s important that we discuss ways to improve things.

He has three main recommendations for us:

1)      He believes voting should be mandatory.  Before we do that, I think we should look into why people don’t vote.  If they are just lazy and don’t care, then I don’t think I want them to vote.  They probably wouldn’t look past the politician who gave them the most freebies.  They would be bought with their own money.

Maybe there are problems with our election system that we are ignoring.

2)      He favors having non-partisan primaries, like they have in Chicago, with the top two vote-getters pairing off in a runoff if one is needed.

There are two problems with this:

a)       The first is that in a non-partisan primary, candidates don’t declare their party alignment, and that is the single most defining piece of information we need on a candidate.

b)      Chicago had a runoff in their last mayoral election, and the top two vote-getters in the primary each got less than 20% of the vote.  That means that more than 4 out of 5 voters didn’t vote for them.  Yet one of them won the election. 

That is simply wrong.  With that many candidates, you need to have ranked choice voting, or you can even let people vote for as many candidates as they wanted.   That would be easier to figure the results.  If there were only three candidates in the race, you could do a runoff, but not when you get more than that.

3)      He advocates for a 2-year program of national service.  That would be good if we can decide on where our kids would serve.  We should in turn pay for two years of their college at least in repayment.  That can be debated, but a lot of people are on long career paths.  Perhaps someone on a medical career path could be exempted as long as they stayed on that path.

Thank you, Arne.

Another Look at the Separation of Church and State

The concept of a separation between church and state is being talked about a lot today, and that is a good thing.  What is exactly the relationship between religion and government?  And why is it a separation between ‘church’ and state?  Why not synagogue or mosque?  Why not religion in general?

The founding document of our country is the Declaration of Independence.  The Constitution describes the system of our government, but the Declaration tells us what it’s all about, what our country is all about, what our government is all about.

In defining our country, the Founders talked about God.  They didn’t present God as the object of their beliefs but as an Actor in life.  God created human beings.  The court called supreme ruled that talk of creation was a religious idea not suited for public schools, but the Founders called it a fact. 

Not only that, but God created human beings equal.  This means that nobody has a divine or inherent right to rule over other people.  This fact of creating people equal determines the form of government that we can have.  We reject the idea of kings, because they have no right to rule over other people.

This God also gave human beings unalienable rights, rights that precede and supersede government.  Rights that the government did not give us and that it cannot take away.  

The first Ten Amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights.  They are meant to encapsulate what these unalienable rights are.  Other Amendments can be repealed, like the 18^th Amendment was, but these cannot. 

So while the Constitution doesn’t explicitly use the word ‘God,’ it certainly recognizes Him.

But what God exactly does it recognize?

All religions talk about God, but not the same God.  They can’t all be talking about the same God, because their beliefs about God are not the same.  They don’t all recognize that God gave these rights to human beings.  Not all religions recognize a right to life.  In some major religions, you don’t have a right to life if you are not of that religion.  And you certainly don’t have a right to the pursuit of happiness.  Anyone ever hear of the caste system?

So whatever this separation is, it certainly doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about God and politics.  We say that religion cannot influence politics.  Well, too late for that.  It already has.  That’s why we have a republic instead of a monarchy.  And we have to talk about God in our public schools if we are to teach our children about the foundations of our country, what America is all about.

The fact that this separation is between church and state and not religion and state shows that we are misunderstanding the concept.  The Founders didn’t want our federal government to choose which church, or Christian denomination, is the official one, like they did in Europe. 

But they were great fans of the Bible and religion being taught in our public schools, because they knew they had to have a moral people if they were to live in freedom, otherwise they would abuse their freedom, hurt other people, and require a large, strong government to rule them.

Questions to ask the candidates in the next election

Following the example of a letter in today’s newspaper, I thought I should write a list of the most important questions to ask all the political candidates in the fall election.  I also included a list directed to candidates in my own state.  Illinois has some unique problems, but the questions might spur relevant questions for other states as well.

1)      Will I uphold the law of the land?  You are free to want to change them.  Tell us what you would change.  But will you follow the laws that exist.  Immigration is one example you can give.

2)      Will you work for the benefit of the citizens of the United States before the citizens of other countries?  This doesn’t mean that you hate the citizens of other countries.  It’s just that you are elected to take care of the citizens of your own country.  That is your job.

3)      Will you stop spending money you don’t have?  Debt is only acceptable for purchases that you can reasonably pay off, like a mortgage or a car.  Government debt is never paid off, and what we spend in interest keeps getting higher, and that is just wasted money.

4)      Do you believe it is the role of government to solve every problem, meet every need.  And we will go (further) into debt to do these things.

5)      Do you believe America is a good country, the freest country in the world with the best opportunities for success for any person living here, or do you believe that America is irredeemably flawed and must be completely reworked?

6)      Do you believe in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?   More specifically, as examples,

a)       that human beings are endowed by God with unalienable rights.  If our rights come from God, then we cannot live as if there is no God.

b)      that the role of government is to secure these rights for its citizens

c)       that the role of government is to form a more perfect union and to ensure domestic tranquility, to unite us, meaning, not to force controversial things on the American people before reaching a consensus on them.

7)      What reforms will you try to implement while in office?  I can suggest a few.

a)       Term limits

b)      No pensions for elected officials, though if they had one before going into office, we could fund that pension while they are away from their last job.

c)       Short bills, so that they can and will be read and debated before voting on them.

d)      Political contributions will be held in a blind trust.  Essentially, no candidate should know who gave what to his campaign. 

e)       Politicians should be forbidden from work as lobbyists after leaving office.  Their public service should not be a stepping stone to a paid position influencing legislation.  And lobbyists will have no place in creating legislation.

8)      Do you believe in what is unfortunately called meritocracy?  Like in sports, where people are evaluated solely on their abilities and not on their demographics, 

9)      Will you focus on what unites us or on what divides us?  How we are alike or how we are different?

 

Questions for state candidates:

1)      Will you fix the pension crisis in Illinois?  I don’t care what promises somebody made 70 years ago.  Those were not wise promises, and they are bankrupting the state.  They can be modified, and most state retirees will still make off like bandits.  If you don’t want and work toward fixing that, we don’t need you in office.  You are part of the problem.

2)      Property taxes are the most absurd tax there is, because it is the only tax that does not take into consideration a person’s ability to pay for it.  Do you believe in property tax reductions, and what will you do?  I can think of several needed changes.

a)       Two-thirds of property taxes goes for public education.  Fund that through the income tax.  This would need to be a distinct income tax with all funds kept separate from all other funds.

b)      Any person who is retired on a fixed income should have their property taxes frozen.

3)      Will you help parents who want to send their kids to schools different from public schools?  There are two ways this can be done.

a)       You can give parents vouchers toward any private school, or

b)      you can give a tax break for private school expenses up to the amount they would have paid in taxes for public schools.

4)      Do you think the government in Illinois is too large?  (We have more governmental agencies than any other state in the country. By far.)  Will you try to reduce it?

These are by no means all the questions I would want to ask.  I suspect that, in order to get all the right answers, I would have to run for office myself.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A Needed Assessment

For most of our nation’s history, our nation’s moral code, or values, was taken from the Bible:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself, Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, and the Ten Commandments: Honor your father and your mother, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet anything of your neighbor’s, and there were four others that had to do with God.

These were often posted prominently in public places including our public schools and courtrooms. 

Then the court called supreme called that whole practice unconstitutional.  Forget that that had been the practice without incident for over 200 years. 

Something else had to be found to take its place.  It was always believed that that moral code was given to us by God; now a new one was needed, and we had to figure one out on our own.  Make one up as we go along.

The first draft was much simpler than the old rules: Instead of ten commandments, they were four: tolerance, equality, fairness, and diversity.  But then they did it one better: diversity, equity, and inclusion.  I think this will probably be the last attempt, and it is gradually being codified throughout our country, one municipality at a time.

No public comment was asked for, but comment we must. 

We might ask: who came up with this motto, or mantra?

Was it a group of our religious leaders?  No, religion was a private matter.  It had no place in public life.  Besides, we were too diverse of a people to agree on anything religious.  No, it was Marxists, the political left.  They have never been shy about anything except using such terminology to describe themselves.

So what should we make of it?

Diversity: They tell us diversity is our strength, but they don’t really mean that.

Why do I say that?

Because it is not about diversity. 

Because the only parts of the population they want to be diverse are the predominantly white ones. 

If a community were all black or all Hispanic or all Muslim, nobody would complain about a lack of diversity.  Nobody says we need more blacks in Hispanic areas or more Hispanics in black ones.  It is only white areas that people don’t like.

Whites are the only ethnic group that people complain about if they have a homogeneous community.  That is deemed racist and elitist, but any other ethnic group can be as homogeneous as possible without a word. 

The goal is a majority-minority society, but calling it diversity is the first step in making this happen.

It is important here that everybody be definable by a group that they are a part of, race being one of the major groups, because history is defined by the various groups interacting with the others.  But primarily it is defined by white people oppressing all the others.  This is why things that suggest white rule, white power, or white majority must be broken up and tempered with minorities.

Whites have been and still are oppressors of all the other people groups, and the others are victims.

Which leads to the second rule: Equity.

Equity means that all the oppressed groups are victims, and this historical victimhood must be addressed.

Equality was a starting point.  You don’t want to be arguing against that.  But equity takes it a step further. 

If history is about oppression and victims, then it is not enough to simply stop the oppressing.  The victims have been too severely damaged or disadvantaged in our society to succeed now on their own.  We must take action to assist them in becoming equal.  It is not enough to merely treat people equally; we have to ensure that they ‘look’ equal as well.  They are incapable of recovering from past injustices without remedial help from our government and our society.

Equality means that people are judged by what they do.  Equity means that that is not what we should be looking at.  Certain groups have been perpetually disadvantaged, so personal achievement is not as important as group advancement.  In practical terms, it is not the most skilled, the highest performing that wins the job, the position, or who should, but different groups have different standards, and all jobs, positions, and awards must be given out in ways that reflect the various groups’ representation in society, at minimum.  Like participation trophies instead of rewarding only the ’winners.’

Inclusion: On the surface, this seems the natural complement to equity.  There have been many marginalized groups in our society, not merely ethnic ones.  Inclusion affirms their full acceptance.

But there is more here than just making people feeling accepted and welcome.

There is a higher goal to all of this.  That doesn’t mean that every person embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion is in on the plan.  As presented, they seem like admirable ideals, but that is what is known as marketing.

The goal is the reinventing of America.  The United States has long been the freest and richest country in the world.  It was also essentially white, capitalistic, and Christian.  It was also seen by its people as being good, blessed, and exceptional.

The new narrative is that the United States is an evil nation, built on the backs of slaves and driven by greed.  The whites are racist oppressors.  And religion, particularly Christianity, has no place in public life or policy.

Diversity addresses the white problem, equity addresses the capitalism problem, and inclusion addresses the Christian problem. 

The religion of Christ says that God created the world and gave us His laws on how things work.  What we used to call truth.  Now truth is whatever you want it to be.  Truth is individual.  Everything we have learned from childhood, from our parents, from our history in our schools, is all wrong. 

Boys can be girls, girls can be boys, and nobody can tell you that you are not.  Inclusion simply means that we are not to question things anymore.  All the old ways of looking at things are wrong, outdated, unenlightened, and hateful.  And so they must be eliminated.

The only reason this has gone on unchallenged for so long is that most people have been just living their lives, working, raising a family, being involved in church and volunteer work that they just haven’t been paying attention.  They never imagined that anyone would want to take away what they had here.  But they were wrong.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are tools to redefine what America is, discredit its history, its traditions, its values, and to bring about a new world order. 

Freedom means that your potential is theoretically boundless.  That essentially means that people’s success, however you want to define it, is as unique as the individual.  In other words, it will be entirely unequal.  Some people have achieved enormous wealth.  The mistake is thinking that there is a fixed amount of wealth to be had, that if one has more, then all the others will have less. 

No, his wealth only shows us what is possible, that one’s potential is not limited by our society.  Diversity, equity, inclusion is a rejection of society as we have known it and attempts to create a new one - less free, less prosperous, and less tolerant.