OCPAC Weekly Insights Monday Edition October 7, 2019
| | This Wednesday's OCPAC Meeting October 9, 2019 | | In Person and... Live on Blue Moose TV & Facebook
Ed Shadid Bringing suit against OKC!
Steve Byas Unveiling the Oklahoma Legislature
Steve Anderson Plan to Restore Library Story Time
| | Restoring the children's story time in public libraries: Steve Anderson will present a way.
Suing the city of OKC: Ed Shadid, former member of the OKC City Council, is no conservative and also not a member of the OKC establishment. He has been invited to come to OCPAC this Wednesday to explain why he is suing the city of OKC.
Knowing What Your Legislator Stands For Steve Byas will talk about his work to keep voters informed.
| | Join us THIS WEDNESDAY! NOON to 1 PM at Olivet Baptist Church 1201 NW 10th, OKC (10th and Western) Lunch Available: See Below! $2 donation to church if not eating | | Today's Content
The Divine Standard & Government by Bob Linn
Last Week at OCPAC Ryan Walters Governor's Education Committee Executive Director, Oklahoma Achieves
Steve Anderson Political Minute
Alan Keyes at CHA Abortion Forum OCPAC ~ CITY ELDERS
Book Recommendations | | The Divine Standard & Government by Bob Linn | We will be looking at a variety of issues this Wednesday which point us to the role (or lack of a role) divine standards play in government and in cultures. Divine standards are fixed. Standards based on anything else (human reason uninformed by a divine standard) is forever moving.
This Wednesday, we will look at a few ways in which standards come into conflict with cultural and political winds. And, I hope, the ways we find solid ground. | Former OKC city councilman, Ed Shadid, is filing a lawsuit against Oklahoma City’s recent MAPS penny sales tax program. He claims MAPS 4 represents an unconstitutional logrolling technique by violating state tax single-subject state tax requirements.
Ed Shadid is known more for his left-leaning political ideas. We disagree with Mr. Shadid on more issues than we agree with him on. However, we are interested in his objections to the OKC city council. He has been extended an invitation to explain his lawsuit to OCPAC this Wednesday.
Is Mr. Shadid being a nuisance or does he introduce important standards to an issue in order to insure a well-run government? As usual, Charlie Meadows, OCPAC’s “right flank”, will help us think through the principles which apply wisdom to the issue. | We have also invited the team of Ron McWhirter and Steve Byas to explain to us the intended uses of the Conservative Index. Ron is out of town and will probably not make it back for the meeting, but he is working by phone with Steve to be sure we get a complete picture. Their Index has been the means of voters to get a look at the intellectual foundations of their elected representatives who make Oklahoma law.
Foundational standards lose their place in a culture when ruling authorities place higher value on pending community ideas than once-treasured law. The Conservative Index has helped keep voters on track here. | A ruling authority may be composed of a small group of elites (tyranny, oligarchy, etc.). In a democracy, the ruling authority is a large group ruled by 51% or more of its citizens. All these governmental forms establish moving standards. These change when people change.
A republican form of government is ruled by fixed law. Our founders established a Republic and required every state in the Union to have a Republican form of government. (Article IV, Section 4.)
Here is the conflict between the two fundamental principles of any government. The rule of man gives us law based on the changing state of the people who make the laws (autonomy). Divine law (theonomy) provides one standard of law for all mankind. From prince to pauper, everyone obeys the same law. | Not too long ago, a student at Oklahoma Wesleyan University felt “triggered” when presented with the unchanging Divine Law of love articulated in the Word of God. The student had no way of knowing that his complaint would propel the university and its president to national prominence with a message of the centrality of the unchangeable standards of the Word of God in public policy.
From that incident came Dr. Everett Piper’s now famous witticism (and book), Not A Daycare, in which Dr. Piper articulated clearly the vital role Biblical thought plays in establishing culture. The book’s subtitle reads, “The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth.”
Marcello Pera, political philosopher and former president of the Italian senate, agrees! Pera states, “The apostacy of Christianity is exposing the entire West to the risk of grave cultural and political crisis, and perhaps even the risk of a collapse of civilization.”
Angelo Codevilla points out that tyrannies “seek to banish religion from public life first, then from private life as well.” He gives us the reason: “Powerful Christianity makes for weak rulers and a strong society.”
If we are to build a stable future for Oklahoma, we must build on a foundation much deeper than conservatism or even constitutionalism. We must look to the firm and unchangeable foundation of Biblical standards. That is how Western Civilization was built. It was what our colonial forefathers built on. Divine standards are our only hope.
Come this Wednesday
Further appreciate the role Ron McWhirter and Steve Byas have played for forty years in helping us apply the fixed Biblical standards which built Western Civilization to the Oklahoma legislature.
See how you can help remediate the children’s story hour in our public libraries.
See if someone with whom we generally disagree might have latched onto a solid political principle for city government. |
Last Week Ryan Walters Governor's Education Committee Oklahoma Achieves | Ryan Walters brought his perspective on remediating education in Oklahoma. His report on the impoverished academic levels of American culture were a reminder of the need for reform.
| POLITICAL MINUTE Steve Anderson State-Wide Medicaid Expansion: A Conservative's View | How to Remove the Democrat Chains On the Poor and Poor Minorities
Most citizens do not know the regulations in programs like Medicaid. Sadly, neither do many legislators. Embedded in these programs are politically motivated rules which develop a dependent society. | When Medicaid was first introduced, then U. S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), used it to promote a key leftist political strategy. The essential purpose of the LBJ scheme was to design a program to convert minority voters to lifelong Democrats. Obviously, he succeeded.
The impending popular vote in Oklahoma threatens to expand Statewide Medicaid. However, the seasoned conservative, will spot two key flaws in the LBJ Medicaid strategy which will enable us to use to use the program (while holding our noses) to reverse the social trends Statist social trends the program has fostered. | Medicaid has what we call a ‘cliff’. It was intentionally and cleverly built into the program from its inception. There are some minor differences in amounts but all state systems have the cliff. It does two things which are good for building a society dependent on a statist government but very harmful to families and robust Christian cultures.
First, it prevents a recipient from getting out of the program. Second, it disincentives marriage.
Here is the short version:
If your income is 185% or less of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) you have full Medicaid coverage for your pregnancy and your children’s health care. Make 186% and you lose it all!! (The cliff!) | The cliff is only one of two insidious elements in this crafty plan. The second element: Income is measured for the household in a way that penalizes couples if they are married. The ‘Marriage Penalty’.
The number of single parent births to African-American mothers sky rocketed after the creation of Medicaid as it did in every ethnic group’s poorest members but the aforementioned group was disproportionately affected because of their economic status coming out of generations of slavery and/or second-class citizenship status. | Statewide Medicaid expansion does not have to include these two LBJ poison pills! States are afforded wide discretion in designing their own state Medicaid program. So … if one must swallow expansion (and it appears that its passage is a certainty), then why not use it to solve the cliff and marriage penalty issue?
We can eliminate the cliff! Let’s build a ‘ramp’ that allows a person to lose only a bit of coverage via a co-pay or deductible amount that incentives a recipient to try to increase their income. A mother knowing that she will lose only a percentage of every dollar she gains in salary to health care costs can now think about becoming upwardly mobile. | Let’s encourage marriage! Currently, the income of both parents are applied to the under-185% of FPL. A a strong disincentive to marry. Fathers are hidden and are less committed.
It is time we stop punishing two parent families and allow the incomes of the two parents to be divided by two for qualifying purposes and thus remove the incentive to hide from view. That will increase the number of covered children and pregnant women and the Democrats will have a hard time opposing that approach!
One of the surest indicators of a good life for a child is having both parents in the household helping raise the child. Implement this plan and watch families begin to form and wean themselves off the lousy health insurance that Medicaid is. | Let’s remove the Democrat chains on the poor by passing statewide Medicaid expansion that ONLY is used to address these two issues.
The alternative is to allow the Democrats to push us one step closer to a socialized single-payer medicine with the standard statewide Medicaid expansions that include single males and others that the program was never intended to cover.
~Edited by Bob Linn
| | The OCPAC compact with City Elders is significant for both organizations. Most importantly, the partnership is significant for the future of Oklahoma.
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If you live in the Tulsa Area, please attend their weekly Thursday morning meetings. It will be the highlight of your week!
The Doubletree Hotel at 61st & Yale in Tulsa 8 A.M. to 10 A.M.
Hear the vision of City Elders here. | | OCPAC meetings are re-broadcast daily | | Our video connections are upgraded! Experience our blazing speed!
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You now have a choice of two platforms.
TRY OUR NEW CONSERVATIVE-FRIENDLY | | Our new broadcast partner, Blue Moose TV, enables you to listen to us live and also to listen later at your convenience.
This is a new, Conservative-friendly, world-wide service. The Blue Moose TV platform will not shadow-ban our broadcast signal due to content. | | We have a $7 lunch solution through Eagle One Pizza.
It is one of Oklahoma's highest rated pizza kitchens and they make it all fresh from scratch. Rated A+.
"Authentic pizza made from the finest ingredients: fresh basil, olive oil, vine-ripened fresh tomatoes & fresh mozzarella."
The $7 includes the $2 meeting room fee.
Tea and water are provided. | | Join Us This Wednesday NOON to 1 PM Olivet Baptist Church 1201 NW 10th St, OKC, OK 73106 | | I'd like to invite you to bring your children and grandchildren to the weekly OCPAC meetings. Build a foundation for the role of Biblical thought in their political views. Only as we train our future leaders will we be able to anticipate the maturing of the Kingdom of God expressed both through the church and through the State. | | Facebook audience: Spread the word... We just upgraded our data flow to lightning speed!
More importantly, a new media platform has surfaced. Wednesday, we join them on their maiden voyage. | | Purchase two great books two great OCPAC speakers. ____________
From Wed July 24, 2019: Shooting Back Charl Van Wyk
From Wed August 21, 2019: Crimes of the Educators Blumenfeld & Newman | | Not A Daycare Still an important read | | Dr. Piper is one of God's choice men. He is leading the way in the American Church and in the American Christian University by calling for a return to epistemological bedrock. I urge those of you who have not read his book, Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth, to order a copy today. It is available very inexpensively here. | | Help support OCPAC'S mission. Join OCPAC or send a contribution today! To print donation form and mail a check, use the MAIL DONATION button below: | | The button below will enable you to electronically join OCPAC or to make a donation through our website: | | | | | | |
