American Heritage Ministry
E-Newsletter
“The Christian Point Of View”
December 31, 2011
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My current AHM PATRIOT BLOG post is titled, “THE REASON FOR THE SEASON” Please read it and post your comments if you want to, and feel free to forward this to your contact list. Also consider registering for the RSS feed to be updated regularly. Click on this direct link: AHM Patriot Blog .
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"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see
your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."
Mat. 5:16
Happy New Year from your friends at American Heritage Ministry
With 2012 being the most important election year in our nation's
history, most of our E-Newsletters will focus on important election issues and
candidates. Earlier this year, we unincorporated our ministry so that I
would be able to "tell it like it is" in the political arena,
without the fear of our oppressive government trying to stop my message!
As a result, any financial support you might can give at any time, is vitally
important to help us move the Christian Conservative message forward across
America. If you can help us, please see the end of this E-Newsletter for
details on how you can financially support this ministry. Thank you for
being a blessing!
OrlandoSentinel.com
Gay couples eager to sign Orlando partner registry
By Mark Schlueb, Orlando Sentinel
7:58 PM EST, December 25, 2011
Gay advocates expect a
rush of same-sex couples at City Hall when the city's new domestic-partnership
registry opens next month.
And not all of those couples will be from Orlando, nor will all of them be gay,
supporters of the law predict.
The City Clerk's Office already has begun accepting appointments for couples to
sign the registry once it officially opens. All 16 appointments available Jan.
12 — the registry's first day — were quickly snatched up.
"I think there's going to be incredible interest. We're going to see a big
surge in the beginning," said Equality Florida field director Joe
Saunders.
The registry doesn't carry the legal privileges of a marriage or civil union.
Rather, it bestows a handful of rights in certain situations.
Couples who record their relationships in the registry are entered in a government
database and then can visit each other in the hospital or jail, make
health-care decisions for an incapacitated partner and plan a partner's
funeral.
Orlando Commissioner Patty Sheehan pushed for the registry, noting that
same-sex couples are often barred from seeing their partners during medical
emergencies because state law doesn't recognize them as family. Gay people are
sometimes unable to execute a partner's funeral plans for the same reason.
"It's not as many rights as marriage, but it helps couples during very
difficult times," Sheehan said.
Straight couples who aren't married sometimes have the same problems. The
registry also is open to them, and some straight couples are among those who
have scheduled appointments.
Sheehan and her partner, Jocelynn White, are scheduled to be the first couple
to sign Orlando's registry.
The registry only applies to hospitals and other institutions in Orlando.
Still, people who live outside the city are allowed to sign up.
Mayor Buddy Dyer said he expects some nonresidents to do that because anyone in
Central Florida could at some point be a patient at Orlando Health or Florida
Hospital, the region's two biggest hospitals. Both are in Orlando and thus
required to treat registered partners as family members.
The registry may also prompt visitors from other states to sign up while
vacationing in Orlando. Metro Orlando saw 51 million visitors last year, and
with Gay Days and Orlando Pride is already a popular destination for gays.
States that have legalized same-sex marriage, such as New York and Vermont,
have seen out-of-staters visit specifically to be married there.
"People do sometimes travel to states that have legalized marriage to
obtain a marriage license even though it's not recognized by their home
state,'' said Cindy Sproul of Rainbow Wedding Network, a company that helps gay
couples plan their weddings. "I know many, many, many couples that have
traveled to the state of New York from another state that hasn't legalized it,
and they have their own reasons for doing that."
Rainbow Wedding Network will hold a Gay and Lesbian Wedding Expo at the Crowne
Plaza Orlando on Jan. 15, in part because of demand from gay couples in Central
Florida.
There's no way to know whether residents of other states will join Orlando's
registry, which carries fewer rights than same-sex marriage. But some couples
who were planning an Orlando vacation anyway might add a stop at City Hall to
sign the list.
Dyer said some might see it as a form of travel insurance: If someone were
injured while vacationing here, at least their loved one could be by their side
in the emergency room and help make health-care decisions.
For others, the registry would be a chance to have the government, for the
first time, officially acknowledge their relationship — even if it's not their
hometown government.
"There were many couples in Florida who went to California or
Massachusetts or states like Vermont to get married because they think it is
important to have a government recognize their relationship, and to get the
legal benefits even if some of those rights aren't available in Florida when
they come back," Saunders said.
"There is a history of our families looking for ways to say publicly and
openly with the force of government that they are a family."
ObamaCare Abominations
By John Stossel
President Obama says his health
care "reform" will be good for business.
Business has learned the truth.
Three successful businessmen
explained to me how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays high. Its
length and complexity make businessmen wary of expanding.
Mike Whalen, CEO of Heart of
America Group, which runs hotels and restaurants, said that when he asked his
company's health insurance experts to summarize the impact of Obamacare,
"the three of them kind of looked at each other and said, 'We've gone to
seminar after seminar, and, Mike, we can't tell you.' I think that just kind of
sums up the uncertainty."
Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy,
added that Obamacare makes it impossible to achieve even basic certainty about
future personnel costs:
"If I was trying to get
you to fund a new business I had started and you asked me what my payroll was
going to be three years from now per employee, if I went to the deepest
specialist in the industry, he can't tell me what it's actually going to cost,
let alone what I'm going to be responsible for."
You would think a piece of
legislation more than a thousand pages long would at least be clear about the
specifics. But a lot of those pages say: "The secretary will determine
..." That means the secretary of health and human services will announce
the rules sometime in the future. How can a business make plans in such a fog?
John Allison, former CEO of
BB&T, the 12th biggest bank in America, pointed out how Obamacare
encourages employers not to insure their employees. Under the law, an employer
would be fined for that. But the penalty at present -- about $2,000 -- is lower
than the cost of a policy.
"What that means is in
theory every company ought to dump their plan on the government plan and pay
the penalty," he said. "So you don't really know what the cost is
because it's designed to fail."
Of course, then every employee
would turn to the government-subsidized health insurance. Maybe that was the
central planners' intention all along.
An owner of 12 IHOPS told me
that he can't expand his business because he can't afford the burden of
Obamacare. Many of his waitresses work part time or change jobs every few
months. He hadn't been insuring them, but Obamacare requires him to. He says he
can't make money paying a $2,000 penalty for every waitress, so he's cancelled
his plans to expand. It's one more reason why job growth hasn't picked up
post-recession.
Of course, we were told that
government health care would increase hiring. After all, European companies
don't have to pay for their employees' health insurance. If every American
employer paid the $2,000 penalty and their workers turned to government for
insurance, American companies would be better able to compete with European
ones. They might save $10,000 per employee.
That sounded good, but like so
many politicians' promises, it leaves out the hidden costs. When countries move
to a government-funded system, taxes rise to crushing levels, as they have in
Europe.
Whalen sees Obamacare as a
crossing of the Rubicon.
"We've had an agreement in
this country, kind of unwritten, for the last 50 years, that we would spend
about 18 to 19 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) on the federal
government. This is a tipping point. This takes us to 25 to 30 percent. And
that money comes out of the private sector. That means fewer jobs. This is a
game-changer."
He means it's a game-changer
because of the cost. But the law's impenetrable complication does almost as
much damage. Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute is right: If you wonder
why businesspeople are not investing and reviving the economy, the answer lies
in all the question marks that Obamacare and other new regulations confront
them with. Higgs calls this "regime uncertainty." It's also what
prolonged the Great Depression.
No one who understands the
nature of government as the wielder of force -- as opposed to the peaceful
persuasion of the free market -- is surprised by this.
Copyright 2011, Creators
Syndicate Inc.
Take the Christian Coalition of America 2012 GOP Presidential
Survey
Who do you support for President?
That's the question we are asking pro-family conservatives all across America
in our new poll, and we want to include your vote.
( Click here and cast your
vote now )
Within a week, the Republican nomination process will officially begin with the
first votes to be cast in the Iowa caucuses on January 3rd. New Hampshire
will vote a week later, followed by South Carolina and Florida later in the
month.
There have been many polls conducted by numerous media organizations, but we
wanted to give an opportunity for pro-family activists to be heard.
Which candidate do you support? Who would be your second choice?
How committed are you to that candidate?
We will be conducting this poll in several phases, and announcing the updated
results to the media just prior to the vote in each of the early voting states.
So click here
and cast your vote today!
Also, please be sure to pass this email along to other fellow conservatives!
Sincerely,
Roberta Combs, President & CEO
Christian Coalition of America
Despite
GOP opposition, light bulb standards will phase in on Jan. 1
By Andrew Restuccia - 12/29/11
02:28 PM ET
New light bulb efficiency
standards will begin phasing in on Jan. 1 despite intense opposition from
conservatives, who have blasted the rules as a textbook unnecessary federal
regulation.
While Republicans secured
inclusion of a measure blocking funding for enforcement of the standards
in a year-end spending bill, energy efficiency groups say the provision will
have little practical impact. The Energy Department rules will nonetheless go
into effect at the start of 2012.
"The [spending bill] cut funding for enforcement, however the law is still
in effect," said Jack Gillis, spokesman for the Consumer Federation of
America. "It is our expectation that companies will still comply with the
law."
Steven Nadel, executive
director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said
companies have been preparing for the new light bulb efficiency standards since
Congress passed the 2007 energy law requiring traditional incandescent light
bulbs to be 30 percent more efficient starting in 2012.
“The major manufacturers have
already made the investments to follow the law,” he said. “They’re law-abiding
companies who aren’t going to break the law.”
The GOP-backed measure to cut funding for enforcing the light bulb standards
“probably is not going to have much impact,” Nadel said.
While the measure prevents DOE
from enforcing the standards through fiscal year 2012, Nadel said that states
can still require companies to follow the efficiency rules.
Gillis, of the Consumer Federation of America, added that individual companies
can pressure other companies to comply with the standards in order to keep a
level playing field.
He said the light bulb
standards got caught up in a growing wave of Republican disdain for federal
regulations.
“The bottom line is the light bulb became a political victim,” Gillis said. “It
was portrayed as an example of overzealous regulation, when in fact none of
that is actually true.”
Inclusion of the measure blocking funding for the light bulb standards in the
broader year-end spending bill was a political victory for Republicans, who
have been targeting the regulations for months.
Republicans often describe the standards as a “light bulb ban,” arguing that
the rules would greatly restrict consumer choice by pushing out traditional
incandescent bulbs in favor of more expensive, but more efficient, LED (light
emitting diode) and CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs.
Environmental and energy-efficiency groups note that the standards do not ban
incandescent bulbs, but instead require them to be more efficient. While more
efficient light bulbs are often more expensive at the point of sale, experts
say they save consumers money on their electricity bills over the long term.
Newsmax
Rev.
Wildmon Urges Christians to Pick Gingrich in Most Crucial Election Ever
Friday, December 30,
2011 11:12 AM
By: Paul Scicchitano and
Kathleen Walter
The Rev. Donald E. Wildmon is urging Christian voters in Iowa to vote for Newt
Gingrich in their caucuses on Tuesday in what he describes as the "most
critical" election in American history.
Wildmon also warns that voting for other "good" conservative
candidates will ensure Mitt Romney's victory.
Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, is one of the nation's
most respected Christian leaders and has been at the forefront for decades in
fighting for traditional values against a rising tide of secularism.
In an exclusive interview Thursday with Newsmax, Wildmon said other candidates
in the Republican race, including Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Michele
Bachmann, are all "good people."
But he said a vote for any of them will divide the conservative vote and help
former Massachusetts Gov. Romney.
Wildmon told Newsmax that Newt Gingrich is the only candidate who can wrest the
White House back from President Barack Obama.
“I think he is the one person that could win the White House and make some of
the changes that are desperately needed,” Wildmon insisted. “I think that he
would be able to defeat Obama, and also he would be able to defeat Romney.”
Wildmon endorsed Gingrich last week, despite his much-publicized personal and
marital issues.
Wildmon said he has talked personally with Gingrich and believes his faith in
Christ is real and sincere.
“I was with a small group that met with the speaker back in — well, it was four
years ago — and he expressed his regret,” Rev. Wildmon recalled.
“He confessed that yes, he did, he had made a mistake. He had done wrong. He
had sinned. And he’s been doing that and has lived since that time with a life
that points toward family and faithfulness.”
Everybody has faults, Rev. Wildmon said, adding, “I don’t think Jesus is
running in this election. But I think [Gingrich] has had enough change in his
personal life — and done enough study and research — to see that the family is
the most important unit in our society. Without it, if it disintegrates, then
there goes our country.”
Wildmon slammed Romney, based on his record as governor, claiming he had been
"soft" on gay marriage and backed an Obamacare health program in his
state.
“I think if you look at his record, he basically was real soft on Massachusetts’
homosexual marriage. That opened the doors for everybody else in the country,”
Wildmon said. “To be honest with you, I just don’t feel good about him. I feel
like that he’s Obama lite. I just don’t think that he can be trusted to really
care about, and protect and defend the family and religious freedom that we
have in this country.”
Rev. Wildmon said the stakes in this election are extremely high, arguing that
the next president probably will pick three to four Supreme Court justices, as
well as federal judges, who will set the legal environment for Christians and
others for decades.
Gingrich is the only candidate who can both beat Romney and Obama — and who has
a proven track record as a conservative, Wildmon said.
Gingrich proved he's a real conservative by authoring the Contract with America
and pushing through other key legislation as speaker of the House in the 1990s.
Gingrich has a solid pro-life record over several decades and has always
opposed taxpayer funded abortions.
“I think this is the most critical and crucial election this country has ever
had and I think our future depends on it. I know every other election that’s
been held, people say it’s important but this is important,” he said.
Video of the Rev. Donald
E. Wildmon's exclusive interview with Newsmax:
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/Wildmon-Republican-Gingrich-Iowa/2011/12/30/id/422594?s=al&promo_code=DD24-1
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
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“Blessed be the nation whose God is the Lord.”
Psalm 33:12
Important Links and Information
Web Site: http://www.AmericanHeritageMinistry.org
AHM Patriot Blog: http://ahmwayne1.wordpress.com
E-Mail: Wayne@AmericanHeritageMinistry.org
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“The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”
Cicero ….. 55 B.C.
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