California Right to Life Advocates

1. Legislation
2. Churches and secular influences.
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“Why has the Lord permitted us
to be defeated today by the Philistines?
1 Samuel 4:3

There is a flurry of activity now in the state legislature. My time has been quite taken up with research, interviews of legislators or their aides and reading books on policy subjects. One book I would recommend for those who like heavy reading is “Politics for the Greatest Good: The case for prudence in the Public Square,” by Clarke D. Forsythe former Director of Americans United for Life.

Prudence, in this instance, is not compromise, but the gifts of discernment and wisdom as to what can be accomplished at any given time in the public arena and what should be tried to accomplish. Sad to admit but there are ever deepening dependencies both in the private and religious realms of dependency upon financial funding sources and power sources tied to activities and funding sources that would ordinarily be inimical to both. Sometimes asking for the whole enchilada can be more destructive than just taking that enchilada one bite at a time as in working for parental notification for a minor child’s abortion rather than a Personhood Amendment in a single bill. This is my example, not one offered in the book.

I have also taken some time to “walk the halls” in Sacramento, talking to legislative Aides, especially Republican Aides. It is instructive to understand what dynamic is going on when we see Republicans such as Republican Assemblyman mark Wyland, endorsing Democrat bills such as the Obama Administration promotion of “Race to the Top” (G. Romero, (D) SB x 45) education funding and restructuring bills. No Wyland employee was willing to speak for the record as to the reason a Republican co-authored a Democrat bill. The Republican federal No Child Left Behind education goals and agenda has now been supplanted by the Race To The Top legislation.

Here is my observation of the current cooperative attitude between Democrat and Republican legislators in Sacramento: there has been a decided choice on the part of Republicans not to think of this as a Democrat or federal funding takeover of local educational matters. Rather they preferred to think of it as a needed improvement of educational standards. These so-called improved educational standards are, in reality, nationwide, standardized core subject standards. This then brings national standards into the local community denying parents a right to involvement of what their child learns, places the national standards within the international (global) standards as sought by the United Nations and effectively makes every child a student of the global goals and standards. This further threatens the autonomy offered to Charter School parents and students as well as I will demonstrate further on in this report.

Did you know that ACORN and PICO have created Charter Schools as well?

This new attitude of cooperation in the legislature brings with it legislation already signed by the Governor authorizing Open Enrollment policies for the Public and Charter School, especially in economically deprived communities (read black and Hispanic).

Open enrollment policy states that a child who is failing in school may apply to any other (approved) school in the state. I asked one Aide if that meant that, for example, a 4th grader might only be able to improve his education by attending a special school that is several counties away from home? He said, yes, if the parents chose that. I asked, if, in the case of this school being only across the district or the county, who would be accountable for living arrangements for out of county placements and or transportation arrangements? Again, the Aide hedged but eventually affirmed that it would be up to the parents to make the living arrangements to board the child somewhere.

Regarding transportation I asked who would be responsible for getting the student(s) to these distant schools especially if poor parents have no means of transportation? He really hedged at that, but admitted that it would probably be up to the school system to arrange for transportation. Can’t you just picture the expanding number of buses needed to drive students of all ages around to schools? Talk about traffic jams!

This Aide further rejected the idea of Open Enrollment leading to internationalization of education, but, stated, instead, that what might happen is one state cooperating with 4 or 5 other states to set standards. I asked if he was referring to regionalization of education? He preferred the words collaboration or cooperation. But he did not deny the idea of regionalization. This fits in with workforce development standards and Master Plans.

And, by the way, everything is thought of these days as the necessity of forming Master Plans. Master Plans for workforce development whether it be in the health care fields, education arena, technology, science, teaching, elder care, transportation. All these plans mandate the formation of state and county advisory or oversight committees of local politicians, business people, non-profits, community organizing groups, unions, etc.
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LEGISLATION - State

AB 535 - Tom Ammiano, (D-SF) Elder Death Review Teams: Information Requests.

This bill has passed both the Assembly Health and the Asm Long-Term Care Committee with both Dems and Reps, in some instances voting for.

Ammiano’s Aide said, in passing, that the medical directive for health care that the bill would work with is called Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment - POLST. This is a program prompted by the Compassion in Care group which was the major supporter of the latest attempt at passing Physician Assisted Suicide.

The official sponsors are the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform and the California Senior Legislature (a private, non-profit lobbying group.

While this would appear to be an admirable piece of legislation seeking to provide the fullest protection against elder abuse and discrimination, a look beneath the nice words presents a different picture.

This is the Master Plan for elder care. It will create state and local elder death review advisory panels for all skilled nursing facilities - snf. These panels consisting of distinguished local elected, legal, community, medical and non-profit groups will have the power to mandate in-depth reporting and analysis of the manner in which patients die. This information will be shared with all the agencies connected to the death review teams. There will be an electronic data collection system developed or put into use. The stated purpose is to act as a monitor for any actual or suspected elder patient abuse, physical, medical, mental, social or financial.

The bill is, in my estimation, suspect for being used to monitor whether or not facilities are complying with any right to die mandates that are not being complied with especially since the bill promotes the POLST. www.finalchoice.org.

Location of Bill: 1/14 it passed out of the Long-term Health Committee and is going to the Appropriations.

REQUEST: Please write to the author, The Hon. Tom Ammiano, c/o State Capitol, Sacramento 95814 with a copy to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, same address. PLEASE use letterhead organization stationery if you have any. Only that way will your opposition get on the record.

Since this is appropriations which means funding, they are not swayed (much) by moral or religious persuasions. The fact that it is going to appropriations means that it is believed that it will have a fiscal impact even though the author denies any impact. One could easily state that this bill would negatively affect the smooth flow of medical and personal care to patients if there has to be a continual use of personnel to fill out state forms and to be on-call to any of the local death panel team members for information and analysis.

This team could also, especially with the advent of Universal Health care, be a means of rating these facilities as to whether or not they will be denied new patients and or whether their employees or medical staff will be subject to law suits for failure to comply promptly with reporting mandates.

SB 438, Leland Yee, (D-SF) Charter Schools: Freedom of Speech and of the Press. On 1/14/ this bill was gutted and amended from a health care bill to its current status as an education Committee free speech bill which will include Charter Schools under the Public School freedom of speech and school newspaper press rights.

It is being promoted as merely an adjustment to the law drawing in the Charter Schools under its protection, but it has an interesting twist.

Charter Schools have become popular with both conservative and Christian families due to its presumed freedom of families to be involved in setting education goals and standards.

This bill would protect the right of students to publish in campus newspapers anything they chose as well as put notices on bulletin boards (that’s where freedom of the press comes in). It also has the potential for protecting staff from law suits for allowing student free speech.

This would begin to be a limitation on parental rights to set standards and goals whether it would be a case of promotion of homosexuality, abortion or in the case of an ACORN Charter School, some student who would want to write about supporting the right to life. LOCATION: Re-referred to Senate Appropriations Committee awaiting hearing due to change of focus and different potential for costs to the state such as law suits.

Letters of Opposition should be sent to the author, The Hon. Leland Yee at the state Capitol address and a copy to the Senate Appropriations Committee. In this case it would be appropriate to make reference to the potential for placing limitations on Charter School parental involvement rights along with stating that this is a nuisance type piece of legislation interfering with academic learning leading to court challenges of parental rights.
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Thank you to all who contributed to our support during December and January. There is one clarification that we wish to make regarding donations. At one time and for many years, California Right to Life Education Fund, IRS 501 (c) 3 and California Right to Life Committee, Inc. IRS 501 (c) 4, were two phases of the same organization. Right around 2000 we split into two separate organizations. CRLEF retained its non-profit, tax deductible status and maintains a separate office and identity. I took over the Committee, Inc. or Public Policy Advocacy activities. Money donated to the one organization does not benefit the other organization. We both hope and pray that you continue supporting both of us but, please, with separate checks.

Donations to Committee, Inc. are used to defray the costs of research on legislation and mailings. It is still considered educational activities but with the added emphasis of providing the citizen with the tools to access their elected officials and advocate for life in the public square. This is not political activity or support or opposition to candidates. That comes under an entirely different branch of IRS rules with which neither of us are connected.

Posted by Camille to General News | add a comment

This was the title of a page 3 article in the 12/20.2009, Contra Costa Times. It was about culling trees unworthy of life from a grove of more desirable and stately oaks. It should have been the title of an article about the most despicable piece of legislation since Roe v Wade.

Senator Ben Nelson betrayed his pro life supporters and all babies waiting to be born, and chose special monetary perks for his state with the same cavalier manner as the tree cutters taking their chain saws to certain trees - sorry, baby, you gotta go.

This Obama Health Care legislation is about a lot of things other than abortion, its true, but whereas, TARP and the ARRA have been used to bolster the banks and auto industry, health care money will underwrite the abortion Planned Parenthood industry which is already awash in state and federal funds, not to mention the blood of millions of unborn human babies.

Will this be enough for the population controllers? Apparently not. No sooner was there an announcement about Ben Nelson’s cave-in than Debra Ness, Director of National Partners for Women and Families issued a statement declaring: “[a]greement reached in the Senate today on abortion services would be a huge step backward.” Further, “[it] creates an unworkable impediment to women’s ability to access reproductive health coverage.”

The abortion industry will never be satisfied until they control every aspect of human reproduction. Margaret Sanger and her original Birth Controller’s group set themselves up to be the ones to determine which human lives get culled from the ranks of the more stately humans and they didn’t care how they did it. The current crop of legislators also don’t seem to care how they wrest control of human lives away from individuals and gather it to themselves. They promise health care for all but the result is universal control of all.

But, make no mistake, this health care legislation is not just about cleansing the population of so-called undesirables horrible as that is. The legislators want to clean up and reform those humans allowed to live.

Over the years many pieces of legislation that have started out as beneficent have become instead a means of control. The 1960’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act has given us sex education in the schools and all that that created. Title X of the Social Security Act has brought abortion funding and now Workforce Development which places control of jobs and businesses in the hands of government.

The No Child Left Behind Act, which originated with the First President Bush in a well-meaning attempt to ensure that no child was deprived of a good education has turned into a further means of government control, government advisory bodies, centralization of education and is now planned as a means of drawing homeless children into the noose of Obama Care.

Something called the McKinney/Vento Act was added to the NCLB providing a definition of what constitutes a homeless child for the purpose of ensuring that homeless children received an education equal with that of any other child. Now Congress is seeking to expand that definition of homelessness into the arena of health care which means placing them in the hands of Planned Parenthood for their Responsible Reproductive activities co-authored by Sen. Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer. Sort of a Civil Rights Act for children.

For the purpose of McKinney/Vento a homeless child is one who: shares housing with other people, experiences economic hardships, living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, emergency shelters or was abandoned in hospitals, etc. and includes migratory children as defined by the ESEA of 1965.

HR 4173 by Barney Frank is yet another omnibus human control piece of legislation. It seeks to reform Wall Street by claiming that it will be the Consumer Protection Ac-t of 2009. This is another 2000 page plus bill, beginning with numbered section 1000 and ending with section 8004.

The U.S. Senate with Harry Reid leading the charge has been debating HR 3590 a 2000 page guide to controlling the population, but Reid also has 66 bills of his own, of which, at least 12 directly effect various aspects of daily human life. And he isn’t the only legislator carrying such bills. All these bills have been sitting in committee, most of them since January 6, 2009, just waiting for passage of this omnibus Universal Care (control) bill.

Here are some of the more egregious bills:

HR 3253, Carl Levin (D-Mi) Advance Directives Promotion Act of 2009. Provides funds to states to advertise and expand the use of advance directives in end of life planning by amending Titles XVlll and XVlX of the Social Security Act. It will create hot lines for decision making counseling, promote decision making educational programs for the general public. Life long learning may become life shortening learning.

S. 1, Harry Reid, Economic Growth. This proposes to create jobs, restore economic growth, strengthen American’s middle class, modernize the nation’s infrastructure, enhance American’s energy independence, expand educational opportunities (this is career technical education - school to work) improve affordable health care, provide tax relief and protect those in great need.

S. 2, Harry Reid, Middle Class Opportunity Act. This bill is what is called a “sense of Congress” bill. It urges the President to sign legislation to improve the lives of middle class families and provide them with greater opportunity to achieve the American dream, meet retirement needs, help families acquire education and training, promote child and elder care, and freedom to unionize which is further referred to in the bill as providing “fair pay for all workers.” In other words one will not be paid for the work done or how much effort was put into preparing for the job but what the government wants you to have.

S. 3, Harry Reid, Homeowners and Consumers. Reduces foreclosures, ensures availability of credit for homeowners, business and consumers and reforming the financial regulatory system.

This falls in line with Barney Frank’s Wall Street reform bill. Government bureaucrats will determine who gets to open businesses, who gets loans, who works at those jobs and who lives where.

In regard to who lives where we refer you to all the Smart Growth, Sustainable Development legislation that seeks to reconstruct communities according to government elitists ideas of the most efficient means of providing affordable housing to everyone, placing like groups of people, economically and age wise together. Senior citizens are already being urged to move into cluster type housing and surrender their homes to those whom the government has declared need them more. I think the clustering of seniors is more for the advantage of all the community service providers who won’t have to drive very far to “service” all the so-called needs of the aging boomers.

S. 4, Harry Reid, Health Coverage. Another sense of the Congress to guarantee affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans.

S. 5, Harry Reid, Economy and Security of United States. This will be provided by reducing the dependence of the US from unsustainable energy sources and the risk of global warming. S. 6 is about providing national security. This, like most of these are basically spot bills. They are brief, say little and can be used at the last minute for amending into other bills or expanding to include other bills.

S. 7, Harry Reid, Educational Opportunities. Early children education and after school programs, advancing reform in elementary and secondary education, strengthening math, science and making education more affordable. This is the true dumbing down of America. Affordable doesn’t mean financially. It means sending all students through 16 years of schooling to insure that the behavior modification stays firmly rooted.

S. 21, Harry Reid, Womens Health Care. This 26 page bill is a rehash of a multitude of abortion funding bills over the years. It amends Title X of the Public Health Service Act to create an education program entitled “Responsibility about Life Act.” Even if abortion funding had been removed from Obama Care, this bill would get pushed through thereby providing the funding for abortion. Guess what non-profit radical feminist group would be charged with developing this curriculum and training the teachers? One would not have to legitimize prostitution, all young people would become volunteer prostitutes doing their duty for their country. Can you imagine your beautiful little girl receiving outcome based education to be a prostitute? Don’t laugh.

S. 968-IS, Harry Reid, Secondary School Innovation Fund Act. According to this bill: “The nation has failed to educate enough students to meet workforce demands.”

Did you understand all these decades that this was the job of education? Was education always meant to be little more than a sausage factory spewing out pliable, compliant bodies ready for work? I surely didn’t realize this. This is how Harry Reid and others see our precious children, merely widgets in the gristmill of capitalism.

HR 4072, Walt Clifford Minnick, (D-ID-01). Federal Job Training and Career Education Programs. Requires certain federal job training and career education programs give priority to programs that provide a national industry-recognized and portable credential.

This is a direct attack on home schooled children. If the graduating student does not have the government mandated required mind set for becoming a member of the workforce in a position that the government has determined is needed, then that student might as well forget about working.

When man attempts to practice the corporal works of mercy but without consideration for the spiritual needs of man; when legislators perceive that they can govern men’s lives through science and touchy feely psychology producing the perfect society but without a consideration of God’s plan for man’s eternal salvation this is the result. Many countries have lived behind the Iron Curtain of Communism. We, in America, may well end up living within the padded cells of smothering nannyism.

This is the Christmas Season. This is the time to recall that God has promised to always be with us. He can not take his eyes off of us, His beloved created beings. We must always hold precious the understanding that all, each and every, human being is precious in God’s eyes and that we are called upon to be a messenger of that love and compassion to all our neighbors no matter what the government mandates.

Posted by Camille to General News | add a comment