Rally, Prayer, Governor, Reagan and STD’s

Voices from the Statehouse Urge Congress to “Kill the Bill”

On Monday afternoon, I was privileged to be a part of the Indianapolis TEA Party “Kill the Bill” rally on the South steps of the State Capitol. It is hard to guess the size of the crowd, but half of the lawn was filled by the time Congressman Mike Pence gave a stirring speech calling on Hoosiers to continue to stand up against Obamacare. There were easily 1,000 people standing in the cold drizzle to show their concern about the massive health care legislation that some want to ram through Congress this week.

The large crowd included several state legislators, congressional candidates and various political leaders. Yet, perhaps one of the loudest voices from the State House chimed in yesterday with a powerful news release. In somewhat of a rare move, the Governor of Indiana called upon the entire Indiana congressional delegation to vote against a piece of federal legislation. The news release was preceded b a letter from Governor Mitch Daniels to every Indiana US House and US Senate member asking them to vote no for the sake of Indiana, calling the bill a “disastrous mistake” “dangerously adverse to the interest of Hoosiers today and tomorrow.”

The Governor backed his concern with some specific negative impacts of this legislation upon Indiana. Here are those concerns:

• Through a massive expansion of Medicaid, half a million (500,000) new Hoosiers would become eligible, costing Hoosier taxpayers billions more in state taxes. One in four Hoosiers would be on public assistance.

• Without a costly increase in the Medicaid provider reimbursement rates, there will not be enough health care professionals to care for this huge new influx of Medicaid patients.

• The Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) would be eliminated as the new federal rules would force the 45,000 families who are currently covered into the Medicaid fee-for-service delivery model, losing the cost saving and quality advantages of consumer-driven health care.

• Many Hoosiers who currently have health insurance will pay higher premiums – the Congressional Budget Office estimates an average increase nationally of $2,100 for some families, and a study of the effects in Indiana showed premium increases ranging up to 78 percent. Premiums will continue to rise because the drivers of rising costs in the health care system are exacerbated rather than controlled by the legislation.

• A growing and job-creating life sciences sector in Indiana will be hit with huge new tax increases: at least $20 billion for the device manufacturers and $90 billion for pharmaceutical companies. These costs will be passed to consumers and will result in job losses in Indiana.

• A job killing tax of $2,000 per employee will be levied on many Indiana companies that cannot afford or choose not to provide coverage to their employees.

• The costs for this massive entitlement expansion are vastly and misleadingly understated: An honest estimate would show an addition of more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.

Its no wonder with this Indiana impact statement that the Governor called this health care proposal“the most anti-jobs, anti-taxpayer, anti-Indiana measure you may ever see in your congressional career.”

It is important that you contact your member of the US House this week with your concerns about how they should vote on this legislation. Their telephone numbers and an email link are as follows (with key Indiana votes in bold):

• Rep. Dan Burton (202) 225-2276
• Rep. Steve Buyer (202) 225-5037
• Rep. Andre Carson (202) 225-4011
• Rep. Joe Donelly (202) 225-3915
• Rep. Brad Ellsworth (202) 225-4636
• Rep. Baron Hill (202) 225-5315
• Rep. Mike Pence (202) 225-3021
• Rep. Mark Souder (202) 225-4436
• Rep. Peter Visclosky (202) 225-2461

Want to Silence People? Call the ACLU of Indiana

There is a misperception among some that the American Civil Liberties Union is a free speech organization. This is certainly true if you think “speech” means the right to have multiple wives, distribute pornography, or remove a 50-yr old monument of the Ten Commandments from the town square, but if you want to actually say something thankful and respectful during a school graduation, don’t count on it.

Seniors and parents at Greenwood High School are learning that tolerance is a one-way street when it comes to a student-led effort to acknowledge and thank God for their achievement in graduating this May. The class valedictorian does not want a prayer at the start of the graduation ceremony even though a majority of his peers would like one included in their ceremony. No one is trying to silence Eric Workman, but rather than be respectful of other speech and religious views he believes that he has a constitutional right to not be offended, or a freedom from religion.

Even if Eric wins the Federal lawsuit that the ACLU of Indiana filed to ban the prayer, he has a lot to learn about being an adult when he enters a world filled with all sort of points of view and speech with which he may not like or agree. (Eric probably should have simply planned to excuse himself for a few minutes, come in ten minutes late, or stood there quietly and respectfully, rather than delve his community and his school into a divisive national controversy.)

At least that is the approach I tried to take with the media late last week when this story broke. You can see news stories on this controversy at these links to the Associated Press news story that ran in newspapers all across Indiana and the country and an interesting video from Indianapolis Channel 6 news here  (note the student comments in the TV story):

Video Clip from Channel 6

http://www.theindychannel.com/video/22826190/index.html

An Example of the Associated Press Story

http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100312/NEWS07/303129916

What Would Reagan Do?

This news story about the Greenwood High School prayer controversy is interesting because 26 years ago to the day this issue was being debated in the United States Senate with a Constitutional amendment to allow voluntary prayer in public schools. President Ronald Reagan was a strong supporter of the legislation. The amendment fell just short of the two-thirds majority required. Here are some of the things President Reagan said about this issue on the day of the vote and in support of it beforehand:

“I am deeply disappointed that, although a majority of the Senate voted for it, the school prayer amendment fell short.” (3/15/84)

“Unfortunately, in the last two decades we’ve experienced an onslaught of such twisted logic that if Alice were visiting America, she might think she’d never left Wonderland. We’re told that it somehow violates the rights of others to permit students in school who desire to pray to do so. Clearly, this infringes on the freedom of those who choose to pray, the freedom taken for granted since the time of our Founding Fathers.”

“To prevent those who believe in God from expressing their faith is an outrage… The relentless drive to eliminate God from our schools…should be stopped.” (10/25/82)

“Sometimes I can’t help but feel the First Amendment is being turned on its head.”
“The First Amendment was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.” (3/15/82)

“Not in Our Backyard”

Several residents from the Southeast side of Indianapolis won a victory for their community when the local alcohol beverage licensing board unanimously voted to deny a liquor license to a controversial skin restaurant on Monday. Show Me’s is a more risqué version of a Hooters restaurant. People near McFarland Farms didn’t want that type of establishment in their neighborhood. (AFA of Indiana helped concerned homeowners and community leaders on this matter behind the scenes, but it was the people who took the time to gather petition signatures and to attend the four-hour hearing who deserve the credit.)

The restaurant will probably look to a different location that doesn’t have the opposition of other business owners, churches, parents and neighborhood homeowner associations.

Sad CDC Statistics Reveal Intrinsic Danger Few Want Mentioned in Public

There is some disturbing new research from the Centers for Disease Control that reconfirms what their own studies have long revealed. Still, our pop-culture wants to ignore it and march in a different direction.

Never before in our nation’s history has the issue of homosexuality and bi-sexuality been more in vogue, chic, acceptable and even promoted. In fact, to raise concerns about these behaviors and to question governmental or societal approval of it can get one blasted in the media, harassed, and labeled a bigot or hatemonger. Still, the fact remains that the rate of HIV infection among homosexual men is 44 times higher than heterosexual men (and 40 times higher infection rate than heterosexual women). The rate of Syphilis infection among homosexual men is 46 times higher than among heterosexual males in the US.

Sometimes percentages can be misleading. The CDC study also put it in raw number terms that are perhaps even more shocking. For an example, the CDC report wrote, “the range was 522-989 cases of new HIV diagnoses per 100,000 MSM [men having sex with men] vs. 12 per 100,000 other men and 13per 100,000 women.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Congressional Races, Current Affairs, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.