THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
The latest report from the Cato Institute comes on top of a long and increasingly unhappy series of reports on freedom’s decline in America. Enitled the "Economic Freedom of the World" and updated with the latest data available (through 2013), the report ranks the United States in 16th position, down from second place when the index was first published in 2000. The United States has fallen behind such countries as New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, Jordan, Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Chile.
Last year’s report showed the United States in 12th position.
The study measures freedom in five broad areas: the size of government, the security an individual has in his property rights, how sound his currency is, what degree of freedom he has to trade and travel internationally, and how much the government regulates his private and business transactions. Having done this for years, the authors of the Cato study note, “Virtually without exception, these studies have found that countries with institutions and policies more consistent with economic freedom have higher investment rates, more rapid economic growth, higher income levels, and a more rapid reduction in poverty rates.”
The Cato study analyzes not only per-capita GDP but individual income levels, life expectancy rates, and something called “personal life satisfaction,” which is, according to the authors, “the degree to which people feel they are in control of their lives.” Wrote the authors, "Economic freedom exerts a strong and persistent impact on both individual life control and life satisfaction … that living in a country with high overall economic freedom is a major determinant of perceived personal control over one’s life."
Sounding like an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence, the authors concluded, "We find that living in a country with high overall economic freedom is a relevant determinant of feeling in control of one’s own life … economic freedom … influences individual happiness by giving people the feeling of being more in control of their lives and having the freedom to choose between different options in the market."
Compare that to this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
What the Founders knew to be “self-evident” has taken a bevy of economists and statisticians at think tanks across the world to confirm. The fifth annual report from Canada's Fraser Institute, the Human Freedom Index, shows the United States falling from 17th place to 20th in just the last year, with one of its authors calling its findings “worrisome”: "The U.S. performance is worrisome and shows that the United States can no longer claim to be the leading bastion of liberty in the world. In addition to the expansion of the regulatory state and drop in economic freedom, the war on terror, the war on drugs, and the erosion of property rights due to the greater use of eminent domain all likely have contributed to the U.S. decline."
Unless that decline is halted, “it could cut the U.S. historic growth rate of 3% by half.”
The Heritage Foundation’s entry into the discouraging discussion, its 2015 Index of Economic Freedom, showed the United States declining from second place in 2000 to 12th place, with that decline accelerating over the past five years “reflecting the broad-based deterioration in key policy areas, particularly those related to upholding the rule of law and limited government.”
In another study published by Cato, the United States fell from 17th place worldwide to 20th, reflecting “a long-term drop in every category of economic freedom and in its rule of law.”
In a perverse expression of optimism, the authors of the Human Freedom Index study listed some of the nations that are now outperforming the United States in economic freedom: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, Jordan, Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Georgia, Chile, Qatar, and Taiwan. Wrote the authors,
Good for them! But, honestly: Georgia, Jordan, UAE and Qatar? Just 25 years ago Georgia was the “Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic,” its people chained by the dead hand of communist central planning, coercion and corruption. On a more hopeful note, if even Georgia can throw off its chains, then surely the U.S. can unwind the damage done by 15-plus years of bad federal policies.
The continuing decline of economic and personal freedom in the United States proves the adage, “The essence of freedom is the limitation of government.” Winston Churchill put it well: "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
Think tanks monitoring the decline of economic and personal freedom in the United States also reflect the success of policies set in place long ago. As Rowan Gaither, then-president of the Ford Foundation, told Norman Dodd, head of the Reese Committee, in 1954: "All of us here at the policy-making level have had experience with directives … from the White House…. The substance of them is that we shall use our grant-making power so as to alter life in the United States so that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."
Titles may have changed over those six decades, but the substance remains. Writing in 1958, Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, said this:
In 1931 … I was convinced that there was plenty of time [to implement] the completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will … servitude made acceptable. These things were coming, but not in my time, not even in the time of my grandchildren. Twenty-seven years later I feel a good deal less optimistic. In the West, individual men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But this freedom and even the desire for this freedom seem to be on the wane.
In the nearly 60 years since those words were penned by the socialist Huxley, the U.S. government has come almost completely unmoored from its constitutional restraints and the entitlement/welfare mentality predicted by him continues to thrive. Just ask the analysts at Cato, Heritage, and Fraser who are tracking the decline. With the growth of government comes the reduction of freedom, just as Jefferson noted in his letter to Edward Carrington in 1788: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” That “natural progress” has been aided and abetted by forces and interests working to hasten the decline.
Speaking to classrooms across America in a live virtual event, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy presses for school children to take EPA's Energy Star climate pledge to "become part of the climate solution." McCarthy: "Get those pledges in. Work with your schools. Work with your community. Bug your family at home to recycle and do all the great things."
When asked by a student what careers to consider if they're interested in protecting the environment, McCarthy says: "Come work at EPA... If you like numbers, we always have room for you, cause how do you think we do all that accounting to figure out what your carbon footprint is? We have lots of people working here that do that type of work."
EPA ADMINISTRATOR GINA MCCARTHY: "There is so much you can do to become part of the climate solution."
HOST KYLE SCHUTT: "What's your favorite part about the pledge and what young people are doing?"
MCCARTHY: "I think the greatest part about the pledge for young people, and when old people take it cause we've had 4.3 million people take this pledge already, and we want you to take it too."
SCHUTT: "That's a big number. That's a lot of people."
MCCARTHY: "Well, that's because we need everybody... It's not just about light bulbs. It's about appliances. It's about riding your bike instead of riding in a car. It's about what kind of car you drive. Can you buy one that's more efficient? Can you use renewable resources in that car, like ethanol? There's lots of choices that you can make that actually lower that footprint, and you'll never miss it."
STUDENT: "What is being done to make schools and homes more environmentally friendly?"
MCCARTHY: "Well, Madison, that's a great question cause it means you're not just paying attention but you actually want to be part of the solution. And, it's really important cause we need to hear kids voices cause it's your world, and you're going to be the stewards of that world coming up. Now there's lots of things you can do. At your school you can pull together a green team or environmental club. We've seen it in lots of schools where people go around and check out their schools, see where there's inefficiencies, make suggestions to the principle and to the school boards on how you can get more efficient. See if you can talk to your utility and get some solar panels on the school so you can teach kids about renewable energy and save yourself money. [...] I am so happy that classrooms all across the U.S. are like watching, cause it helps us get the message out. So, get those pledges in. Work with your schools. Work with your community. Bug your family at home to recycle and do all the great things." [...]
STUDENT: "Administrator McCarthy, what are some careers that kids could consider if they're interested in working with energy or protecting the environment through saving energy?"
MCCARTHY: "Well, there's lots of choices. Come work at EPA. That would be really good, cause we're great people here who love to do this kind of work. [...] You could come and do economic work. If you like numbers, we always have room for you cause how do you think we do all that accounting to see what your carbon footprint is? We have lots of people working here that do that type of work."
National ENERGY STAR Day - Live Virtual Event Discovery Education October 27, 2015
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
In a new propaganda talk presented in classrooms across America, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) boss Gina McCarthy (shown) urged school children to become part of the “climate solution,” take a government “pledge,” and even “bug” their families to jump on the Obama administration's “green” bandwagon. If those students enjoy math and numbers, the top environmental bureaucrat said she wants them to go work for the EPA — so they can help calculate the “carbon footprint” of Americans. “We have lots of people working here that do that type of work,” McCarthy explained.
The bizarre EPA climate propaganda in the classroom meshes well with Education Secretary Arne Duncan's repeated pledges to transform American school children into “green” and “global” citizens ready for “green jobs” in the new, “sustainable” world order. Critics of McCarthy's antics, however, were not amused, with one equating the EPA intrusion to Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin's tactics.
The man-made global-warming alarmism is extraordinarily controversial. Former NASA climatologist Roy Spencer famously referred to vicious climate alarmists as “global warming Nazis,” saying they threaten liberty and humanity. Other leading scientists in the field, such as MIT meteorology professor emeritus Richard Lindzen, have called climate alarmists a “cult” for refusing to adjust their faith despite the evidence. Even the United Nations' top global-warming guru, forced out recently after being arrested for sex crimes, boasted that his mission was actually his “religion.” Just 40 percent of Americans, meanwhile, believe the man-made global-warming theory, according to a Pew poll released last year. And the evidence discrediting the theory keeps piling up by the day.
But none of that stopped the EPA from invading your child's classroom to propagate the controversial climate faith without so much as parental consent. On October 27, in a national event that was ignored by the establishment press but highlighted by ClimateDepot.com, the EPA chief participated in a carefully orchestrated “live discussion” with school children all across America. It took place under the guise of having impressionable young Americans in government schools “celebrate National Energy Awareness Month” and “ENERGY STAR® Day,” as the EPA put it. And yes, those are real things.
Central to the bizarre event was encouraging children to sign the EPA's “Energy Star Pledge” and hand over their contact information to the bureaucracy for future propaganda programming. But there were a lot of “green” messages for the children to take home with them — literally.
“There is so much you can do to become part of the climate solution,” McCarthy told children, without any hint of discussion on what the alleged climate “problem” in need of a “climate solution” might be. “I think the greatest part about the pledge for young people, and when old people take it cause we’ve had 4.3 million people take this pledge already, and we want you to take it too.”
The “host” of the propaganda program noted that that was a “big” number. “Well, that’s because we need everybody,” McCarthy responded. And by “everybody,” she really means everybody — including parents of the children subjected to the inappropriate propaganda during school hours.
Of course, the EPA's “Energy Star” program children were supposed to pledge allegiance to has long been the subject of ridicule. When the Government Accountability Office (GAO) set out to investigate the scheme in recent years, the results were beyond shocking. First, the watchdog agency set up four bogus firms to form “Energy Star” partnerships with the federal government. All of the fake companies’ applications were approved by the EPA or the Department of Energy within two weeks. Then GAO submitted various fake products for “Energy Star” certification.
Among the “products” was one called Black Gold. Its description read: “Gas-powered clock radio is sleek, durable, easy on your electric bill, and surprisingly quiet.” The listed dimensions were similar to those of a small generator “for increased ease while traveling.” “The newly Energy Star-qualified product is safe for indoor use and easy on the environment,” it added. Another fake GAO product certified by Energy Star was the “energy-efficient” air cleaner, described as a “space heater with a feather duster and fly strips attached.”
But saving the “climate” from humans and their emissions of the gas of life (CO2, exhaled every time you take a breath) is about more than just purchasing Energy Star-certified gas-powered alarm clocks and space heaters with feather dusters and fly strips attached. In her pitch to school children, the EPA boss also outlined a broad array of actions for the little ones to take.
“It’s not just about light bulbs. It’s about appliances,” she said. “It’s about riding your bike instead of riding in a car. It’s about what kind of car you drive. Can you buy one that’s more efficient? Can you use renewable resources in that car, like ethanol [food turned into engine-ruining fuel with government subsidies even as people starve]? There’s lots of choices that you can make that actually lower that footprint, and you’ll never miss it.”
Then a student asked McCarthy what schools and homes could do. “At your school you can pull together a green team or environmental club,” McCarthy suggested. “We’ve seen it in lots of schools where people go around and check out their schools, see where there’s inefficiencies, make suggestions to the principal and to the school boards on how you can get more efficient. See if you can talk to your utility and get some solar panels on the school so you can teach kids about renewable energy and save yourself money.… I am so happy that classrooms all across the U.S. are, like, watching, 'cause it helps us get the message out. So, get those pledges in.”
But signing the Obama-EPA pledge and quietly reducing your own “carbon footprint,” or even the footprint of your schools and homes, is not nearly enough. Students must become zealous missionaries for the climate-alarmism movement as well, the EPA chief insisted. “Work with your schools. Work with your community,” she exhorted the children. “Bug your family at home to recycle and do all the great things.”
Of course, the Obama administration is not the first government to urge children to spread the government's controversial views to their parents. But historically, such dramatic intrusions into family life and value systems by government agents have often ended in tragedy. Indeed, physicist John Droz with the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) blasted the targeting of children in this way as a throwback to an especially brutal dictatorship of the last century.
In an e-mail to The New American, Droz said he saw two issues here. He did not see anything wrong with some of the ideas presented by the EPA, such as riding bikes. “However, included with the sensible ones, are nefarious implications (e.g., that all fossil fuels are a bad thing),” he said. “This is a classic PR tactic, hide the real message in a collection of seemingly harmless suggestions.”
But it gets worse. “The fundamental problem with the entire EPA program is that it is based on politics, not Science,” continued Droz, who has long blasted what he calls the ongoing "corruption" of science. “Of course the EPA says otherwise, but the reality is that they either don’t understand what Science actually is, or they really do and are ignoring Scientific realities for the sake of promoting a political agenda. For example, there is no Scientific basis for the EPA to be promoting wind energy, as there never has been a genuine Scientific assessment concluding that wind energy is a Net Societal Benefit. Never. Anywhere.”
And the intrusion into school classrooms with the EPA's anti-science message is not appropriate. “For the EPA to be foisting these two matters onto unsuspecting school children is a seriously disturbing tactic — commensurate with Lenin,” Droz conluded.
The students selected to visit EPA headquarters and ask questions, though, seemed fully on board with the agenda. One student in the discussion, for example, asked McCarthy about what types of careers kids could consider if they are interested in “protecting the environment through saving energy.”
“Well,” the EPA chief said, “there’s lots of choices.” First among them: “Come work at EPA. That would be really good, 'cause we’re great people here who love to do this kind of work,” she said. “You could come and do economic work. If you like numbers, we always have room for you cause how do you think we do all that accounting to see what your carbon footprint is? We have lots of people working here that do that type of work.”
To hear the EPA chief tell it, your carbon footprint represents your sin, and reducing your carbon footprint is your required penance, and even the salvation of the world. “Today’s students are tomorrow’s innovators, decision-makers, and problem-solvers,” McCarthy said in a press release about the event. “I’m thrilled to participate in an Energy Star Day event aimed at educating young people about the tools we have to act on climate, and inspiring them to design the solutions of the future.”
But of course, the EPA was not alone in beaming a top Obama bureaucrat's propaganda into classrooms all over America. School administrators, too, played a role. “This virtual event is an exciting way to engage my students in the science of energy efficiency and the critical issue of climate change,” District “Science Director and STEM Educator” Dacia Jones with Durham, North Carolina, Public Schools said in a statement. “I look forward to utilizing this one-of-a-kind learning opportunity to help my students gain a deeper understanding of how they can preserve a healthy planet for future generations and help protect the climate by saving energy.”
Also participating were mega-corporations and crony capitalists. Among them is an outfit known as “Discovery Education,” which boasts on its website about helping schools implement the Obama-backed Common Core scheme and “support this critical transformation.” Of course, one of Common Core's key operatives, Obama education chief Duncan, who bribed states to surrender final control of education to Washington, D.C., touted the broader agenda in a speech on sustainability. “We must advance the sustainability movement through education,” he explained, calling education a “weapon” to “change the world” while boasting about his partnership with UNESCO and the administration's increasing usurpation of power over education.
Another player participating in the EPA's event was DIRECTV, owned by AT&T. Both companies recently ranked among the ten worst companies in America on the Faith Equality Index. But Charlene Lake, AT&T Services senior vice president of “Corporate Social Responsibility” and “Chief Sustainability Officer,” celebrated the firm's role in proselytizing the environmentalist dogma to captive children. “It is important that we not only prepare students academically, but also empower them to be good stewards of our planet,” Lake said.
Government schools should not be a place for the Obama administration to preach its radical views to American children without parental consent. But, as the latest EPA scheme illustrates, that is exactly what they have become. Congress must take action. If it is true that the EPA has “lots of people” working to calculate the “carbon footprint” of Americans, the admission should be heeded by U.S. lawmakers as a good tip on where they might start with cutting down the massive deficit and saving embattled taxpayers some money. The propaganda budget for the agency, created by an executive order signed by President Richard Nixon, would be another easy place to start. More broadly, any agency or program not authorized by the U.S. Constitution should be cut as quickly as possible.
Controversial propaganda and encouraging kids to “bug” their parents about it should have no place in America's school classrooms. And if the administration itself is incapable of understanding that, the American people's elected representatives must take action to protect education and children from the White House and its agenda.
A news radio station in New York reports that the broadband and telecommunications company Verizon is now scanning customer email.
If email contains a hyperlink to a website, the email is rejected and not sent to the recipient, according to 95.1 FM in New York City.
After a customer complained about the policy the corporation told him there isn’t a way to op-put of the program.
“Verizon scans the digital signatures of all inbound and outbound email messages to reduce the overall volume of spam on our network” and all email containing a hyperlink will be considered spam.
“So if a business person needs to get information to a colleague, or a student needs to get research to a fellow student, or if a wife wants to share an interesting recipe with a friend . . . all those emails will be rejected by Verizon!” the radio station website explains.
In October Matt Drudge told the Alex Jones Show the very foundation of the free internet is under severe threat from copyright laws that could ban independent media outlets. Drudge said he was told directly by a Supreme Court Justice, “It’s over for me.”
The move by Verizon follows a previous effort by the broadband giant to dictate news on the internet.
In a 2012 legal brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Verizon argued the Constitution gives the phone company the right to control everyone’s online information.
“Just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which content to publish and where, broadband providers may feature some content over others.”
In other words, Verizon believes it has “editorial discretion” over what news and information its customers may access.
The following year the company went before the appeals court and said it has the right to block content that cannot or will not pay a toll.
In 2007 Verizon Wireless blocked text messages it deemed “controversial or unsavory.”
“This is right at the heart of the problem,” said Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at theUniversity of Michigan law school, told The New York Times. “The fact that wireless companies can choose to discriminate is very troubling.”
Additionally, Verizon works with the NSA to monitor and collect the metadata of tens of millions of phone users. _____________________________________________________________
VATICAN SUSPECTED OF MONEY LAUNDERING, INSIDER TRADING, MARKET MANIPULATION
Published on Nov 4, 2015
Vatican financial investigators suspect a department of the Holy See which oversees real estate and investments was used in the past for possible money laundering, insider trading and market manipulation.
Vatican Bank Whistle-Blower Arrested
Published on Nov 3, 2015
Two more whistleblowers were arrested by the Vatican today as two books being released this week allege the Vatican Bank is involved in money laundering, insider trading, market manipulation, offering sainthood for sale and funds for a children’s hospital being used to remodel a mega-penthouse. All this from a Pope that relentlessly pushes global government as a solution to climate alarmism. At best, the Vatican Bank scandal is a tale of a Pope who can’t manage a small government while he pushing global governance. At worst, it is the tip of an iceberg of greed and corruption while the Pope tells us we need global governance and wealth distribution because of — GREED.
in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
The Department of Education’s office of civil rights says that a disguised boy has been discriminated against because he is not allowed to shower naked with girls.
Federal education authorities, staking out their firmest position yet on an increasingly contentious issue, found Monday that an Illinois school district violated anti-discrimination laws when it did not allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl and participates on a girls’ sports team to change and shower in the girls’ locker room without restrictions.
The Education Department gave 30 days to the officials of Township High School District 211 to reach a solution or face enforcement, which could include administrative law proceedings or a Justice Department court action. The district could lose some or all of its Title IX funding.
In a letter sent Monday, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education told the Palatine district that requiring a transgender student to use private changing and showering facilities was a violation of that student’s rights under Title IX, a federal law that bans sex discrimination. The student, who identifies as female but was born male, should be given unfettered access to girls’ facilities, the letter said.
The boy should be given unfettered access to naked girls. What’s confusing about that?
The district said she was allowed to change inside the girls’ locker room, but only behind a curtain. The student, who has not been publicly identified, has said she would probably use that curtain to change. But she and the federal government have insisted that she be allowed to make that decision voluntarily, and not because of requirements by the district.
That’s right! The boy should decide whether he gets to see the other girls naked and show them his private parts.
“What our client wants is not hard to understand:She wants to be accepted for who she is and to be treated with dignity and respect — like any other student,” said John Knight, director of the L.G.B.T. and H.I.V. Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois[.]
The boy just wants a little dignity and respect – just like any other boy who wants to see girls naked in close quarters!
All kidding aside, this is sick, and this is perverted, and this perversion is being coercively pushed by the highest levels of government. This is not about the “dignity” of this arrogant, perverted boy, who was given his own changing room. He demands to see naked girls and for naked girls to see his male body, and he doesn’t care about anyone’s “dignity” or “respect” but his own.
This is an enormous opening for Republicans. Who is waging the “war on women” now? It is radical Democrats pushing for girls to be exposed to naked men. Now Hillary Clinton has become a born-again transvestite supporter. Would it really be hard for a Republican in a debate to turn to her and say, “Mrs. Clinton, do you really want girls to be forced to expose themselves to boys in locker rooms?”
It’s indefensible. It sounds like a small issue compared to illegal immigration and the debt, but I think a candidate who focuses on this could destroy Clinton’s credibility. Unfortunately, while this topic has been much in the news, most of the Republican candidates have been quiet about it. I wonder why.
