We are Barron County Wisconsin Republicans
We believe in the following:
{slider Strong National Defense|closed}
We believe in a strong National Defense. |
America has always considered herself an island nation. For years, we were shielded from attack by the vast expanse of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. During World War One, (and for the most part), World War Two, the continental United States was relatively safe from invasion. We responded to the needs of other nations in both of those wars by building up our Army and Navy, and deploying to foreign soil. |
The U.S. Military was the overriding force that saved Europe and the World from the evil aggression of once trusted governments (Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia...). America has always been willing to shed its blood for the freedom of other peoples and countries. It is in our genes. We are a product of an idea, a dream, held by most of the world's population, "Freedom". A nation of immigrants with the overwhelming desire to be free. We love our liberty, yet we do not hoard this idea onto ourselves. |
After each of the World Wars, America stood down the military. We turned our eyes inward and for the most part ignored the world and its problems. We denigrated the military each time. We let the United Nations involve us in the "Korean Conflict". We are still there. We tried to help South Viet Nam stave off an invasion from the north. Congress lost its will to fight in Viet Nam even though our military won every battle and the "North" was months away from surrendering. We denigrated the military once again. We built up the military under the outstanding leadership of President Ronald Reagan, which ended the "Cold War" by trumping the Soviet Union militarily, only to see it degraded sharply by the Clinton Administration.
Then: September 11, 2001 |
U-Tube's Warrior Song |
From Military.com Support Our TroopsLooking for ways to support and honor U.S. military servicemembers and veterans who protect our security and freedom? In years past, you could wrap up a care package and mail it to "Any Service Member" for the holidays, but with increased mail restrictions, the Pentagon is asking people to help through financial contributions, letter-writing and e-mail, purchasing authorized pre-made care packages, or volunteering time through non-profits. Below are links to programs that offer aid to our military -- everything from care packages to emergency services to military family support. Show your pride in our armed forces today, either by purchasing a gift or card for a servicemember, or donating to programs that support our military.
Cards, Letters, Gifts, and Care Packages Important Note: Walter Reed Army Medical Center officials want to remind those individuals who want to show their appreciation through mail to include packages and letters, addressed to "Any Wounded Soldier" that Walter Reed will not be accepting these packages in support of the decision by then Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Transportation Policy in 2001. This decision was made to ensure the safety and well being of patients and staff at medical centers throughout the Department of Defense. The following charitable organizations help send gifts, cards, and care packages to our troops: The Billy Blanks Foundation - The Billy Blanks Foundation was founded by the creator of Tae Bo. One of the foundations many projects is sending care packages to U.S. Servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Help with Mailing Packages Health Care, Hospice, and Recovery OrganizationsThe following charitable organizations offer programs that provide comfort and support to our wounded veterans and their families:American Red Cross Armed Forces - Offers medical services to active duty, veterans, reservists and families nationwide. Transition, Scholarships and Vocation RehabilitationThese organizations provide transitions services, scholarships and vocational programs to help servicemembers and their families re-integrate in to the civilian world. The Billy Blanks Foundation - The Billy Blanks Foundation was founded by the creator of Tae Bo. The foundation offers scholarships and support for after school programs. Counseling and Other Relief and Support OrganizationsThe following organizations provide a wide range of services and support for our troops and wounded veterans including counseling, financial support, housing, emergency services and more: Air Force Aid Society - Official support and relief organization for Air Force servicemembers, veterans, and families. America Supports You"America Supports You," a nationwide program launched by the Department of Defense, recognizes citizens' support for our military men and women and communicates that support to members of our Armed Forces at home and abroad. MISSION SERVE will activate people engaged in volunteer and military service across America to more closely coordinate our civilian service and military communities, enabling each to strengthen the other and, ultimately, to strengthen our nation. The initiative partners the ServiceNation coalition’s community service organizations with veterans groups, military family groups, and active-duty and reserve components of each military branch. These partnerships will more closely integrate service to country with service to community, and will help grow the service movement that is critical to America's future success. Bank of America is proud to support MISSION SERVE as a means of enhancing service opportunities for military and civilians. |
{slider Defending the Constitution}
{slider Limited Government}
"MY OBSERVATION IS THAT WHENEVER ONE PERSON IS FOUND ADEQUATE TO THE DISCHARGE OF A DUTY.... IT IS WORSE EXECUTED BY TWO PERSONS, AND SCARCELY DONE AT ALL IF THREE OR MORE ARE EMPLOYED THEREIN."
by GEORGE WASHINGTON, the father of our country
Limited Government Definition: A type of government in which its functions and power are prescribed, limited an restricted by law. (reference: dictionary.com/ask.com division)
In this country we have the opportunity to elect government officials who are to protect the Constitution. It is the responsibility of our elected officails to meet this basic expectation. We need to look deep into our hearts and decide whether or not our elected representatives are doing the American citizens justice. If we find they are not, it is the duty and the responsibility of every citizen to remove those leaders through the proper channels. Have our elected officials protected the Constitution?
If we find the answer to be NO, it is our duty to hold them accountable at election time.
{slider Right to Keep and Bear Arms}
We the people of the Barron County Republicans believe in the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms".
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to prevent themselves against tyranny in government". Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States. |
The Founding Fathers were right when they amended the Constitution. The Second Amendment was not enacted to ensure we could hunt game, or shoot at targets. They knew "We the People" needed the ability to protect ourselves and our property against those who would do us harm. They understood the fact that evil exists in the hearts of men and therefore it would exist in government. |
"The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
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From The Heritage Foundation
January 29, 2010
To Keep and Bear Arms
by Nelson Lund, Ph.D.
WebMemo #2786
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{slider Right to Life}
When Does Human Life Begin?
T here is a tremendous consensus in the scientific community about when life begins. This is hardly controversial. If the claim were made that life was discovered on another planet, for example, there are well-defined criteria to which we could refer to conclusively determine whether the claim was accurate. How do scientists distinguish between life and non-life?
A scientific textbook called “Basics of Biology” gives five characteristics of living things; these five criteria are found in all modern elementary scientific textbooks:
According to this elementary definition of life, life begins at fertilization, when a sperm unites with an oocyte. From this moment, the being is highly organized, has the ability to acquire materials and energy, has the ability to respond to his or her environment, has the ability to adapt, and has the ability to reproduce (the cells divide, then divide again, etc., and barring pathology and pending reproductive maturity has the potential to reproduce other members of the species). Non-living things do not do these things. Even before the mother is aware that she is pregnant, a distinct, unique life has begun his or her existence inside her.
Furthermore, that life is unquestionably human. A human being is a member of the species homo sapiens. Human beings are products of conception, which is when a human male sperm unites with a human female oocyte (egg). When humans procreate, they don’t make non-humans like slugs, monkeys, cactuses, bacteria, or any such thing. Emperically-verifiable proof is as close as your nearest abortion clinic: send a sample of an aborted fetus to a laboratory and have them test the DNA to see if its human or not. Genetically, a new human being comes into existence from the earliest moment of conception.
“I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” Hippocrates, 400 B.C., Greece
Biologically, from the moment of conception this new human being is not a part of the mother’s body. Since when does a mother’s body have male genitals, two brains, four kidneys? The preborn human being may be dependent upon the mother for nutrition, however, this does not diminish his or her humanity, but proves it. Moreover, dependence upon a parent for survival is not a capital crime.
"To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion ... it is plain experimental evidence." The "Father of Modern Genetics" Dr. Jerome Lejeune, Univ. of Descarte, Paris
At the average time when a woman is aware that she is pregnant (the fifth to sixth week after conception), the preborn human being living inside her is metabolizing nutrition, excreting waste, moving, sucking his or her thumb, growing, and doing many other things that non-living things just do not do. As early as 21 days after conception, the baby’s heart has begun to beat his or her own unique blood-type, often different than the mother’s. (Moore & Persaud, The Developing Human, p.310; Nilsson & Hamberger, A Child is Born, p.86; Rugh & Shettles, From Conception to Birth, p.217.) At 40 days after conception, brain waves can be read on an EEG, or an electroencephalogram. (Dr. H. Hamlin, Life or Death by EEG, JAMA, Oct.12, 1964, p.113.)
"By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception." Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic
Medical science already refers to a spontaneous heart rhythm and the presence of brain waves to determine whether someone is alive at the other spectrum of human existence. In simplistic terms, if an organ donor is in an automobile accident and is on life support in a hospital, the physician cannot “pull the plug” and donate the patient’s organs to others unless the patient is “brain dead” and his heart is not beating on its own. If the medical community maintained consistency with this generally-accepted medical definition of human life, then we would condemn every abortion after the time when the average woman discovers she is pregnant. Every abortion, by the generally-accepted standards of medical science, aborts an innocent human life.
One of the most amazing photographs I have ever seen is of a surgery being performed on a 21 week-old fetus named Samuel Armas. The boy is having surgery performed in utero for his spina bifida. In the photograph, the unconscious boy’s hand is poking through the surgical incision in the uterus and is resting on the finger of the surgeon. You can see the photo at http://www.michaelclancy.com/. The picture paints a thousand words that my mere words cannot match, but allow me to draw attention to the obvious fact that the surgeon is performing surgery on one living human being who is residing in the womb of another living human being.
“Yeah,” the pro-choice attorney rebuts, “but is it a person?”
In Roe vs. Wade, Justice Harry Blackmun noted, “The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the (Fourteenth) Amendment.”
According to Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, a person is “a human being.” Attempts to render an entire class of human beings as “non-persons” based upon arbitrary qualities such as age and place of residence in order to discriminate against them is immoral and unjust. History is full of infamous examples of governments legalizing the discrimination of an entire class of human beings by rendering them “non-persons.” Jews were rendered “sub-humans” in Germany in the 1940’s and colonial slaveowners bought and sold Africans as “property.” As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court in 1857 ruled that Dred Scott, a black slave, was not a “person” with rights but the “property” of his master. Was the Court wrong then? Of course! The Supreme Court of 1973 that legalized abortion nationwide with its Roe v. Wade decision was just as immoral and unjust. They dehumanized an entire class of human beings in order to legitimize wholesale discrimination against them. Abortion may go down in history as the greatest human rights abuse of all time.
As our nation’s founding documents make clear, the right to life is God-given and inalienable. The right to live cannot be legitimately usurped by men. No man, no government has the right to deprive one of life or liberty without a trial by jury, regardless of skin color, age, stage of development, level of dependence upon others for survival, or place of residence.
Abortion results in the death of an innocent human being. It is immoral and unjust when evaluated in the light of the law of the land (our founding documents) and the divine commandment that forbids taking the life of an innocent human being (Exodus 20:13).
The Association of Pro-Life Physicians
5063 Dresden Court
Zanesville, Ohio 43701
www.ProLifePhysicians.org
Saving lives :: Saving medicine
The APP :: www.ProLifePhysicians.org
{slider Sovereign United States}
Watch these 2 film clips and then forward to those who think the new AZ illegal immigration law (same as old federal law) is racist. BS. This is not just about Mexicans being here illegally. We "all" better wake up.
According to the Border Patrol the public is being mislead as to WHO is
coming into the US from Mexico. This was reported by WSBTV in Atlanta.
Video 1 http://www.wsbtv.com/video/23438021/index.html
Video 2 http://www.wsbtv.com/video/23438712/index.html
{slider States Rights}
Abstract: "Federalism" is no outdated concept. The founding fathers of the American Republic are the authors of a brilliant design of the distribution of political power between the national government and the states. Under the Constitution, the federal government is responsible for the general concerns of the republic; the state governments are the custodians of the people's trusts and are authorized to address their particular concerns. This is the essence of federalism -- and precisely what is under attack in the massive health care bills currently under consideration in Congress. Former U.S. Representative from Florida Thomas C. Feeney explains what is at stake for every American. Many state legislators and governors are rejecting the idea that Congress and the federal bureaucracy can micromanage either state health insurance markets or individual and family health care decisions. The federal government is inherently incompetent in making such decisions. The wisdom of the founding fathers was evident in recognizing the inherent limits of political power, and in constitutionally dividing that power between the officers of the national government and the officials of the states.[1] It is increasingly apparent that Congress, crafting massive trillion-dollar bills with far-reaching consequences, will not solve the problems that ail America's health care sector, instead making American citizens, in Alexis de Tocqueville's words, "minions of an omnipotent government."[2] Indeed, instead of solving widely agreed-upon existing problems, Congress is prepared to create new ones. Not surprisingly, state leaders around the country are expressing alarm, fear, and anger. The massive Congressional health care bills currently under debate would impose requirements, such as mandatory Medicaid expansion, that would devastate state budgets, eviscerate existing health insurance plans, undermine current consumer choices and quality of care, and generally trample on the traditional preeminence that the states, under current law and the Constitution, have long held in enacting and improving the regulation of their very different health insurance markets. State leaders are making their voices known. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), with a membership of 2,000 legislators from all 50 states, recently wrote letters of concern to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. ALEC members noted that, "ALEC is troubled by the public plan and national health insurance exchange, which we believe will trample states' rights and lead Americans down the road to single-payer health care."[3] These concerns are shared by the policy community as well. Heritage Foundation analysts, among others, have cautioned Congress to be mindful of its constitutional responsibilities and the limits of national power. They urge the national legislature to proceed with caution and make careful changes in federal tax and health insurance laws to promote accessible and affordable health insurance coverage without ruining the highest quality of health care in the world and nationalizing one-sixth of the American economy.[4] Taking a Stand for Federalism Federal and state legislators alike should go back to the basics, the traditional principles of American self-government, and take a firm stand for federalism, a crucial component of the unique constitutional order of the United States. Congress and state policymakers should follow the following four principles: Principle #1: Reject Federal Micromanagement of State Issues and Encourage Entrepreneurial Health Insurance Reform. Rather than mandating a uniform system of federally supervised health care for 300 million Americans in widely divergent circumstances, Congress should set clear goals for state health reform. Through federal grants and funding for technical assistance, a routine feature of many federal-state partnerships, states can design new means for covering the uninsured, enhancing quality of care and improving patient satisfaction. They can do this in a variety of ways, including health insurance market reforms that expand coverage for low-income working families and new risk-pooling arrangements that can secure stable private health insurance coverage for citizens, including the poorest, sickest, and most vulnerable of the states' populations. There is strong bipartisan support in Congress for such a federalist approach, as evidenced by the co-sponsorship of the Health Care Partnership Through Creative Federalism Act (H.R. 5864) by Representatives Tom Price (R-GA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).[5] This kind of legislation should include strict neutrality in guaranteeing equal opportunities for conservative and liberal experimentation. There should also be a guarantee to state officials that if they embark on a new health care policy, they should be allowed to change course, if necessary, and not be irreversibly locked into health care policy errors. Under the federalist principle of the U.S. Constitution, the 50 states can be "laboratories of democracy,"[6] and learn from one another's successes and failures. As Tocqueville wrote in his masterpiece Democracy in America, "The most favorable form of government ever created to promote the prosperity and freedom of man was the federalist system." In 1990, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton agreed. Before his election as President, he addressed his fellow governors urging them to take the lead in developing "pragmatic responses to real problems" in his foreword to David Osborne's Laboratories of Democracy.[7] It is hard to imagine an issue more suitable to innovative experimentation than the financing and delivery of health care. Indeed, the potential for resolving some of the thorniest issues in health care policy highlight the splendor of the American founders' federalist design. States can make and correct their own mistakes quickly and effectively while learning and replicating the successes of others. Multiple experiments in different jurisdictions tend to improve upon successful reforms while also teaching important lessons from unsuccessful experiments. TennCare. People tend to overlook the obvious. A federalist balance between state and federal authority has largely worked in American health care policy. In 1994, Tennessee replaced its Medicaid program with a managed care program to cover not only traditional Medicaid beneficiaries, but also lower-income uninsured residents. In designing and implementing the new program -- TennCare -- the state made serious mistakes, offering expensive, heavily subsidized "comprehensive" coverage and attempting to pay for the resulting dramatic cost increases by adopting severely restrictive reimbursement policies for the participating health care plans and providers.[8]TennCare proved destabilizing and unaffordable;[9] many residents dropped their private coverage to enroll in the new subsidized program and dramatic cost escalation overwhelmed the state budget, forcing the state to scrap the reform. Other states learned the lesson and rejected the TennCare approach. Washington State. In 1993, Washington state legislators passed a law that mirrored the Clinton health care plan of that same year. In fact, Clinton Administration officials praised Washington as a test case of their own comprehensive proposals for reform at the national level. The new state law imposed a massive and powerful new bureaucracy, individual and employer mandates, more regulation, higher taxes, and a government-defined standard benefit package that everyone was required to buy. The legislation was repealed less than two years later based on massive public dissatisfaction.[10] Both the TennCare and Washington state models were widely heralded by proponents of these types of reforms at their inception; both failed. But both would have been disastrous for all Americans if they had been adopted nationwide. While unsuccessful state reform efforts provide policymakers with cautionary lessons and a sound reason to avoid certain approaches, successful initiatives offer a treasure chest of new reform tools. West Virginia, for instance, redesigned its Medicaid program to provide a choice for patients between a "basic plan" and an "enhanced plan." The enhanced plan provides beneficiaries a greater range of benefits in exchange for entering into a Health Improvement Plan with their physicians, which requires patients to sign and comply with a "Responsibility Agreement" in which patients agree to follow their physicians' instructions to improve their health. Studies from West Virginia verify that even poor Americans can demonstrate high levels of health literacy, tend to make wise and informed choices about health care when given the freedom to choose, and can adopt healthier lifestyles when offered incentives to do so.[11] Patient Power in Utah. The state of Utah is in the process of implementing a new program designed to enhance accessibility to and choice of private health care.[12] Just two Utah officials run the program, using almost no new taxpayer money. The law creates a new "defined contribution" option for employers to offer coverage to their workers, administered through an online health insurance exchange. An employer who elects this option will no longer need to manage a traditional one-size-fits-all group plan for his workers. Rather, each worker, during the annual open season, will be able to choose from a menu of health insurance plans -- while the arrangement still qualifies as "employer-sponsored" coverage that is tax-free for workers. This new coverage option, together with the administrative functions provided by the exchange, eliminates most of the obstacles that small businesses face in offering health benefits to their employees, while expanding their workers' choices of health care plan benefits and premiums. Employees of small businesses can shop for health insurance plans that best meet the financial and health coverage needs of their families. They can add their employers' contributions (including multiple employers and their spouses' employers) to their own pre-tax dollars to purchase the policy of their choice. Utah is testing the exchange this fall with a pilot group of 136 small-business employers who collectively employ 2,333 workers. The average small business size is 17 employees. The exchange already features 66 plans offered by three private insurance companies. So far, 141 additional employers have requested to be notified when enrollment in the exchange re-opens. These Utah small-business leaders embrace the new state-based exchange model because it suits their needs. Nationally, only 43 percent of employers with 50 or fewer workers currently offer employer-sponsored health insurance, but Utah's rate (32 percent) is even lower.[13] Killing Innovation. The West Virginia Medicaid program and Utah exchange program represent very different types of reforms, yet they share something with each other and nearly every other promising and successful state-based health care reform: They would be abolished by the current federal reform proposals. While the President and his congressional allies insist that they are not proposing a federal government "takeover" of health care, the facts are indisputable. The leading bills would transfer regulatory control of health insurance to the federal government, and would crush state innovation and experimentation. The leading bills would impose federal mandates on individuals and employers to buy and offer federally approved packages of health care benefits. The leading bills would expand government-run health programs, or create a new government-run health plan to "compete" directly against private health insurance for the purpose of eroding it. The leading bills would impose new taxes on middle-class Americans and would, in their current form, add to the large and growing federal debt. There is something even more disturbing that is becoming evident: hubris. In the face of mounting public apprehension and opposition to these schemes, Members of Congress are intent on having their way with the health care of 300 million Americans, regardless of their wishes in the matter. Washington politicians promise cradle-to-grave health care security (on the cheap), guaranteed and ruled by federal authority, while the empirical evidence from nationalized health care systems worldwide shows that such promises are delusional. As early as 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher admitted that Britain's government-controlled care resulted in fewer doctors, fewer nurses, and that patients can wait weeks in one area to see a doctor and years in another.[14] A Congress that is running up trillions of dollars in deficits, creating a $10 trillion national debt, presiding over Medicare and Social Security systems that are insolvent, and plagued by mounting debt should not be entrusted with control over every American's health care or permitted to create yet another unsustainable entitlement. Principle #2: Empower States to Preserve Quality and Choice While Reducing Costs and Increasing Coverage. Democratic and Republican state legislators will have more confidence in federal health care reform that respects the interests of their states and their people, and also respects the professional relationship that doctors have with their patients. State legislators can only be helped with federal reforms that open up health insurance markets and permit a broader level of choice and competition than exists today. For example, the federal government should reform regulatory and tax obstacles to allow organizations, such as churches, unions, and chambers of commerce, to provide group health insurance plans across state lines.[15] Draconian federal mandates imposed on states, whether through Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, or other collective funding mechanisms, inhibit simple, sensible, and rational state-designed reforms that would allow families, individuals, and businesses to design the optimal health coverage at the most affordable cost. Indeed, federal expansion of Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP mandates may well bankrupt the states in the process.[16] Federal overreach explains not only some of the groundswell of popular uprisings at tea parties and congressional town hall meetings across the country, but also the hostile reaction by many state legislators to the congressional initiatives. It is also not surprising that there is a strong freedom-of-choice movement, evidenced by the introduction of 17 state constitutional amendments to protect personal freedom in health care around the country. Among other things, this movement sends a clear message to Members of Congress that state officials and their constituents are not going to go along with federal micromanagement of their health care decisions.[17] As a matter of public policy, whatever rules Congress imposes at the federal level, Congress should also allow states the right and the recourse to opt out if they wish to do so, pursue their own reforms of the health care system (as Hawaii has done in the past), and protect the legitimate interests of their own people. Principle #3: State Officials Should Adopt Policies that Unshackle Patients from Artificial Restrictions of Choices. State legislators and governors must be free to adopt patient-doctor-centered policies that allow patients to exercise informed choice. Patients must be empowered to tailor their health care coverage to their needs and obtain portable (job-to-job) health insurance. States should restrict the exercise of their regulatory powers to the establishment of minimum standards and the prohibition of fraud and abuse, and must fight the paths of political expediency -- such as federal Medicaid expansion -- that lead to a single-payer, government-run option, or federally financed socialized health care. Principle #4: Congress Should Promote Affordable, Quality Care and Protect Patient-Doctor Relationships.Specifically, Congress should: Provide tax equity for individuals and their families to receive equal treatment whether they buy health insurance on their own or through their employer;
Conclusion The founding fathers of the American Republic are the authors of a brilliant design of the distribution of political power between the national government and the states. The national government, under the Constitution, is responsible for the general concerns of the republic; the state governments are the custodians of the people's trusts and are authorized to address their particular concerns. This is the essence of federalism. America's federalist system should not be destroyed in a narrow ideological hot pursuit of an illusory perfection: a nationalized health care system that will provide perfect security and will "bend the cost curve" downward. The massive bills on Capitol Hill will do neither. From the inception of the republic, Americans have been instinctively skeptical of the notion that Washington politicians, and the national bureaucrats who supposedly answer to them, are successfully able to micromanage the affairs of tens of millions of individuals and their families. Americans desperately need sound common sense and consequential health care reform. This means a reform that will result in a measurable expansion of private insurance coverage and control of cost. There is a great deal of work to do. While guaranteeing accessibility and controlling the costs of health care, Americans should reject national micromanagement and let the market work. They -- and their elected representatives in Congress -- should support major federal reforms that change tax policies that undercut consumer choice in the health insurance markets and federal regulatory burdens that stifle state reforms and subvert patient choice. The states have a key role to play. State policymakers should support the growing movement in the states themselves that support the protection and expansion of patient choice in health care. State officials should also insist on keeping state control of health insurance regulation. At the same time, they should take bold steps to enhance patient choice, and create an environment that rewards high-quality care from physicians and other medical professionals. If they are true to their public trust, if they are to defend the legitimate interests of their citizens, state officials must stand with their citizens and reject policies that would put the United States on a glide path to single-payer, government control of the health care of every American. The Honorable Thomas C. Feeney is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida and former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives [1]David F. Forte and Matthew Spalding, eds., The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing Inc., 2005), and Eugene W. Hickok, Why States? The Challenge of Federalism (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 2007). [2]Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Teddington, U.K.: Echo Library, 2007). [3]Letter from ALEC members to Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid, July 29, 2009, at http://www.alec.org/am/pdf/hhs/HealthCareLetter.pdf (October 7, 2009). [4]Robert E. Moffit, "State Health Reform: Six Key Tests," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1900, April 23, 2008, athttp://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm1900.cfm. [5]For a description of the bill, see Stuart M. Butler and Nina Owcharenko, "The Baldwin-Price Health Bill: Bipartisan Encouragement for State Action on The Uninsured," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1190, August 7, 2006, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm1190.cfm. [6]David Osborne, Laboratories of Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1990). [7]Ibid. [8]Sandra Hunt et al., "Actuarial Review of Capitation Rates in the TennCare Program," PricewaterhouseCoopers, March 1999. [9]Merrill Matthews, Jr., "Lessons from Tennessee's Failed Health Care Reform," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1357, April 7, 2000, athttp://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/bg1357.cfm. [10]Robert Cihak, Bob Williams, and Peter J. Ferrara, "The Rise and Repeal of the Washington State Health Plan: Lessons for America's Legislators," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1121, June, 11, 1997, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/bg1121.cfm. [11]Dennis G. Smith, "Health Care Reform in West Virginia: A Lesson From the States," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2582, August 7, 2009, athttp://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2582.cfm. [12]Grace-Marie Turner, "Innovation, Not Intervention," Forbes, September 18, 2009, at http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/17/state-health-care-opinions [13]Kaiser Family Foundation, "Percent of Private Sector Establishments That Offer Health Insurance to Employees, by Firm Size, 2008," athttp://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=176&cat=3 (October 8, 2009). [14]Lady Thatcher Speech to the Party Conference, Blackpool, England, October 13, 1989. [15]For an analysis of this proposal, see Robert E. Moffit, "The Health Care Choice Act Eliminating Barriers to Personal Freedom and Market Competition," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1164, July 17, 2006, at http//www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm1164.cfm. [16]Henry J. Aaron and Stuart M. Butler, "How Federalism Could Spur Bipartisan Action on the Uninsured," Health Affairs, March 31, 2004, athttp://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/hlthaff.w4.168v1.pdf (October 8, 2009). [17]Visit Help Rescue America: In Support of the United States Constitution, at http://www.states-rights.org (October 8, 2009). |
{slider Freedom of Religion}
From The Heritage Foundation.
September 26, 2005
Why Religious Values Support American Values
Heritage Lecture #899
Mr. Loconte’s remarks are adapted from a debate sponsored by the Oxford Union Society at Oxford, England. He argued against the proposition that “Christian Values Undermine American Values.” He was joined by Richard Lowry, editor of National Review and Eric Metaxas, director of Socrates in the City. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, and Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition for America, argued for the proposition. The debate was held on May 26, 2005. The proposition before this august body, that Christian values do not support American values, would have utterly mystified the greatest generation of political leaders in the history of Western democracy. Consider this statement from James Madison: We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government…. We have staked the future upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God. And this, from Thomas Jefferson: No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man, and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Benjamin Rush observed: I have always considered Christianity as the strong ground of republicanism. And John Jay declared: No human society has ever been able to maintain both order and freedom, both cohesiveness and liberty apart from the moral precepts of the Christian religion…. Should our Republic ever forget this fundamental precept of governance…this great experiment will then surely be doomed. We have many doubters among us today who deny this “fundamental precept of governance”— at great risk to their own nation’s experiment in freedom. Uncoerced Conscience Let me now draw our attention to a Christian concept that lies at the intersection of biblical religion and the American democratic tradition: It is the necessity of authentic faith—the idea that genuine religious belief must be freely chosen, unharassed by human authorities, whether religious or secular. Authentic faith is a religious and a political necessity. It is a religious necessity because the Christian tradition views conscience as the realm of belief formed through reason and conviction, not through force or violence. Through persuasion, not coercion. The great Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther, refused to recant his teachings about divine grace because, as he put it, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. To go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” That rugged English Quaker, William Penn, founded a “holy experiment” in religious liberty in Pennsylvania, a model that would inspire America’s Founding generation. His Puritan counterpart in New England, Roger Williams, fought to establish a government that would respect Jews, Muslims, and Catholics alike. His argument was simple: “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.” And so it was that James Madison, architect of the American Constitution, came to regard freedom of conscience as a sacred right and a binding political obligation. It was Madison, a pupil under the evangelical minister John Witherspoon at Princeton, who enshrined the guarantee of religious liberty in our political imagination. “If this freedom be abused,” he warned, “it is an offense against God, not against man.” The American approach to religious freedom immediately surpassed the European experience: It rejected Christendom’s fusion of church and state, as well as the radical Enlightenment’s brooding hostility to faith. Even John Locke, in his Letter Concerning Toleration, argued tepidly for the toleration of religion—as if the exercise of faith was a gift from government, not an inalienable right. The First Freedom Americans took a different line. If we Americans believed in royalty, we might call it the Queen of our political virtues. It is the First Freedom: the freedom that precedes and helps make possible all the other liberties. And that is what makes it a political necessity. For without liberty of conscience, how can there be free speech or a free press? Without religious freedom, what happens to the right to assemble, or to associate with people who share your deepest values? It is conscience—the sacred realm of belief—that motivates our civic and political activity. This is what that great Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville observed during his visit to the United States in the 1830s: The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other…. If any hold that the religious spirit which I admire is the very thing most amiss in America…I can only reply that those who hold this language have never been in America and that they have never seen a religious or a free nation. No one is claiming that this Christian precept of liberty of conscience is beyond abuse in the United States, either by pastors or politicians. William Livingston, an 18th century Presbyterian leader in New York City, complained that “there is more Iniquity committed under the Robe, than is repented of under the Gallows.” Fair enough. But consider the fruit of this Christian virtue translated into the American experience: The United States is a nation of breathtaking ethnic and religious diversity, with thousands of different religious groups and traditions. And yet we have sustained a level of civic peace and social stability that is the envy of the world. How is that possible? First, we have a largely Christian culture that honors the God-given worth of every individual. Second, our government does not pick winners and losers in religious matters. We Americans jealously enforce the separation of church and state—but not the separation of faith from life. A Nation of Dissenters Consider another consequence of this biblical value of freedom of conscience, reinforced in American society: It is our great tradition of social protest, of social reform. Who led the decades-long fight to end slavery in the United States? It was Northern evangelicals, who petitioned lawmakers, rescued runaway slaves, and gave birth to the Republican Party. Who launched massive rescue missions for thousands of poor families during the economic upheaval of the early 20th century? It was that British import known as the Salvation Army. Who led the civil rights movement in the face of violent white supremacists and a hostile legal culture? A Baptist minister, the Reverend Martin Luther King, joined by brave foot soldiers from black churches throughout the country. In each case, the Christian concept of religious freedom, embedded in our political system, made possible these great challenges to that same political system. Here were Christian leaders, armed with biblical ideals, attacking the nation’s political and economic values—attitudes and practices that contradicted the nation’s founding principles. They were against America, for America, for the Gospel’s sake. Thus, the United States is, and always has been, a nation of dissenters. Whether the cause is civic, political, or religious, we insist on the right to disagree. And we consider this right grounded in our God-given dignity. Your own Edmund Burke admired this quality in Americans during the Revolution. Addressing the British Parliament on the subject of the American rebellion in March of 1775, he warned that the “fierce spirit of liberty” is stronger in these English Colonies than in any other people on earth. “The people are Protestants,” he explained. “And of that kind which is most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion.” In a certain sense, all Americans are Protestants. The United States is a nation of immigrants—many of whom began their journey here in protest. My own grandfather left his home in southern Italy, mostly because the right to disagree was fading quickly under the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. It wasn’t enough that the trains ran on time. So in 1935, my grandfather took his wife and two young sons, got on a boat and sailed for America. During the Second World War, whenever Mussolini was on the radio, my grandfather could be heard shouting insults in Italian across the room of their Brooklyn apartment. This is what we mean by the right to dissent, the right to protest. The United States—along with Great Britain, our eternal ally—fought to defend this right, not only in the Second World War. We fought for it in the war’s aftermath, at the formation of the United Nations. No government pushed harder for a U.N. Charter committed to protecting the dignity of all persons. No nation argued more effectively for a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No country understood better the importance of Article 18 in that Declaration, the guarantee of freedom of conscience. Charles Malik, the Arab intellectual and Commission delegate from Lebanon, described the influence of the United States during this time in this way: The American spirit of freedom, tolerance, largeness of heart and profound respect for individual human beings permeated and suffused our atmosphere all around…. I cannot imagine a document on human rights and fundamental freedoms arising in our age without the sustaining support of this spiritual background. I cannot imagine the Declaration coming to birth under the aegis of any other culture emerging dominant after the Second World War. Faith and Freedom. The right to dissent. The right to believe according to the dictates of one’s conscience. This is a profoundly Christian idea, and a basic doctrine in the American Creed. Americans are chronic dissenters, and Europeans should not be shocked when the United States refuses to bow to established political orthodoxy from time to time. It doesn’t mean, of course, that we Americans are always right in our dissenting. It just means we insist on the right to be wrong. That sometimes makes us hard to live with. But when we consider what’s at stake in the fight for freedom around the world today, perhaps that makes us hard to live without. Joseph Loconte is the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at The Heritage Foundation and editor of The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm(Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). |
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PROPERTY RIGHTS
THE RIGHT TO PRIVATE PROPERTY
"The right to private property is the social-political principle that adult human beings may not be prohibited or prevented by anyone from acquiring, holding and trading (with willing parties) valued items not already owned by others. Such a right is, thus, unalienable and, if in fact justified, is supposed to enjoy respect and legal protection in a just human community".*
*from the internet encyclopedia of philosopy
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Fiscal Responsibility
Two common definitions in the Random House Distonary are:
1) of or pertaining to the public treasuries or revenues
2) of or pertaining to revenues in general
Responsibility is defined as: a particular burden of obligation upon one who is responsible
A balanced budget is a budget in which income equals expenditures. In other words, if a country takes in X dollars in a year and spends exactly that amount, it has a balanced budget. The term 'balanced budget' usually applies to the U.S. federal government. For most of the past forty years, the United States has not maintained a balanced budget but rather ran a deficit. The exception to this occurred during the tail end of the dot-com boom during which the U.S.
Federal government not only maintained a balanced budget but ran a surplus. Classical economists tend to argue that a balanced budget should be the aim of the government. Keynesians* argue, however, that the government should forgo the goal of a balanced budget during difficult economic times and instead attempt to stimulate the economy through deficit spending.
*Keynesian Economics
Named for economist John Maynard Keynes. Aneconomic theory which advocates governmentintervention, or demand-side management of theeconomy, to achieve full employment and stable prices.
The Ten Cannots
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
n Rev. William John Henry Boetcker, 1873
Top 10 STATES IN FISCAL PERIL* - #1- California, #2- Arizona, #3- Rhode Island, #4- Michigan, #5- Oregon, #6- Nevada, #7- Florida, #8- New Jersey, #9- Illinois and #10- WISCONSIN.
Just look around us, our national legislators have us trillions of dollars in debt! Our unborn children will be held more liable for this than most of us.
Our state, as they say, is $5.5 BILLION in the RED. According to the Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance, they are closer to $10 Billion, as the state does not follow “GAAP”- Generally Accepted Accounting Principles”.
Thankfully, our local governments try and do a better job for us but they still must follow state and federal mandates which very seriously hinder them. Our local governments do not have to spend more on mandated programs than the limits set within them.
Our elected officials should be Good and Honest stewards of our tax dollars and our rights. The question we need to ask ourselves is, "ARE THEY?"
Elected officials work for US! We need to hold them accountable.
GOD BLESS AMERICA and AMERICA BLESS GOD
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We believe the majority of Barron County citizens hold these same beliefs. We welcome you to join us to help return our government to the people. You are needed to protect the sovereignty of our nation and ensure a secure future for our children and grandchildren.