Like you, I'm sure, I watch a lot of the TV talk shows. Things seems to be changing so fast, and there are constantly "breaking news" announcements interrupting the shows themselves. It's hard to keep up, but I want to know who did what, and why. How did we get into this mess? And does anybody know a way out? A way back to what we had?
Are there answers? Real, substantive, effective answers?
YES … but first, we've got to ask the right questions!
I've mentioned this famous fable before in one of my columns, but I mention it here again, because most everybody is familiar with it. It's the story of the "Emperor's New Clothes," the pompous ruler who was so vain he paraded around naked, convinced he was wearing the world's most expensive and elegant diaphanous garments, intimidating his subjects into professing they, too, saw and marveled at his grandeur.
But it's mainly the story of the naïve little boy who, looking honestly at the ridiculous ruler, exclaimed loudly, "The emperor has no clothes on! Look, he's naked, Mommy. Why doesn't he have any clothes on?"
It was the right question.
I like that kid. I want to be like him.
So … I'm asking the two vital questions all the blathering "news people" and "reporters" haven't had the courage, or the common sense, to ask on two of the most pressing issues of the day.
One: Why was a Canadian company, with no previous experience, given $687,000,000 to create the monstrosity called the Obamacare website and operational rat's nest?
Two: Why isn't anybody defending the right of any business or property owner to serve anybody he wants to or decline to produce products that offend his own religious beliefs?
When these questions are honestly and objectively asked, there are answers – and the American people deserve to know them. And we absolutely must insist that our elected representatives get to the bottom of these things and make the facts known to all of us.
First, this governmental takeover of the health-care system is a giant, virulent cancer eating away at our very bowels, economically and politically. Millions are losing their previous insurance, millions are being shepherded obediently into "better" policies they didn't want, insurance companies are floundering and trying to cope with all the hidden and "evolving" regulations in the incomprehensible "Affordable Care Act," nightmarish unpayable debt is being loaded on bewildered taxpayers – and Congress is focusing on the symptoms, not the cause.
On Oct. 25, 2013, a diligent political reporter named Patrick Howley uncovered the cause in the Daily Caller. He revealed that the "U.S. arm" of a Canadian company, CGI Federal, was given the contract to construct the projected website engine of Obamacare. At least four other companies, American-based and with more experience, submitted bids – but only CGI was considered by the administration, and was summarily awarded the contract with $687 million dollars attached!
Reporter Howley didn't have to do much research to uncover the relationship between Senior VP of CGI Toni Townes-Whitley and her fellow Princeton alumna, Michelle Obama.
Both were lauded members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, Class of '85.
Further, Howley divulged that president of CGI, George Schindler, became a significant donor to the Obama 2012 re-election campaign after CGI was awarded the massive contract.
Then the whole project was turned over to Kathleen Sebelius to be "overseen" by the Department of Health and Human Services. With $687,000,000 to spend! What has resulted is a Solyndra-on-steroids example of political patronage, a naked squandering of billions in taxpayer funds, creating a logistical quagmire that has thrown the whole nation into mounting turmoil!
And the other related questions are still begging:
Who specifically authorized this?
Where did all those millions go?
Who profited enormously, and how?
Where are the millions that obviously couldn't have been spent on creating what is basically a function of computers and technology?
And when will our elected representatives rise up and demand the answers?
The second vital question is much more easily answered, once asked.
At what point, and under what authority, was the right of a property owner or business operator to make his own decisions about who he wanted to do business with taken away?
Yes, civil rights legislation decreed that businesses catering to the public at large couldn't discriminate on the basis of color or race. Anybody could walk into a restaurant or store and be served whatever the business was selling. That was only right, especially where other business options might be scarce.
But nowhere, constitutionally or otherwise, has it been decreed that privately owned businesses are obligated, required, to create programs and products that promote behavior and lifestyles that directly confront and offend their own religious beliefs! That is not the same thing as serving food or selling dresses. And today, there are plenty of businesses that will create and produce anything a customer wants.
This is where the free market, and liberty itself, come into play.
Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned popular business, is being threatened with massive, destructive fines if it won't provide contraception and abortion services to their employees – when those employees can obtain those things elsewhere, without offending the very principles on which the business is founded.
Homosexual lobbying groups mounted huge demonstrations against Chick-Fil-A because its founder expressed personal views they disagree with – ignoring the fact that the popular food company has been happily serving all its customers, homosexual included, with no questions asked, for years!
These well-funded lobbying groups are not satisfied with getting the goods and services they want; they're determined to police the thoughts and beliefs of the business owners they disagree with! And because they control so much of the media and can fund and affect election campaigns, political leaders are cowed into going along with this Big Brother intimidation.
But will a homosexual baker be forced to cater a Chick-Fil-A event? An Islamist photographer record a Jewish wedding? A Jewish baker be compelled to produce a cake with a big swastika for a neo-Nazi group?
The simple answer to this vital question is written in the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all rights are granted to all men equally by our Creator, but that these include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – not the dominance of one group or ideology enforced on another.
In fact, the answers to these and all our other vital questions must be pursued by men and women who will balance our rights and liberties with goodwill, equality and constitutional authority.