1/5/07 California Governor proposes statewide health insurance for all children in the state, including illegals.

1/4/07 Whitehouse annouces the signing of some 2004 secret program of a shared Social Security benefits program that would extend to Mexicans in the U.S.  Simply put:  If a Mexican worker works 8-years in Mexico and then 2-years in the U.S., they will qualify for Social Security benefits at age 65 regardless of citizenship.  Who's side is Bush on?

originally written April 5, 2006

by Christine Gates

 
“Strike to support undocumented people for legalization,” is the rallying cry from the Immigrant Solidarity Network website I found last week.  That is nonsense!  I don’t know what exactly that means.  “Undocumented people” are who? 

 Do they mean some people are here in America without the proper legal documents allowing them to be here?  Does it mean they have not been invited to enter the country by our government? 

 Would that not mean those people are breaking American law?  Which then means we can call them aliens (foreigners) here illegally, thus illegal aliens and, finally, criminal invaders.

 Amnesty is bad no matter what it is called.  It rewards those who knowingly choose to break the law and, technically, invade this country.  This behavior cannot be rewarded.

 If we begin to enforce all of the immigration laws already on the books, we could go a long way to stopping this invasion.  Maybe later, with calm cool heads our politicians can draft some legislation with real meaning and purpose. 

 Some of the proposed bills in Congress allow the invaders to sign-up for benefits, how nice.  It is nice that we are going to “ask” these law-breakers to come into government offices to pay their fines and back taxes.  It is nice that we are not going to go out and actively search for these twelve million invaders, but we will ask them to come-on-in.  That is insane public policy.  What if they don’t come-by the office to sign-up, can we deport them then?  Well, no, that wouldn’t be nice.

 What kind of euphemism is “undocumented people for legalization”?  We have established what “undocumented people” means, criminal invaders, but “for legalization” of what?  Does that mean the aliens want to become something “legal”?  Legal workers or naturalized / legal American citizens.  They are very different. 

 Legal workers would fall under a guest worker program instituted when there are not enough people for the number of jobs offered.  Legal migrants would be those who come into our country as invited guests to work in taxed and regulated jobs and then go back to their country.  They would not be eligible for all the extraordinary right’s of American citizens.  They would participate in a guest worker program and go home.

 We have millions of people on welfare in America and millions more people on unemployment, a tremendous social burden.  And still, we are going to allow more documented people into America to take jobs away from those Americans.  Just because they are “documented” doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

 A guest worker program will not make this North Carolina job shortage any better.  A guest worker program will only drive the wages down for everyone in blue-collar jobs, because these wonderful hard-working “guest workers” will do any job for next to nothing. 

 They are thankful for the opportunity, but it doesn’t make invading and exploiting our country right.  They are willing to live 20 people to a house and spend virtually no money here in America. 

 They are satisfied to send nearly all of their untaxed income back to Mexico.  Making those money transfers collectively the largest source of money to the Mexican economy.  Mexico does not want to stop that free flow of money.  That is why no one in the Mexican government is interested in stopping the illegal border crossings.

 If all of those American people receiving Welfare benefits and unemployment benefits worked in the eight to twelve million jobs which the illegal aliens currently hold, we could eliminate a large portion of our federal and state social spending. 

 My solution is to deport all criminal invaders for additional fiscal savings to our country and build a wall to keep them out.

 Oh, and don’t forget to clear out the jails and prisons of the “undocumented people” or criminal invaders, too.  They cost us, the taxpayers, billions of dollars each year to feed, cloth, and provide legal services, because, unfortunately, they are not all hard-working people.

 So, these “undocumented people,” or criminal invaders, came to America for a better life, a better future, better wages, freedom, liberty, and justice without adhering to our most basic laws to reap the benefits?  Who can blame them for trying to get here, but are they not still invading this country and subverting the sovereignty of our country? 

 I am a granddaughter of an Italian immigrant and an Irish immigrant.  My husband is the grandson of a Mexican immigrant.  I am proud to be an American.  Our grandparents became naturalized American citizens.

 Our grandparents were extremely proud to become Americans.  My mother and my mother-in-law were not permitted to learn the native language of their parents, because they were in America now - Americans.  These people were proud of their struggle to learn English and have their kids learn better English.  They all became truly Americanized.  I thank them for acculturating the way they did.

originally written March 20, 2006

by Christine Gates

Last month, South Dakota become the first state since Roe v. Wade (1973) to all ban abortions. 

The legislature of South Dakota beautifully stated that the rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn child are EQUAL.  Hurrah!!!  They further stated in the law that “each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization.” 

Governor Michael Rounds (R-SD) said, "In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society.  The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society.  I agree with them."

These are the statements are so simple and in such alignment with our Biblical teachings.  The Legislature and Governor have argued against permissive abortion laws on the basis of equal rights.  It is brilliant!

With a statement like Rounds’, don’t look for any Euthanasia or Physician-Assisted Suicide laws to be coming out of the this great state.  This state values human life in all its forms.

In South Dakota, North Dakota and Mississippi there is only one abortion clinic in each state.  South Dakota performs 800 abortions per year.  Maybe someone could put an adoption agency on either side of the abortion clinic and find homes for those other 800 babies.

Planned Parenthood has to fly physicians into the state to perform abortions.  The physicians within the state will not perform them because of the disgrace and bad reputation attached to the procedures, or killings, depending on which side you’re on.

South Dakota Legislature passed five laws last year that put even tighter restrictions on killing unborn babies, something the Pro-Choice crowd nicely calls a woman’s choice. 

One of the laws requires all physicians to inform women that their choice was a “whole, separate, unique human being."  Luckily, the humanitarian organization and champion of women, children, and families, Planned Parenthood, has filed a lawsuit and blocked the requirement of “whole, separate, unique human being" from the physician’s pre-procedure information while the litigation is on going.

I can’t understand the harm in telling a woman that what she is carrying inside of her womb and about terminate, destroy or kill is a “whole, separate, unique human being" or more simply a baby. 

What is the harm in such a statement?  Is it the mother’s fragile psyche during her predicament?  Or is it the havoc wreaked on a physician’s moral compass that is the issue? 

I know what the harm is… it makes the abortion, the choice, the procedure more like what it really is.  It kills “whole, separate, unique human being[s]” and that is not what anyone inside the abortion industry wants people to think about.

Who could go through with the procedure on the terms of killing a “whole, separate, unique human being”?

Abortions will still be legal in the other 49 United States.  A woman who doesn’t like the law, or who could never live under such a law, is free to move the one of the other states or travel to the other states for an abortion.  (Oh, stop shouting about socio-economic advantage!  I don’t care.)

Conceivably, this restriction could be one way for South Dakota to embrace a way of life that does not conform to today’s liberal ideologies. 

The new law might even drive those who do not embrace the idea of “No Abortions” out of South Dakota, well more power to’em!  That idea is called States’ Rights, a fundamental guarantee given to each state by our U.S. Constitution, but that is another topic.

Originally written Feb. 9, 2006

by Christine Gates

Torture & Intimidation?

I will tell you about Intimidation!

The U.S. military and CIA are repeatedly accused of torture, intimidating the Iraqi people, and other alleged war-crimes by the main-stream media (MSM).  I’ll tell you about intimidation of people.

 
If what some call torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were really torture, then we would beat them within an inch of their lives, get the information, and then kill them.  We don’t!  Some say our torture tactics are intimidating the Muslim world, especially the Iraqi people, which is a human rights violation.  Hog-wash!

 
If what some call intimidation of the Iraqi people were really what I would call intimidation, here is what I would do.

I would be beat them so severely that many or most of the bones in their bodies were fractured, whip them, cut off their arms and legs, and leave them on the streets in Baghdad to die like dogs.  I would make sure the torture victim was able to live long enough to tell everyone - like the other terrorists - how brutal the Americans were and to plead with everyone to give up.  The “victim” would be in such excruciating pain and agony that the tales of torture would be accompanied by the gurglings of death. 

 
That would make everyone in Iraq intimidated by U.S. practices.

 
It is sure to intimidate most, and by the way, the above scenario is how Westerners are treated when they are captured by terrorists in Iraq, with the only exception being when they are beheaded so they can’t talk.  It is all video taped for the world to see.  Al-Jezeera broadcasts the images and then they are archived on the internet.  The images show innocent men pleading for their lives as their heads are slowly sawed off with a small saw, not a sharp blade.  The radical-Muslims decapitate little girls on their way to school, principals who teach girls, and numerous aid-workers who have no political affiliation in places like Afghanistan and Indonesia.  That is our enemy in this war.  They torture; we do not.

 
What we are doing is nothing compared to such things as described above.  I would hope that my government would never do such heinous things against another human being.  We, the American military, are not doing such things.  Here is what we do:  We play loud rap music.  We keep them awake for long periods of time.  We flush books down toilets (proven untrue, but still thrown around as fact).  We feed them according to their Islamic food laws.  We allow prayer five times a day (as prescribed by their religion).  We give them prayer mats and Holy books.  Recently, we have been intravenously feeding some of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay so they won’t die while they are on a hunger strike.  We have allowed attack dogs to bark close to prisoners.  How exactly are we violating human rights? 

 
Maybe some are disturbed by my fantasy, as they should, but think about the reality of American methods and the methods of others in history.  We are not “torturing” our enemy.

 
China, to begin another topic, is engaged in the practice of selling the body parts of executed political prisoners.  They sell vital organs for transplantation and adult stem cells for research.  They sell aborted fetus parts for medical research and to cosmetics companies.  Those seems to be bigger human rights violations than one of our soldiers letting his dog bark too close to a terrorist prisoner or putting underwear on the heads of naked prisoners.  I don’t hear great out cry from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch about China’s practices.  Why not?

 
Everything needs to be kept in its context and not blown completely out of proportion.  War is inherently ugly, unfair and harsh – we need to remember that.

                                                      orginally written Feb. 2, 2006

by Christine Gates

State of the Union: How will we pay for it all? 

    Where do I start?  I see the idea of a “focused and smaller government” is lost on this President.  In his one hour, address he proposed $264,181,000,000 in increased spending for the fiscal year (FY) 2007 alone.  That’s 264 BILLION DOLLARS for his three little ideas, not for the entire federal budget or just one department or the war, but three ideas!

    President Bush proposed three little ideas: an American Competitiveness Initiative (education spending) $166,650,000; Affordable and Accessible Health Care Initiative $97,710,000,000; an Advanced Energy Initiative $821,000,000.  All totaling $264.181 billion only for FY2007, but if you run the numbers out over 15 years (and ending limited programs as scheduled) he is proposing that we spend $2,518,121,000,000 or $2.5 trillion just on these three ideas of education, health care, alternative energy.  Wow!  How will we pay for this?    

    While laying out his ideas of the American Competitive Initiative, he called No Child Left Behind (NCLB) a “success” and he wants all of us, including Congress, to support him in building on it.  I do not know what country Bush is doing his education research on, but it is not America, because as far as I know, No Child Left Behind is an abysmal failure.  While its intentions were good, it is doing almost the exactly opposite of its stated goals.  I’ve heard NCLB sarcastically called No Child Gets Ahead.  And now… he wants to dump an additional $445,500,000,000 into it over the next 15 years.  That is an insane policy.     

         NCLB is the obstacle for any complaint in school.  Everyone within the bureaucracy of public schools points to NCLB as the scapegoat, they pass the buck, and say their hands are tied because of NCLB legislation.  I do not know if it is true, but that is the excuse from everyone. 

     Since NCLB, there is no accountability in schools, the schools teach to the EOC or EOG tests, and the schools are not teaching kids to think only how to take standardized tests.  Too much time is spent on how to guess which multiple-choice answer is the best when preparing for the tests. 

     No thanks!  I’ll pass on building on that kind of success and hope that the government can find something better to do with my hard-earned tax dollars.  We cannot afford this one.

    Next, he wants us to develop energy alternatives in his Advanced Energy Initiative.  Well, his proposed cost for that is only $2.621 billion over the next 10 years.  I applaud that and hope he can get that legislation passed this year. 

    He stated bravely, “We have a serious problem:  America is addicted to oil, which is imported from unstable parts of the world.”  He wants to cut oil importation by 75% and spend a lot of money on R&D for alternative fuels for our homes, offices, and cars.  Great!  Git’R done.

    I do have some advice to go along with it though.  Open Anwar in Alaska, drill off the coasts of Florida and California because we, too, are an oil rich country.  Allow more refineries to be built to handle our own petroleum needs domestically or develop new alternatives.  Either one is better than buying from countries who are unfriendly, to say the least, to America (i.e., Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Mexico).

     The use, or threat of use, of domestic oil or alternative fuels will produce an intermestic policy (a domestic policy that has international ramifications) that will do one of two things:

1)      “Help” those countries behave better towards the U.S. because they will lose billions of dollars in revenue if we stop buying their “unfriendly” oil.  (Leverage)

2)       Their economies will collapse and they will become irrelevant like the USSR if they are not in line with our hegemony (philosophy).

Both are great foreign policy tools and better than war.

     The Affordable and Accessible Health Care Initiative was thrown around, too.  (I am so tired of perpetual health care whining.)  He had some simple sounding solutions for that, too.

      Electronic medical records scares the bejeebers out of me!  First, everyone will have to be micro-chipped for it to work most efficiently.  Can you say Big Brother?  If you are worried about identity theft regarding your financial records, now, hang on.  How much would someone pay to get your clean bill of health?  How hard would it be to get it back?

      Bush proposes a nice little $3,000 tax credit for families earning $25,000 or less to set up a medical savings account and/or buy a low cost insurance plan.  I spent some time researching this gem.  It turns out there are 32 million households who earn less than $25,000, multiply it by $3000 (because it will come to them in the form of a payment from the government since families at this income level don’t usually pay very much, if anything at all) you arrive at an astonishing figure of $96,000,000,000 for FY2007 alone.  $2,070,000,000,000 over 15 years just to fund this one tax credit program, a government hand out.  

     “Dole for the proles” brought the Great Roman Empire down.  Look it up.  $2.07 trillion for one little program because the proles are clamoring for more and more!  How will we afford this?  How will our grandchildren afford this?  The only way this could possibly be affordable is by eliminating Medicaid all together and replacing it with this proposal.

    At length, he discussed the War on Terror, which he called A Strong American Leading the World but gave no estimates of costs.  We must afford this at any price, it is our children’s freedom.  Remember, the terrorists want us all dead because we are the Great Satan, the Infidel.  They have no desire to peacefully co-exist with us, if we are to believe their own rhetoric, and we should. 

     Bush reminded Congress eloquently that “Hindsight is not Wisdom.”

      The topic in the speech called A Strong America Leading the World made me think of how America is the beacon of the light for the rest of the world.  A Strong America Leading the World is similar to Ronald Regan’s vision of American as “A shining city upon a hill.”  We were the light for the oppressed people of the Soviet Union whom we led out of communism.

     Lastly, the President asked Congress specifically for the power of the pen, the Line Item Veto.  Other presidents made use of such a tool, but it is granted to the president by Congress for only short periods of time.

      With such a power, a president can cut out riders, or port-barrel-spending, in any bill he signs into law.  Sometimes riders, or pork, is added or heaped onto a really important bill that Congress knows the President is going to sign no matter what.  There can be dozens or hundreds of riders tacked onto a bill that cost all of us billions and billions of dollars each year in waste like the Hickory Tea Pot Museum.  I believe any president should have this power.  It is the only way to afford these more important programs.

 
Contact your Congressman about all of these issues.  Let them know what you think.  Everyone’s opinion matters.  America is a representative democracy – tell your representative what matters to you.  Get involved, even if you don’t agree with me.

www.senate.gov

www.house.gov

www.whitehouse.gov