Tag: Consequences

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Five Consequences of America’s Moral Collapse

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John Hawkins | Jul 25, 2015

Americans have become so “non-judgmental” that many people can no longer tell the difference between good and evil. We congratulate ourselves for being “nicer,” more sensitive and less prejudiced than past generations of Americans, but we don’t stop to consider how much more there is to morality than that. An America that isn’t full of good people won’t remain a good nation, nor will it remain strong and free over the long haul. Our country’s lack of morality has real consequences that are capable of eventually sinking us as a nation.

1) The Collapse Of Marriage: There used to be quite a bit of social stigma attached to getting a divorce or having a child out of wedlock. That’s no longer true and consequences for society have been horrific.

Although there is some dispute about the numbers, roughly 40% of marriages now end in divorce and “half of all children born to women under 30 in America now are illegitimate. Three in 10 white children are born out of wedlock, as are 53 percent of Hispanic babies and 73 percent of black babies.”

That’s important because children raised without a mother AND a father are statistically worse off in just about every area imaginable.

“Controlling for socioeconomic status, race, and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single parent. By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy-two percent of juvenile murderers and 60 percent of rapists come from single-mother homes. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents, and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced. A 1990 study by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that after controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.

Various studies have come up with slightly different numbers, but all the figures are grim. According to the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, children from single-parent families account for 63 percent of all youth suicides, 70 percent of all teenage pregnancies, 71 percent of all adolescent chemical/substance abuse, 80 percent of all prison inmates, and 90 percent of all homeless and runaway children.

A study cited in the Village Voice produced similar numbers. It found that children brought up in single-mother homes ‘are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home.’ Single motherhood is like a farm team for future criminals and social outcasts.”

Instead of trying to reverse the crippling damage being done to our country by the collapse of marriage, we’ve chosen to degrade it even further by allowing same sex unions, soon to be followed by polygamous unions that will degrade the institution ever further. If it’s true that marriage is the bedrock of society, then our nation’s house is built on sand.

https://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2015/07/25/five-consequences-of-americas-moral-collapse-n2030199/page/full

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Many parents feel spanking has its place, but doctors worry discipline can cross the line to abuse

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Many parents feel spanking has its place, but doctors worry discipline can cross the line to abuse

SEPTEMBER 21, 2014    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2014, 12:29 AM
BY KARA YORIO
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORDIn study after study, as many as eight out of 10 adults in America say spanking is an appropriate form of discipline.

Suggestions for parents

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics policy, which offers guidance to pediatricians counseling parents about disciplining children:

Effective discipline has three components:

1. Provide a positive, supportive and loving relationship.

2. Use positive reinforcement.

3. When punishment is necessary, use timeouts and other alternatives to spanking or physical punishment.

The policy goes on to state:

Spanking has negative consequences and is no more effective than other forms of discipline. In fact, there’s a gray area between when spanking ends and child abuse begins.

What the studies don’t show is how people define spanking and where they believe corporal punishment of children crosses a line to abuse.

While those questions have long been quietly debated, the indictment of NFL star Adrian Peterson has raised them in a very public way, even if many of those who believe in spanking find Peterson’s alleged behavior abhorrent.

The story is well-known by now — the Minnesota Vikings running back has been indicted on child abuse charges for stuffing leaves in the mouth of his 4-year-old son and beating him with a switch — a tree branch — that left the boy with cuts and bruises all over his body.

The incident started a conversation among opponents and defenders of corporal punishment of children by their caregivers. The issue is so uncomfortable that pediatricians, who are supposed to ask parents how they discipline and if they spank their kids, rarely broach the topic.

The question hardly comes up in discussions between parents and doctors, said Dr. Howard Mazin, an attending pediatrician at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, because of the belief it has “fallen out of favor and people don’t do it.”

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/many-parents-feel-spanking-has-its-place-but-doctors-worry-discipline-can-cross-the-line-to-abuse-1.1092799#sthash.hLfICuQI.dpuf

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This Circuit Court’s Obamacare Decision Could Have Huge Consequences

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This Circuit Court’s Obamacare Decision Could Have Huge Consequences

Elizabeth Slattery / @EHSlattery / July 22, 2014

Elizabeth H. Slattery focuses her research on issues such as the scope of the Constitution’s commerce clause, equal protection, federal preemption and election laws as senior legal policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

Today the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a blow to the Obama administration, ruling that the language of the Obamacare law only established federal subsidies for individuals enrolling in state-run health care exchanges, not for individuals enrolling in federal-run state-level health care exchanges.

Since 36 states (the administration might deem it 27 states based on nine states’ cooperation with federal exchanges) have opted not to run their own exchanges, this ruling has significant implications for the practical implementation of Obamacare.

Section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code (enacted as part of Obamacare) allows the IRS to make subsidies available to residents who buy health insurance through a state-run exchange. While lawmakers assumed every state would open an exchange, 36 states chose not to do so. In those states, the federal government established exchanges, and the IRS claimed it could extend the subsidies to individuals purchasing insurance through the federally-run exchanges.

In a 2-1 decision, the D.C. Circuit determined that the IRS’s “interpretation” violated the plain language of Section 36B: the law “unambiguously restricts the Section 36B subsidy to insurance purchased on Exchanges established by the State.” The government argued that it was “standing in the state’s shoes” when it opened exchanges in 36 states, but as the court noted “section 36B plainly distinguishes Exchanges established by states from those established by the federal government.”

The IRS’s revision of Section 36B “significantly increases the number of people who must purchase health insurance or face a penalty.” Further, since the employer mandate’s penalties depend on the availability of credits, this expansion “exposes employers [in states without state-run exchanges] to penalties and thereby gives the employer mandate broader reach.”

The government urged the court to look to the broader goal of Obamacare—near-universal coverage for all Americans—that would be impossible without these subsidies (in addition to the nondiscrimination requirements applying to insurers and the individual mandate to purchase insurance). Yet the court was unpersuaded. In the face of unambiguous statutory text, “there must be evidence that Congress meant something other than what it literally said” in order for the court to depart from the statute’s plain meaning. The government failed to meet this burden, and the court was unwilling to overstep its bounds.

A dissenting judge argued that the court bought the challengers’ “myopic construction” of Section 36B without “regard for the overall statutory scheme,” and defied the will of Congress.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals also ruled on this same issuetoday. That court found the language of Section 36B is ambiguous and allowed the IRS “interpretation” to stand. A concurring judge helpfully pointed out that when Section 36B says ““[E]stablished by the State” this “indeed means established by the state – except when it does not…”

The judicial branch must respect the separation of powers, and it is for Congress—not the courts or the executive branch—to create the laws. The D.C. Circuit recognized that the IRS’s attempt to rewrite the law (which is the Obama administration’s signature move) was improper:

“Within constitutional limits, Congress is supreme in matters of policy, and the consequence of that supremacy is that our duty when interpreting a statute is to ascertain the meaning of the words of the statute duly enacted through the formal legislative process.”

The D.C. Circuit stayed its decision pending rehearing by the full D.C. Circuit. These cases address only one of many problems with theunaffordable, unworkable, and unfair Obamacare. The consequences of this decision will mean higher costs for individuals who purchase insurance through federally-run exchanges. The Obama administration announced it will appeal to the full D.C. Circuit. Given the split between two federal appellate courts, Obamacare may be heading back to the Supreme Court next term.