All posts by Wintery Knight

https://winteryknight.com/
News

Felipe Calderon proposes pro-democracy electoral reforms in Mexico

Leave a comment

Story here from Townhall.

Excerpt:

President Felipe Calderon is proposing runoff elections in future presidential contests and re-election for many officials in Mexico’s most dramatic political reform attempt in decades.

The proposal announced Tuesday would still limit presidents to a single, six-year term, but it would relax Mexico’s ironclad ban on re-election of other officials. It also would allow independent candidates to run for public offices and would permit citizen initiatives.

“The idea is to give citizens more power, to give them the capacity to shape public life and to strengthen our democracy,” Calderon said in a televised address.

But reforms would require a string of tough-to-pass constitutional amendments and they are likely to come under fire from established parties who could see their power eroded by the changes.

Under the proposed reform, the winner of presidential elections would have to receive more than half of the votes to avoid a runoff with the next-highest vote getter.

[…]Calderon also proposed reducing the number of senators from 128 to 96 and congressmen from 500 to 400 as a way to cut government spending and “to facilitate the building of accords.”

Lawmakers and mayors could hold office for up to 12 years through re-election, making them more accountable, Calderon said.

“The public officials who want to remain in their posts will have to show their work and be accountable to voters who will then punish them or praise them with their votes,” he said.

The possibility of having to win re-election, and the permitting of independent candidates and citizen inititiatives should make a big difference – if he can get this all passed. It’s very, very bold.

Podcasts

Former midwife reveals sorry state of NHS maternity services

Leave a comment

Story here in the UK Daily Mail. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

I started working as a midwife in Basildon in 1995. I left to work as an independent midwife in January last year because I simply could not bear to let any more women down.

During a typical 12-hour shift, I could be the sole midwife in charge of six women in the antenatal ward  –  some in early labour  –  or one of two qualified midwives running a postnatal ward with up to 32 women.

If I was in the delivery unit, I would assist in the births of up to three babies a shift.

Obviously, if there was a crisis during a woman’s labour  –  such as a sudden need for an emergency Caesarean  –  there was always a surgical team on call, and there would be an anaesthetist available to administer epidurals and so on.

But in terms of the normal care through labour, that was all down to the midwives.

Although we were under huge stress even back in 1995, current cutbacks mean fewer and fewer midwives are caring for more and more women.

No wonder new mothers are encouraged to leave hospital just hours after giving birth.

When I started in the mid-Nineties, there were 35,000 midwives working in Britain. A year or two ago, that number had fallen to 25,000, more than half of whom were part-time.

What a mess! Here is my previous story about 4000 NHS patients denied hospital beds to give birth to children.

More NHS horror stories linked here.

Health care podcasts from the libertarian Cato Institute

I listened to these and thought they were filled with interesting details about the effects of Obamacare.

Now may be a good time to call your representatives in Washington and tell them not to pass the health care reform bill.

News

Christianity under fire from secular governments in San Francisco and Quebec

6 Comments

First story from LifeSiteNews about San Francisco.

Excerpt:

A panel of eleven judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in San Francisco will hear oral arguments tomorrow, December 16, concerning the constitutionality of the San Francisco Board of Supervisor’s resolution attacking the Catholic Church for its teachings against homosexual adoptions.

[…]The challenge was made on the grounds that the resolution expresses government hostility toward the Catholic Church and its moral teachings in violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.[…]The resolution refers to the Vatican as a “foreign country” meddling in the affairs of the city and proclaims the Church’s moral teaching and beliefs on homosexuality as “insulting to all San Franciscans,” “hateful,” “insulting and callous,” “defamatory,” “absolutely unacceptable,” and says that Church teaching shows “insensitivity and ignorance.”

And the second story also from LifeSiteNews about Quebec, the most secular and leftist province in Canada.

Excerpt:

The Quebec Government has promulgated a new provincial policy against “homophobia,” touted as the first of its kind from a North American jurisdiction.  While homosexuality is already effectively fully normalized within Quebec law, the policy, released on Friday by the Ministry of Justice, is essentially a manifesto for normalizing homosexuality on the social level.

[…]They highlight at several points the need to target schools and youth, as did the original 2007 report.  “Awareness-raising and educational measures must target young people and the institutions they frequent in order to increase their acceptance of sexual diversity,” the policy states.

Pulling the troops out of Iraq, free health care and tax increases on the “rich” sound good to many uninformed Christians during an election, but they need to be careful about losing their religious liberty.