Few socially liberal republicans oppose MN Marriage Protection Amendment -- no new news.

The press conference by some socially liberal Republicans who came out against the marriage amendment is really no news. Representatives' Kriesel and Kelly have made known their opposition this past session. And Wheelock Whitney is know for his pro-gay positions. And Susan Kimberly had a sex change so Susan's opposition comes as no surprise as well.

Representative Kelly was quoted as saying that opposing the amendment is the conservative thing to do. Nothing could be further from the truth. Redefining marriage will only usher in a greater expansion of government to address the needs of greater family and marriage dissolution resulting from the devaluing and watering down of marriage. And government will grow as it seeks to impose upon society, an unnatural understanding of marriage on the rest of an unwilling society. This isn't about allowing a miniscule number of gay couples to get married but the rather redefinition of marriage for all society.

Representative Kelly is certainly free to hold whatever position he wants on the marriage protection amendment. But he needs to know that redefining marriage is anything but conservative.

Dependency on government. Part of reason for problems we're facing.

One of the reasons we have massive government deficits and difficulty cutting spending is nearly half the US population lives in a household where somebody receives government benefits. Up from just under 30% in 1983.

A Wall Street Journal story notes:

Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census
data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.

The share of people relying on government benefits has reached a historic high, in large part from the deep recession and meager recovery, but also because of the expansion of government programs over the years.

Means-tested programs, designed to help the needy, accounted for the largest share of recipients last year. Some 34.2% of Americans lived in a household that received benefits such as food stamps, subsidized housing, cash welfare or Medicaid (the federal-state health care program for the poor).

Another 14.5% lived in homes where someone was on Medicare (the health care program for the elderly). Nearly 16% lived in households receiving Social Security.

High unemployment and increased reliance on government programs has also shrunk the nation’s share of taxpayers. Some 46.4% of households will pay no federal income tax this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That’s up from 39.9% in 2007, the year the recession began.

This is part of the reason we're running up our massive deficits. It's too difficult politically to cut back on massive social programs because so many people are dependent on some form of government benefit.

"Modern economies 'rise and fall' based on family"

That's a quote from a new study pointing out the fundamental importance marriage and intact families play in society. The study takes aim at cohabitation, easy divore and too few children as detriments to the economy.

If the wealth of a nation is tied to both the quality and the quantity of its people, then modern trends toward cohabiting instead of marrying, easy divorce and fewer children born to couples will have sweeping economic consequences, a new report says.

The "long-term fortunes of the modern economy rise and fall with the family," the Social Trends Institute says in its new report, "The Sustainable Demographic Dividend: What Do Marriage and Fertility Have to Do With the Economy?"

This is because economic growth, viability of welfare programs, size and quality of a workforce, and profitability of large sectors of an economy - health care and food, for instance - are intertwined with the family decisions of the populace, says the report, which is co-sponsored by six international institutions and the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

Countries should strive for "sustainable fertility" of at least two children per woman or a total fertility rate of 2.1, the report says. Among developed countries, it adds, the U.S. is an "outlier" with its relatively stable 2.0 fertility rate. Elsewhere, "the average woman in a developed country now bears just 1.66 children," New America Foundation scholar Phillip Longman writes in the report.

Marriage also matters, the report says. Children raised in married, mother-father homes are the most likely to acquire the skills and behaviors conducive to becoming a "well-adjusted, productive" workforce. Also, "men who get and stay married work harder, work smarter, and earn more money than their unmarried peers."

Married couples with children are also economic "drivers" because they consume many services and goods, especially in child care, groceries, health care, home maintenance, household products, insurance and juvenile products, says W. Bradford Wilcox, associate sociology professor at UVa. and director of the National Marriage Project.

Married parents outspend childless singles and single parents in all these categories, and outspend married-but-childless couples in all but one category - "pets and toys," adds Mr. Wilcox. That's "probably because they are laying down big bucks for Fido."

The new report urges countries to find ways to encourage strong marriage and family cultures as an economic strategy, and, as if on cue, the Obama administration Monday announced grants of $119 million to promote "healthy marriage" and "responsible fatherhood."

"A strong and stable family is the greatest advantage any child can have," said George Sheldon, acting assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency awarded about $60 million to 61 marriage-strengthening groups, and $59 million to 59 fatherhood programs, including some that assist men leaving prison.

Frankly, marriage should be a top priority for policy makers. They shouldn't try to take over parenting or marriage counseling but they should eliminate policies which penalize people who marry and protect the commitments people make when they do marriage. And they should promote the positive message that marriage is good. The direct opposite from what we see in the entertainment world.

Another brewing crisis? Health care and out of control cost increases.

We didn't need another economic related crisis, we have another one with Obamacare -- the attempt to expand government control and relationship of our nation's health care system, which is about 18% of our nation's economy.

Obamacare house of cards is crumbling before our eyes. The Obama administration’s signature piece of legislation brings a sixth of the U.S. economy under federal control, and the writing is on the wall: Obamacare will collapse under the weight of its own false promises. The only mystery left is whether we will allow America to go down with it.

Remember when President Obama claimed over and over again that his health care plan would “bend the cost curve downward”? He even declared resolutely that he would not otherwise sign the bill. Well, add that to the growing list of Obamacare lies.

This is going to be a bumpy flight.

The nonprofit and nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation recently released the results of a survey that shakes the president’s health care law right down to its core. Health insurance premiums rose in 2011 to more than $15,000 per family for the first time in American history. Not surprisingly, Obamacare itself is to blame for much of the increase. The forced requirement to include adult “children” on their parents’ insurance up to the age of 26, as just one example, contributed to 20 percent of the increase.

Before Obamacare, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) projected annual health care spending would increase an average of 6.1 percent per year over the next decade. Despite the promises, after Obamacare passed, CMS recalculated its projections upward to 6.3 percent. Huh? Now the Kaiser survey shows that the actual results for the first year amounted to a 9 percent increase. Mr. Obama bent the cost curve all right - upward.

Are the increased costs justified, even if it does break the president’s cost-curve promise because, after all, Obamacare finally was going to provide insurance for 46 million uninsured people? Brace yourself. According to Gallup, the percentage of adults in America without health insurance has increased since Mr. Obama took office and since he signed Obamacare into law.

Please return your seat backs and tray tables to their full upright position. We are hitting some major turbulence now.

OK, so health care costs are going up because of Obamacare, and more adults are uninsured since it began - mostly because of Obamanomics (that’s another story) - but at least Mr. Obama promised it would reduce the deficit, right? Well, that was then, and this is now. Administration officials are quietly abandoning the so-called CLASS Act portion of Obamacare, supposedly meant to provide long-term elderly care. In reality, this was the mother of all accounting gimmicks, which counted 10 years of tax revenues but just five years of expenditures to give a false sense of fiscal sanity. Democratic senator and Obamacare supporter Kent Conrad of North Dakota called this “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.” Absent the accounting gimmicks, the Congressional Budget Office now acknowledges that Obamacare actually increases the national deficit by $540 billion over the next 10 years.

Should we be surprised that a promise of more health care, lower costs and no addition to our federal deficits is resulting in higher health care costs, higher taxes, and additions to our government's deficit? Some would argue this was the known outcome from the get go. It would lead to a greater crisis with calls for more government to solve it. But that's a topic for another day.

Fewer divorces, reconciliation and the reasons for divorce.

The economic hard times are keeping more married couples together and causing many to reconsider. This was pointed out in a recent USA Today story:

The Census bureau counted 65,000 fewer divorces in 2010 than in 2008, a 7% drop. The Census bureau counted 65,000 fewer divorces in 2010 than in 2008, a 7% drop. Observers say tough economic times mean many delay divorce; it's expensive to maintain separate households and pay attorney costs. It also may be difficult to sell the house to divide assets.

Observers say tough economic times mean many delay divorce; it's expensive to maintain separate households and pay attorney costs. It also may be difficult to sell the house to divide assets.

Also, 12% of parties in the process of divorce are still interested in reconciliation.

Doherty's survey of 2,484 parents who filed for divorce in Minnesota offers new insight into how people decide whether to call it quits or try again. About a quarter of those surveyed thought there was still hope for the marriage; in 12% of a subset of 329 couples, both partners independently indicated interest in reconciliation.

It was interesting seeing that the top reason for divorce wasn't abuse or infidelity but simply "growing apart". It points out the lack of commitment to marriage from the get go. From an understanding that marriage is a lifelong commitment to a relationship that can be discarded because "I've moved on".

Additional surveys in 2009-10 of 886 Minnesotans who filed for divorce dug deeper into contributing factors. "Growing apart" was the top reason, cited
by 55%, followed by "not able to talk together" (53%). Infidelity was cited
by 34%, the same percentage who cited "not enough attention."

Doherty says lack of attention from one's spouse and in-law problems were among reasons associated with partners thinking the marriage could be saved. Also, infidelity wasn't a factor in whether someone was open to reconciliation, he says.

Alan Hawkins, a professor of family life at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, says there's a lot of research on factors that predict divorce but "virtually no research on the thinking process."

Iris Krasnow interviewed more than 200 women for her book, The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes to Stay Married. "Splitting up crosses people's minds more than I imagined," she says. And "those on second marriages were not any happier than they were in their first. Many times, you're trading in one set of problems for another."

I've been saying the biggest long term crisis facing American society is the breakdown of marriage and families. If this continues unabated, the future of nation is at stake, because marriage and family are the foundation of society.