Archive for the ‘Health Care’ Category
Abortion, breast cancer, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and pro-life alternatives
Abortionbreastcancer.com is an organization that is getting the word out to women of all the risk factors that can lead to breast cancer. Please take some time to go to their website and tell others about them. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is October.
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Like many families, my grandmother and great-grandmother both had breast cancer. The issue of wanting to fight what harms your family or friends is noble. So when I tell people that I do not support Susan G. Komen an organization that exists to “fight breast cancer”, I normally get the look of one: why would you abandon your family or two: oh there goes one of those extremist.
However, my reasons are not that extreme, but rather principled.
I’m sure many of you reading this article have also been confronted with the issue of, “if I ‘m pro-life, how can I support an organization that supports the nation’s leading abortion provider?” Hopefully, the following principles can shed some light on how to respond sympathetically, yet firm with why you cannot wear pink, or join the race, or all the various ways that Susan G. Komen is supported.
Principle # 1 Don’t give to organizations that promote the shedding of innocent blood.
If this were a list of commandments, we could start with Thou Shall Not Kill. However, Proverbs 6:17 states that one of the seven things God hates are hands that shed innocent blood.
Unfortunately, Susan G. Komen has given over $3 million dollars between 2003 and 2008 to Planned Parenthood which is the nation’s leading abortion provider.
While Susan G. Komen makes claims that these grants go for breast exams, once the funds go to Planned Parenthood they are fungible. For example, you can throw two twenty dollar bills into a purse one from a friend and one from your own account, but when you go to pay the light bill you use both.
The same is true with Planned Parenthood’s money it receives from Komen. Whenever someone applies for a grant they can say that while this $5,000 is going to breast cancer research, 20 percent of that money is going to pay for administrative costs like keeping the lights on and paying rent. So in essence, the money that people are raising to fight breast cancer is also going to keep the lights on at Planned Parenthood.
According to the 2008 Annual Report from Planned Parenthood, breast cancer services decreased by 4% and abortion procedures increased by 6%. In 2008, Susan G. Komen gave $731,000 to Planned Parenthood.
Principle # 2 Know and Recognize the Risk Factors for the Disease You are Trying to Prevent.
There are certain risks that can increase an individual’s chance of getting breast cancer. While Susan G. Komen says that they believe in knowing your risk factors, they have repeatedly denied the link between breast cancer and one of the greatest avoidable risk factors, abortion.
According to Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, “29 out of 38 worldwide epidemiological studies show an increased risk of breast cancer of approximately 30% among women who have had an abortion.”
Putnam County Right to Life has provided links these pro-life alternatives to the Susan G. Komen Foundation:
Because the Komen ‘Race for the Cure’ organization is a documented funder and partner of Planned Parenthood, click here for documentation, you may wish to familiarize yourself with these alternative agencies which work to prevent breast cancer without violating the sanctity of human life.
Breast Cancer Prevention Institute: Founded by Joel Brind, Ph.D. and Angela Lanfranchi, M.D.; a leader in the study of the link between abortion / contraceptives and breast cancer; 1-86-NO CANCER (1-866-622-6237); http://www.bcpinstitute.org
The Polycarp Research Institute: A non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and disseminating high-quality research designed to enhance the physical, psychological and spiritual condition of mankind; 717-732-4904; http://www.polycarp.org
Coalition on Abortion / Breast Cancer: A leading international women’s organization that provides education and information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer; 877-803-0102; http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com.
Jill Stanek: Abortion, breast cancer, and the Susan Komen Foundation
Life Issues Institute: Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation’s Link to Abortion
President Obama Lied About Not Using Federal Funds for Abortions
‘Imperfect’ kids teach life lessons
We’ve become a culture both welcoming and deadly to people with disabilities. On the one hand, the law requires that they have access to buildings and employment opportunities, and children with disabilities are mainstreamed in our schools.
As a country, we’re more sensitive about the words we use (think of the deserved uproar when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called opponents of his health care plan “retarded.”) It’s wonderful to see changes in our laws and attitudes that inspire compassion and respect for people like Michael. While he doesn’t fit the imagined mold of a “perfect” child, he still has rights that are protected by law.
But only if he’s lucky enough to be born.
For preborn children with disabilities, our culture’s desire for perfect children too often proves deadly. Prenatal testing, now routine, spots markers of future disability or disease. Sometimes that testing saves lives. Most often, however, a prenatal diagnosis of disability such as Down syndrome spells death.
Be Not Afraid: Every Life is Precious
Obama Needs Your 401(k) to Balance His Budget
The Obama administration is “taking the first steps to confiscate retirement dollars,” according to Dr. Jerome Corsi who predicts that the end result will be retirees with 401(k) plans holding near-worthless government debt “that will be paid off in a devalued currency worth…pennies on the dollar.”
All of this is being promoted by the idea that individual citizens aren’t saving enough for their retirement, and that consequently government has to “do something.” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash., above photo), Chairman of the House Ways and Mean’s Committee’ Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, is confused about whose money is in those 401(k) plans: the individual contributor, or the government. He said that “since the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment [Congress is making] of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax savings], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”
The worldview of Rep. McDermott is revealing, and brings clarity to the point of view of many in the Washington establishment that the $4.5 trillion currently invested in 401(k) plans and other private pension plans that enjoy tax breaks actually belong to the government, and that when Congress loses $80 billion that would otherwise flow to Washington due to those tax breaks, it’s an “investment” that must “generate what we say it should”, or else it must be replaced with something else that works better.
The real “story behind the story” was revealed by Joe Wolverton here when he said,
…since the day of his inauguration, Barack Obama and his congressional co-conspirators have consistently and unapologetically set out to systematically nationalize the economy of the United States: first the banks; then the insurance companies; then the auto industry; then healthcare; and now the piece de resistance, the private savings accounts of millions of middle-class Americans.
But, thanks to the SEIU and their program “Retirement USA,” it’s all dressed up to look like a good deal for unsuspecting owners of retirement plans.
The Discovery Attacker: A True Green Believer
News Wednesday afternoon that an armed gunman had entered the cable TV headquarters of Discovery Communications in Silver Spring, Maryland and begun taking hostages alarmed people throughout the Washington, D.C. area and around the country. As law enforcement officials negotiated with the suspect, posts on social media outlets inevitably began arguing over the ideological motivations of the hostage-taker, James J. Lee. Conservatives were quick to point out the suspect’s radical environmentalist manifesto, while left-leaning sources disclaimed any connection. News a few hours later that the suspect had been shot and killed by police spawned a round of smug black humor, concluding that he had been successful in accomplishing one of his chief demands, a smaller world population.
The immediate verdict from the online world seems to be that Lee was simply insane, even as differently motivated voices tried to pin the source of his insanity on each other. If we take a step back, though, we can look at the demands he made — which law enforcement officials said “mirrored” those in his online manifesto — and see the wider context of Lee’s beliefs.
His focus on population control is clear from the beginning. Lee demands that the Discovery Channel and its affiliates must “Focus…on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution.” On the topic of immigration, he recommends that we “find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that” and in order to safeguard the future of wildlife, he writes that doing so “means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!”
While his rhetoric is crude and offensive, that doesn’t mean his ideas don’t have wider currency. From the time of Paul Ehrlich’s infamous 1968 manifesto The Population Bomb to the work of groups like Zero Population Growth (first re-branded as simply “ZPG” and currently known as “Population Connection”), the specter of unsupportable population growth has been one of the environmental movement’s greatest scare stories. It’s the kind of all-encompassing disaster that was supposed to be hard to ignore — even if you didn’t care about the environment, the pitch goes, you have to be worried about overpopulation! You don’t want millions of people to starve to death or see wars spawned by a fight over food and scarce natural resources, do you?
But how does a concern over famines and resources depletion translate into the vicious anti-human ideology of a James Lee? The answer is clear — combine one old theory about the inherent limitations of mankind with one new theory about the alienation of human beings from the rest of the natural world. Lee provides us with all of the leads we need when he demands that the Discovery Channel “develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences.”
Read more at American Spectator
The Malthusian Delusion and the Origins of Population Control
James Lee Discovery Channel bomber – Al Gore disciple
My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn – James Jay Lee’s bible
Call for two-child limit on families from the Government’s leading green adviser
Fewer Children to Save the Planet?
Environmentalism Is the New Religion
Inhofe: Some Senators Share Holdren’s View That Born Babies Are Not ‘Human Beings’
The Left is in Full Retreat: Time to Step Up the Pressure
Last Thursday, a who’s who of the progressive movement met for a conference call organized by Families USA and hosted by the advocacy group for government-run health care, The Herndon Alliance. The Alliance’s partners include AARP, AFL-CIO, SEIU, MoveOn and La Raza, among many others. Democratic pollsters John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg were the call’s main event, and they were there to deliver some bad news. Politico reports:
“Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. … The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.”
Health care is not the only issue where the left is retreating in the face of strong disapproval from the American people. Versionista, a Portland, Oregon-based company that tracks changes to the White House website, reported last week that the Obama administration had made “whole-cloth” changes to its “Energy & Environment” issues page. Out are any references to a cap on carbon emissions and a campaign pledge to spend $150 billion on clean energy technologies. In its place the new White House site includes a three-minute Earth Day-themed video from President Barack Obama. And across the country, leftist Senate candidates in Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana have all come out against President Obama’s impending trillion dollar tax hike, due in January.
As satisfying as it is to see Obamacare’s supporters come to terms with the failure of their grand plan, it is not enough for conservatives to just say “no.” Conservatives must have real plans for reform if the American people choose to empower them. The Heritage Foundation’s Solutions for America chapter on Getting Health Care Reform Right recommends:
Repeal Obamacare: There is a precedent for repealing highly unpopular and misguided laws: the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988. Recently, over 70% of Missouri residents rejected a key provision of Obamacare—the requirement that individuals purchase a health insurance plan designed and approved by government bureaucrats. The House of Representatives even voted recently to repeal one provision of Obamacare that will impose draconian paperwork requirements on millions of small businesses. The easiest way to address all these grievances: repeal Obamacare.
Promote Personal Control Through Tax Equity: Today, workers who purchase coverage through their employer receive an unlimited tax break on the value of their health care benefits. However, those who purchase coverage on their own receive no comparable tax break. Ideally, the current tax exclusion should be replaced (or at the very least capped) with a system of universal tax credits for taxpayers. Medicaid and SCHIP spending should also be redirected to help low-income individuals and families purchase private health insurance
The Real Costs Of Social Security: Red Ink, Instability, Loss Of Choice
The real costs of Social Security far exceed the taxes collected: The compulsory pay-as-you-go retirement system has denied people the choice of using those funds for private investment, diminished the culture of responsibility and strengthened the redistributive state. People have become more dependent on government, and the retirement decision has become politicized. Social Security now accounts for 20% of the U.S. budget, with expenditures of $686 billion last year.
Reforms in 1977 and 1983 increased payroll taxes and the retirement age, but made no fundamental changes to the system in terms of empowering workers by allowing them to put part of their Social Security taxes in personal accounts.
The U.S. system has accumulated surpluses, but they have been used to expand the size and scope of government. The so-called trust fund has no real assets, only IOUs that taxpayers must eventually pay.
In contrast, Chile’s Social Security Reform Act of 1980 allowed workers to opt out of the defined benefit plan and set up personal accounts. Today Chilean workers are no longer burdened with payroll taxes and no longer dependent on government for their retirement income.
The lack of private property rights in Social Security means that individuals have no secure claim to future benefits and cannot pass them on as part of their estates.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress has the power to change promised benefits or other terms of the “social contract” — that is, Congress has the power to break the contract and to renege on past promises.
Indeed, Social Security statements now state: “Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time. The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2037, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 76% of scheduled benefits.”
What kind of a contract is that? Would anyone voluntarily sign such an uncertain agreement? Of course not! That’s why Social Security is compulsory.
The deal is bound to get worse. This year OASDI will run a deficit of $41 billion, with a smaller deficit in 2011, and surpluses in 2012-14. Beginning in 2015, revenues will be insufficient to pay full benefits, according to the just-released Social Security Trustees’ Annual Report to Congress, and the cash-flow deficit will rapidly increase.
Is the Welfare State a Ponzi Scheme?
In the Red: Social Security to See Payout Exceed Pay-In This Year
300 Million, Social Security, and Solvency
U.S. Will be Like Greece in ‘Seven to 10 Years,’ Say Congressmen, Experts
Obama Administration Blocks Release of Pivotal HHS Abstinence Study
The Obama administration is, once again, entangled in controversy over sex education.
Yet this time, it is not about what the administration is trying to implement, but about what it is withholding – and apparently for political reasons.
A taxpayer-funded study that indicates parental and adolescent support of abstinence education is not being released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as it does not support the administration’s objective – or that of vocal “safe sex” activists – of eliminating all abstinence-education funding.
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division of HHS, funded a survey of 1,000 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 and their parents, in order to measure parent-adolescent communication and adolescent attitudes toward sex and abstinence.
The American Public Health Association’s (APHA) website reveals the only is results of the survey:
“Adjusting for all other factors in the model, parent and peer factors are more consistently associated with differences in adolescent attitudes about sex and abstinence than are measures of adolescent exposure to sex and abstinence topics in a class or program.
Additionally, parent attitudes are more important in influencing adolescent views than the level of parent communication with their adolescent.”
The executive summary revealed that:
- 70 percent of parents agreed with the statement: “It is against your values for your adolescents to have sexual intercourse before marriage.
- 70 percent of parents agreed with the statement: “Having sexual intercourse is something only married people should do.”
- Adolescents had similar responses for the two questions.
During an APHA conference, researcher Lisa Rue, Ph.D., who specializes in adolescent behavior, was intrigued by the study and requested the full report. She was summarily denied access.
Rue then resorted to submitting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which was also denied because it was “pre-decisional and deliberative” – even though it was presented in public twice.
Science or Ideology? What Lies Behind the Abstinence Education Debate
Sexually explicit reading assignments: is your child’s innocence being stolen?
A Report on the U.N.’s Shocking Sexuality Guidelines
School condom distribution program includes first graders, denies parental notification
Government raids increasing on farms and private food-supply clubs
“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.” ~ Ronald Reagan
Here come the food police – literally!
When the 20 agents arrived bearing a search warrant at her Ventura County farmhouse door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday a couple weeks back, Sharon Palmer didn’t know what to say. This was the third time she was being raided in 18 months, and she had thought she was on her way to resolving the problem over labeling of her goat cheese that prompted the other two raids. (In addition to producing goat’s milk, she raises cattle, pigs, and chickens, and makes the meat available via a CSA.)
But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn’t the least bit tongue-tied. “She started back-talking to them,” recalls Palmer. “She said, ‘If you take my computer again, I can’t do my homework.’ This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven’t gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids.”
As part of a five-hour-plus search of her barn and home, the agents — from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County Sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture — took the replacement computer, along with milk she feeds her chickens and pigs.
While no one will say officially what the purpose of this latest raid was, aside from being part of an investigation in progress, what is very clear is that government raids of producers, distributors, and even consumers of nutritionally dense foods appear to be happening ever more frequently. Sometimes they are meant to counter raw dairy production, other times to challenge private food organizations over whether they should be licensed as food retailers.What’s behind all these raids? They seem to stem from increasing concern at both the state and federal level about the spread of private food groups that have sprung up around the country in recent years — food clubs and buying groups to provide specialized local products that are generally unavailable in groceries, like grass-fed meats, pastured eggs, fermented foods, and, in some cases, raw dairy products. Because they are private and limited to consumers who sign up for membership, these groups generally avoid obtaining retail and public health licenses required of retailers that sell to the general public. (For more on what’s behind the raids, see this new post.)
S510 Vote Delayed, But Not Defeated
The FDA vs Raw Milk and the Constitution
Delia Lopez: Our government has gone Gestapo
The Oregon Consumers and Farmers Association endorses Delia Lopez for Congress
Memo to Republicans: It’s Big Government, Stupid!
Riding a record of unprecedented government spending, rising debt, a government takeover of the health-care system, high unemployment, and proposals to tax everything they stumble across, Democrats have put themselves in position for an epic electoral defeat that will rival the Republican debacles of 2006 and 2008.
Given this record of Democratic ineptitude and the voters’ reaction to it, one would think that Republicans would be talking about these issues every day. Instead, Republicans and conservatives have spent recent weeks talking about such distracting side-issues as immigration, the 14th amendment, gay marriage, and when and where mosques should be built.
No doubt these are important issues to various constituencies. But, the merits of the issues aside, if Republicans believe that the key to victory this year is to refight the culture wars, they are mistaken.
Republicans should focus on creating jobs, reducing spending, repealing Obamacare, and cutting the size of government — and leave the culture wars for another day.
New fairy tales from Obamaland
It cannot be said often enough that Washington is a city of endless fairy tales. Politicians in both parties can be found spinning these fantasies, but the yarns have been coming especially fast and furious since President Obama and his two best buddies — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — have been running the government. They spun two new fantasies just this week.
The first was that without the latest Obama-Reid-Pelosi government bailout, at least 100,000 teachers would lose their jobs this fall. That’s why the $26 billion “stimulus” bill passed by the House in an “emergency” session included $10 billion for “job creation.” That’s a charming legend for the gullible.
The reality, as the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci noted, is that “it’s common practice for school districts to overestimate the number of teachers that will be laid off in advance of budgets being set, and in advance of the school year.” So the vast majority of those dire warnings of 100,000 teachers being laid off were mostly just hot air.
And here’s something else to ponder: If it cost $10 billion to save 100,000 teachers’ jobs, they are each being paid $100,000 a year. Since the national average teacher salary is just over $54,000 a year, somebody — federal bureaucrats? — is making a bundle on overhead.
The second was the assertion by the Medicare trustees in their annual report to Congress that Obamacare “improves the financial outlook for Medicare substantially.” That assessment was based on multiple assumptions that, frankly, defy political reality.
Obamacare’s bureaucratic web clearly mapped for the first time
Four months after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously declared “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it,”a congressional panel has released the first chart illustrating the 2,801 page health care law President Obama signed into law in March.
Developed by the Joint Economic Committee minority, led by U.S Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the detailed organization chart displays a bewildering array of new government agencies, regulations and mandates.
“For Americans, as well as Congressional Democrats who didn’t bother to read the bill, this first look at the final health care law confirms what many fear, that reform morphed into a monstrosity of new bureaucracies, mandates, taxes and rationing that will drive up health care costs, hurt seniors and force our most intimate health care choices into the hands of Washington bureaucrats,”said Brady, the committee’s senior House Republican. “If this is what passes for health care reform in America, then God help us all.”
Brownback, the committee’s ranking member, added, “This updated chart illustrates the overwhelming expansion of government control over health choices and the bewildering complexity facing everyone affected by this law. It doesn’t take long to see how the recently signed health care bill causes a hugely expensive and explosive expansion of federal control over health care. Personal choices that should be between a doctor and a patient will quickly be strangled in a never ending web of bureaucracy.”
ObamaCare Looks Worse Upon Further Review
Sexually explicit reading assignments: is your child’s innocence being stolen?
Author and blogger Barbara Curtis is raising the alarm for parents:
My daughter Samantha went through this last year in our neighboring Clarke County – writing letters to the principle, school board, newspapers. She went door to door with a petition and when people would look at her like she was a crazy book banner – she would ask them to listen a minute while she read aloud something from one of the questionable books.
They listened. They signed.
Many parents have their heads in the sand. Even if they look at their children’s reading lists, recommended reading has changed so radically since you and I were in school – even considering the generations – that you would be appalled to find out what kids are required to read.
“Some of the material being recommended for use in schools by national gay-activist groups includes what I would consider Triple X-type material,” said Candi Cushman, education analyst for CitizenLink. “These depictions are so extreme that you wouldn’t expect to find them anywhere but a porn store.”
Students may be forced to confront these texts as mandatory reading in a literature or socialstudies class. Or they may be suggested by teachers, or available as options. Sometimes, such material appears on summer reading lists either as required or available reading.
Often, objectionable books simply occupy shelf space in school libraries. In any event, the insistence of many public educators to bring brazenly sexual, often homosexual-themed, books and stories into the mainstream is a growing threat to the moral maturation of American highschool students.
This material doesn’t just yield the relatively harmless peccadilloes of a previous generation of scandalizing literature, such as the occasional profanity in Catcher in the Rye. Much of the modern variety appears to have no other purpose than to centralize homosexuality or to sensationalize edgy heterosexual practice in ways that young readers can’t easily forget.
“Parents have the right to object to sexually explicit material that their child isn’t emotionally or psychologically ready to handle, and many students are being inundated by this stuff,” Cushman said. Urging parents to intervene against such assignments isn’t a common message these days. “Parents are told that they have no control over their kids in the public schools, that states will decide these things,” said Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, a Cincinnati-based affiliate of Focus on the Family. “And that kind of thinking is gaining even more speed.”
‘Safe Schools’ Czar Recommends Child Porn For Classroom Reading
Graphic booklet sent home with Portland schoolkids shocks parents
A Report on the U.N.’s Shocking Sexuality Guidelines
School condom distribution program includes first graders, denies parental notification
U.N. Agency Calls for Teaching Children 5-to-8 Years of Age about Masturbation
The Stark Truth: If Obamacare Is Legal, Then Government Has No Limits
Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) is one of the more honest members of the left in Congress. Long before President Barack Obama first started pushing Obamacare, Rep. Stark was advocating for a government “Medicare for All” takeover over our nation’s health care system.
Rep. Stark’s honest view about the proper role and power of the federal government were on display again last month at a townhall in Hayward, CA. In the video posted, a constituent asks Stark: “If this legislation is Constitutional, what limitations are there on the federal governments ability to tell us how to run our private lives? … If they can do this, what can’t they?”
Stark eventually answers: “The Federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country.”
Stark’s logic, if not his understanding of the Constitution, is dead on.
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Obamacare
From ObamacareClassAction.com:
The purpose of this lawsuit is to reverse Supreme Court precedent related to the Commerce clause and thereby overturn Obamacare. The Supreme Court has historically erred in its interpretation of the Constitutional role of the Federal Government. Recent Supreme Court rulings hint that they may be willing to take another look at Commerce clause precedent. Obamacare is so over reaching and so onerous, that it must either be repealed in Congress or struck down in the courts. We must fight this on both fronts. This is our historic opportunity to reverse America’s trend toward Socialism by overturning this unconstitutional precedent.
Private Citizen Sues The Feds
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