Caffeinated Thoughts

With Christ in the Voting Booth: The Foreword by Mike Huckabee
Former Clinic Manager Accuses Planned Parenthood of the Heartland of Medicaid Fraud in Whistleblower Lawsuit
Correction Representative Carson: The West Was More Enlightened Than You Think
See Roberts Run
Obama’s Tax Warfare on the Middle Class
DOJ Reveals Brian Terry and Border Patrol Agents Defended Themselves With Bean Bags
Public School Teachers Are Not Underpaid, and There’s Probably Too Many of Them

With Christ in the Voting Booth: The Foreword by Mike Huckabee

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 03:16 AM PDT

Today starts a series of posts excerpted from my book, With Christ in the Voting Booth. To begin, I am posting the complete Foreword written by Governor Mike Huckabee. Thank you governor for adding your kind words to the book.

Foreword by Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas:

In polite company, one avoids discussing three highly controversial subjects. David Shedlock bluntly writes about two of them here: Religion and Politics. With Christ in the Voting Booth leaves no question he thinks religion, or specifically "faith in God", is the more important of the two. But he's not afraid to mix it up. Utilizing the Bible, history, logic and lots of original sources, David is not so much interested in the religious character of the people of the U.S. (that's a given!), nor our Christian heritage, but rather emphasizes the need for ethical, truth-based politics and governance today.

When I began my service as the governor of Arkansas, some were skeptical that as a former Baptist pastor I could resist shoving my personal theology down everyone's throat. When I finished my terms 10½ years later, few people still held that fear. It can be done. In this book, David warns against two extremes every Christian voter and politician faces: putting too much faith in the government, and developing a rebellious attitude toward government, an institution ordained by God.

He writes:

Because we are sinners, we need government. But what kind of government is needed to restrain wicked men? … Government-too-big tends to dehumanize us, making us more like numbers to be counted than people to be served. Some people do not see the government as the God-ordained means for protecting society from those who would destroy it. On this basis, Ayn Rand libertarianism refuses to protect us against attacks on life and marriage; thus it is godless government, or government-too-small. Some detractors have frantically warned us that politicians like George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann are theocrats, people who believe that God will or should rule in the civil realm via the church or clergy. These naysayers are hyperventilating…. There is not one shred of evidence that any of the candidates listed above has ever been a theocrat or a theonomist.

With Christ in the Voting Booth is not a dated Voter's Guide that promotes certain candidates and after the election becomes as useful as day-old toast. Instead, Shedlock has written a book that addresses issues that crop up in every election. What if the candidate isn't fully pro-life? What if he or she wants to raise my taxes? Does God care who wins the presidency and my local mayor's race? Can I vote for a liberal candidate like Barack Obama? Should gender, race or religion enter my decision? What about third parties, or sitting it out altogether?

I have watched David regularly tackle tough issues like these in his blog posts at Caffeinated Thoughts. He does his homework and genuinely seeks to tell the truth. While I may not always agree with him, thoughtful Christians shouldn't ignore the advice he gives when they go to the ballot box or when they decide to run for office themselves. His strategy is simple: explain the principles, philosophy and process of politics from a Biblical perspective, and apply each of these elements to actual decisions voters make in the voting booth, and politicians must make every day in Washington, in state capitals all across the country, and in city halls everywhere.

Every primary season and general election is important. We ought to get it right this time.

Former Clinic Manager Accuses Planned Parenthood of the Heartland of Medicaid Fraud in Whistleblower Lawsuit

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 01:00 AM PDT

The Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) is representing Sue Thayer, a former Planned Parenthood of the Heartland Clinic manager in a lawsuit filed in March, 2011. The complaint by law was not allowed to be made public until a court unsealed it which happened recently. The ADF attorneys filed suit under a federal law that allows "whistleblowers" with inside information to expose fraudulent billing by government contractors.

Thayer, who is a former manager of Planned Parenthood's clinics in Storm Lake, IA and LeMars, IA has sued under both the federal and Iowa False Claims acts. The suit alleges that Planned Parenthood knowingly committed Medicaid fraud from 2002 to 2009 by improperly seeking reimbursements from Iowa Medicaid Enterprise and the Iowa Family Planning Network for products and services that were not legally reimbursable under those programs.

Thayer in the lawsuit alleges that Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa, now known as Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, filled nearly 500,000 false claims with Medicaid from which Planned Parenthood received and retained nearly $28 million. If the court rules in favor of Thayer, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland could be ordered to pay both the federal and Iowa governments as much as $5.5 billion in False Claims Act damages and penalties.

In the lawsuit, Thayer alleges that in order to enhance revenues, Planned Parenthood implemented what is called the "C-Mail" program which automatically mailed a year's supply of birth control pills to women who had only been seen once at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Those women, the lawsuit explains, were usually seen by personnel who were not qualified health care professionals.

Planned Parenthood's cost for a 28-day supply of birth control pills mailed to clients was $2.98, but Thayer asserts that the actual Medicaid reimbursement received by Planned Parenthood was $26.32. After being seen only once clients were mailed thousands of unrequested birth control pills. The lawsuit also alleges that when the Postal Service returned the pills in some cases Planned Parenthood would resell the same birth control pills and bill Medicaid again instead of crediting Medicaid or destroying the pills.

The suit also claims that Planned Parenthood coerced "voluntary donations" for services and then billed Medicaid for them. In effect Planned Parenthood not only falsely billed Medicaid, but also took money from low income women by getting them to pay for services that Medicaid was intended to cover in full.

"During my last years working at Planned Parenthood, it became increasingly clear to me that not all of their policies and protocols were completely legal and ethical," Thayer said in a released statement yesterday. "I believe it (the lawsuit) is an important piece in the nationwide effort to shed light on the darkness and deception surrounding America's largest abortion provider – Planned Parenthood. It seems that God can use all those years I spent working at Planned Parenthood for His good."

The lawsuit Thayer v. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. Des Moines attorney J. Russell Hixson is assisting with the case.

Correction Representative Carson: The West Was More Enlightened Than You Think

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 10:26 PM PDT

The past week Indiana Congressman Andre’ Carson, a Muslim Democrat, made the statement to the effect that American Schools needed to be like the Madrasah schools of the Islamic world with the idea that schools patterned after these Koran centered schools would further advance the West. Oh really? Having taken a number of history classes in college myself the verdict of history has been that Islam stunted the growth of the Middle East and it was Christianity that caused the rise of the West. I would argue that if the Islamic mindset had been so highly enlightened that they should have continued to advance against the West and the Ottoman Empire should have become the dominant world power, but they didn’t. It was the Christian nations that rose up and have dominated world history since 1492. I would also argue that had it not been the divisions in the West and a failure to accurately apply Biblical principles that allowed Islam to eclipse Christianity for a time. Once the Christian nations got their acts together in the late 15th and 16th Centuries it was not Islam that advanced, but Christianity. It was not the Madrasah that prevailed, but instead was the private school and later country schools that taught a world view based on Christianity that prevailed. It was not the unpredictable god, Allah, who was detached from man that prevailed of the Mosque, but the Christian God of the Church who was a God of order whose very mind could be understood who gave rise to modern science that prevailed.

The Muslim world has not contributed significantly to world history in the past five hundred years. There was a period of Muslim advance that threatened the West, but it was stopped with the West regaining Spain and Portugal, and stopping them in the Balkans. Once the Renaissance and Reformation occurred, the tables switched. The West refocused on learning , the focus of the Reformation on individual relationship to God and personal liberty led to innovation that allowed the European Powers like Spain, France, Portugal, Russia, England, and America to expand and gain world domination. It was not the Muslim nations that developed the steam engine, sewing machine, or nuclear reactor. The Muslim powers passed on firearms technology, but they did not develop the flintlock, breach loader, revolver, or machine gun. The Muslim nations did not develop the internal combustion engine, light bulb, the cotton gin, the telephone, or airplane. The Muslim world did not abolish slavery, or give the right to vote and equal rights to blacks and women. The West did.

Instead, the record of the Muslim world has been that of backwardness.

The Muslim world has remained essentially Medieval in its approach to the world. They may have access to assault rifles and Russian T-62 tanks and MiG fighters, but little else. They are intolerant brutes that believe it is ok to lob rockets at civilians, to blow up themselves with bomb vests in rooms with women and children, and behead journalists slowly. If the advancement that Mr. Carson seeks is from the Muslim Madrasah’s then I would argue that Mr. Carson would be best off to leave the United States and live there rather than foisting the kind of rubbish that he seems so eloquent in speaking. Either the man has not read a single history book, or he has denied all senses of reality and put himself in the same kind of loony bin that other Muslims have who deny that the Holocaust ever occurred. In either case he needs to resign from the American Congress, because he is not fit to be a leader of this nation.

See Roberts Run

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 10:15 PM PDT

Not since 1973 and Roe Vs. Wade has a Supreme Court decision been so convoluted or contrived as the Supreme Court's ruling on Obamacare. In Roe the Supreme Court wanted to find a constitutional reason for a woman to have the right to terminate the life of her unborn baby. Finding none they invented something called a woman's right to privacy and hung their constitutional reputations on a phantom concept. Since that time, over 50 million babies have been sacrificed on the altar of convenience.

How ironic that the judge many conservatives (including me) believed would provide a strong intellectual argument for overturning Roe actually ran to the left on Obamacare inventing a constitutional concept along the way. Thomas, Alito, Scalia, and even perianal swing voter Kennedy all agreed that Obamacare should be overturned. Apparently, for a while Roberts agreed. According to CBS News reporter Jan Crawford Roberts originally joined the four stalwart conservatives in rejecting the Commerce Clause argument and thus gutting Obamacare by stripping out the individual mandate.

But something happened on the way to the ruling's release. Evidently Roberts started thinking more about the court's legacy than the Constitution. He went on a grand quest to find a reason to be reasonable in the eyes of the Washington Press Corp and the rest of the mainstream media. After all, conservatives are supposed to be reluctant to overturn sweeping legislation that has been duly debated and consciencelessly passed by Congress. Roberts, like an NFL receiver hearing the footsteps of a rushing cornerback, knew he and "his court" would take a beating if they overturned Obamacare. So, he decided to lateral the ball and make something out of nothing. He would have been better served to simply acknowledge the nothingness of the team Obama argument and let the Affordable Care Act be stopped in its tracks.

I have read all the arguments coming from the right about how Roberts is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers. His ruling has been called brilliant by some and innovative and slick by others. A kind of constitutional rope-a-dope to lure progressives into a corner on this case and then come out swinging with a knockout blow on the next big decision. Some believe the Commerce clause can now never again be used to justify the expansion of government power. Those who believe that underestimate the ability of the Left to disregard legal precedent in favor of their own twisted understanding of a law.

For example, in the Everson v. the Board of Education case, which became the basis for the modern understanding of the separation of Church and State, the Supreme Court ignored 150 years of precedent against the idea of separation and inserted a sentence from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson into the Constitution. If a bunch of liberals on the court can find a woman's right to privacy in the Constitution and totally disregard multiple previous court rulings I am sure they will have no trouble ignoring this ruling.

Others say turning the Obamacare mandate penalty into a tax was a brilliant move that will henceforth and forevermore hamper the ability of Congress to pass overwrought legislation because they will have to admit it is a tax. But if the term tax were the automatic red flag it is being portrayed to be we would not be overtaxed, overregulated, and hopelessly in debt. Just as water always seems to find a way around any barrier as it heads for the lowest point Congress will always be able to find and promote another logical sounding reason to impose a tax.

Maybe the silver lining in this dark cloud of constitutional contortion is the provision that will allow the states to reject government mandated Medicaid without incurring a penalty. While a reassertion of federalism is a nice touch it is a poor tradeoff for allowing a program to stand that is clearly unconstitutional and that will, once fully implemented, bankrupt the country.

My favorite commentary on Roberts run to the Left comes from Jonah Goldberg of the National Review. Commenting on all the reasons why Roberts decided to run to the Left Goldberg writes, "What Roberts did is not in his job description. Whatever his motivation…whether it was to defend the Court's reputation or his own, or if it was to deliver some ingenious slow-acting poison to the Nanny State that's now hat justices are supposed to prioritize. If he's the umpire he claims to be, he should be umping."

I think the problem boils down to this. Instead of umping according to the rules Roberts redefined the strike zone to keep the pitcher who can't throw strikes from feeling bad. By finding a phantom tax in Obamacare Roberts rewrote the rules and turned the IRS into the 2012 equivalent of the KGB. We are now left with only one recourse. We must elect Mitt Romney president and give him a clear majority in the United States Senate. If we fail, Robert's run to the left leaves us running for our lives in the face of an all powerful, unrestrained, unconstitutional government.

Obama’s Tax Warfare on the Middle Class

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 07:15 PM PDT

obama_taxes President Obama today said he favors extending tax cuts for those making less than $250,000. His administration today has also promised to veto an extension of tax cuts for everybody. So in effect if Congress votes to extend the tax cut for everyone Obama favors raising taxes on everyone. For those of you who believe that President Obama is being a champion of the middle class let me make the following points:

First off he's not cutting taxes… there's no new tax cuts here for the middle class. He is only saying he doesn't want to raise our taxes – for a year. He wants to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000. That is the benchmark that went from $1 million dollar down to $250,000 during his last campaign. So if anyone tells you that President Obama is cutting taxes they are a liar.

Secondly this policy will hurt job creation which hurts the middle class and those in poverty. How many sole proprietorships and LLCs will this impact? Obama says nationally this will only impact 3% of small businesses, provided that number is correct, and I have my doubts, how many jobs are produced by those businesses?

Third, how much does the bottom threshold of the "top 5%" of our earners actually make. Well there's a good reason to believe it is south of $250,000. Try $154,643 based on the latest information released to the public. Since the number was consistently lowered during the 2008 campaign can we expect the same this time around?

Fourth, he's already raising taxes on the middle class via the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, seven times actually:

1. The Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax: Starting in 2014, anyone not buying "qualifying" health insurance – as defined by Obama-appointed bureaucrats — must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following:

1 Adult 2 Adults 3+ Adults

2014 1% AGI/$95 1% AGI/$190 1% AGI/$285

2015 2% AGI/$325 2% AGI/$650 2% AGI/$975

2016+ 2.5% AGI/$695 2.5% AGI/$1390 2.5% AGI/$2085

2. The Obamacare Medicine Cabinet Tax: This tax took effect in January 2011 and prevents Americans from being able to use their health savings account (HSA),flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

3. The Obamacare Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka "Special Needs Kids Tax": Starting in January 2013, Obamacare imposes a cap on FSAs of $2500 (now unlimited under federal law). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

4. The Obamacare "Haircut" to the Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI: Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction for medical expenses to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). Beginning in January 2013, this new Obamacare provision imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI.

5. The Obamacare HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike: This provision, which took effect in January 2011, increases the tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

6. The Obamacare Tax on Indoor Tanning Services: Since July of 2010, Americans using indoor tanning salons face a new 10 percent excise tax.

7. Obamacare Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans: Starting in 2018, this provision imposes a new 40 percent excise tax on "Cadillac" health insurance plans ($10,200 single/$27,500 family). Higher thresholds exists for early retirees and those in high-risk professions.

None of the above tax increases contain any exemption whatsoever for families making less than $250,000 per year.

Then there's the 13 additional taxes he's adding for those who make $250,000 or above via Obamacare.

President Obama isn't looking out for the middle class, he never has. He's looking to say whatever he needs to say in order to take your mind off of his actual record and the stagnant employment numbers.

DOJ Reveals Brian Terry and Border Patrol Agents Defended Themselves With Bean Bags

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 05:15 PM PDT

Via Fox News:

The Justice Department on Monday unsealed an indictment charging five individuals allegedly involved in Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s death, and announced a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of those suspects still at large.

For the first time, federal officials also revealed that Terry and an elite squad of federal agents initially fired bean bags — not bullets — at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2011. During the exchange, Terry was shot and killed.

The indictment came down in November, 2011, but we're now hearing about it. I'm not the only one questioning the timing:

The announcement comes amid an intensifying debate over the department’s failed Fast and Furious anti-gunrunning operation. Weapons from that program were found at Terry’s murder scene — Republicans seeking documents pertaining to Fast and Furious last month escalated their probe by voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, praised the department Monday for its announcement but questioned the timing.

"I applaud what they’re doing, but I condemn the timing. It’s very clear that the timing has everything to do with the House of Representatives holding Eric Holder in contempt," Issa told Fox News.

Issa, who led the contempt push, said Justice could have been doing more to find the suspects all along — he called the timing of the FBI reward money "another example of using politics over good policy."

I also wonder if using bean bag rounds against people carrying assault rifles is standard practice or were they ordered to do so. I know they hurt like heck, but it doesn't seem much better than being just armed with a knife during a gunfight. Consider the violence taking place across the border it seems like an incredibly stupid policy.

HT: Jim Hoft

Update: I originally wrote "Ben" Terry in the headline – a typo which has now been fixed.

Public School Teachers Are Not Underpaid, and There’s Probably Too Many of Them

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 03:45 PM PDT

"Teachers are underpaid." I hear this comment frequently from people in various circles when discussing education reform. "It's the most important job a person can have and we need to pay them accordingly," is another statement I hear frequently. We hear it in Washington, DC and from special interest groups as well as Teresa Shumay points out at The Foundry:

Last year, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated that America's public school teachers are "desperately underpaid" and called for a doubling of teachers' wages. A similar theme is touted frequently by politicians, media, and education unions.

She shared an interview of The Heritage Foundation's Jason Richwine for ChoiceMedia TV. Dr. Richwine conducts quantitative analyses on a wide variety of social policy issues, among them immigration, education, welfare and family structure.

He basically says "time out" on that assumption. What people typically don't keep in mind are the fringe benefits that teachers receive. Teacher compensation is more than just a cash salary. Not only do they have great health benefits, but the public pensions they receive is greater than any private sector retirement plan. (Side note be sure to check out Truth in Pensions on information about public pensions). In a report he issued last fall on the subject Richwine and co-author, Andrew Biggs, PhD, noted the following when considering teacher compensation:

First, formal educational attainment, such as a degree acquired or years of education completed, is not a good proxy for the earnings potential of school teachers. Public-school teachers earn less in wages on average than non-teachers with the same level of education, but teacher skills generally lag behind those of other workers with similar "paper" qualifications. We show that:

The wage gap between teachers and non-teachers disappears when both groups are matched on an objective measure of cognitive ability rather than on years of education.

Public-school teachers earn higher wages than private-school teachers, even when the comparison is limited to secular schools with standard curriculums.

Workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent. Teachers who change to non-teaching jobs, on the other hand, see their wages decrease by roughly 3 percent. This is the opposite of what one would expect if teachers were underpaid.

Second, several of the most generous fringe benefits for public-school teachers often go unrecognized:

Pension programs for public-school teachers are significantly more generous than the typical private-sector retirement plan, but this generosity is hidden by public-sector accounting practices that allow lower employer contributions than a private-sector plan promising the same retirement benefits.

Most teachers accrue generous retiree health benefits as they work, but retiree health care is excluded from Bureau of Labor Statistics benefits data and thus frequently overlooked. While rarely offered in the private sector, retiree health coverage for teachers is worth roughly an additional 10 percent of wages.

Job security for teachers is considerably greater than in comparable professions. Using a model to calculate the welfare value of job security, we find that job security for typical teachers is worth about an extra 1 percent of wages, rising to 8.6 percent when considering that extra job security protects a premium paid in terms of salaries and benefits.

We conclude that public-school-teacher salaries are comparable to those paid to similarly skilled private-sector workers, but that more generous fringe benefits for public-school teachers, including greater job security, make total compensation 52 percent greater than fair market levels, equivalent to more than $120 billion overcharged to taxpayers each year. Teacher compensation could therefore be reduced with only minor effects on recruitment and retention. Alternatively, teachers who are more effective at raising student achievement might be hired at comparable cost.

So perhaps we should dispense with the "teachers are underpaid" talk.

Also, are there too many public school teachers? Andrew Coulson, the Director of Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, believes so. In an op/ed published today in The Wall Street Journal he wrote:

Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubled—to 6.4 million from 3.3 million—and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers’ aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.

Or would they? Stanford economist Eric Hanushek has shown that better-educated students contribute substantially to economic growth. If U.S. students could catch up to the mathematics performance of their Canadian counterparts, he has found, it would add roughly $70 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next 80 years. So if the additional three million public-school employees we’ve hired have helped students learn, the nation may be better off economically.

To find out if that’s true, we can look at the "long-term trends" of 17-year-olds on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. These tests, first administered four decades ago, show stagnation in reading and math and a decline in science. Scores for black and Hispanic students have improved somewhat, but the scores of white students (still the majority) are flat overall, and large demographic gaps persist. Graduation rates have also stagnated or fallen. So a doubling in staff size and more than a doubling in cost have done little to improve academic outcomes.

….

The implication of these facts is clear: America’s public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievement—people who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.

Coulson argues that we should eliminate non-productive government jobs and replace them with productive, private-sector jobs. He says this must be done in order to avoid Greece's fate.

Instead of talking about boasting teacher compensation perhaps we need to figure out how many we actually need instead.