The best model for fixing the safety net for the poor is the model already worked out by the Mormon Church. Mormons have a system of welfare that lets almost no one fall through the cracks while at the same time ensuring that its beneficiaries do not become lifelong dependents.
The Mormon system includes a 15-acre warehouse on the outskirts of Salt Lake City that contains a 2 year supply of food to support the church’s welfare system in the U.S. and Canada (primarily for church members in need) and its humanitarian program, which sends food, medical supplies and other necessities to the needy of all faiths world-wide.
In addition to goods from canned peaches to emergency generators, the facility also houses the church's own trucking company, complete with 43 tractors and 98 trailers, as well as a one-year supply of fuel, parts and tires for the vehicles. Just in case.
Most of the inventory in the central storehouse, though, goes to supply more than 100smaller storehouses around the country, plus hundreds of soup kitchens and homeless shelters of other religious communities around North America.
This whole system is manned and supplied with money from volunteers and church donors. It is designed to rehabilitate to working status rather than to keep its aid recipients on the dole with perpetual unemployment insurance.
If you would like to learn more about this wonder of efficient welfare supply, go to http://on.wsj.com/zQliuP
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The War On Christians
Newsweek 18 February 2012 published an article with the above title by a 42-year-old woman who escaped Somalia in 1992 and lived in the Netherlands. She speaks 6 languages and served for a time as an MP in the Netherlands. She now resides in the United States. To read her bio, go to http://imdb.to/zAeaYp . (Her bio is, perhaps, the most interesting part of this post.)
In recent years, the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries, it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.
In Nigeria, a Muslim organization called Boko Haram is spearheading the thrust to eliminate Christians from that country. In the month of January, Boko Haram was responsible for 54 deaths. In 2011, its members killed at least 510 people and burned down or destroyed more than 350 churches in 10 northern states. They used guns, gasoline bombs, and machetes. They have attacked churches, a Christmas Day gathering (killing 42 Catholics), beer parlors, a town hall, beauty salons, and banks. They have so far focused on killing Christian clerics, politicians, students, police officers, and soldiers, as well as Muslim clerics who condemn their mayhem. While they started out by using crude methods like hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes in 2009, the latest AP reports indicate that the group’s recent attacks show a new level of potency and sophistication. Boko Haram has stated that its goal is to kill all Christians in Nigeria.
This kind of mayhem has been evident in Sudan, Egypt, the Middle East, Pakistan, the Punjab, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. To read more about this, go to http://bit.ly/ApSjFU.
In recent years, the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries, it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.
In Nigeria, a Muslim organization called Boko Haram is spearheading the thrust to eliminate Christians from that country. In the month of January, Boko Haram was responsible for 54 deaths. In 2011, its members killed at least 510 people and burned down or destroyed more than 350 churches in 10 northern states. They used guns, gasoline bombs, and machetes. They have attacked churches, a Christmas Day gathering (killing 42 Catholics), beer parlors, a town hall, beauty salons, and banks. They have so far focused on killing Christian clerics, politicians, students, police officers, and soldiers, as well as Muslim clerics who condemn their mayhem. While they started out by using crude methods like hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes in 2009, the latest AP reports indicate that the group’s recent attacks show a new level of potency and sophistication. Boko Haram has stated that its goal is to kill all Christians in Nigeria.
This kind of mayhem has been evident in Sudan, Egypt, the Middle East, Pakistan, the Punjab, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. To read more about this, go to http://bit.ly/ApSjFU.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Is The President Being Fair?
A very thought-provoking editorial appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 7 February 2012. Following are a few excerpts from that editorial:
“President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?
“Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?
“Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?
“Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?”
”Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy-pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is ‘subsidized’?”
“Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?”
Well, these are just some of the excerpts. If you want to read the whole editorial, go to http://on.wsj.com/wrwCvo.
“President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?
“Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?
“Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?
“Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?”
”Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy-pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is ‘subsidized’?”
“Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?”
Well, these are just some of the excerpts. If you want to read the whole editorial, go to http://on.wsj.com/wrwCvo.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
