This story is from National Review, and it really made me think about where all the money that I’ve paid in taxes over the years has gone.
Excerpt:
After Alabama reinstated food-stamp work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, the rolls dropped by 85 percent.
[…]According to the Alabama Department of Human Resources, between January 1 and May 1, 13 counties in the Yellowhammer State saw their food-stamp rolls drop by a combined 85 percent. The reason? At the beginning of the year, those 13 counties joined the rest of the state in ending a years-long exemption from work requirements for ABAWDs — able-bodied adults without dependents — participating in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
On New Year’s Day, there were 5,538 ABAWD enrollees across the 13 formerly exempted counties; by the beginning of May, there were 831. That mirrors a sharp statewide decline, which began on January 1, 2016, when the same exemption ended in Alabama’s 54 other counties. At the beginning of last year, the state had 49,940 able-bodied adults without dependents on its SNAP rolls; by May 1 of this year, that number was 7,483 — a drop of 85 percent.
The article notes that work requirements on welfare programs were dismantled at the federal level by the Obama administration in 2009.
As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by President Obama that February, Congress “temporarily” suspended the conditions on ABAWD SNAP enrollees nationwide. The suspension was supposed to extend only through 2010, but no government initiative is temporary. Eight years later, ABAWD time-limit waivers are still in effect in at least part of 36 states; ten states remain entirely exempt.
The article also notes that Kansas (in 2013) rejected Obama’s federal waiver. The result? Welfare program usage fell 72%.
The article concludes:
The overall food-stamp population remains large: Forty-four million Americans — about one in seven — at a cost of $71 billion to the federal government last year. Compared to other categories of recipient, that of able-bodied adults without dependents is small. But more than savings is at stake in removing clingers-on from the dole. A free people does not depend on the government for its daily bread. Those who can work, should.
People who have jobs don’t need welfare, but these people were literally choosing not to work so that they could collect welfare. They could have worked if they wanted to, but they chose not to.
How do you think that people who are dependent on government vote? Do they vote for smaller government and lower taxes? All that Obama achieved by attacking welfare reform was to buy hundreds of thousands of votes from dependent people. But he didn’t use his own money to do this – he used mine. I could have used my money for my own life priorities, but Democrat politicians know better than me, apparently. My job is just to work to earn the money, but I’m too stupid to know how to spend it. Other smarter people who are better than me know best about how to spend it. And they spend it on buying the votes of lazy people so they can get re-elected.
Senator Bernie Sanders had an interesting exchange with White House deputy budget director nominee Russell Vought.Religious liberty defender David French writes about it in National Review.
First, French’s rough transcription of the dialog:
Sanders: Let me get to this issue that has bothered me and bothered many other people. And that is in the piece that I referred to that you wrote for the publication called Resurgent. You wrote, “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned.” Do you believe that that statement is Islamophobic?
Vought: Absolutely not, Senator. I’m a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith. That post, as I stated in the questionnaire to this committee, was to defend my alma mater, Wheaton College, a Christian school that has a statement of faith that includes the centrality of Jesus Christ for salvation, and . . .
Sanders: I apologize. Forgive me, we just don’t have a lot of time. Do you believe people in the Muslim religion stand condemned? Is that your view?
Vought: Again, Senator, I’m a Christian, and I wrote that piece in accordance with the statement of faith at Wheaton College:
Sanders: I understand that. I don’t know how many Muslims there are in America. Maybe a couple million. Are you suggesting that all those people stand condemned? What about Jews? Do they stand condemned too?
Vought: Senator, I’m a Christian . . .
Sanders (shouting): I understand you are a Christian, but this country are made of people who are not just — I understand that Christianity is the majority religion, but there are other people of different religions in this country and around the world. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?
Vought: Thank you for probing on that question. As a Christian, I believe that all individuals are made in the image of God and are worthy of dignity and respect regardless of their religious beliefs. I believe that as a Christian that’s how I should treat all individuals . . .
Sanders: You think your statement that you put into that publication, they do not know God because they rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned, do you think that’s respectful of other religions?
Vought: Senator, I wrote a post based on being a Christian and attending a Christian school that has a statement of faith that speaks clearly in regard to the centrality of Jesus Christ in salvation.
Sanders: I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.
French comments:
This is a disgraceful and unconstitutional line of questioning from the man who came close to being the Democratic nominee for president. He’s not only imposing a religious test for public office in direct violation of Article VI of the United States Constitution, he’s gone so far as to label this decent man — who’s seeking to serve his country in a vital role — as “not someone who this country is supposed to be about.” Vought expressed entirely orthodox Christian beliefs. There is nothing “extreme” about his statements, and they mirror the statements of faith of countless Christian churches and schools across the land. Are these believers also not fit for public office?
The Christian view is, of course, that some people choose to separate themselves from God’s presence in the afterlife because of their refusal to respond to God’s revelation of himself in the time they have while they are still alive. People could respond to general revelation and the moral law written on their hearts, or if they are able to, they could investigate deeper, studying scientific evidence or historical evidence. But each person is morally obligated to seek the truth about God as he really is. God reveals himself to those who seek him.
Surprisingly, many people with advanced degrees and great careers and great wealth want nothing to do with seeking the truth about God’s existence and Jesus Christ. I know. I work next to brilliant software engineers who have utterly stupid and ignorant opinions about God’s existence and the historical Jesus. And they go their whole lives chasing health, wealth and fame rather than buckle down with the books and look into these things. They would prefer not to look into these things and that’s why they remain separated from God eternally, after they die. God isn’t grading people on whether they go to a good college, marry, have a great career, make lots of money, have lots of kids, and send their kids to great colleges to become doctors (wonderful though all that is). God is concerned about whether you know who he is, whether you accept what Jesus Christ is has done for you in history, and whether you love God in your priority-setting and decision-making.
Disagreement with non-Christians does not make Christians mean to non-Christians. You can just look at Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan to see how Christians are supposed to treat people that we disagree with about religion. In this life, Christians are called on to love their neighbors – including their neighbors of other faiths or of no faiths – as themselves. In fact, historically speaking, one of the main reasons why Christianity expanded so quickly is that early Christians took the obligation to love their neighbors so seriously. Unlike Democrats, we didn’t outsource caring for the poor and the sick to the government. Instead of being “generous” by spending other people’s money, we were generous with our own money. This is foreign to most Democrats, who typically give nothing to charity, but make a big show of spending taxpayer money – money that they never earned themselves.
Some people may ask, “what about those who have never heard of Jesus?” For the problem of those people who have never heard of Jesus before they die, we have the middle knowledge solution. Christians love people who disagree with them, and we hope and pray that they will take the time to investigate these matters for themselves so that they come to a true worldview. I pray for non-Christians – this is a normal part of the Christian life. Disagreeing with someone doesn’t mean that you treat them badly. For the problem of those who are not able to search out the answers from science and history, God will judge them on their response to God’s existence in nature – which everyone has access to. The design of the universe is one of the reasons given by people for an intuitive belief in a Creator and Designer, and we all have the moral law written on our hearts.
What about Sanders? Is he tolerant of other religions? Does he treat people of other religions well? My opinion based on what I know of Sanders is that Sanders is an atheist, and so he is in disagreement with the factual claims of every religion on the planet. They’re all wrong, according to Sanders. We’re already seeing a lot of attacks by secular leftists against Christians using government as a weapon. Sanders would take it up a notch, by actually preventing Christians from serving in political roles. To me, that seems like what Hitler did to the Jews in Nazi Germany – drumming them out of positions of influence solely because their religion differed from his own pagan religion.
Very interesting for me now, to think back to the Christians I knew who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democrat primary last election. Why did they do it? Sanders has virtually no positions in common with what the Bible teaches. Not just on social issues, obviously, but also on fiscal and foreign policy issues. He is the complete anti-Bible politician. I believe that the main reason that some Christians supported Bernie Sanders is because they wanted to feel good about themselves, and be perceived as “generous” by other people around them. They did not want to do this by spending their own money and time to help others. They wanted to feel good and look generous by having Bernie Sanders steal other people’s money and time to “help” others through enormous government spending and borrowing from future taxpayers. They wanted to take money away from individual taxpayers who earned the money by working, and let the secular leftists in government spend it on buying votes from their favored special interest groups. It was all about envy, theft and coveting. Things that no real Christian would ever choose when voting for President.
YouTube has deleted a video that showed Planned Parenthood executives admitting abortion is “killing,” leading pro-life activists to accuse the site of censorship.
[…]The link to the three-minute video now redirects to a message from YouTube, saying, “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Terms of Service.” It does not elaborate on which terms or condition the video violated, nor does it give a reason why it was taken down. YouTube did not return request for comment.
But the Daily Signal has posted something about the video.
Exerpt:
Lawyers for Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden released a new video Thursday that exposes horrifying statements from leaders of the abortion industry during National Abortion Federation conventions in California in 2014 and 2015.
The National Abortion Federation describes itself as “the professional association of abortion providers.” The group says it “exhibits and presents at numerous conferences … about topics related to abortion care.”
The video notes that “Planned Parenthood makes up about 50 percent of [the National Abortion Federation’s] members and leadership.”
The video opens with a Planned Parenthood medical director speaking on a panel about “heads that get stuck” and the “hemorrhages that we manage.”
She is later seen telling a panel: “Given that we might actually both agree that there’s violence in here, ask me why I come to work every day. Let’s just give them all the violence, it’s a person, it’s killing, let’s just give them all that.”
A Planned Parenthood abortionist then complains about how an unborn child “is a tough little object” and “very difficult” to take apart.
A lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union is heard remarking, “When the skull is broken, that’s really sharp” as the crowd laughs about the difficulty of “getting that skull out.”
Another Planned Parenthood official, speaking on a panel, recalls that an “eyeball just fell down into my lap, and that is gross.” The crowd laughs.
The video shows a procurement manager from StemExpress, which acquires fetal tissue for research, commenting that there are “a lot of [abortion] clinics that we work with that, I mean, it helps them out significantly.”
At another point, a Planned Parenthood official says of clinics providing tissue from abortions that “the truth is that some might want to do it … to increase their revenues. And we can’t stop them.”
The Daily Signal article notes that California is currently prosecuting the Center for Medical Progress for releasing videos of abortionists explaining in plain English what it is exactly that they do for a living, and how they maximize revenue earned by killing unborn children.
CMP is being defended by the Alliance Defending Freedom.
If abortion were such a wonderful thing, you would think that abortion providers would be anxious to brag to the public about the great work they are doing.
Instead, countries that have legalized abortion have to censor news stories and prosecute nurses and doctors who refuse to perform abortions. Naturally, these nurses and doctors are not allowed to tell their stories or they will face criminal charges.
There is a great push in the United States right now by the abortion profiteers to force pro-life nurses and doctors out of the medical profession.
Doctors in the United States cannot be forced to perform abortions or assist suicides. But that may soon change. Bioethicists and other medical elites have launched a frontal assault against doctors seeking to practice their professions under the values established by the Hippocratic Oath. The campaign’s goal? To force doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others in the health field who hold pro-life or orthodox religious views to choose between their careers and their convictions.
Ethics opinions, legislation, and court filings seeking to deny “medical conscience” have proliferated as journals, legislative bodies, and the courts have taken up the cause. In the last year, these efforts have moved from the relative hinterlands of professional discussions into the center of establishment medical discourse. Most recently, preeminent bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel—one of Obamacare’s principal architects—coauthored with Ronit Y. Stahl an attack on medical conscience in the New England Journal of Medicine, perhaps the world’s most prestigious medical journal. When advocacy of this kind is published by the NEJM, it is time to sound the air raid sirens.
Naturally, in countries with single payer socialist medicine, that effort is much further along. Canada, for example, has been prosecuting pro-life nurses and doctors for decades. In a signle-payer system run by the secular left, there just is no room for conscience, much as there was no room for Germans who wanted to abstain from killing innocent Jews in Nazi Germany. When you are in a single payer health care system, you have to kill or be prosecuted for listening to your conscience.
Ontario, Canada, has passed a law formally legalizing lethal injection euthanasia. And it will force all provincial doctors to be complicit by either doing the deed themselves to all legally qualified patients who request to be killed, or by tasking them with procuring a death doctor.
From the website of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (my emphasis):
In Ontario, health regulatory colleges are responsible for regulating their respective professions in the public interest. In doing so, colleges may establish policies and standards that their members must comply with, including policies and standards regarding medical assistance in dying.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario requires that when physicians are unwilling to provide certain elements of care for reasons of conscience or religion, an effective referral to another health-care provider must be provided to the patient. An effective referral means “a referral made in good faith, to a non-objecting, available, and accessible physician, other health-care professional, or agency”.
Think about this. Three years ago, it would have been a felony for doctors to kill patients, potentially landing them in prison.
Now, refusing to participate in homicide could cost them their medical licenses.
Single payer countries are very supportive of killing the elderly, since this reduces health care costs and allows them to have more health care money to buy votes by providing things that leftists want with taxpayer money, e.g. free sex-reassignment surgery, free contraceptives, free drug injection clinics for people addicted to illegal drugs, free breast enlargements, free IVF for unmarried elderly feminists, etc.
I see the effort to censor the CMP videos as part of the attempt to nationalize health care and criminalize dissent from the leftist agenda of deeming certain lives not as valuable as other lives.
WINTERY KNIGHT 