Most Americans on Gov't Dole

This is scary! From NewsMax:

Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. That's up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President's Reagan's move to scale back the size of government.

It also explains why it's so hard to fight the encroachment of socialism today: most people are already benefiting from it and don't want to give up their gravy train.

How far we've fallen from the independent, responsible people who founded a great nation and a great state!

Should Christians be Involved in Politics?

Good advice on the subject from Madeline Crabb at Renew America:

Charles Finney once said that the Church must take right ground in politics, and that God will bless or curse America according to the course Christians take in politics. Finney asserted, "Politics are a part of a religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as part of their duty to God."

Christians are instructed to carry their principles, their salt and light, into the whole world, which includes the world of politics. If Christians aren't engaged in this arena, then the ungodly will be. If Christians don't speak up to be heard, then the ungodly will.

If Christian principles don't affect public policy and lawmaking, then ungodly principles will. It is a simple fact that godly principles will become a part of public policy, and yes, politics, only if godly people are involved in these areas.

More Misbehavior Before the Enemy

In today's Rapid City Journal, Sam Hurst provides more of what has emboldened our enemies and undermined stability in Iraq:

The influence of Iran is rising in the east. We have made heroes out of Islamic terrorists in a land where they were once hated. Our Army is exhausted, and our wounded poorly attended. We have wasted half a trillion dollars.

The president’s refusal to pursue a bi-partisan end to the war has brought us to the brink of a constitutional crisis between the executive and legislative branches.

But the best John Thune can do is fan the flames of blame. It is short-sighted.

Shame on you, Sen. Thune. You want a fight with Democrats, you better come with something more than cheap political rhetoric. This has been George Bush’s War. Now it’s your war, and “I didn’t know” is no longer an excuse.

"[H]eroes out of Islamic terrorists in a land where they were once hated"? What planet has Hurst been living on? Saddam was funding terrorism and providing haven for terrorist training camps before we invaded. The only reason terrorists weren't blowing up people in Iraq back then is because they considered it friendly territory.

And because Senator Thune supports the president's efforts to fight terrorists, Hurst chooses political pot shots over presenting a united front before our enemies. Thune picked no fight; national Democrats picked a fight with our own military efforts.

If we had stood together in requiring Saddam to meet his obligations, we might not have needed to invade in the first place. But, as they always do, liberals chose to side with evil, and Saddam was emboldened. Liberals again chose to nit-pick, bicker, back-bite and undermine our military efforts after the invasion, and terrorists have been emboldened.

President Bush deserves some blame for underestimating the terrorist activity that came after the invasion. But I think he underestimated the enemy because he overestimated the ability of our country to unite and put the national good ahead of scoring political points.

You can lay the current problems in Iraq squarely at the feet of liberals here and abroad who have undermined our national efforts from Day One until now. You have misbehaved before the enemy, and it has encouraged him.

Blog Changes

I'm making some changes to the blog, with some already done. If things look goofy, hang tight as I try to fix them.

One key change I'll be making is that I'll be turning the comments back on. I turned them off about a year ago when I was just too busy to deal with them, and only recently have things started to slow down a little. I plan to keep them moderated, however, to ensure that stuff like some of the profanity-laced email I get doesn't find its way onto the blog.

I'll also be including more links, tools, etc. on the right-hand side. They'll prove helpful to me as a quick reference, and hopefully for you, as well. I'll also be expanding the news and commentary feeds to show more items at one time before the old stuff falls off the bottom. Some of these feed items show up automatically and some are manually added, so if there's a lot of traffic, old stuff can roll off pretty fast.

There are some new navigational aids, including some links at the bottom of each post so it can be added to some of the main social bookmarking sites with greater ease.

There are also changes in store for the main Dakota Voice website, but those are a little ways down the road yet.

The Cost of Free Health Care

Alan Aker has a good column in the Rapid City Journal today about the mess that is our current health care system.

In it he points out how this mess is caused largely because of government intervention:

As far as liberals know, hospitals and doctors, when confronted with a government price cap, slap their palms on their temples and exclaim, 'Now we get it. We've been charging too much. The government knows better than we do what we should charge, so we'll just save ourselves the trouble of setting our own prices, and use the government-set price for everyone.'

Or maybe liberals think doctors and hospitals say this: 'Hmmm. We'll be getting less money from the government than we've been charging. We could either pay less to our staff, buy less equipment, or... wait a minute... what about that money tree out back? Maybe it's time we used that.'

The liberal's answer would be, of course, MORE government intervention. That's always the liberal answer: when you've dug yourself into a hole, dig faster.

Alan's column has a lot of information about how the whole merry-go-round works with regard to cost shifting.

Read the whole thing here.