News

Democrat senator Barbara Boxer introduces carbon tax legislation

3 Comments

From CNS News.

Excerpt:

Today, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced a bill to levy a carbon tax. But, back on Nov. 15 of last year, Pres. Obama’s press secretary promised the administration would “never” do so.

According to Reuters, the new tax law “would set a $20 tax for each ton of carbon dioxide equivalent a polluter would emit beyond a set limit, which would rise 5.6 percent annually over a 10-year period.”

Last November, however, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that would never happen:

“We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one.  The point the President was making is that our focus right now is the same as the American people’s focus, which is on the need to extend economic growth, expand job creation.  And task number one is dealing with these deadlines that pose real challenges to our economy, as he talked about yesterday.”

“A carbon tax will skyrocket [the] price of everything,” a statement from Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, warned today:

“It’s not just energy prices that would skyrocket from a carbon tax, the cost of nearly everything built in America would go up.”

The cost of everything is already going up because of inflation. This carbon tax is just going to make it worse, especially for the poor.

Commentary

Jennifer Roback Morse on the injustice of the American family court system

4 Comments

I find myself thinking about life-long married love on Valentine’s Day, so I’m going to post an article by marriage-defender Jennifer Roback Morse about one of the biggest challenges to life-long married love.

Excerpt:

Easy divorce opens the door for an unprecedented amount of government intrusion into ordinary people’s lives. This unacknowledged reality is the subject of Taken Into Custody, by Stephen Baskerville. With penetrating insight, the political scientist exposes the truly breathtaking consequences of no-fault divorce for the expansion of state power and the decline of personal autonomy.

First, no-fault divorce frequently means unilateral divorce: one party wants a divorce against the wishes of the other, who wants to stay married. Kim Basinger dumped Baldwin for no particular reason, unleashed the power of the Los Angeles Family Court system to inflict pain on him and, in the process, inflicted untold damage on their child. Second, the fact that one party wants to remain married means that the divorce has to be enforced. Baldwin wanted to stay married and to continue to be a husband and father. Yet, the coercive and intrusive machinery of the state must be wheeled into action to separate the reluctantly divorced party from the joint assets of the marriage, typically the home and the children.

Third, enforcing the divorce means an unprecedented blurring of the boundaries between public and private life. People under the jurisdiction of family courts can have virtually all of their private lives subject to its scrutiny. If the courts are influenced by feminist ideology, that ideology can extend its reach into every bedroom and kitchen in America. Baldwin ran the gauntlet of divorce industry professionals who have been deeply influenced by the feminist presumptions that the man is always at fault and the woman is always a victim. Thus, the social experiment of no-fault divorce, which most Americans thought was supposed to increase personal liberty, has had the consequence of empowering the state.

Some might think the legacy of no-fault divorce is an example of the law of unintended consequences in operation. That assumes its architects did not intend for unilateral divorce to result in the expansion of the state. But Baskerville makes the case in this book—as well as his 2008 monograph, “The Dangerous Rise of Sexual Politics,” in The Family in America—that at least some of the advocates of changes in family law certainly have intended to expand the power of the state over the private lives of law-abiding citizens.

She explains who is really behind the attempt to destroy marriage, and the answer might shock you.

It’s important for people to understand the real reasons why people are not getting married, so that we can do something to encourage them to marry that really fixes the problem. Talk to any man and he will tell you that aside from the concerns about the economy and the national debt, the main reason why he is not willing to get married is the unfairness of the family courts. If you don’t understand the threats that men are seeing with respect to marriage, it might be a good idea to take a look at this essay by Stephen Baskerville, hosted by the Christian Touchstone magazine. It’s a summary of the book that Dr. Morse reviewed. I consider that book “Taken Into Custody” to be a must-read for anyone contemplating marriage.

News

Childless single adults “co-parenting” children in loveless partnerships

2 Comments

Dina sent me this depressing article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

An increasing number of childless men and women, who are finding themselves single at 40, are now pairing up to build families, minus any romance.

Instead of becoming single parents by choice, these middle-age professional are turning to co-parenting, a growing trend where singles meet online with the sole objective to become
equal partners in raising a child.

Here’s one case:

Dawn Pieke, 43, is one woman who turned to co-parenting after her live-in boyfriend, who she was was ready to have children with, cheated on her.

‘I’ve met so many women in this same situation, who aren’t married and feel like they missed the boat,’ she said.

Ms Pieke said she found a Facebook group devoted to co-parenting, and soon found Australian resident Fabian Blue, 41, who wanted to be an equal partner in raising a child as much as she did.

She wanted a baby, but feared doing it alone because it was important for her to have a child who knew their father. She said, ‘I didn’t grow up with my dad.’

So rather than focusing on a love match, she decided to find someone to share both the financial and emotional stresses of child rearing.

Mr Blue had considered adoption, but ‘figured no one would let a single gay male adopt a child, and I didn’t have the kind of income for a surrogate,’ he said.

Here’s another one:

Rachel Hope, a 41-year-old real estate developer and freelance writer in Los Angeles, is usingModamily to seek a man who lives near her, is healthy, and ‘has his financial stuff together,’ she toldthe New York Times.

She met the athletic Parker Williams, a gay 42-year-old founder of QTheory, a charity auction company also in Los Angeles, and since October, the pair have been in serious discussions about having, and raising, a child together.

Ms Hope, who has a 22-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter, both from co-parenting partnerships, and believes she may have found a third co-parent in Mr Parker, revealed that her first co-parent was a close friend – they decided to become non-romantic partners because of their belief that the institution of marriage was broken.

While they both had romantic relationships with others, they were first and foremost committed to their son, she said.

‘I get all the benefits of being married but I didn’t have all the weather patterns of sexual-romantic destabilization,’ she explained to Buzzfeed. ‘He was late twice in 20 years. And my son is extraordinary.

I’m not surprised by this. This is the next step up from single motherhood by choice, IVF and gay marriage. Children have become commodities, like an iPhone or a hand bag. They have no rights, and their needs are being neglected by selfish, narcissistic adults. These adults can’t be bothered to make wise decisions that will lead to a stable environment in which to raise a child. They don’t care that the child will never see the love between his or her mother and father. They only care about themselves.