Idaho Chooses Life

Idaho Chooses Life announced today that it was urging pro-Life Idahoans to support Rick Santorum in the March 6th GOP Presidential Caucuses.
“The Board of Idaho Chooses Life has voted to support Rick Santorum,” said David Ripley, Executive Director, in a prepared press statement, “based upon his viability, his stellar record and his unquestionable passion for defending the sanctity of human life.”

“We have watched with increasing revulsion as President Obama leads an unprecedented assault on Life and Liberty,” Ripley continued. “The hour demands a leader with a deep understanding of the threat posed by government-run health care. As Rick Santorum has argued, ‘ObamaCare will crush economic freedom, will make people dependent upon government for the most important thing: their very lives’.”

ICL noted that Santorum has been in the forefront of the national pro-Life movement for many years. He was a principal sponsor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act as a member of the U.S. Senate. But Santorum has not just fought against Roe v. Wade – he has worked to provide women and girls in difficult situations with real world help. In 1999 he sponsored the Women and Children’s Resources Act to help women access health care, housing and educational services.

Santorum’s fundamental grasp of the core issues at stake in the pro-Life battle is further demonstrated by his sponsorship of the Assisted Suicide Prevention Act and the Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act. This latter bill would have directed resources toward medical research on stem cells derived from ethical sources.

“Idaho pro-Lifers have an historic opportunity to impact the national race for president,” Ripley concluded. “We urge our supporters to get involved and make a difference on March 6th.”

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Idaho Chooses Life

My son and I ventured out to hear GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum in Boise. It was an encouraging and historic event. Perhaps 2500 Idahoans came out on a chilly evening to learn more about the man most likely to challenge Mitt Romney for the nomination.
First, we must give kudos to Jonathan Parker and Norm Semanko of the Idaho GOP for engineering an historic moment. Not many candidates have found the will or interest to travel out here to meet real folks and talk about their vision for America. Idaho’s March 6th Caucus date is meaningful and the presence of Rick Santorum proves it. Santorum’s retail campaign effort has even forced Mitt Romney to hold his first public event when he comes to Boise on Friday to once again raise money.

Santorum is a rock solid conservative, but he is no rock star. The folks in attendance were hungry for the kind of battle cry that Newt Gingrich can dish up; Santorum seems almost shy about folks getting too worked up. A few times the crowd was on the verge of a standing ovation, but Santorum interrupted to continue with his lecture about the numerous threats posed by the continued reign of Barack Obama.

The presidential hopeful comes with a modest staff and a U.S. Constitution in his back pocket. He produced it to expound on the need for the next president to be steeped in its powers and limitations. He called upon the nation to restore the nation’s founding vision, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Santorum recalled the courageous decision by the Founders to pledge their sacred honor at a time when they challenged the most powerful nation on earth: He demanded that those listening answer the call to service posed by these critical days.

No doubt that those in attendance were ready to answer that call. And there is the encouraging part of the evening: Ordinary citizens gathered in different parts of Capital High School to fight for their country at a time when she is in serious danger. Many, like me, brought their children. (Not only because of the historic opportunity to participate in history, but because these young people are the ones who will inherit the fruits of our present labor – or suffer most harshly the consequences of our failure).

No doubt these people will be present on March 6th. My guess is that most will be voting for Rick Santorum.

While Santorum does not have Gingrich’s gift for the spontaneous battle cry, he does have a certain charisma. It is the kind of charm, alloyed with a few parts humility, that could wear well in the months and years ahead. That humility was best displayed by his insistence upon coming to the gym, used as an overflow room, to take a few questions and shake hands all the way around the floor.

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By Richard Larsen

Many of us were relieved that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Thursday signaling six more weeks of winter. In the context of one of the warmest Idaho winters on record, anecdotal quips and references to anthropogenic global warming (AGW), or manmade global warming, are on the increase. But of course, they can only be anecdotal since we know from the data that average global temperatures have been cooling slightly over the past decade, while manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) has been increasing steadily during the same period.

The fundamental tenet of AGW is logically fallacious. Man cannot “cause” the climate or the earth to warm. The primary source of heat for the planet is the sun, consequently, all truly causal forces of climate warming must be logically and scientifically connected with the sun, regardless of what man may or may not do to contribute to it. It is therefore both illogical and oxymoronic to refer to “manmade global warming.”

AGW proponents point to man’s CO2 emissions as “causal” to AGW, but they cannot be causal. Carbon dioxide, is a naturally occurring component of our atmosphere, but does not, of itself, produce heat. So even if we, as a species, doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it would not necessarily increase the global mean temperature since CO2 is not the cause, or origin, of heat for the planet.

That said, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means it can trap solar heat in the atmosphere. So while it’s illogical to refer to “manmade global warming” or AGW, it is completely logical and scientific to refer to man contributing to global warming. Since CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and we generate CO2 with our carbon based transportation system and much of our energy production, we can and do have an effect on the amount of solar heat that remains in the atmosphere. Therefore we can contribute to global mean temperatures, but we cannot be the cause of it.

Let’s see if we can get a handle on how much we may be contributing to global warming by examining the components of our atmosphere. Scientists tell us that our atmosphere is composed roughly (by volume) of 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0-4% water vapor, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.

Now, let’s put carbon dioxide into perspective Oceans contain 37,400 billion tons (GT) of suspended carbon and land biomass has 2,000-3,000 GT. The atmosphere contains 720 GT of CO2 and manmade emissions contribute about 6 GT. The oceans, land and atmosphere exchange CO2 continuously which means that the addition by humans is incredibly small, amounting to .00159% of the total, and .0083% of the atmospheric carbon dioxide. Can such a relatively small contribution of CO2 make a difference climatically? Probably, but it’s going to be negligible.

To provide a point of reference for comparative purposes, the average household bathtub holds about 42 gallons of water. If you filled your tub and then poured in an additional half-a-teaspoon of water, that would be the equivalent of our CO2 contribution to the atmosphere. And remember, CO2 makes up just .039% of the atmosphere, which under other measuring systems would constitute no more than a “trace amount.” Water vapor is by far the most prevalent component accounting for as much as 85% of the greenhouse effect.

I’ve not seen anyone put this into the proper perspective better than Andrew Montford, a British science publisher. He said a couple months ago, “The problem is that you can accept all the basic tenets of greenhouse physics and still conclude that the threat of a dangerously large warming is so improbable as to be negligible, while the threat of real harm from climate-mitigation policies is already so high as to be worrying, that the cure is proving far worse than the disease is ever likely to be. Or as I put it once, we may be putting a tourniquet round our necks to stop a nosebleed.”

There appears to be little correlation between the amount of CO2 emissions and global temperatures. According to corrected NASA data, the earth has cooled by about 1 degree Celsius over the past decade, about the same amount it warmed over the past century, while CO2 emissions have increased by some estimates as much as 25%. If that tiny portion that man contributes to the atmosphere was so contributory to planet warming, certainly there would be empirical correlation and actual results would more closely match Michael Mann’s discredited “hockey stick” graph.

Even if all manmade CO2 emissions were immediately stopped, the effect would be negligible, as we contribute so little as a percentage to the atmosphere.

Like the weather, the climate has always changed, and will continue to do so in spite of, not because of us. Perhaps Punxsutawney Phil is a better prognosticator than the AGW alarmists.

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Idaho Chooses Life

Kudos to Austin Hill (KIDO Radio – Boise) for his show on the dire threat of Obama’s “contraceptive” mandate. This new exercise of raw federal power shows the dangers of ObamaCare. But contrary to the liberal media spin, this raw power grab impacts much more than the Catholic Church or religious institutions.

Under the new edict, EVERY private employer will have to provide free sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees. Not only will every employer have to provide those “benefits” – they will have to pay the full cost of doing so. President Obama has determined that it is an “unreasonable burden” for employees to cover even a modest co-pay. That makes every private employer, including the many who have pro-Life/Christian values, an unwilling party to the destruction of innocent life.

This is but one example of the grave moral danger associated with the drive in the Idaho Legislature to submit to ObamaCare by creating a state insurance exchange. Regardless of the hype coming from the gaggle of lobbyists pushing greater state power and control over insurance competition – a state exchange is the cornerstone block of ObamaCare. As such, it must adhere, by federal law, to the rules and guidelines issued by the Obama Administration.

A state insurance exchange is an expensive idea whose time may never come; but is downright dangerous now as part of Obama’s drive to remake Idaho.

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By Andi Elliott

Folks, we are asking people to send this to their representatives so that Idaho can be certain that candidates that appear on Idaho ballots are actually eligible to be there. It is up to the Chairmen of the political parties to “vet” the candidates. This is not always done. Georgia and Texas and a handful of other states have begun this process and this legislation is modeled after their legislation.

This is a draft of the proposed legislation that folks all over the state are asking their representatives to sponsor/cosponsor.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks, Andi Elliott
208-662-5808
straighttalkidaho@yahoo.com

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT relating to certification for placement on the ballot of candidates for president or vice-president of the United States.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF IDAHO:

SECTION 1. Section_________, Election Code, is amended by amending Subsection (__) and adding Subsection (___) to read as follows:

(a) Except as provided by Subsection (__) or (___), the secretary of state shall certify in writing for placement on the general election ballot the names of the candidates for president and vice-president who are entitled to have their names placed on the ballot.

(d) The secretary of state may not certify the name of a candidate for president or vice-president unless the candidate has presented the candidate’s certified and/or notarized copy of his or her original birth certificate indicating that the person is a natural-born United States citizen.

SECTION 2. The secretary of state shall perform a background check on presidential candidates to ensure they meet the Constitutional qualifications, including whether not they are a NATURAL Born Citizen of the United States – born of 2 U.S. citizen parents within the United States according to the U.S. Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett, 1875. Candidates for president and vice-president who are entitled to have their names placed on the ballot shall complete the same Federal I-9 form that every other employee in the country is required to complete to prove that they are legally able to work in the United States. The secretary of state shall certify that said Federal I-9 form has been completed.

SECTION 3. An emergency existing therefore, which emergency is hereby declared to exist, this act shall be in full force and effect on and after its passage and approval.

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Idaho Chooses Life

The pro-Life community is buzzing with the tremendous news that Planned Parenthood has lost the legitimizing cover of the breast cancer lobby. The Komen Foundation’s decision to end its partnership with the Abortion Industry is a huge blessing – on many levels.

There is the money which Komen has transferred from life-loving citizens to those promoting the death of women and babies. Seeing Planned Parenthood lose several millions in charitable support is certainly encouraging.

And we are all excited by the fact that pro-Lifers will no longer have to argue or wince or boycott fundraising efforts designed to end the scourge of breast cancer. In fact, we encourage our readers to at least send the Komen Foundation an email to express our gratitude; a donation in the name of innocent children would be better. Komen deserves sincere praise for protecting the integrity of the effort to treat and cure breast cancer.

But in the long term, the best aspect of this development is that Planned Parenthood can no longer hide its evil behind the skirt of “fighting breast cancer” – as if it were principally concerned about the health or lives of women. Whenever their killing operations have been exposed, they seek to change the subject by pointing to their work with Komen.

That ruse just got a lot harder.

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By Richard Larsen

The president, in his State of the Union address declared, “The problems we’re overcoming are not the heritage of one person, party, or even one generation. It’s just the tendency of government to grow. And there’s always that well-intentioned chorus of voices saying, ‘With a little more power and a little more money, we could do so much for the people.’ For a time we forgot the American dream isn’t one of making government bigger; it’s keeping faith with the mighty spirit of free people under God.”

If you don’t recall that opening line, it’s understandable, for it wasn’t in the latest State of the Union, and it wasn’t this president. The president was Ronald Reagan, and the year was 1984. Whether one agreed with him or not, there was remarkable consistency in what he said, and his message didn’t vary based on the venue, his audience, or the grandness of the stage. Even more remarkable was his policies and recommendations to congress and the American people were consistent, at least incrementally, with what he said. This is an increasingly rare commodity, especially in politics, as we observed firsthand this week.

In this week’s State of the Union we heard, “What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.” I couldn’t agree more! But what does he think those values are? The historical version of those “American values” and Obama’s are not synonymous. For the rest of the speech the only words uttered with greater frequency than “fair” and “fairness” were “I,” “me,” and “my.”

From what Obama said Tuesday night, his notion of our “American values” is not based on freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness, or any of the ancillary principles or traits that have made America great. His overarching theme was “fairness,” which is simply a euphemism for class envy, based on increased taxation of the most financially successful Americans, to pay for more regulation, agencies, and programs. This concept of “values” is very un-American. They are distinctly antithetical to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that encompassed the nation’s political value system for two centuries.

This contrast is observed even more starkly with the 1986 State of the Union address when President Reagan put the role of fairness in proper perspective. “Private values must be at the heart of public policies.” He elaborated, “Americans have always valued faith, character, hard work, personal responsibility, self-reliance, discipline, competition, charity, fairness, and achievement. Values originate from what people believe, especially what they believe about God.” Clearly, from Obama’s speech, those are not his idea of “American values.”

Editors at The Washington Post observed this as well, when they said of Obama’s speech, “None of the proposals constitutes a single bold stroke to revive the economy, but the heart of Obama’s message was that America’s wealthiest citizens must do more to cement the economic recovery and pull the country from its dire fiscal condition.”

We should, with every major speech like the State of the Union, assess the consistency in speech and actions. If one tells us one thing but does another, that’s not just duplicity, it’s hypocrisy and prevarication. Here’s a perfect example from Obama’s speech the other night, “But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” He obviously doesn’t really believe that, since government now is expanding and encroaching into our lives more than ever before and he proposed even more government “solutions” in his speech.

In describing the period leading up to Reagan’s 1984 address, Reagan said, “There was a feeling government had grown beyond the consent of the governed. Families felt helpless in the face of mounting inflation and the indignity of taxes that reduced reward for hard work, thrift, and risk-taking. All this was overlaid by an ever-growing web of rules and regulations.” Sound familiar?

Every solution for Obama is another government program or more spending. This is clearly not an American value. But this one is, “I think the best possible social program is a job.” That, too, was Ronald Reagan. He also correctly assessed the relationship between expansion of government and individual liberty, when he declared factually, “As government expands, liberty contracts.”

For those of us who lived through the Reagan years, the contrast between our president from thirty years ago and our current incarnation could not be more stark. They are diametrically opposed in the role of government in our lives, the American values that define us culturally and economically, and in the inherent trust of people, versus a trust of the government.

History and our founding documents provide a documented transcript of what our “American values” are, and that transcript provides a narrative much different from what our current president portrays.

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Idaho Chooses Life

President Obama issued a public statement this past Sunday honoring the Supreme Court for its heinous act 39 years ago this week:

“We must remember that [Roe v. Wade] not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.”

That is special. As the present leader of a movement to strip Americans of privacy and their right to pursue happiness and retain the fruits of their labor – the one area Obama would acknowledge “privacy” is in the matter of destroying an innocent life. In his view, the destruction of a defenseless human being should remain a “personal” matter between a mother and her abortionist.

How truly sad it is that the “leader” of the free world has nothing more to offer than legitimizing moral chaos in the name of “freedom”.

We ask that you join us in praying to the Lord Almighty that He would raise up a righteous man to help restore America’s moral grounding by tearing down the high altars of libertinism.

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By Richard Larsen

It’s too bad that we can’t rely on the headline numbers that our own government gives us. The headline numbers the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases each month obfuscate the real unemployment malaise across the country. Yet ironically, it’s in the BLS releases that we find a more complete unemployment picture, we just have to dig deeper for it.

When the BLS reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5% with December’s year-end data, media pounced on the headline figure but almost none delved deeper into the official report. What they report is the demographic composition of the workforce as calculated in Table A-1 of their monthly report. Since 1994, these are the primary data for headline purposes. They also “tweak” the figures for “seasonal adjustment.”

For a more complete picture, however, look at the BLS monthly employment report, table A-15. U-6 on that table indicates as a percentage of the total civilian workforce, the number of unemployed (those included in Table A-1), those who have given up looking for jobs, plus those who are working marginal part-time jobs who need fulltime positions. In the latest report, that percentage is 15.2%. This is a much more accurate indication of the state of the economy relative to unemployment and job creation.

It’s easy to understand why those figures wouldn’t be reported in the headlines. They don’t look good. But to understand how current economic policies have failed so dramatically in job creation, it’s imperative that we look at the full picture.

Based solely on BLS data, for example, we learn the following. Over the past year alone, the civilian workforce population rose by 1,726,000. That means we need to add an average 166,000 jobs per month just to keep up with the demand of those who are entering the job market. Yet over the past year the number of people actually working fell by 67,000.

In November alone, when the headlines across the nation reported that unemployment dropped from 9.1% to 8.6%, job creation was not what caused the decline. The cause of the drop, which should’ve been the real headline, was that 487,000 fellow Americans stopped looking for work.

In the 30 months since the recession ended officially, according to BLS data, nearly one million previously employed workers have dropped out of the labor force. That means that not only are they not working, but they’ve become discouraged and given up finding a job, and aren’t even looking for a job anymore.

Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) reports that this anemic job growth is atypical in post-recession recoveries. Their research indicates that in the past nine recession recoveries the labor force “had climbed an average 3.5 million by this point.” After the recession in 2002-2003, job growth exploded with over 4 million jobs created, culminating in an official unemployment rate of 4.4% by this point in the recovery.

Instead, we have a net job loss over the past few years. The participation rate, which is the percentage of the number of people either working or looking for work compared to the civilian working-age population, is now 64%, which is down nearly two points from when the recession officially ended in June 2009. The only time that figure was lower, according to BLS, was several decades ago when women began entering the workforce en mass. And total payrolls are still a whopping 6.1 million lower than when they peaked in 2008.

The nonprofit Employment Policy Institute tracks this data closely. They take the number of jobs lost since the recession began and add in the growth of the working age population. The resulting figure they report as a “jobs deficit,” and they calculate we have a current deficit of 10.8 million jobs, even factoring in the 1.4 million jobs added since the recession ended,

The anemic job situation has a pejorative impact even on those who are fortunate enough to still have one. According to Sentier Research, real median annual household income has declined 5.1% since the recession ended 30 months ago. That represents even more of a drop than what happened during the recession itself, which declined 3.2%.

Corporate profits have continued to improve over the past two years, but companies are still reluctant to start hiring again. Most small business owners and corporate officers cite the uncertain regulatory environment, high corporate tax rates, and new regulation implementation costs as obstacles.

If anything, it’s a testament to the resiliency of our private sector that we’ve had any jobs created in this hostile environment that Washington has created. What jobs have been added is in spite of, not because of what the administration has been doing to the private sector.

The only real hope for revitalizing America’s job market lies in policies emanating from Washington that are conducive to job creation, rather than punitive. Let’s hope November elections facilitate that most critical change.

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By Richard Larsen

President Hugo Chavez, over the past several years, has systematically nationalized entire sectors of Venezuela’s economy, created new positions for his cronies to centralize his power, and ignored constitutional limitations. This systematic dismantling of a Latin American constitutional democracy has transformed his democratically elected presidency into a virtual totalitarian dictatorship.

If it is true that that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then our president has an abundance of praise for the Latin American dictator. In spite of their occasional verbal spats, it seems increasingly like both rulers must’ve attended the same Capone School of Political Science in Chicago, majoring in totalitarianism, for they both have proven adept at centralizing their power by trampling their respective constitutions.

Speaking of their verbal posturing, the occasional exchanges between apparent ideological kin have themselves proven interesting. Just two weeks ago, President Obama criticized Chavez for his questionable human rights record and support of Iran. Obviously not appreciating the criticism, especially in light of Obama’s emulation, Chavez responded by calling Obama a “clown,” and astutely remarked further, “take care of your own business, focus on governing your country, which you’ve turned into a disaster. Leave us alone.”

The trampling of the respective constitutions is what is most distressing. The most recent example (and there are many over the past three years) here is nothing short of spectacular. Having been rebuffed by the Democrat controlled senate in an attempt to make several appointments, Obama made “recess” appointments of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Protection Agency and named three others to the National Labor Relations Board. Recess appointments are frequently used by presidents to seat their desired appointees when they can’t garner the necessary senatorial support for confirmation. Such appointments only last a year.

But the key from a constitutional perspective is that the Senate has to be in recess for such appointments to be made. Recesses of congress occur when both houses agree to adjourn and a session is ended by formal resolution. No such formal resolution was passed by either chamber of congress before the holiday break, which means they are not in recess. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, has maintained a pro forma session of the Senate which means as far he’s concerned, they’re not in recess either. In fact, at the end of the Bush administration, Reid did the same thing to prevent George W. Bush from making recess appointments.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, declared that Obama’s disregard of the Constitution in making these appointments, “arrogantly circumvented the American people.” He continued, “Breaking from this precedent lands this appointee in uncertain legal territory, threatens the confirmation process and fundamentally endangers the Congress‘ role in providing a check on the excesses of the executive branch.”

Since the Senate, which must confirm many presidential appointments, is not in recess, a “recess appointment” constitutionally cannot be made. But when we have an ideologically motivated president with an insatiable appetite for power, and with such little regard for the Constitution, apparently nothing is beyond the scope of possibility.

And lest we think that the Constitution has no relevance, every president promises that they will “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That oath of office, that he declares he will “faithfully execute,” as stated in Article Two, Section One, Clause Eight of the Constitution, clearly indicates that it is relevant. What are we to think of a president with such little regard for the oath he takes and the document upon which our laws are based that he vows fealty to and promises to uphold? How can it be conscionable for someone to promise to uphold the Constitution, and then violate it whenever it conflicts with his agenda?

Perhaps therein lies the answer. One has to take the oath seriously, have respect for the Constitution, and have a conscience in faithfully preserving, protecting and defending it for the oath to mean something. None of which seem to apply to Obama.

Such abject disregard for the constitutional limitations leaves those of us who love this republic to wonder what others he will choose to ignore. If he’s following Chavez’s playbook, it might well be changing his own term of office, buying the next election through promises of populist government largesse to voters, or even going so far as suspending the election if he deems it necessary.

Is it a stretch to compare Obama with Hugo Chavez? Undoubtedly. But their modus operandi possess distinct similarities, including their disregard for their respective constitutions.

Our Constitution was brilliantly crafted to prevent excessive power being centralized in any one of the three branches of government. The checks and balances built into the Constitution are there precisely to prevent any one branch from running roughshod over the others. Indeed, they are there to prevent precisely what Obama did so egregiously this week.

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