Governor pushes discrimination with inclusion of domestic partner benefits in state contracts.

Now that the state legislature is no longer controlled by Republicans, Governor Dayton is intent on pushing domestic partner benefits for state employees.  While I haven't seen the contract language I presume it's predicated on a sexual relationship, e.g. just for gay and lesbians.  If so, he's clearly discriminating against other people who care for one another who aren't married.  This would include parent and adult child, siblings, non-homosexual friends who live in the same home, etc.  The goal isn't to address all people who might care for another person but push for recognition of only homosexual couples.

Disabilities treaty implicating parental rights, abortion, and US sovereignty defeated in US Senate

Efforts to pass a treaty dealing with disabilities was defeated in the US Senate by a 61 to 36 vote.  They needed 67 votes to pass it.  Concerns were raised over abortion, parental rights and US sovereignty.

The U.S. Senate has voted down a treaty that opponents warned could widen acceptance of abortion, deny the parents of special needs children their rights, and compromise U.S. sovereignty.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) failed to be ratified after a 61-38 vote.

“Today’s vote was a victory for human rights and for American sovereignty,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, an organization that testified against the treaty.

Article 25 of the CRPD called on nations to furnish the disabled “free or affordable health care…including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based public health programmes.” Pro-life leaders warned that language could be interpreted to include abortion, as it has in the case of other UN treaties.

“The irony of including abortion in this treaty is that abortion especially targets the disabled in the womb,” Josh Craddock, international representative for Personhood USA, said in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com. “Persons with disabilities should not be exposed to violence and discrimination, either before or after birth.”

Whenever a UN treaty comes up for ratification I'm always concerned about the broader ramifications.  This proposed treaty is another case in point.

The reality of Obamacare. Layoffs, cut hours, dropping health insurance.

This story from one company highlights the inherent problems Obamacare is bringing on the business community and people's health care.  

When Mary Miller, CEO of Cincinnati’s Jancoa Janitorial Services, testified July 10 before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, her message was clear: The federal healthcare law would force her and her husband “to choose between several impossible options in order to remain in business.” The options: either increase premiums for her 320 full-time employees, cease coverage and pay a more than $600,000 penalty, or downgrade workers to part-time status.

So far, the company hasn’t had layoffs and can operate until 2014 without incurring penalties. But other companies, especially larger companies, are taking preemptive steps to avoid the impact of the healthcare law. 

The law requires employers to provide health insurance for employees working more than 30 hours a week. So grocery retailer Kroger, with more than 350,000 employees, said it will limit part-time employees to 28 hours per week. Darden Restaurants—which employs 185,000 people at Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, and other chains—said it will experiment with “limiting the hours of some of its workers to avoid health care requirements under the Affordable Care Act.” John Schnatter, founder and CEO of Papa John’s Pizza, said the new law would cost Papa John’s between $5 million and $8 million annually. Customers and employees will bear most of these costs, he said.

Obamacare doesn’t just hit low-wage retail and fast-food employees. Medical device manufacturers, who typically hire high-wage, technically trained workers, also take a hit from the mandated medical device tax. Welch Allyn, a New York manufacturer of medical diagnostic equipment, announced in September it would lay off 275 employees, or roughly 10 percent of its workforce, over the next three years. The conservative group FreedomWorks said at least 10 medical device companies have announced more than 5,000 job cuts since passage of the Affordable Care Act. Boston Scientific plans 1,200 to 1,400 job cuts, but spokesman Steven Campanini told WORLD the job cuts are “not related to Obamacare. We are going through a re-structuring plan. We’re aligning our business to the markets we serve.” Campanini acknowledged, though, that Boston Scientific has worked to repeal the medical device tax, which he called an “innovation tax.”

And that may be the most significant long-term cost of Obamacare: that it stifles innovation and entrepreneurship. Jancoa’s Mary Miller said her company started a “Dream Manager” program that allowed her mostly low-wage employees to achieve long-term goals such as purchasing a home and starting a business. “Our mantra has been to take the ‘dead-end’ out of ‘dead-end jobs’ and let our employees grow.” Federal healthcare, she said, will likely force her to “put an end to our very successful Dream Manager program. Regrettably, for me and my employees, the new health care law is a ‘dream killer.’”

In the name of universal health care coverage, Obamacare intends to put the government further in charge of our health care system.  That will only mean higher costs and rationing.  It's not a pretty picture.  The answer?  Restoring a consumer centered health care system in which individuals are able to buy their own health care insurance in a fully operational, free market system.  And help the truly needy who can't afford health care.  Imbedding the government more fully in the health care system will only make matters worse.

Minnesota Lottery preying on Minnesotans.

The Minnesota Lottery is working to take more money from Minnesota's problem gamblers.  They're doing this by starting a pilot program placing lottery tickets at ATMs and gas pumps.  The reason this initiative targets problem gamblers is they disproportionately account for a large majority of sales.  It's estimated that 10% of gamblers account for 70 to 80% of video gambling/ lottery sales.

Lottery jackpots are growing bigger more quickly, and ticket sales are soaring all over the country.

Now Minnesota is the first state to make buying tickets even faster, at gas pumps and ATMs.

With a debit card, driver's license and cellphone number, buyers can try their luck at a touch screen. The system is being piloted at nine gas stations and 19 ATMs in the Twin Cities, allowing people to buy quick-pick Powerball and Mega Millions tickets without going inside to a counter. Since October, about $5,260 worth of Powerball tickets have been sold that way.

"People are always in a hurry nowadays," said Minnesota Lottery Executive Director Ed Van Petten. "The thought is it takes 10 to 15 seconds to go through the process, and I think people would say, 'Why not. I'll give it a shot.' "

Andrew Anderson, who works at the BP station at Calhoun Beach in Minneapolis, said in the days leading up to last week's record Powerball drawing, many patrons avoided convenience store counters.

"A lot of people just want to pay at the pump now," Anderson said....

Lottery buyers insert their debit card into the slot used to pay for gasoline. They then select a prompt to buy tickets, choose how many, and after entering a cellphone number and other identification information, a ticket is dispensed with their numbers. A $1 fee is charged for each transaction, and the minimum is three Powerball or five Mega Millions tickets. A text message also is sent to a cellphone with a link to the numbers....

 

The convenient way of buying a lottery ticket arrives when sales in Minnesota already are at an all-time high. Sales for the 2012 fiscal year, which ended June 30, topped $520 million, an increase of $15.6 million from the previous year.

Minnesota was one of at least two dozen states to post record sales over the past year.

For last week's big Powerball jackpot, 130,000 tickets a minute were being sold nationally — about six times the volume two weeks ago.

The large jackpots often cause sales to skyrocket, which means higher revenue for participating states....

 

Andrea Davis, 23, of Minneapolis, was one of them. She only occasionally buys lottery tickets, but the new technology may change that.

"I'd be more apt to buy one if I don't have to come inside," she said. "I usually pay with my debit card at the pump."

Traditionally, a problem gambler had to venture out to casino or go up to a window to buy tickets, now they can do it when they get cash from an ATM or buy gas.

 

It's the children, stupid.

The 1992 Clinton Campaign made famous the phrase, "It's the economy stupid". It was his theme for defeating President George Bush Sr.

I think a modified phrase, "It's the children stupid" applies to an analysis of the future well-being of our society.

I know folks on the left love to trumpet children to expand spending on social programs though many of the initiatives are often anti-children, e.g. pro-abortion policies and funding kill unborn children, birth control advocacy results in fewer children, and gay "marriage" intentionally denies what children need most - both their mom and their dad in their lives.

Ross Douthat conservative columnist with the New York Times has an interesting article on the declining birth rates in the US, "More Babies, Please."

First, the US's birth rate has geopolitical implications.

In the eternally recurring debates about whether some rival great power will knock the United States off its global perch, there has always been one excellent reason to bet on a second American century: We have more babies than the competition.

It’s a near-universal law that modernity reduces fertility. But compared with the swiftly aging nations of East Asia and Western Europe, the American birthrate has proved consistently resilient, hovering around the level required to keep a population stable or growing over the long run.

America’s demographic edge has a variety of sources: our famous religiosity, our vast interior and wide-open spaces (and the four-bedroom detached houses they make possible), our willingness to welcome immigrants (who tend to have higher birthrates than the native-born).

It implicates economic growth.

And it clearly is an edge. Today’s babies are tomorrow’s taxpayers and workers and entrepreneurs, and relatively youthful populations speed economic growth and keep spending commitments affordable. Thanks to our relative demographic dynamism, the America of 50 years hence may not only have more workers per retiree than countries like Japan and Germany, but also have more than emerging powers like China and Brazil.

 But now it's dropping dramatically.

If, that is, our dynamism persists. But that’s no longer a sure thing. American fertility plunged with the stock market in 2008, and it hasn’t recovered. Last week, the Pew Research Center reported that U.S. birthrates hit the lowest rate ever recorded in 2011, with just 63 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. (The rate was 71 per 1,000 in 1990.) For the first time in recent memory, Americans are having fewer babies than the French or British.

The plunge might be temporary. American fertility plummeted during the Great Depression, and more recent downturns have produced modest dips as well. This time, the birthrate has fallen fastest among foreign-born Americans, and particularly among Hispanics, who saw huge amounts of wealth evaporate with the housing bust. Many people may simply be postponing childbearing until better times return, and a few years of swift growth could produce a miniature baby boom.

 Immigrants won't fill the gap.

But deeper forces than the financial crisis may keep American fertility rates depressed. Foreign-born birthrates will probably gradually recover from their current nadir, but with fertility in decline across Mexico and Latin America, it isn’t clear that the United States can continue to rely heavily on immigrant birthrates to help drive population growth.

Among the native-born working class, meanwhile, there was a retreat from child rearing even before the Great Recession hit. For Americans without college degrees, economic instability and a shortage of marriageable men seem to be furthering two trends in tandem: more women are having children out of wedlock, and fewer are raising families at all.

 Then he discusses why it's happening.

Finally, there’s been a broader cultural shift away from a child-centric understanding of romance and marriage. In 1990, 65 percent of Americans told Pew that children were “very important” to a successful marriage; in 2007, just before the current baby bust, only 41 percent agreed. (That trend goes a long way toward explaining why gay marriage, which formally severs wedlock from sex differences and procreation, has gone from a nonstarter to a no-brainer for so many people.)

 What can be done to change it, by the government?  Some things but the problem goes much deeper.

Government’s power over fertility rates is limited, but not nonexistent. America has no real family policy to speak of at the moment, and the evidence from countries like Sweden and France suggests that reducing the ever-rising cost of having kids can help fertility rates rebound. Whether this means a more family-friendly tax code, a push for more flexible work hours, or an effort to reduce the cost of college, there’s clearly room for creative policy to make some difference.

  Then he points out that low birth rates are a symptom of -- decadence.

More broadly, a more secure economic foundation beneath working-class Americans would presumably help promote childbearing as well. Stable families are crucial to prosperity and mobility, but the reverse is also true, and policies that made it easier to climb the economic ladder would make it easier to raise a family as well.

Beneath these policy debates, though, lie cultural forces that no legislator can really hope to change. The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.

Such decadence need not be permanent, but neither can it be undone by political willpower alone. It can only be reversed by the slow accumulation of individual choices, which is how all social and cultural recoveries are ultimately made. 

 Strong words but it's important we face these developments square on.