TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !

Written to the church: “Because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.  You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’  But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” (Rev 3:16-17)

At a Texas Baptist University chapel service a chapel speaker shared how a man blind from birth had been led to a skilled surgeon.  After performing the meticulous operation, the man’s eyes were miraculously and perfectly healed.  For the first time he could observe the beauty of God’s creation.

A few weeks later a beautiful and heart-touching act unfolded.  Walking carefully into the doctor’s office were 10 men with their hand resting on the shoulder of one in front of them being led into the doctor’s office by the man who had been blind, but now seeing clearly.  When asked why they were there, the man leading them and still overflowing with joy explained, “These are my friends.  They have been blind from birth.  I want them to see as I see.”

What an inspirational picture.  Jesus said He not only came to “set the captives free, but to restore sight to the blind and free those who are downtrodden.” (Luke 4:18)  If there was ever a time when blind eyes need to be opened, it is now!

The story exemplifies what every Christian should be doing as it relates to their faith.  We should be so excited about being able to see clearly the will of God and His ways along with the profound results of this transforming experience that we simply can’t wait to share with others.   is too special to be kept secret and withheld.

Even when threatened by persecution and prison, the New Testament believers in the book of Acts boldly proclaimed, “We cannot help but speak the things we have seen and heard!” (Acts 4:20)  It is sad to acknowledge, but much of the church today is not only asleep, they are by their failure to lead others into the light proving to be blind to the truth and their responsibilities.  Jesus said, “You are blind leaders of the blind, and when the blind lead the blind they will both fall in the ditch.”

We are witnessing firsthand the tragic effect this has on the church and our nation.  We are blindly being led into the ditch of defeat, despair, dissension, division and debt with little resistance.  It is amazing to watch those who are in the ditch trying desperately to make it more comfortable.  In the Christian church, people seem to find false comfort in stained-glass windows, cushioned pews, and sweet little messages that move no one to action, but enhance the slumber.  We air-condition the ditch, decorate it, install magnificent pipe organs, have big choirs, loud praise and gifted musicians and take pride in the gathering, but only a few dare to come out from under the covering of conformity and compatibility that leads to compromise and an ineffective witness.  We hide the light under this bushel and refuse to put it on the lamp stand.  We took our influence out of society.  We stopped standing up ourselves and others.  We stopped standing firm and truly piercing the darkness with the transforming light of God’s truth.

Christians were never intended to live in this mode defeat.  The church has been misled, and even bullied, for years to stay out of the fray, stay in the pew or under it, to be content to remain in the shadows of ineffective unbelief rather than living in the shadow of the Almighty while not only declaring His truth, but demonstrating its effect being salt and light.

Our nation’s leaders, for decades and with far too few exceptions, have been leading us into a ditch of hopeless dependence upon a government power that our Founders told us at its best is in itself but a “necessary evil” because of the evil deeds of mankind, and their refusal to live under control.  The Founders understood that government, in order to function effectively, must be limited.  People must remain free to not only live, but to be productive and charitable so they can really find the peace and happiness that they sincerely pursue.  Government cannot provide it.  Only God can!

Right now we are seeing what could prove to be a tragic knee-jerk reaction to very real and serious problems.  Men are not seeking sane solutions.  They are continually engaged in fruitless discussions, like a loud, clanging noise that is not the fruit of love, but self-interest which will keep men under their thumb and the church hiding, as Jesus put it, “under a basket or a bowl.” (Luke 11:33)

I am not denying for one moment that we don’t have some very real problems that need to be addressed, but in this knee-jerk reaction, we are likely to replace what people are concerned about and frustrated over with something not only ineffective, but worse.  This has been the tendency and practice for many decades.  Some of the most serious problems began to rapidly grow when an inappropriate response to the Great Depression led the United States to begin a trend toward dependence upon the feeble, worthless promises of mere men rather than remaining free to become productive and prosperous with the church influencing people to avoid greed and unnecessary selfish indulgence while forgetting others.  The nation began to build systems in which we confiscate the success of others and dole it out at the whim of politicians who find it easy to tell people who have any need, “We’ll get what they have and give it to you!”

Alexis de Tocqueville stated: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse [money, bounty, assistance, gifts] from the public treasury.”

Alexander Frazer Tytler added to that later: “From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

Benjamin Franklin had also written: “Once the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic.”

The excess of some corporations and the excess in the demands of unions spearheaded the foolish practices of some who prospered, which in turn led to a hatred for those who succeed because of the benefits offered by the free market.  Foolish solutions will never solve the real problems.

Our Founders understood that every able-bodied person should help bear the load, and that if we are going to love our neighbor and meet needs, that responsibility is not going to be assumed only by the upper end in society, but by every person who is able to help in any way, large or small.

We are intensifying class warfare that makes typical racism pale in comparison and people are finding it justifiable.  Let me declare emphatically, WE ARE DIGGING A DITCH!  We are not digging our way out!

This debt load is unbearable and many of the policies we are about to embrace, which foolish people have put forward as a solution to serious problems, are going to be passed on to our precious children and their children.  Many elected representatives are spreading the lie that it is beneficial to forcefully take from the rich and give to the poor.  The fact is, we’re going to disable their ability to continue producing opportunities and jobs, expanding opportunity for all and employment for many.  They are also now setting in place the confiscation of any potential productivity of our children and grandchildren.  This is happening because church and political leaders are blind leaders of the blind.

Greed and selfishness are problems clearly defined as sin.  These problems are not only to be addressed by the church and its leaders, but, as believers, we have the only solution to the problems and that is changing hearts and changing lives.  In the family of faith we have made people like us, rather than like Christ.  We have made disciples of men rather than Him.  God forgive us.

Isaiah said, “Who is so blind as my servant?” (Isaiah 42:19)  In a later chapter he said, “His watchmen are blind. They all lack knowledge.” (Knowledge of the truth that sets men free.)  ”They are mute dogs, and they cannot bark.” (Isaiah 56:10)  I believe they are refusing to bark because of the fear of man and the fear of opposition.

I, for one, will not remain silent.  The horror and coming despair is too great to bear.  Hear me loudly and clearly! I say this as emphatically as I can: Unless the church allows the glory of God to rise and shine, and stands together to rebuild the walls and restore the foundations, freedom hope and prosperity as we have known it, will vanish from the earth.  I know God does not have to use America or the nations that have enjoyed some semblance of freedom to turn the tide.  He can raise sons from stone, and He can speak through any available source.  The tide will not turn without the influence of believers who have been blessed to see what a nation can do when it is established on Biblical principles and a foundation of faith by the founders of this nation. They came here seeking the freedom that only God can give, protect, and preserve. It will only be protected and preserved by those bold enough to take off the blinders, refuse to follow the blind, and ask God to open our eyes so that we may see clearly His will and walk in His ways.

May God give us all eyes to see clearly the way out of every ditch that blindness has led us into.

Planned Abortionhood slithers into Haiti to capitalize on its lucrative pastime of killing babies with relief funds donated to major organizations like UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.  Find other good organizations to give to that will get the relief fund to the people for what it was intended. Not the ones in this article.

What is Planned Parenthood really doing in Haiti?

Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow – 2/14/2010 4:15:00

Planned Parenthood International Planned Parenthood has focused on the earthquake in Haiti to raise funds – but for what purpose?

While aid workers continue the hard work of meeting the basic needs of Haitians, International Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups are making their presence known. Paul Tuns is editor of The Interim, which bills itself as “Canada’s Life and Family Newspaper.”

“When you dig around and look at [their] website and look at the medical services that they are providing, the priorities that they give are to – quote – “low-cost, quality sexual and reproductive healthcare,” he states.

The pro-life journalist says while Planned Parenthood does not further define on its website and in its literature what that entails, “we know from experience [that it] includes contraceptives, birth control and condoms – and often, but not always, abortion.”

According to Tuns, there has been a call from pro-abortion sources – mostly in Florida – to increase abortion facilities at this time of need. But what Haitian women really need, he explains, is food, water, and shelter, as well as prenatal care, quality delivery services, and post-natal care. He cautions people about the groups they give money to for aid and relief.

“Groups such as UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Committee of the Red Cross are all clearly involved with either doing abortions, promoting sterilization, or working with groups that do abortions,” he shares.

Tuns says Samaritan’s Purse and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief are just two of the Christian-based relief organizations that merit pro-life support.

Truth, Love, and Endurance

Dr. King and Christian Activism

As Americans observe Martin Luther King Day today, I am reminded of the rich Christian tradition of activism in this country. For millions of Christians who have gone before us, activism was considered fruit of the faith. Not only was the civil-rights movement led by evangelical Christians like Dr. King, so too were campaigns for abolition and women’s suffrage heavily influenced by Christians expressing their faith.

But for much of the 20th century, Christians – especially white evangelicals – shied away from activism. Part of the reason is that from about the 1920s to the 1970s, many evangelical Christians simply withdrew from the public square. Defeats in Prohibition and the discouraging results of the Scopes trial left many evangelicals disheartened. Soon the rich activist tradition was lost or divorced from true faith.

But in the African-American community, Christian principles and hopes prodded the rise of the civil-rights movement. It was not until the ’80s with the rise of the Moral Majority, that activism began to resurface among white evangelicals. Unfortunately, as Tim Stafford notes in his new book, Shaking the System, by then, “The very idea of Christians advocating for public causes created panic among secularists and dreams of utopia (a long-lost Christian America?) among true believers.”

This is why I like Stafford’s book so much: It draws from the rich history of Christian involvement to revive that lost knowledge of what it looks like to be a Christian activist.

True Christian activism, Stafford writes, always begins with the truth. “That means,” Stafford says, that “the true activist is a witness, anxious to pass on truth to others.” This is how the abolition movement began in the United States. About 30 years before the Civil War, the truth that slavery was a sin began to break through the consciousness of more and more Americans.

Soon all activists, however, learn that not everyone can handle truth. That is why a second thing that any Christian should know about engaging the world with a Christian worldview is to expect resistance. When truth collides with the status quo, Christian activists had better know where their ultimate hope lies.

Christians must also have a strategy for shaking the system: from prayer to dialogue, from political involvement to pressure tactics such as boycotts and strikes.

But above all, like Dr. King, the activist must possess courage and an unyielding faith in the God of justice. Injustice does not loosen its grasp easily. We must be prepared for a long haul, drawing on the rich resources of community and that abiding hope and passion for truth. And we must avoid violence: in our rhetoric and our actions. As Martin Luther King reminded those who gathered at his home after it had been bombed, “Don’t get panicky. … I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love.”

So if the life of an activist holds so much discouragement and risk, why get involved at all? Because a Christian understanding of the world compels us to combat injustice and promote truth. That is a thought worth reflecting on, when we speak of people like Martin Luther King – a man who exhibited those qualities.

Driscoll on Haiti Quake: Sex Trade Occurring in Port-au-Prince

By Michelle A. Vu|Christian Post Reporter
Wed, Jan. 20 2010 02:46 PM EDT

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle landed in “hell” this week where he witnessed a teenage boy shot in the head and a girl sold to an older man. He was in the collapsed city of Port-au-Prince where rubble from former buildings and streets piled with corpses give the impression of an aftermath of a war zone.

Driscoll, along with Pastor James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel in the Chicago-area, landed in the capital of Haiti on Monday to assess the situation and needs of Haitian churches and to deliver 1,000 pounds of relief supplies.

On his first day on the ground, Driscoll said he heard a gunshot behind him and when he turn to look he saw a teenage boy immediately killed by a shot to the head. The teenage boy was just a few feet away from a seminary property and next to a makeshift clinic where thousands of people slept outside, Driscoll reported on his Facebook page.

In an interview with USA Today on Tuesday when he returned to America, Driscoll said the boy was murdered “for no apparent reason. He was just shot in the head and left in the street.”

Fears of violence, looting, and chaos in the aftermath of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince last Tuesday grew when relief supplies, including food and clean water, could not meet the immediate needs of quake victims.

But the fears somewhat eased Wednesday when U.S. troops provided security for water and food aid deliveries.

In addition to concerns of unrest due to shortage in relief supplies, aid agencies are also concerned about the some 4,000 criminals that escaped from prisons after the earthquake struck.

“It gets too dangerous,” said Remi Rollin, a private security guard hired by a shopkeeper to prevent looting, to CBS News. “After sunset, police shoot on sight.”

There are about 12,000 U.S. military personnel on the ground in Haiti, and the U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed this week to temporarily add 2,000 U.N. troops and 1,500 police to the 9,000-member peacekeeping force in Haiti.

Besides being troubled by the security situation, Driscoll also confronted an incident he believed to be part of the sex trade in Haiti’s capital amid the wreckage.

“If u want a phone, cigarettes or a teenage girl you can get them here in Port au Prince,” Driscoll tweeted. “Like the American who said he’s on a relief mission and bought a hungry girl despite our confrontation.”

The pastor elaborated in the USA Today interview that a man pushing a cart while selling cell phones, cigarettes “and a few young girls” asked Driscoll, “You want to buy loving?”

Another man, who claimed to be a translator for a relief agency, negotiated with the seller on a price for a young girl.

“I (Driscoll) asked him what he was trying to do,” the American pastor recalled. “He said, ‘Oh, she’s a friend of mine. We’re just trying to connect.’

“That’s ridiculous. A young girl. A man 20 or 30 years older. I told him this was unacceptable. MacDonald confronted him, too. But there were no police and you could argue all you wanted but the girl took his money and they walked away.”

Driscoll plans to report the American man, and submit his photo, to the relief agency he supposedly works for, according to USA Today.

MacDonald and Driscoll are part of a new effort called Churches Helping Churches, which led them to travel to Haiti this week. The initiative seeks to address the immediate and long-term needs of churches affected by disasters. Many times churches provide social services – such as health care, humanitarian aid and education – to the local communities, so rebuilding local churches would help address the communities’ practical as well as spiritual needs.

Global Warming Science Implodes Overseas: American Media Silent

Rick Moran

The revelations have been nothing short of jaw dropping. Dozens – yes dozens – of claims made in the IPCC 2007 report on climate change that was supposed to represent the “consensus” of 2500 of the world’s climate scientists have been shown to be bogus, or faulty, or not properly vetted, or simply pulled out of thin air.

We know this because newspapers in Great Britain are doing their job; vetting the 2007 report item by item, coming up with shocking news about global warming claims that formed the basis of argument by climate change advocates who were pressuring the US and western industrialized democracies to transfer trillions of dollars in wealth to the third world and cede sovereignty to the UN.

Glaciergate, tempgate, icegate, and now, disappearing Amazon forests not the result of warming, but of logging. And the report the IPCC based their bogus “science” on was written by a food safety advocate according to this Christopher Booker piece in the Telegraph :

Dr North next uncovered “Amazongate”. The IPCC made a prominent claim in its 2007 report, again citing the WWF as its authority, that climate change could endanger “up to 40 per cent” of the Amazon rainforest – as iconic to warmists as those Himalayan glaciers and polar bears. This WWF report, it turned out, was co-authored by Andy Rowell, an anti-smoking and food safety campaigner who has worked for WWF and Greenpeace, and contributed pieces to Britain’s two most committed environmentalist newspapers. Rowell and his co-author claimed their findings were based on an article in Nature. But the focus of that piece, it emerges, was not global warming at all but the effects of logging.

A Canadian analyst has identified more than 20 passages in the IPCC’s report which cite similarly non-peer-reviewed WWF or Greenpeace reports as their authority, and other researchers have been uncovering a host of similarly dubious claims and attributions all through the report. These range from groundless allegations about the increased frequency of “extreme weather events” such as hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves, to a headline claim that global warming would put billions of people at the mercy of water shortages – when the study cited as its authority indicated exactly the opposite, that rising temperatures could increase the supply of water.

This is a great story. It has everything a media outlet could desire; scandal, conflict of interest (IPCC head Pauchuri runs companies that benefited from climate scare stories), government cover ups – why then, has this unraveling of the basis of climate science that posited catastrophic man made warming not been making any news at all in the United States?

It’s too easy to simply claim “bias.” Media outlets don’t pass up juicy stories that could potentially increase their readership and revenue for ideological purposes (except the New York Times – and even they could spin all of this to show skeptics to be using flawed arguments like the liberal Guardian is doing in England).

Perhaps it’s time to ask why this story being revealed overseas with new revelations almost daily in the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Timesonline, and other Fleet Street publications can’t get any traction here. Blogs like Watts up with That and Climate Depot are keeping us informed of the latest from England but we hear crickets chirping when it comes to stories from major newspapers and – outside of Fox News – the cable nets.

As global warming the political movement is losing its scientific justification, the American people – who will be asked to foot the bill to the tune of trillions of dollars if Obama goes ahead with his “green” plans – are grossly uninformed about the state of the debate.  Until the media starts to give this story the coverage it deserves, that state of affairs will not change.

Air America Crashes, Burns — Will Anyone Besides Franken and Maddow Notice?

Posted by Dana Loesch Jan 21st 2010 at 5:01 pm in Air America, NPR, Talk Radio, liberal media, media bias

Air America announced today, with little fanfare, that it is ceasing operations and filing for bankruptcy, citing “tough economic times” as the reason. Quite honestly, I’m shocked that they didn’t blame Bush. Or global warming.

It’s not the economy, stupid.

Talk radio continues to thrive and do exceptionally well – in the conservative market. There is a reason for this, and it has nothing to do with unfairness but everything to do with the free market.

Mainstream media operates as little more than a mouthpiece for the current administration. Every nightly news anchor from Katie Couric to Brian Williams has an acknowledged bias – different from people like Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck who have admitted biases, whose programming operates not as news, but as op/ed. Newspapers more often than not also have a slant – this according to a Pew Research Center poll: Seventy-four percent said news organizations tend to favor one side in dealing with political and social issues. Eighteen percent said they deal fairly with all sides.

The accompanying headline for this poll? “Public Trust in US Media Eroding.”

Why is it eroding? Because people aren’t sheep; they recognize the bias – “objective” journalists refuse to acknowledge what the public knows anyway and continue to operate under the assumption that they’re delivering the straight story and when they aren’t, no one can tell.

So why would people want to listen to admittedly biased radio programming that is little more than an echo of what they hear on television or read in the paper? Liberal talk on the radio doesn’t perform well because it is not a sequestered to a niche – It’s everywhere in the media universe. Conservative talk radio. on the other hand, performs well because the radio is the only place, besides Fox News that people can go for right-sphere opinions.

Which is why, with the failure of Air America, expect the left to ratchet up its demand for a renewal of the Fairness Doctrine as a way for it to survive on the radio while the right demands nothing similar of the television and newspaper industries – the latter of which is currently requesting public financing or tax credits. NPR gets taxpayer dollars and still slants to the left, as evidenced by their recent “Learn to Speak Tea Bag” video.

Liberal radio performs poorly because its format already dominates other markets. And it will continue to perform poorly until the day comes when the rest of the media is at least balanced, if not fair.

The hitch is that the man-caused catastrophic global warming theory is dead, and it needs to be buried. Evidence had been mounting for years that there were problems with the global warming model; most telling was that the globe refused to warm up. Carbon emissions continued apace, but the world began cooling. This is why true believers abandoned the “global warming” brand name and tried to shift the debate to the more ambiguous label “climate change,” which is something the rest of us like to refer to as “weather.”

The dam broke with Climategate when hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that global warming advocates had for years attempted to hide conflicting data and silence their professional critics. British authorities have determined that the university broke freedom-of-information laws by denying information to scientists seeking to check claims that global warming was caused by human activity.

Evidence is emerging that the data had been rigged all along. Russian analysts noted that British temperature calculations excluded data from 40% of Russian territory, much of which showed no increase in temperature in the past 50 years. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also cherry-picked data, cutting Canadian data sources from 600 to 35 and relying on only one monitor for all of Canada above the Arctic Circle. This was done even though Canada operates 1,400 weather stations, 100 of which are in the Arctic.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is having its own scandal regarding a finding in its Nobel Peace Prize-winning 2007 report that glaciers in India were rapidly disappearing. It is now revealed that this dramatic claim was based not on years of patient observation and research but anecdotes from a hiking magazine and a student’s master’s thesis. IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri knew about the erroneous information before December’s Copenhagen climate summit but maintained the falsehood. He even denounced a report from India that showed the glaciers were in far less jeopardy as “unsubstantiated research.”

Climate scientists have to come to grips with some highly inconvenient truths. World temperatures continue to decline as carbon emissions increase. Chilly Scotland is facing its coldest winter in a century. Arctic sea ice is not vanishing. Polar bears are experiencing a baby boom. Water vapor appears to play as important a role in the climate as carbon emissions. Sunspot activity may be more important than both combined. Meanwhile, climate change fanatics seek to blame capitalism and productivity for global warming, global cooling, too much snow, not enough snow, hurricanes, tornadoes and even the Haiti earthquake.

The increasingly discredited theory of carbon-based, man-caused global warming needs to be discarded, and the scientists who sought to squelch skeptics and artificially inflate their own reputations must be disciplined. This deception needs to cease as does the teaching and indoctrination of it in schools, universities, and society. Too many lies are being taught by ideologues without proof.

Yes, we need to be good stewards of the earth but not worship it. Natural resources were given to humankind to utilize and manage for their benefit.  The more efficiently this is accomplished, and wisdom we use in that accomplishment, the better it will be. There is always room for more technologies that will help this happen.

When the “Green Police” commercial came on during the Super Bowl, I was at first distracted.  As the commercial wore on, however, it seems the commercial is an attempt at humor from Audi, which can be taken one of two ways.

Way #1: Audi is as fed up as most of us with the legalistic approach of government-worshippers who want to enforce responsible behavior through the power of the state.  In a good stab at such misguided beliefs, Audi basically tried to sell an awesome car to people fed up with getting in trouble with the viciously politically correct.  I am okay with this view, though the imagery was still very scary.

Way #2: Audi agreed with the stance that would require governmentally enforced global eco-wackoism and thought it was funny to poke fun at people who don’t share the extreme “granola” viewpoint.

Obviously, the commercial was so controversial because it rang close to the truth.  Many of us share the viewpoint that ecological hysteria is being used to increase statist’s power at the expense of individual freedom.  Just like wars, if a government can get people freaked out enough (i.e. the world is coming to an end, we will be nuked in five minutes, the earth is going to overheat, the polar ice-caps are melting, global warming, and now, the ever-flexible “climate change”-allowing people to freak out when temperatures trend in either direction) then they can justify taking emergency, draconian measures to enforce their “protection.”  It used to be that this protection was from enemies in war.  Now the protection is against ourselves and neighbors who dare to flush their toilets a bit too often.

This is tragic.

Why? … because the loss of individual freedom will kill everything else.  The parasite in totalitarian government always ends up killing its host (usually millions at a time).

But there is another tragedy, too.  It is the tragedy that will certainly befall our environment if the extremists succeed in giving something like the Green Police the power the commercial showed us.  What some don’t seem to understand is that totalitarian, tyrannical, communistic, socialistic governments have a very consistent track record of being the worst polluters.

For those of us who truly enjoy nature and care about passing a clean, well-cared-for planet on to our grandchildren, and who also realize that the private sector is more effective at administering nearly anything when compared to pervasive governments, the issue is a hot one.  There is no way a statist power of even the most invasive kind can effectively control the behavior of 6 billion people.  It is up to individual responsibility and stewardship.  This has always been accomplished best through community activism, social norms, private enterprise, proper incentives aligned to reinforce the correct behavior, and the like.  None of these are perfect, and we have a long way to go, (if only all the effort toward empowering government toward this end were being used to empower the private sector) but, rest assured, they will far surpass the efforts of any government to make a difference, and, they come with the additional benefit of individual freedom instead of its opposite.

Government is like a sledge hammer.  It is only good at one thing, and the use of a sledgehammer is obvious.  However, when you are a sledgehammer, every problem tends to look like a cinder block in need of smashing.  A sledgehammer can be used to cut a board in half, but it will do a messy and destructive job of it.  (Don’t even get me started on how the sledgehammer works on the economy!)  The board may eventually be pulverized into two pieces, but not as effectively as it would have had the correct tool been used.

The question isn’t whether or not we should be responsible stewards of planet earth.  Of course we should.  The question is rather which tool is most appropriate to bring about the most effective results.  History is clear that individual initiative and the private sector properly incentivized are consistently far superior to the government sledgehammer.  The people who don’t believe this don’t read history, I guess, or haven’t traveled enough to third world countries.  Or maybe, just maybe, they simply want the power and prestige governmental decree in service to a worthy political correctness can bring.

First the Obama administration backed off on prosecuting pornography and drug use, and now it’s hoping to ease restrictions on international sex trafficking.  With barely a peep from the press, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is trying to overturn a key policy of PEPFAR-the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.  Under this new rule, the countries that receive HIV/AIDS dollars under PEPFAR would no longer have to oppose prostitution and sex trafficking-which was a condition of the funding under President Bush.

Since 2003, PEPFAR has been one of the most successful initiatives launched by the U.S. government to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa.  It was initially passed in 2003 with the anti-sex trafficking provision, and both were reauthorized last year.  Every time this program comes before Congress, anti-prostitution organizations have fought to ensure that your taxpayer dollars wouldn’t flow to organizations that promote the trafficking of human beings.

Apparently, the Obama administration thinks that position is too restrictive.  Instead of protecting the most vulnerable, this President is trying to relax the rules for groups that exploit women and children!  Not only is prostitution associated with several health, emotional, and physical risks, but it’s also one of the leading causes of HIV/AIDS in these regions.  Some reports estimate that close to 70% of prostitutes in certain areas are infected with this disease.  Of course, this begs the question: Why would we fund the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa if our own policy is promoting it?

Senator Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) ability to sway all 60 Democratic Senators to vote for his health care bill monstrosity wasn’t an exploit of legislative prowess-but taxpayer-funded bribery. On the heels of the “Louisiana Purchase,” a deal that saw Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) pocket $300 million in pork, Senator Reid stuffed billions more into the Democrats’ stockings in exchange for their crucial Sunday night vote. In the leadership’s edition of “Let’s Make a Deal,” Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebr.) was the biggest winner of all. While Americans in the other 49 states will have to pick up the tab for the bill’s expansion in Medicaid, the Nebraska Democrat made sure his state got off scot-free. He traded in his pro-life scruples for a guarantee that the Cornhuskers will never pay a cent toward the government’s plan. And for what? An abortion “compromise” that may actually be worse than the actual bill.

Under Senator Nelson’s opt-out plan, states can refuse to offer abortion coverage-but their taxpayers will still be subsidizing the states that don’t! Meanwhile, the senators from Vermont and Massachusetts watched the Nebraska deal unfold and decided to negotiate for something similar. All together, these statewide exemptions could cost a minimum of $1.2 billion! Pennsylvania, New York, and Florida all protected their Medicare programs from cuts, while other states will have to find ways to manage with the scaled-back program in the underlying legislation.

Also, Senators Nelson and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) have made sure that certain insurance companies in their states are off the hook from a new $7 billion dollar tax. On page 328 of Senator Reid’s manager’s amendment, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the master of illicit sweetheart deals, got his kickback-a $100 million bonus for the University of Connecticut to do with whatever they want. A staunch supporter of the public option, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) was “persuaded” to drop his concerns after Senator Reid offered his state a $10 billion grant for “community health centers”-money that could easily be funneled to facilities that perform abortions. Playing hard-to-get certainly has its advantages in this new political climate.

Yesterday, some of the Democrats who didn’t get the same incentives are kicking themselves. When Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) couldn’t get past the reporters swarming Ben Nelson on her way to the cloture vote, she quipped, “I know I’m not as important as Senator Nelson. I didn’t get the money for my state. I was too stupid.” To read more about how this bill could destroy American medicine, check out this excellent op-ed from Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, ” Change Nobody Believes In.” We do have one quibble with the article though. Senator Nelson might think he got abortion restrictions (he didn’t), but even he admits he isn’t quite sure.