Vote No on Ohio Issue 3, 2015

There are advantages and disadvantages to legalizing marijuana.

If marijuana were legalized, the police could spend more time and resources on rapists, thieves and murderers.  If people smoke marijuana and they experience its negative health effects, this should be enough of a deterrent, so there is no need to put them jail.  With fewer people in jail, more room could be made to give violent criminals longer sentences.  Criminalizing marijuana give authorities a pretext to use their powers against innocent people.  It gives them more power which tends to corrupt them.  Marijuana may have some legitimate health benefits for people with certain medical conditions.

One the other hand, marijuana may be a gateway drug that could lead someone to do harder drugs and commit more crimes.  Smoking marijuana causes lung diseases, brain damage and may be psychologically addictive.  Even though many people use marijuana illegally and for recreational purposes, legalizing it might increase usage. 

You may or may not believe that the benefits of legalizing marijuana outweigh the disadvantages.  But that’s not the point.  Issue 3 is not only about legalizing marijuana.  If issue 3 passes then only certain people who own certain property would be able to grow, process and sell the marijuana.  It is really about one group of investors wanting corner the market on marijuana so they can sell without any legal competition.  This is like the gambling issue all over again.  If you don't believe me read it for yourself:

http://ballotpedia.org/Ohio_Marijuana_Legalization_Initiative,_Issue_3_(2015)

If issue 3 passes, then the illegal marijuana producers and sellers will continue, the police will still have to arrest them and the people to whom they sell.  The people who sell it legally will charge exorbitant prices so that anyone with a medical need will have to pay more than they should if they can afford it at all.  For the most part, issue 3 has all of the disadvantages of legalizing marijuana, with very little of the advantages.  There are all these numbers and junk describing the exact boundaries of the land on which the marijuana can be grown and sold.  The Constitution of the state of Ohio is supposed to be about protecting the basic rights of EVERY citizen of Ohio.  Even though I don’t think that total criminalization of marijuana is good thing, marijuana shouldn’t be considered a fundamental right like freedom of speech, religion, arms and such.  On top of that it is an inherently unjust amendment which shows favoritism to a small group of marijuana investors which is one of the main things that is wrong with America today.  Its crony capitalism.

If you live in Ohio, please vote NO on issue 3.

Vote No on Ohio Issue 1, 2011

Hear Barry Sheets and Chuck Michaelis on their new radio show "Principles and Policies" talk about Issue 1 at the links below:

part 1: http://www.principledpolicy.com/?p=982
part 2: http://www.principledpolicy.com/?p=984

I don't think that there should be any age limits for judges at all.  But while I disagree with Barry and Chuck about raising the age limits, I am glad that they called to my attention that this is not the only issue addressed by Issue 1.  Issue 1 would repeal an 1851 provision which allowed the General Assembly to create courts of conciliation and an 1867 provision allowing a Supreme Court Commission to be created to deal with backlogs.  Courts of conciliation were designed in part to help stop divorces.  Please read the article at the following URL before voting on this issue:

http://www.divorcereform.info/index.php/Failure-of-Current-Divorce-Laws/Marriage-Saving-in-Court-Ohio-s-Conciliation-of-Marital-Controversies.html

Here is the ballot language:

1  PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 
TO INCREASE THE MAXIMUM AGE AT WHICH A PERSON MAY BE ELECTED OR APPOINTED JUDGE, TO ELIMINATE THE AUTHORITY OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY TO ESTABLISH COURTS OF CONCILIATION, AND TO ELIMINATE THE AUTHORITY OF THE GOVERNOR TO APPOINT A SUPREME COURT COMMISSION PROPOSED BY JOINT RESOLUTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY TO AMEND SECTION 6 OF ARTICLE IV AND TO REPEAL SECTIONS 19 AND 22 OF ARTICLE IV OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF OHIO 


A majority yes vote is required for the amendment to Section 6 and the repeal of Sections 19 and 22 to pass. 
This proposed amendment would: 
1.  Increase the maximum age for assuming elected or appointed judicial office from seventy to seventy-five. 
2.  Eliminate the General Assembly’s authority to establish courts of conciliation. 
3.  Eliminate the Governor’s authority to appoint members to a Supreme Court Commission. 
If approved, the amendment shall take effect immediately. 
A “YES” vote means approval of the amendment to Section 6 and the repeal of Sections 19 and 22. 

A “NO” vote means disapproval of the amendment to Section 6 and the repeal of Sections 19 and 22. 

Vote NO on Ohio Issue 5

I got a call last week that was an automated phone message from Mike Huckabee saying to vote NO on Ohio issue 5.

The Issue

Voting NO on issue 5 means that you favor blocking a portion of a law (section 3 of H.B. 545) recently passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Governor Strickland which puts more restrictions on lending practices. This law mainly concerns the regulation of so called PDL (pay day loan) or short term lenders. The regulation would limit the maximum amount of a short term loan to $500, give the borrower at least 30 days to pay back the loan, and limit the interest rate to 28% APR. Under current regulations (H.B. 545 is not yet in effect), the maximum amount of a short term loan is $800, there is no minimum repayment period, and the interest rate can be substantially higher than 28% APR.

The people who are saying vote YES on issue 5 say that this would help to prevent these lenders from taking advantage of people who are in a bad situation. They also point that the loans that are being regulated are “unsecured” loans.

Huckabee gave two reasons for voting NO on issue 5:

1. The bill would cause jobs to be lost (the employees of the PDL businesses).
2. The bill would result in a loss of financial privacy.

The first reason reminds me of Jim Petro, Bob Taft, and Mike DeWine’s phone messages urging people to vote NO on the Ohio marriage amendment because it would result in a loss of jobs. How pathetic that was. Just because something creates jobs doesn’t necessarily make it good thing. We could all go around vandalizing businesses and homes, breaking their windows. This would create jobs for the businesses that make glass. We need to vote on principle, and let the economic consequences take care of themselves.

The second reason is, at least in principle, a valid reason for voting NO on issue 5. But whether or not this would in fact occur if this bill were to be made law is something that I have not fully studied. (H.B. 545 is a very long and complicated bill.) If this bill were to violate our privacy rights, then a NO vote would definitely be the right thing to do.

Other groups, such as Ohioans For Financial Freedom, have advocated against issue 5. They point out that these regulations unfairly single out PDLs, while credit card companies and other lenders could still charge excessive interest, late fees, and bank overdraft fees which have the same detrimental effect on the poor. Without PDLs, these poor people might resort to these other ways of borrowing money and might end up falling even further in debt.

Candidate for Ohio Attorney General Robert Owens is against this bill and so is the Ohio Christian Alliance.

But in this post, I want to set aside these reasons and focus on the merits of restricting lending practices from a biblical point of view. The idea of placing limits on terms of lending (especially to the poor) is contained in the Law of Moses. Such passages are Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:35-37, Deuteronomy 15:1-4, 23:19, and Nehemiah 5:1-13. These passages seem to be limited to “my people” or “thy brother” and not to “the foreigner”. This seems to indicate that God only intended for them to apply to the congregation of Israel, not universally. Even if you believe that these passages are to be carried over to the “my people” (Christians) of today (and I think they do--see Proverbs 28:8, Ezekiel 18:8, 13, 17), it would seem that they would apply only to believers and not advocating for a civil law. Therefore I would classify this as moral law only. Furthermore, the terms of these laws don’t really have anything to do with the regulations of H.B. 545. All authority in Heaven and on Earth now comes from Christ (Matthew 28:18). Whenever civil government goes beyond its proper biblical scope, it always fails and ultimately causes more harm than good.

Conclusion

We live in a free country and if someone wants to throw away their OWN money, this does not violate my rights in any way. Do not get involved in taking advantage of the poor yourself, but vote NO on Ohio issue 5 for the right reasons.

Inside the Values Voters Summit

The following is a summary of my impressions of the Washington Briefing for Values Voters held on October 19 and 20 in Washington, D.C. I attended the Briefing.

Governor Mike Huckabee, the Making of a President

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Washington, D.C., AGC - I was blessed to be one of the 2,600 participants in the Washington Briefing Values Voter Summit this past weekend. Last September 1,800 had attended the Briefing. All of the then 9 major Candidates made a presentation. Senator Sam Brownback, though he made a speech at the Summit, announced in Kansas that he was taking himself out of the running for the presidency. Brownback had been my early choice for president. The immigration issue hurt him.

I was able to see and hear, first hand, the candidates. Every major candidate of both major political parties had been invited. I was disappointed, though not surprised, that no Democrat Presidential candidate cared enough or dared enough to make a presentation, which tells me a lot about their values or lack of same. Representatives Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee did the best in getting their message out. Tancredo was the most passionate, Hunter the most correct and Huckabee the most electable without compromising conservative and Christian principles. Over 50% of the persons actually attending the conference agreed that Huckabee is the best candidate to face a Clinton-Obama ticket next year. None of the so-called top tier candidates impressed me or changed my mind about my support for any of them.

Senator John McCain was very wrong on amnesty and teaming with the Dems to foil the filibuster against the President’s judicial appointments. These are unforgivable policy positions. Former NY Mayor, Rudy Giuliani unashamedly supports the slaughter of innocents (abortion) and will fail to protect and uphold marriage’s exclusiveness to that of one man and one woman. Governor Mitt Romney is a slick, unprincipled, finger in the wind, say whatever he needs, trying to seduce the conservative Values Voter. I am afraid he will use me as much or more than the current president did to gain power. Senator Fred Thompson seems disinterested and I question why he is even running. He seemed tired, bored and unrehearsed.

Listening to the 9 want-to-be presidential candidates was just a small part of the Washington Briefing. There were a large number of the media in attendance. I even was interviewed by a New York newspaper correspondent. The LA Times and the NY Times reporters were among those present. There were at least 8 radio stations and a couple dozen bloggers also present.

In fact, I attended two press conferences. One called to announce a united opposition to the Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA), the law being discussed in the U.S. House which would allow the immoral, unnatural and unhealthy homosexual lifestyle to have special civil rights protection. Bishop Harry Jackson, a black Maryland minister along with several others voice opposition to this unnecessary and destructive law. It would institutionalize this deviant behavior and cause all kinds of confusion in our courts, churches and marketplace.

We heard a powerful message from a Jewish Rabbi reminding us that our early forefathers were quite familiar with the Hebrew language, the language of much of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Hebrew had been taught in schools and studied closely by the preachers of that day. We have so much in common with true Judaism.

We listened to speakers talk about culture building endeavors such as the production and distribution of movies portraying Christian and moral values. There was a panel of women discussing women and conservatism. We heard presentations on what the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and their partner organizations are doing in the courts to stand up to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other culture and American value corrupters. Attorneys and popular talk show hosts Dr. Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham presented a powerful case exhorting the assembly to continue to fight the battle for the culture and for American values.

There was also an interesting debate between theologian Richard Lamb, a Bible-believer and pretend-evangelical Jim Wallis, a believer in the social gospel. Most of Jim Wallis’ ideas were as out of place, repulsive and abhorrent to me as are Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s position on abortion and promotion of the homosexual agenda. A good variety of exhibitors were also on hand to present their work, such as Priests for Life, American Family Association, Faith2Action, Focus on the Family, and the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU).

All and all, the Washington Briefing for Values Voters was fast paced, intense and very informative. Conservative and Christian voters have a great deal to do the next twelve months to insure the right person sits in the White House beginning January 2009.

Abortion: Celebration or Condemnation? Part 1

Can you believe it? Tomorrow has been declared, “National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers." What next, “National Mass Murderers Day” or maybe “National Pedophilia & Child Abusers Day”? This observance is obscene. Can you imagine Germany celebrating “National Holocaust Day”? This denotes evil thinking.

According to one weblog March 10th, 2007 commemorates the 14th year anniversary of the death of (Abortionist-Exterminator) Dr. David Gunn at the hands of an anti-choice, "pro-life" extremist. Since 1996, pro choice advocates have begun to claim this day National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers and have turned this day of mourning into a day of remembrance of our losses, mobilizations for activism and celebration for our gains.

Much like their comrades, the radical liberal homosexual crowd, the fanatical supporters of baby-killing desperately try to mobilize support and sympathy for their pitiful, evil cause and to apparently justify and legitimatize its immoral, unnatural debased behavior, the vile and pretentious abortion industry has established March 10th as the day to honor abortionist-exterminators and their accomplices, the abortion workers.

Instead of preserving and supporting life, abortion actually destroys, snuffs out life by the millions and visits emotional havoc on the would-be mothers. All of this occurring in the land of the free and has been doing so since 1973. Abortion is the end of life for those human beings who were never given a chance or a choice of life because of some trumped up, some counterfeit“right”. It is not that a woman has a “right to choose to bear or not to bear the baby” it is the horrible humanist and feminist-friendly judiciary has give women the “right to kill who she carries in her womb”. Actually the Judeo-Christian Bible says that it is God's will that a pregnacy be carried through to birth.

So while the killers savor their judicial victories let us pray and work for the day when every baby will have a chance, a choice to be free.

Please visit RealChoice, "The reality of "choice" in America," an excellent weblog which chronicles many of the past and current victims of abortion, who are rarely, if ever, covered by the liberaly biased main stream media.

To be continued . . .

Tomorrow we will examine some of the gruesome abortionist “stars" who snuff out the candles of thousands of lights of babies before they can see even the flicker of a single day.