President Obama's Convenient Lie Provides Free Advertising for His Donors

Earlier today President Obama tweeted the following about women's "health":

Make sure the women in your life know: twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 26, 2012

It's intriguing that the President decided to tweet a quote from a women's health magazine to make a policy point. The quote Obama used was from a scare tactic campaign from Women's Health magazine that indicates that women's reproductive "rights" may go the way of the dodo bird. A little closer look shows that President Obama may be giving Women's Health magazine the Solyndra treatment. The CEO of Rodale Inc, Maria Rodale, which publishes the magazine, has given the President $5,000 to his campaign and and another other $5,000 to the DNC. Rodale Inc mostly focuses on health and wellness related magazines and books, but interestingly also published Al Gore's "global warming" fictional book, An Inconvenient Truth--indicating their aim may be more political than solely "health and wellness". It sure was nice of the President to give some advertising to one of his donors and ideological peers, huh?

Of course, Women's Health Magazine , in addition to campaign funding, also gave First Lady Michelle Obama the platform to promote the President's health care reform bill this past May. Mrs. Obama writing in part about contraception (emphasis added): 

 It used to be that even many women with health insurance would skip these check-ups because of the cost. In fact, before the health reform law that my husband signed back in 2010, some insurance companies would routinely charge women 50 percent more than men for the same coverage because they needed more frequent access to preventive services like mammograms and cervical screenings. Fortunately, the new health care bill makes that discrimination against women illegal starting in 2014, and today, insurance companies are required to cover life-saving cancer screenings and other preventive services like contraception and immunizations without a co-pay. 

While the First Lady wrote this piece for Women's Health and provided them with her workout play list,  interestingly, she turned down an interview and cover with the Heart & Soul, a  health magazine for African American women.

Beyond the cronyism of free advertising, the tweet is blatantly false. President Obama implies that the Republican Party is trying to limit or ban birth control. Those claims are only true in liberal newspeak where "ban" is synonymous with "not forcing employers to pay for". However, this is the kind of fight the Obama administration brought upon themselves when they sacrificed the first amendment to expand government, and it's a problem easily solved if the free market is brought into health care, a concept I describe in a post at Breitbart.com in February:

Beyond the economic benefits, a free market based health care system provides the best vehicle for religious liberty. When health insurance is detached from employment, it means that employers—be they religious institutions or religious business owners-- have no requirement to violate their conscience by providing insurance that covers contraception and abortion causing drugs. 

The same is true for individual health care consumers and insurance companies themselves. Individual health care consumers would have the option to purchase plans from insurers that either do or do not cover contraceptives. While individuals opposed to contraception would not desire contraception for themselves anyway, choosing a plan that does not cover contraception means the money they used to purchase health insurance does not have the potential to “cross subsidize” contraception or abortion causing drugs. 

“Cross subsidization” occurs when insurance premiums are pooled by the insurer and then dispersed to pay medical bills for those they insure, meaning that the money one pays in insurance premiums beyond what care they need may ultimately cover another individual’s care . Market based healthcare also provides health insurers with the freedom to abide by their conscience in what they will cover. Insurers who oppose contraceptives would not be obligated to provide coverage, and those who approve contraceptives would be free to do so. There is a market for both, and it would provide employers, individuals, and insurers the freedom to exercise their religious liberty.

President Obama is again trying to scare women into believing that the only way to protect their so called reproductive freedoms is to grow government and quash religious freedom--and in the process, he's providing free advertising for his donors. In reality, the free market providers the greatest platform for both individual and religious freedom.

Crossposted here and here.

When a Woman Votes...

Today marks the 92nd anniversary of the day when Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the 19th amendment. With this, women were granted the right to vote--a right fought for by many from Abigail Adams in her letters to the Constitutional Convention to pioneers like Susan B.Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

The right to vote is indeed an honor granted by the democratic processes of our Republic outlined in the Constitution. It seems though that in the years that have followed since women were granted suffrage that this   great opportunity has been diminished--not that opportunities to vote have diminished, but that more and more it has been viewed as collective statement, rather than an individual's opportunity.

Last weekend, I visited the Illinois State Fair and decided to pop into the Illinois Democratic Party tent. It was pretty much your standard political tent with flags, politicians' photos and literature, but one of the pieces of literature stood out to me-- the Illinois Democratic Women's flyer seen below:

To be sure, any literature from a political party is going to be partisan by default, but I was a bit surprised by the line, "when women vote Democrats win". With the exception of the 2010 election, the majority of women have voted Democratic in elections. However, there are two things wrong with this type of message: 1) it's about party power not about improving the state 2) it tries to make a statement about how women vote as a collective--thus diminishing the individual woman.

I don't particularly identify with any political party. Both parties have made government too big and too full of cronyism and corruption. I grew up in a conservative home, but I've voted Republican, Green Party, and Democrat in various elections in the past ten years--even for Barack Obama when he ran for Senate in 2004 (I was in college--youthful indiscretion). In the last few years, my political ideology has solidified as some conservatarian hybrid. Nonetheless, regardless of whether or not I, as a woman (or as an American in general) identify with a party, I'm sick of how the Democratic party projects their beliefs onto all women as if we're all supposed to walk in lock step. Why did the Illinois Democratic Women assume that women all women vote Democratic? In their laughable attempt to win female votes, why did the Obama campaign's graphic artist depict "Julia" without a mouth?

Is that because President Obama speaks for her, and she's not allowed to speak for herself? Additionally, why does the Obama campaign call Paul Ryan bad for women? For a party that prides itself on "female empowerment", it is certainly hypocritical for them to support the idea that taxpayers should pay for a woman's divorce between sex and personal responsibility. Why does Code Pink think that dressing up as vaginas will help their cause? Are they simply trying to show which organ they will vote with rather than their brains? All of these are examples of projection of party ideology onto individual women.

Women vote across all party lines, and all parties indeed want their vote. However, far too often the Democratic party gives their collectivist answer without asking the question--what do women want? They assume that women want the government to do things for them, rather than to stop doing things to them. In this "war on women", too often women have become the grenades. This is true of both major parties. The Democrats raised money off of Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke, and the Romney campaign raised money off of Hilary Rosen's comments about Ann Romney--both in attempts to win the "women's vote". There's no such thing as the "women's vote". There is a woman's vote; there are tens of millions of these across the country--each with a different perspective and different priorities. I'm so thankful to live in a country where I have the opportunity to vote as a woman.  As I wrote this past spring:

The voice of women has made a huge impact at the ballot box, but the “women’s vote” is not a collective declaration. Rather, the “women’s vote” is a collection of individual women’s decisions based upon their priorities. A CNN poll performed late last month indicated that 54% of women saw the economy as the most important issue with 16% and 14% of women stating that the federal budget deficit and healthcare were the most important issues respectively. The remaining 16% of women thought that either the situation in Afghanistan, illegal immigration, terrorism, or gay and lesbian policies were the most important issues. Suffice it to say, each women has a unique set of priorities when it comes to how they vote, and women’s opinions on how these priorities should be as a means of policy fall all along the political spectrum.

While the Democratic party wish to project their views onto all women, it an individual woman's choice to cast her vote how she chooses--just as it is for a man. It's not the women's vote; it's a woman's vote.

Crossposted here and here.

Why Senate Races Are the Most Important Races of 2012

In an election year when there is a presidential election in addition to Congressional and statewide races, the presidential election often takes center stage. In some respects, this is understandable. The president comprises the head of one of the three branches of our constitutional republic.However, the focus on the presidency is indicative of a government whose balance of power has gotten out of whack. For starters, we have crept away from our Constitutional foundation where the federal government's power is limited, and the states' power is appropriate. Even in our federal government, the scales of power have been tipped. Congress has willingly abdicated its legislative powers to unelected executive branch agencies who legislate under the guise of regulation. Couple the extensive powers of agencies and departments like the EPA, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security with the increasing frequency of executive orders in the last 100+ years, it is clear that the branches of government have been twisted. Additionally, with each Supreme Court decision, judicial precedence becomes the new guiding force rather than the true precedence--the Constitution.

One of the reasons our Founders created this three branch system of government was to provide a check and balance, not only to provide a check to each branch's adherence to the Constitution or ideology, but also to each branch's power. The election later this year has the potential to re-elect an extremely progressive president or elect an unprincipled "Republican". This election year also will indicate whether we maintain a GOP House or flip it, Somewhat lost in the shuffle is that this election year also determines whether or not Republicans regain control of the Senate or at least pick up some seats. Regardless of who is elected President, there are several reasons why the Senate is especially crucial, as the Constitution has given Senators different powers or responsibilities than their counterparts in the House.

One of the responsibilities that the Senate specifically has is the ratification of treaties. In late 2010, we saw a Democratic majority Senate (with a good deal of moderate Republicans joining in) ratify the START treaty . This treaty with Russia was rushed through by America, only to have the Russians sit on the treaty before ratifying it themselves. With President Obama recently noting to Russian President Medvedev that he would have "more flexibility after the election", this would prove to be a motivator for conservatives if Obama were to be re-elected. A strong conservative Senate would be crucial in preventing the President from entering into more treaties that may not be in America's best interest, nor in the interest of an ally like Poland. Between President Obama scrapping a missile defense program in Poland on the 70th anniversary of Soviet invasion of Poland and his gaffes in discussing "flexibility" with the Russian President and in referring to Nazi death camps as Polish death camps, it would be important to have a Senate who would stand with America's allies and not aim to weaken our country. In the same vein, discussion has opened up again recently over the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) in the Senate. If this treaty were to be ratified, it would require that America pay royalties ,which would be distributed to poor underdeveloped countries, on energy development done in certain arctic regions. This would abdicate American sovereignty by implementing a global redistribution of wealth from energy production on what are really American seas. This is in addition to the limits on sea travel and naval activity. If this is ultimately not voted upon during this session, a conservative Senate would be a big deterrent in its ratification regardless of whether Obama's Secretary of State were to push for the treaty again or if a Romney administration were to advocate for its approval.

Another  important responsibility given to the Senate is the approval of judicial and cabinet appointments. A strong conservative Senate would help keep President Obama in check when he attempts to appoint a new Secretary of State, if he is re-elected. Current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, although quite liberal, was palatable enough to be confirmed by the Senate in 2009. However, she has opted not to serve in Obama's second term if he is re-elected. A conservative Senate would ideally help ensure that President Obama would appoint a more palatable liberal, rather than one who is a radical. We saw earlier in his term when President Obama attempted to appoint radical Donald Berwick to head Medicare, the blowback from Republicans and conservatives was strong enough to prompt President Obama to appoint Berwick during a Senate recess. Berwick later resigned from his post.  This check and balance would be even more pronounced if the Senate were to not only become more Republican, but more conservative as well. Additionally and probably most importantly, a strong conservative is needed when a new Supreme Court nominee is appointed. There is the potential for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg to retire. Would a President Obama appoint another justice to perpetuate judicial activism for even longer in that seat? Additionally, there is potential that if a Republican were to win, Justices Roberts and Scalia would retire in order for more justices to be appointed by a Republican president. For the most part, with the blocked appointment of Robert Bork being a notable exception, the Senate confirms the President's nominees to the bench. However, would Senate confirmation hearings of Obama's appointees be more rigorous with a conservative Senate, or would they be bold enough to block a radical appointee? On the flip side, would a conservative Senate hold a Romney administration accountable in appointing a true originalist judges to the bench, even in spite of his poor record of judicial appointments as governor? Romney often blames Democratic control in Massachusetts as a source of his failings. Would a conservative Senate hold him accountable to make wise decisions? Not only in potential judicial appointees, but also in his own cabinet, as again, he did a poor job with some other appointees as governor and even to date as the presumed GOP nominee.It is important that the Senate provides a conservative and constitutional check to whomever is elected President in November.

Suffice it to say, the 33 Senate seats up for grabs this November are extremely important, not only in working with their bicameral buddies in the House, but also in providing a much needed check to whomever occupies the White House and whomever may be placed on the judicial bench. In order to slowly but surely try to bring our nation back to its true Constitutional foundation, we must ensure that principled conservatives are elected in 2012. Most conservatives are disenchanted by our presidential prospects, but we have every reason to be inspired by the foundational principles found in our Constitution. We must remember, though, as the father of our Constitution, James Madison, once noted, "if men were angels, no government would be necessary". Men are not angels, and yet another blessing of our republic is that we get to elect our leaders from amongst our fallible selves. It is inherent in our human nature that our leaders will be flawed.Therefore, it is important for us to elect from among the flawed human candidates out there those who have the best grasp of our Constitution so that they may exercise those powers and responsibilities that they swear an oath to uphold to the best of their abilities. Let's remind our leaders that the Constitution still begins with "We the People", and let's ensure we have a Senate that lives that message out in their leadership.

Crossposted here and here.