From the Barack Obama campaign web site:

“Your own story and the American story are not separate — they are shared. And they will both be enriched if we stand up together, and answer a new call to service to meet the challenges of our new century … I won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate; I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am president of the United States. This will not be a call issued in one speech or program; this will be a cause of my presidency.” (emphasis added)

It sounds to me like he’s serious. And it sounds like a warning we should heed. Guess who plans to decide what cause is served. Do visions of arm-band wearing youths come to mind? Probably not, unless you’re at least my age.

The web site outlines Obama’s plan for “universal voluntary public service.” Now there’s an interesting juxtaposition of words. This public service he envisions is going to be both voluntary and universal. I suppose he plans to use our “voluntary” income tax system as a model. Signing up for public service will be “voluntary” but if you don’t volunteer he will come get you.

Thinking about millions of youths and old farts out doing Obama’s bidding frightens me. What he has in mind is an army of community organizers. His army will be trained to indoctrinate and intimidate. Its purpose will be to convince all that it serves to support the great leader. (If Obama is elected how long do you think his team will wait before the two-term limit on presidents is publicly questioned? I suspect that it has already come up internally.)

A very pertinent issue at this point in time is how Obama plans to pay for his legions of volunteers. The scope of the program he is talking about will cost billions of dollars that we don’t have. Will he raise taxes to pay for it? If so, it will all have to come from 5% of taxpayers because he assures us that 95% will get tax cuts. It’s more likely that he will come up with a “universal voluntary support fund,” to which the “wealthy” are expected to voluntarily contribute. That way it doesn’t count as a tax.

It’s interesting to note that Obama’s college service program proposes that students receive a $4,000 tax credit for 100 hours of public service each year. That’s $40 per hour. Most of these students will be disappointed to learn that they won’t get that pay rate in their first professional job after graduation.

What we’re witnessing in Washington this week is not a Wall Street bailout, it’s a bailout of the politicians. The members of Congress are afraid, and they should be, that if there is a major near-term meltdown of our economy most of them won’t be elected the next time they’re up for re-election. They prefer that the economy be dragged down gradually over several years so that it won’t be so directly linked to them.

Make no mistake about it. It’s a zero-sum game. The economy has already taken the hit; we just haven’t seen all the effects yet. The question is do we want to take the punishment now or do we want to spread it out over time? I say take it now. Let’s gulp down the medicine and get on with the healing.

Let the weak companies fail. Let the strong (or new) companies step in to take their place. Put more weight on what the economists who don’t have strong ties to Wall Street have to say than on what Wall Street executives and former executives have to say.

Let those who bought more house than they could afford lose the house. Let the lenders who gave them the opportunity lose their money. Rescind the laws that encourage bad lending practices. The worst thing we can do for the economy is to endlessly continue to prop up bad decisions.

I heard Senator Barbara Boxer this morning mock John McCain for saying last week that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. I don’t know if she was just being political or is dumb enough not to know that McCain is right. I suspect the latter. I suspect she doesn’t understand that the fundamentals of the economy are the skilled workforce, the capital infrastructure and the entrepreneurship that exist in this country. I suspect that she thinks it is the amount of control the government has over the economy.

The fundamentals are going to still be there whether Wall Street crashes or doesn’t crash. We will bounce back if the government will get out of the way. I prefer that we start the bounce sooner rather than later.

In discussing the proposed financial institution bailout in his column yesterday Dr Thomas Sowell said that “many people have trouble even forming some notion of what such numbers as billion and trillion mean.” To get some idea of the magnitude of a trillion he suggests thinking about it in terms of what was going on in the world a trillion seconds ago. The answer is not much. No one on the planet knew how to read. That could have been because no one knew how to write. It was over 31,709 years ago. I suspect there were no politicians around back then.

If you could earn a dollar a second (that’s $3,600 per hour) and worked 24/7 with no sleep or vacations it would take you over 31,709 years to earn a trillion dollars. You would be earning over $32 million per year but it would still take you more than 31,709 years to earn a trillion dollars. If you don’t think you can work that long and if you can recruit 31,708 people with the same earning ability to help out, you can earn the trillion dollars in about a year.

If the trillion dollar debt the government is about to incur is divided equally among 300 million Americans it will come to $3,333.33 per person. It seems to me that will drag down the economy as much or more than letting a few rogue companies go belly up.

Two weeks ago it was New Orleans, now it’s Galveston. The federal government is riding to the rescue of thousands (millions?) of Texans. It has not only plucked people from the water and rooftops, but will also help them rebuild their homes and businesses.

I’m all for saving people in imminent danger of being killed, but I believe that someone who refuses to evacuate and then has to be extricated by the Coast Guard should have to reimburse the cost of the operation.

It’s time for people to reconsider their decisions to build their homes on an ocean beach — especially those for whom the beach house is their only place of residence. For each person living on the beach there are probably a hundred people who would like to but don’t because they don’t want to accept the risk. But have at it if you can afford to lose it and won’t ask the government to replace it for you.

If the government is not bailing out homeowners who make bad decisions about where to build their homes it is bailing out those who make bad decisions about the size of home they can afford or bailing out the lending institutions that facilitate the acquisition of too much house. Now it is also bailing out investment bankers who make bad decisions. Next thing we know we’ll have a huge Department of Homeland Bailouts.

I wonder if any homes in foreclosure were destroyed by Ike. If so, will the homeowners get a double bailout? Don’t laugh.

This is all quite depressing but if Obama gets elected we ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

But are they spending untold millions to repair their reputation or to save the lives of the citizens of New Orleans? Or both?

My fireman nephew in Tennessee called yesterday to say that FEMA has turned his station into an emergency operations center for the processing of evacuees from Louisiana. They plan to house thousands in the barracks of a nearby National Guard base. You’ve probably seen some TV coverage of other far-ranging operations that FEMA has underway.

It’s not that I think the residents of New Orleans should be left to drown. I just don’t think they should be living in a place that requires such heroic efforts to save them every few years. They might argue that before Katrina it had been decades since the city had suffered any significant storm damage. But I would respond that the millions spent on levees, pumps and other measures probably helped protect them during that period. Storms or no storms taxpayers across the country are paying dearly to try to keep New Orleans safe. And it’s not working very well. For taxpayers there’s nothing easy about the Big Easy.

I read that thousands of the pre-Katrina residents have never returned. They’re the smart ones. We should reward them. Hey there’s an idea! Perhaps we should pay New Orleans residents to leave and never come back. It might cost less than evacuating them every time a hurricane enters the gulf and housing them after each storm that destroys or floods their homes. And make no mistake about it. An evacuation operation will have to be started for every hurricane that can hit New Orleans within four or five days.

If Al Gore is right New Orleans will be permanently underwater within a few years anyway. Regardless of Gore’s climate astuteness it just doesn’t make sense for us to encourage people to live where they can’t afford the risks they are taking.

It costs a lot to get reelected to Congress. So the incumbents are willing to take your money and my money to help ease their pain. Not directly, mind you. Devious politicians never do anything directly. After all, it wouldn’t be devious if it was direct. The AP reports:

A mortgage aid plan is on track for passage in the Senate as soon as today. The massive foreclosure rescue bill cleared a key Senate test yesterday by an overwhelming margin, with Democrats and Republicans both eager to claim election-year credit for helping hard-pressed homeowners.

The mortgage aid plan would let the Federal Housing Administration back $300 billion in new, cheaper home loans for an estimated 400,000 distressed borrowers who otherwise would be considered too financially risky to qualify for government-insured, fixed-rate loans.

So all those people who have already demonstrated that they are poor risks for loans are going to get another loan backed by you and me. The Senate wants the loans to go as high as $625,000 and the House wants to up that to $730,000. Think about that. If someone with a bad credit rating wants to spend nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to buy a house, you and I are going to be forced to guarantee them a loan — if the House has its way. President Bush has said that he will veto the bill if it is passed, but that is because he doesn’t like some of its provisions.

Some of the lawmakers are pushing to make the bill revenue neutral. But who believes that will happen? If a lot of the “400,000 distressed borrowers” weren’t expected to default on their loans they wouldn’t need to have the tax-payers backing them.

What this bill is really about is a way for a bunch of well-connected builders to get rid of their over-built inventory of over-priced houses. What a stroke of political genius! Use tax-payer money to reward big reelection campaign donors and buy the votes of over-indulgent borrowers at the same time. I’m still looking for the day when such strategies backfire, but I’m afraid I’m looking in vain.

The Texas Supreme Court has affirmed the appellate court’s ruling that District Judge Barbara Walther was wrong to allow the FLDS children to be taken into state custody and placed in foster-care. It said, child welfare officials overstepped their authority, failed to show an immediate danger to the children, and removal of the children was not warranted. In other words Walther screwed up royally. Yet she is still in charge of resolving the case.

Why is a judge who made such an egregious mistake, one that has traumatized over a thousand people, still on the job? Because they are insulated from their mistakes. They aren’t penalized for incompetence. In some states it is theoretically possible for the citizens to vote a judge off the bench, but it rarely happens.

The child welfare officials in Texas are now talking about imposing restrictions on the sect when their children are returned. One possibility is requiring all the male adults to leave the ranch. Another is implementing safeguards to prevent the families from fleeing the state. All this even though there is still no clear evidence of illegal behavior. But they probably feel that Walther will back them up.

Why should I expect reason from crusaders? That is exactly what this is, a crusade. One set of bible-thumpers trying to impose its will on a different set of bible-thumpers. The set with the most power will eventually prevail. Reason is not likely to be a strong factor in determining the outcome.

Well, it appears there are some level heads in Texas. But what took them so long? The AP reports:

An appellate court decision upended the custody case that sent more than 440 children from a polygamist sect’s ranch into foster care, but it’s not clear whether the children might soon return home.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the state failed to show the youngsters were in any immediate danger, the only grounds under Texas law for taking children from their parents without court action.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther now has 10 days to release the youngsters from custody, but the state could appeal to the Texas Supreme Court and keep the children from immediately going back to their parents.

The decision Thursday in one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history was a humiliating defeat for the state Child Protective Services agency. It was hailed as vindication by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who claim they are being persecuted for their religious beliefs.

…

“Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse … there is no evidence that this danger is ‘immediate’ or ‘urgent,’” the court said.

“Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal,” the court said.

The court said the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children. Half the youngsters taken from the ranch were 5 or younger. Only a few dozen are teenage girls.

The court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as a single household and to seize all the children because some parents in the home might be abusers.

Were these justices reading from my blog? No, it’s just that, like me, they weren’t among those hyperventilating over the strange behavior of the sect’s members.

Now the Texas authorities should decide not to appeal the decision, get those children back to their parents and get on with investigations of individual instances of abuse — if they can find any. Here’s a guideline: motherhood at the age of 27 is not evidence of abuse.

Based on a comment on a previous post by a regular and respected reader I decided that I need to clarify my position on the whole Texas FLDS thing.

I believe that Mormonism as practiced by the FLDS is all about male domination, power and sex, just like I believe that Islam as practiced by its radical elements is all about male domination, power and sex. I believe that clear instances of abuse should be punished, but when we ditch the constitution in order to right what some in government feel is wrong we are stepping out on a very dangerous slippery slope. I fear the unbound power of government more than I fear fringe religious elements.

If there is one family caught in the wide net cast by the Texas officials that can show they were in no way involved in illegal practices and that there was no probable cause for search and seizure, I hope they sue to the full extent of the law. If there are a hundred such families I hope they all sue.

What Texas should have done when they received the telephone complaint from the young woman was to get a warrant from a judge and go out to the compound and conduct an investigation. If the sect leaders refused to cooperate the authorities should have taken the steps provided by law to force them to cooperate or go to jail. If this process produced clear evidence of abuse, those instances of abuse should have been prosecuted. All other parents and children should have been left to continue their lives as they see fit, as long as it is within the law.

Some have said that if one child was saved from abuse the actions of the Texas officials are justified. This is an absurd argument. Absolutes in a complex social system are unattainable. The FLDS children are being placed in foster-care. Texas cannot guarantee that none of them will be abused. We sacrifice children in accidents because we won’t give up our freedom to travel. We may have to sacrifice children to retain our constitutional rights.

The reader says to ask those who have escaped or been cast out of the FLDS. That is a very good suggestion. Why has their testimony not been used to investigate and prosecute the offenders in the sect? Perhaps it has in some cases. I seem to remember that this might have been a factor in the Warren Jeffs case. But why have we not heard of a lot more of these cases. Could it be that no clear evidence of abuse is found in many of the cases?  Or that the escapees or cast-offs won’t cooperate?

This affair smells to me like a bunch of self-righteous do-gooders getting a bit overwrought over some beliefs and practices that are not like theirs. Neither do I have any clear evidence of that, but I’m not going to go out with armored vehicles and force them into my custody.

I believe that any religion that seeks to force its will on people is despicable. I also believe that a government that unlawfully seeks to force its will on people is despicable and more dangerous (at this time).

Having said all this, I’m willing to admit that I’m wrong about this particular case if Texas proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that all the affected parents are guilty of placing their children in imminent danger of physical abuse.

It’s a puzzling world we live in. The State of Texas believes that all members of the Eldorado FLDS sect are guilty by their association with some of the Sect’s leaders, who are suspected of sex crimes. But we are lectured constantly by the media that Barack Obama should not be considered guilty of race-baiting through his association with his long-term pastor Jeremiah Wright.

Why weren’t all Catholic children rounded up and put in state custody in Texas when many of the priests were found to be pedophiles? Is there not a Baptist church in Texas whose pastor was charged with having sex with a minor member? It’s in the news somewhere quite frequently.

CBS and AP report on hearings in Texas on the FLDS mess. Some of the parents’ attorneys complained that the Book of Mormon was confiscated from some of the children at a foster facility. If this is true we have Texas taking the Book of Mormon from citizens while the federal government is providing the Koran to foreign terrorists.

State Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said officials have not been able to confirm whether the sect members’ holy text was taken from them, but they have removed photos, sermons and books of FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs, a convicted sex offender.

Texas now decides what is fit for children to read? I don’t know what the materials say but it looks like censorship to me. Does this mean that if your child is found to be reading black-listed materials the state can take him or her away from you?

Church members insist there was no abuse. They say the one-size-fits-all action plan devised by CPS doesn’t take into account specific marriage arrangements or living circumstances.

CPS spokeswoman Shari Pulliam said the plans look similar now but will be customized as officials get more information.

“It’s logical they all look the same. All the children were removed from the same address at the same time for the same reason,” she said. But “it’s an evolving plan.”

“It’s an evolving plan” is code for “we acted hastily, we didn’t have much concrete information at the time and we used a broad-brush approach, but we are now compiling information that will cover our asses when all this is scrutinized.”

The plans call for parenting classes and vocational testing for the parents. They also require the parents to prove they can support their children and call for safe living environments, though they offer no specifics.

Before they get their children back all the parents will have to be indoctrinated and reprogrammed.