Government & Politics . . . Speaking of Props!
Published March 7, 2010 | 
….Never underestimate this president’s lack of shame, though — or his penchant for Chicago-style politics…..
Digest, Patriot Post, March 5, 2010
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.”
–Thomas Jefferson
When Reconciliation Doesn’t Mean Getting Along
Reconciliation is still the buzzword on Capitol Hill as Democrat “leaders” Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi try to figure out how to ram ObamaCare down our throats. Not that they see it that way; as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer put it, “That’s not ramming something through with a majority. It is doing what democracy calls for.” Well, this isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic: and the Founders set it up that way for a reason.
Accompanied by his teleprompter, Barack Obama began a renewed push for a vote on the health care bill by Easter when he met a group of people wearing lab coats in the Rose Garden on Wednesday (and he accused Rep. Eric Cantor of using a “prop” by bringing the 2,400-page bill itself to last week’s health care summit). Obama claimed that “new and improved” legislation “incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans.” As we said Tuesday, however, the problem isn’t whether the bill is “bipartisan.” A few Republican ideas sprinkled in won’t fix it. The problem, at its core, is that a plan for Congress to take over one-sixth of the U.S. economy is unconstitutional.
In the face of all evidence, the teleprompter continued, “I don’t believe we should give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America.” Huh? Giving government bureaucrats control over health care in America is precisely what Obama is proposing to do.
For all the talk about reconciliation in the Senate, the House vote may be the more important one. The Associated Press reports, “The House passed health overhaul legislation by a narrow 220-215 vote in November, but since then several Democrats have defected or left the House. To avoid a filibuster in the Senate that Democrats can’t defeat, Obama is now pushing the House to approve the Senate’s version of the bill, along with a package of changes to fix elements of the Senate bill that House Democrats don’t like, including a special Medicaid deal for Nebraska and a tax on high-value insurance plans that is opposed by organized labor.”
If Pelosi is able to strong-arm the Senate bill through the House with a bare majority, Senate reconciliation becomes moot. With three vacancies, Democrats need just 217 votes for passage, and there are a handful of Democrats who voted “no” in November who now say they’re undecided. On the other hand, 12 pro-life Democrats, led by Bart Stupak of Michigan, say they’re prepared to switch sides and scuttle ObamaCare if sufficient protections against abortion funding aren’t put in place. The Senate bill doesn’t meet their benchmark.
Never underestimate this president’s lack of shame, though — or his penchant for Chicago-style politics. For example, Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) voted against ObamaCare in November, but he is now “undecided.” So on Wednesday, Obama nominated Jim’s brother Scott to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Offering jobs for playing the White House way is nothing new, and Scott Matheson is, to be fair, a well-credentialed nominee. However, even the appearance of selling judgeships for health care votes would give pause to a more honorable president.
As for leftist sentiment, perhaps MSNBC host Ed Schultz best summed it up this week, saying, “[S]mall government has never gotten anybody any health care.”
“The Republicans have a choice,” Schultz declared. “Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. … We have people in need and they need to be helped.”
Memo to Ed: If government would get out of the way, those people might be able to help themselves, as our Founders intended. Democrats aren’t about to let that happen because it really isn’t about helping those in need.
http://patriotpost.us/edition/2010/03/05/digest/
The Governing Elite vs. the Rest of Us
Published March 7, 2010 | By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson, Catholic Exchange, March 6, 2010
The truly revolutionary American idea of government as the servant of the people may be fading away. Many of today’s so-called “civil servants” are a protected, privileged class. While Middle America struggles through a difficult recession, a lot of government employees have lived on the gravy train.
Here are some facts to buttress that assertion:
Since the recession began in 2008, a period during which approximately eight million private-sector workers lost their jobs and millions more saw their income decline, the number of federal employees is increasing at a 7 percent per-year rate and their income is holding up quite nicely. According to the Cato Institute, the average federal worker’s pay and benefits now approximates $120,000 per year, or roughly double the compensation of the average private-sector employee. Factor out the lavish government fringe benefits and look at salary only, and the civil servant is still far ahead: $71,197 vs. $49,935.
During this recession, the percentage of federal employees earning annual base salaries above $100,000 increased from 14 to 19 percent. The number of Defense Department employees being paid more than $150,000 per year increased from 1,868 to 10,100. Before, the Department of Transportation had one employee with a salary above $170,000, but now has 1,690.
As a gesture toward fiscal responsibility, President Obama reduced what was supposed to be a 2.4 percent raise in federal salaries this year to 2.0 percent. That still compares quite favorably to the zero-percent cost-of-living increase that Social Security recipients’ have received.
Also on tap are handsome pay raises for the employees of the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA has distinguished itself recently by incurring a loss of $54 billion in a mismanaged home-loan business. And of course we can’t neglect to mention the CEOs of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, who have been cleared to receive as much as $6 million in salary this year while being subsidized to the tune of over $100 billion in monetary transfusions from the Treasury and the Fed.
Other federal agencies may not be losing money by the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars in such an obvious way, but money appropriated for them by Congress still seems to vanish into a black hole. For example, statistics from 2006 showed that if all the federal dollars spent by antipoverty programs had been given directly to Americans below the poverty line, a poor family of four would have received $67,000. The actual aid received by poor Americans is less than half that amount. What explains such glaring inefficiency? Most of those funds are consumed by the cushy pay packages of the army of bureaucrats who administer those programs. And let’s not even get into the Department of Agriculture, which has one bureaucrat for every nine or ten full-time farmers.
The preferential treatment received by government employees was also reflected in how last year’s stimulus money has been spent. According to ProPublica, the District of Columbia received more than four times as much money per capita as the average of the 15 states that received the most money. (Oh, did I mention that members of the Pelosi/Reid Congress voted themselves a 6 percent increase in funds for their staffs and other support?)
It isn’t just the federal government workers who have an unusually lucrative setup. Gov. Christie of New Jersey recently announced his intention to reform the pension plan for the Garden State’s public employees. Consider an incredible fact: According to Christie, a 49-year-old state employee who had contributed $124,000 toward his retirement is eligible to receive $3.3 million in pension payments and another half-million dollars in heath care benefits over the rest of his life; and a retired teacher who had put $62,000 toward her pension and not a penny for health care is scheduled to receive $1.4 million in pensions and $215,000 in health care benefits. Taxpayers pay for this.
This story is repeated over and over in a number of states that now teeter on the brink of bankruptcy due to billions of dollars of obligations to state employees. It’s hard to refer to these people — many of whom, of course, are wonderful, decent human beings — as civil “servants” when their salaries and/or benefits are so much higher than those of the taxpayers who pay for the generous compensation packages of their government “servants.”
Abraham Lincoln’s ideal of government “of the people, by the people, for the people” seems to have become government of the governing elite, by the governing elite, and for the governing elite. The current imbalance can’t continue. Something’s got to give.
Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson is a faculty member, economist, and contributing scholar with the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College.
http://catholicexchange.com/2010/03/06/127791/
Is This What Happens When You Lack Core Principles and Values?
Published March 7, 2010 | Obama’s Old Tune: No Reconciliation
Patriot Post, March 5, 2010
Barack Obama didn’t always think ramming through health care “reform” with reconciliation was a good idea.
During a CBS-TV election night interview on Nov. 2, 2004, for example, Obama said, “My understanding of the Senate is, is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen, which means that Democrats and Republicans have to ask the question: Do we have the will to move an American agenda forward, not a Democratic or Republican agenda forward?”
At the Change to Win convention on Sept. 25, 2007, he declared, “The bottom line is that our health-care plans are similar. The question, once again, is: Who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we’re going to have to have a 60 percent majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We’re going to have to have a majority, to get the bill to my desk, that is not just a 50-plus-1 majority.”
He didn’t stop there. On Oct. 9, 2007, in an interview with the Concord (NH) Monitor, Obama pontificated, “You’ve got to break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-1 pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of 50 plus 1, but you can’t govern. You know, you get Air Force One — I mean, there are a lot of nice perks, but you can’t deliver on health care. We’re not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-1 strategy.”
At the Center for American Progress on July 12, 2006, he confided, “You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with my fellow progressives — and some of these have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion — is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove, where we identify our core base, we throw them red meat, we get a 50-plus-1 victory. But see, Karl Rove doesn’t need a broad consensus, because he doesn’t believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a sizable majority.”
Obama was right then, though he was merely campaigning. He has always been motivated by radical ideology and narcissism. His present course of calling for a 50-plus-1 victory is just part of the game.
http://patriotpost.us/perspective/2010/03/05/obamas-old-tune-no-reconciliation/
The Sunday Homily: LENT AND OUR SPIRITUAL PROGRESS
Published March 7, 2010 | Fr. James Farfaglia, March 6, 2010
Father James Farfaglia is pastor of St. Helena of the True Cross of Jesus Catholic Church in Corpus Christi, Texas. His email address is fjficthus@gmail.com. You can visit Father’s Electronic Parish at www.fjicthus.com.
http://donotbediscouraged.blogspot.com/2010/03/sunday-homily-lent-and-our-spiritual.html
DID YOU KNOW . . . . The U.S. Catholic Bishops Have Bought in to the Myth of “Global Warming”?
Published March 7, 2010 | SOURCE: USCCB’s Environmental Justice Program: Caring for God’s Creation
What are the moral implications of climate change? Who is most impacted? What should the Catholic community do?
The Catholic Coalition on Climate Change was launched in 2006 to help the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Catholic community address these issues.
Learn about Catholic Principles and Teachings applied to the issue of global climate change:
- Prudence—thoughtful, deliberate, and reasoned action
- Poverty—concern for those least able to bear the burden
- The Common Good—promotion of solidarity over self-interest
Catholic Coalition on Climate Change supports and complements USCCB’s Office of Social Development and World Peace and the bishops’ Environmental Justice Program. The Coalition is funded with generous assistance from the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.
The Catholic Coalition on Climate Change
http://www.lcwr.org/lcwrsocialjustice/eoclentcalendar2010.pdf
GOSPEL & MEDITATION: The Goodness of Evil
Published March 7, 2010 | Father Shane Lambert, LC
Luke 13:1-9
At that time some people who were present there told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. He said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” And he told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ´For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?´ He said to him in reply, ´Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.´”
Introductory Prayer: My Lord and my God! I believe that you came as my Savior. I know you wish to save me from everlasting harm. Thank you. I place all my trust in you. I love you, Lord, and I offer myself as an instrument for you to help others to know and love you, too.
Petition: Teach me, Lord, to repent, to turn to you and to spread your Good News.
1. Why is there Evil in the World? It can happen that people become scandalized or doubt God because of the evil and suffering they see in the world around them. Christ shows us that this attitude is mistaken because God says, “I swear I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but rather in the wicked man´s conversion, that he may live. Turn, turn from your evil ways!” (Ezekiel 33:11). God does no evil. It is we, his creatures, who do evil, and God suffers the consequences twice: He suffers when we reject him through our sins, and he then takes our sins upon himself and suffers on the Cross so that we might be redeemed. If anyone has a right to complain about the evil in the world, it is God. However, it is through forgiveness that God shows his power and his love. We should not be scandalized by evil, but examine our souls and repent of our own sinful deeds.
2. The Return to the Father “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). I am that tree which so far has given little or no fruit. Jesus is the gardener who sticks up for me and pleas to “fertilize me” instead of cutting me down. The fertilizer is Christ’s Body and Blood, which he sacrificed so that I might have life to the fullest. He wishes to give me his very self and to fill me with grace and thus “reconstruct” my weak, worn heart and person. What does he ask of me? I need to turn to him with both contrition for my sins and confidence in his healing love. I need to open myself to his saving grace. Am I fully aware of my need for Christ, and do I turn to him hungrily? If not, why not?
3. Bearing Fruit “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). After three years of public ministry, we see in today’s Gospel that Jesus is ready to put his life on the line for me – but does the Son of Man find any faith or love in my heart? “God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). He will soon shed his blood under Pontius Pilate – for my sins. Will he find my tree barren and grant me this one last “year” of mercy? Or will he find my tree blooming with sweet-smelling fruits in good works performed out of love for him? He will hang from a dead tree on Good Friday, and his corpse, given out of love for me, will become real fruit, real moisture and fertilizer to my arid soul. Let him make of me a fruitful fig tree, so that others, too, may come to repentance on my account.
Conversation with Christ: Teach me, Lord, to repent, to turn to you, and to spread your Good News. I believe in your mission of saving souls, including mine. I hope in you because of the time of mercy that you grant me. I want to love by spreading the Good News of your salvation. Let me be a messenger of your love.
Resolution: I will serve others by voicing Christian hope in my conversations today.
STS. PERPETUA AND FELICITY AND THEIR COMPANIONS
Published March 7, 2010 | CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY, MARCH 07, 2010
Saints Perpetua and Felicity were martyrs who died for the faith around the year 203.
St. Perpetua was a young, well-educated, noblewoman and mother living in the city of Carthage in North Africa. Her mother was a Christian and her father was a pagan. In terms of her faith, Perpetua followed the example of her mother. Despite the pleas of her father to deny her faith, Perpetua did the very opposite, and fearlessly proclaimed it. At the age of 22, she was imprisoned for her faith. While in prison she continued to care for her infant child and put up with the tortures designed to make her renounce her faith. Perpetua remained steadfast until the end. St. Perpetua was sacrificed at the games as a public spectacle for not renouncing her faith.
St. Felicity was a pregnant slave girl who was imprisoned with St. Perpetua. Little is known about the life of St. Felicity because, unlike Perpetua, she did not keep a dairy of her life. After imprisonment and torture, Felicity was condemned to die at the games. Only a few days before her execution Felicity gave birth to a daughter who was secretly taken away to be cared for by some of the Faithful.
The feast of these saints is March 7.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint.php?n=169
Are You Scrupulous? A Lenten Homily by John Cardinal O’Connor
Posted By Catholic Exchange On March 6, 2010
My sisters, my brother, my mother, were she alive — any of these — could tell you as can I of what was the ritual in our little house in Philadelphia every single night. My father would ask three questions and insist that they be answered and verified. One, “Was the back door locked?” (The back door locked with a little bolt.) He never asked about the front door. Two, “Has the light in the cellar been put out?” He never asked about lights anywhere else. Three, “Are you sure that all of the jets on the gas range have been turned off?” We heard this night after night when we were kids. But the house never blew up and the electric bill remained reasonable, and no one ever broke in the back door.
Those who are given to such language today would probably call my father a victim of an “obsessive-compulsive disorder.” I do not think that he was, but nevertheless it serves our purpose to use this as an example, an example with which many of you, I suspect, are familiar. If you think in terms of such an obsessive-compulsive disorder but add to it a spiritual and, most particularly, a moral component then you have what we call “scrupulosity.”
Scrupulosity is so-called because the Latin word scrupulus means a sharp little stone. Everyone knows what it is like to have a little sharp stone in a shoe. It can be the most expensive pair of shoes in the world, but that little stone ruins everything. You might be able to walk for miles, but it is killing you all the time. It is like having a tiny little speck in your eye. It’s a scrupulus, a tiny, little, sharp stone. Those who experience scrupulosity experience this tiny, little, sharp stone, as it were, in their consciences, in their very beings, which keeps them constantly anxious, constantly concerned and, above all, constantly afraid. This is why we are reflecting on scrupulosity this morning.
At the beginning of Lent we said that we would be speaking of forgiveness and reconciliation on each of the Sundays of Lent. This is one of the main purposes of Lent: forgiveness and reconciliation given to us by the magnificence of the sacrifice of Christ, his crucifixion and death on the cross that brought about the resurrection. We all seek forgiveness, and during Lent we petition, most particularly, for forgiveness of all the sins of the past and for reconciliation. But most of us do this without a constant gnawing or overwhelming fear.
Those of us caught up in scrupulosity honestly believe that forgiveness is impossible for us; God himself can not forgive us despite the crucifixion of his Son. It is quite conceivable that not one single person in this cathedral, at this moment, needs a reflection on scrupulosity. If so, count your blessings because as any confessor, any clinical psychologist, any psychiatrist can tell us, there are a huge number of people in our culture, even in this highly permissive, highly promiscuous culture, who suffer the terrible burden of scrupulosity. It is quite possible that there is someone here who knows instantly what I am talking about.
Scrupulosity always involves fear: fear of dying without being able to get to confession, fear of not being forgiven by Almighty God, fear of going to hell. If anyone needs an awareness of the mercy, the gentleness, the love, the forgiveness of Almighty God it is a scrupulous person. One might ask, How is it in this highly permissive, promiscuous society in which the media so often set the norm–what we see in the movies, on television often dismiss the very idea of sin, ridicule some of the most sacred beliefs of our faith–how can it be that in this culture people of all ages can experience this pain, this suffering of scrupulosity? You think it would be exactly the opposite. But it is quite conceivable that because of the permissiveness and the promiscuity of our culture more and more people tighten up so that they feel they must try to protect themselves not only from the culture but from God, himself.
There is a fascinating book on scrupulosity written by a psychologist, William Van Ornum, Ph.D., called “A Thousand Frightening Fantasies.” It is a book that some people are finding very helpful. It has been given rave reviews by psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and confessors. I want to read a few passages that are very illustrative of what I am talking about.
At one point in this book it is said that scrupulosity is like an airport that is always open. That is a good example. No sooner does one airplane leave than another one is ready to take off. No sooner does one airplane come in and land than another one comes along to land. So it is with the person who is constantly worried about some problem of conscience. He or she might get rid of this particular matter, might talk to a priest, might talk to a counselor, to a therapist, to a psychologist but then another problem quickly comes along to take its place.
Dr. Van Ornum did a survey of an organization that you might not know ever existed called “Scrupulous Anonymous.” It is much like Alcoholics Anonymous or Over-Eaters Anonymous. He received replies from a thousand people and discovered and verified everything that he had learned in his work. They depicted immense suffering and anguish caused by scrupulosity.
“Perhaps most sad is that 50 percent reported that scrupulosity had a severe or a very severe effect on romance; 54 percent noted a severe or a very severe effect on marriage. …
“Many people with [scrupulosity] believe they have wasted years. They lost friends, love, time with children, work, recreation and hobbies, and sacramental participation. This is tragic. …”
So, for example, we read:
“People with [scrupulosity] in the survey expressed loneliness and feeling apart from others. Many never met another person like themselves. Many longed to talk with a kindred spirit.”
This is one of the reasons I am talking about this today. So many people hide this moral, this spiritual debility. I am not sure I have ever heard a priest give a homily on scrupulosity, and that I think is unfortunate. One individual said:
” ‘I was eleven and everybody was playing baseball, having fun. I knew I was the only kid that was worrying about mortal sin. I wished I could just play and have fun like everyone else. …’
“Several respondents reported a predicament when they became engaged. They wondered, ‘Should I tell my fiance? How much should I say? Will he [or she] break it off when he [or she] learns’?
“One respondent reported fears that his friends don’t know:
” ‘I worry excessively about breaking the Communion fast. When I receive Communion, I worry about particles of the Host remaining on my hand. I worry about bad thoughts. I worry about breaking the Church law about the Sabbath. These concerns take the joy out of my life.’ ”
One respondent over 80 years old said she “hid her scrupulosity for her entire life.”
Another respondent said:
” ‘When I go to Mass, I must be perfect. There must be no rips in my clothes. I worry if the priest or deacon does his job right. Is it a valid Mass? The dismissal prayers cause me concern. I worry that the deacon forgot to say “The Mass is ended” or said the words in the wrong order.’ ” [To some perhaps these might sound like foolish fears. To others, as the title of the book says, these are "frightening fantasies."]
“Internally, …[many people] curse God. … [They] radiate anger and bitterness toward God. Internally, they curse their condition. They wonder why God selected them for torment. …”
Another stated:
” ‘My image of God is a punishing God. I feel He watches my every move and waits for me to sin. He marks it in a book in Heaven. I cannot escape the punishment I know I deserve.’ Continue reading →