Columnist.
A new Pew Research Center survey of opinion about the importance of religion in American life shows an interesting picture. Over the last 12 years, the percentage of Americans that think religion is losing influence in American life has increased dramatically. In 2002, 52 percent of those surveyed said religion is losing influence. In 2014, 72 percent of Americans said religion is losing influence. However, while increasing numbers of Americans feel religion is losing influence, most feel this is a bad thing. Fifty-six percent say that the waning influence of religion is a bad thing compared to 12 percent that say it is a good thing.
Our national debate on immigration policy centers on a paradox. We must become aware of it and deal with it. The United States needs an immigration policy because a lot of people want to come here. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't need an immigration policy. Why do they want to come? For freedom. And because there is freedom, there is opportunity. The immigration issue is now a political football because of the political baggage it carries. Both parties want the votes of the Hispanic population, the most rapidly growing demographic in the country. And this is the same population most sensitive to the immigration issue because most of the illegals within our borders are from Latin American countries.
This is my third consecutive column about the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black youth, by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. I have focused on this because the circumstances that led to this tragedy point to more than narrow, parochial concerns of low-income minority communities. They point to things fundamentally wrong in America that are dragging us all down. Hopefully, remedial measures will be adopted that will lower the likelihood that a police officer will reduce a black youth to a racial stereotype and kill him. But even with such measures, we cannot continue to ignore circumstances that practically guarantee ongoing intergenerational poverty and the dysfunctional behavior that accompanies it. The costs of not addressing and changing what has failed in low-income communities and the whole country are enormous.
Eight days before 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, he received his high school diploma from Normandy High School in the Normandy School District near Ferguson. In January 2013, Normandy district schools lost their accreditation from the Missouri state Board of Education because of poor performance on standardized tests and poor graduation rates. The 2014 evaluations have just been issued from the state board and the Normandy district score has dropped even further from last year. Scores are based on compiling results of a number of different performance measures and in order to remain accredited, a district needs a score of 70. The latest score of the Normandy district was below 10.
Economist Milton Friedman said "The economic race should not be arranged so everyone arrives at the finish line at the same time but so that everyone starts at the starting line at the same time." Those on the left and the right have always contended whether economic outcomes for any given set of individuals is the business of government. But few, on the left or right, dispute that government should work to assure that every American starts the game under fair conditions. It's the latter point, fairness at the beginning of the game, that defines the motivation behind Republican Congressman Paul Ryan's vast and sweeping new set of ideas for taking on poverty in our nation.
August 28, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the mall in Washington, DC. One year later, a half century ago, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. A half-century is a long time. Yet, as events in Ferguson, Missouri attest to, race remains a problem in America. Why? Change has swept our nation over these years. Technologies abound that no one would have dreamed of. And millions of black Americans have moved into the ranks of the upper middle class, the rich, and the super rich.
Investopedia defines a "zero sum game" as "a situation in which one person's gain is equivalent to another's loss, so the net change in wealth or benefit is zero." If a political leader wielding power sees the world as a zero sum game -- gains to one must mean a loss to another -- it is likely that this leader will promote policies that will limit growth, wealth creation and innovative problem solving. What a zero sum worldview will produce more of is political, class, and ethnic resentment and strife.
With, most recently, incumbent Republican Senators Pat Roberts in Kansas and Lamar Alexander in Tennessee winning their respective primaries, Tea Party challengers failed in all attempts in this primary cycle to defeat Senate incumbents. Now we're starting to hear eulogies about the Tea Party movement. But let's not confuse birth pains with death throes.
We now mark the one-year anniversary since important new regulatory restrictions on abortion were passed into law in Texas that protect life and make this nasty procedure safer for women that choose it. HB 2 was signed into law in July 2013. Its four major provisions require that abortion doctors have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles where they practice, abortion after 20 weeks of fertilization is banned, stricter controls on medically induced abortion, and abortion clinic facilities must meet the same standards as those of ambulatory surgical centers.
America is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. But as we become bogged down in our many problems, I see, unfortunately, a mentality in which we are becoming increasingly a nation of the unfree -- the victim -- and the timid, in how we're approaching these challenges. Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman wrote a column this week drawing attention to the latest dire projections from the Congressional Budget Office. CBO projects the nation sinking deeper and deeper into an ocean of red ink.
It is no accident that rhetoric about race has been ramping up at a time when racial politics can be the key determinant for control of the Senate this year.
Senate and House Democrats are outraged by the Supreme Court's decision in favor of Hobby Lobby in the firm's lawsuit seeking exemption from the Obamacare mandate that employers provide, free of charge, contraceptives to employees. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid called the Supreme Court decision "outrageous" and Democrats have introduced bills in the Senate and the House to overturn the decision. Why exactly is it that Democrats find it so outrageous that in America religious freedom is respected? That we have law -- The Religious Freedom Restoration Act under which the owners of Hobby Lobby sued the federal government -- that assures that no federal law will substantially burden individuals in the practice of their religion. Paying for contraception would violate the Christian principles of Hobby Lobby's owners.
On June 2, the Palestinians announced a new unity government, which included Hamas, an organization designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group. American aid to the Palestinians since the mid-1990s, according to a Congressional Research Service report, has exceeded $5 billion. In recent years it has averaged $500 million per year. The report notes three major U.S. objectives of these funds: preventing terrorism against Israel from Hamas; fostering "stability, prosperity, and self-governance on the West Bank"; humanitarian aid.
Incumbent Republican Senator Thad Cochran's successful game plan, which drove his run-off victory over Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel for Mississippi's Republican Senate nomination, was unconventional. But most incredible was the success of this game plan -- to reach out to liberal black churches and get Democrat black voters to turn out and vote for Cochran -- despite being executed in broad daylight. Soon after Cochran lost to McDaniel in the primary, necessitating a run-off because McDaniel fell short of getting 50 percent of the vote, papers reported the intent of Cochran's team to turn out black Democrats to overcome the thin margin by which Cochran lost.
Last week's California superior court decision, which struck down teacher tenure law in California public schools, is good news for everyone worried about America's future. The decision, finding these provisions unconstitutional and discriminatory against low-income and minority students, was even applauded by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. With the success of this lawsuit, similar suits can be anticipated around the country. Everyone, except the teachers unions, seems to grasp that public education in America, particularly in low-income communities, suffers because of lack of competition.
Just when Tea Party obituaries were being sounded around the country, Washington fixture of 42 years, Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, loses to upstart Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel. And one week later, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, in the blockbuster of this year's political season, is booted out of office in the Virginia Republican primary by an economics professor from Randolph-Macon College, total undergraduate enrollment -- 1,312 students. Turns out that reports of the death of the Tea Party are greatly exaggerated.
Anyone that wants to know what is wrong with today's Republican Party need only look to the state of Mississippi. A 76-year-old Republican Senator, Thad Cochran, who has been serving in the United States Congress for 42 years, is running yet again for another six-year term. This, while his dementia-ridden wife has been sitting in a nursing home for the last 14 years. In the primary last Tuesday, Cochran lost by half a point to Tea Party Republican challenger Chris McDaniel. But because McDaniel garnered 49.6 percent of the vote, short of the 50 percent mark, there will be a run-off.
The Commerce Department reports that first quarter GDP contracted by one percent. The Wall Street Journal notes that a contraction of GDP during a time not in recession is rare. So we continue in the slowest economic recovery since the end of World War II, with unemployment, in the 6th year of the Obama regime, at 6.3 percent, still well above its historic average. According to a recent Gallup poll, the economy is the number issue on the minds of Americans. Ninety one percent of Republicans and 87 percent of Democrats say it is the most important issue facing the nation.
Talk about Republican Party differences between the "establishment" and the Tea Party is taking attention from where it really needs to be focused -- on the real issues facing the nation. With all our differences, Americans agree that we're on the wrong track. The latest Gallup poll asking "Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?" shows just 25 percent satisfied. Even among Democrats just 35 percent are satisfied.
In 1831, a French aristocrat named Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in America and spent several years travelling and studying life in the communities of the new nation. He produced a book called Democracy in America which Harvard professor of government Harvey Mansfield calls "at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America." Tocqueville looked at America with open eyes and saw its strengths and its flaws. He reported with honesty about the human damage caused by slavery. But he also saw the beginnings of a great country in which human potential could be realized through freedom. And he recognized the crucial role that morals and religion play in making this possible.
