The Washington Times published an informative article this week (Wed., 2/1/2012) by Sue Thayer, “a former Planned Parenthood clinic manager from Storm Lake, Iowa.”  Thayer ran the Planned Parenthood clinic in Storm Lake from 1991 to 2008.  Originally, this clinic did not offer abortions, but in 2008 Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa required the clinic to perform “telemed abortions.”

Thayer made the following observations about telemed abortions:

….  Telemed abortion is the practice by which an abortion doctor from a remote location simply presses a button, which opens a drawer containing the dangerous abortion pill, after a brief teleconference call with the woman.

Telemed abortion doesn’t only result in the death of an unborn child; it strips women of their dignity by denying them the courtesy of an in-person visit from a doctor concerned for their health and well-being. It risks their lives by sending them away with no support and a drug that has led to massive bleeding and hemorrhaging, infection and even death.

So what does Planned Parenthood, the “trusted friend of women,” love so much about telemed abortions? Low overhead costs.

My superiors justified telemed abortions, lauding the financial benefits of not having to worry about or pay for specialized equipment, staff and a traveling physician – all required with surgical abortions.

When I expressed my concerns, I was “let go,” supposedly because of “downsizing.”

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[An original, shorter version of this post first appeared at Lifenews.com!]

Turning a blind eye toward both good science and good ethics, the embryonic stem cell and cloning company, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), has published a very preliminary online report regarding their first two patients injected with embryonic stem cell derivatives. The two patients, one who has age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness, and the other with a rare form of blindness called Stargardt’s disease, were injected with retinal cells made from human embryonic stem cells only 4 months before the report was submitted. This makes it far too early to know whether these embryonic stem cells will actually be safe or effective. In fact, it’s surprising that any reputable scientific journal would publish such very preliminary data, given the early stage of the clinical trial (which is supposed to last at least two years), the short period of time after the patients were injected, and the low numbers of patients and lack of controls.

Dr Martin Friedlander, Professor of Ophthalmology at Scripps Health in La Jolla, California pointed out the deficits and dangers of such early and incomplete reporting:

“To reach any conclusions on the safety or efficacy of two patients treated for four months without a control population for comparison is unreasonable. This is why anecdotal reports like this are not published. This falsely raises the hopes of millions of individuals suffering from these diseases.”

The paper published in the journal Lancet clearly reveals that the data are preliminary and uncertain. It mentions that one patient who showed improvement in her eye that was injected with the cells, also showed improvement in her eye that was NOT injected with the cells. The authors admit in the paper that there is a general lack of hard data:

“At present, we do not know if the transplanted cells have reduced immunogenicity or whether they will undergo rejection without immunosuppression in the long term. Similarly, we are uncertain at this point whether any of the visual gains we have recorded were due to the transplanted cells, the use of immunosuppressive drugs, or a placebo effect.”

First author Dr. Steven Schwartz has noted the likelihood of the placebo effect in several interviews. Dr. Schwartz conceded that it was “extremely unusual” for researchers to publish a study after treating only two patients out of a planned 24. But he said that was justified by the huge interest in the stem cells. ACT has been criticized in the past for overstating results, in part because it has been desperate to raise money to stay in business. The company’s stock rose 3.4 cents, or 23 percent, to 18 cents on Monday.

The safety of the patients is also still very much in question. Humans can take much longer to develop a tumor than lab mice, sometimes years. Previous research has shown that as few as two growing embryonic stem cells among millions of injected cells can lead to tumors, even if the cells are supposedly pre-differentiated. The concern regarding potential tumor formation and need for continued surveillance was noted by Dr. Sheng Ding of the Gladstone Institute:

If just a few undifferentiated stem cells are injected, “you may not see [an effect] at all, or you may be able to see it over a much longer period of time. The 4-month follow-up received by the trial patients thus far is “very short in this regard, and I think the patients need a much, much longer-term follow up to make sure there’s no tumor cells.”

It is indeed surprising that this paper was published. The preliminary nature of the paper reinforces the image of ACT noted in a recent story in Nature:

“Since the late 1990s, ACT has gained a reputation as a renegade company, accused of overhyping results to raise attention and money. Critics say that the company has damaged the field more than once with its high-profile, controversial announcements, such as one describing the company’s attempts to clone a human embryo in 2001…”

The embryonic stem cells (line MA09, currently pending review for NIH approval of taxpayer funding) used for injections into patients in the current trials are part of another embarrassing moment for ACT. Their derivation was described in a 2006 paper in which ACT claimed that they arose from single blastomeres that had been removed from human embryos, without destroying the embryos. However, the embryos had indeed been destroyed cell by cell, leading to several “corrections” to their published information. In a subsequent 2008 paper they again claimed to have accomplished derivation of embryonic stem cells without destroying an embryo, creating what they termed their NED (“no embryo destruction”) lines, but their own published data showed only 80-85% of the embryos survived the laboratory manipulation, falsifying their claim.

There are certainly better alternatives to embryonic stem cells. Similar stem cells–iPS cells–can be derived without any use of embryos; their potential is noted in the accompanying published comment. In fact, ACT scientist Bob Lanza has already said that they are planning to use iPS cells in the future, which potentially could remove the need for immunosuppressive drugs and provide an ethically-derived source of cells. However, since iPS cells are pluripotent, with a penchant to grow and make lots of cells, they face the same practical problem of tumor formation as embryonic stem cells.

A practical, as well as ethical solution, would be the use of adult stem cells. Preliminary work has shown that retinal repair could be accomplished using adult stem cells from bone marrow, or possibly even adult stem cells from within the patient’s own eye. Adult stem cells from the patient’s own eye have already been used successfully to treat corneal blindness in people.

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On Wednesday the Obama Administration again rejected the construction of an oil pipeline, the Keystone XL, that would have carried oil 1,700 miles from Canada to refineries in the United States.  The pipeline would have been the largest infrastructure project in the United States with an estimated cost of $7 billion.  It is estimated that Keystone XL would have created 10-20,000 jobs.

President Obama apparently indicated to the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, that the pipeline would be approved after the November election.  Environmentalists are a major constituency of the Democratic Party, and they oppose the pipeline for many reasons but primarily because they believe that killing the project will stop the production of unrefined oil from Canadian tar sands.  This is folly because the Chinese are more than willing to buy the oil, so the oil will be produced, and it will be consumed somewhere.

The United States imports dangerously large volumes of crude oil, but it also has massive resources that could be used to reduce our dependence on unfriendly governments who produce oil.  Yet, our current government has anti-energy policies that will inevitably lead to more importing and higher prices.

Oddly enough President Obama chose to go to Disney World on Thursday (1/19) to press the flesh and promote tourism in Florida.  Florida has an unemployment rate of 10.0%, and it depends greatly on tourism.  It has Disney World and all the nearby entertainment parks.  It has a large cruise ship industry, and it has a wonderful climate and beaches that people visit from all over the world (e.g., South Beach, Miami).

How do people get to Florida to enjoy these various tourist activities?  They consume a pretty substantial amount of fossil fuel like the stuff we won’t be getting from the Keystone XL pipeline.  As energy prices climb due to lack of production, the health of the vacation and entertainment industries will be imperiled.  I hope some Floridians asked the president about that.

Furthermore, the political Left hates energy production and the economic productivity it brings.  It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that one of the reasons our standard of living is so high is that we use these fuels to run engines that increase our real productivity.  Take a look at the History Channel’s program “Modern Marvels” sometime.  Almost all the episodes rely on the use of fuel or electricity to run machinery that expands human productivity enormously.

The environmental movement has a basic problem with this fact.  Remember that in 1992, Al Gore wrote in his book, Earth in the Balance, that the internal combustion engine posed a greater threat to the United States than actual military enemies.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Engines of various kinds have been one of the factors that have allowed mankind to escape the grinding poverty it had known for millennia.

The United States has 55,000 miles of oil-carrying pipelines, and Keystone XL would have expanded that total only marginally.  That was not the problem for the environmentalists.  They just want to shut down all new energy production except for inefficient renewable energy (wind, solar) that has no hope of powering our economy.  The long-term continuation of policies like this will have profound effects on the ability of the United States to grow economically and increase the standard of living for American families.  More basically, it will help determine whether many families will be able to heat there homes economically.

The American people are going to have to choose the vision of reality they endorse.

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Bartholomew Sullivan (Scripps Howard News Service) has written an important article raising the possibility that the student college debt/loan issue may become a significant issue in the presidential race:

Outstanding student loan debt — which exceeds $1 trillion, more than what Americans owe on credit cards — is likely to be a major political issue this election year as students and their parents question the rising cost and value of a college education.

Sullivan presents some alarming statistics about loan defaults:

The rate of defaults rose from 7 percent in 2008 to 8.8 percent in 2009, the latest official figures available. That’s 320,194 of the 3.6 million people who began repayment that year, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

The rate in 2009 is about one in twelve – a high rate.  Concern runs from the political Right to the Left.  As a Univ. of Pittsburgh English professor, William Scott, associated with the Occupy movement observed, “Schools keep raising their tuitions because they know their students have easy access to these student loans.” “It’s almost become a type of predatory lending.”  At the same time, Rep. Ron Paul believes the loan programs should be abolished because they are “an absolute failure.”

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A couple of weeks ago a paper was published in Nature Communications, describing how scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have shown that adult stem cells from the muscle of young mice can improve the health and extend the life of aged mice. While the story didn’t make big news at the time, the news is surfacing again, e.g., in a video report by Dr. Marc Siegel on Fox News. The video includes interviews with two of the scientists who did the study, Dr. Laura Niedernhofer and Dr. Johnny Huard. Dr. Siegel does a good job of discussing the key points of the study, including the point that these were not embryonic stem cells, but rather adult stem cells.

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It seems that the United States is not alone in having colleges and universities that chronically graduate students who are unable to find work.  Some countries find this situation unacceptable, however, and plan to make some corrections.

Jay Schalin, of the excellent John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy (Raliegh, NC), has written an op-ed in the Washington Times discussing some educational reviews that may be coming in China:

China’s state-run universities have been churning out graduates so quickly that many can’t find good jobs, even in a booming economy.

In response, China will “soon start evaluating college majors by their employment rates, downsizing or cutting degree programs in which the employment rate for graduates falls below 60 percent for two consecutive years,” the Wall Street Journal reported recently.

Much is imperfect with this authoritarian approach, but it seems more sensible than having no feedback in a system – like ours – that continues to sink students in unproductive majors and degree programs with loads of debt.  (See the Wall Street Journal article by Laurie Burkitt who writes from Beijing.)

As Schalin observes – after noting that employment rates are not the only evaluative measure that should be used:

But using data on the employment of graduates is still a valuable evaluation tool, and it serves as a useful guide for reforming higher education.

The Chinese exhibit hard-nosed common sense by looking at the actual results of their higher-education system; forward-looking U.S. public universities should do the same. If they won’t end their excesses voluntarily, perhaps it’s time for state legislatures to consider Chinese-style standards.

Results matter; it’s time to judge universities on how well graduates perform once they’ve left the security of the ivory tower.

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Nature notes that the first brief has been filed in the appeal of the Sherley et al. v. Sebelius et al. case. Dr. James Sherley and Dr. Theresa Deisher have filed suit against HHS and NIH to stop federal taxpayer funding of human embryonic stem cell research. The initial appeals brief (Appellants’ Brief) was filed by attorneys for Drs. Sherley and Deisher.

The briefing schedule was set back in December, as well as the date for oral arguments in the appeal.

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A 30-year-old Baltimore man is now back home recuperating from surgery in Sweden that implanted an artificial trachea made with his own adult stem cells. Christopher Lyles was diagnosed with inoperable tracheal cancer. He found Italian Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, who is a Visiting Professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who has constructed and transplanted replacement tracheas, using the patient’s own bone marrow adult stem cells to build the new tissue. Lyles traveled to Sweden in November to have the surgery; he returned home this week with his new implanted trachea. In a telephone interview, Lyles said he was “feeling good”, and “just thankful for a second chance at life.” He was looking forward to watching his 4-year-old daughter grow up.

“He went home in very good shape,” said Dr. Macchiarini. Macchiarini said that Mr. Lyles adult stem cells were placed onto the synthetic windpipe scaffold and grown in a bioreactor for two days, then transplanted into his body after removal of his tumorous trachea. The cells continue to grow and differentiate after implantation into the patient. Macchiarini pointed out:

“We’re using the human body as a bioreactor to promote regeneration.”

Because his own adult stem cells were used, there was no need for drugs to prevent his body from rejecting the transplanted windpipe; use of anti-rejection drugs, which have numerous side-effects, is a common problem in transplants using donated organs.

This is the second synthetic trachea transplant. The first transplant occurred in June 2011, and the results of that first synthetic trachea transplant were published in The Lancet. Macchiarini had done eight previous artificial trachea transplants, using cadaveric trachea stripped of cells and then coated with the patient’s own adult stem cells. The synthetic tracheal scaffold was designed and built by a Columbus, Ohio company and the bioreactor used to initiate growth of the adult stem cells on the scaffold for two days was built by a Massachusetts company.

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NIH Director Francis Collins has approved four more human embryonic stem cell lines as eligible for federal taxpayer funding. The latest approval brings the total to 146. The four new lines are all from UCLA. The new lines, designated by the deriving lab as “UCLA 7″, “UCLA 8″, “UCLA 9″, and “UCLA 10″, join six previous UCLA lines approved by NIH for taxpayer funding–UCLA 1-3 approved April 27, 2010 and UCLA 4-6 approved February 3, 2011. All of the lines were apparently derived from human embryos after the new NIH guidelines went into effect in July 2009. NIH doesn’t provide details on the cells themselves or their derivation.

In the meantime, Adult Stem Cells continue to provide the gold standard for patient treatment, and the only stem cell type with published positive results at improving health and saving lives.

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Praise needs to be given to recent work of the Young America’s Foundation.  Ron Meyer and Nathan Harden of the foundation published an insightful op-ed in the Washington Times entitled “Generation Y Asks ‘Why Us’?”.  The article begins by noting that President Obama’s approval among the young has fallen by 30 percent.  The authors believe that “America’s youth are taking an economic beating.”  At FRC, we agree.

It isn’t just that their unemployment rate is higher than that of any other group in the general populace, but the young are being subjected to “record-smashing college debt levels.”  This is taking place while the national debt explodes.  Youth employment stands at 17.4%, and college debt has reached $26,300 for the typical graduate.  The national debt now stands about 100% of GDP – 15 trillion dollars.  More significantly in one sense: the interest payments alone are now equal to $3,000 per taxpayer.

Young America’s Foundation recognizes the economic problems facing the young and has developed a “Youth Misery Index.”  The Index reflects a value for youth unemployment plus college debt levels and per capita national debt.  This is a good idea, and I look forward to the Index’s release each year.

(One suggestion might be to adjust the national debt component to also reflect the finding of Reinhart and Rogoff (This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly) that debt levels above 90% of GDP have a detrimental effect on long-term growth and stability.)

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Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have shown that adult stem cells from muscle of young mice can improve the health and extend the life of aged mice. The research team tested aged mice that are a model of an aging disease called progeria; the condition leads to advanced early aging. The idea was that in aged mice, the adult stem cells may have lost their vitality, with problems in proliferation (growth) as well as differentiation into other tissue types. However, when cultured in the same lab dish as muscle adult stem cells from young mice, the stem cells from aged mice recovered their ability to grow and differentiate. When young adult stem cells were injected into the abdomens of aging mice with progeria, the mice lived two to three times longer than expected and were healthier than aging control mice. Instead of losing muscle mass and moving slowly, the animals grew as large as normal mice. The Pitt researchers found evidence that the young adult stem cells secret a growth factor that delays the aging process.

Senior investigator Dr. Johnny Huard suggested that human muscle-derived stem cells could be stored at an early age and used when people age, allowing some rejuvenation of tissues and slowing the aging process.

The study was published online in Nature Communications.

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“The Wonder of Life” is a beautiful 1-minute video from Youth Defence in Ireland.

Happy Christmas!

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Just in time for Christmas, NIH Director Francis Collins has approved more human embryonic stem cell lines for taxpayer funding, bringing the total number of hESC lines at the federal trough to 142. Today’s approval is not all that surprising–the four new lines, from the University of Queensland, were recommended for approval by the Stem Cell Working Group at the December 9, 2011 meeting of the Director’s Advisory Committee. The Stem Cell Working group had also voted not to approve six lines from China.

The four new hESC linies that have been approved are not for clinical use, however. Subsequent to the meeting and before the latest approvals, NIH also approved two other hESC lines, from Mt. Sinai Hospital in Canada. Those two lines are also restricted:

NIH-funded research with this line may only be conducted at Mount Sinai Hospital and “other Canadian laboratories affiliated with the Canadian Stem Cell Network for further research or potential clinical use.”

In the meantime, the current and future patient benefits of adult stem cells continue to be ignored.

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As the year ends there is more news on the education front.  An article by Ben Wolfgang in the Washington Times (12/15/2011, “Record Numbers Fail to Clear No Child bar”).  At the outset of the article, Wolfgang notes, “The numbers keep getting worse for the nation’s education system.”  In the 2010-11 academic year, the No Child Left Behind statute’s standards were not met by 48% of public schools.

There is a great deal of debate even among conservative education scholars whether the NCLB’s standards have become increasingly unrealistic.  There is disagreement over whether NCLB should continue as a national guide.  Whatever one’s feelings about NCLB, it seems clear that many schools and students are not proficient in reading and math.  Proponents note that the law “require[s] states to publish test-score results in math and reading for each school in grades 3 through 8 and again in grade 10.”  Parents can see how their children’s school is doing, but see this article that argues the federal yardstick  is defective.

The debate will continue next year as the NCLB law needs to be reauthorized by the Congress.  That may not be possible in an election year.  As with many other things much depends on the outcome of the presidential election.

One area in which there seems to be positive news is in “virtual” schooling.  “Virtual” education refers to taking classes online using the internet as the teaching device.  It seems completely obvious that online learning – if packaged properly – will revolutionize education.  See the Khan Academy.  A recent article notes the rapid growth in this new avenue for learning.  I think it is a positive development for a market-based approach to make an appearance in schooling.

The New York Times published a lengthy incredibly negative article on virtual learning recently.  Virtual learning probably has its difficulties, but it also strikes at the core of the modern public school power structures by giving parents more choices.  Lindsey Burke at the Heritage Foundation has some good observations on this debate.  One wonders if the Times is more worried about that than learning.

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In case you missed it, the appeal that was filed in the federal embryonic stem cell lawsuit regarding taxpayer funding, Sherley and Deisher et al. v. Sebelius et al., is moving forward.

The briefing schedule runs through March 12, 2012, and oral arguments are scheduled for April 23, 2012.

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This Christmas season has been very memorable for me and my wife especially now that Audrey, our 2-year-old, is old enough to participate in festivities such as decorating the Christmas tree. Since Thanksgiving, Audrey has danced around the house singing “Jingle Bells” and humming the tunes of Christmas carols that she hears throughout the day. Last Saturday, Audrey almost had the opportunity to experience another Christmas tradition for the first time — caroling. The three of us stood in line along with dozens of other customers at the U.S. Post Office located in the Aspen Hill Shopping Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. We were preparing our packages when Audrey tugged on my sleeve, saying “Daddy, Daddy, look.” I turned to see a bright smile on her face as she pointed to a trio of Christmas carolers entering the post office who looked like they had stepped off the theatre stage of “A Christmas Carol.” The gentleman of the group wore a top hat and the ladies were arrayed with shawls and bonnets. Dickens would be proud. Everyone turned their attention to the carolers in anticipation of that annual tradition that we’ve all experienced.

They were only a few notes into their carol when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I saw a scowling postal manager rushing to confront the carolers. He angrily told them that they had to leave immediately because they were “violating the post office’s policy against solicitation.” Everyone was momentarily frozen in astonishment before customers began booing the manager. Even in the face of protests from his customers, the manager wouldn’t back down.

The carolers explained that they were going to each business within the shopping center to sing a couple of carols — as they have done for many years. However, this was the first time that they had been turned away. The manager said he didn’t care and that they could take it up with the postmaster if they had a problem. “You can’t do this on government property,” he said. “You can’t go into Congress and sing” and so “you can’t do it here either,” he said smugly as the carolers turned sadly to leave. I encouraged them to file a complaint but they had little hope that a complaint would resolve anything and felt they had no choice but to acquiesce.

I later described the incident to a friend of mine who had worked for the post office for 26 years. He couldn’t imagine that there would be any policy that would prevent Christmas caroling at post offices. Indeed, a Google search will show examples of post office caroling during past Christmas seasons.

Over the last several years, we have watched militant secularists team up with federal bureaucrats in the effort to sterilize the public square of anything remotely connected to anything religious. This postal manager has clearly received the memo which has led him to stamp out Christmas caroling. But I have my own memo to all the Christmas carolers out there. Let’s not surrender to the secularist version of Christmas future. Let’s hold onto Christmases of past and do our part to pass that on to our children. As for me, I am taking at least one piece of advice from the postal manager and will send my own comment to the General Postmaster. The U.S. Constitution in no way prevents the government from accommodating Christmas caroling. I invite you to send your own memo (or email in this case) to pmgceo@usps.gov or call 1-800-275-8777.

Ben Franklin, the founder of the U.S. Post Office once said, “So shalt thou always live jollily; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.” The U.S. Post Office and all of us would do well to heed Franklin’s advice.

UPDATE: Sign FRC’s petition affirming Christmas

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Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the Universityof Tennessee.  He is also the founder of the Instapundit blog.  Professor Reynolds has taken a considerable interest in the skyrocketing cost of higher education and the accompanying debt spiral.  He wrote about the topic first in a Washington Examiner column in June 2010 (“Higher Education’s Bubble Is about to Burst”) and then again in an Examiner column in August 2010 (“Further Thoughts on the Higher Education Bubble”).  He also gave a lecture on the topic in the Fall of 2010 at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University (“The Higher Education Bubble and What Comes Next”).

At its core, Reynolds thesis is simple.  He notes that education costs have risen at multiples of the general level of inflation in the economy.  Roughly speaking over the past thirty years, U.S. inflation was about 106%; health care costs increased 251%; and, college tuition costs increased 439%.  Next, he borrows the economist Herbert Stein’s maxim that things that are unsustainable, won’t be sustained.  These levels of excess cost increases for higher education are so great that they cannot and won’t be sustained over time.

This weekend, Professor Reynolds, had another column on this topic in the Washington Examiner.  Reynold made a couple of additional points.  First, he believes that college loan debt should be subject to elimination in bankruptcy.  That is not possible now.  Related to this he makes the following recommendation:

For higher education, the solution is more value for less money. Student loans, if they are to continue, should be made dischargeable in bankruptcy after five years — but with the school that received the money on the hook for all or part of the unpaid balance.

Up until now, the loan guarantees have meant that colleges, like the writers of subprime mortgages a few years ago, got their money up front, with any problems in payment falling on someone else.

Make defaults expensive to colleges, and they’ll become much more careful about how much they lend and what kinds of programs they offer. China, which has already faced its own higher education bubble, is simply shutting down programs that produce too many unemployable graduates.

Second, Reynolds argues that it may be time for skilled trades to make a return along with a return of vocational education.  (As he writes, “We need people who can make things, and it’s harder to outsource a plumbing or welding job to somebody in Bangalore.”)

Ultimately, he argues correctly that the skill that is most needed for young workers now is adaptability.  That seems to be clearly correct.

Check out the articles and the lecture, they are worth your time if you have an interest in this topic.

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Click here to listen to Part 1 of the interview

Click here to to listen to Part 2 of the interview

This week on American Family Radio, Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt discussed the recent case in Ohio, where case workers removed a 200 pound third grader from his home. Congresswoman Schmidt argued that in many cases, obesity is the result of emotional stress, and that taking the child away from his mother might actually worsen the problem.

“Think about an eight-year-old child. Only knowing its mother, and the loving arms of its mother. Every morning that child runs to its mommy for a hug and a kiss, it’s part of its security…In most cases, people who are obese are obese because they use food as a cover for their emotions. So now you’ve put him in a new setting…where there’s all kinds of emotional trauma going on, and what is this child going to reach for? Or want to reach for? The cookie”

“Why didn’t the state step in and really help her and that child? Not just marginally, but really stepped in and helped them in the home. That’s where it should have occurred. All of the help should have occurred inside the home”

Congresswoman Schmidt is an avid marathon runner, and works with Congress on issues including child nutrition and women’s health.

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I recently saw a picture of an Occupy Wall Street poster that read, “The Game of Capitalism Breeds Dishonest Men.” Over the past three months, the “Occupy” movement has seemed to push a sentiment of anti-capitalism that has blocked city streets, cost local NYC businesses nearly half a million dollars, and created an atmosphere of hostility in various OWS protests across the country. It’s a bit troubling to see such a movement that seems to go against every economic principle that has directed this country.

The more and more I see my Twitter feed full of the term “#OWS” or “#OccupyDC”, I become a little more disheartened. However, I’ve recently come across a few articles that have made me feel a little bit better about my beliefs and show what economic principles this country runs on: capitalistic ones. In article on Mark Levin’s website, Gary Wolfram shows that, through the ages, capitalism seems to be the economic structure of choice. He points back to his experience as an educator. He would ask his students where they would like to be born, if they had the ability to chose. Never did students state that they would want to have grown up in North Korea, Zimbabwe, or Cuba. Time and time again, his students chose countries whose governments are based on free market principles that allow choice, competition, and growth.

Continue reading »

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The United States just agree to place 2,500 Marines in Australia as a signal to the Chinese that even the Obama Administration recognizes, perhaps dimly, that something is amiss in Asia and the Pacific.  (See the informative AP story that seems to be doing some chest thumping for the Administration.)  In any case, China is in the news, and, as we know, it’s “One Child Policy” is a brutal offense to human rights whose enforcement requires the sort of intrusive police state that seems to get little attention in the American press.  That is merely one type of oppression which the Chinese people face.  The Washington Times has been running a series of articles from a new book, Bowing to Beijing: How Barack Obama is Hastening America’s Decline and Ushering A Century of Chinese Domination, by Brett Decker and William Triplett II.  If you are doing some Christmas book shopping for someone who has an interest in China, take a look at Brett Decker’s useful list of “Ten Books You Need to Read about the Chinese Threat.”

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