Editorial: YCC Endorses Private-Accounts!

"Today, the top 20 percent of the United States population controls 80% of the wealth. We have a wealth gap that is unhealthy. It leads to class envy and political hyperbole," writes Senator Rick Santorum in his influential book, It Takes a Family. "The current financial divide in America is between those people who save, and therefore are able to acquire assets, and thus the potential to build wealth, and those people who have not yet grasped that they have that opportunity."

One way to help our fellow Americans to save, acquire assets and build new wealth is the Thrift Savings Account Plan for Social Security. The Thrift Savings Account Plan would allow Americans to take the hard earned money that they currently pay into the system (at a two percent rate of return) and place it in a private investment account (at an historical average of a six percent rate of return).

By returning Americans abilities to take ownership and responsibility for otherwise untouchable taxed income, in order to invest in diverse low risk securities investments, they would be able to see their money grow, be inclined to invest more, and be permitted to pass unspent savings on to their children. The Thrift Savings Account Plan would turn millions more Americans into active savers, investors, and members of the American ownership society. Further, the plan would release new capital into The Cause of Wealth in Nations- the free market, and thus create new jobs. In short, the Thrift Savings Account Plan rocks!

In razor sharp contrast, under the status quo, the average American will pay eighty-four thousand dollars into the system that they will never get back. Further, the wealth gap will continue to grow, creating class envy. What's worse? There is no guarantee that future generations will receive social security benefits at all. Under current law, the government can pull the plug on social "in-security" at any time. How did it come to this?

Ostensibly, leftist politicians claim to want to "fix social security." In reality, they want to institutionalize dependency at any cost. Their goal is to make middle-class Americans depend on them, financially! Leftists want the government to collect our money so that they can bribe us with it later for votes, it is the leftists way.

In order to lure Americans into handing their hard earned money over, leftist politicians love to make the argument that private-accounts are ''too risky,'' but what I love to do is point out to people that these same politicians turn around, and use a special Congressional loophole, to sign-up for private-accounts themselves. Further, whenever they claim that diversified private-accounts are too ''insecure,'' I let the truth be known. Since conception, there has never been a 20 year period, in which the market has not risen by a minimum of four percent, which is double social securities current rate of return! Heck, even online banks now offer savings accounts that pay a 5 percent rate of return, which is double and a half what our money makes under so-called "social security." To be quite frank, under the liberal system, we are all getting screwed!

The leftists lack of faith in diversified private-accounts either demonstrates a lack of faith in the entire Free Market System, the system upon which this nation stands, which might explain why they continually fight for socialist policy, or, it shows that they would rather do nothing than something. It shows that they could care less about the Americans that they claim to represent, and that they care deeply for playing politics, via scare tactics, with our generation's future.

With declining birth rates and a generation gap, we are looking into the eye of a perfect level 5 Social Security hurricane. Don't let the donkeys in Congress postpone fixing the levees of Social Security any longer. Contact your federal representatives today, and demand that they champion private-accounts, and thus, our future!

Ryan Sorba

Editorial: Intelligent Design: Dembski > Darwin

With all our technology, our understanding, our progress, our super-computers and lifetimes of work, we cannot even come close to creating anything anywhere near as complex as an earthworm. Yet these super complex organisms, with more complex parts than any super-computer, supposedly came together by chance, without anything intelligent guiding their way.

When that giant, Charles Darwin, roamed the earth so long ago, most scientists held the view that the universe was infinite and eternal. However, in the middle of the twentieth century, the universe, according to science, got much cozier.

As evidence mounted for the Big Bang hypothesis, the specter of a beginning of the universe, and thus, a finite universe, the limits of time and space ruled out the possibility for infinite chance events. Without infinite chance events, the highly improbable events associated with the theory of evolution stretch the boundaries of probability, and the imagination, past the breaking point. In light of a finite universe, in light of the impending collapse of purely naturalistic explanations, how should science come to view life?

Enter, Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is the theory that all biological organisms are far too well ordered, or, too complex, to have been created by any simple, unintelligent chance event, or, series of chance events.The Intelligent Design hypothesis is premised on what is called specified complexity. Specified complexity uses reason, science, and math to detect design in highly improbable, complex, independent patterns.

For example, we detect design at the cellular basis for life because cells are extremely complex, and molecules are extremely independent. "Cells are machines of stunning complexity. A single cell is like an entire assembly line of molecules, operating in perfect harmony."

Another indicator that the "universe might have some sort of design was the gradual discovery, starting in the 1950's of dozens of 'fine-tuned' parameters in physics and cosmology, that were seemingly arbitrary values; yet, if those values were varied by even the tiniest amount, the universe simply wouldn't 'work' in anyway that it actually does."

One example of such a parameter is the "strong nuclear force," which allows for "heavy atoms" such as carbon to form, which in turn, enables the formation of atomic bonds, thus enabling the formation of complex molecular and cellular structures, both necassary for life. Similarly, if the weak nuclear force varied by even the tiniest amount, the universe, again, would cease to exist in any way that it actually does. Further, if the Big Bang were not immediately followed by a Big Crunch, and the universe wasn't moving in the way that it has been as a result, then this would have caused other finely tuned parameters to vary, which, according to cosmologists, would mean that molecules, galaxies, stars, and planets could not have formed.

What most people don't know is that there is a long and growing list of finely tuned parameters that have been identified. If evolutionary models for intelligent life were correct, the probability for evolution should continually increase as scientists learn more about the universe. On the other hand, if the creation explanation for physical intelligent life is correct, that probablility should continually decrease. In 1995, 41 fine-tuned characteristics had been identified, by 2000 the number of them had more than trippled to 128, by 2002, scientists had discovered more than 200, and by 2004, 323. With each new specific, fine-tuned parameter, the probablity for getting the right values, for all the parameters, increases exponentially.

Today, assuming that the universe contains ten billion trillion planets and one trillion trillion moons, (the most optimistic estimates) the probablilty of getting all the perfect parameters, so as to enable life is 10 to the negative 282 power!

If any one of these finely-tuned parameters, varied, even slightly, then life as we know it would not be possible. The probability of getting the "right" values for all of these parameters (each of which could have been any number between one and infinity) by blind chance, so as to enable life on our planet, is so astronomically high, that is raises some obvious and weighty questions about whether the cosmos bears the mark of design.

Interestingly, in response to the scientific case for cosmic design most working cosmologists have accepted an ad hoc escape valve called the 'multi-verse.' The idea behind this multi-verse is that there must be an infinite number of universes, each with a random set of physical laws, constants, constraints, etc. in order for ours to just so happen to have all the correct values necassary for life. Supposedly, we just happen to have "won the universe lottery!"
According to multi-versers, we're sitting in what is possibly, the single universe, out of infinite universes, that just so happens to have all the right conditions to make life possible. Well, it looks to me like it would take an awful lot of "faith" for "scientists" to believe in a far-out theory like the "multi-verse," given it's own statistical probability, and our complete lack of evidence for any such thing.

Basically, even is trillions of years went by, I don't believe that any super-computer, or a pencil for that matter, or an earthworm, or, indeed, a self-conscious, life and blood, breathing human being, could come into existence without an intelligent designer. Do you?

If one observes nature, if one practices the scientific method, Intelligent Design offers a far more plausible explanation for the universe, and for life.

Ryan Sorba

-All text in quotes was taken from either page 396 or 397, of Senator Rick Santorum’s book “It Takes a Family.”

Ryan Sorba Lecturing on the "Born Gay Hoax" at Cal State

A one hour talk exposing the hidden agenda of the pro same-gender sex political movement.