Tag: SCOTUS

Ban Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood, Say Members of the Black Leadership Network Project 21

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S. 1881, Senator Joni Ernst’s Bill to Do Exactly That, to be Voted on Shortly

Washington, DC – Members of the Project 21 black leadership network are joining calls for passage of S. 1881, a bill to prohibit federal funding of Planned Parenthood,” sponsored by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).

The legislation, which would ban federal grants and Medicaid reimbursement payments to Planned Parenthood, but keep overall funding levels for womens’ health care services the same, will be voted upon in the U.S. Senate at approximately 5:30 PM on Monday, August 3.(1)

Project 21 members say:

* Dr. Day Gardner: It is mind-boggling that American taxpayers are forced to pay more than $500 million to Planned Parenthood

“Planned Parenthood is a billion-dollar-a-year organization that makes most of its blood money by killing children by way of abortion. It is mind-boggling that American taxpayers are ‘forced’ to pay more than $500 million to an organization that kills unborn children in the most gruesome and brutal ways possible, and then deals in selling their lungs, heart and liver and other body parts for profit.

“What does Planned Parenthood do with the money? There is the obvious, of course: Planned Parenthood’s CEO makes more than half a million dollars a year. They also pay high salaries to abortionists who fly from abortion mill to abortion mill, killing children.

“You may have heard that Planned Parenthood does ‘cancer screenings.’
What that means is the same type of breast exam that every woman can do herself at home. They do not do mammograms.

“They also say their funding provides for contraception, treatment and tests for sexually transmitted diseases, and other women’s health services. First of all, what are ‘other women’s health services’? Secondly, aren’t all those things supposed to be covered by ObamaCare?” – Dr. Day Gardner, Project 21 member, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union and an executive member of the Washington, D.C.-based National Clergy Council.

* Joe R. Hicks: Why is this heinous organization still being subsidized by federal tax dollars?

“Only heartless or hopelessly ideologically-blinded leftist political partisans were unaffected by the horrific video clips of Planned Parenthood operatives coldly discussing the lurid details of dismembered aborted babies. However, the question must now be – why is this heinous organization still being subsidized by federal tax dollars? Planned Parenthood, a billion-dollar so-called ‘non-profit,’ performs 300,000 abortions each and every week, yet describes itself as a ‘women’s health care group.’ Are they really? They claim to provide valuable health services, like mammograms, yet is has been discovered that they do no such thing. They ‘refer’ women to health clinics that do provide this service. Planned Parenthood argues that ‘research,’ performed on crushed and dismembered aborted babies, has advanced stem cell cures, yet cannot provide independent data to show this is the case. What’s clear is that they perform abortions, subsidized by tax dollars. Congress must act now.” – Mr. Joe R. Hicks, Project 21 member and vice president of Community Advocates, Inc. in Los Angeles.

* Bishop Council Nedd: If there’s a constitutional right to a lifestyle, why isn’t there a constitutional right to life?

“Last week, a friend of mine who is a bishop and constitutional lawyer, remarked, ‘If there’s a constitutional right to a lifestyle, why isn’t there a constitutional right to life?’ So, the question in my mind is, why are the taxpayers subsidizing the murder of innocents in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution?

“Planned Parenthood received $500 million in taxpayer dollars last year. If we are now so enlightened that the courts are now signing off on protecting lifestyles, protecting lives would theoretically give the courts more lifestyles to protect. However, it is sadly still the case that the lives that the courts are abandoning to the social engineering of the elite and enlightened are the least of those among us. To protect the most vulnerable, Congress should pass a law that bars Medicaid from reimbursing its clinics for patient visits.” – Bishop Council Nedd II, founding member of Project 21, rector of St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Pine Grove Mills, PA and author of the books Does America Hate God? Faith Under Fire (2015) and The Final Four: A Scriptural Journey Through Advent (2013).

* Stacy Washington: There are 666 Planned Parenthoods and 9,069 federally-funded Community Health Centers. Women don’t need Planned Parenthood.

“The defense of Planned Parenthood by the media and politicians is disheartening. New videos released this week by the Center for Medical Progress provide evidence that doctors and executives working for Planned Parenthood may have committed gruesome crimes that make Dr. Gosnell’s clinic of horrors look tame. Each new video reveals more damning information including video of the Chief Medical Director of the Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood negotiating for the sale of baby body parts. This comes right on the heels of news that the Alliance Defense Fund has filed a criminal complaint after learning that a 13-year-old girl was brought in for an abortion by her rapist/sexual predator and Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood performed the abortion but didn’t report the abuse. Criminal. $528 million dollars of taxpayer funds are sent to Planned Parenthood on a yearly basis. Another $612 million dollars of taxpayer funds earmarked for ‘reproductive health services’ go to USAID for abortions abroad.

“Americans have had enough of the excuses and whitewashing of what increasingly looks like an organized crime syndicate hell-bent on selling human baby parts for cash.

“There are 666 Planned Parenthoods in operation, with some states only having only one. In contrast there are 9,069 federally funded Community Health Centers that provide identical services excepting abortion operating in all 50 states. Women don’t need Planned Parenthood; it does not deserve federal funding.” – Mrs. Stacy Washington, Project 21 member and radio talk show host on KFTK in St. Louis.

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives for over two decades, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank.

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The Law Should Not Treat Bill Cosby Differently Simply Because He Gave a Speech

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Members of Black Leadership Group Say U.S. District Court Judge Was Wrong to Release Transcript of Deposition in a Cosby Civil Case Explicitly Because Cosby Gave a 2005 Speech in Telling Young Black Parents to do a Better Job Raising Their Children

WASHINGTON, DC — Members of the Project 21 black conservative leadership network are weighing in following news that documents in a civil case related to allegations that Bill Cosby molested a Temple University employee were made public by a U.S. district court judge specifically because Dr. Cosby has publicly criticized the way many black parents rear their children.

“I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two?” Cosby famously said in 2005 in what has become known as the “Pound Cake” speech. “Where were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?”

“50 percent drop out rate, I’m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men,” Cosby continued in 2005. “Under what excuse, I want somebody to love me, and as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them. All this child knows is ‘gimme, gimme, gimme.’ These people want to buy the friendship of a child… and the child couldn’t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we’ve done, we still fear our parents. And these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers, for what? They won’t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.”

Project 21 members say the law should not treat Cosby differently because he gave that speech.

“Bill Cosby should be vilified and, if possible, prosecuted if he used Quaaludes and perhaps other drugs to facilitate rape,” said Project 21 member Deroy Murdock, a New York-based columnist. “His decades-long reputation as a popular entertainer should not shield him from the consequences of his actions.”

“But Cosby’s role as a ‘public moralist’ with views on ‘childrearing, family life, education, and crime,’ as U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno described him, should have played no role in Robreno’s recent decision to publicize Cosby’s deposition in an alleged sexual-molestation case,” Murdock added. “This transcript should have stayed sealed or been unsealed solely for legal reasons, not due to Cosby’s beliefs about any issue beyond this case. Americans should be free to express themselves without fearing that their views will be used later to justify breaching confidential documents in what resembles political score settling by federal judges.”

“This ruling is appalling,” said Horace Cooper, an attorney, former counsel to a U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader, and co-chairman of Project 21. “A decision to unseal documents is a weighty one and should only occur under exceptional circumstances – circumstances that have nothing to do with the popularity (or lack thereof) of one of the litigating parties.”

“My father was born in to a very different world than the one I live in today. He was a black Roman Catholic who was born in 1925 in Sumter, SC. He also spent 20 years as a policeman. As a youth he repeatedly saw the rights and privileges of individuals blatantly and furtively ignored. One of the lessons he drummed into me and my brothers was the importance of knowing the law and the rules so than no one can take advantage of you,” said the Most Rev. Council Nedd II, PhD, DHum, Bishop and Rector, St. Alban’s Anglican Church, Pine Grove Mills, PA.

“What we have seen over the last year is Bill Cosby repeatedly attacked and tried in the media. Without commenting on the allegations against Dr. Cosby, or the credibility of the accusers, based on the fact that none of the accusers, seen on the variety of news and talk shows, saw fit to push for criminal charges when the events occurred, tells me that they made a personal and calculated decision to live with whatever transpired. To me it seems opportunistic to seek media headlines now.”

“What the judge did in this case is as morally reprehensible as SCOTUS deciding to ignore the constitution on the gay marriage issue. The judge releasing those sealed documents is pandering to the media, akin to Justice Robert’s decision in the Obamacare ruling, and Charleston County Magistrate James Gosnell, Jr.’s very odd speech at the arraignment of Dylann Roof,” Bishop Nedd added.

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives for over two decades, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (http://www.nationalcenter.org).

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Orwell Must Be Laughing in His Grave

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“… some of the animals remembered–or thought they remembered–that the Sixth Commandment decreed ‘No animal shall kill any other animal.’ And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this.”  George Orwell, Animal Farm, Ch. 8

Policy aside, the Supreme Court of the United States is behaving in the most capricious manner. I understand that most American have no understanding of what our Constitution and the Bill of Rights say, which is why no one is appalled by the whimsy of SCOTUS.

We are truly living in an Orwellian nightmare where his hyperbole is becoming our reality. Big Brother is watching everything we do. Now we have evolved into Animal Farm situation where our post literate culture is fine with the government redefining itself by fiat.

Why is this ok with everyone?  Is our Constitution and the separation of powers just a historical curiosity from America’s past?

 

Supreme Court Ruling in King v. Burwell Means Americans Will Have to Wait Longer for a Free-Market Health Care System

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ObamaCare Is Unsustainable as Exchanges Will Eventually Devolve into a Death Spiral
Ruling Also a Blow to the Rule of Law

Washington, D.C. – The Supreme Court’s ruling in King v. Burwell means Americans will have to wait longer for greater liberty in their health care system, said Dr. David Hogberg, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“The Court has had two chances to stand up for freedom and against ObamaCare and has blown them both,” Dr. Hogberg said. “This won’t change the fight for health care freedom. It will just take more time to move toward a free-market based health care system.”

A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would have been a great opportunity to start replacing ObamaCare with free-market based policies. Rather, Americans will have to suffer the problems of ObamaCare for the foreseeable future.

Dr. Hogberg notes that the ObamaCare exchanges are already exhibiting signs of a death spiral, where insurance premiums rise precipitously, causing young and healthy people to drop their insurance. This renders the “risk pool” older and sicker, causing premiums to rise again, and the process repeats.

“We’re seeing loads of insurers ask for big premium hikes, at least 20% and in many cases much higher,” said Dr. Hogberg. He recently examined this in a National Policy Analysis entitled “ObamaCare Premium Hikes for 2016–Ignore Them at Your Own Risk.”

“In the end, the exchanges are not sustainable, and free-market based reform of our health care system will be necessary. Today’s Court ruling only delays that,” said Dr. Hogberg.

In the longer term, Congress must adopt policies that repeal ObamaCare and replace it with policies that promote liberty. NCPPR provides an easy-to-access spreadsheet at http://goo.gl/y1ALI2 that summarizes a dozen plans from conservative and libertarian think-tanks and Congressional Republicans offering free-market alternatives to ObamaCare. The spreadsheet explains how each plan treats vital health care policy issues such as tax credits, pre-existing conditions, Medicaid and Health Savings Accounts.

“There are a lot of great ideas out there, from the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute to Rep. Tom Price and the Republican Study Committee,” said Dr. Hogberg. “Unfortunately, most of the media has ignored them, so most Americans are unaware that free-market alternatives to ObamaCare exist.”

While the ruling isn’t a fatal blow to achieving health care freedom, it is a serious blow to the rule of law.

“From here on out, presidents and the bureaucracy can apply the law however they like, even if the law says differently,” said Dr. Hogberg. “As long as they can plausibly claim that Congress intended for the law to say something different, presidents and the bureaucracy will win every time before the Supreme Court.”

David Hogberg is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research. He is author of the forthcoming book Medicare’s Victims: How the U.S. Government’s Largest Health Care Program Harms Patients and Impairs Physicians.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations, and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 96,000 active recent contributors. Sign up for free issue alerts here.

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Black Conservatives React to U.S. Supreme Court Decision for Use of “Disparate Impact” in Administration of Fair Housing Act

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For Immediate Release: June 25, 2015

Contact: Judy Kent at (703) 759 7476 or jkent@nationalcenter.org or Amy Ridenour at (202) 543-4110 or aridenour@nationalcenter.org

Washington, D.C. — Legal and policy experts with the Project 21 black leadership network are available for comment on today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows perceived group racial disparities to be used as a trigger for enforcement of the Fair Housing Act.

http://nationalcenter.org/P21Index.html

“When those statistical differences alone are used as proof of discrimination, freedom and liberty are lost; but worse the constitutional protections provided to every American as an individual are lost too,” said Project 21 co-chairman Horace Cooper, a legal commentator who taught constitutional law at George Mason University and is a former leadership staff member for the U.S. House of Representatives.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/bios/P21Speakers_Cooper.html

“It’s a shame that the majority of justices are willing to allow allegations of discrimination in housing to be painted using a broad brush — sometimes by those who may not even be among the aggrieved — rather than finding and cutting out true instances of abuse with scalpel-like precision,” said Archbishop Council Nedd II, Ph.D., author of multiple books and rector of St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Pine Grove Mills, PA. “The Fair Housing Act was meant to be a scalpel, but the Court has now decided otherwise to our peril. Society is served better by a system that removes specific problems rather than pitting groups against each other.”

http://www.nationalcenter.org/bios/P21Speakers_Nedd.html

On appeal from the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the case of Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, et al. v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc, addressed a festering legal problem regarding the Fair Housing Act’s use to address accusations of disparate racial impact instead of enforcing the law on a case-by-case, as-needed basis as was argued by its supporters when it was debated in Congress.

Specific to this case, the Inclusive Communities Project (ICP) claimed the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, a state agency, violated the federal Fair Housing Act by allocating housing tax credits to developers in a manner that they alleged broadly kept minorities in low-income minority-majority neighborhoods rather than allowing access to housing opportunities in wealthier majority-white communities in the Dallas metropolitan area. ICP charged the department’s tax credit distribution policy creates a disparate impact on black recipients of such credits as a class rather than addressing individual instances of alleged abuse.

Project 21 joined a legal brief submitted to the Court that asked the justices to specifically define the legal scope of the Fair Housing Act. In the brief, it was argued that the Act was written “to apply solely to disparate treatment, not acts having disparate impact on protected classes” and that the U.S. Supreme Court must “consider the threshold question of whether disparate impact claims are even cognizable under the Fair Housing Act” since “disparate impact claims do not depend on the intent of the action or policy.”

This legal brief joined by Project 21 was written and submitted to the Court by the Pacific Legal Foundation and was also joined by the Center for Equal Opportunity, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Individual Rights Foundation and Reason Foundation.

Click to access PLF-AC-BRIEF-TEXAS.pdf

In 2014 and 2015, Project 21 members have already been interviewed or cited by the media over 2,600 times — including TVOne, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Fox News Channel, Westwood One, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, SiriusXM satellite radio and 50,000-watt talk radio stations such as KOA-Denver, WHO-Des Moines, WJR-Detroit, WBZ-Boston and KDKA-Pittsburgh — on issues that include civil rights, entitlement programs, the economy, race preferences, education and corporate social responsibility. Project 21 has participated in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding race preferences and voting rights and defended voter ID laws at the United Nations. Its volunteer members come from all walks of life and are not salaried political professionals.

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives for over two decades, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (http://www.nationalcenter.org).

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