The ignorance and misinformation surrounding the common sense passage of Arizona’s Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, which requires police officers, who in the course of a lawful law enforcement action come to a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal alien, to ask for a driver’s license to verify that the person is in this country legally, has spread like a virus. The measure has sparked fierce debate across the country. Here in Wisconsin – far from the front lines of illegal immigration in Arizona – we have done our part to encourage a growing illegal immigration problem which is no longer limited to our nation’s borders.
 

The first signs of the virus were documented when the Milwaukee Area Technical College District board of directors wasted more taxpayer dollars and approved a resolution on May 25 directing the already bloated college's administration to boycott Arizona in response to the state's newly passed immigration law. Somebody in the over-funded technical school had to spend our tax dollars figuring out and publicizing that through the fiscal year, MATC had spent $72,453 on goods and services from Arizona-based businesses. The MATC resolution is another in a long line of creative ways this technical school has arrive at to waste the tax dollars they are entrusted with. It is clear they do not have enough to do. The resolution was proposed by MATC board member Peter Earle, a lawyer who didn’t take the time to actually read the Arizona law, one of the symptoms of the virus. Board member Ann Wilson said she voted in favor of the boycott because she's concerned about the possibility of “civil rights violations” of those here illegally, but ignoring the civil rights violations and unsustainable costs heaped on the backs of law-abiding taxpayers – another symptom of advanced infection.
 

The ignorance infection next spread to our Milwaukee County board, which spent the better part of June 24 debating a measure that would call for the county to boycott doing business with companies in Arizona – more good use of tax dollars. Heavily infected and grossly uninformed supervisors Peggy West and Elizabeth M.Coggs called the Arizona law racist. “It reminds me of the days of apartheid in South Africa,” said Coggs. Peggy West didn’t even know where Arizona was on the map. "If this was Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this saying that they had a major issue with undocumented people flooding their borders, I would have to look twice at this," a geographically-challenged West said in the meeting. "But this is a state that is a ways removed from the border and, um, it doesn't make sense to me," she muttered, embarrassing Milwaukee in front of the entire world. This is what happens when we teach our children about self-esteem and political correctness instead of math, science, and history. The board was forced to delay its vote on the stupid measure due to the advanced stage of Ms. West’s infection. She is reportedly resting comfortably although heavily sedated. 
 

Local media has been infected also. Sadly, TMJ4 reported on their website that “Communities around the nation have passed similar measures in response to a law in Arizona that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.” The Arizona law doesn’t do anything of the sort, as I painstakingly point out below. Even Ozaukee County’s own News Graphic rejected an article for my own local op-ed column entitled “Illegal Immigration In Wisconsin”, much of which is recounted below. News Graphic op-ed editor Jan Rockley claimed it wasn’t local enough. You be the judge as the balance of this article is essentiallythe same as the column they rejected. As a result, I have resigned from writing my column in the News Graphic and have begun a new column in the conservative state-wide publication Reality News. It is a conservative publicationi sponsored in part by the Ozaukee Patriots and can be subscribed to by calling Steve Welcenbach at (414) 491-3421.
 

Efforts to quarantine the ignorance virus have been mostly successful and it appears to be contained within Milwaukee County’s borders. On July 7, the Ozaukee County Board supervisors approved sending an apology to Arizona residents for the Milwaukee Area Technical College's buffoonish economic boycott. On a 16-5 vote, the board approved a resolution describing the MATC action as "intolerant and divisive" and asking the college's board to reconsider its decision. There are 31 supervisors on the county board. In addition to the five no voters, seven supervisors walked out of the meeting before the vote and three others were absent. The five county supervisors voting against the resolution were Rose Hass Leider (Belgium), Thomas Richart (Grafton), Kathlyn Callen (Mequon), Patrick Marchese (Mequon) and Karl Hertz (Thiensville). "I didn't think it was our place to apologize," said Callen. "The MATC board should do that." Callen announced she does not agree with the college's economic boycott, but as a guardian of our county tax dollars – far too much of which goes to MATC – she is front line of defense against waste and all five supervisors who voted against the measure did so due to being infected with the ignorance virus or abdicating their responsibility as tax watchdogs for Ozaukee County. There may be early signs of infection on the Ozaukee County Board, although medical tests have not yet confirmed this. Seven supervisors left the County Board meeting room and did not cast a vote. The seven supervisors who skipped the vote were Richard Nelson, Raymond Meyer, Kathy Geracie, Jean Zens, Cindy Bock, Nancy Szatkowski and John Slater.
 

Our Ozaukee County Board is to be commended for standing up for common sense. They remain a beacon of hope in a world otherwise gone mad with political correctness and a reflexive enmity for almost anything our country does to protect itself and its borders. Those on the board who walked out or voted against the measure have some explaining to do. For those individuals on the Board who may be ignorant as to the Arizona law and how it works, the rest of this article will be particularly illuminating.
 

As a lawyer, I’ll now take the time to explain why the Arizona immigration law is not racist, zenophobic, unconstitutional, discriminatory, unfair, totalitarian, intolerant or even simply naughty. I’ll take the time to explain to fellow lawyer Peter Earle that seeking treatment from the virus might not only be good for his performance on the MATC board, but also for his profession as a lawyer. Details and facts matter. So here they are.
 

We don’t need “comprehensive immigration reform” – liberal-speak for “amnesty” – as our president has called for. What we need is strict enforcement of our current federal immigration laws. The argument against doing so is emotional, illusory, and dangerous. The simple fact is America cannot afford to house, clothe, and shelter the world. Neither can Wisconsin. There are more than 20 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. today, and growing rapidly. About 60% of them are unlawful border crossers, while 40% are “documented aliens” who have overstayed their Visas. This illegal invasion of our country has contributed to overcrowding of underfunded schools, soaring health care costs, crime, unemployment, lowered wages, higher taxes, and the loss of a common language and culture. A growing number of them radically refuse to assimilate and openly profess an intention to culturally “re-conquer” America.
 

Illegal immigrants take $1.6 billion from Arizona's education system, $694.8 million from health care services, $339.7 million in law enforcement and court costs, $85.5 million in welfare costs and $155.4 million in other general costs. Arizona does not want to become like California, which is bankrupt after spending more than $10.5 billion per year on illegal immigrant education, health care, and incarceration.
 

Our own U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, sworn to protect America, has promised legal challenges to the 17-page Arizona law he admits he has never even read. The vocal minority who oppose the common sense measure mistakenly believe it allows police to stop people randomly and ask for their “papers.” This is emotional nonsense. Arizona's SB 1070 reads in part as follows:
 

“For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official…where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an [illegal alien], a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to [verify with the federal government] the immigration status of the person.”

The 4th Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and its protections extend to brief investigatory stops of persons or vehicle falling short of arrest. Only when there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed can a stop be "lawful." Only after the police legally stop somebody and ask for a valid Arizona driver’s license does the rest of the bill come into play:
 

“A law enforcement offer, without warrant, may arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States.”

To further alleviate racial profiling concerns, Section 2 of the law specifically mandates that a law enforcement official "may not solely consider race, color or national origin" in making any stops or determining immigration status.
 

The new Arizona law is supported by 71% of Americans. Law-abiding U.S. citizens who live within 80 miles of the Arizona/Mexico border have for years been terrorized by daily invasions of their property. One rancher testified that 300 to 1200 people each day come across his ranch, vandalizing, stealing his vehicles and property, cutting down his fences, and leaving trash. In the last two years he has found 17 dead bodies and two Koran bibles. Another rancher testified that drugs are brought across his ranch daily in heavily-armed military-style operations. Dozens of sheriff deputies, police officers, park rangers, and border agents – men and women with families – have been murdered by illegals. It’s no wonder that Arizona’s police associations favor the new law, along with 70% of Arizona residents.
 

Last week, Mexico’s president insulted America by blasting the new Arizona law, but failed to mention that Mexico deports far more illegals than America does, and imprisons those who violate immigration laws. Mexican immigration law ensures that all foreign visitors and immigrants are in the country legally, have the means to sustain themselves, will not be an economic or social burden on society, are of good character with no criminal records, and will contribute to the well-being of Mexico. Violators are deported or imprisoned.
 

Wisconsin is not immune from the immigration problem. Illegals in Wisconsin tend to work in hotels, cleaning services, farms, construction, landscaping, home repair and roofing. Most are from Mexico but many are from the Congo, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mali, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and Peru. Our proximity to Chicago – a major illegal immigration destination - has fueled the increase in the population of illegals locally. Only recently, 20 fugitive illegal aliens were arrested in Wisconsin following an 11-day operation that targeted only those in violation of deportation orders or with criminal convictions for drug dealing, home invasions, bank fraud, battery, robbery, and assault.
 

Wisconsin is the northernmost state that does not share a border with Canada, so enforcement here has largely been focused on interior issues. In 2008, an illegal named Ezequiel Lopez-Quintero gunned down Kenosha Deputy Frank Fabiano Jr., a former U.S. Marine and an 18-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department, during a routine traffic stop in the Town of Somers. Fabiano was unable to fulfill his promise of taking his 8-year old daughter, Angelina, to see "Shrek IV" when it opened later that week. The man who shot him should never have been allowed into this country. Don’t boycott Arizona. Boycott Racine and Madison, two Wisconsin cities which shamelessly offer “sanctuary” to illegals.
 

Here in Wisconsin we have illegals offending and re-offending, being deported, and somehow finding their way back to commit more crimes. Wisconsin ranks 21^st in the country, with an estimated 150,000 illegal aliens, far less than the 5 million in California or 4 million in Texas, but far more than the estimated 10,000 in West Virginia, Wyoming, Maine, or Vermont.
 

The ignorance infection has consumed Madison. Wisconsin lawmakers not only tolerate, but reward illegal immigration. Last month, the state Senate failed to pass a bill that would make companies that hire illegal aliens ineligible for tax breaks and government contracts. Last year, Wisconsin became one of only ten states which give illegal immigrants discounted tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities. In 2005, the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority openly made a joke of our federal immigration laws by becoming the first such agency in the country to guarantee home loans for illegal immigrants. That year the Federation for Federal Immigration Reform estimated that the taxpayers of Wisconsin spent $201.4 million per year on illegal aliens and their children in public schools.
 

Here in Wisconsin, Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker reversed himself on Arizona's controversial immigration law over the weekend, first expressing serious concerns about “racial profiling.” After being bombarded with negative feedback saying Walker indicated that as governor, he would “sign legislation that strengthens our protection against illegal immigration and ensures that taxpayer funded benefits like BadgerCare and drivers licenses are not available to those who are here illegally." His challenger, Mark Neumann, opposes amnesty, in-state college tuition discounts and drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, and supports the rights of states to protect their citizens when the federal government fails to do so, but hasn’t gone so far as to say he would sign a bill similar to Arizona’s if elected.
 

Even more locally, Cedarburg Police Chief Tom Frank says that while his department has no written policy involving the handling of illegal immigrants, they do follow the recommendations issued by the Milwaukee U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office. However, Frank stated that previous contact his department has had with the local ICE office has confirmed that ICE only enters the picture if the investigation of a serious crime is involved. It is clear that the federal government doesn’t consider illegally entering our country a “serious crime.”
 

It seems that the ignorance virus thrives in emotional environments. People who react emotionally and with very little common sense or logic, are most likely to be infected. Enforcing our existing immigration laws is no longer an immigration issue; it's a national security issue. When the federal government fails to do its job of protecting U.S. citizens and borders, states like Arizona and Wisconsin are our last line of defense. It’s time we use less emotion and more common sense in enforcing our national and state immigration laws and policies.
 

The heated debate over Arizona’s Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, which requires police officers who, in the course of a lawful law enforcement action, come to a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal alien, to ask for a driver’s license to verify that the person is in this country legally, has rapidly spread across the country. Here in Wisconsin – far from the front lines of illegal immigration in Arizona – we have done our part to exacerbate a growing illegal immigration problem which is no longer limited to our nation’s borders.

The argument against enforcing of our existing federal immigration laws is both emotional and impractical. The simple fact is America cannot afford to house, clothe, and shelter the world. Neither can Wisconsin. There are more than 20 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. today. About 60% of them are unlawful border crossers, while 40% are “documented aliens” who have overstayed their Visas. This illegal invasion of our country has contributed to overcrowding of underfunded schools, massively increased health care costs, crime, unemployment, lowered wages, higher taxes, and the loss of a common language and culture.

In 1994, Californians forsaw what the problem has now done to their state and passed Proposition 187, which denied illegal immigrants non-emergency public services. The will of the people was thwarted by legal challenges and a Democrat governor who killed the measure. Today, California's illegal immigrant population is costing the taxpayers of California more than $10.5 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. Arizona does not want to become like California.

We keep hearing people who claim that the Arizona anti-illegal immigration law (SB 1070) is “unconstitutional.”  Well, the Arizona law is ever bit as “constitutional” as the federal law – considering it basically IS the federal law with even more limitations added to it. Our own U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, has promised legal challenges to the Arizona law he admits he has never even read. Most of those opposed to the sensible measure mistakenly believe it allows police to stop people randomly and ask for their “papers.” This is nonsense, but emotion trumps facts. Arizona's SB 1070 reads in part as follows:

“For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official…where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an [illegal alien], a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to [verify with the federal government] the immigration status of the person.”

In order to stop and detain somebody legally ("lawful contact"), there must be reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or is about to be committed. The 4th Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and its protections extend to brief investigatory stops of persons or vehicle falling short of arrest. Only when there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed can a stop be "lawful." Stopping somebody for merely “looking like an illegal” would not be lawful and any subsequent arrest or deportation efforts would be nullified. Only after the police ask for a valid Arizona driver’s license does the rest of the bill come into play:

“A law enforcement officer, without warrant, may arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States.”

After the officer has acted on reasonable suspicion and detained somebody, and after he has legally asked for identification and has received none, he has probable cause that the person is here illegally and may arrest that person. Even the liberal New York Times agrees with me here, when it wrote last month: "[The new bill] requires police officers who, in the course of a traffic stop or other law-enforcement action, come to a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal alien verify the person’s immigration status with the federal government." For example, a police officer stops a minivan with a dozen passengers for speeding in a known illegal-smuggling corridor (“lawful contact”). None has identification. The driver is acting evasively or the vehicle has expired registration (“reasonable suspicion”). When the driver and occupants cannot produce a valid Arizona driver’s license, the officer has probable cause to arrest them for being illegal. And to pacify emotional racial profiling zealots, Section 2 of the law specifically provides that a law enforcement official "may not solely consider race, color or national origin" in making any stops or determining immigration status. Everyone should be happy, except for those here illegally and those who truly don’t want to tackle the tough problem of illegal immigration.

The law is simple, constitutional, and couldn’t be needed more desperately. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has already held in its 2005 decision styled Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93 (2005), that police officers who handcuffed a gang member while they executed a search warrant for weapons, did not violate her rights by questioning her about her immigration status.  The Court explained, “[E]ven when officers have no basis for suspecting a particular individual, they may generally ask questions of that individual; ask to examine the individual's identification; and request consent to search his or her luggage." Yet, ignorant liberals who haven’t even read the law continue to bash the law as “un-American,” “racist,” and “discriminatory.” If the law is all of these things, so is the U.S. Supreme Court.

Law-abiding U.S. citizens who live within 80 miles of the Arizona/Mexico border have for years been terrorized and have been pleading for help to stop the daily invasion of their property. The federal government, our current man-child president, and his predecessor, have all ignored them. One rancher testified that 300 to 1200 people each day come across his ranch, vandalizing his property, stealing his vehicles and property, cutting down his fences, and leaving trash. In the last two years he has found 17 dead bodies and two Koran bibles. Another rancher testified that drugs are brought across his ranch daily in a military-style operation. A point man with a machine gun goes in front, 1/2 mile behind are the guards fully armed, 1/2 mile behind them are the drugs, behind the drugs 1/2 mile are more guards. These people are violent and they will kill anyone who gets in their way. Lawful Arizona residents routinely listen to gun fire during the night. It is not safe to leave their families on the ranch and they can't leave the ranch for fear of nothing being left when they return.

David March, a Los Angeles County Sheriff was killed by an illegal when he pulled over a car for a routine traffic stop. So was Officer Kenneth Collings of the Phoenix Police Department, Park ranger Kris Eggle, Oceanside police officer Tony Zeppetella, Phoenix police officer Robert Sitek, Officer Brandon Whitfield, Phoenix policeman Marc Atkinson, Officer Hugo Arrango, and hundreds of other innocent Immigration, Park Service, and Police Officers.

The federal border patrol is not even found on the border. They set up 60 miles away with check points that do nothing to stop the invasion. They are not allowed to use force in stopping anyone who is entering. They run around chasing illegals like chickens loose from their pens, and if they get their hands on them then they simply take back across the border. The illegal who raped a woman behind an Edmonds, Washington grocery store last week had been deported five times. Border security is a laughing stock. Arizona is ground zero for illegal immigration and Phoenix is the epicenter of human smuggling and is the kidnapping capital of the world, with more than 240 kidnappings in 2008 alone. It’s no wonder that Arizona’s police associations favor the new law, along with 70% of Arizona residents.

Wisconsin is not immune from the immigration problem. Illegals in Wisconsin tend to work in hotels, cleaning services, canning or meat industries, farms, construction, landscaping, home repair and roofing. Most are from Mexico but there are others from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mali, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru and Poland. Our proximity to Chicago – a major illegal immigration destination - has fueled the increase in the population of illegals locally. Only recently, 20 fugitive illegal aliens were arrested in Wisconsin following an 11-day operation that targeted only those in violation of deportation orders, including many with criminal convictions for drug dealing, bank fraud, battery, robbery, assault and criminal damage to property.

Wisconsin is not a border state, and its northern border is not seen as a major entry point for illegal immigrants, so enforcement in this state has largely been focused on interior issues. In 2008, an illegal named Ezequiel Lopez-Quintero was convicted of killing Kenosha Deputy Frank Fabiano Jr., a former U.S. Marine and an 18-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department. Fabiano was gunned down on the night of May 16, 2007while attempting a routine traffic stop in the Town of Somers. Fabiano was unable to fulfill his promise of taking his 8 year old daughter, Angelina, to see "Shrek IV" when it opened later that month. The man who shot him should never have been allowed into this country. Don’t boycott Arizona, boycott Racine and Madison, which are two Wisconsin cities which shamelessly offer “sanctuary” to illegals.

Sanctuary cities shamelessly protect illegal aliens through local resolutions, executive orders or city ordinances. City police departments may also issue their own special orders, policies and general orders to a similar effect. The bills prohibit cities, towns, villages and counties from enacting policies that allow them to prohibit workers and agencies from asking about legal citizenship status.

Here in Wisconsin we have illegals offending and re-offending, being deported, yet somehow finding their way back to commit more crimes. Wisconsin ranks 21^st in the country, with an estimated 150,000 illegal aliens, far less than the 5 million in California or 4 million in Texas, but far more than the estimated 10,000 in West Virginia, Wyoming, Maine, or Vermont.

Emotion trumps logic when it comes to immigration. In Madison, politically correct lawmakers not only tolerate, but reward violation of federal immigration laws. Last month, the state Senate failed to pass a bill that would make companies that hire illegal aliens ineligible for tax breaks and government contracts. Last year, Wisconsin became one of only ten states which give illegal immigrants discounted tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities. 
 

Here in Wisconsin, Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker reversed himself on Arizona's controversial immigration law over the weekend, first expressing serious concerns about “racial profiling.” After being bombarded with negative feedback saying Walker indicated that as governor, he would “sign legislation that strengthens our protection against illegal immigration and ensures that taxpayer funded benefits like BadgerCare and drivers licenses are not available to those who are here illegally." His challenger, Mark Neumann, opposes amnesty, in-state college tuition discounts and drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, and supports the rights of states to protect their citizens when the federal government fails to do so, but hasn’t gone so far as to say he would sign a bill similar to Arizona’s if elected.

The Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority became the first such agency in the country to make getting a first mortgage easier — for illegal immigrants. Wisconsin did avoid adding its name to the short list of states that allow illegal aliens to get a driver's license, however. Washington, Maryland, New Mexico and Illinois are the only states left which issue a license without documenting immigration status. In 2004 it was estimated that the taxpayers of Wisconsin spent $201.4 million per year on illegal aliens and their children in public schools.

Illegal immigrants are not simply “undocumented,” they are criminals. The first law broken is crossing the border. Where can “legal” immigrants and natural born citizens express our outrage at how our taxes fund the health care, education, pensions, and social services enjoyed by those in this country illegally who simply refuse to assimilate and openly profess an intention to culturally re-conquer America?

When our great-great-grandparents came to these shores during the waves of European immigration, the American industrial giant needed semi-skilled and unskilled workers to fill millions of manufacturing jobs. Most of those jobs are long gone due to big government overregulation, the second-highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world, and unchecked union greed. We have 73 million Americans with only a high school education - more than enough unskilled labor. When cheap, illegal labor floods the market, the result is more unemployment for those here legally and a 44% decrease in wages among the poorest Americans.

Illegal immigration, both across the country and here in Wisconsin, is not a victimless crime. It is a crisis for our country - an open door for drugs, criminals, and potential terrorists to cross our borders. Thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the Arizona border are from nations with ties to terror, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen and members of Hezbollah, according to a newly-released Congressional Report on Border Threats. Giving illegals legal status will be seen throughout the world as an invitation for more illegal immigration, while our process for legal immigration becomes more and more expensive and drawn out. It’s time we use less emotion and more common sense in formulating our national and state immigration laws and policies. Abandoned military jackets with insignias depicting 9/11 and reading “Martyr: Way To Eternal Life” have also been found. The report details the route Middle-Easterners take – from Europe to South America, then travel to Mexico and a short walk into the U.S.

Illegal immigration is straining our economy, adding costs to our judicial, healthcare, and education systems. While most illegal immigrants come only to seek work and better economic opportunity, their presence outside the law furnishes an opportunity for terrorists to blend into the same shadows while they target the American public. Building a border fence is no longer an immigration issue; it's a security issue. When the federal government fails to do its job of protecting U.S. citizens and borders, states like Arizona and Wisconsin are our last line of defense.

 

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY INTENDED FOR PUBLICATION IN MY COLUMN IN THE NEWS GRAPHIC. UNFORTUNATELY, CONLEY PUBLISHING HAS RECENTLY TOLD ITS OP-ED COLUMNISTS THAT THEY MUST WRITE ONLY ABOUT "LOCAL" ISSUES, RATHER THAN ISSUES OF GREAT IMPORTANCE LIKE THIS ONE. APPARENTLY, THIS ARTICLE WASN'T "LOCAL" ENOUGH.

          There are few church-goers in our community who have not been confronted with the on-going debate over the use of contemporary music within worship services. Walk into a random church in Ozaukee County and the odds are even that you’ll see guitars, drums, and an electronic keyboard somewhere in the sanctuary, as opposed to simply a bell choir and pipe organ. Some see this as a good thing. Others do not.  
 

On one side of the debate, there are those who insist that only organ music and traditional hymns are appropriate and worthy of a worship service. Most churchgoing Ozaukee County residents over 40 were raised in a church where such music was synonymous with worship. Traditionalists, for lack of a better term, frequently feel quite strongly that alternative forms of music are inappropriate, constitute “giving in” to cultural icons and pressure, and do not fulfill the perceived purpose of music in worship – to proclaim the word of God to the people of God. Some feel that traditional hymns alone are genuinely contemplative, self-examining, God-seeking and pious enough to be worthy of the Christian worship service. Some feel that the alternative and contemporary music of our time does not even hint of things like confession, guilt, and sin – that it is a feel-good and emotional type of “Gospel-lite”, without even a footnote mentioning the Law, our sins, or our need for a Savior.
 

On the other hand, there are those who feel that more contemporary music is the most effective means of joyfully praising our Savior and communicating with the unchurched – especially the young. They cannot comprehend why anybody would want or need to sing durge-like hymns written before man discovered that the Earth actually revolves around the Sun. They cannot understand why anybody would take issue with powerful, contemporary music that simultaneously praises God and evokes an emotional and spiritual response in worshippers. They point to the numbers of young people who flock to and worship in contemporary music settings and blame lethargic membership and the falling away of young adults in many congregations on the “old way of doing things”. They feel strongly that there is nothing wrong with contemporary worship music.
 

So who is right? Who is wrong? Or is there a right and a wrong? And while there is no Biblical prescription that a congregation must use old hymns or the same worship format at each service, it is frequently the pastors left hanging in the balance as they try to make both sides happy, while at the same time struggling to maintain the Bible’s clear call for church unity and order.
 

Most advocates of appropriate contemporary Christian music do not claim there is anything wrong with traditional music. They note that Scripture itself contains admonitions against those who would worship according to human rules rather than the Word of God.
 

Many Biblical references to music occur at spiritual high points in the history of the church. Events such as the Reformation, the 18^th and 19^th Century Awakenings, and modern crusade evangelism, have all produced new forms of worship music. Contemporary worship music, therefore, is a symptom of an awakening within our society that is very much needed. Like new forms of worship music in years gone by, contemporary Christian music contains lyrics very similar to the praises of the Psalms. Contemporary music, therefore, is not much different from past traditions of church music. It just seems that way. In a sense, contemporary Christian music is, therefore, very traditional.
 

Worship serves dual purposes - it is vertical because it is focused on God. At the same time, it is horizontal by edifying, strengthening, and uplifting the worshippers. A Biblically-balanced view of worship must take into account both purposes. Churches that focus on the vertical are in danger of making God appear distant, unfriendly and unloving. Those that focus on the horizontal can lose sight of his majesty and purity, his hatred of sin, and the consequences of our sinful nature. If contemporary Christian music sometimes errs on the side of ignoring the vertical, then traditional worship risks erring on the side of underemphasizing the horizontal.
 

God leaves us to work out the specifics of worship by our own Spirit-led wisdom, within the broader principles of the Word. Scripture tells us to pray together, for example, but it does not tell us precisely what prayers to say during a service. Similarly, Scripture does not prescribe the use of any particular melodies for hymns or any particular musical style. Music used during worship services should simply be of good quality, appropriate to the texts employed, and meaningful to the worshippers.
 

Brandon Rockstroh is music director at Christ Church in Mequon. This ELCA Lutheran church features a traditional Sunday service at 8:00 a.m. with a Chorale and hand bell choir, and a contemporary service at 10:30 a.m., featuring guitars, drums, and a keyboard. “The church has always mimicked where popular music is going,” he says. “There is no right or wrong here – people want what they’re used to. Even many of today’s youth are perfectly content with traditional music.” Brandon points out that humans are born into sin, and the negativity and contentious debate between the two schools of worship is often accentuated by a society which teaches us to be critical. First Immanuel Lutheran Church in Cedarburg, goes even further to cater to all tastes and features traditional worship at 9:00 a.m., contemporary worship in their gym at 10:10 a.m., and a blended service at 10:30 a.m.  
 

Father Tom Eichenberger with St. Francis Borgia in Cedarburg loves contemporary Christian music, which he refers to as “praise music.” He listens to it in his car and on his iPod. “Roman Catholics are a little more cautious about its use,” he says. “It tends to be more emotional and personalistic – more appropriate for personal use than worship.” He wants St. Francis Borgia’s music to be “liturgical” (appropriate for the standardized order of events observed during a religious service and fitting for the applicable church season), and most praise music is not liturgical. Having said that, he did point out that one of their five weekend masses – 6 p.m. on Sunday evenings – features praise music from their “Fire Choir.”

And what of those who say that contemporary music is more about entertaining the sheep than worshipping the shepherd? There is certainly a risk here that must be avoided, because some contemporary worship is deceptively similar to sitting down for secular entertainment. The vertical and horizontal aspects of the service should be kept in balance. God wants us to take delight in Him (Psalms 37:4: 40:8; 119:16). If we do not enjoy singing about God’s incomparable love, something important will be missing. But contemporary worship music should not have as its sole purpose the stirring of the senses. Such a stirring, however, should be expected if the horizontal aspect of a worship service is effective.
 

Jesus established one church, not many, and he prayed that the church would always be one. As sinners, we must work to love one another, honoring the diversity of the church body in order to honor its unity. How do we honor each other and still defer to one another in the selection of church music? We must first search our own sinful hearts for evidence of selfishness and musical snobbery. Unless music can be shown to be inappropriate for worship, everyone’s music should be acceptable in worship.
 

If the use of contemporary Christian music is contrary to any Biblical principle, then we should not use it. But if Scripture permits the use of this style of music, it is not wrong to think about and thank God for the effect it has in producing church growth, reaching the younger generation of today, and following through on the Great Commission which Christians of all stripes all too often forget once we walk out of those doors on the way home from church.

For those of us blessed with fathers who are still with us, we have one less year to spend with the man who taught us how to throw a ball, ride a bike, fillet a fish, and change the oil in our car. For those whose fathers are gone, it is one more opportunity to cherish relationships with their sons and daughters. The younger you are, the less likely you are to appreciate the man who has shaped you into the young man or woman you are today – less likely to understand the sacrifices he has made on your behalf. As you grow older, you begin to realize that this man literally put many aspects of his life on hold in order to put food on your plate, put clothes on your back, and put a warm understanding of God, family, and country in your heart. Your father sacrificed many of his dreams so that you could fulfill yours. He became less so you could become more.

My earliest memories of my father are some of the most vivid – hanging on to his neck as he rolled in the grass, pretending he was a camel and rocking back and forth while I held on for dear life. I was 7 years old when he took me to see “The Warlord” starring Charlton Heston. My mother wasn’t happy about it, which made it all the more exciting. Even Charlton Heston couldn’t hold a candle to my dad. I was 8 when my dad explained that it’s not good for the car when you fill up the gas tank with water from the garden hose, and 9 when I proved him right. I was 10 when my dad took me pheasant hunting at the old Lueders’ farm on Western Avenue and 11 when he showed me how to shoot my first goose. At 12 he let me drive the family car. I was 13 when he took away the Playboy magazine I had found in a dumpster and 14 when I found it again in his closet. I was 15 when he chased me down the street with a belt because I had lied to him, and 16 when I watched from the safety of the living room as he surveyed the front tires of our 1964 Oldsmobile – each pointing in different directions, courtesy of an uncooperative curb. I was 20 when I knocked out an unruly patron while working as a bouncer at a Fox Point disco and was fortunate that the on-duty police officer who showed up to investigate was my dad.

My father introduced me to many things in life - Bazooka Joe bubble gum, the chicken dance, drive-in theaters, hard work, Red Skelton, banana seats, my first shotgun, and the proper way to make him a Brandy Old-Fashioned Sweet.

The 6’ 3” 250 lb. police sergeant with a bullhorn for a voice, a great sense of humor and a strong belief in discipline was the strongest man I have ever known. I would challenge him to wrestling matches on the back lawn – the winner the one who could pull the other over an imaginary goal line. He would pick me up and carry me over the line – year after year. No matter how strong I got – he was always a little stronger. Until one year, at age 19, I won after accidentally breaking his toe. Years later, as his hair turned white, my sons challenge me in the same way. For now I am winning, but it isn’t as easy as it once was.

I was 30 when my grandfather died. After church on Sundays he and my father would play chess at our kitchen table, talk loudly about politics, laugh, and drink 9·0·5 beer. But all of that came to an end 21 years ago. It was the first time I saw my father cry. As I hugged him he spoke softly into my shoulder, “I’m never going to see my dad again.” At that moment I realized that one day I’d be hugging my sons, saying the same thing – and years later they would be hugging theirs.

I have a close friend who at a young age lost his father to a tragic car accident. There isn’t a day that goes by that he wouldn’t love to spend Father’s Day, or any day, with his dad. He can only imagine learning from and growing up with the father that so many of us take for granted – until it’s too late. We should all make an effort to treat every day as though it was our father’s last – as though every day is Father’s Day. The world would collapse without mothers, but don’t underestimate the wisdom you’re father has left you with. I’ve often considered what the world would be like if politicians and world leaders followed the lessons their fathers taught them.

If you do something, do it right. Love and respect other people. An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Love and respect your wives and girlfriends. Chivalry is not dead. Never lie about anything. Above all else, be honest. Imagine someone is watching you every moment of the day – because someone is. Learn the lessons the Bible has to give us – the greatest gift in life is free. Don’t borrow money you can’t pay back. Cherish the present and make the most of it. Little things are the most important things. Cherish them. Talk openly and honestly about absolutely everything with your wife and family – communication is the key to a good marriage and a healthy family. Stay humble. There are always greater and lesser persons than yourself. Talk with other people about their lives, accomplishments and interests – not yours. When you feel like quitting is exactly when you must try even harder. Think before you talk. A person’s word is their bond; never break it for anybody or anything. Be somebody others rely on. Be the person in the back of the room who has the answer to the question but doesn’t need to shout it out. Never make promises you cannot or will not keep. The true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can and will do nothing for him in return.

In the words of Lee Ann Womack, our fathers taught us never to lose our sense of wonder, to stay hungry, to give faith a fighting chance. They taught us that there are some mistakes worth making and we shouldn’t be afraid to make any or all of them. That fear of pain and failure is the most debilitating thing in the world. That we should give the heavens above more than just a passing glance. That we should consider not only the “what” of life – but also the “why.” That we should always feel small beside the ocean, and that when we have the choice to sit it out or dance – we should dance.  

In the coming year, make a Father’s Day card from scratch and give it to your father. Write something in it from your heart – a secret - something you’ve never told him before. One of the best Father’s Day cards I have ever received was magic marker on a white sheet of paper which read, “Dad, you know what? If you had been little when I was little, I know we would have been best friends.”

Rediscover the softness you found in your daddy’s hands when you were hurt and never forget the hard lessons those same hands taught when you did something wrong. Recall the miracle in his hugs and the love in his eyes. Give back to the man who gave so much to you.    

On November 4, 2008, a majority of American people put Barack H. Obama and the Democrats in power - in the House, Senate, and Oval Office. They voted for hope. They voted for change they could believe in. They were promised the most ethical and transparent administration in history. They were promised a bipartisan Congress. The world would be safer, the economy better, the environment cleaner. Lobbyists would be a thing of the past. Our troops would come home and Guantanamo Bay would close. Our families would be stronger and our future would be brighter.  How is that ‘hope and change’ working out for everyone?  A look back at Obama’s frustrating first year in office reveals that it was a real clunker.

JANUARY: In the first hours of his presidency, Obama halts military trials against the five terrorists who coordinated the attacks of 9/11. He orders Guantanamo Bay closed by January 22, 2010. Camp Justice is still open and no new deadlines have been proposed. On January 24 he demands an “emergency” stimulus bill – a monster slush fund which doles out $800 billion we don’t have on ACORN, union activities and pork.

FEBRUARY: Despite campaign promises of a “net spending cut”, his budget increases spending by $1 trillion over the next decade, runs a $1.75 trillion deficit, implements a 12% increase in discretion­ary spending and greatly expands the federal government. He nominates 4 tax cheats to his cabinet and breaks a tax pledge by implementing a huge new tax on the millions of cigarette smokers whose purchases fund the SCHIP program.

APRIL: Obama bows to the Saudi King at the G20. He embarks on a whirlwind U.S. Apology tour and calls America “arrogant” while referring to a non-existent Austrian language. He risks national security by releasing top-secret CIA “torture memos”, burns 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to plant a tree for Earth Day, and gives the Queen of England another iPod. 

MAY: Obama declares we are “out of money” and then spends $1 million to take his wife to New York for dinner, drinks and a play. He mocks the Special Olympics on the Tonight Show, gives PM Gordon Brown incorrectly-formatted DVD’s, and refers to Cinco de Mayo as “Cinco de Cuatro” in front of Mexico's Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan.

JUNE: Obama forces GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and gives 55% of Chrysler to the UAW, 20% to Fiat, 8% to the federal government, and even 2% to Canada. He takes over 60% of GM, gives 18% to the UAW, fires its CEO, and gives GM bondholders pennies on the dollar. In Cairo, he quotes from the Koran and apologizes to the Arab world on behalf of America. During his ABC infomercial about ObamaCare he tells old people they’d be better off if they just “take a pain pill” rather than getting well. Cap and trade – driven by the now-debunked hoax of global warming - passes the House, where it will likely die.

JULY: TARP watchdog and life-long Democrat Neil Barofsky blasts the “most transparent administration in history” for corruption and a lack of transparency in the handling of the TARP monies. Obama responds by pressuring the Justice Department to rule that Barofsky works for his hand-picked Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who forgot to pay $34,000 of his own taxes. Cash for Clunkers runs out of money 6 days after it is announced. Obama incorrectly presumes white Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in the arrest of a black Harvard professor, without knowing the facts, so they all drink beer.

AUGUST: General Stanley McChrystal urgently needs 60,000 more troops to achieve victory in Afghanistan. Obama ignores him and later admits that “victory” is not a word he is comfortable with. 51 troops die in Afghanistan, the highest total since 9/11.

SEPTEMBER: No decision from Obama on troop reinforcements. McChrystal has talked to the president only once since taking command of NATO troops in early June. Obama pitches Chicago for the 2016 Olympics, but is rejected in the first round of balloting. Forty-three more troops die in Afghanistan.

OCTOBER: Still no decision. McChrystal has to travel to Copenhagen to meet with Obama on AirForce One and calls situation in Afghanistan “serious.” Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize for creating a “new climate in international politics.” Fifty-five more troops die in Afghanistan – the most since 9/11.

NOVEMBER: Still no decision. Thirteen killed and 30 wounded in terrorist attack at Fort Hood. Obama speaks for nearly 3 minutes at “tribal leader’s conference” and gives a “shout out” to Dr. Joe Medicine Crow before acknowledging the massacre. Unemployment hits 10.2%. Obama announces amnesty plan to give 14 million illegal aliens citizenship. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be given lawyers, American rights, and a $200 million a year trial in the heart of New York City.

DECEMBER: Obama finally decides on half the number of troops requested, but 116 U.S. soldiers have died since the request. Our budget deficit for December alone is $176 billion and Obama says we must “spend our way out of the recession.” He claims America will go “bankrupt” if health care isn’t passed. He holds a “jobs summit” – which Press Secretary Gibbs admits “is not about creating jobs” - but instead of inviting job producers, stacks it with people who believe we need more government reallocation of taxpayer money. Obama and Democrats Congress secretly try to force health care reform past Republicans and 61% of the American people who do not want it.

Obama’s first year in office witnessed 139 bank failures, a quarter million foreclosures, 17% actual unemployment, 29 rounds of golf (compared to 7 for Bush), nearly 400 speeches, including one to a grade school in which he used a teleprompter, 10 visits to Camp David, 2 vacations, visits to 21 foreign countries, 2 teleprompter failures, 152 casualties in Iraq and 319 in Afghanistan. The hope appears to have been hype.

Broken promises? The complete list is too long for this article. Candidate Obama promised to reduce earmarks, make government open and transparent, allow the public 5 days to read a bill, put every pork barrel project online, make meetings where laws are written public, and cut spending. He did none of them. He said he wouldn’t force people to buy insurance – a key provision of his not-dead-enough health care bill. “Lobbyists won't find a job in my White House," he said, but dozens have. He promised a pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) law and then proposed a budget that violated it by $3.4 trillion.

There can be no doubt now about the type of “fundamental change” our president visualized during his first year in office. It appears 2010 will be more of the same – a fight between the American people and a far-left socialist who believes that wealth redistribution should have been an integral element of the 1960’s civil rights movement.

But the American people have finally had enough. From tea parties to town hall meetings to the voting booths, mainstream America is fighting back. Recent political victories by Republicans such as Bob McConnell and Chris Christie raised eyebrows, but Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts – a seat held by liberal Democrats for 48 years - is the canary in the coal mine for Democrats. Some liberal Democrats have noticed the dead canary. Our president has not.

November 2, 2010 is right around the corner. We're broke and it's time for heads to roll – on both sides of the aisle. No more outrageous taxes. No more deficit spending. No more job-killing legislation. No more national apologies. No more special laws and exemptions for Washington politicians. No more government takeovers. No more redistribution. No more career politicans. No more tax dollars to ACORN and unions. No more socialism. We've had enough. We’re taking our country back.

"The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave." – Ayn Rand

They used to hide in the shadows. Unfortunately, today’s detractors of capitalism and the American free market system have come out of the closet, operating openly in places such as American universities, AARP, labor unions, SEIU, Hollywood, Congress, and even the White House itself. Their once-subtle methodologies are now about as blatant as Michael Moore’s hit piece on America, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” It seems that a growing number of Americans yearn for some form of communism or socialism – they just don’t want to call it that.

We have only ourselves to blame for this tolerant journey leftward. Russia’s Pravda said it best recently, “The American descent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless people.” Like sheep, many of us are being led toward the collectivist notion that the group is superior to the individual and thus individual rights and freedom may be destroyed with impunity for the perceived "common good.”

It may seem like it is happening all at once, but the march to collectivism – playing on the vulnerability and weaknesses of human nature - has been gradual. First, Americans were dumbed down through political correctness and an education system obsessed with xenocentrism, multiculturalism, and a politically correct brand of social consciousness rather than American history and the classics. Then our faith was attacked and our churches liberalized, as our government banned and struck down public references to the very God Almighty who inspired and motivated our founding fathers.

Next, we were inundated with the specious argument behind giving people something for nothing - the feel-good utopian notion that we can eradicate poverty, pain, sickness, and hunger with unearned government handouts. To fund these giveaway programs, the assets of gentle citizens were quietly confiscated in the name of the collective good. Still, far too many of us failed to recognize or believe what was happening.

Our president’s policies track something called the “Cloward-Piven Strategy”, first proposed in 1966 by Columbia University sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Piven. It seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading government with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. With each government solution in search of a problem there is the perceived need for yet another nanny law protecting us and controlling the details of our lives. Cloward and Piven promoted using welfare to weaken the poor and create reliance on government. Our current administration knows all too well that when government becomes our parent, we become its children.   

Instead of allowing troubled corporations and banks to run their course, government took them over. Instead of promoting free market solutions to hold down the cost of the best health care in the world, the Statists push government-run health care against the will of the majority. It was Leon Trotsky who said, “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.” Isn’t it ironic that the same excuse which makes the individual the tool of the collective – that necessities justify the forbidden – is closely adhered to by another enemy of America - radical Islam?

In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx laid out gradual steps toward Communism. Sadly, the White House whose agenda tracks these steps is now teeming with unvetted, unapologetic socialists without paper trails. Obama's hand-picked former global warming czar, Van Jones, founded the socialist group Commission for a Sustainable World Society and published a communist-oriented manifesto. Manufacturing Czar Ron Bloom – who called the American free market system “nonsense” - and White House Communications Director Anita Dunn are only the latest in a long line of White House officials who openly admire Mao Tse Tung, the Communist Chinese dictator who killed 70 million people during peacetime. And let’s not forget Patrick Gaspard (ACORN Czar), a former consultant at the Democratic Socialists of America, Carol Browner (Energy and Environment Czar), a former member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, and Hugo Chavez admirer, Mark Lloyd (Diversity Czar).

Shameless Leninists used to lurk quietly in dark places, but they’re not hiding anymore. If America doesn’t act, it will wake up one day soon at best resembling the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe. In July, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, directly warned our president not to follow the path to Marxism because it only leads to dispair. His words fell on deaf, indoctrinated ears.

The idea of a Marxist society can be alluring. The idea of “economic and social justice” and the illusion of everyone being made “equal” through redistribution appears sympathetic, caring, and even Christian in nature. However, the deficit in Marxism is obvious. Putting aside the tyrrany it inevitably leads to, it doesn’t work because it is dependent on a type of human nature that is extremely rare. To succeed, there must be very little greed and jealousy and people must be willing to work hard for the good of others – even those who do no work at all.

On the other hand, capitalism, while not perfect, rewards work ethic and the moral maturity to cooperate and develop productive skills, at the same time punishing the self-interested seeking merely to benefit from the hard work of others. The free market system some say isn’t fair is precisely and uniquely fair.

We have no more right to expect our government to provide health care – another form of welfare - than we do food, housing, or education. These are not rights, they are rations of slavery; hay and a barn for human cattle. And with each comes an incremental loss of freedom. As Thomas Sowell put it, "If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us." Where are today’s leaders unafraid to point out that from little ACORNs, mighty Marxists grow?

In 1967, Ronald Reagan warned, “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.” Too many Americans have forgotten the truth behind these words and are no longer vigilant. Perhaps we have enjoyed this miracle called “America” too long to be properly appreciative of what we have.

Like lambs to the slaughter, too many appear willing to march into slavery without a fight. If only they knew the fate that awaits them. Not this American. I intend to go down swinging. It’s time to take back our country – one Marxist spider hole at a time.

          Ozaukee County is a magical place to live. It is a community whose residents understand, care about and practice things like civic responsibility, tough love, the gift of giving, the art of listening, patriotism, fairness, loving your neighbor, and the importance of free enterprise. It is a place where the privilege and responsibility of being a parent is taken seriously and worked at diligently; a place where many of our children still walk to school - yes, even when it’s cold. Family is priority.
 

Ozaukee County is a community whose roads are not more heavily traveled at midnight on Saturday evening than at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. It is perhaps one of the last bastions of our country where the commercial aspects of Christmas haven’t eclipsed the Reason for the Season. Residents wish each other a Merry Christmas – and nobody is offended. You notice these things if you move here from Wauwatosa or Shorewood, but that really hits you over the head if you move here from another state – or country. It is almost like going back in time, to another place, to another era where things seemed simpler and friendlier. It is America at its finest, and for many of us, it is why we live here.
 

          Within Ozaukee County, the Town of Cedarburg opens its Town Board meetings with a pledge of allegiance to a nation “under God”. Everyone stands. We face the flag. Hands are placed over hearts. It makes this Town Board member feel like a citizen of a very special place. In Estes Park, Colorado, a community identical in size to Cedarburg, a board member who refused to stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance during Town Board meetings due to a conflict he had with the words, “under God,” was recalled. Councilman David Habecker maintained that the Pledge constituted a violation of the “separation of church and state.” Elsewhere, grade school students at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High School in northwestern Minnesota were suspended for sitting during the Pledge. They gave no reason.
 

          A quick history lesson is in order. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister. Bellamy’s original Pledge read as follows: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, onenation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Bellamy considered placing the word, 'equality,' in his Pledge, but knew that the state superintendents of education on his committee were not keen on equality for women and AfricanAmericans. Bellamy circulated material which read, “Let the flag float over every school-house in the land and the exercise be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duty of citizenship.” On Columbus Day in October 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance was repeated by more than 12 million public school children throughout the country.
 

Fast forward to the year 1940. Lillian and William Gobitis, two Jehovah’s Witness siblings from Minersville, Pennsylvania, filed suit after being expelled from school for refusing to salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance. At that time the Pledge didn’t even contain the words, “under God.” Interestingly, in those days, the flag salute began with the hand over the heart and then, as the person began reciting the words “to the flag”, the arm would be extended, palm upwards, toward the flag. This gesture, which had been in place since the 1890’s, was later eliminated because of its similarity to the Nazi salute. The Gobitis siblings refused to salute the flag because it conflicted with their Jehovah’s Witness understanding of Exodus 20 – that one should not worship or bow down to any “graven image” of God. The Supreme Court held that the compelled flag salute did not infringe on religious liberty.
 

Three years later, however, the Gobitis decision was overturned in the Court’s 1943 decision in West Virginia v. Barnette. A West Virginia statute, which had been enacted specifically because of the Gobitis decision, required recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, and punished unwilling students with expulsion and their parents with fines and possible jail time. The Court reversed itself, holding that a state could not compel students to say the Pledge. National unity could be fostered by persuasion, but not by compulsion.
 

          In 1951, the Knights of Columbus adopted a resolution to amend the Pledge of Allegiance as recited at their assemblies by adding the words "under God." The addition was inspired by the closing portion of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom…” In 1954, a total of seventeen resolutions were introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives to similarly amend the Pledge of Allegiance. One was adopted by both Houses of Congress, and it was signed by President Eisenhower on Flag Day, June 14, 1954, who publicly thanked the Knights of Columbus.
 

          There were few problems with the word “God” in our Pledge, until 1989, when the U.S. Supreme Court was asked by the American Civil Liberties Union to not only declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, but also our many references to “In God We Trust” on our money and public buildings. In County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union,the Court decided that it is only government’s allegiance to a particular sect, denomination or creed that is prohibited by the First Amendment. While government may not display the Christian manger scene, it may open the Supreme Court and Congress with a nonsectarian prayer, declare a National Day of Prayer, refer to God on its coins and money, and include the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
 

In 2000. Atheist Michael Newdow, a California physician with a law degree, a five-year-old daughter in the Elk Grove school system, and an axe to grind with monotheistic religion, decided he wasn't happy about students at his daughter's school standing to say the Pledge each morning, even though students were allowed to opt out. Newdow challenged the law and the circus known as the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals declared our Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional and in violation of the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly overturned the controversial decision.
 

The First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The first portion is known as the “establishment clause”, and the second, as the “free exercise” clause. These clauses were designed to harmonize, but they frequently conflict. The free exercise clause guarantees citizens the right to freely exercise their religious beliefs, or not. It forbids the outlawing of any religious belief, but not necessarily conduct related to those beliefs, such as polygamy, the avoidance of secular education by the Amish, wearing yarmulkes in the military, and certain types of discrimination.
 

On the other hand, the establishment clause prohibits the government from setting up an official state church, forcing or influencing a person to go to or remain away from church against his or her will, or forcing anyone to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.
 

As you can see, the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the First Amendment – or anywhere else in the Constitution for that matter. The phrase comes from a January 1, 1802 letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. Connecticut still had religion taxes and the Baptists were objecting. They wrote to Jefferson because they knew he understood their concerns. In his reply, written from France, Jefferson merely referenced “building a wall of separation between Church and State”. He didn’t say how high the wall would be.
 

Former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist – a Wisconsin native - has written opinions stating, “The 'wall of separation between church and State' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and specifically abandoned.” But the metaphor stuck, and is often inaccurately cited as a license to keep God out of the public eye.
 

          Freedom is a marvelous thing. If David Habecker doesn’t want to stand up during the Pledge, he is free not to. At the same time, the residents of Estes Park are free to vote him out of office for refusing to do so. As I stand before each Town of Cedarburg Board meeting, with my hand over my heart, proudly reciting the words “one nation, under God”, I do not do so in derogation of or with animosity toward my Jewish, Muslim, or atheist friends and fellow citizens. Rather, I do so, knowing that regardless of whose sensibilities might be “offended” by my exercise of this right, I enjoy the freedom, protected by the Constitution, to acknowledge the Creator of the universe as the benefactor of this great country and my community here in Ozaukee County. And I do so confident in the simple but often-misunderstood legal truth that the First Amendment grants all of us the freedom of religion, but guarantees none of us a freedom from religion.
 

"I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all."

Last month, over 1000 people stood in the rain for hours at Cedarburg High School, waiting for the H1N1, or swine flu, vaccine. The long, slow-moving line was reminiscent of scenes from the 1973 Charlton Heston movie Soylent Green and was thebeginning of what is expected to be the largest mass vaccination in decades. Alongside the huddled masses walked Cedarburg resident Mike O’Keefe holding a large plywood sign which read, “Welcome To Government Health Care.” Clearly, Mike O’Keefe gets it. He realizes that a national health care overhaul will lead to more long lines like those at Cedarburg High School.

In July the federal government said they’d have 120 million doses of the vaccine by October, but only 27 million doses were available. If a private company ran a vaccination operation this poorly – whether underestimating the number of flu shots needed, an inability to deliver the appropriate number of vaccines, or simply requiring people to stand in the rain for three hours – the person responsible would be fired. As of Tuesday, only 407,000 doses of the vaccine had been allocated for Wisconsin, a state of 5.6 million people, according to state health officials. If government-run health care ever slips through the cracks, this sort of debacle will become commonplace and even more tragic. Waiting hours for a vaccine is one thing – waiting months for life-saving treatment is quite another.

The fiasco merely served as the backdrop for one crisis after another which our state-run media and current administration appear to crave in order to justify a need for their big government agendas. In today’s electronic age, just about everything is magnified, hyped, and placed under the worldwide microscope for all to panic over. One cannot forget the famous words of Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Not a day goes without the novel H1N1 virus making the news feeds resulting in ominous headlines such as "H1N1 Infects Entire Country Per CDC" and "H1N1 Deaths Up" – which are only two from last week. One could be led to believe we should hole up in our homes, bar the doors, and tape shut any possible openings.

The facts regarding H1N1, or "swine flu", tell a different story however. Basically, it is another influenza virus like the run of the mill seasonal flu that is identified each year, but which is targeting a slightly different population with its complication rate. Whereas older folks are most affected by complications from the seasonal flu, the H1N1 flu virus affecting more younger people (ages 20 to 60), pregnant women, the obese, and immunocompromised individuals (AIDS, MD, cystic fibrosis). Out of an estimated U.S. population of 310 million, the CDC website has identified 4,958 laboratory-confirmed 2009 H1N1 hospitalizations and only 292 laboratory-confirmed 2009 H1N1 deaths through October 10, an average of less than 6 people per state. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 74 countries have officially reported 399,234 laboratory-confirmed cases worldwide, including 4,735 deaths.

While the 4,735 worldwide deaths caused by H1N1 are tragic, this must be put into proper perspective. Compare that number with the 674,000 people who die from the measles every year – in developing countries alone. Smoking kills 5 million people annually and the hazards associated with the occupation of fishing kills 24,000 fishermen worldwide every year. Over 32,000 people die every year from adverse reactions to prescription medications and 7,600 from taking aspirin.

An epidemic is defined as an illness or health-related issue that is showing up in more cases than would be normally expected. However, in the case of a pandemic, even more of the population is affected than in an epidemic. On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization declared the H1N1 outbreak a pandemic, marking the first global pandemic since the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

The Hong Kong flu outbreak in 1968 and 1969 was a true pandemic, killing an estimated 1 million people worldwide. The Asian flu pandemic was an avian influenza that originated in China in early 1956 and lasted until 1958. It killed 69,000 Americans and over 2 million worldwide. The Spanish flu pandemic lasted from March 1918 to June 1920 and spread to every part of the world, killing an estimated 50 million people – 3% of the earth’s population at the time.

When dealing with media it's wise to remember that they are out to sell papers and the more they can sensationalize something, even if it scares their intended audience, the more we tend to read. With the information now known about H1N1 it seems that the pig flu is no more and no less than the seasonal flu and most everyone who contracts it has a mild course of illness. The problem appears to be more media hype than medical crisis.

Human nature has its shortcomings, two of which are the tendencies of people to panic and governments to overreact. You may recall we had another swine flu panic in 1976. Gerald Ford decided to immunize all 220 million Americans. Four people died from the swine flu that year, three of whom died from the vaccine itself. The shots were linked to Guillain-Barre Syndrome. $49 million worth of vaccines were destroyed and $2.64 billion in claims were filed against the government. The cure was worse than the disease.

The real tragedy beyond the few deaths we have seen from the swine flu, however, is the sad but predictable reaction of government to any crisis – real or imagined. States are already preparing for the mandatory vaccination stage of the eugenics program, and Pennsylvania is right on schedule with Pennsylvania House Bill 492, the “Emergency Health Powers Act.” The Pennsylvania legislature is right now debating legislation which authorizes on the basis of one man’s opinion – the governor – forced medical examinations, forced isolations and quarantines, forced relocations, prohibitions of firearms, and forced vaccinations. A person who fails to comply with this section commits a misdemeanor of the third degree. This is a peek behind the curtain of what government-run health care has in store for us.

Last week was significant for something besides the foreshadowing pig flu lines at Cedarburg High School. It also marked the 45^th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s October 27, 1964 “Rendezvous With Destiny” speech. We would do well to remember his words:

Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.

It was colder last Thursday in Port Huron, Michigan than it has been in more than seven decades. Daytona Beach, Florida set an all-time low temperature of 58°. Cold temperature records were broken this year in Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota and Colorado. Similar records were broken in the United Kingdom, Canada, Central Europe, France, and Italy. Here in Ozaukee County, August treated us to an evening of 46° along Lake Michigan, nearly breaking a record low set all the way back in 1892. All of this after global warming/anti-capitalists wrongly predicted – once again – more hurricanes, a loss of Antarctic ice, and record high temperatures. Geez, it’s gotta be embarrassing.

You’d think they’d revert to the global cooling hysteria of the late 1970’s. But, no. Shivering in their August parkas, the global warming crowd still stammers that the "science" is "settled" and that it is mankind's production of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere which is public enemy number one and responsible for an increasing "Greenhouse Effect.” Hollywood elitists and Democrats in Congress continue to remind us about the now-discredited “hockey stick” for which Al Gore incredibly won both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize.

Last month at the one day UN summit, a Star Wars bar scene crowd eager to bring America to its industrial knees gave us one final, chilling warning: “Act now or humanity is doomed.” Despite falling temperatures, an Antarctic landmass which is rapidly gaining ice and snow cover, and the opinion of 31,000 U.S. scientists - 9,000 with doctorate degrees in atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and other specialties - who signed a petition rejecting global warming, the goose-stepping enemies of CO2 keep marching.

One hundred prominent scientists jointly signed an open letter to Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, requesting they cease the man-made global warming hysteria and take CO2 off the Ten Most Wanted list.  The final signature was from the President of the World Federation of Scientists. With the credibility of global warming theories hovering just below that of Area 51 and the Yetti, the anti-capitalists among us scramble to find new demons and new excuses to destroy Wisconsin and American businesses and force us into driving ethanol-powered riding mowers to work. They didn’t have to look long.

Sigourney Weaver, appearing last week on Fox News to promote her new movie, Avatar, blindsided Fox’s Brian Kilmeade by refusing to talk about the movie, but instead, rambled on about a her new documentary, Acid Test, the premise of which is that one quarter of the carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels enters our oceans, where it makes the water more acidic and kills plankton. I guess one quarter of the 97% of CO2 in the atmosphere which is naturally-occuring doesn’t enter the oceans. “Whether you believe in global warming or not, CO2 is going to run havoc in the oceans if unabated”, claimed a caring Sigourney. We’ve been warned. The sky is falling - again. The crime is new but the villain is the same - CO2.

The mass hysteria and paranoia sweeping our culture is both disappointing and disturbing.  I understand that many are searching for meaning and purpose in life and saving mankind is about as heroic and fulfilling as it comes. But I might suggest they pick a different villain. You see, CO2 is good for life on earth. Even Barney would tell us that it is our special friend.

The Manhattan Declaration – from the 2008 International Climate Conference - not only declared that global warming is not a global crisis, but also exonerated CO2. It turns out there isn’t enough CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb more than 2/1000 of radiated heat (IR) passing upward, and man is responsible for only a tiny fraction of that. The Declaration announced that, far from being a pollutant, CO2 is essential for all life and all biological processes on earth. It is no more a pollutant than nitrogen, which makes up 80% of the air we breathe. Increased CO2 is good for plant growth and causes trees and crops to flourish. This past spring, our president pressured the EPA into declaring CO2 to be a “pollutant” for the same political reasons he’s done everything else in his short political career. It's more than terrifying – it’s a slap in the face to science.

CO2 comes from animal life, the oceans, the earth, and the fuels we find in it. The fuels that produce CO2 have freed us from a life of back-breaking labor. They light up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need and the people we love. Carbon dioxide is our friend. It isn’t pollution – it’s life. As CO2 increases, so does animal life and crop yields.

Most global warming enthusiasts are not evil, they’re just wrong. Even if they were right, warming would benefit the earth, save lives, lengthen growing seasons, and feed millions. Ice is the enemy of life, not CO2. Trees absorb CO2 and release O2 - animals inhale O2 and exhale CO2. See how nice this all works! God does know what he’s doing after all. Scientists confirm that primitive forests made their prolific debut 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period. Before then, the atmosphere held far more CO2 concentrations than it does today.

The most significant greenhouse gas – responsible for 95% of the earth’s greenhouse effect - is water vapor, and water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Human activity and CO2 are responsible for less than ¼ of 1% of the earth’s greenhouse effect. The T-1000 robot from Terminator 2 would be a more likely villain to blame global warming on than CO2. After all, the T-1000 melted in the end. The next thing you know, radical environmentalists will be blaming man-made water vapor for the coming global Apocalypse.  

Well, guess what. A recent study by climatologists at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK has now concluded that human activity is behind the rising levels of water vapor in the lower atmosphere over the past few decades. Man-made humidity is now a co-conspirator on trial alongside innocent CO2 and the evil United States. Where is Batman when you need him?

It was colder last Thursday in Port Huron, Michigan than it has been in more than seven decades. Daytona Beach, Florida set an all-time low temperature of 58°. Cold temperature records were broken this year in Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota and Colorado. Similar records were broken in the United Kingdom, Canada, Central Europe, France, and Italy. Here in Ozaukee County, August treated us to an evening of 46° along Lake Michigan, nearly breaking a record low set all the way back in 1892. All of this after global warming/anti-capitalists wrongly predicted – once again – more hurricanes, a loss of Antarctic ice, and record high temperatures. Geez, it’s gotta be embarrassing.

You’d think they’d revert to the global cooling hysteria of the late 1970’s. But, no. Shivering in their August parkas, the global warming crowd still stammers that the "science" is "settled" and that it is mankind's production of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere which is public enemy number one and responsible for an increasing "Greenhouse Effect.” Hollywood elitists and Democrats in Congress continue to remind us about the now-discredited “hockey stick” for which Al Gore incredibly won both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize.

Last month at the one day UN summit, a Star Wars bar scene crowd eager to bring America to its industrial knees gave us one final, chilling warning: “Act now or humanity is doomed.” Despite falling temperatures, an Antarctic landmass which is rapidly gaining ice and snow cover, and the opinion of 31,000 U.S. scientists - 9,000 with doctorate degrees in atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and other specialties - who signed a petition rejecting global warming, the goose-stepping enemies of CO2 keep marching.

One hundred prominent scientists jointly signed an Open Letter to Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, requesting they cease the man-made global warming hysteria and take CO2 off the Ten Most Wanted list.  The final signature was from the President of the World Federation of Scientists. With the credibility of global warming theories hovering just below that of Area 51 and the Yetti, the anti-capitalists among us scramble to find new demons and new excuses to destroy Wisconsin and American businesses and force us into driving ethanol-powered riding mowers to work. They didn’t have to look long.

Sigourney Weaver, appearing last week on Fox News to promote her new movie, Avatar, blindsided Fox’s Brian Kilmeade by refusing to talk about the movie, but instead, rambled on about a her new documentary, Acid Test, the premise of which is that one quarter of the carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels enters our oceans, where it makes the water more acidic and kills plankton. I guess one quarter of the 97% of CO2 in the atmosphere which is naturally-occuring doesn’t enter the oceans. “Whether you believe in global warming or not, CO2 is going to run havoc in the oceans if unabated”, claimed a caring Sigourney. We’ve been warned. The sky is falling - again. The crime is new but the villain is the same - CO2.

The mass hysteria and paranoia sweeping our culture is both disappointing and disturbing.  I understand that many are searching for meaning and purpose in life and saving mankind is about as heroic and fulfilling as it comes. But I might suggest they pick a different villain. You see, CO2 is good for life on earth. Even Barney would tell us that it is our special friend.

The Manhattan Declaration – from the 2008 International Climate Conference - not only declared that global warming is not a global crisis, but also exonerated CO2. It turns out there isn’t enough CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb more than 2/1000 of radiated heat (IR) passing upward, and man is responsible for only a tiny fraction of that. The Declaration announced that, far from being a pollutant, CO2 is essential for all life and all biological processes on earth. It is no more a pollutant than nitrogen, which makes up 80% of the air we breathe. Increased CO2 is good for plant growth and causes trees and crops to flourish. This past spring, our president pressured the EPA into declaring CO2 to be a “pollutant” for the same political reasons he’s done everything else in his short political career. It's more than terrifying – it’s a slap in the face to science.

CO2 comes from animal life, the oceans, the earth, and the fuels we find in it. The fuels that produce CO2 have freed us from a life of back-breaking labor. They light up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need and the people we love. Carbon dioxide is our friend. It isn’t pollution – it’s life. As CO2 increases, so does animal life and crop yields.

Most global warming enthusiasts are not evil, they’re just wrong. Even if they were right, warming would benefit the earth, save lives, lengthen growing seasons, and feed millions. Ice is the enemy of life, not CO2. Trees absorb CO2 and release O2 - animals inhale O2 and exhale CO2. See how nice this all works! God does know what he’s doing after all. Scientists confirm that primitive forests made their prolific debut 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period. Before then, the atmosphere held far more CO2 concentrations than it does today.

The most significant greenhouse gas – responsible for 95% of the earth’s greenhouse effect - is water vapor, and water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Human activity and CO2 are responsible for less than ¼ of 1% of the earth’s greenhouse effect. The T-1000 robot from Terminator 2 would be a more likely villain to blame global warming on than CO2. After all, the T-1000 melted in the end. The next thing you know, radical environmentalists will be blaming man-made water vapor for the coming global Apocalypse.  

Well, guess what. A recent study by climatologists at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK has now concluded that human activity is behind the rising levels of water vapor in the lower atmosphere over the past few decades. Man-made humidity is now a co-conspirator on trial alongside innocent CO2 and the evil United States. Where is Batman when you need him?

America seems to have an obsession with awareness. As I drove down Washington Avenue in Cedarburg last week I observed a sign declaring October 21 to October 27 as National Massage Therapist Awareness Week. I must admit being a little nonplussed at first. I wasn’t quite sure whether, the next time I see a massage therapist, I should buy a Hallmark card or call the police. After all, October is also National Cyber Security Awareness Month. In as much as there is also an Alcohol Awareness Month (April) and an Eating Disorders Awareness Week (February 24 – March 1), and in light of the fact that the massage therapist is just down the street from Otto’s Beverage Center, I wondered if they are both aware of each other. It seems, however, that Massage Therapy Awareness Week is different from Oral Cancer Awareness Week (April 11 – 17) or National Headache Awareness Week (June 11 – 17), as I assume that massage therapy is a good thing and the others are bad – unless you are a married woman and it is important for your husband to be aware of your headache as you crawl into bed.

I looked up the definition of “awareness” and it means to be vigilant or watchful. I concluded that we are being bombarded with reminders to be vigilant and watchful for both good and bad things – some very important, and some so trivial that you wonder if it isn’t a prank. I began to wonder what sorts of things were so important that our government felt that they needed an officially designated day, week, or month for us to be reminded to be aware of them, and where all of these awareness observances came from. It turns out that some observance periods are federally designated, like National Domestic Violence Week. But the state legislatures are busy at work also with things like Connecticut Severe Storms Awareness Week, Wisconsin Heat Awareness Day (interestingly, Florida does not have such a day), Ohio’s Severe Weather Awareness Week, or the one day covers all Pennsylvania Warning Day. Louisiana saved tax dollars by combining two dangers into Louisiana Lightning and Heat Awareness Week. Sometimes organizations or activist groups simply declare awareness days without official permission or legislation. Maybe an Unofficial Awareness Day Awareness Day is in order.

Many of these awareness observances are for very important and significant social issues or problems. AIDS is a serious social problem that deserves awareness. Yet, some AIDS observances are rather quite specific and needlessly segregated, such as National Latino AIDS Awareness Day (October 15) and National Black AIDS Awareness Day (February 7). This is in addition to World AIDS Day (December 1), National Womens & Girls AIDS Awareness Day (March 10), American Asian and Pacific Islander AIDS Awareness Day (May 19), Caribbean American AIDS Awareness Day (June 8), and National Native AIDS Awareness Day (March 20). It seems that white American males don’t get AIDS. Perhaps one AIDS Awareness Day for everyone would be in order. We apparently need a national coxswain to shout out orders and synchronize these observance periods so we’re all rowing at the same time. That person, in turn, could be appreciated during Physical Fitness and Sports Month (April) or, as the word “coxswain” is shouted out at the top of somebody’s lungs, during New York’s or Idaho’s Tourette’s Syndrome Awareness Month (May 15 to June 15), both of which mysteriously straddle two different months. Unfortunately, both New York and Idaho were not aware that the Gipper himself declared November 2 through November 8 as National Tourette’s Syndrome Awareness Week in 1987.  

Some observances don’t even make me aware when I know it’s their turn – like GERD Awareness Week. I had to resort to the internet to learn that GERD is an acronym for Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. With some health awareness initiatives we apparantly don’t need to be aware of the disease, rather, we have to be aware of the screening process – Hemochromatosis Screening Awareness Week – which makes you wonder if you are to avoid the disease or the screening. IBS Month sounded like a reason to throw a party until I learned it was Irritable Bowel Syndrome Month.

Exactly when an issue warrants a day, as opposed to a week or month for observance still has me puzzled. The Earth gets a day (April 22), while Administrative Professionals get a whole week (April 20 – 26). Fireworks Safety gets a whole month (June) – even though we only use fireworks one day a year – in a different month altogether. National Parental Involvement gets only a day (November 15), but fear not, as National Family Week runs from November 18 to 24, in case you forgot November 15. When something really cries out for public awareness, however, it appears entirely appropriate to devote both a day, and an additional separate week to the matter. Case in point: this October 7-13 marks the first National Squirrel Awareness Week - not to be confused with National Squirrel Appreciation Day, which typically falls on January 21. However, they have separated Dog Appreciation Month (April) from Cat Appreciation Month (January).

I was certain that there were not any awareness periods that lasted the entire year – but I was wrong. 2002 was Autism Awareness Year, 2003 was Asthma Awareness Year, and 2004 was Pneumonia Awareness Year. 2005 went to Pain, and 2006 was Asperger’s Awareness’s turn - although this seemed to be a repeat of 2002, as Asperger’s is one of several autism spectrum disorders. I was not aware of that. 2007 goes to – the envelope please – Malaria. I assumed that we never have to be aware of pain again (2005 is gone), until I discovered that every September is Pain Awareness Month.

Some appreciation observances may leave certain individuals or issues feeling ignored or unappreciated. Take National Incredible Kids Day (March 20) for example, which is great for my kids, but what about everybody else’s? Virginia School Board Appreciation Month (February) is great for the Newport News School Board, but might leave the Cedarburg School Board feeling a little out in the cold, and there are only twelve months in a year, so some school boards will just have to do without. I guess it’s first come, first serve. Wait! Never mind. January is School Board Recognition Month in Oregon and throughout the United States, so everybody is covered. April is Mathematics Education Month, but history and science apparently didn’t make the cut. Oregon has a taxpayer funded website with ideas on how to help celebrate Mathematics Education Month – but don’t worry about it or party too hard because April is also Alcohol Awareness Month and Stress Awareness Month. 

Sometimes similar issues that need appreciating bump heads – like National School Breakfast Week and National School Psychologists Week – both celebrated heavily during the same week in March. However, somebody is going to get failing marks in school because the former is only celebrated for five days – two days short of a full week – and lunch was ignored altogether. Not to be outdone, National Music In Our Schools Month trumps them both and takes up the entire month of March. School psychologists are again honored during National Educational Support Professionals Day (November 14), but only one card is necessary.

And then there are the genuinely absurd days of awareness. January is National Oatmeal Month – not quite on par with Church Library Month in October. I wasn’t even aware that my church had a library, probably because they don’t. February is Sinus Pain Awareness Month (headaches only got a week in June). February 14 (appropriately enough I suppose), is National Condom Day. Apparantly, on the third Saturday in October - Sweetest Day – we don’t need the reminder about protection, because October is also Clergy Appreciation Month. May is Correct Posture Month, as well as a month dedicated to the awareness and appreciation of smiles, salsa, vinegar, ultra-violet (all other light spectrums are ignored), hamburgers (without cheese), eggs, photos, and teen self-esteem. June 10 is National Yo-Yo Day, right in the middle of National Accordian Month. July 14, Bastille Day in France, is Nude Day in America; purely a coincidence, I’m sure. August 1 through August 7 is officially World Breastfeeding Week. September 22 is Elephant Appreciation Day, but apparantly there is no appreciation for lions and tigers and bears, oh my, and the post office is open.

Super human achievement is appreciated as well. This year, the second Wednesday in October was declared International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction by the U.N. General Assembly. That was right about when the California fires started burning. October 22, besides being Stuttering Day, also is Used Car Day. October 26 is Mule Day. I am either unaware or have forgotten the difference between a mule and an ass - the latter of which, sadly, is not as well respected as the former and therefore has no awareness day. November 22 is Start Your Own Country Day, although this is something that should have been given a week or a month. There’s not much you can do in a day, but it’s still on the books. Interestingly, December 8 through December 14 is National Hand Washing Awareness Week. I was not aware of that.

Maybe I didn’t appreciate what I was getting into as I wondered about the National Massage Therapist Awareness Week sign in the window that morning. Delving into the subject of national awareness was akin to falling helplessly down Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole – and it made me aware of how unaware I truly am. There are things in life that we need to be reminded to be aware of as members of the human race, and, well, things we don’t. The problem, it seems, as I stress over what sort of card to get my massage therapist, is that the really important reminders are being muted and obfuscated by the overabundance of the quite silly and absolutely needless ones – and that is a problem we need to be aware of.

President Obama’s speech to the nation’s schoolchildren on Tuesday created a firestorm. The speech was not seen by students in the Elmbrook School District, after parents threatened to pull their children out of school if it was shown. Wauwatosa students didn’t see the speech live, but Superintendent Phil Ertl allowed the district to tape the broadcast so teachers could determine if it’s something they want to show in class. Students of parents who didn’t want their children watching the speech were given alternate assignments. Many school districts in Texas, Illinois, Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri and Minnesota also refused to show the president's address and many parents did not want their children politically indoctrinated.

More locally, Cedarburg School District issued a statement directing that if the activity fell within the board-approved curriculum, the individual teacher had the option of showing the broadcast with prior principal approval. If parents or students did not wish to participate, they were allowed to do exempt themselves without academic penalty. Mequon-Thiensville School District specifically refrained from promoting the speech and Superintendent Dr. Demond Means went even further, allowing teachers to show it only if the teacher could demonstrate a connection to the curriculum but “strongly encouraging teachers notto spend instructional time showing the speech.”

Why all the furor? What could be wrong with the President of America challenging students to work hard, stay in school, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning? After all, there is historical precedent for presidents speaking to students. President George H. W. Bush did so in 1991 when his speech to students at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C. about studying hard and staying away from drugs was broadcast to over 4 million students in 110,000 schools. In 1988, Ronald Reagan addressed and even took questions from students from four area middle schools from the Old Executive Office Building. The speech was broadcast live and later rebroadcast by C-Span and Instructional Television Network to schools nationwide on three different days. Why would parents, teachers, students, and even entire school districts have a problem with President Obama doing the same thing?

The answer itself is political. Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were openly proud of America and what it stood for. They were not engaged in a clandestine effort to criticize and radically rewrite the America established by our founding fathers. During his address to the students, Ronald Reagan said, “To a degree never before seen in human history, one nation, the United States, has become the model to be followed and imitated by the rest of the world.” He told students that economic freedom, the freedom to work, to create and produce, to own and use property without the interference of the state, was central to the American Revolution. The problem with Obama’s speech for parents and school districts was that many could not imagine our current president saying anything like that.

Washington instructed teachers across the country to ask their students to write letters to themselves about what they could do to help the president. These letters were to be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals. The Administration later backed off of this strange lesson plan, saying that it was intended to be an “inspirational, pro-education message to America’s youths.” Another task for students was to engage in a discussion about what the president wants us to do.” Unlike Reagan and Bush, Sr., this president runs Camp Obamas where young people “receive real world organizing experience.” Naturally, skepticism ran high.

Reagan and Bush didn’t use code words couched in free market parlance to disguise Marxist tendencies and admittedly-redistributionist agendas. There were no You Tube videos depicting elementary school children reciting allegiance not to the country, but to the president, as there are today. There are those who would use the opportunity of Obama’s speech to indoctrinate our youth, and our president knows this.

Some parents are concerned about whether the president follows Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals as his strategy guide for implementing his policies. Compare Tuesday’s recommended lesson plan questions with the "Communication" chapter of Alinsky's book, which says, "He (the Community Organizer) will not ever seem to tell the community what to do: instead, he will use loaded questions." Many parents feel that both Obama and his admitted mentor, Alinsky, mistakenly view democracy's ideal as the achievement of "social justice" rather than – as Bush, Sr. and Reagan did - preserving liberty. The internet is loaded with photographs of early Obama teaching Alinsky's principles of "Power Analysis" and "Relationships built on self-interest" as clearly seen written upon the blackboard in these photos. And while he tries to back away from his radical mentor, the president is on record calling his Alinskyite experience "the best education I ever had." If he really believes that, wouldn’t he be doing himself and the country a disservice if he didn’t try to impart some of that “wisdom and truth” to the youth of Ozaukee County?

Many are surprised at the backlash and attention the speech received, arguing that when the president speaks to students about education, it shouldn't be a tool for the right wing. I would ask those people to consider how they would respond had President George W. Bush ordered teachers to ask students to write letters to themselves about what they can do to help him win the War in Iraq? When Bush, Sr. spoke to students in 1991, it was House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO) who said, “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students. The president should be doing more about education than saying, ‘Lights, camera, action’.” On Tuesday, the shoe was on the other foot.

Despite my clear concerns over the vision our president has for our country, I believe our local school districts acted wisely in not banning the speech, but allowing individual teachers to make the call and giving parents peace of mind in knowing their child could opt out if he or she so desired. A president speaking to American students is a proud and patriotic exercise. The opportunity for our children to hear directly from our President is one which civics classes, if such things still exist, generally encourage. While concern over the event was neither unwarranted nor a figment of parents’ and school districts’ imaginations, it is sad that Tuesday’s civic opportunity devolved into a concern over political indoctrination.

It might be the worst piece of legislation in the history of the world. The great assault on American industry and our free market system continued in June with the narrow passage by the House of Representatives of H.R. 2454, “The American Clean Energy and Security Act,” also known as the Waxman-Markey plan. You know it as “cap and trade.” If it passes the Senate, the devastation on our beleaguered American economy and what’s left of our manufacturing sector will be both permanent and incalculable. It is as though somebody has set out to intentionally destroy our country. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The concept of cap and trade is arguably simple: A "cap" is a nationwide limit on emissions to reduce the amount of “pollutants” released into the atmosphere. The "trade" creates a market for carbon allowances, requiring companies to make drastic changes in order meet, or come in under, their government-allocated limit. The less they emit, the less they pay, so it is in their economic incentive to pollute less. At least this is the story we are told. The amazing truth is, government has run out of things to tax – so it has to make a few up. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity - in this case the right to emit carbon - and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs will inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices – an indirect tax.

Cap and trade is nothing more than a tax which starts accruing the instant you flip on your light switch. The Wall Street Journal calls it “the tax that dare not speak its name.” It is the tax that nobody wants to mention, and Democrats in particular are hoping that no one notices who will be asked to pay for their climate ambitions. You see, Obama is counting on huge carbon revenues – ultimately paid by you – to fund his utopian vision of America. This massive tax keeps moving forward because you are told that it is “polluters” being taxed, while all along, it is you, in the form of higher prices on everything you buy. Hit hardest would be the “95% of working families” Obama promised a tax “cut.” Our good friend, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the price hikes from a mere 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That’s about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment. It will cost consumers $2 trillion in pass-through costs in the five years alone. If you don’t believe all of this is part of a massive rewrite of the country our founding fathers left to us – guess again.

Cap and trade is opposed by just about every business and tax organization in existence. The president himself has said, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." He has admitted it will destroy an entire industry - coal. And those are just the things he is acknowledging. If passed, every new home in America will have to meet California’s building code. There are so many reasons to oppose cap and trade that it is hard to know where to begin.

It will drastically increase energy costs. Even Obama agrees here. But what he’s not telling you is that according to the Tax Foundation, cap and trade will cost the average U.S. household about 2% of household income. MIT pegs the cost at over $4000 per household. Obama says it will cost the price of a postage stamp. Who do you believe? The cost of every product you buy will climb steeply as every vendor and component manufacturer will be paying a new, steep carbon tax.

Just wait and see how much pork and how many earmarks are going to be added to this bill for Senators’ pet home state projects. Wait and see how much more ACORN gets. The bill is modeled after the UN cap and trade policy which hasn’t reduced CO₂ emissions or worked well at all, according a study by Stanford University. But since when has it been a requirement that something actually work before it passes as a law?

This bill will force manufacturers to move out of the country in record numbers because the pollution restrictions will be so tight that a majority of manufacturers won't be able to afford to stay. Unemployment will reach levels that make today’s post-stimulus unemployment look rosy by comparison and since other countries don't have the same tight “pollution” policy, the whipping boy known as carbon will be emitted at record levels worldwide. A 2007 analysis conducted by Charles River Associates estimates anywhere from 1.2 million to 2.3 million jobs would be lost under a cap and trade scheme. Saying cap and trade is good for jobs is a bit like saying Roundup is good for weeds. Americans for Tax Reform estimates cap and trade will cost 2 ½ million American jobs, while China’s and India’s jobs will be secure. Yet, our president had the nerve to call it a “jobs bill’ – and there are those who blindly believe him.

If you’re a believer in anthropogenic global warming, despite the fact that average temperatures have been dropping since 2001, you might not want to take the aluminum foil off your head just yet. Cap and trade will not help the environment or affect the earth’s climate. Even scientists who support the concept of AGW agree that the maximum drop in the earth’s temperature as a result of cap and trade would be no more than 0.07 degrees Celsius by the year 2050. Just how negligible a measurement is that? Well, we cannot even estimate the absolute mean surface temperature of the earth within 0.07.  What’s worse is that cap and trade actually provides incentives to emit more carbon, not less. You see, by turning carbon emissions into commodities, cap and trade would remove the stigma of producing such emissions.  Just look at Europe where we have seen carbon emissions go up, even though the European Union has had a cap and trade regime in place since 2005. Want more?

Cap and trade will require American industry to do one of two things to comply: (1) manufacture less – which will eliminate jobs as companies lay off people to compensate for a drop in production, or (2) buy carbon offsets in order to keep production up – eliminating jobs as companies have less to spend on wages and benefits. 

Cap and trade is essentially stealth socialism – nothing new for this administration. President Obama promises to return carbon revenues to “vulnerable” communities, families and businesses, but that leaves taxpayers at the whim of the radicals in Washington, who will redistribute income to those they deem worthy, rather than letting taxpayers keep their hard earned dollars. It’s yet another form of “economic justice.”  

The unintended consequences of good intentions seem to be the order of the day for this administration, whose axe is gradually dulling as it chops away at the foundation of a free America. Even those who blindly disagree with my indictment of the well-intentioned cap and trade initiative cannot ignore the one certainty to come out of Washington as a result of any such legislation - all the fraud and corruption that always appears every time we assume that government is the answer, instead of the problem.

On June 25, absent even a pretense of objectivity, ABC turned its air waves over to our president, allowing him to make his case for nationalization of one-fifth of the nation’s economy – our health care system. Sadly, the network literally banned GOP commercials in opposition – before, during or after the infomercial, which received rock bottom ratings in its time slot. The man who “loses sleep” over the very deficit he created is proposing to put your children and grandchildren two to four trillion dollars further in debt. And that’s just for starters.  

But wait a second. Health care reform is dead last on the list of things Americans want tackled and polls indicate that virtually everybody seems to be happy with their health care. Reforming health care is even less popular today than when Hillary Clinton tried to saddle us with ill-fated “Hillary Care” in 1993. Back then, a 55% majority said they felt the health care system needed to be “completely rebuilt” compared with 41% today.

Moved to tears by propaganda like Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’, emotional proponents of Obama’s newest government takeover of the private sector mindlessly parrot that there are 45 million uninsured – a number misrepresented and exaggerated more and more every year for partisan reasons. According to the Pacific Research Institute, one-fourth of the uninsured are under 24 and half are under 35. They aren’t even the same people from year to year or even month to month. Three-fourths of the “uninsured” remain so for less than a year and the simple truth is that the percentage of uninsured Americans remains the same as in 1996, and lower than in 1997 and 1998. One-third live in households making more than $50,000 a year and one in seven make over $75,000. One-sixth of them are illegal aliens. The Census Bureau even counts as “uninsured” the 15 million children and poor people who are eligible for Medicaid and the SCHIP program but do not enroll. Suddenly things don’t look so dire.

Over 85% of Americans have health insurance and are happy with their care. Yet, Big Brother wants you to believe that dismantling the best health care system in the world and putting your health care decisions in the hands of the same people who ran Medicare and Social Security into the ground is good for America.

Obama Care creates an individual mandate requiring you to buy a “qualified” health insurance plan, as defined by Obama. If you go without such an animal for any given month, you will pay another new Federal tax.  Under Obama Care, Big Brother will define “qualified plan” in such a way that all private health insurance will be mandated to have guaranteed issue and renewal terms, modified community ratings, no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, and no lifetime or annual limits on benefits. Family policies would have to cover “children” up to age 26. It would punish the successful by defining what “affordable and available coverage” is for different income levels and reward smokers, alcoholics and drug users by preventing plans from charging more for risky behavior. In essence, the private health insurance business will be made unprofitable.

At the same time, Obama Care will also create yet another employer mandate, one strongly opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because it would chase overseas even more over-regulated corporations already suffering from the second-highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. Employers would have to offer insurance to their employees and pay a large percentage of the premiums at a mandated level. Any small business that does not would pay yet another new tax. That giant sucking sound will be the last remaining American businesses heading for the door.  

Underlying all of this is the innocent-sounding “public option” – essentially a government-run program for anyone unhappy with the options from private insurers. Obama claims critics like me who warn that this will lead to a "single-payer" system run by the government "are not telling the truth." But it's the president who is not being  honest about this proposal. Government health care will be fueled by unlimited funds from you – the taxpayer – to help it compete with and crush private insurers, guaranteeing that single-payer health care run by big government will be the last man standing.  Make no mistake – this is the beginning of socialized medicine in America.

Nobody in Obamaland has any idea how to pay for this new government rush to utopia. Your employer-provided health care benefits will be taxed, reducing your take-home pay, but that won’t even scratch the surface of the surface. How soon we forget the empty teleprompter words echoed hundreds of times during Obama’s campaign about not raising the taxes of anybody earning less than $250,000 and tax cuts for 95% of Americans.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates Obama’s utopia will add another trillion dollars to our indescribably-massive deficit. Republican scoring puts it over $3 trillion. The American Medical Association is against any form of government-sponsored health care program, and so are an increasing number of Democrat Senators and Congressmen, and even Obama’s own Chicago Tribune. But the “Yes We Can” train keeps rolling.

What’s worse, the proposal will only extend health insurance to a net 15 million more Americans – less than a third of those alleged to be uninsured and less than half as many as the unpopular Hillary Care would have covered in 1994, for the same money.

Obama says you’ll be able to keep your doctor. Not so, says the CBO. Obama Care immediately kicks nearly 20 million people out of the current health care system because many employers will no longer offer insurance and coverage from other sources will decline by 8 million. The Lewin Group documents that the public option alone will result in 100 million Americans being switched by their employers from their existing coverage or transferred to Obama Care. The paradox is that in order to provide care to all, government must deny it to some, and the terminally ill and elderly are the first ones on Obama’s chopping block.

At the same time, President Obama and the Congressmen who vote for this latest in a long line of expensive government takeovers will be exempt from the very plan being foisted on the rest of us. As payback to his supporters, members of labor unions will also be exempt, and he has backed off of tort reform measures which he promised would help hold down health care costs, as a payback to his supporters, in deference to personal injury trial lawyers.

For those who still fawn over the collective disasters that are the Canadian, British and French health care systems or still insist “something” must be done to “fix” health care, there are reasonable, non-socialist alternatives that control costs and keep your health care choices between you and your doctor. Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan and Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn have proposed the Patient’s Choice Act, a patient-centered alternative that transforms health care in America by strengthening the relationship between the patient and the doctor, uses choice, health savings accounts and competition rather than rationing and restrictions to contain costs, and ensures universal, affordable health care for all Americans.

As Canada, France, and the rest of the EU swerve sharply to the right under the weight of unsustainable socialist programs, here comes pokey Obama Care, following the same failed trickle-up poverty policies that haven’t worked anywhere. Even the socialists running Hungary are smarter than we are – recently passing dramatic tax cuts and cutting personal income tax rates and the employment tax to encourage employers to save and create jobs. Advocates of universal coverage and mandates point longingly to countries like Switzerland, but fail to mention that those countries have a population about the size of metropolitan Dallas and almost no unemployment. 

In 1884, Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany, instituted the first modern program of socialized medicine. It was called compulsory national health insurance and was very similar to Obama Care. Bismark’s motive in introducing socialized medicine to the German masses was to buy their loyalty and deter them from the illusion of communism. In other words, Bismarck was the first leader to fight communism by adopting communism. The German citizens paid more and got less in return. Bismark failed, but he did become an important component of the German militaristic state and helped pave the way for Hitler a generation later. With every intrusion on our liberty we become more dependent on – and more subservient to –our government.

England first started experimenting with socialized medicine in 1911.

The inept and overly-expensive National Health Program which became the law of England in 1948 is modeled after the Soviet system created by Lenin. In less than two years, there were more than half a million people on hospital waiting lists and 40,000 unused hospital beds because of a nurse shortage. The doctor and hospital shortage in Britain has become so bad that mentally retarded and elderly people are unable to secure proper care. The only effective means of easing the shortage is to deny hospital admission to the old and chronically ill, similar to what Obama is advocating.

Nearly one-seventh of all British taxes go into the national health program. Sadly, the horribly inept "free" medical services actually cost the average Brit much more than the most expensive American private health insurance and hospitalization. In June of 2005, Canada’s Supreme Court rule that its health care system - which originally outlawed private health insurance -  held that waiting lists for medical treatments were too long and private health insurers had to be allowed to compete with the public system. As a result, the future of Canadian healthcare is a question mark.

Experiments with socialized medicine were and still are a failure. But government never retreats. When it seizes money, power, and liberty from us in order to promote our “welfare” and the unintended consequences make things worse, government always argues that it didn't have enough power and money to do enough promoting.

Our health care system is not without its problems, but the true causes of the problems might surprise you. Obama-supporting trial lawyers and government itself are responsible for much of the high cost of health care in America today – not insurance companies. A Milliman study recently showed that a family of four pays $1700 a year more in premiums because Medicare and Medicaid grossly underpay doctors and hospitals, exactly like Obama’s “public option” will do. If private insurers could mimic Medicare payments levels for health care providers, health insurance premiums would be cut nearly in half. Defensive medicine practices – out of fear of malpractice suits filed by liberal trial lawyers – also create a huge obstacle to holding down costs. The remaining $11,000 purchases the family's own coverage, usually through an employer. Though we count that as "private" spending, the government largely controls that $11,000 as well.

The “private” health care system Obama complains about hasn’t been “private” for generations. Government already finances about half of Americans' medical care, thanks to Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs. In 2007, the average family of four paid $25,000 for health insurance - nearly 30% of their income. About $14,000 of it represents taxes that fund Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and other health programs for the elderly and the poor. In other words, the government already controls the lion's share. So, the “solution” of socialized medicine is actually itself the problem. The high cost of our current “private” system can also find blame in the patients themselves – when it’s “all you can eat”, people eat as much as they can in order to get their money's worth. The consumer has been taken out of the equation. I can’t help but laugh out loud when our esteemed president, in championing health care reform, stresses the unsustainability of our current system while insisting that nothing will change. It doesn’t add up.

The sobering reality is that the guy about to take over one-fifth of our economy has never met a payroll or run so much as a Jiffy Lube. Our president might be a smart guy, but to borrow a phrase from the Gipper, the real danger isn’t that he’s ignorant – it’s just that he knows so much that isn’t so. He has misinterpreted last November’s disenchantment with Bush and Iraq for a socialist mandate. Unless we take a stand, the government rationing will soon begin. The good news is we'll all have a health care card with the Messiah’s picture on it. The bad news is it will be worth almost nothing and will come at the steep price of our liberty. It seems our first black president is also our first Red president and last November’s chickens are now coming home to roost. All at once.

For the devastating details of H.R. 3200, see below:

Reviewed, revised and adapted on July 29, 2009, by Liberty Counsel from the original authored by Peter Fleckenstein and posted on FreeRepublic.com and his blog, http://blog.flecksoflife.com. Liberty Counsel 800-671-1776 www.LC.org

• Sec. 203, Pg. 84 - Government mandates ALL benefit packages for private Health Care plans in the exchange.

• Sec. 113, Pg. 21-22 of the Health Care (HC) Bill MANDATES a government audit of the books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self-insure in order to "ensure that the law does not provide incentives for small and mid-size employers to self-insure"!

• Sec. 122, Pg. 29, Lines 4-16 - YOUR HEALTH CARE WILL BE RATIONED!

• Sec. 123, Pg. 30 - THERE WILL BE A GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE deciding what treatments and benefits you get.

• Sec. 142, Pg. 42 - The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your benefits for you. You have no choice!

• Sec. 152, Pg. 50-51 - HC will be provided to ALL NON-US citizens.

• Sec. 163, Pg. 58-59 beginning at line 5 - Government will have real-time access to individual’s finances & a National ID health care card will be issued!

• Sec. 163, Pg. 59, Lines 21-24 - Government will have direct access to your bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

• Sec. 164, Pg. 65 is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in unions & community organizations (ACORN).

• Sec. 201, Pg. 72, Lines 8-14 - Government is creating an HC Exchange to bring private plans under government control.

2

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.  - President John F. Kennedy     January 20, 1961 

A few months ago my family visited the Statute of Liberty. Since 9/11 you are no longer allowed to climb much beyond the pedestal, but the experience was still a moving one. As I patiently stood in the long security line for the metal detectors and the GE EntryScan3 walk-through explosives detection portals, I looked up at Lady Liberty and noticed that she seemed to be a little tired. It has been nearly fifty years since John F. Kennedy asked American citizens to make a deposit, rather than a withdrawal from their country. The weight of America’s continued failure to heed those wise words was clearly evident on Lady Liberty.

This past New Year was a significant one for America. 2008 marked the first year when those born in 1946 – the first of the Baby Boomers - reach Social Security's early retirement age of 62. From now until 2025, every year will see another crop of boomers reach the magic threshold. Like a Marine battalion advancing against its enemy, Social Security's future problems approach slowly, but their arrival is inevitable. Over the next 10 years, $100 billion a year surpluses, which Congress currently spends, will continue to shrink and then disappear completely. Without those surpluses to offset the federal budget deficit, Congress will have no choice but to again raise taxes, cut programs, or let annual deficits climb. And then the wheels will really come off the cart.

Somewhere around 2017, on top of replacing Social Security's $100 billion annual surplus, Congress will have to find billions more to make good on all of the benefits that it has promised. In a few short years, the additional money needed will reach $100 billion a year (not counting inflation). From there, the annual demands will reach first $200 billion a year, and soon $300 billion a year.

Then there is Medicare.

The reality is that together, Social Security and Medicare will consume an estimated 60% of income taxes collected by 2025, and nearly 100% by 2048. What's left would have to finance the entire rest of the government. Moody’s has even recently said that the U.S. could lose its AAA bond rating within 10 years.

Instead of making tough choices that would fix the gaping hole in the proverbial dike, Democrats and Republicans teamed up to heap Medicare D (prescription drug program) onto Lady Liberty’s shoulders, at a cost approaching $1.3 trillion by 2016, according to Medicare chief Mark McClellan. The entire federal budget is only $2.7 trillion! President Bush called the bill a “major victory” and even conservatives like our own Jim Sensenbrenner voted for the program.

The coming apocalypse is the financial equivalent of the meteor in the movie Armageddon. With an impending disaster of this magnitude, surely the current crop of presidential candidates are lining up with ideas to fix the problem. Mention Social Security, however, and all you hear are crickets chirping. Instead, any suggestion of taking away programs such as these has become the dreaded “third rail” – touch it and 30,000 volts blows off your hand. As a fireball the size of Argentina hurtles toward earth at nearly a million miles per hour, those elected to protect us simply put on sun glasses.

Social Security Insurance, as it was originally known, was intended as insurance – a fallback for widows at a time when the life expectancy of men was much shorter than women. It was to provide a helping hand for workers who retired at age 65, financed by contributions these workers made over their career. In a spectacular explosion reminiscent of the Big Bang, it has expanded to something it was never intended to be – a retirement plan which gives us the right - at age 62 – to enjoy our old age while sipping umbrella drinks on the beach. It is now the largest government entitlement program on the planet and growing daily.

Our founding fathers would not recognize the federal government of today. It is the nation’s largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider, and pension guarantor. Washington is even backing private car warranties and before long will be giving away the unpopular and unprofitable hybrids it has forced Detroit to make to anyone who doesn’t have a job. And yet, advocates of statism continue to speak indignantly, manipulate public perception, create class envy, invent new definitions for racism, and demonize capitalism and the very free market economy which has produced the trillions of dollars being given away – all in the name of making government even bigger.

Social Security is only the beginning. Attitudes among so many Americans today revolve around what our country can do for us, which programs benefit us, which politician is offering more unemployment benefits, bigger school grants, or free health care. Even local government is infected with the “gimme disease” – building needless projects for fear of losing federal dollars or grants. I’d like to see how a politician running for office would fare with a platform asking all Americans to serve a mandatory two years in the military, a volunteer organization, or a charity – for free. Cynically, I think they’d run a distant second to whoever finished second last. In a desperate effort to pay for the growing public attitude that our country owes us, we have mortgaged America by borrowing from our children and others without any thought as to how this debt would be repaid. Our current national debt is a mind-boggling $9 trillion, and is growing by a staggering $2 billion per day - $7 million while you read this article. And this was before the "stimulus bill" which threw billions at ACORN and the multiple bailout bills of our new administration.

So just who do we owe this debt to? The money is borrowed from buyers of Treasury securities -- which are basically a big batch of IOUs that are auctioned off every three months. As the auction date approaches, the Treasury figures out how much it will need to pay off old debt and cover the government’s latest round of overspending. Half of our debt - $4.5 trillion - is owed to the U.S. government itself, as round after round of wasteful and deficit spending is paid for by simply issuing ourselves more securities – a practice that would result in a prison sentence for any American. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that most of the government’s holdings are for entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and welfare. The remainder of the debt is owed to countries like Japan ($644 billion), China ($350 billion), and the United Kingdom ($239 billion), as well as state and local governments ($467 billion), individual investors ($423 billion) and insurance companies and banks ($283 billion).

And this was all before Obama's record $2 trillion deficits which followed the hope and change rhetoric on the campaign trail and the massive and ineffective bailouts which saw bankruptcy close at their heals.

There are three types of conquest: military, religious, and economic. In economic conquest, you place the inhabitants under tribute or debt, and slowly take over their country economically. America is being conquered without a shot being fired, and we don’t even realize it.

The national debt has become so large that if we started selling U.S. real estate, buildings, aircraft carriers, and football stadiums to repay the debt, we would have to sell everything in America – three times over – to simply pay down the debt, which would then start climbing again because of our deficit spending. And we’ve only been discussing the federal debt; state and local governments account for an additional $2 trillion in debt.

Yet politicians continue to ask more of our country. Free national health care ($1 trillion). An expanded SCHIP program ($160 billion). The list is endless.  In September, Hillary Clinton proposed giving every baby born in America $5,000 – a compassionate proposal that would cost America an additional $20 billion a year. In her book, It Takes A Village, Hillary espouses universal pre-school ($18 billion). Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, is proposing socialized medicine in California ($14 billion). Here in Wisconsin, Democrats in the Assembly proposed state-wide socialized medicine ($15.2 billion). 

The notion of ‘tax and spend’ Democrats has lost its meaning in light of our last Republican Congress which thought vote-getting would be easier with compassionate spending, rather than fiscal conservatism, and a Republican President who seemed to have misplaced his veto pen. The notion of raising taxes as a solution may be inevitable, but American workers already work well into May in order to pay their federal, state, and local taxes – and that doesn’t even include sales taxes and the dozens of other hidden taxes and fees paid every day. The typical American family pays more in total taxes than it spends on food, clothing, and shelter combined. That's over 38 percent for total taxes vs. 28 percent for food, clothing and housing.

Compounding the problem is rampant government waste and inefficiency. Taxpayers spend $20 billion per year for 165 job-training programs that are administered by 15 different federal agencies. There are 342 economic development programs managed by 13 agencies, and little or no coordination. Ten departments, three independent agencies, one federal commission, one presidential council, and one quasi-official agency administer 131 juvenile programs at a cost of $4 billion per year. The federal education bureaucracy involves more than 788 programs in 40 different federal agencies at a cost of nearly $100 billion each year. An estimated 30 cents of every federal educational dollar is lost in overhead and never makes it to the classroom. Each year, the U.S. government funds hundreds of programs that largely benefit businesses and private industries which could, and should, finance these activities without taxpayer assistance.  In FY 1998, appropriations for such corporate welfare totaled approximately $40 billion.  Producing and publishing statistical data on the country's economic and social makeup involves 70 different agencies within 12 Cabinet departments.

A recent USA Today reported that Hurricane Katrina victims have filed claims against the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers for the levee failures, totaling more than $12 trillion – more than entire annual output of the national economy.

As a nation, we have forgotten that America is us, and our children It is not a government employee with a checkbook. We only hurt ourselves and our children by allowing America to be conquered economically. Every program has good intent at its roots, but at some point we must face the fact that we can only afford so much compassion. To pour salt in the wound, so many in America and abroad seemingly despise the country that does so much for so many, without asking for much in return.

I’m not suggesting that the unfortunate, the poor, the elderly, and others don’t deserve some help. I’m simply saying that if we love our children – the same children we struggle so hard for to be sure they graduate college without significant students loans and debt – we should do anything, and endure any sacrifice, to be certain we don’t saddle our children with a debt that currently amounts to nearly $30,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. Yet we don’t. Instead, we selfishly continue to ask what else our country can do for us. The Greatest Generation sacrificed for us; we can surely sacrifice for the next generation. Our sacrifice will require higher taxes, should require doing with less, but must require significant slashing of a hemorrhaging federal budget fraught with waste, fraud, and inefficiency. Government can’t fix our problems. It wasn’t intended to and can’t afford to.

We may be the world’s lone superpower, but we’re under assault and are being conquered economically from within, and without. It’s high time to let other countries know that America’s children alone will not get the bill for keeping the planet safe, for fighting terror, and for helping countries half the globe away to develop and modernize. We all too often forget the words of John F. Kennedy which followed his more famous “Ask not” appeal: “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” Now that would make the Statute of Liberty smile!

He doesn’t want you to know about them. He’ll never admit to a relationship with them or refer to them by name. He’s even tried to hide them from the American public. Yet, because of these associations, the 47 year-old former community organizer who wrote two memoirs but not one piece of legislation during his scant 143 days in the U.S. Senate would not be able to pass a routine background investigation to become a state trooper, FBI or DEA agent, join the military, or become a member of his own administration or cabinet. Something is wrong here. Ignoring for a moment the drug use and the many ties to radical socialism and even communism in his past, it’s Obama’s scary relationships with the most vile and unrepentant of terrorists, convicted criminals, political thugs, and corrupt and dishonest organizations that have me concerned.

Barack Obama is applying for the most important and politically sensitive job in the world. Who’s vetting him? Certainly not the Democrats. Obama supporters ignore these associations because they are desperate for a Democrat in the White House. Obama has been far less than forthcoming when asked about his past associations and dealings and to this day refuses to release any records. Obama couldn’t get clearance for a job as his own secretary, yet, here he is, on the ballet this November.

Obama is mum about his college years. Two years at Occidental College he describes as a “dead end.” From there he went to Columbia University, and this is where the roadblock begins. Obama and his campaign have gone to great lengths to keep his time at Columbia and Harvard a secret, and they will not allow either school to release any information. Compare this with all of the records George Bush had to reveal about his years at Yale University and the Texas Air National Guard. Even the liberal New York Times has reported that Obama refuses to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript, or identify even a single fellow-student, co-worker, roommate or friend during those years. Nobody can find and Obama will not produce a copy of his 1983 senior thesis written at Columbia, entitled “Soviet Nuclear Disarmament”. Likewise, researchers cannot find anything with Barack Obama’s name on it from his time at Harvard. And how did a poor kid from Chicago afford a Harvard education?

It was former Malcom X lawyer and New York City mayoral candidate Percy Sutton who inadvertently revealed how Obama could even afford to get into Harvard. In a New York television show entitled “Inside City Hall”, Sutton admitted that orthodox Muslim, Black Nationalist, and Black Panther mentor Dr. Khalid al-Mansour personally asked Sutton to help Obama get into Harvard. This is the same al-Mansour who can be seen on YouTube saying “whatever you do to white people, they deserve it.” Sutton described al-Mansour as a "radical Middle Eastern extremist with ties to the Saudi government" and stated that al-Mansour, an outspoken enemy of the State of Israel, was raising money for Obama. But why? Doesn’t America deserve to know?

Obama is a follower of Chicago’s own Saul Alinsky, the author of the book” Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals” – a book dedicated by its author to “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.” Saul Alinsky is unknown to most Americans, yet his shadow darkens our coming election. Alinsky was the chief architect of a model of bloodless socialist revolution in America. Barack Obama was trained by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation and spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project. Later, he worked with ACORN and its offshoot Project Vote, both creations of the Alinsky network. Recently, Alinsky’s own son praised Obama in an editorial for learning and implementing the “Alinsky model” well. Obama's denials appear on his own rumor-squelching website called “Fight the Smears.” I've looked at this site several times and have been struck by the lawyer-like denials contained within it, each one leaving a little wiggle room. It all looks like something I might write for a guilty client. This site even denies that Obama worked for ACORN. However, it is public knowledge that he was a top trainer for the radical organization which was recently raided in Nevada after registering the Dallas Cowboys football team to vote both there and in Missouri. In 2006 ACORN registered 1800 people to vote in the State of Washington of which only 6 were legitimate.

Obama also has clear ties to Weather Underground terrorist and long-time friend and mentor, William Ayers, who bombed both the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon and attempted to murder entire families with little children. Obama’s political career was launched in Ayers’ living room. Partners in many entities, the two exchanged ideas, including how to turn Chicago schools into reeducation camps to create a generation of social revolutionaries. In 1995, Ayers set up the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a project which included indoctrinating elementary school children with notions of social reform. Obama and Ayers co-chaired this organization. Obama claims Ayers was just “a guy in my neighborhood” and that they didn’t exchange ideas “on a regular basis.” But isn’t any exchange of ideas with an unrepentant terrorist like Ayers too much? In fact, Obama and Ayers also served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing Chicago organization. There, they doled out tens of thousands of dollars to such beneficiaries as the Trinity Church, where Obama “mentor” and America-hater Jeremiah Wright, preached a radical, anti-American brand of Black Liberation Theology

While Obama tries to downplay Ayers’ terrorist acts by saying they were committed when Obama was only eight years old, the important thing to remember is that in a 1998 interview with Connie Chung, both Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Bohrn – who had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list – admitted that they didn’t commit enough terrorist acts. “We would do it again,” they said. This was three years after Obama started his political career in Ayers’ living room. On September 11, 2001, as the World Trade Center and Pentagon burned, Bill Ayers said, ''I don't regret setting the bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.'' As Hillary Clinton has continually warned, Obama’s relationship with Ayers continued long after these very public and despicable comments. While Obama served on the Woods Fund, it also directed thousands of dollars to the Arab American Action Network, co-founded by Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO member at a time when it was a designated terrorist organization. Khalidi had supported attacks against Israel and now directs Columbia University’s notorious Middle East Institute. Like Obama, Khalidi also used Ayers’ living room as a central planning venue. He also threw fundraisers for Barack. The Times reported that Khalidi was a “friend and frequent dinner companion” of Obama’s. In 2003, Obama held a lavish farewell dinner for Khalidi, and the Los Angeles Times reported that “Allies of the Palestinians Have a Friend in Obama.” At that dinner Obama went on record about conversations with Khalidi that had “challenged my thinking” and served as “consistent reminders to me about my own biases and own blind spots.” Fox News’ Sean Hannity recently reached out to both Obama and Khalidi about their relationship, but both declined comment.

Closer to home, Barack’s older brother, Abongo "Roy" Obama, is a Luo activist, militant Muslim and a Marxist, as well as the person of whom Obama says in his book “made me proudest of all.” A teen mentor of Obama’s was Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.

Of course, we all know that for 20 years Obama was a member of Trinity Unity Church of Christ where Rev. Jeremiah “Chickens Coming Home To Roost” Wright spewed the most vile of racist sermons. Obama called Wright his “friend, mentor, and pastor” and Obama’s second book was inspired by Wright’s teachings. He even quoted one of Wright’s sermons in his first book. Obama later denied ever hearing any of the controversial sermons, although the New York Times reported in 2007 that “Mr. Obama arrived at Harvard Law School later that year (1988), where he fortified himself with recordings of Mr. Wright’s sermons.” In June of 2005, Obama – a tough talker on ethics reform and the voice of the “little guy” - approached his friend and political fundraiser Tony Rezko, while Rezko was under federal indictment. Obama represented a district that included 11 of Rezko's 30 low-income housing projects. The two jointly purchased adjoining parcels in the elite Kenwood district of Chicago. The state's junior senator paid $1.65 million for a Georgian revival mansion, while Rezko paid $625,000 for the adjacent, undeveloped lot. Both closed on their properties on the same day. Obama then expanded his property by buying a portion of Rezko’s strip of land for a mere $104,500. Obama later called it "boneheaded" because people might think the Rezkos had done him a favor. Rezko, accused of influence peddling, was convicted on fraud and bribery charges in June of this year. Life is simple. If you don’t want to be associated with bad guys, stay away from them.

Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer my president to be forthcoming about his past, not have associations with indicted, convicted and unrepentant radicals and criminals, be drug-free for a lifetime, have unquestioned integrity and be able to pass a simple background investigation. If I want someone with radical revolutionary roots as my president, I’ll move to Iran or Venezuela.