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Politics : Apocalypse soon? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skywatcher who wrote (2705)	7/27/2012 2:19:34 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2741

yeah schummer wants to curtail the 1st amendment, libs want the fairness doctrine and now look at Chick Fil-a mayors in dem cities say christians can't open stores. Like Hitler said about jews

To: Skywatcher who wrote (2705)	7/30/2012 9:28:24 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 2741

Catholic Family Biz Scores Win Over ObamaCare Mandate Basic Rights: A court in Colorado has ruled that, contrary to DOJ arguments, Americans do not have to choose between giving up their faith or giving up their business. Freedom of religion also applies to the free marketplace. The Newland family of Colorado and the heating and air conditioning business they run are not quite as famous as CEO Dan Cathy and his Chick-fil-A restaurant chain — at least not yet. The granting of an injunction by Senior Judge John L. Kane of the U.S. District Court in Colorado saying they do not have to comply with the Health and Human Services rule that they provide contraception coverage may change that. Chick-fil-A had to deal with threats from mayors in Boston and Chicago to not permit the franchise to open new stores because of the owners' personal belief in the biblical definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman. Hercules Industries, the Newland family business that manufactures heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) products, faced the ultimate threat from the Department of Justice — stop acting on your faith or shut down altogether. The Newlands are devout Catholics and like the religious institutions that have filed suit against the Obama administration's mandate that their health insurance cover contraceptive services, the Newlands filed suit against Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius when they were told the mandate applied to small businesses run by Catholics as well as Catholic religious institutions. Since Hercules Industries would be required to begin offering the new coverage when its self-insured plan renews on Nov. 1, Alliance Defending Freedom, the group representing Hercules, has requested a preliminary injunction that could prevent the government from enforcing the mandate against the company by Aug. 1, the date when the company would need to begin the process of making changes to its plan. In the Department of Justice's filing in Newland v. Sebelius — a suit brought by William, Paul and James Newland, and their sister, Christine Ketterhagen, DOJ made the assertion — worthy of Stalinist Russia — that Hercules Industries has "made no showing of a religious belief which requires that (it) engage in the (HVAC) business." No, their faith does not require them to open up an HVAC business, but it does require them to act in all aspects of their lives and dealings with others in accordance with their faith. They argued that the mandate to provide contraceptive coverage or face existential fines placed an undue burden on their First Amendment right to practice their faith. The court agreed. In his order, Kane, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, said the government's arguments "are countered, and indeed outweighed, by the public interest in the free exercise of religion. "As the Tenth Circuit has noted, 'there is a strong public interest in the free exercise of religion even where that interest may conflict (with another statutory scheme) ...' Accordingly, the public interest favors entry of an injunction in this case." The injunction applies only to the Newlands and their family business and is temporary, but a way to kill ObamaCare has been found. Its penalties may have been ruled by the Supreme Court to be a constitutional tax, but ObamaCare's shredding of the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty is definitely not constitutional. "Religious liberty rights don't stop at the storefront door," agreed Hannah Smith, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents plaintiffs in similar suits. "This decision portends the demise of the current administration's attempts to drive religious activity from the public square and confine it within the four walls of a church." Amen to that.

To: Skywatcher who wrote (2705)	7/30/2012 9:28:58 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 2741

The Big Lie In Politics: Rich Get Richer While Others Grow Poorer It was either Adolf Hitler or his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who said that the people will believe any lie, if it is big enough and told often enough, loud enough. Although the Nazis were defeated in World War II, this part of their philosophy survives triumphantly to this day among politicians, and nowhere more so than during election years. Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of "the rich" is going up, while other people's incomes are going down. If you listen to Barack Obama, you are bound to hear this lie repeatedly. But the government's own Congressional Budget Office has just published a report whose statistics flatly contradict this claim. The CBO report shows that, while the average household income fell 12% between 2007 and 2009, the average for the lower four-fifths fell by 5% or less, while the average income for households in the top fifth fell 18%. For households in the "top one percent" that seems to fascinate so many people, income fell by 36% in those same years. Why are these data so different from other data that are widely cited, showing the top brackets improving their positions more so than anyone else? The answer is that the data cited by the Congressional Budget Office are based on Internal Revenue Service statistics for specific individuals and specific households over time. The IRS can follow individuals and households because it can identify the same people over time from their Social Security numbers. Most other data, including census data, are based on compiling statistics in a succession of time periods, without the ability to tell if the actual people in each income bracket are the same from one time period to the next. The turnover of people is substantial in all brackets — and is huge in the top 1%. Most people in that bracket are there for only one year in a decade. All sorts of statements are made in politics and in the media as if that "top one percent" is an enduring class of people, rather than an ever-changing collection of individuals who have a spike in their income in a particular year, for one reason or another. Turnover in other income brackets is also substantial. There is nothing mysterious about this. Most people start out at the bottom, in entry-level jobs, and their incomes rise over time as they acquire more skills and experience. Politicians and media talking heads love to refer to people who are in the bottom 20% in income in a given year as "the poor." But, following the same individuals for 10 or 15 years usually shows the great majority of those individuals moving into higher income brackets. The number who reach all the way to the top 20% greatly exceeds the number still stuck in the bottom 20% over the years. But such mundane facts cannot compete for attention with the moral melodramas conjured up in politics and the media when they discuss "the rich" and "the poor." There are people who are genuinely rich and genuinely poor, in the sense of having very high or very low incomes for most, if not all, of their lives. But "the rich" and "the poor" in this sense are unlikely to add up to even 10% of the population. Ironically, those who make the most noise about income disparities or poverty contribute greatly to policies that promote both. The welfare state enables millions of people to meet their needs with little or no income-earning work on their part. Most of the economic resources used by people in the bottom 20% come from sources other than their own incomes. There are veritable armies of middle-class people who make their livings transferring resources, in a variety of ways, from those who created those resources to those who live off them. These transferrers are in both government and private social welfare institutions. They have every incentive to promote dependency, from which they benefit both professionally and psychically, and to imagine that they are creating social benefits. For different reasons, both politicians and the media have incentives to spread misconceptions with statistics. So long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it.