Columnist.
The question is not whether America is afflicted with socialized medicine, it is whether the socialized medicine afflicting this country is curable or incurable. The inescapable diagnosis: If nothing is done, America dies. You don't need to run an expensive test -- or commission a group of fiscal pathologists -- to see the metastatic growth of government-controlled health care. You only need to look at the data the U.S. Treasury and Office and Management Budget have released to the public. In 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid, all federal outlays equaled $118.23 billion, according to OMB. In fiscal 2012, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for September, outlays for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) alone hit $1.05 trillion -- the third straight year they exceeded $1 trillion.
How rich do you have to be in Barack Obama's America to pay the whole tab for your own abortion? What about a divorced 38-year-old public school principal who has three children and earns $90,000 per year? Would she need to personally pay the full fair to have a doctor kill her fourth child while that child was still in her womb? Under Obamacare, the federal government will force taxpayers to help her buy insurance that pays for abortions. Back in March, the Obama administration published the 166-page regulation governing the establishment of Obamacare's state health-insurance exchanges. A few weeks later, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) published a two-page analysis explaining what this regulation means for American taxpayers who do not want to pay for someone to kill a child.
When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they made it clear that the only time the president would have the authority to use military force without prior authorization from Congress was when, as James Madison recorded in his notes from the Constitutional Convention, it was necessary to "repel sudden attacks." It was thus fittingly symbolic that when Barack Obama announced he had ordered the U.S. military to intervene in Libya's civil war, he did not do so from the Oval Office or the well of the U.S. House of Representatives, but from the capital city of Brazil. In that speech, delivered March 19, 2011, Obama repeatedly used the first-person pronoun, I, in explaining who had decided America would intervene in Libya.
Upon hearing that there had been an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans had been killed there and that this murderous assault had been carried out on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a rational mind might find it difficult to avoid formulating the working hypothesis that this had been a premeditated act of terror. The Obama White House and State Department did resist that temptation. On Sept. 12, the day after the attack, White House press secretary Jay Carney judiciously answered the obvious inquiry.
In November 2008, the Americans who turned out to vote in the presidential election outnumbered the Americans who turned out to work full-time by more than 14 million. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 118,423,000 Americans worked full-time in November 2008. According to the University of California at Santa Barbara's American Presidency Project, 132,645,504 people turned out to vote in that month's presidential election. The presidential election voters outnumbered the full-time workers by 14,222,504.
In 1989, the year President Ronald Reagan left office and the Berlin Wall came down, total spending by the Department of Defense equaled $468.7 billion in constant 2005 dollars, according to the Office of Management and Budget. In 2005, when President George W. Bush started his second term, and the U.S. was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq, DOD spent $473.4 billion in constant 2005 dollars. This year, under President Barack Obama, DOD will spend $582.5 billion in constant 2005 dollars. In inflation-adjusted dollars, Obama is spending 23 percent more on defense than Bush did when the United States was fighting simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and 24 percent more than Reagan spent when he won the Cold War.
Meritocracy is nowhere more manifest in modern America than on the high school football field. The boys who play the game know who their most courageous teammates are, and they just as readily recognize the fastest, the smartest and the hardest working. In the weeks of physical training and full-pad practices that precede their first game, they learn to admire each other's skills and trust each other's character. Having been through much together -- and having started with equal chances to prove themselves on the field -- they become a team. That is not what happened in Florida last Friday night, when South Plantation High fielded a girl as quarterback to run two carefully circumscribed plays.
President Barack Obama has such ill-advised contempt for the intelligence of American taxpayers that he has become an habitual liar when talking about his plans to deal with a national debt that will imminently top $16 trillion. For example, on Aug. 14, he told a crowd in Waterloo, Iowa: "I'll make sure government still does its part to reduce our debt and our deficits. We've cut out already a trillion dollars' worth of spending we don't need." On June 22, in Tampa, Fla., he said: "We're going to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion. I have a detailed plan. We'll cut spending we can't afford." On June 12, in Philadelphia, he said: "And I've already signed $2 trillion of cuts into law already and have proposed $2 trillion in additional deficit reduction." So, which is it?
Americans witnessed a remarkable drama this week when some of our most exalted politicians frantically scrambled to reassure voters that they, too, believed that the United States ought to permit the deliberate killing of at least some innocent human beings. They apparently did so to persuade the public they are caring, compassionate and -- above all -- reasonable people. The drama started when Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee in the U.S. Senate race in Missouri, expressed his view that no innocent human being ought to be deliberately killed. However, that was not the only thing Akin expressed.
To justify expanding the power of the federal government and increasing the burden of debt on federal taxpayers, President Barack Obama has repeatedly lied about a peerless icon of America's pioneering spirit -- the Golden Gate Bridge. "During the Great Depression, America built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge," Obama said in his January State of the Union Address. "After World War II, we connected our states with a system of highways. Democratic and Republican administrations invested in great projects that benefited everybody, from the workers who built them to the businesses that still use them today." Obama suggested here that the federal government invested in the Golden Gate Bridge. Elsewhere, he has used a royal "we" to seemingly credit the federal government.
Those who have convinced themselves that American football is incurably violent and shortens the life expectancy of those who play it -- I am thinking of George Will -- ought to read the study the American Journal of Cardiology published in March on the mortality of former NFL players. Men who played in the NFL for at least five years over a period of three decades, the study demonstrated, had a lower mortality rate than the general population of American males. However, in The Washington Post on Sunday, George Will wrote: "Various unsurprising studies indicate high early mortality rates among linemen resulting from cardiovascular disease. For all players who play five or more years, life expectancy is less than 60; for linemen it is much less." The definitive study says otherwise.
To find the heart of San Francisco, you need to head south of Market Street, not to the Castro District teeming with people who very publicly define themselves by the perverse acts in which they engage, but to the Mission District. Here is where the most beautiful of American cities was founded -- not by 49ers, beatniks, hippies or homosexuals, but by devout and dedicated Spanish Franciscans who crossed half the world to bring their faith to a new land. Mission Dolores is not just the heart of San Francisco, she symbolizes its soul. The Franciscans founded the mission on June 29, 1776, just as American patriots on the other side of the continent were preparing to declare their independence from England with a document that said all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
William, Paul and James Newland and their sister, Christine Ketterhagen, who together own Hercules Industries, have no right to conduct their family business in a manner that comports with their Catholic faith. The federal government can and will compel them to either surrender their business or to engage in activities the Catholic faith teaches are intrinsically immoral. This is exactly what President Barack Obama's Justice Department told a U.S. district court in a formal filing last week. Never before has an administration taken such a bold step to strip Americans of the freedom of conscience -- a right for which, over the centuries, many Christian martyrs have laid down their lives, and which our Founding Fathers took great care to protect in a First Amendment that expressly guarantees the free exercise of religion.
President Barack Obama speaks of his own presidency as a rough patch in our nation's history. "I don't need to tell you what we've been through over the last three and a half years because you've lived it," Obama said in Roanake, Va., last week. "Too many folks lost jobs. Too many people saw their homes lose value. Too many folks saw their savings take a hit." The first lady last week described the bad times marking Obama's term in office as some sort of inevitable legacy he took on from his predecessor. "That's what he inherited," she said. The truth is: We are in the Obama recovery now. If history is a guide, these are the best of the Obama times. The next presidential term -- no matter who serves in the Oval Office -- is likely to see another recession.
No previous president ever promoted a giveaway more peculiar than Barack Obama's mandate that all health care plans must offer free sterilizations to all women -- but not all men -- capable of breeding. This mandate is Obama's defining act as president -- just as his adamant opposition to a bill that would have defined a born baby as a "person" was his defining act as an Illinois state senator. Obama's Department of Health and Human Services proposed the mandate last August and finalized it in January. It takes effect Aug. 1.
Are you required to stop your car at a red light? In his opinion declaring Obamacare's individual mandate constitutional, Chief Justice John Roberts constructed an absurd doctrine of legal interpretation that, if consistently applied, would hold you are not. The Roberts Doctrine of Lawlessness can be summarized as follows: You need not stop at a red light as long as you can afford to pay the penalty for running it. Red lights merely give motorists a "choice" of whether to stop or keep moving and pay the fine the government imposes for not stopping.
President Barack Obama, occupant of the bully pulpit, set aside the past month to celebrate a most peculiar thing. "Now, each June since I took office," Obama said in a June 15 speech at the White House, "we have gathered to pay tribute to the generations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans who devoted their lives to our most basic of ideals -- equality not just for some, but for all." Among the places our president said he wanted "equality not just for some, but for all" -- that is, presumably, including "bisexuals" -- is in the institution of marriage. "We've supported efforts in Congress to end the so-called Defense of Marriage Act," Obama said. "And as we wait for that law to be cast aside, we've stopped defending its constitutionality in the courts." "And Americans may be still evolving when it comes to marriage equality," Obama said, "but as I've indicated personally, Michelle and I have made up our minds on this issue." So, what does Obama's "marriage equality" mean for bisexuals?
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has staked out a position on federal spending to the left of every Republican in the U.S. Senate. On Dec. 14, the Senate voted on S.J. Res. 10, the proposed constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget sponsored by Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee of Utah. All 47 Senate Republicans voted for this constitutional amendment. All 53 Democrats voted against it. Romney took no stand. Romney did sign a "Cut, Cap and Balance" pledge, vowing to support a balanced budget amendment that would include an unspecified "spending limitation." However, he did not specifically support the Hatch-Lee Amendment that would require balancing the budget while capping federal spending at 18 percent of gross domestic product. Senate Republicans backed the 18-percent spending cap for a reason: 18 percent approximates the average percentage of GDP the federal government has been able to collect in taxes over many decades.
Vincent Gray, who is the mayor of Washington, D.C., which has some of the worst public schools in America, has an idea he believes will improve them: Keep children there longer. "It is time for us to get rid of what I think is an agrarian concept," Gray told a Washington radio station this spring, "and that is the days, in the 19th century, when it was thought that children had to get home early to help out with the chores, when they had to get out of school in June and go back at the end of the summer to help out with the farming. "Well, we are long past that era at this stage, and I think we can improve outcomes for children by expanding that," said Gray. "So, my first step is to look: Can we take a few schools, extend the day. Take a few schools, extend the year." "We have found that school ending at 3 p.m. does not work for anyone," Gray said elsewhere, according to the Washington Informer. He would like to see kids stuck at school as late as 5:00 p.m. -- and not so they can practice basketball or the spring play.
President Barack Obama said: "Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years." And then he said, "Think about that. I went to the White House website to see what sort of historical light the data published by Obama's Office of Management and Budget would shine on his fiscal record. The data says this: Since fiscal 1930, the earliest year for which the government has made official calculation, only two presidents have spent 24 percent or more of GDP for three or more straight fiscal years that started while they were president. They are Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama.
