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Michele Bachmann files papers to create “Tea Party Caucus”

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Meet your future President, America

Story from radical left-wing extremists at CNN.

Excerpt:

The 2010 midterms will offer Tea Party activists their first chance to elect their preferred candidates to national office. But once those candidates get to Washington, there might already be a “Tea Party Caucus” waiting to greet them.

That’s because a Tea Party favorite, GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann, has filed paperwork to start such a caucus in the House.

In a letter dated July 15 and sent to Rep. Robert Brady, the Democratic chairman of the House Administration Committee, Bachmann asked to register the group for the 111th Congress.

Bachmann writes: “I would like to register the House Tea Party Caucus as a Congressional Member Organization for the 111th Congress. The House Tea Party Caucus will serve as an informal group of Members dedicated to promote Americans’ call for fiscal responsibility, adherence to the Constitution and limited government.”

Here’s some video from Fox News – she’s looking very comfortable in this interview.

By the way, you can contribute to her 2010 election campaign here. And you should. If there’s anybody that social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and foreign policy conservatives can support, it’s Michele. She is perfect across the board. I wish she were our President right now, but we have to wait till 2012 to see what will happen.

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Massachusetts firms canceling health coverage due to rising costs

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From the Boston Globe. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the state’s already-stressed budget.

Since April 1, the date many insurance contracts are renewed for small businesses, the owners of about 90 small companies terminated their insurance plans with Braintree-based broker Jeff Rich and indicated in a follow-up survey that they were relying on publicly-funded insurance for their employees.

In Sandwich, business consultant Bill Fields said he has been hired by small businesses to enroll about 400 workers in state-subsidized care since April, because the company owners said they could no longer afford to provide coverage. Fields said that is by far the largest number he has handled in such a short time.

“They are giving up out of frustration,’’ Fields said of the employers. “Most of them are very compassionate but they simply can’t afford health insurance any more.’’

[…]The Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy annually surveys employers and found no significant drop in coverage as of the end of 2009, when more than three-quarters of companies offered health insurance.

But insurance brokers say the pace of terminations has picked up considerably since then among small companies, of which there are thousands in Massachusetts. Many of these companies — restaurants, day-care centers, hair salons, and retail shops — typically pay such low wages that their workers qualify for state-subsidized health insurance when their employers drop their plans.

“Those employers are trying to keep their doors open, and to the extent they can cut expenses, they will cut health insurance because they know their people can go to Commonwealth Care,’’ said Mark Gaunya, president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Underwriters, a trade group representing more than 1,000 brokers and other insurance professionals.

Remember, Obamacare is patterned after these state-run health care plans from Massachusetts and Tennessee. These plans try to cover more people, which increases demand. But supply is the same. What results is a shortage. Prices rise. And when prices price, employers can no longer afford to pay for health care coverage for their employees. You can’t keep your health care plan when the state takes over health care. They are going to have to cut costs and you are going to have your coverage limited.

Here’s what the ultra-left-wing New York Times has to say about the move by companies to reduce health care choices and cut costs.

Excerpt:

As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.

The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.

But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.

The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.

[…]But choice — or at least choice that will not cost you — is likely to be increasingly scarce as health insurers and employers scramble to find ways of keep premiums from becoming unaffordable. Aetna, Cigna, the UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint are all trying out plans with limited networks.

The size of these networks is typically much smaller than traditional plans. In New York, for example, Aetna offers a narrow-network plan that has about half the doctors and two-thirds of the hospitals the insurer typically offers. People enrolled in this plan are covered only if they go to a doctor or hospital within the network, but insurers are also experimenting with plans that allow a patient to see someone outside the network but pay much more than they would in a traditional plan offering out-of-network benefits.

It’s happening, folks. The only choice that liberals want you to have is the choice to kill unborn babies and to marry anyone or anything you want. They don’t want you to have a choice to keep the money you earn, or to spend the money you earn on whatever you want. You can’t buy health care products and services unless they allow you to buy health care products and services. They believe that the economy works better when you spread the wealth around.

Polemics

MUST-READ: Is Wes Widner right to oppose short-term mission trips?

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Here’s a challenging post about short-term missions (1-3 weeks) from Wes Widner. Read and see what you think.

Excerpt:

One of the biggest elephants in the evangelical, missiological, soul-winning room is the lingering question of just how much good short-term mission trips are and whether or not they merely amount to sanctified vacations taken at the expense of others.

Now, to be fair, I’m not claiming that either the missionaries or those who fund them are intentionally nefarious. On the contrary; I believe that for the most part, those who go on short term mission trips and those who support them financially have honest evangelistic intentions. I am simply wondering whether we’ve fostered this “super spiritual” mindset around something we call “the mission field” and, as a result, neglect to ask the burdensome and unpopular questions of stewardship and effectiveness.

He explains how people misunderstand the great commission by thinking that it requires people to go to foreign lands, and then he writes this:

Because of this misunderstanding of the great commission and what it truly means to make disciples of those around us, we tend to overlook questions of stewardship and logistics. In fact, since we think the imperative is to go we tend to start to think that any cost is acceptable and questions of logistics are a mere nuisance.

How much does a round-trip plane ticket usually cost to travel overseas? $1,000, $2,000? More? Once you count the cost of food, lodging, transportation, etc. you can often approach figures well over $3,000 just to send a single person overseas. Is this really the best way to reach the lost?

I agree with him completely that it is not a good use of money to send laypeople as missionaries to foreign countries. However, I do think that it is worth it to send scholars with doctorates to foreign universities and other centers of influence to lecture and debate. So basically we agree on the stewardship question, except if the missionary is a scholar headed to a center of cultural influence. What laypeople can do instead of going themselves is to work hard in school, get good jobs, and to financially support Christian scholars in their studies and public events at home or abroad – e.g. – William Lane Craig debating Muslims in Turkish universities or debating atheists in Chinese universities, etc.

I also agree with Wes that the right way for laypeople to disciple non-Christians is to deal with the people who are around you in your workplace, etc. The thing is, it is much more difficult to build a relationship with non-Christians on the same social rung as you are who you have to work with day in and day out. That’s much harder because you have to live as a public Christian where you are, and let it affect your life more personally. This isn’t flying off somewhere to deal with poor strangers who you will never see again. It’s much easier to fly off somewhere and not to have to deal with people over the long-term. Flyig off to “do good” gives a person the feelings of “being good” and “doing something” but without any of the hard work and persecution of having peers equal to you in social standing seeing you every day bearing with suffering and striving for holiness. Instead of trying to squeeze feelings of goodness out of temporary experiences “helping the poor”, we should be dealing with the smartest and most challenging people in our own lives – family, friends and co-workers. It’s not as emotionally fulfilling and spectacular, but it’s where God has placed us. It’s harder, too.

Secretly sponsoring the PhD studies of an aspiring Christian philosopher, lawyer or scientist would be an excellent use of your money, although it is not as flashy or emotional as helping the poor in Africa. You can’t really tell people back home about your spiritual experiences signing a check to bring in William Lane Craig to debate. You can’t really show impressive pictures of yourself working overtime to keep your job so you have money to support influential Christians like Michele Bachmann or Jennifer Roback Morse. But we have to ask ourselves which is more effective – not which caters to our emotional needs to get attention to force spiritual experiences and to feel good about ourselves.

More Wes:

Why do we go? Why do we really go? If our real aim is to make disciples as we are commanded to, then we will gladly step back and examine the questions raised above (and many will come to the conclusion that short-term, long-distance mission trips are simply not a good idea) but I believe the main reason most Christians go is to satisfy a desire for an emotional experience which they equate with “being close to God”. And therein lies the heart of our dilemma.

In the end, what’s the difference?

When we take vacations, we are expecting experiential reward. We don’t expect to leave a lasting impact on the lands we travel to, and we expect to receive a euphoric high from our experiences. Sadly, most testimonies I hear from short-term missionaries are wholly self-centered (though they are couched in a plethora of “Jesus speak”) with the focus being on the person as opposed to the message and often with little thought as to the lasting impact and cost vs. benefit to the congregation that helped send them.

We have a responsibility to God to think about what we are doing and produce results for him. We need to stop having pictures taken of ourselves hugging children in foreign countries, and to instead think about working hard in school, studying hard things that matter, and saving our money, so we can actually move the ball forward. I know lots of Hollywood celebrities who make a big deal out of supporting animal rights and global warming, but they want nothing to do with chastity, fidelity, marriage, parenting, etc. Christians should not be thinking of Christianity as a fashionable cause that allows them to feel good and be recognized by others. We’re not Hollywood celebrities. We’re supposed to be concerned with truth, not feelings.