No matter where we are, the GOD of creation (Nature's God) gave humans the ability to dream. No government, business, or any other person can steal your ability to dream In America, we are free to live our dreams.

The question that I have is will it be harder to live our dreams in post modern America. The President gave a well spoken address today. He spoke of remembering the indomitable spirit of our founders. The fact that throughout our history we have been able to face down any trial and live up to any challenges. Then he started rattling off a host of government programs that we needed. All of a sudden we are not up to meeting the challenges that face us by unleashing our dreams rather by unleashing our government.

I have a great deal of respect for our President. He is living the dream. I am concerned that the very policies that he advocates such as energy rationing and putting on the hook for 99 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities risks discouraging Americans from reaching their dreams by undermining their ability to take risk.

The more failure regulators have, the more regulation we are told that we need. The truth is regulators rarely have the ability to keep up with the targets of their regulation. When they are pressured to prevent failures instead of catch criminals, they act as if everyone is a criminal. The result is that they preemptively punish everyone. Innovation becomes something to be feared instead something to be honored. Risk becomes a proverbial four letter word instead of a literal one. America ceases to be unique.

I don't believe this is the time to give up on liberty. Setbacks are opportunities for comebacks. If your child takes a spill on a bike, do you ban bikes? We do not need a nanny state rushing to take our bikes away. We need to understand that price of greatness is temporary pain. Your child doesn't give up bike riding because it will take him/her to more places in a faster and more efficient way. It is about fulfilling the dream of the wind in your face as you and your friends expand your world.

America, this Independence Day one little citizen says, let's cast aside the voices of doom which tell us that our best days are behind us. We need to reach down within ourselves and understand that the greatness of America is not found in expenditures of our government. It is found within our souls. When we allow each other to turn our dreams into reality, then we shall be better than our dreams.

Happy Independence Day.

It is almost Independence Day. Our Founders sought to give us a free nation rooted in Christian Principles. They succeeded. Now the secular mindset is undermining our heritage and threatening our freedoms. When a people no longer trust GOD, they look in vain to some other organizing force. The leftist fringe has made that an out of control, extra constitutional government.

It is why the Government is proposing to take over everything including our lives (health care), our liberty (CAFE, FACE, gun control, PC hate crimes restrictions, radical education, and more), and even our pursuit of happiness with its war on prosperity through higher taxes, energy restrictions, and neo-corporatism.

Rejecting this trend is vital. That is why I am intrigued with the 9/12 project. I am watching it to see if it goes in the right direction, but it sure has started with the right principles and values.

What insanity would possess a person in a small state to support DE HB 198? It is The abolishes Federalism and insures Delawareans don't matter Act or at least that is what it would be called if we applied truth to labeling.

The Act would disenfranchise Delaware Voters by insuring that regardless who they vote to support in a Presidential election, their electoral votes would go to whomever has the plurality vote in the country not even the majority is required to over ride the wishes of the people of the state. Recounts are not required to be complete in the legislation; it takes a snapshot 6 days before the appointment of the electors.

One has to wonder about the Constitutionality of the measure. It would not allow voters to select the electors, but institute a plebiscite on election day. It allows the voters of other states to bind the voters of our state. It binds the electors to vote a certain way (which has been challenged in other settings) regardless of the intentions of the people who voted in the state.

Imagine if 60% of this state voted for Joe Biden and President Obama but the electors had to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin. The right of the people to vote for their own Senator to be VP would be gone. Your voice as a state would be eliminated.

In a practical sense, it would be the states handing over their identity and the concept of federalism. We would no longer have the 50 states and D.C. voting as the United States of America. We would have the Republic of America. The states would no longer matter in the Presidential election. This continues the assault which we already see on state primaries. Instead of having to campaign in the states, we now have huge Super Tuesday votes. This has decreased voter contact with the candidates and outrageously increased the cost of the Presidential election. Public financing reform is dead in the primaries and special interests are more influential (this by the very people who promised the opposite.) The two Bushes campaigned in Delaware and so did the Obama-Biden ticket. Do you think that would happen in a national plebiscite? State issues would matter a lot less. The elections would further fall into national media ads and manipulation.

Even more objectionable to me is the fact that it would not take a majority vote to over ride our voice. The vote of the people could be divided into the smallest of factions and their would be no mechanism to have a run off. The current system blunts a divided vote by requiring support all across the country. This would risk minority factionalism. 60% of our state could vote one way and be forced to support a 25% candidate. It would make us Britain. Even most parliamentary governments do not undermine legitimacy by tossing the vote to a small plurality candidate with no input to build a coalition. The current toss into the House of Representatives does that. Such a scenario would lead to unbelievable gridlock and disunity.

This bill is unAmerican in the sense that it is contrary to our traditions and structure. It needs to die in committee today.

My Testimony to the Dover Human Relations Commission
Mr. Chairman and Commissioners,
Thank you, for the opportunity to address this body since I was mentioned by name in a letter to the editor by a member, I decided to personally make my case.
I am concerned that the resolution before you though well intentioned is based upon a flawed premise. It is based upon the belief that love is something to be legislated and in the absence of legislation there is some sort of injury. I am sympathetic to the historic proscriptions often found in law against homosexual couples. However the recognition of marriage as a mixed sex institution which ensures the stable continuation of humanity, is not one such proscription. We did not recognize marriage even before written history because it was the only way people could love one another. We did it because a married family takes on a unique responsibility for all of us by committing to form a stable family. That family unit continues to be the basis of civilization in societies of all different religions, ethnic groups, and geographic locations. Marriage unites humanity. In spite of some differences, it is a mixed gender institution recognizable around the world.
The reason certain “benefits” are given is not to reward one group of people over all others. It is not to idealize love. It is to compensate for the high cost and sacrifice realized by families. Since society benefits to the degree of its very survival in its current form based upon the family, recognizing the contribution of people who make a lifelong commitment to children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren is not unreasonable. Since humanity is dependent upon the procreation celebrated by marriage, enshrining its unique and noble status into law is only natural.
People should be free to choose their relationships, and they are. I believe there is a difference between demanding legal recognition of a relationship and allowing people to choose with whom they have relationships. Recognizing a person’s right to choose does not mandate a right to recognition. The Supreme Court of the United States already addressed this issue in Lawrence v, Texas.

“The statutes do seek to control a personal relationship that,
whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is
within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished
as criminals.
This, as a general rule, should counsel against attempts
by the State, or a court, to define the meaning of the relationship
or to set its boundaries absent injury to a person
or abuse of an institution the law protects. It suffices for
us to acknowledge that adults may choose to enter upon
this relationship in the confines of their homes and their
own private lives and still retain their dignity as free
persons.
Another issue is does homophobia enter into a person’s position on marriage? It can. If someone has an intense distrust of homosexuals, then obviously that person would not favor same sex marriage. My personal view is that the mere holding of that view does not make a person “homophobic”.
Margaret Sommerville who is known to be for laws favoring gay rights, wrote the following in a court brief in Canada:”Recognizing that a fundamental purpose of marriage is to engender respect for the transmission of human life provides a corollary insight: Excluding same-sex couples from marriage is not related to those people’s homosexual orientation, or to them as individuals, or to the worth of their relationships. Rather, the exclusion of their relationship is related to the fact that it is not inherently procreative, and, therefore, if it is encompassed within marriage, marriage cannot institutionalize and symbolize respect for the transmission of life. To recognize same-sex marriage (which is to be distinguished from same-sex partnerships that do not raise this problem) would unavoidably change and eliminate this function of marriage. ”
She further stated:”Being against same-sex marriage is frequently alleged by proponents of same-sex marriage to be proof of homophobia (See “Same-sex hearings rife with ‘gay- bashing,’ critic says”, Globe and Mail, 11 March, 2003, A6). A useful comparison can be made with people who take the view that being against infant male circumcision (IMC) is proof of anti-Semitism. (I, personally, have been subject to both sets of allegations in the public square.)
The strategy adopted in both cases is to shame those who are against same-sex marriage or IMC into silence. The choice of language and framing of the issues is carefully crafted to achieve this result. (See William Eskridge, who has articulated important insights in this respect, through his analysis of the techniques used by identity-based social movements to place courts in the position that they see their only alternatives in reaching a decision as being either to find discrimination or to believe that in not doing so they would be approving of discrimination and themselves engaging in it. In the same vein, see Halpern et al v. Canada and arguments considered by the judges.) “
Respectfully Submitted

David Anderson

Dear editor:

My concerns about the spending spree of local and state governments have come to fruition. Since 2001, I have been steadily showing how this problem would one day cost us. It has cost us the last couple of years in increased electric rates and fees in the City along with this year’s painful furloughs which will ensure elimination of some policing programs downtown. Even so the city is better managed than most governments in this state.

At the county level, we are going to have a tax increase as if on cue after the election. Proposed reforms by Commissioner Eric Buckson were not adopted even though they would have avoided a tax increase on an already hurting population.

At the state level, we have a crisis. While most of the attention has gone to huge proposed pay cuts, senior centers are facing a loss of a third of their funding, and taxpayers are facing significant increases.

As Sussex County showed, not going wild in the good times means that you can not panic in the bad.

With governments at all levels raising taxes in the next couple of years, the state has a responsibility to use our money wisely. It is not.

The Delaware Financial Management System has been shown to be highly inefficient to say the least. It may very well be siphoning 10% of our tax money through its inefficiencies. Its inability to pay vendors in a timely, but quick system is costing us more in fees. Its incomprehensibility is costing us unnecessary paperwork. Learning the system is like learning a foreign language. Its bulky nature is forcing workers to do expensive work arounds. Its inefficient structure is so burdensome that the cost of writing a check is estimated to be $50 by comparison it is $6 or less in the private sector. The dealings with vendors alone have been documented to cost $200,000,000.00 a year by the Wilmington News Journal. A patch on the vendor portion was suggested in 2004 and it will not go live until 2010. That is 1.2 billion dollars tossed away.

A financial management system is designed to save money not cost more money.
This system has literally cost us Billions of dollars. DFMS is Bernie Madoff of financial accounting.

The best budget reform legislation that anyone could introduce would be a joint resolution to establish a commission to find a new financial management system. Whenever I hear a hybrid approach being discussed, I get concerned. Let’s study this and see if we can go world class instead of poverty class.

I wish I were wrong, but right after the election Kent County Democrats proved themselves to be tax raisers as I predicted. They balked at spending reforms and raided the surplus. They join their Democrat counter parts in New Castle and likely in the Capitol. The good news is that every (all one of him) Republican (Hi Eric Buckson) stood strongly against this and he was joined by two Democrats who thought of the people.

Elections have consequences. Welcome to one party rule. May it soon expire.

First the man proposes tripling our taxes with a single payer/player health scheme and now he thinks that taxpayers need to sacrifice more because it is unfair that state employees have to give back to balance the budget.javascript:void(0)

Rep. John Kowalko proposes massive tax increase in the gas tax, personal income tax, and just so that you don't have a job to pay those business and corporate taxes. The man is a walking job killer and a threat to the economic well being of Delawareans. At least he didn't buy into the temporary sales tax proposed by one of the unions just to insure we are ruined for years. These types of protect government at all costs proposals ignore the fact that State spending increased under Democrat rule with few checks. Efficiency and prioritization were not important factors. We ignored reforms in medicaid, education, employee benefits, corrections, and other areas. Now the Blue Hens have come home to roost.

Rep. John the taxpayer mugger Kowalko solution is to feather their roost with what little money you have left.

Do you want real answers to the economic turmoil? Financial expert Dave Ramsey is hosting a nationwide town hall on April 23rd. Go to http://www.townhallforhope.com For site locations follow the link. I have been to other Dave Ramsey events. They worth your time. The Dover Location is The Pentecostals of Dover on West Denny's Road.

Do you believe in power to the people not the plutocracy? You have plenty of company. Attend a tea party to show your support for fiscal sanity. This event is non partisan. Of course I think that after you get educated you should make it count and be partisan for those who stand up for you. Have a great tax day. I hope that you had no unpleasant surprises.

Dover
Legislative Mall on the Green
4:00 - 6:00 PM

Georgetown
The Circle
12:00 - 2:00 PM

Laurel
Janosik Park
4:00 - 7:00 PM

Wilmington
The Riverfront
4:00 - 6:30 PM

Middletown
Middletown Town Square
4:00 - 6:00 PM

America is still a Christian Nation. A certain news magazine (the name of which is not worthy of my mention) had a sensational cover declaring the Decline and fall of Christian America. As usual the secular left can't understand the rest of America. It was timed to coincide with Holy Week while 70% of America is honoring Christ. It was typical liberal nonsense. The actual article seemed measured and worthy of discussion. The author is serious scholar who is grappling with societal changes. He points out that the near universal Christian consensus this country had is no longer universal. Of course most of us knew that for 40 years. Just turn on MTV and you can see that is true. When porn fills our society like an open sewer, when we push games and entertainment which celebrates killing, when babies are aborted, when giving out Bibles in school causes fear in the hearts of administrators, but condoms are dispensed daily, when public prayer is controversial in school but blasphemy is common place, when people think that marriage is about any two people getting together, then it seems obvious that a Christian consensus no longer exists.

Where I completely disagree with the author of that survey (see its link here) and certainly the headline writers is that Christian America is on the rise. Church attendance is not down. The fervor of the faithful has increased. Evangelical Christianity is sweeping America. The Catholic Church likewise is finding a resurgence in people wanting to learn about the faith they took for granted. The conversion rate is higher than the birth rate. While some of those who are not serious have finally stopped misusing the label, I find that a positive. The worst thing that can happen to a faith is when it is defined by the outliers and not the faithful. I would rather have the Ten Commandments in posted in every home of the faithful than be unread in every courthouse (I do favor keeping the Ten Commandments in public displays.) I would rather have meaningful prayers than symbolic emptiness. It is only by allowing the Living Lord to be shown that meaningful change will occur. That doesn't come from a casual affiliation.

For the fun of it; let's refute those numbers. How do you look at a nation in which half of the people attend church regularly and 44 to 46% attend church weekly to be in religious decline? Those numbers have been consistent for 3 decades. The rise in secular identification stopped 8 years ago after the 9/11 attacks. The article should have been written in the late nineties. The survey showed a marked increase in a fundamental view of Christianity. As for political involvement, exit polls show no evidence of a lack of will among the faithful in public policy. In fact one political party wouldn't even be a major party without the votes of the faithful and the other had to pretend to have found faith.

Other surveys bear out my contention from Gallup to Rasmussen to Pew. We even had one published in our own News Journal. As found in previous years 92% of Americans believe in God. What is even more interesting to me is that half of self proclaimed agnostics and a fifth of atheists believe in a God as well. What has changed is that more and more people are increasingly finding a belief in the supernatural, miracles 80%, demons, and angels.

Pentecostalism, which hearkens back to an Apostolic experience is not only on a rise globally, but in the U. S. as well. It is one of the reasons traditional values are becoming a profound issue. Americans who pray tend to be more conservative as defined in American terms. As a side note Christian conservatism is also the engine of the resurgent Canadian Conservative movement. PM Stephen Harper is an evangelical Christian. This is also true in Latin America, Nigeria, and other areas of the world.

While there is no question that the worldview of the faithful is under its greatest assault, the faith is meeting the challenge. Christianity is more vibrant today than it has been in a long time. All of the wishful thinking of the secular progressives in the world cannot change that fact. Thanks to Watermark Productions for the Video.

Happy Resurrection Day! Because He lives, We shall live also.

Yes, there are pants of panic from a new UN study which says that the global population will soar to 9 billion by 2050. I say great. That's more people we can teach the Gospel to. (I had to toss that in so a couple of liberal heads would explode.) I welcome the change. We have become more prosperous globally with fewer incidents of starvation and famine since our population has increased. Why, we have developed new technology especially in medicine and food production. Population is not a problem, it is just a challenge.

Still there is way too much poverty in the world. A billion people live on less than 2 dollars a day and may never take a shower in their life times. There is too much suffering in the world which is needless. Why is it needless? We have the ability to end run most of it.

The Korean peninsula was a place that was torn by decades of war, starvation, and poverty. Half of it had godless socailism imposed upon it. The other half was allowed to experience free markets, religious freedom, Christianity, and sensible tax policy. Which half is starving and which half is one of the wealthiest nations in the world?

I believe the great enemy of the poor is secular progressive socialism. Bangladesh is one of the poorest nations on earth. Why? It has long had some of the highest marginal tax rates on earth. When you look at all of the world's poorest economies, you see that they impose some the highest tax rates at very low incomes. One African nation has the 35% rate kick in around $430 a year. Bangladesh had the 60% rate around $7000. When ever someone tries to get ahead and save so they can start a business or birth an invention, they are slammed by the government. That is why so many of the people come to America and become successful.

I believe one of the keys to solving the third world issues is a flat tax or progressive national sales tax like the Fair Tax. People would become free to save, invest, and trade without excessive restrictions. That is the only way new technology will transform their lives. It has worked for us. Then again maybe we will abandon what made us successful while they transform themselves. That would be a sad irony.

The next key is the adoption of certain values. These nations are being held back by certain customs that the Christian nations have escaped. Many of them do not have as stable of a family situation as they could. Many young men are not focused toward productive paths. They do not have women and fathers to civilize them. As a result those nations often end up in civil wars and unrest. The AIDS and other epidemics are destroying their society because monogamy is not valued. The talents of the women are under utilized by depriving them of education which puts them at an even greater disadvantage to the West. Social structures lock some in to being privileged and others into being forgotten. Culture matters. You can not have a strong society without a strong culture.

It seems the solutions to the most difficult problems of the world can begin with tax cuts and Christian Principles.

Trillions for symptoms, but not one dime for root causes. Back in the early 1800's there was a saying "millions for defense but not one cent for tribute". It spoke of America's determination to stand strong in the face of terror and extortion. Unfortunately today, we are seeing that we would rather throw money at the economic problems we are facing than address the root causes of these problems. Some of the solutions do not even cost money to implement. It was a fool hardy approach taken by the Bush administration and it seems like the Obama administration is willing to continue it. I guess it is more of the same instead of the change we need.

There are many myths about the economy including that the last stimulus bill and its payments didn't work. They did. They worked in 2002 and they worked in 2008. They helped delay the downturn by several months and should be part of a new package. The problem is that unlike 2002 this downturn was more than cyclical. It had some stubborn root causes which went unaddressed.

This writer called for us to address the housing crisis back in February 2008. It is still not done. We don't need to buy toxic assets. We need to give the banks compensation for modifying mortgages and entice them to mass modify ARM's and troubled mortgages of people who are not literally on the block. Economists estimate that federally guaranteed 4% mortgages done this way would cost us 300 billion dollars. Yet it would save the average family several hundreds of dollars a month for as long as they keep that mortgage. That would do more than any one time check. Let's do it. We could use the second half of the TARP or use it in the stimulus bill. We should also extend the temporary credit to first time homebuyers. It would cost 20 billion but as an interest free loan paid back over 15 years it would really cost us nothing but the interest we pay.

We should give aid to the states so they don't raise taxes and layoff workers which would worsen the economy. I would say pick up 95% of Medicaid for two years and give block grants for "shovel ready projects". We should also pick up unemployment, federally mandated student testing, at 100% for two years federally.

Energy policy should be in the stimulus because it will help create a long term recovery. It is also a national emergency.

Cut the corporate tax rate and give accelerated depreciation to small and medium size businesses. Give a $1000 a person rebate this summer and cut the payroll tax for two years in half so businesses are rewarded for each person they keep and people have more money every week.

Taken together these steps would save and create millions of jobs without socializing and regulating the economy beyond recognition.

Tell me, would that type of policy work better than putting down new sod, giving out contraceptives, and funding starving artists?

America is the greatest nation in two thousand years. No one nation has advanced the cause of human dignity more in that time. It is the place where human rights such as life, liberty, and universal right to own property emerged as central governing principles. It has served as a beacon to the world. Unfortunately, there have been times where we have allowed some portion of our government to undermine our core principles. One such time was the Roe v. Wade ruling.

It is bad enough that Roe pretended not to know what is self obvious in science, logic, and religion, that life begins at conception. The ruling pretended not to know when life began at all. The ruling violated legal reasoning, precedent, constitutional restraints on the federal government, the 5th and 14th amendments, and the laws of all 50 states. Even the 5 states which disgracefully declared they would close their ears to the cries of the most vulnerable of citizens, did not go as far as the runaway Burger Court.

Since Roe became case law, new technology has put a virtual window on the womb. We can see in real time and in living color the children we denied. It is time for us to come to grips with the fact that we have created an environment of callous disregard for the weakest of humans. Even worse we have opened the floodgates for human cloning and genetic engineering. We have a federal government which denies sick people marijuana to get well, but allow others fatal prescriptions to be offed in the renewed Eugenetics movement.

I disagree with the Obama Administration. There is not a specter of man made global warming hanging over America. There is the specter of abortion haunting what is left of the soul of America. There is a culture of death which is robbing us of our heritage of human dignity. There is a lawless judiciary, which is undermining the Federal Constitutional Process and amassing dangerous power unto itself. It took the greatest of global wars by launched by mad men to equal what our court accomplished January 22, 1973.

Any administration which supports the slaughter of 48 million innocents, is unworthy of the executive office. It is refusing to faithfully execute the Constitution of the United States for over a million citizens a year. Thankfully, under Republican rule, the number of abortions dropped from a high of 1.6 million to a little over a million. Unfortunately, this administration seems hell bent on reversing what little good has been done not only domestically, but globally. President Obama said he would support unconstitutional federal legislation, which would overturn the few protections the states have been allowed to establish for women such as informed consent and parental involvement laws. It seems that the administration will bend over backwards to give new rights to terrorists caught on the battlefields yet rush to spit on the graves of the unborn.

All responsible Americans must raise their voices at this crucial time. No issue defines us more as a people. No issue is more important to our national culture.