Slots for Tots

Gambling has become a national obsession. The promise of millions of dollars annually has cleared the way for casinos in many states. The state of Maryland now has five casinos, the largest and most lucrative, recently opened adjacent to the Arundel Mills Shopping Center.
Slot machines were legalized in a number of Maryland counties back in the 1940s, generally with the promise that proceeds would pay for children's education and lower property taxes. Stories of bankruptcy, theft, and malfeasance soon followed. Several public officials admitted being approached by interested parties to sell their votes for pro-gambling initiatives. By July of 1968 gambling was once again illegal in the state.
But the lure of a cash flow without raising taxes on the public soon brought a state-wide lottery, with the promise (can you see it coming?) of better educations for the children of the state. Then in 2008, voters (again warned that their children's education would suffer without it) voted for casino gambling.
Before the first slots were set in place, State Senate President Mike Miller began saying that five casinos were not enough. If children were to continue to receive a quality education, a sixth casino (in his home county) would be needed.
Before the largest casino was opened, a state official remarked that revenues were not what they'd expected, and therefore table games should be added to the casinos. Who could argue with such logic? After all, you wouldn't want the children to suffer, would you?
The sad truth is that Maryland is no different than any of the other states with lotteries and/or casinos. Raising taxes on the citizenry costs votes, offering fun and excitement doesn't. But what of the real cost? How about the families devastated by bankruptcy, divorce, or jail time for a loved one because of addiction to gambling?
Gambling is a stealth tax that disproportionately reaches into the pockets of those least able to afford the loss of income. That's not to say those who are well off do not gamble, or suffer from the effects of their gambling. They have the luxury of disposable income.
Casinos are the worst form of taxation. With smiles, bright lights, and good food they promise riches and glory one token at a time.
And the children's education? Somebody please show me a state where the education budget went up in direct proportion to the amount of taxes generated by gambling. The truth is this is a shell game. The money exists for the education budget. Monies that would have been allocated for education are redistributed into other departments, leaving the gambling receipts to cover the load.
Some refer to gambling as the "stupid tax." It's more of a luxury tax. One that a lot of people don't have the luxury to afford.

For a nice study of gambling in MD:
http://maryland-politics.blogspot.com/2008/11/marylands-sordid-slots-history-about-to.html

Some info on the effects of gambling:
http://www.troubledwith.com/AbuseandAddiction/A000000707.cfm?topic=abuse%20and%20addiction%3A%20gambling

NARAL Tosses out the Bathwater

Every state and municipality that has either passed or attempted to pass laws requiring abortion clinics to include mandatory sonograms during treatment has met with vehement opposition to such requirements from, among others, the National Abortion Rights League (NARAL).

So I find it somewhat disingenuous for NARAL to accuse Crisis Pregnancy Centers of that very thing.

“Anyone seeking health-care services should receive comprehensive, unbiased, medically and factually accurate information. Women facing unintended pregnancy deserve no less. When women are fully informed, they are better able to make responsible and appropriate decisions about their reproductive health. Mindful of this, the anti-choice movement has for years tried to restrict, control, and manipulate the information doctors give women facing unplanned pregnancies.” (1)

 
NARAL argues that the Centers, “continue their campaign to misinform women about abortion and to dissuade women from exercising their right to choose…” They also state that, “Women are entitled to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased medical information with which they can make their own decisions.” I would like to know how the inclusion of a sonogram during treatment can be considered biased. And how does the exclusion of a sonogram enhance a woman’s right to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased medical information?

NARAL is a large tax-exempt 501(c), eligible to receive contributions deductible as charitable donations. (2) On NARAL’s website, they say they oppose “bans on safe abortion methods that protect women’s health,” and “Dangerous laws that jeopardize young women’s health and safety,” and “distortions of science to instill fear.”(3)

The truth is they have thwarted attempts to bring abortion clinic regulations in line with existing requirements for any other medical facility. Jeopardizing women’s lives in their view is suggesting they carry their baby full term. And while science pushes steadily back the curtain of “personhood” by showing just how alive and human a baby is earlier and earlier in a pregnancy, and doctors save early births at ever earlier points in pregnancy, they want a blanket thrown over such research and procedures. After all, if a child was a child at delivery before, and at five months of a pregnancy now, what can their organization say when scientists stand up and tell them that all the requirements for human life are complete at conception? That would mean abortion is tantamount to murder.

The government should support legitimate, comprehensive reproductive-health clinics, rather than centers whose goals are to prevent women from exercising their constitutionally protected right to choose. (1)

Is that it? Rights trump human life?

Representative Trent Franks (R-Ariz) introduced into the House of Representatives, H.R.3541, “The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.” The intent of the legislation is to eliminate the use of abortion to choose the sex of the child, that is to say, aborting a child because the parent(s) wanted a boy instead of a girl, or vice-versa.

Painting the legislation’s supporters as women hating men who oppose prenatal care, equal pay, and contraception, NARAL promises to defeat any law that would prevent a woman from having an abortion for any reason. Nancy Keenan, head of NARAL, sees it as an attack on a woman’s right to choose, and insists NARAL has always been opposed to the use of abortion for sex selection. (4)

Taking her cue from Margaret Sanger, Keenan holds abortion as a sacrosanct right.

I agree with Keenan in that I think the legislation will not have the intended effect. Planned Parenthood and their ilk will no more report sex selection abortions than they have teen rape victims that come to their clinics for abortions.

But I will say dismissing the bill is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Seeing no baby anyway, NARAL will disagree.

(1) http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/media/fact-sheets/abortion-cpcs.pdf

(2) http://www.bbb.org/charity-reviews/national/health/naral-pro-choice-america-foundation-in-washington-dc-507

(3) http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/what-is-choice/abortion/

(4) http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/media/press-releases/2012/pr05292012_prenda.html

The Law of Our Own Land

Unlike the United Kingdom, the United States of America has a written constitution. Arguments can be made pro and con as to the benefit of having an unwritten constitution, but perhaps one in favor of the written variety is that the law is the law. The law can be altered. New laws can be created. But all laws must pass muster by way of meeting Constitutional agreement.
This can cause problems when the letter of the law creates unintended consequences, or when activist jurists reinterpret constitutional law in order to bring it in line with  a particular set of values.
The truth is that the framers of the Constitution were, in large part, men who held a conscious belief in the God of the Bible. Whether they were Baptist, Congregationalist, Lutheran, or Methodist, the writing and thinking process of these men was influenced by their own understanding of the universe, which for them was a Judeo-Christian view.
Today, of course, a great many men and women in the United States either grew up without or chose to ignore the Christian viewpoint, and that is their prerogative.
But it doesn't change the Constitution. We can try to reinterpret it as many do the Bible, placing a "modern" set of values into the text, and proclaiming that red is now orange, blue is now brown.
But like the Bible, the Constitution is not a living document. It survives intact. True, it has been modified a number of times through the amendment process. But there is no lawful approach to Constitutional amendment that flows through Judicial Fiat, nor is there a mechanism in place for the judiciary to consider the laws of foreign lands or societies when deciding a case.
The State of Kansas has enacted legislation ensuring that Sharia Law cannot be considered when a case is brought before state courts.
The shame isn't that they have done so. The shame is that such legislation had to be enacted in the first place.

The Image of Modern Man

As much as women are portrayed through advertisements, music, and movies as sexual objects, men are imagined as objects of ridicule at best and at worst, contempt. Light hearted advertisements targeting women show men making ridiculous purchases as their wives and girl friends shake their head in disbelief. Men struggle to take care of children, fail miserably to keep the kitchen clean, and can't help but ogle every woman within a hundred yards.

While there will always be heroes in movies and on television, unless the male lead is the dashing romantic who women are anxious to fall into bed with, men are inept, bungling, inconsiderate, unfeeling, ready to be trampled upon by the women in their lives.

Gone are the Ward Cleavers and Lucas McCains, who taught their children valuable lessons, while, in Ward's case, his wife was supportive and caring, and in Lucas's, he raised his son Mark on his own.

I suggest we could go a long way toward restoring family values by departing from these trends. We certainly do no one any good by allowing young boys to grow up with images of men as insipid and spineless creatures driven by the basest of instincts and allowing young girls to be inculcated by the sights and sounds of women driven to fit into a size four.

Secret at Seventeen

A teenager has called out Seventeen Magazine for its patently false imaging of young girls in the magazine's photo spreads. Julia Bloom says the magazine's portrayal of young girls does not help the young readership, and in fact, does them harm.

“Here’s what lots of girls don’t know. Those ‘pretty women’ that we see in magazines are fake. They are often Photoshopped, air-brushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life,” Bluhm said.

Kudos to Ms. Bloom for her courage to take a stand. How many women, your and old, have have dealt with terrible self loathing dimply because they do not measure up to a plastic standard that they can never come close to achieving without hardship and surgery?


But Seventeen Magazine is merely a reflection of the greater society in which we live. A society that values image to such an extent that it sacrifices substance. Weight loss advertisements and exercise videos, while occasionally positing products as producing a healthier you, focus on the visual impact using their food supplements, their diet plans, their gym equipment will have on the user's image. Hair treatments tout the product's ability to attract sexual partners, as do clothing lines and beverages.


Sadly, women's rights organizations pay very little attention to the issue, parlaying political acumen into secondary issues such as equal pay and sexual discrimination. The truth is, both of these are the result of the Barbie image, the Victoria's Secret image, the Seventeen Magazine image that is foisted upon men and women and accepted, making women little more than playthings. We can create laws that demand equal pay for equal work, but that doesn't solve the underlying issue.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/05/08/teen-takes-on-seventeen-says-magazine-contributes-to-body-image-issues/#ixzz1uInu1pTF

Sheep

I don't know which irritates me more- The incessant class warfare or the insistence that our children's education and the safety of our streets will be in danger if we don't increase the budget and raise taxes, or the sheep that hear these mantras and take them for gospel.
The lessons learned in the Soviet Union have not transferred to many in this country. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Tell that man he may only keep an ever shrinking fraction of his fish and he will not work as hard, and he will resent those who do nothing and yet share in his catch.
The excuse that taxes must be raised in order to balance a budget is only true to the extent that the budget cannot be reduced to the level of tax receipts. To use the excuse that taxes must be raised or children will suffer and crime will run rampant is equally fallacious. It suggests that there is no way to either reduce the cost of education and public safety or to reduce funding for other programs.
A citizenry that blindly accepts such claims without question deserves what it gets. Far too many people have bought into the notion that big government is in their best interest. The interest of big government is growing big government, creating more and more dependency upon government, and reducing or eliminating the influence of the private sector.

Breaking for tradition, denying reality

Rowan Williams, Arch Bishop of Canterbury, has announced his resignation from the leadership of the Anglican Church and is to be Master at Magdalene College in Cambridge. Since the announcement, he has received praise from many of those who approved of his administration and even many of those who disapproved.
Rowan worked feverishly during his tenure as head of the Church of England to keep the body together. But his high-mindedness obscured his theology. What did he stand for? Many who know him personally say he is a champion of homosexual inclusion in the hierarchy of the church. Yet he spoke publicly of working with both sides of the issue to reach an amicable solution. That's like saying you intend to cheer for both sides in a football match. Either you are secretly favoring one side or the other, or you really don't care who wins. And it really is a case of win or lose.
Centuries of church teaching supports the exclusion of anyone willfully disobedient to the will of God from holding office. In doing so, the church agrees with scripture. But wait, you say, scripture can be interpreted to deny teaching and authoritative positions to women as well yet the church has no problem with that.
And there's the crux.
Church teaching is tradition, and tradition is human and therefore mutable and malleable. It can change with the times. The Bible isn't rewritten. It is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. As long as you consider it to be the authoritative Word of God.
And there's the second crux.
Williams does not accept the authority of scripture. He is part of a brood of teachers and thinkers that began molding the teachings of the Church of England to conform to societal demands over the last few decades. As the church has become more and more secular, it has become more and more irrelevant. Trying to be inclusive, it has ignored the exclusivity of Christ's authority.
In seeking to make the teachings of Christ palatable to those whose lifestyle is in direct opposition to biblical precepts, the church has divorced itself from the deity of Christ.
Let me make this clear. Homosexuality is not the real issue here. Sin is sin regardless of the nature. Sexual immorality is not acceptable by biblical standards, be it between two of the same sex or of different sexes. While Christ emphatically stated His love of everyone, He never displayed love for their sin. The body of believers welcomes (or should) anyone with a desire to learn of God's redemptive plan. No one should be stopped at the door. But just as assuredly, there are biblical standards for leadership with the body.
Living in England in the late nineties, I saw first hand the destruction of biblical authority in the ranks of of the C of E. Visiting a small church in the village of Ripley, I listened to a Priest who calmly and warmly told his congregants that the miracles in the bible were simply teaching tools. "No one seriously believes the world was created in seven days, or that Noah built an ark, he told them, "no more than water was turned into wine, or that Lazarus was raised from the dead."
As for the growing schism that Williams worked so hard to prevent, the seeds of dissent were sprouting before the millennial celebrations had begun. Although the church had long ago removed the necessity of acknowledging biblical authority in its ordination vows, many priests were graduating from seminary and challenging the "orthodoxy" of the current establishment. The turn towards scripture was so pronounced that church leaders were writing articles about what could be done to stop it.
Schisms are not entirely bad. It means that not everyone has forgotten why they wanted the bible as the church's authority in the first place. It's why there are so many Protestant denominations. There always seems to be a remnant willing to stand and fight for the Gospel regardless of attendance numbers or popularity polls.