Some thoughts on how to oppose the vaccine mandate

Abstract: My Christian faith will not allow me to bend the knee to an unjust mandate that violates the dignity of human beings by denying them free will when it comes to their own persons and classifies those who refuse the vaccine specifically or the mandate generally because it effectively declares such people as “disabled” according to the law of the land.

NOTE: I am not a lawyer, I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn last night. I consider myself a well-educated person with experience in theology and regulatory analysis. The following is an attempt to bring those two worlds together to demonstrate the complexity surrounding opposing the government overreach of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. I’m using the plain language of the Constitution, fully realizing that the Bill of Rights has been watered down significantly in its 230-year history (btw, 12/15/2021 is the 230th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights). I think it’s time we start reclaiming the plain language of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as intended by our founding fathers.

This article is copublished on my http://sundaymorninggreekblog.wordpress.com.

The Biblical Argument for Freedom of Choice Over One’s Body

One of the key verses on human freedom in the Scriptures is 1 Corinthians 7:21–24:

²¹ Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. ²² For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave. ²³ You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings. ²⁴ Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.

The idea here is that Christianity in its early days understood that slavery was part of the human condition, but that it was not the ideal situation for humanity. Christianity has a long tradition of fighting against slavery and promoting free will (e.g., Augustine’s On Grace and Free Will), so when people began to migrate from Europe, often from places where they did not have religious freedom, the founding fathers incorporated freedom of religious expression into the constitution. Christians eventually led the effort to overturn slavery in the United States by siding with the North and offering refuge for slaves that escaped from the South.

So the founding principle of freedom directly derives from the biblical and theological concept of free will. We see these embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as well, which I will address shortly.

The ministry of Jesus Christ is founded in part on the words of the prophet Isaiah in 61:1–2a (which Luke records Jesus reciting in his gospel, 4:18-19):

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
Because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good new to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,

To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

As Christians, we carry on the ministry of Jesus to “proclaim freedom for the captives.” The “captives,” in this case, are those who are unjustly being denied work because for whatever reason, they do not want to heed a government mandate. I will demonstrate later that, based on the definitions in the U.S. Code, every vaccine mandate (Federal Employee, Federal Contractor, and OSHA) creates a new class of disability that includes the unvaccinated and those who refuse to heed the unconstitutional demand for their protected, private health papers. In other words, the mandate attacks the dignity of those who want to work but are prohibited from doing so. (On the dignity of work, see such passages as Ecclesiastes 2:24–26, 1 Thessalonians 5:14, and 2 Thessalonians 3:6–13.)

Galatians 5:1   It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Freedom is not just a spiritual concept in the Christian faith. In the 1 Corinthians passage above, we are encouraged not only to obtain our freedom, but to maintain it and not go back into slavery. Christ’s ministry helps his followers do that through the example of his compassion to the lost and his confrontation of corrupt leadership. In this Galatians passage, we’re told to “stand firm,” which coincides with Paul’s exhortation in the final chapter of Ephesians, where he tells Christ-followers to “stand firm” against everyone and everything that would try to destroy our freedom and faith in Christ and draw us back into slavery again.

Peter emphasizes the intersectionality of faith and politics:

1 Peter 2:16–17: Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

It is important to recognize that the supreme power of the day was the emperor. He had no one to answer to, and he ruled absolutely; the emperor was the highest law in the land. In the American system, absolute power does not reside with the president, either branch of congress, the courts, or any executive departments, but in the Constitution. The U.S. Constitution is the highest law in the land and the standard against which all other laws are judged.

The other aspect of Peter’s statement here is that he says believers should live as God’s slaves. This means, for our own bodies, that we live for God, and we belong to God. We do NOT belong to the State. God created mankind; the State did not. God breathed life into the human body; the State did not. God sustains his creation; the State does not. We are responsible for our eternal fate before God; the State has no legitimate power to affect or effect our relationship with God. So this is just one reason why a Christ follower should not be subject to a mandate regarding our own bodies: we have personal autonomy that the State should not and has no right to violate (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons…shall not be violated”; U.S. Constitution, 4^th Amendment).

This must be kept in mind when we come to Paul’s discussion of the intersection of faith and politics in Romans 13:1–7. In his day, all authorities were human beings. In our day, as I said above, the ultimate “governing authority” is the U.S. Constitution.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.  Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.  For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.  For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.  Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.  Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

At first one may think that opposing a mandate would be akin to not submitting to government authorities, but a problem arises when government dictates contradict established law or the Constitutional authority that supports the law. It is at that point that a person of faith is put in a position of which law to obey. As I’ve stated above, the U.S. Constitution is the highest governing authority in the land, so as both a Christian and American, my highest political allegiance is to the U.S. Constitution; not to a person or political leader, but to the principles embodied in the Constitution and its Bill of Rights and other amendments. I should add that I believe the Constitution was written by men who had a profound understanding of the relationship between the free expression of religion (one of the reasons the original pilgrims came to the North American continent) and political freedom. I believe that the Constitution had its origin, in part at least, in mind of God as revealed to the founding fathers.

So when I look at political actors, I must always turn to the Constitution to judge the actions of those who claim and have taken an oath to protect, defend, and enforce it. If I see that such actors are rebelling against the authority of the Constitution, they are rebelling against what God has instituted, according to the Romans passage above, and I owe them no allegiance to the extent they are demanding behaviors and policies that violate the plain language of the Constitution.

The preceding line of reasoning leads to the most salient point of all when it comes to the COVID vaccine mandate: I belong to God, not to the State, and the State has no power to compel me to any action that is not specifically outlined in the Constitution. The Bible supports paying taxes to the government, regardless of what we think of their politics, and I willingly do so. We have a Constitutional amendment that allows for that taxation as well, so I have no conflict with my Christian faith in that regard. In fact, it is in the context of people asking Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar that he makes the following statement, which is the most concise statement anyone could make for a religious exemption, as it perfectly resolves the tension between being a political subject and a subject in the kingdom of God:

Matthew 22:21b: “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

The U.S. government prints money and puts their seal on it, therefore that money is “Caesar’s.” But as I said above, I belong to God, not to Caesar, not to the State, not to Joe Biden, not to Donald Trump, certainly not to Anthony Fauci, and not to any political leader. Nor do I belong to the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution is made for We the People; We the People were not made for the Constitution. I am God’s. The State doesn’t own me, so the State can’t impose a mandate on my body.

The Intersection of My Faith With the Constitution

The State has no legitimate power over my person. Here is where the intersection of my faith jibes with the 4^th Amendment in the Bill of Rights:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Almost every part of this amendment is violated by the vaccine mandate. Asking for protected, private health information is akin to an unreasonable search of my physical body.

• The plain meaning of “probable cause” is that someone suspects a crime has been committed, and failing to be vaccinated, or failing to document your vaccination, is not a crime, but a condition of employment. Because no crimes have been committed, the searches for and seizures of protected, private health information are unreasonable.
• My COVID vaccination card is a “paper” again not subject to an unreasonable search or seizure.
• The statement “rights…shall not be violated” is absolute, save the qualification of “Warrants.”
• Any “warrant” issued to try to seize one’s protected, private health information, especially in the form of a paper card or electronic image of such, must “particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” In other words, the government is not allowed to issue a general “warrant” that applies to all working citizens in the United States without “particular description.” Instead, to comply with the plain language of the Constitution, the government must issue separate warrants for each individual with the particular language of each person’s name, address, and information sought. That’s a lot of warrants! The purpose of such “particular” warrants would be to allow individuals to protest the terms of the search and seizure if they so desire.

Not only does my faith intersect with the 4^th Amendment, but it also intersects with the 5^th Amendment as well:

No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

My protected, private health information is my property, and I am allowed the right to keep that property in the absence of any due process. The government has the burden of proof to deprive me of such, and I have an individual right to challenge such attempted deprivation. Additionally, since the government claims that they need my protected, private health information as a matter of public health, they are taking my private property for public use and not compensating me justly.

And if violating two amendments of the Bill of Rights isn’t enough, my faith intersects with the 8^th Amendment as well, as I desire to protect the free citizens of the United States from the oppression of “excessive fines imposed” and “cruel and unusual punishment” for failure to heed the mandate. The proposed $14,000 per infraction fine is excessive. And it is cruel and unusual punishment to fire workers based on a medical condition. If it is illegal for an insurance company to deny someone health insurance coverage based on a preexisting condition, then it is illegal to deny someone a job based on their health or vaccination status. This is nothing short of tyranny.

Somebody must stand up to this abuse of power by the government. People are getting tired of it. Not only is the mandate unconstitutional, but it is overreach as well, because the 10^th Amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

How the Vaccine Mandate Trashes the Dignity of Humanity

The Americans With Disabilities Act (42 USC 12102) defines disability in this way:

(1) Disability

The term “disability” means, with respect to an individual-

• a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual;
• a record of such an impairment; or
• being regarded as having such an impairment (as described in paragraph (3)).

(2) Major life activities

• In general

For purposes of paragraph (1), major life activities include, but are not limited to, caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working.

Vaccine hesitancy is a documented mental health issue and has been since the advent of vaccines. The Diagnostic & Statistics Manual, 5^th Edition (DSM-V) lists blood-injection-injury on its specific phobia scale.[1] The etiology of vaccine hesitancy is highly complex and not always based on irrationality. Many have thoughtfully considered whether they should subject themselves or their children to some or all vaccines. Here is how one article from 2013 describes the decision-making process on vaccines:

Many interventions are designed with the assumption that resistance to vaccination can be countered by supplying probabilistic information about vaccine risks and benefits. From this perspective, individuals who have concerns or doubts regarding vaccination are often assumed to be irrational, emotional, ill-informed, or to be manipulated by anti-vaccination groups….individual decision-making about vaccination is influenced by many different factors, including the fact that some of those who have doubts and concerns about vaccine safety use an entirely different decision-making model or subscribe to a different set of beliefs about health and illness. Supplying additional probabilistic information may not adequately address individual concerns.[2]

In the face of such a complex decision-making process, especially in a society that, at least on parchment, supports freedom of speech and thought along with personal liberty, it is nothing short of an insult to limit the vaccine hesitant to simplistic, single-track paths toward seeking exemptions. Exemption requests are allowed for two basic reasons: Medical or Ethical/Religious. Why is there not an exemption path for well-informed people, especially for those who work in the field of pharmaceuticals and the regulations surrounding them, to proffer their own reasoned arguments against submitting to a mandate for experimental vaccines that have not yet completed their full clinical trials and for which we have little public data or reporting (perhaps by design?) on any adverse effects. There have been enough media reports about potential vaccine-related health issues and even fatalities to raise significant concerns in the minds of some.

As such then, a mandate is violation of the freedom and personal autonomy I have defended and explained earlier in this essay. A general, universal mandate with little concern for people’s hesitancy to comply (whether it be with the imposition of the mandate apart from any hesitancy or taking the vaccine itself) degrades the individual freedoms we as Americans should be able to enjoy. It is a blow to our dignity and our freedom. At some point, and I think we are getting very near that point in America based on what is going on in Europe, the attacks on our freedom will awaken the sleeping giant of freedom fighters everywhere. Add to that an extremely low case-fatality rate for COVID-19, much lower than smoking-related deaths, and it should be easy to see why some suspect the government of hypocrisy or selective targeting with these mandates.

To get back to the Americans With Disabilities Act, then, vaccine hesitancy, regardless of whether it is fueled by irrational or rational thought, should be considered an “impairment” for purposes of the law in that a failure to be vaccinated (or rather the reluctance to turn over private health information to document vaccination) severely limits the major life activity of working. It should NOT be a basis for discrimination in the workplace at any level, whether a Federal or State employee, Federal or State contractor, or most of the rest of the working population subject to the overreaching OSHA rule. The mandate effectively creates a new class of disability, which strikes at the dignity of those who have this impairment, something the Americans With Disabilities Act was designed to counter.

It is also clear to me that the COVID-19 vaccines are proving to be ineffective. We have had more COVID-19 deaths in 2021 since the vaccine was approved (and with a significant portion of the public having both initial shots) than in 2020 before the vaccine. None of this is helped by such things as Dr. Fauci’s cacophany of conflicting comments for the past two years, the broken promise of the current president who at first said there would be no mandate, and the other failures in his administration that have driven his approval rating and American’s confidence in him into the toilet—it’s no wonder people don’t trust the mandate.

The mandate in the current climate has the appearance of an authoritarian move by a desperate man to try to salvage some semblance of control amidst the utter chaos of his administration. The mandate shows ZERO respect for the liberties and freedoms we as Americans should be enjoying. As a Christian, I feel it is my duty to speak up for these freedoms and liberties as I described above and protect the dignity of my fellow man. I respectfully submit my request to be exempted from the mandate to turn over my protected, private health information to the government.

I will make this offer, however: I am not opposed to the vaccine, only to the mandate. I am willing to sign an affidavit under penalty of termination that I have received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine, but I am not willing to turn over any official records of my health history to or for a government that has shown no respect for my personal freedom and has trampled on the dignity of the free and the brave.

Scott Stocking

My opinions are my own.

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[1] Freeman D et al (2021). Injection fears and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Psychological Medicine 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291721002609 Accessed 11/23/21

[2] Dubé, E., Laberge, C., Guay, M., Bramadat, P., Roy, R., & Bettinger, J. (2013). Vaccine hesitancy: an overview. Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, 9(8), 1763–1773. https://doi.org/10.4161/hv.24657 Accessed 11/23/21

#ToxicMasculinity: Walking Like an Egyptian Pharaoh–2021 Update

Author’s note: I am copublishing this article on my Sunday Morning Greek Blog as well.

Back in February 2019, I wrote in my Sunday Morning Greek Blog about the hot topic du jour, Toxic Masculinity. As I said at the time, I thought the Left and the so-called Progressives (they’re really regressive) had worse examples of toxic males than anything they were complaining about on the right, including then President Trump. This included especially Virginia’s governor Ralph Northam for his suggestion that a woman may have the right to euthanize her child both before and after birth; and the now defrocked (for another sort of toxic masculinity) New York governor Cuomo for suggesting abortion should be legal up until the time of birth.

But since Joe Biden was inaugurated by an election fraught with irregularities nationwide, he has to take the cake for toxic masculinity. Now I know there are serious questions about whether he’s even psychologically capable of leading the country, let alone caring for his own personal needs, but since he’s the president and he’s trying to portray himself as competent, he’s open to the same criticisms as every other president. Personally, I think he’s just a puppet, and some other toxically masculine and toxically feminine men and women are pulling his strings, but the following criticisms would apply equally to them as they would to the president.

This last week, since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, has amplified Biden’s (and his handlers’) toxicity. In the first place, almost all major media outlets, Left and Right, have been pointing out his inconsistent statements, outright lies, inability to understand (supposedly) conditions on the ground in Afghanistan, and his general ignorationalizations (a term I’ve coined to mean actions that fail to account for obvious facts that cannot and should not be overlooked). Most notedly, his response to George Stephanopoulos’s question about the Afghani’s who fell from C17 as it ascended out of Kabul last week displays the utter lack of compassion he has for the situation: “That was 4 or 5 days ago.” In other words, “Why does that matter?” Absolutely disgusting and contemptible. If Trump had said something like that, toxically feminine Speaker Pelosi (am I insulting women to call her feminine?) would have had him drawn and quartered within the hour; no impeachment trial necessary.

Let’s add to this the other toxically masculine so-called leaders surrounding Biden. Pentagon spox John Kirby couldn’t muster up the cajones to call the Taliban the enemy, and he said the Pentagon had no idea how many Americans were now behind enemy lines. No wonder they don’t have a plan to collect our patriots. General Mark Milley thought it was more important in the last 7 months to bad mouth our military heroes for being “white supremacists” and “insurrectionists” for holding conservative views than it was to have a solid plan to exit Afghanistan safely. Looks like he had no clue that the real insurrectionists were just waiting for American troops to leave so they could recapture the country for their barbaric beliefs. And retired general and DOD secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken appear to have been completely inept at not only coordinating communications, but at pushing back on Biden’s disastrous choices to apparently ignore all of the evidence they had to indicate such a disaster was just around the corner. Really, what difference would it have made if the Taliban had taken over later than sooner? All the work of our brave soldiers who gave Afghanis a taste for freedom would have gone to naught either way.

Add to all of these foreign policy failures the absolute debacle of the border crisis, squandering our energy independence (and low gas prices), and perpetuating ridiculous social policies contrary to common sense, and we have the perfect picture of what the dereliction and dissolution of duty does to a country led by toxic males who, as C.S. Lewis described them, have no chests.

And so I say to my brothers and sisters in the faith: it is time for all believers everywhere to lift up holy hands and pray not just for the security and survival of America. but for Afghanis and the whole world. America has been a guarantor of freedom for over 200 years; the toxic males (and females) of the Biden administration have all but sacrificed that noble and vaunted position by their own ignorationality and given other political aggressors a green light to carry out their hegemonies. If Moses can speak to Pharaoh for the freedom of the Israelites; if Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets can speak against the nations for ignoring God; if Jesus can confront the religious oppressors of his day; if Paul can proclaim the Gospel to upper echelons of Roman political leadership; then surely we who are alive today can speak truth to power and ACT to secure freedom for the captives (see Isaiah 61, the passage on which Jesus based his ministry, a ministry that we as the body of Christ should continually carry out). We need another miracle like Moses at the Red Sea or the fall of Sennacherib in Hezekiah’s reign to topple the terrorists. To appropriate Saint Bede’s line: “When America falls, the world shall fall.”

My opinions are my own.

Scott Stocking

The “Alternate Facts” of the Left (#SustainableAmerica)

I came back to my desk in my three-desk cubicle area to a conversation between my two managers discussing with some disdain Kellyanne Conway’s use of the phrase “alternate facts,” saying that they knew something was wrong with her for using that phrase. I found myself feeling a bit oppressed by that attitude, and I immediately began, in my mind, identifying the “alternate facts” that the Left has been throwing at conservatives, and especially conservative Christians. Although the term may be new in the American vernacular, it has been the practice of the Left for more than 50 years.

Let’s start with the classic debate about intelligent design versus evolution. Evolution has never been proven beyond a shadow of doubt and has been called into question by numerous prominent scientists. Yet Christians who believe in the absolute truth of Scripture are told they’re foolish for rejecting this so-called science. They seize the opportunity to discredit the faith of billions across the millennia, who believe a loving God created them and sustains them for a purpose, for a newfangled theory that removes any source of moral absolutes from their worldview. After all, if we’re just descendants of some primordial slime, we don’t have a Creator to answer to, and there’s no solid foundation for a moral code.

To go along with that, there’s the alternate truth about “separation of Church and State.” The Founding Fathers of these United States never intended that religion should have no place in the government or in government-funded institutions. That is so absurd! If that had been the intention, why would Jefferson have evoked the Creator for our “inalienable rights”? The corollary to that is, if the left says there’s no Creator, then what does that do to our inalienable rights? The “wall of separation” Jefferson was talking about refers to a one-way door: government has no business intruding on religion, but that is exactly what happened in the Obama administration! A baker was punished not only for his exercise of religious freedom, but also for the exercise of his rights to freedom of association and freedom of speech.

And let’s follow the “inalienable rights” connection a little farther down the trail. Since the Left denies the Creator, theoretically then, they don’t believe in the inalienable rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. But as we’ve seen, this not just a theory or hypothesis; this is how the Left acts! Political correctness is the embodiment of the Nero Redivivus myth: the government and the minority political correct oligarchy have been telling us for the last 8 years that we have to think and act a certain way, or we’re hatemongers, bigots, homophobes, racists, and a host of other pejoratives. How is that “life” if we’re expected to live like everyone else, and live at a lower standard to boot? How is that “liberty” if we have no freedom to dissent? How can we pursue “happiness” if politically correct culture is solely focused on keeping the minority 1 to 2 percent happy? The Left has come full circle from King George. They seek to impose (by mob rule of late) the religion of secularism on everyone else and persecute any shred of non-Islamic religion. (Because, of course, it’s politically incorrect to say anything bad about Islam, even though one branch of it is decidedly terroristic.)

And need I go into the other “alternate truths” the left has out there?

• King David was a homosexual, because the Bible makes reference to him using a common middle eastern greeting (still in use today) between two people of a kiss on either cheek. Talk about historical revisionism!
• Abortion isn’t murder or killing, it’s just a surgical procedure. The fetus in the womb isn’t human and has no rights because it’s not viable outside the womb. Yeah, somebody send those idiots back to Anatomy 101.
• Gender is a social construct. Oh really, so now you’re rejecting the hard sciences in favor of some wacko sociopolitical agenda?
• Man is responsible for climate change. Umm, that was going on long before the industrial era. Continental drift and seismic and volcanic activity have had more impact on the Earth’s climate than man will ever have.
• God is dead. If that’s show, then show me the corpse.

The Right, and conservatives generally, now have a champion against these alternate truths of the Left, and so far, he is proving himself a capable commander-in-chief in that charge. Congress needs to step up and follow his leadership, and judges need to get back to the Constitution and quit promulgating their sociopolitical agenda. Those on the right need to rally behind our champion and pray for his success.

Scott Stocking

My views are my own. Period.

The Left’s Hangover and Withdrawal (#SustainableAmerica)

Eureka! By George, I think I’ve figured it out!

What?! What is it, Scott?!?!

I think I’ve figured out what’s going on with the Left. They’re coming out of an 8-year long drunken revelry. The hangover started early in the morning of November 9 when it became clear that Donald J. Trump had won a constitutional, political and, I would argue, spiritual victory over arguably the most prominent icon of the Left, Hillary Clinton, and the spiritual powers behind her. The symptoms are all there.

Drunk with Power

Here’s what happened in the drunken stage. For 8 years, the Leftist powers in the Executive Branch of government systematically began to dismantle all that conservatives, and conservative Christians especially, held dear. The first domino was Obama apologizing for American superiority, then spending so much that the United States’ credit rating took a dive. Another domino was gay unions. Now frankly, what you do in your bedroom is your business, and I don’t think the government should have any say in it one way or the other. But the fallout of that hit hard for a baker and pizza maker who were vilified and ruined for saying they didn’t want to endorse a gay union by providing their services to them.

Then came more progressive social changes. Let’s encourage and enable kids who are confused about their gender by telling them they can go into any bathroom they want. Let’s legitimize a whole new vocabulary on gender that flies in the face of God’s created order: male and female He created them. And the traitorous political moves. The Iran deal, billions in ransom money to Iran, allowing ISIS to rise and thrive while the ignoramus POTUS calls them the “JV team.”

And to top it all off, let’s throw in a Black Lives Matters movement that encourages, demands, and carries out the murder of cops. That’s about as close to anarchy as we could have come.

The spiritual forces behind the Left, along with the Left itself, were getting drunk on all this social and political power they had been wielding. And they thought they had the final nail in coffin ready to go: a liberal female president. That would have been the icing on the cake, the final victory in the battle, the pinnacle of rubbing it in the face of Conservatives.

The Hangover

But in the dead of night on November 8–9, 2016, red lights began popping up all over the country, in places that hadn’t seen red in a long time. Come to think of it, maybe they had been seeing red about the drunken binge on the Left, and it showed up on the election map! Then the Left started seeing red, and the hangover began. They were all crying, and not just tears of sadness. For some, the crying seemed pathological. “How could this happen?” “We were so close!” The Left was beside themselves. Their first move was to bring up the tired, unconstitutional argument that Hillary had won the popular vote, and President-Elect Trump was “not my president.” One look at the election results map, and you understand why we have an electoral college that elects the president state-by-state, not on the aggregate popular vote.

Denial and Delirium Tremens

Hangovers never last too long, but the next stage, denial, isn’t far behind, and it usually runs parallel with the delirium tremens that comes from withdrawal. We’ve seen that their main form of denial has been to blame the Russians for hacking the election. They couldn’t (and still can’t) accept that conservative Americans had had enough of the liberal slime oozing out of Washington. Now someone was going to be in power to “drain the swamp.” He is cleaning out their liquor cabinet and flushing it down the toilet, along with the drugs and other contraband. The women’s march last weekend was the epitome of their withdrawal and a protest against the social and cultural degradation over which they had been presiding. It was a childish, immature response to the results of a legitimate, constitutional, political process, but it’s also their right to behave that way if they want. Just don’t expect any r-e-s-p-e-c-t from me, Trump supporters, or conservative Christians.

Comparison and Analysis

Conservative Christian values were trampled on far worse than anything women think Trump will do to their rights. He’s not that kind of person, no matter how you try to vilify him. So his locker room talk got caught on an open mic. How many women have gone to see male dance strippers and said the same thing, even to the point of putting money in their thongs? And what of Madonna offering blow jobs to men if they vote for Hillary? Is that not equally as offensive to men as what Trump said about women? Do we delegitimize all of womanhood because of that? Do we delegitimize individual women because of that? No. But back to the point: you didn’t see Christians marching in the streets, burning limos, and using foul language about Obama because he trashed our values. That’s because we’re mature enough to realize that our identity and worth doesn’t come from who’s in the Oval Office (and that’s true even with Trump), but from whose we are.

And that’s where our power comes from. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). That promise was activated on November 8, 2016, and implemented on January 20, 2017. I for one am looking forward to a new era of the rule of conservative principles.

Scott Stocking

My opinions are my own, period.

HHS Can’t Control Improper Payments (#SustainableAmerica)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its annual Agency Financial Report for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 this week. No surprise that improper payments continue to haunt the agency, which is responsible for over half of all improper payments in the government at large. According to this latest report, HHS reported $96.9 billion (yes, billion, with a B), of which Medicare (Parts A through D) and Medicaid are responsible for all but $1B of that.

Medicare Improper Payments

For the third year in a row, Medicare has toyed with a $60B improper payment rate, yet this little fact gets completely ignored when the media and politicians talk about the Medicare Trust Fund going bankrupt by 2030. When are politicians going to wake up and smell the coffee, for crying out loud! It’s time to do something about this, and as I’ve said before, I think President-Elect Trump is the right person for the job. I trust that he will apply his incredible business acumen to programs in this kind of trouble and get them turned around so they can continue to provide needed healthcare for seniors, put an immediate stop to the bleeding, and put a stop the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.

Medicaid Improper Payments

Similarly, Medicaid is on a three-year rocket trajectory with its improper payments. Since the Affordable Care Act’s “encouragement” to States to expand Medicaid kicked in in 2014, Medicaid improper payments have more than doubled. In 2013, Medicaid improper payments reached a low of $14.4B, but in 2014, they jumped to $17.5B, then to $29.1B in 2015. For FY 2016, Medicaid’s improper payments jumped another $7.2B to $36.3B. Again, how can we expect any program to survive with this kind of bleeding?

The Problem

To be fair, both Medicare and Medicaid improper payments came in a little under what was projected, but not much. And the fact they are more than all other agencies combined continues to be disturbing. The main problem, as I see it, is the “pay and chase” policy of both programs. Providers submit claims, which should be run through some basic automated edits to validate, then Medicare or Medicaid pays the provider. But the process doesn’t end there. Medicare turns a number of claims over to review contractors for more detailed review, at which point a number of claims get rejected, and providers have to refund the payments for those claims. Add to that the number of claims that result in a determination of fraud, of which only a fraction is recovered even after trials and settlements.

Both Medicare and Medicaid have spent a lot of time and money creating, updating, and in some cases simplifying (shocking, I know) regulations, but none of that has made any difference, and only seems to exacerbate the problem. Why? Because it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the thousands of pages of regulations and rules that come out each year! In some cases, providers are used to doing things one way, then some obscure change in a regulation makes that way wrong now. As soon as they do it the wrong way and still get a payment for it, that becomes an improper payment, and Medicare can then come after them for repayment! Thank you for your service, provider!

A Solution

Drastic problems call for drastic measures. I think one possible solution would be to put a moratorium on any new regulations except for those that have to do with annual payment rates. All of those policy analysts should be turned loose on prepayment review of claims so we can catch more potential improper payments BEFORE they’re made. Doesn’t that make sense? Of course it does, too much sense for an establishment politician!

In order to sustain America, one area we need to address is the incredible wasteful spending perpetuated by the Washington establishment and business as usual. I hope you share my concern that we need to try something completely different, and that difference will be President-Elect Trump.

Scott Stocking

My views are my own.

 

A Primer on Government Rule Making

Before talking about the need for limited government as a constitutional ideal for ensuring the Republic’s sustainability, it’s important to see where we’re at now and how we got here.

A Comparison with Ancient History

Being a religious scholar, I can easily draw a comparison to the Jewish faith and practice. God laid out the fundamental laws in the Ten Commandments, and the Scriptures after that lay out “case law” to clarify the correct judgments, punishments, and restitutions when the fundamental laws are violated. With respect to jurisprudence, then, this can be compared to our vast collection of court cases that establish “precedence” for similar situations that follow.

With respect to the legislative aspect, we have very little “codified” law in the Scriptures. What the Jews did was build a “hedge” around the law called The Mishnah, codified in the late first or early second century AD. This was a record of the debate among leading Rabbinical scholars of that era, informed by years of written and oral tradition, of what actions should or should not be considered violations of the Ten Commandments generally, and of the Torah specifically.

Modern Law and Rulemaking

This codification can be compared to our modern law and rulemaking process. It is not enough to pass a law. America has a somewhat convoluted process of implementing that law, so much so that “the people” are taken out of the equation.

Many in my generation remember “I’m Just a Bill,” the Schoolhouse Rock song. It’s a fairly accurate, albeit oversimplified summary of the process of introducing and passing legislation. But as I hinted above, that is only the tip of the iceberg for the legislative process. If you’ve ever read the text of a law, you will have seen that there is much language about editing, adding to, or deleting certain sections of the U.S. Code, the official codification of U.S. law.

But the U.S. Code does not offer much in the way of specifics to implement and enforce the law. That’s where rulemaking comes in. Since I work in the area of Medicare policy and education, let me take an example from that.

Section 3022 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) authorizes the “Medicare Shared Savings Program.” This is one of the better aspects of Obamacare in my opinion, because it offers incentives for providers and provider groups to work together to reduce costs in Medicare. If you go to the place where that section of the law is, you will see that the law adds a section to the end of Title XVIII of the Social Security Act (the Title that governs Medicare) and, in the margin note, you will see the corresponding section in the U.S. Code is (Title) 42 USC 1395jjj. The same language will appear in both places once the edits are applied.

Notice the first line of the added section: “the Secretary shall establish.” This line authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take the steps necessary to create the new Shared Savings Program. This usually means the Secretary will charge, in this case, the director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to direct their employees to come up with the nuts and bolts of the plan. The law itself lays out several parameters that they must abide by, but the specifics are left up to those who are going to draft the official “regulations” (= rules) for the program and implement them in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), including the size of the incentive payments.

CMS prepares a “proposed final rule” that is then published in the Federal Register, and they invite the public to comment on the proposed rule for two or three months. The proposed final rule is not just the text of the regulations they want to add; it contains a lengthy narrative justifying why they wrote it the way they did and how it may intersect with other aspects of Medicare. Once the comment period is closed, CMS then processes the comments, decides whether any are significant enough to modify the proposed regulations, then publishes a final rule implementing the law in the 42 CFR sec. 425. In this case, the rule was amended in 2015, and then, in the midst of a 1400-page final rule (in manuscript form) on the Physician’s Fee Schedule (released 11/15/2016 in the Federal Register), there were a few pages that described more changes to the Shared Savings Program. In this case, unless you went looking for these changes, most people would have never known they were in there! It’s like finding a needle in a haystack sometimes just to keep up to date.

This final rule summarizes the comments CMS received and their responses to the comments, which more often than not take the tone of “Thank you for your comment; we hear you, but we’re going to do it our way for now.” In a few cases, strong professional groups are able to lobby for certain changes, especially if they propose their own language instead of merely being critical of CMS’ proposed language.

So imagine multiplying this over the thousands of government agencies in the dozens of Departments the United States government operates, and you begin to get a sense of the polylithic bureaucracy that is Washington, D.C. At some point, we need to ask ourselves as a country if all this effort is worth it. This is how government gets their fingers into every aspect of our lives, and it’s nearly impossible to get away from it. I think our founding fathers are turning over in their graves with all these rules and regulations; and they certainly don’t like it that States, through these processes, have gradually been forfeiting their rights to Federal structure.

I do not believe America can sustain itself with an ever-burgeoning bureaucracy (= a government that gets bigger and more intrusive each passing day). I believe this is why President-Elect Trump was so successful with his message. It’s time to simplify things again; give the States and the people more freedom to live their lives, not more regulations from a nanny government that has a false sense of its own self-importance and a false presumption that they know what’s best for us.

Scott Stocking

My views are my own.

The Republic and the Electoral College

“And to the Republic, for which it stands…” (Pledge of Allegiance).

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…” U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 4.

The Meaning of Republic

The republican form of government in America operates with the people electing at the State level their representatives (senators, House members, and presidential electors) to represent them in Washington at the Federal level. The emphasis here is that the function of electing a president is not a Federal process, but a State process, just like for Senators and Representatives. That is why presidential candidates must petition to be placed on the ballot in each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia, and not make just one petition at the Federal level to be placed on all ballots in every State and D.C.

Who Empowers Whom?

This is where the Electoral College comes in to play. The founding fathers never envisioned a president elected by popular vote alone. Why? There are numerous reasons. First, we are the United States of America. The Constitution is what the original States agreed upon to invest power in a Federal government structure. Hear me here: the population at large gives power to their respective States; the States give power to the Federal government. The Electoral College is the means by which the States elect the president to represent them.

One only needs to look at a county-by-county election results map to understand why the Electoral College is so important for ensuring balanced and fair representation for the political districts in our Republic. Geographically speaking, Clinton only won about 20% (a generous estimate) of the physical area of the country by county, and mostly in the large population centers. The implication here is that, were we to elect president strictly on popular vote, this would in all practicality invest the power of the vote in those large population centers, and presidential candidates would not have to worry about campaigning in less populous States or regions.

An Indirect Process

Electing a president then, is really an indirect process when it comes to the popular vote. The popular vote for president only has meaning at the State level. Since it is the States who granted power to the Federal government in the first place, the States, in the Constitution, reserved for themselves the right to elect the president, based on how the people of their respective States voted. If we were to abandon the Electoral College, we would essentially strip the States, as political entities, of their right to determine who rules them. This would create huge legal questions, about whether the Federal government, then, would have any right to impose laws and regulations on the States.

Limited Power

Our founding fathers were indeed wise. They understood that the Federal government needed to be limited in power, otherwise they would become no better than the kings or tyrants the colonists were trying to escape. Unfortunately, States have slowly undermined their authority by ceding more and more of their constitutionally enumerated powers to the Federal level, and few have had the power to say “enough is enough.” At least until this past week, when we elected Donald Trump as president.

The sustainability of America depends on restoring and enacting the principles of limited government. This means returning powers to the State that the Constitution does not give to the Federal government. If we continue to grow the size of the Federal government, it can only lead to a tyranny of powerful, and the people will lose their voice altogether.

Scott Stocking

My views are my own.