Monthly Archives: March 2014

Are They Being Denied Asylum Because They Might Vote Republican?

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PLEASE SEE THE UPDATE AT THE END OF THIS STORY!!!!!

America has allowed millions of illegal immigrants to stay in this country. The Obama Administration has made it easy for children who were brought here to get tuition breaks, temporary visas, and many things to allow them to remain in America. However, one family seeking asylum because they fear having their children taken away from them has been denied asylum by the Obama Administration. The family was originally granted asylum, but the Obama Administration then denied that asylum, and the family began a court battle to remain in America. The odd thing here is that the Obama Administration has spent a lot of resources fighting the original asylum decision, while at the same time loosening immigration laws for thousands of other people. It makes no sense. However, here is the story.

The Washington Post reported the story yesterday:

The Supreme Court on Monday (March 3) declined to hear an appeal from a family seeking asylum in the United States because home schooling is not allowed in their native Germany.

…HSLDA helped the Romeikes leave Germany in 2008 after they were threatened with jail time and losing custody of their children. The Romeikes are evangelical Christians, and say they should be allowed to keep their children home to teach them Christian values.

An immigration judge in Tennessee granted the Romeikes’ bid in 2010, but the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned the ruling in 2012, arguing that religious home-schoolers don’t face any special threats.

The family lost their appeal in federal court in May 2013. The U.S. grants safe haven to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution, but not necessarily to those under governments with laws that differ from those in the U.S., Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the court’s decision.

“The German authorities have not singled out the Romeikes in particular or homeschoolers in general for persecution,” Sutton wrote.

We need to remember that parents should have the last word in the education of their children.

From the Home School Legal Defense Association Facebook (HSLDA)  page:

Today, a Supervisor with the Department of Homeland Security called a member of our legal team to inform us that the Romeike family has been granted “indefinite deferred status”. This means that the Romeikes can stay in the United States permanently (unless they are convicted of a crime, etc.)

This is an incredible victory that can only be credited to our Almighty God.

We also want to thank those of who spoke up on this issue–including that long ago White House petition. We believe that the public outcry made this possible while God delivered the victory.

This is an amazing turnaround in 24 hours. Praise the Lord.

Proverbs 21: 1 “The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord, He guides it wherever He pleases.”
~~Michael Farris

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Another Fiction-Based Policy Brought To You By The Obama Administration

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The Daily Caller today is reporting that the policies that are part of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ‘s plan to fight global warming will cost the economy $2.23 trillion. The debate over global warming continues, but so does the runaway cost of fighting it–courtesy of the EPA.

The article reports:

“Higher energy prices as a result of the regulations will squeeze both production and consumption. Since energy is a critical input for most goods and services, Americans will be hit repeatedly with higher prices as businesses pass higher costs onto consumers,” writes Nick Loris, a Heritage Foundation economist and co-author of the report.

“However, if a company had to absorb the costs, high energy costs would shrink profit margins and prevent businesses from investing and expanding,” Loris adds. “The cutbacks result in less output, fewer new jobs, and less income.”

Let’s wait until we are sure the problem actually exists before we throw tons of money at it.

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Sometimes New Rules Won’t Solve The Problem

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The National Review Online posted an article yesterday about the recent problems in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The article reports:

There are two competing models for reforming the Internal Revenue Service’s oversight of the political activities of certain nonprofit organizations: one put forward by the IRS itself, in the form of a regulatory rule change, a second put forward by Representative David Camp (R., Mich.) on behalf of the House Ways and Means Committee. Neither program is sufficient, because neither reflects the reality behind the recent IRS scandal, which was not the result of murky rules or bureaucratic incompetence but rather of what gives every indication of being deliberate misuse of federal investigatory resources for partisan political ends. That there have not been criminal charges in this matter is probably at least as much a reflection of the highly politicized Department of Justice under Eric Holder as it is of the facts of the case. The problem, then, is that both the IRS plan and the Camp plan assume that the IRS ought to be regulating rather than being regulated.

The article points out the in America, the government is prohibited from regulating free speech–yet that is exactly what the IRS has tried to do since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision.

The article at National Review Online reminds us:

No rule change from the IRS — nor Representative Camp’s well-intentioned but wholly inadequate reforms, which amount to a list of minor no-nos such as inquiring about an audit target’s political or religious beliefs — is going to change the fact that the agency is full of highly partisan bureaucrats with a political agenda of their own and an inclination to abuse such police powers as are entrusted to them.

The article concludes with comments about Representative David Camp’s proposal to fix the IRS:

But his proposal falls short in that it assumes that the IRS is a proper and desirable regulator of political speech. It is not. It is not even particularly admirable in its execution of its legitimate mission, the collection of revenue: Its employees have committed felonies in releasing the confidential tax information of such political enemies as the National Organization for Marriage and Mitt Romney, and the agency itself has perversely interpreted federal privacy rules as protecting the criminal leakers at the IRS rather than the victims of their crimes. The Camp bill, thankfully, would address at least that much, but it would still leave the IRS in charge of determining whether its employees were playing politics with audits and decisions. The IRS does not inspire confidence as a practitioner of self-regulation, much less as a regulator of political speech.

We need honest people in Washington. Until we have that, I am not convinced that any amount of laws will make a difference.

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Cutting Medicare Home Health Benefits To Fund ObamaCare

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On Friday the Washington Times posted an article about cuts to home health care for senior citizens. These cuts of 14 percent, or an estimated $22 billion, were part of ObamaCare.

The article reports:

How did home health care save money for taxpayers? Using 2009 as a reference year, Medicare’s average Part A and Part B payment for a home health care visit was $145, compared to $373 per day in a skilled nursing facility or a whopping $1,805 per day in a hospital. In addition, according to one leading expert, skilled home health care services saved the Medicare program $2.8 billion during the most recent three-year period. Approximately $670 million of that savings is attributable to 20,000 fewer hospital readmissions.

This is either extremely short-sightedness, or another attempt by the Obama Administration to cut the amount of healthcare available to senior citizens. It doesn’t save money–it just takes healthcare away from our most vulnerable citizens.

The article details the impact this will have on businesses that provide home health care:

It will hit the small businesses that provide home health care nationwide, and is already doing so. More than 90 percent of those providing home health care are small businesses. According to the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 40 percent of these companies will be operating “at a loss” — that is, they will likely fold or end up in bankruptcy — by 2017 as a result of the cut. What does that mean? It means nearly 5,000 more Medicare home health care providers may go out of business, and nearly 500,000 more jobs within this flogged industry may be wiped out to fund Obamacare. Those who care about such things should put that into their future unemployment calculations — and then thank Mr. Obama and his congressional friends, who all got a waiver and probably do not worry about home health care anyway.

We will elect a new House of Representatives this year, and we will also get to vote for one-third of the Senate. We need to consider carefully who we vote for. The survival of the elderly in our country depends on our vote. ObamaCare will probably not be repealed as long as President Obama is in the White House and as long as the establishment Republicans have a strong voice, but it can be significantly changed.

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A Very Insightful Comment

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Michael Ledeen posted an article at PJ Media yesterday about the current war in the Ukraine.

Mr. Ledeen states:

It’s not as if we’re at war, after all.

And we’re not.  Only our enemies are.  It’s like target practice for them.  Fortunately, they’re not very good at it, and so they miss a lot. When they win, they find ways to screw it up.  They took over Egypt, remember?  Then lost it in the “biggest demonstration in human history” (thus sayeth the BBC).  They were on the verge of taking over Tunisia, but no more.  They made a hash out of Ukraine and Venezuela, then lost the first and are facing the people’s wrath in the second.  They keep trying to organize lethal rocket and missile attacks on Israel, only to get destroyed.

 

But we choose not to be at war.

 

The article concludes:

 

For those who actually want to see the world plain, the global network is luminously clear, from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran and Syria, to Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.  Those are the nations aligned against us.  They support a variety of terror groups, from al-Qaeda to Islamic Jihad to the various Latin American guerrillas, and they work in cahoots with the narcotics mafiosi.

There are two keystones in this global network:  Iran and Venezuela, with Russia manipulating them both as best Putin can.  If we see the world plain, the current revolutionary turmoil in Venezuela is enormously important, arguably the most important hot spot on earth today.  For if the Castroite tyranny in Caracas were to fall, it would be a devastating blow to the Axis of Evil.  The bad guys know it;  that’s why, in addition to Cuban intel officers and special forces, Hezbollahis are moving from Damascus to Caracas.  Khamenei knows there’s an intimate connection between what happens in Venezuela and what happens in Syria.

But America has chosen to cut its defenses and remain at peace (until we are attacked by the part of the world who chooses to wage war). We need a President, a Congress, or a State Department smart enough to play chess. Evidently we don’t have one.

 

 

The Cost Of Poliltical Partisanship

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One of the problems in America right now is politicians who value their political party more than they value their country. As a result of that values system, statements from the other party that should be heeded are mocked and ignored. We saw this principle in action with Sarah Palin in the 2008 presidential campaign and with Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential campaign.

Breitbart.com posted an article yesterday reminding us of the events in 2008:

Palin said then:

After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama‘s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.

Levin (conservative talk radio host Mark Levin) said her comment was “dismissed as a very strange comment by the eggheads in and out of Washington.” And Levin mocked those who derided Palin for not thinking that “Russia’s our friend… they would never go into Ukraine.” As Breitbart News reported, Blake Hounshell, who was then at Foreign Policy magazine and is now at Politico, wrote that Palin’s comments were “strange.”

Her comments may have been “strange,” but they were obviously 100 percent accurate.

Breitbart further reminds us:

Because she was running on the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin’s comments were ignored and mocked. No one on the Democrat side of things was willing to listen to her.

When Mitt Romney ran against President Obama, something very similar happened. Steven Hayward at Power Line posted the story yesterday (along with the video):

John (John Hinderaker at Power Line) noted before how the Obama campaign attacked Mitt Romney in 2012 for saying Russia was our most important adversary, but it’s also worth taking in Obama mocking Romney in their third debate, saying that “the 1980s want their foreign policy back.”  That’s actually starting to sound pretty good.

I don’t know what difference it would have made if Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney had been listened to, but I can’t help but think that we would have been able to react in some way had we been prepared for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One analyst I was listening to this morning felt that if America does not do something to help the Ukrainians, Russia will turn its sights to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. The world is getting very complicated, and we have a President who is so convinced he knows everything that he is not paying attention to what is going on around him. Putin is playing chess and President Obama is playing checkers. President Obama needs to listen to people on both sides of the aisle–it might avoid some serious mistakes.

 

 

 

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The Results Of Socialism

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A picture is worth a thousand words. This picture is from the Independent Journal Review:

You Can See Socialism From Space…

The heading of the article with the picture is, “You Can See Socialism From Space….”

The article points out:

In newly released nighttime photos from NASA, the disastrous economics effects of socialism can be clearly seen. Causes: North Korea’s stifling government control yields power generation and per-person economic activity that is less than 10% of that in South Korea. Still think socialism is “good on paper”?

If we lived in a world of perfect people, socialism would work. Unfortunately, we live in a world of flawed people–all flawed in different ways. Socialism was tried by the early settlers of America. The Puritans instituted a form of socialism–they abolished private property and stated that all property would be held in common. Half the colonists died of starvation. At that point, private property rights were restored, and each man farmed his own land. As a result of the decision to restore private property rights, more food was produced, and fewer people faced starvation. Americans can learn from their own history as well as the history of other countries. Socialism is a wonderful utopian idea that does not work. It’s really that simple.

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Tax Policies Have Consequences

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Today’s New York Post posted an article about the impact of Mayor de Blasio’s proposed tax policies.

The article reports:

Taking a page out of Barack Obama’s playbook, de Blasio casts his push for a tax hike on those earning over $500,000 as a moral imperative.

“I believe it’s time to ask the wealthy to do a little more,” he said last year. He paints taxes as a matter of giving back, as though the money was taken from others.

The article also reports New Yorkers’ response to this idea:

One friend says 10 wealthy people have told him they are leaving and another says disgusted New Yorkers bought $1 billion in residential property in Florida since the November election. The Sunshine State confers an automatic tax cut of about 12 percent because it has no city or state income tax, nor does it have an inheritance tax.

Below is the Laffer Curve. It represents the fact that there is a point where you raise taxes to the point that revenue decreases. There are many reasons for this–people find ways to shield their money from taxes, people relocate to places with lower taxes, and people make a decision to earn less so that they will be taxes less. At any rate, there is a tipping point. It remains to be seen if New York City has reached it.

English: The standard Laffer Curve

English: The standard Laffer Curve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Who Do Your Children Belong To?

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The Heritage Foundation posted an article today pointing out that because parents are become more aware of what the program is, many states are renaming the Common Core program in order to sneak it past the parents. The curriculum is unacceptable to parents for a variety of reasons.

The article reports:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, as it is officially known, began in earnest in early 2009. The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers drafted the standards, but the effort quickly became a Washington-centric one. To induce states to adopt the standards, the federal government:

  • Offered more than $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants.
  • Directly financed the two national testing consortia developing the assessments to test whether students learn according to the standards.
  • Have offered waivers to states from the onerous provisions of No Child Left Behind in exchange for common standards adoption.
  • Have created a technical review panel for the tests housed at the U.S. Department of Education.

Parents recognize that Common Core national standards and tests will require them to relinquish one of their most powerful tools to effect school improvement: control of academic content, standards, and testing through their state and local policymakers. Parents recognize that Common Core takes their seats at the table, further removing them from the decision-making process in favor of decisions being centrally made by national organizations and Washington bureaucrats.

The last thing this country needs is Washington bureaucrats messing up children’s education.

The article quotes a very troubling statement:

“The children belong to all of us,” former Massachusetts Education Secretary Paul Reville recently stated. Likewise, according to MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.” Wrong.

Part of the problem with the education our children are currently receiving is that  the involvement of parents in our schools has decreased greatly because of the need for two wage earners in families. Common Core will totally freeze parents out of all decision processes concerning educational standards for their children–these will now be standards set by the federal government that have no room for individuality.

Common Core needs to be replaced by a plan that allows states and communities to set educational standards that fit their communities. In education, one size does not fit all.

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