A Slippery Slope

The United States Department of Health and Human Services announced on January 20 that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include these "services" in the health insurance policies they offer and almost all individuals will be forced to pay for that coverage as part of the health insurance policies they purchase.

This ruling should be of great concern to all Americans regardless of religious belief, or position on pro-life/pro-choice issues. This ruling should be a red flag to all Americans of the danger of an Administration that has no respect for the rights of others and one that has the attitude of being the smartest guys in the room.

In so ruling, the Administration has undermined both the principle of religious conscience and the First Amendment to the Constitution in an unprecedented and profound way. Unless the ruling is overturned, faithful Catholics will be forced either to violate their consciences or to drop health coverage for employees and suffer penalties for doing so. The Administration's only concession was to give Catholic institutions one year to comply. This is not only inadequate but insulting as the Administration is basically saying this is the law of the land so take it or suffer the consequences of non-compliance. It betrays the faith of many Catholics who, until now, have supported this Administration with an honest will.

Catholic leaders across the country have made it clear they cannot comply with this ruling without compromising long held convictions and undermining Catholic identity. This ruling interferes with the basic right of Catholics to work for the common good.

In this ruling we have yet another example of an Administration that wants to force social change upon us in the worst possible way led by a President who cares little for the rights and convictions of the citizenry.

This ruling has nothing to do with abortion or contraception but has everything to do with this Administration displaying their arrogance toward the people and it has everything to do with individual liberty. Again, this president is forcing us to do something thru legislation just as he did with the Individual Mandate. This is another smoke and mirrors move, someone must pay for these mandates. The president keeps saying these "benefits" are free but someone must pay for it!


If this Administration can force us to buy insurance and pay for benefits we do not want, what is next? Whenever the government issues a mandate, in reality it is eliminating choice.

This ruling exposes Obama's steps toward unlimited power for the central government and its unique disdain for people who do not think like him. No change in wording will change Obama's position on the issue.

With his recent policy tweak, Obama asserts that insurance companies will do -for free- what faith based organizations do not want to do. Nonsense! Insurance companies will simply price their products based on actual cost. The courts are already considering the constitutionality of Obama Care. How can a government supposedly of the people, by the people and for the people punish the people if they do not want to shop at Obama's health care store?

Even though this issue is a direct threat to religious liberty, it is much bigger. It threatens the very essence of liberty by allowing government to dictate matters of individual discretion. Even if there was not a direct and wholly unconstitutional assault on the religious convictions of Catholics and other Christians, it is simply not the government's right to demand that an employer provide something that it does not want to give, or that employees do not want. If the president can demand employers to provide contraceptives or even abortion today, then next he may demand some other form of health coverage. He could then insist all employees be covered for dental and cosmetic surgery. Maybe I need a face lift but it is not a necessary function of the president to demand it.

The president's attempt to move the cost to the insurance companies is lame and laughable. It is not about adding forced benefits for people, it is about taking away the right of self-determination from people. No president has been granted that authority or power from the Constitution and it simply fails to meet the test of the "consent of the governed."

We should all object to the notion that we are required by the dictates of the president without Constitutional or legislative process to surrender the terms of our faith.

Nancy Pelosi was right about one thing, they needed to pass this legislation so we could all understand it. Well, they passed it and now we know. Speaker Boehner should put the ObamaCare bill back on the table for a vote. Let's see who is willing to put his or her name on it now that we know what is in it!

Obama is acting like a thug with a cavalier attitude that people of faith should cast aside their beliefs in favor of politically correct thinking. This is incredibly insulting and ignorant of the very nature of faith.

Contraception access is not the issue. It is available from many sources. The issue is who pays and whether all, including faith based organizations, must be made to kiss the ring of the American monarch and swear loyalty to his value system.

Henry the Eighth would be proud.

It is time for Obama to repent and Congress to repeal.

The Constitution is king, not Mr. Obama!

A Foreigner's Perspective

In a recent edition of the London Times, Irwin Stelzer, business advisor and director of policy studies at the Hudson Institute, wrote an op/ed piece on the Republican presidential candidates. I found his opinions to be very interesting so following is a condensed version of his piece which also includes some of my own thoughts:

Politics makes for strange bedfellows. With the exception of Mitt Romney, all the candidates have decided that it is evil to take over failing companies in an attempt to restructure them so they can grow and create jobs. What these candidates have forgotten is that this so-called creative destruction has enabled risk-taking businessmen to create the capitalist system that has created the greatest material prosperity the world has ever seen. They are all saying that Romney's successful stewardship of Bain Capital disqualifies him from becoming the party's nominee to face Barack Obama in November.

Why? Because in the process of restructuring companies headed for the rocks two bad things sometimes happen: there are layoffs before the leaner company went on to success and the rescue effort failed.

This criticism is not coming from Democrats who have no use for the unpleasant aspects of American capitalism. This criticism is also not coming from European defenders of the social democratic system to which Obama wants to "transform" (his word) America.

This criticism is coming from candidates trying to get the support of conservatives who in their eagerness to derail Romney are advocating capitalism without risk or failure, which is akin to religion without sin: it will not work.

According to the Wall Street Journal, during Romney's tenure Bain gathered capital from investors and lenders and invested in 77 companies. Some 22% of those companies filed for bankruptcy or went out of business, some struggled along, some produced extraordinary profits for Bain's investors - roughly 50% to 80% annually. LIke oilmen who drill exploratory wells knowing that nine out of ten will be dry holes but the successful one will cover the cost of all ten and yield a profit, private equity firms gamble on the overall success of their portfolios.

It is unfortunate that the debate about American capitalism is being cast as a debate about the role of financial architects because one of the forces that drives capitalism forward is the private equity firm like Bain Capital that creates new, re-organized companies.

But there is more to capitalism than finance. There is investment by risk-taking, innovative entrepreneurs of the sort that populate Silicon Valley and garage laboratories all over America. John Maynard Keynes refers to "animal spirits" that reside in people possessed of a spontaneous urge to action than inaction, a group of people that Barack Obama knows nothing about and cares not to understand.

Romney, born to wealth, hardly qualifies as a hero of capitalism. He is a successful investor and good manager who, among other things, revived Staples which now employs over 70,000 and Domino's pizza with 145,000 workers.

Unfortunately, he opposes a president who has little use for bankers, an absolute distaste for "the rich", who he defines as "millionaires and billionaires" and any family earning more than $250,000 a year. It is Romney's misfortune that his Republican colleagues are giving so much ammunition to the Democrats.

If voters think government is simply a large business and the skill required to manage Bain is the skill needed to restructure government, Romney is their man. If they think that an entirely different world view from that of Obama is required, Romney also qualifies,no matter what one thinks of his Bain experience.

Two things are certain. First, running a private equity firm is not a disqualification for the presidency as might be the case for lobbying on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Second, if Ron Paul decides to head the third party Libertarian ticket, he might siphon off as much as 6% of Romney's vote (assuming Romney is the candidate) and virtually assure Obama an extension of his stay in the White House.