The Feminist Movement
Posted here for 3-8-10

"Feminist ideology has radicalized criminal justice and eroded centuries-old constitutional protections: New crimes have been created; old crimes have been redefined politically; the distinction between crime and private behavior has been erased; the presumption of innocence has been eliminated; false accusations go unpunished: patently innocent people are jailed without trial. [. . .]

"Feminists and other sexual radicals have even managed to influence the law to target conservative groups themselves. Racketeering statutes are marshaled to punish non-violent abortion demonstrators, and 'hate crimes' laws attempt to silence critics of the homosexual agenda. [. . .]

"Men accused of rape today enjoy few safeguards. 'People can be charged with virtually no evidence,' says Boston former sex-crimes prosecutor Rikki Klieman. 'If a female comes in and says she was sexually assaulted, then on her word alone, with nothing else -- and I mean nothing else, no investigation -- the police will go out and arrest someone.' [. . .]

"A defendant who can absolutely prove his innocence . . . can nonetheless still be convicted, based solely on the word of the accuser." [. . .] Crime laboratories are notorious for falsifying results to obtain convictions. [. . .]

"Like rape, domestic 'violence' is defined so loosely that it need not be violent. The U.S. Justice Department definition includes 'extreme jealousy and possessiveness' and 'name calling and constant criticizing.' For such 'crimes' men are jailed with no trial. In fact, the very category of 'domestic' violence was developed largely to circumvent due process requirements of conventional assault statutes. A study published in Criminology and Public Policy found that no one accused of domestic violence could be found innocent, since every arrestee received punishment. [. . .]

"Amazingly, bar associations sponsor seminars instructing women how to fabricate accusations. [. . .]

"New Jersey court literature openly acknowledges that due process is ignored because it 'perpetuates the cycle of power and control whereby the [alleged?] perpetrator remains the one with the power and the [alleged?] victim remains powerless.' [. . .]

"Special 'integrated domestic violence courts' [. . .] can seize property, including homes, without the accused being convicted or even formally charged or present to defend himself. [. . .] Domestic violence courts . . . are designed to get around the protections of the criminal code. The burden of proof is reduced or removed. and there's no presumption of innocence."

-- "No Prosecution Necessary," by Stephen Baskerville, The New American January 18, 2010, pages 24-28. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

Trouble Ahead
Posted here for 2-22-10

"'Obama is a fine, very impressive person. He really is. Unfortunately, everything that he is doing in economics is exactly wrong. He is a crappy President," [economist Arthur] Laffer said.

"'Whenever a country is in the throes of spending too much and raising taxes, it's a fiscal catastrophe in the making and this is what is happening now," he said. [. . .]

"But, he adds, don't be fooled into thinking the economy is actually coming out of one of the worst recessions of the post-war era, because this year will be a false recovery. The downturn will begin again when '2011 will enter center stage, followed quickly by an economic catastrophe. All the factors that will make 2010 (and have already made the last half of 2009) look so good will reverse direction, and 2011 will be a train wreck," he said in his forecast.

"The big reason, among several, is Obama's plan to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of this year, and other tax increases the Obama Administration intends to enact this year and next, and how businesses will respond to these tax changes.

"'In anticipation of known tax increases, the economy will shift income and output from 2011 -- the higher tax year -- into 2010 -- the lower tax year. As a result of this income shift, 2010 will look a lot better than it should, and 2011 will be a train wreck," he predicts. [. . .]

"Laffer said, 'In 2010 the U.S. will have a payroll tax rate increase, an estate tax increase and income tax increases.

"'There's also a tax increase coming in 2010 on carried interest. This rate will rise from its current level of 15% to 35%, and then it will rise again in 2011.'"

-- "Arthur Laffer: Economy Headed for 'Train Wreck'," by Donald Lambro, Human Events, February 1, 2010, page 10. Address: 1 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001. Phone: 202-216-0600. Website.

Creating Crisis
Posted here for 2-15-10

"Corrected for inflation, Medicare and Medicaid spending has increased by 2,735 percent since funding began in 1967. That is a real annual growth rate of 8.5 percent, almost three times the annual rate of economic growth for the same period. [. . .]

"All these effects were predicted by economists, and we were repeatedly warned. The Left knew. [. . .]

"[T]he American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons recently responded to President Obama's wildly false claim that Surgeons charge '$30,000, $40,000 [or] $50,000' for a foot amputation. Instead, they say, 'Medicare reimbursements to physicians for foot amputations range from approximately $700 to $1,200 which includes the follow-up care the surgeon provides to the patient up to 90 days after the operation.' [. . .[

"Private insurance on the other hand, provides a larger reimbursement, and uninsured individuals who do not qualify for the government programs pay full price. These prices are much higher than they would be in absence of the government programs because medical providers have to recoup their costs somehow. And because the pool of Medicare and Medicaid recipients continues to grow, prices keep going up.

"So while private citizens pay the lion's share of taxes to fund Medicare and Medicaid, we are also cross-subsidizing these government programs through higher insurance premiums than we would otherwise pay. This is a primary reason medical care has become more expensive.

"The left has attacked the private healthcare system from another angle as well: malpractice lawsuits. It has gone largely unreported in the mass media, but the dramatic expansion of all forms of liability lawsuits since the 1960s is the result of a deliberate, organized effort by leftist law professors to turn civil courts into agents of income redistribution. By undermining contract law and expanding the definition of liability -- ideas advocated at leading law schools -- legal precedents have allowed trial lawyers to pick the packets of American business as never before. Liability costs have skyrocketed as a result. [. . .}

"[T]he United States pays over $589 billion per year in excessive tort litigation. That is approximately 5 percent of GDP and costs a family of four on average about $8,000 per year. [. . .]

"The increasing costs of medical care resulting from Medicare, Medicaid and the dramatic growth of malpractice lawsuits have provided activists with the rationale they need to agitate for socialized medicine. But this has been their strategy all along."

-- "Manufactured Healthcare Crisis," by James Simpson, Whistleblower magazine, January 2010, pages 14-15. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

A German's Perspective on Obama's Politics
Posted here for 2-1-10

"I grew up under the Nazis, and what I saw then there I see now here. There is nothing theoretical when I speak about what happens when a nation throws God out of government and society, and when Christians become religious bystanders. I am not part of those who want some people to look bad by calling them Nazis, as Nancy Pelosi and so many people do nowadays. My writing is based on my own experience and that of my family. We were there. [. . .]

"The end-of-life-counseling section of Congress's health care 'reform' bill is rooted in the philosophy that not all people have the same value for society and that, therefore, treatment for old people should be different than that for young people. [. . .] The Jews were declared by law to be less valuable than the Arian German race and eventually killed. Important for the Nazis also was the contribution of a person to society. Handicapped and old people were of no use to them. Therefore, they were led to a cost-saving death. [. . .]

"Does the health care project lead to an early end for old people for cost-saving reasons? One cannot trust the Democratic Party, which has abortion in its political platform and therefore is most likely also open to euthanasia. [. . .]

"Obama's trillion-dollar projects belie a purpose to cripple the American economy and integrate a weak United States into the communist/socialist United Nations world order. [. . .]

"Germany went down because of godlessness, and America is sliding down for the same reason. Obama and Pelosi, to name only two, are closer to the Nazis than to our Founding Fathers and our Constitution. [. . .]

"We need a president and members of Congress who stand for truth and life and not for lies and death."

-- "The Socialists Within Want to Take Over," by Hilmar von Campe (author of four books, he was a WWII veteran of the German Army as well as a prisoner-of-war in Yugoslavia), Whistleblower magazine, October 2009, pages 40-42. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

Silencing the Major Force Against Evil
Posted here for 1-25-10

"Here are two official slogans [. . .] 1) 'Politics do not belong in the church' and 2) 'The church must be separate from the state.'

"These mottos did not come from the ACLU, nor from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. No, these slogans, word for word, came directly from the mind of Adolf Hitler.

"These were official slogans of the Nazi Party, adopted in the mid-1930s and relentlessly hammered into the minds of the compliant German population by the Nazi propaganda machine. [. . .]

"Why did Hitler do this? For one simple reason. He knew that the only force in Germany which could keep him from fulfilling his totalitarian ambitions was the church of Jesus Christ. He knew that if he could not silence the voice of the church, he could not exercise total domination.

"He also knew that if he could silence the voice of the church, nothing could stand in his way.

"The church and its leaders meekly capitulated to this form of tyranny, and 25 million people died as a result, 6 million of them Jews.

"Secular fundamentalists in the United States know the same thing that Hitler knew. The only thing that stands in their way of the total takeover of our culture, the final removal of any mention of God from the public arena, and the shredding of the last remains of our Judeo-Christian value system is the church of Jesus Christ."

-- "What Hitler Knew," by Bryan Fischer, American Family Association Journal, January 2010, page 13. Address: PO Drawer 2440, Tupelo, Mississippi 38803. Phone: 662-844-5036. Website.

Public Schools: Government Disgrace
Posted here for 1-18-10

"[The U.S.] educational system, founded on freedom of choice and competition, worked. Adult literacy in 1795 is estimated to have been 90 percent. And it preserved our religious and political freedoms.

"Beginning in the 1850s, that system was undermined and then destroyed. Public funds were withdrawn from all but Protestant schools, and those schools became government schools, with their buildings owned by governments, their teachers working for governments, and their curricula chosen by governments. Parental choice and competition in education, except for a very small private sector of mostly religious schools, came to an end. [. . .]

"U.S. education [became] in essence a socialized business, the American equivalent of the Soviet Union's collectivized farms.

Government schools gradually crowded out private schools, so that today about 9 of every 10 students attend government schools.
Unions took over the government schools, bringing with them workplace rules that protect incompetent and even dangerous teachers while making it difficult or impossible to reward the best teachers.
Curriculum was debased. Teachers and administrators conspire to lower standards in order to avoid being held responsible for falling student achievement.
Spending exploded, to where today the government schools spend more than $10,000 a year per student, more than twice the amount spent by private schools.
Nearly half of all students perform below even the basic level of proficiency in national tests, meaning they are functionally illiterate and haven't mastered even basic arithmetic. A third of students drop out before graduating; 70 percent of those who do graduate aren't academically qualified to enter college. [. . .]

"Failing schools increase the gap between poor and wealthy. They increase crime in neighborhoods when schools should be islands of safety and community spirit; increase conflict among racial and income groups; and make it possible for politicians to be demagogues instead of leaders, appealing to myths and envy and resentment instead of what is best in our hearts and what is best for our country."

-- "School Choice: Past, Present, and Future," by Joseph Bast, The Heartlander, November-December 2009, pages 1, 5. Address: The Heartland Institute, 19 South LaSalle Street, Suite 903, Chicago, Illinois 60603. Phone: 312-377-4000. Fax: 312-377-5000. E-mail. Website.

Darwin, Sanger, Hitler, and Eugenics
Posted here for 1-11-10

"The history of PP [Planned Parenthood] cannot be studied without first considering the American Eugenics Society (AES). After the Civil War, many wealthy, former slave owners sought a solution to what they deemed the 'Negro Problem.' The first idea was to send all former slaves back to Africa. It was termed 'colonization' and was abandoned shortly after its conception. Then Francis Galton, cousin to Charles Darwin, birthed the idea and coined the term 'eugenics.'

"Eugenics is defined as 'the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable characteristics.' In laymen's terms this means people in power give reproduction permission to the 'fit' while refusing it to the 'unfit.' Out of this idea was born the AES.

"The AES used 'research' and legislation at state and federal levels for birth control, abortion and forced sterilization. They were so successful with forced sterilization that from 1907 to 1963, some 64,000 'unfit' were sterilized, many without giving their consent.

"AES leaders soon decided they needed a front man. They needed someone whose hatred for blacks and misfits matched or rivaled their own, a person who would be willing to play the role of muscle while they played the role of mastermind. Margaret Sanger stepped forward and was quickly chosen.

"She believed so strongly in eugenics that she said in 1921, 'The eugenics and civilization value of birth control is becoming apparent to the enlightened and the intelligent. . . . [T]he campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in the ideal with the final aim of eugenics.

"Sanger quickly began what she designated the "Negro Project." [. . .] Sanger's project led to the American Birth Control League (ABCL). The driving concept was to diminish the birth and fertility rates of blacks to remain consistently below replacement until they were extinct. In 1929 Margaret Sanger's reputation for racism and her well-known desire to end the lives of all blacks earned her an invitation to speak at a Ku Klux Klan meeting. [. . .]

"Sanger believed, as many of her associates did, that those on welfare should be given a choice: accept sterilization for yourself and children or no longer receive governmental assistance. [. . .]

"She also moved for everyone to be forced to apply for a birth permit. She desired the U.S. government to decide who could have a child and who could not. If a woman became pregnant without the permit, the child would be aborted. Each permit was good for a single child. [. . .]

"Since Hitler's praise of the ABCL was in print and widely publicized, the first step was to change the name. Sanger changed her organization's name from the American Birth Control League to Planned Parenthood. Though the name was different, the goal was the same. [. . .]

"Because of the family friendly image they project and their well-funded political activism, PP has gotten a vast amount of support from the U.S. government. Federal support began in 1964 under the Great Society programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson. [. . .] [T]he federal government has given over $4.8 billion to PP. [. . .]

"In 2010, PP will receive more than one million dollars every day from the pockets of American taxpayers. Approximately every 30 seconds since Roe v. Wade, a son or daughter has been killed. [. . .] [Planned Parenthood] kills more African Americans in four days that the KKK killed in 150 years."

-- "Worth Saving?" by Teddy James, American Family Association Journal, January 2010, pages 14-15. Address: PO Drawer 2440, Tupelo, Mississippi 38803. Phone: 662-844-5036. Website.

Taxes, Taxes, and More Taxes
Posted here for 1-4-10

"Have you ever thought about how many taxes you are paying when you buy a product or a service? An amount is obvious when a sales tax is tacked on, but is that the only tax included in the price you pay? You know the answer -- of course it is not, but the remaining taxes are out of sight, out of mind.

"The Center For Fiscal Responsibility [. . .] has calculated the percentage that represents the hidden taxes paid for by each dollar spent for 13 commonly purchased goods and services. [. . .] The results of the Center’s analysis shows that taxes represent the following percentages of the price:

Soda -- 37.6%
Cell Phones -- 46.4%
Gasoline -- 51.2%
Meals Out -- 44.8%
Hotel Stays -- 50%
Landline Phones -- 51.8%
Firearms -- 45.6%
Domestic Airfare -- 55%
Car Rentals -- 60.6%
Cable -- 46.3%
Beer -- 56.2%
Distilled Spirits -- 79.6%
And a drum-roll please for the taxes in the price of the 13th product: Cigarettes - 81.3%.

"Another Center project is to calculate the "Cost of Government Day" for the federal government and for each state. The Cost of Government Day is defined as 'the date of the calendar year on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burden imposed by government at the federal, state and local levels.' The 47-page long 2009 'Cost of Government Day Report' is available for reading via a link on the Center’s website.

"The national average date to pay off governments is August 12th. [. . .] [T]he shortest period of indentured service is served by Alaskans who are free of working for government on July 11th. The longest period falls to citizens of the Nutmeg State -- Connecticut residents work until September 7th to settle with all the government demands to which they are subjected.

"The Report shows the impact of the explosion of federal government spending in 2009. For the period 1999 through 2008, the number of days the average citizen had to work to cover federal spending increased from 79.62 days to 89.94 days; in 2009, the number of days jumped to 110.88."

-- "Trackside ©," by John D’Aloia Jr., December 20, 2009.