Category Archives: News

News

Felipe Calderon proposes pro-democracy electoral reforms in Mexico

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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.

News

Christianity under fire from secular governments in San Francisco and Quebec

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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.

News

Why the mortgage cramdown bill would hurt consumers

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The Democrats are pushing a “cramdown” bill which is a bill designed to allow federal judges to renegotiate the terms of delinquent mortgages when the person who entered into a contract to borrow the money cannot repay it. The problem with this bill is that it hurts the very people it is intended to help – because as soon as banks see that they cannot rely of the courts to enforce contracts, they will immediately stop making loans to those with mediocre credit ratings. So, the people who most need to borrow money will be the hardest hit. And it opens the door for the government to then seize control of the banks and force them to make the loans, so that we turn into Venezuela.

Consider this article from the Heritage Foundation:

Just as the housing market is showing definite signs that it is stabilizing after a lengthy drop in housing prices, the House of Representatives is about to vote on proposal that would destabilize it once again while also raising the cost of mortgages for future home buyers.

The proposal – to be offered by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) as an amendment to the financial regulation bill now before the House -would allow bankruptcy judges to reduce the principal owed on a mortgage, a practice often referred to as a “cramdown.” Judges would also be able to reduce interest rates or lengthen the term of the mortgage.

This is a huge policy mistake that would help only a few people while raising the cost of borrowing for thousands of moderate-income and first-time homebuyers.

Fortunately the bill failed to pass, but it does show you the fatal flaw of Democrat emotion-based policy-making. They hurt the very people they are trying to help – the cause the very crisis they are trying to alleviate. That is standard operating procedure for Democrats. They don’t understand the incentives they are creating when they pass “compassionate” laws.

Democrat secures TARP funds for unemployed homeowners

On another subject, take a look at this AP article. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

Excerpt:

Call it the $6 billion boycott.

By boycotting a key House committee vote last week and threatening to abandon support for banking regulations, members of the Congressional Black Caucus got $4 billion added to a Wall Street regulation bill and $2 billion to a proposed House jobs bill in spending they sought for African American communities.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., this week inserted $3 billion to the legislation to provide low-interest loans to unemployed homeowners in danger of foreclosure. He added $1 billion for neighborhood revitalization programs.

The money would come out of the $700 billion financial rescue fund.

“For those of us who walked out, it was absolutely essential that we have parts of that legislation directed toward helping people who have been left out of all of these bailouts,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., one of 10 black caucus members in the Financial Services Committee, said…Among the caucus’ demands were greater assistance for minority-owned auto dealerships and banks that lend in African-American communities and more government advertising in minority-owned media.

This is taking money out of the private sector, which creates jobs, and bailing out people who bought too much house. Taking money out of the private sector destroys economic growth. And that is why we have a 10% unemployment rate.