Introducing The Faith Shift Series

Religion matters ONLY in the way it translates into mainstream moral values and community. The radicalization of ANY religion to serve the forceful inculcation of views and faith is unacceptable. Religion is (should be) as personal as possible, and community faith-sharing and demonstration only matter when they create tolerance for others, and work towards bettering our community.

Your religion, or lack of one, stops at the end of my nose, my eyes, my ears.

Be as faithful as you like in your own mind, in your personal behavior. Don't practice YOUR religion at the expense of my community, my children, my government.
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Scott Walker Recall: Wisconsin Officials Recommend Elections Go Forward

This is a "death cage" match for Demon-crats. If they can pull off this Recall (aided by over $30-40 Million dollars-or more-from outside the state) they can offer sober reflection on Democrats ability to light torches and man the pitchforks. Make no mistake, the Recall effort is just a lynch mob in disguise. Democrats MUST prove their resiliency in Wisconsin, otherwise-horrors!- other governors an dstate legislatures may catch the same deadly (to unions and bloated benefit plans) virus of change to fiscal manageability and responsability. Republicans and Tea Partiers better get the message as well, if this Recall succeeds, states facing fiscal "moments of truth" wil have second-and third-thoughts about balancing their books. Break out the checkbooks fiscal conservatives, the Wisconsin fight isn't over yet!
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The Economic Question at the Core of the Individual Mandate

Everyday Health care cost-shots, well-care- would be much less if ALL consumers paid out-of-pocket, because they would shop for services that meet their needs using competitive pricing.

Second. ANY realistic person knows that the 30-40 million "uninsured" the government contemplates getting insurance would not pay, because they are too poor, and would either get subsidized (meaning taxpayer Citizens pay for it) and, since doctors don't have office hours at night, would continue to use emergency rooms for immediate care, nullifyiny the logic used to promote the plan.

Nobody in their right mind would design a health care system that looks anything like today's model. But, we could easily model a well-care and diagnostic model, based on the free-enterprise system, that would deliver care to everyone for 75% less than today's model, using for-profit local clinics for the 90% of health care that involves keeping people healthy and treating minor ailments and injuries, reserving the higest cost model-the hospital and ER- for circumstances where cost is justified. There is an old rule that says "20% fo your expenses are incurred by 90% of your customers, and 80% of your expenses occur with 10% of your customers." That's the health care model of today.

Let's substitute Catastrophic Care Insurance, subsidized for poor as necessary (approx. $45-50 per month per person) and let the free market, operating through the 15-20,000 clinics deliver the everyday well-care.
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Deadbeat Nation: Why the Public Should Cut Off Wall Street's Credit

Again, we see Congress pushing the envelope, as did Mssrs. Frank and Doll in the mortgage mess (virtually same actors in the student loan case), in this case for creating a structure almost guaranteed to raise defaults by allowing less -than-qualified-and-verified-assets, the college degree, to be used as "collateral" for problematic loans, repayment being based on speculation that the degree owners would achieve gainful employment that justified the investment. There is no evidence that either the process that generated the loan demand, or the results to date thereof, are valid, more the contrary.

Universities have responded to media and government-generated demand by terrific and unwarranted expansion of courses to fill in degree requirements, recruit and overpay less-than-qualified professors (while loading them up with benefits and perks), building unneeded and palatial support mechanisms to help justify the underlying expansion, and more. When we have higher total undergraduate and graduate degrees granted than ever, but less and less graduates eligible to full the technical and scientific job requirements needed in the modern marketplace, education has definitely gone astray. Advanced degrees in social sciences and lesser skills may help pad the revenues and budgets of these "higher learning" institutions, but do little to satisfy the demands of the modern American economy, so much so that the level of recruiting from outside the U.S. for these skill sets exceed the amount produced by the U.S. educational institutions. How's that for poor planning and management?
About Student Loans
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Deadbeat Nation: Why the Public Should Cut Off Wall Street's Credit

Part of the process has to be forcing the banks (and similar financial institutions) to recognize their losses, take the consequences,and move on. If that means a new Resolution Trust Corp similar to that used to restructure the S&L industry in the past, then let's do that-right now. Part of the bail-outprocess was allowing the banks and financial institutions to "defer" or otherwise characterize those mortgage-related debts and financing instruments to the net effect of making them their own judge of the safety and likelihood for repayment, a practice normally reserved for the independent accountants supposed to certify the valuation.

And, similarly, the recent and congressionally-approved cancellation of the Glass-Stegall Act-requiring separation of Investment Banking and similar operations from traditional bank savings and loan operations-gave even more license to the high-risk leverage of speculative trading and other investment-related operations, some of which caused the problems.

Banks and related financial institutions MUST be re-capitalized to the 15%-20% area, restricted as to the amount of capital dedicated/invested in each type of bank activity, except for Savings Accounts, and A-rated mortgages, otherwise Prudent Man Rules apply.

Transparency and limiting risk to the equity owners of banks and financial institutions must rule.
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Arlen Specter: GOP Hurt 'Terribly' By Going After Women's Rights

What's unconscionable is Spector blowing up a minor difference into claiming a "full-on assault" on women's rights.

Even if you agree with every and all types of birth control programs and processes (excluding abortion), the hyperbolic characterization of what some would call reasonable restrictions on expansion, constant expansion, of added and "protected" classes of individuals (who are already protected in most states) is just time-consuming anf political, not helpful. Why aren't they legislating a strengthening of requirements that unwed mothers name the father so that parental responsibility, including child support, be better managed? Why aren't they supporting actual cash incentives for long-term birth control implants, which could include contributions to college or vacational colleges for under-age girls and boys (boys qualify through voluntary (and reversible) vasectomies? Why not more and better ideas that deal with the reduced standards of living caused mainly by too many poor and minority children being born into poverty, fatherless (and motherless) households (11-12% of ALL poor and minority children are being raised by relatives other than the mother, or in foster homes) which has been researched forever and which research proves beyond any doubt that poor and minority motherhood at too early in life (even if married) is a one-way ticket to more of the same for them, and their offspring.
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Don't Blame The Supreme Court For Citizens United -- Blame Congress, The FEC And The IRS

The history of the FEC and it's predecessor, the FERC, Congressional legislation and subsequent court decisions all reveal the attempts of elected officials and candidates to open contribution spigots from every direction (http://www.fec.gov/info/appfour.htm). The original attempts were meant to give Unioins more leeway to raise and fund PAC's, and later attempts, including Citizen's United all show a court bias towards finding backdoor solutions (and dimunition of individual, human Citizen's rights) with granting free speech enhancements to artificial constructs of law being the latest. Unless we, as Citizens, do what's necessary to stop the progession of American Democracy into something less responsive to the individual rights of people-it's Citizens-this will only get worse.

"Personal decisions, personal consequences; individual opportunity, individual achievement."
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