ManringEN

ObamaCare Oversteps American Liberties!

2012-02-08T04:09:00.000-08:00

In mandating that public charities must provide contraceptive and abortion prescriptions for their employees in conflict with their stated and long-term religious beliefs, ObamaCare has definitely overstepped its rightful boundaries.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal dated 8 February 2012 outlines the problem very well:

“The political furor over President Obama's birth-control mandate continues to grow, even among those for whom contraception poses no moral qualms, and one needn't be a theologian to understand why. The country is being exposed to the raw political control that is the core of the Obama health-care plan, and Americans are seeing clearly for the first time how this will violate pluralism and liberty.”

In my opinion, this action of the Department of Health and Human Services represents the exercise of pure political muscle without considering the Constitutional rights to freedom of religion, which is guaranteed to all Americans. The government policy ludicrously claims that organizations which qualify for the title of religious organizations are only churches—religious hospitals, homeless shelters, schools, soup kitchens, and other religious charities are really not religious organizations in the opinion of the government. Therefore, they apparently do not qualify for protection under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The WSJ editorial goes on to say, “The entire thrust of ObamaCare is to standardize benefits and how they must be paid for and provided, regardless of individual choices or ethical convictions.”

This government grabbing of Constitutional liberties must stop!! Today it is religious freedom; tomorrow it will be something even more intrusive, if possible.
If you want to read the whole editorial, I suggest you go to http://on.wsj.com/wk8ZaY.

We, Americans, have a natural hope and trust in government to provide what is best for us, but what we hope for in the Affordable Care Act is an illusion; and we absolutely must recognize this Act for what it is—an illegal government theft of our basic rights. Listen to what Patrick Henry said about such government action: “It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth; and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”

It’s Time To Quit Low Interest Rates

2012-02-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal of 6 February by Charles Schwab points out that in the 37th month of central government manipulation of the free-market system, the Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest rate policy is still not accomplishing its goal of stimulating the economy.

“The Fed policy has resulted in a huge infusion of capital into the system, creating a massive rise in liquidity but negligible movement of that money. It is sitting there, in banks all across America, unused. The multiplier effect that normally comes with a boost in liquidity remains at rock bottom. Sufficient capital is in the system to spur growth—it simply isn't being put to work fast enough.

“Average American savers and investors in or near retirement are being forced by the Fed's zero-rate policy to take greater investment risks. To get even modest interest or earnings on their savings, they move out of safer assets such as money markets, short-term bonds or CDs and into riskier assets such as stocks. Either that or they tie up their assets in longer-term bonds that will backfire on them if inflation returns. They're also dramatically scaling back their consumer spending and living more modestly, thus taking money out of the economy that would otherwise support growth.

“In short, the Fed's actions, rather than helping, are having the perverse effect of destroying the confidence of businesses and individuals to invest and the willingness of banks to loan to anyone but those whose credit is so strong they don't need loans.”

It seems the money is there for the asking; but with consumer confidence at such a low ebb, nobody is willing to risk anything on borrowing. It seems to me that if America were to elect a President, such as Mitt Romney—an obviously skillful and insightful businessman—the confidence in American business and entrepreneurship would explode in a burst of borrowing and investing.

Removing God From the Public Square

2012-02-01T13:20:00.000-08:00

A recent action by Director Robert V. Abbey of the Bureau of Land Management has succeeded in denying the placement of a plaque at the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. The plaque commemorated the prayer of President Franklin Roosevelt on the morning of the D-Day invasion. He said, in part: “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion and our civilization, and to set free suffering humanity….Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace—a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God, Amen.”

Mr. Abbey’s denial undoubtedly reflects the mindset of the Federal Government, bent on erasing all evidence of faith from our people and from our history. This is just another all-too-familiar attempt to throw God out of every aspect of our public life.

I suggest that all the readers of this blog post write to their Congressmen, Senators, the President, and the Bureau of Land Management objecting to this action. Thanks for your participation in the attempt to stem the evaporation of our traditional values.

Why Does God Want Us To Praise Him?

2012-01-27T12:16:00.001-08:00

There are several reasons for God’s quest for praise from us, his creatures. But in looking at this question, we must, first of all, remember that God is all sufficient in himself; and he does not need anything—including our praises. He seeks praise because the praise of God is good for us!
1) God inhabits the praises of his people. I find him; and I find life when I praise him.
2) By praising him, we complete our relationship with him—just as a loving couple loves and relates to one another. Ps 100:4, 5 states, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.”
3) Praise is a one-way communication with God. We are telling him we love him; we are telling him how great he is; we are thanking him for the things he has done in our lives. When the Lord rescued Israel through the crossing of the Red Sea, Moses and Miriam praised God in Ex 15:1, 2. “I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”
4) Yet, praise does not stop here. Psalm 22:3 says, “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel. In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them.” When God is with us, the communication suddenly becomes two-way. God is speaking to us: affirming us of the truth; convicting of sin; reminding us of scripture: etc…. This is worship.
5) Is God’s presence good or bad? Certainly good! James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. “ Jesus says in Matthew 7:9-11, “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!” Based on these scriptures, you could certainly conclude that God has our best interest at his heart.
6) This question about the command of God that we should praise him nags at the heart of many would-be believers. We should also remember that by praising him we fulfill his admonition to give thanks for the blessings we have. Romans 1:21 “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
7) So…to answer the question, “Why does God want to be praised?” The conclusion is the furthest thing from selfishness on the part of God. God wants to be praised because he wants what is best for us, and this goodness can only be found in his presence.

So What About Saul Alinsky?

2012-01-26T12:07:00.000-08:00

In my last blog post, I outlined the techniques used and promulgated by Saul Alinsky in the mid-20th Century—techniques designed to gain perceived benefits for disempowered minorities. But…those techniques also had another goal—a goal of gaining power for the community organizer. Those power grubbing activities are being used to the detriment, today, of the American people. They are being used by the Obama administration. President Obama and his wife were good students of Saul Alinsky. Look for the techniques of Saul Alinsky in the policies of our Federal Government.

Rules for Radicals

2012-01-23T04:35:00.000-08:00

(To understand President Obama and his political techniques, one must understand the teachings of his mentor, Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was a master of stirring up dissention in the Chicago south side to produce political and social change. His techniques fully endorsed the dictum that “A particular end is justified by a particular means.” The following is copied from http://familyrightsassociation.com/bin/Rules_for_Radicals.html.)

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

His “rules” derive from many successful campaigns where he helped poor people fighting power and privilege.

For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, they stop thinking about it.

According to Alinsky, the organizer — especially a paid organizer from outside — must first overcome suspicion and establish credibility. Next the organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is necessary to get people to participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent community life where people have simply come to accept a bad situation. Alinsky would say, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”

Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.

Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

Are The Rich Really Ripping Us Off?

2012-01-20T03:25:00.000-08:00

We hear a lot these days about how the rich are not paying their fair share of federal taxes. I would invite each of my readers to look carefully at the Wall Street Journal article referenced in the following link. You will see clearly that the rich certainly ARE paying their fair share of federal taxes, e.g., the top 1% of income earners are paying about 40% of the money flowing into the fed treasury.

An excerpt from this article reads: “In any event, raising tax rates has not over time succeeded in increasing tax shares from the rich. When the top income-tax rate was as high as 70% in the 1970s, the top 1% paid about 19% of all federal income taxes. At the current rate of 35% the top 1% pay just under 40% of all income taxes. Liberals say this is because the rich earn a larger share of income. But when tax rates are lower, the rich have less incentive to seek tax shelters and more incentive to put their money to work in income-earning, revenue-producing ventures.”

The whole article can be read by linking to http://on.wsj.com/wRaqz4.

Why Does Winter Happen?

2012-01-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

Today, listening to Science Friday on NPR, I learned the answer to a question about which I had long wondered. My question: The winter solstice is on December 22; that is the day on which the sun reaches its most southerly position in the sky. After that, the sun moves gradually farther north every day. My question is, if the sun is moving north, why do the days get colder and colder throughout our winter in the northern hemisphere?

Most people think that the reason our winters occur is because we move farther from the sun during that season. That is not the truth. The earth’s orbit describes an almost perfect circle around the sun, maintaining an almost consistent distance from the sun—there is a slight variation, but it is insignificant.

The earth’s north/south axis is tipped 23° from its horizontal orbit. In the winter, we, in the northern hemisphere are located on the part of the tilt that is away from the sun. This tip causes radiation from the sun to be more diffused than it is in the summer, when the sun’s rays strike the earth in a more perpendicular direction. Therefore, heat from the sun is spread over a larger area, and that heats the surface of the planet less than in the summer.

The reason for the lag in the onset of cold weather after the winter solstice is that the earth soaks up and radiates heat slowly in response to the abundance or the paucity of the sun’s heat radiation. Water, which covers 71% of the earth’s surface, is especially adapted to slow heat transfer. Liquid water is a mitigating influence on rapid changes in weather as the tilted earth rotates around the sun.

We are indebted to the changing seasons for much of life, as we know it. If the earth did not have the 23° tilt, there would be no seasonal changes. This would plunge much of northern Europe, Australia, the southern tips of Africa and South America, and northern Asia into a perpetual ice-crusted no-man’s land. Many crops are dependent upon a changing season system; and that would impair the growth of human populations.

How Beneficial Are Biofuels, Anyway?

2012-01-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

We live in a world where species of wild animals are disappearing and a billion people are barely able to get enough to eat. Is this the time to clear rain forests to grow palm oil or give up food-crop land to grow biofuels so that people can burn fuel derived from carbohydrate rather than hydrocarbons in their cars? This paucity of food-producing land is already driving up the cost of food for human populations.Five percent of the world’s crop land has been taken out of growing food and put into growing fuel; in the United States, that figure is 20%. Drought in Australia and more meat eating in China has pushed the world food supply below world food demand. In 2008 the food shortage caused food riots all over the world. Between 2004 and 2007, the world corn harvest increased by 51 million tons; but 50 million tons went into fuel ethanol, leaving nothing to meet the increase in demand for food. American car drivers were taking carbohydrates out of the mouths of the poor to fill their tanks.

This might be okay if the money spent on ethanol would save Americans money so they could afford to buy more goods and services from the poor and help them out of poverty. But…Americans are taxed three times for their ethanol hunger—they subsidize the growing of corn through the government; they subsidize the manufacture of ethanol; and they pay more for their food. Ethanol production actually impairs the ability of people to contribute to the demand for manufactured goods.

In order to produce fuel ethanol, a farmer must use fuel for his tractors, petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, truck fuel, and distillation fuel. So…on balance, it takes just about as much fuel to produce the new ethanol fuel as the ethanol fuel, itself contains. Drilling and refining fuel from oil and coal reserves, of which there are many, gets you a 600% energy return on your energy used.

Making fuel from Brazilian sugar cane is more efficient, because it is produced by armies of underpaid laborers.

Using oil to drive cars releases CO2, which is a greenhouse gas; but using tractors to grow crops releases nitrous oxide from soil, which is a stronger greenhouse gas with nearly 300 times the warming potential of CO2.

The ultimate argument against the use of biofuels is that these fuels require land for their production; and the earth’s land area is finite. The human population, which uses land for food production, is increasing. By 2050, the earth’s population will need every bit of arable land for food production. We need to quit using biofuels until some more efficient way of producing them is discovered.

Data for this blog post were taken from The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley.

How Good Are We—Really?

2012-01-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

It is common understanding that we, humans, are not the pillars of righteousness and beauty we think we are. We have more shortcomings than we care to admit—especially when it comes to the issue of confronting culture with the truth.

A recent study from Penn State University found that half the students said they would object if someone made a sexist comment; but in practice, fewer than one-sixth had ever said anything in objection to a comment like that.

In essence, we are afraid to confront society about things we think are politically incorrect. Especially, are we uncomfortable when it comes to telling people about our belief in Christ. In this matter, we need to remember the words of Christ, himself: “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32, 33)

Despite the prevalent idea that living a good, Christian, lifestyle before an unbelieving world will make people want to emulate the Christian belief that motivates such a lifestyle, this kind of “presence evangelism” just does not work. Words must be used. It is not possible for an unbeliever to distinguish a Christian from a Hindu or a Muslim based on a perceived moral lifestyle—those sects all look the same when judged on the basis of outward morality. But…there is a great difference; and it must be articulated in words.

Reader, do not despair! Telling the truth publically is not so dangerous. I remember a saying that was used by my Scoutmaster years ago: “If public opinion had any real power to harm, the skunk would have been extinct long ago.”

Monkey See, Monkey Do… or, Young People Act Out TV Model

2012-01-09T05:28:00.000-08:00

About half of American girls eleven to seventeen regularly watch “reality” TV, with another 30% watching it sometimes. And it’s bad for them, according to a study sponsored by the Girl Scout Research Institute. Thirty-eight percent of these girls think a girl’s value is based on how she looks, for example compared with 28% of those who do not watch reality television. Almost 40% of the first group but only 24%of the second group believe “you have to lie to get ahead.”

The reason we can guess. What you see, if you see it often enough, begins to feel normal—even if you start watching it because you think it is not normal.

(In case you don’t know… “reality” TV is a genre of TV programs, supposedly unscripted, that show supposedly non-actors, i.e., “normal people,” in unusual or stressful situations. The language and behavior are street language and behavior, complete with vulgar words and ideas. On example of this kind of programming is the program, Wife Swap.)

The Larger the Government, The Smaller the Citizen

2012-01-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

We live in an era of burgeoning government. One hallmark of the Obama Administration has been the Dodd-Frank Bill (Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act H.R. 4173) designed to identify risks to the financial stability of the U.S. and promote market discipline. The other has been the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, designed to make health care much more of a responsibility of the Federal Government by adding layers of regulation into health care access.

I have looked as carefully as I can into these two bills; and I find them incomprehensible in their complexity and sheer size. In my opinion, they will almost double the size to the Federal Government.

We, as citizens of the United States, need to be very suspicious of such sweeping legislation and look at burgeoning governments of the past to evaluate such programs.

In The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, I read, “Empires, indeed governments generally, tend to be good things at first and bad things the longer they last. First they improve society’s ability to flourish by providing central services and removing impediments to trade and specialization; thus, even Genghis Kahn’s Pax Mongolica lubricated Asia’s overland trade by exterminating brigands along the Silk Road, thus lowering the cost of oriental goods in European parlors.” Later, however, a pattern was set which has been followed by governments ever since. Aging governments “employ more and more ambitious elites who capture a greater and greater share of the society’s income by interfering more and more in people’s lives as they give themselves more and more rules to enforce, until they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. There is a lesson for today. Economists are quick to speak to speak of ‘market failure,’ and rightly so, but a greater threat comes from ‘government failure.’ Because it is a monopoly, government brings inefficiency and stagnation to most things it runs; government agencies pursue the inflation of their budgets rather than the service of their customers; pressure groups form an unholy alliance with agencies to extract more money from taxpayers for their members. Yet despite all this, most clever people still call for government to run more things and assume that if it did so, it would somehow be more perfect, more selfless, next time.”

State Department to Defend Islam Against Free Speech

2011-12-07T01:42:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal reported on 5 December on page A-17 that Hillary Clinton has invited the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to hold a conference in Washington to discuss ways in which governments can prevent their otherwise free newspapers from criticizing Islam. She has said that the conference is to build “muscles of respect and empathy and tolerance” into Western societies that criticize Islam.

For more than 20 years, the OIC has pressed Western governments to restrict speech about Islam. In 2009 the OIC issued fatwas calling for free speech bans, including “international legislation” aimed at protecting “the interests and values of [Islamic] society,” and for judicial punishment for public expression of apostasy from Islam. Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu emphasized that “no one has the right to insult another for their beliefs.” (I wonder if Mr. Ihsanoglu thinks that no one has the right to KILL other people because of their beliefs!)

The OIC does not define what speech should be outlawed, but its leading member states’ practices are illustrative. These states are in the practice of severely punishing de facto “insulters” of Islam and condoning the attack upon their lives and families by Muslim vigilantes.

Civil society must vigorously protect the freedom of its press and of its speech. Any religion or world view that is worth its salt should stand in the strong winds of public criticism and prove its value by open debate. All religions of the world must stand and protect themselves publically, answering the following questions: Which religion teaches us to love our neighbor? Which religion teaches that we should tolerate differing opinions peaceably without resort to violent means for winning converts? Which religion convinces people to believe by means of persuasion rather than force?

Any religion that fails these questions must resort to such agencies as the United States State Department and to legislative coercion in order to protect itself from open debate.

Furthermore, I do not believe that our government has any business meddling in the freedom of our press or speech unless that expression is openly subversive of law and order in our society. Clearly, open criticism of Islam in the press of a Western nation is not disruptive, nor has it advocated overthrow of government based on religion. On the other hand, I cannot say that Islamic regimes have not advocated overthrow of non-Islamic governments. Islam has claimed suzerainty over governments in order to take complete control of them by their religion.

Should We Slow Down the Rich or Speed Up the Poor?

2011-12-04T03:05:00.000-08:00

There is no question about American society, these days. The rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer. The spread between the two is becoming more marked every day. As I mentioned in my blog post of 23 November, the share of money going to the top 1% of earners in America has increased from 8% in the 1960’s to 20% today. At the same time, incomes of the lower income group have been stagnant for several decades. Observers have noticed that the middle income group has been decreasing in size.

Liberals insist that the way to remedy this situation is to tax the rich, knock them down in the economic hierarchy; and that is supposed to equalize our societal unbalance. I would propose a different approach to the same problem. My approach is founded on the fact that society is becoming more and more sophisticated and requiring of more sophistication in education and training.

I read in the newspapers that even in this recession and period of high unemployment; companies are having trouble finding skilled workers for blue-collar jobs. Welders, diesel mechanics, finish carpenters, etc. are in short supply—simply because those jobs require a higher level of training and education.

It is my opinion that instead of penalizing the upper income group for making money, our society should be working to train up more skilled blue-collar workers and white-collar executives and supervisors. That measure would narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.

Punishing the rich is an exercise in futility. Our government is experiencing a deficit if revenue; and overtaxing the rich will only decrease government revenues. One fact of taxation in the United states is that those who make $1 million/year accounted for about 0.2% of all tax returns but paid 20.4% of income taxes in 2009. Those with adjusted gross income above $200,000 a year were just under 3% of tax filers but paid 50.1% of the $866 billion in total personal income taxes. This means the top 3% paid more than the bottom 97%. Yet the 3% are the people that President Obama claims do not pay their fair share. Before the recession, the $200,000 income group paid 54.5% of the income tax. (Redacted from an editorial by Robert Barron in the Wall Street Journal 8/24/11)

The way to prosperity is to train up the poor and the uneducated to take their proper place in our economic scheme of things. Leave the rich alone and let them earn as much money as they can—that will benefit government revenues. But get the lower classes in our society to bring up their earning capacity.

Shall We Adopt China’s Ways?

2011-12-02T11:17:00.000-08:00

Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union (SIEU) wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on 12/1/11 after he had returned from a trip to Chongqing, a city of 32 million people in western China. In the editorial, he extoled the praises of the Chinese economy. He reported that the bustling Chinese city is building new floor space at a rate of 1.5 million square feet daily, which will include 700,000 units of public housing annually. He reports that China’s 12th five year plan aims at a 7%/year growth plan for the general economy. Western China is programmed for a cloud computing program and automotive/aerospace production. The area is predicted to produce an annual growth rate of 12.5% with a 49% growth in tax revenue each year. Wages there are predicted to advance at a rate of 10%/year.

By way of contrast, Mr. Stern says that in the USA, we have seen a decade of high joblessness, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking of the middle class, and phenomenal gains in wealth by the top 1% of our country’s taxpayers.

His conclusion is that “America needs to embrace a plan for growth and innovation, with streamlined government as a partner with the private sector.” In other words, we need to become more like China.

I am under the impression that China is booming economically precisely because it has adopted western ways of entrepreneurship and combined that change with an extremely low wage scale for laborers—bordering on slave-labor-type wages.

I suppose we, Americans, could do the same as China—as Mr. Stern implies we should. It might require that we give up our penchant for civil rights, personal control of our lives separate from government, and the basic desires we have for human dignity.

But, what more might we expect from a labor leader like Mr. Stern. America’s tradition of profit-seeking entrepreneurship has served us well in the past; and I would guess that China’s use of our system is the main driving force behind that country’s economic success now. If we were to adopt China’s ways, we would obviously have to knuckle under to more government control over business—which effect is proving the death knell to American business under our present administration.

I believe in American private business ownership and the stimulus of true profit making.

Any of you who would like to read more about this subject can link to Mr. Stern’s editorial at (Adopt China's ways?)

We Won’t Stop Until We Kill!

2011-11-29T06:02:00.000-08:00

How should young teen-aged girls act? Well…you probably think they should be kind, polite, gentle, and considerate of others. I certainly agree with that kind of mind-picture of acceptable teen behavior. However, it is not always the way things work out in the real world.

Nancy and I have recently moved to a near western suburb of Cleveland, Ohio; and we work in a Christian tutoring program in the inner city of Cleveland; we teach reading skills using the Bible as a text. We serve a population of mostly second-generation African immigrant children. Last week a fight broke out in our classroom between two groups of young teen-aged girls. The weapons used were yelling, pushing, shoving, scratching, hair-pulling and flying fists. Over the ensuing week, one of the groups visited the homes of the other group and left graffiti on their doors and homes. Vile images, words, and threats were painted on the doors. One remark that appeared was, “We won’t stop until we kill!” The whole experience reminded us of the society where we lived in inner city Detroit 15 years ago. It is the picture of the typical rust belt, socially deteriorating, American city.

This kind of experience causes one to think. Hmmm…I wonder if even the Spirit of Christ can penetrate such social and psychological darkness. I wonder how much more liberal immigration policy America can tolerate before our whole society disintegrates into a violent maelstrom of destructiveness. What can we, as Christians, do to stem the tide of such social and spiritual chaos?

Well, I don’t think that Christ is helpless in this situation. I have faith that even out of this violence, hope can spring. But, we, Christians, absolutely must respond to this kind of destructiveness and social/spiritual darkness. We have to tend to these cities and do what we can do to counter such confusion of values and behavior. Please pray with us that Christ and His Spirit may reach the neighborhood where Nancy and I work. HE IS ABLE!!

Increasing American Inequality—Why Is It Happening?

2011-11-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

American polity is deteriorating; few can deny that. The Occupy movement is telling us that the masses of poor and middle class Americans are dissatisfied with the economic divisions that are rending apart our cities and our society. We all ask, “Why is this happening?”

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the main goal of American government was to make a better American. The two parties differed on how this was to be done; but the general goal was the same. Over the 1st 60 years of that century, the goal gradually shifted toward a goal of increasing the gross domestic product and distributing it evenly. All seemed to work well at first, and America became the dominant force in the world economy. However, the system began to come apart in the 1960’s and 70’s with the civil rights movement and the Viet Nam War. American liberalism seemed to be taking over; and American business influence on the society reached its nadir.

American business reacted. In the years after World War II, Americans had embraced the ideas of pluralism, which they thought would insulate them against the excesses of communism and fascism, the scourges of the early years of the 20th Century. But then, something very unexpected happened beginning in the 1960’s and 70’s. The voices of traditional American entrepreneurism began to speak loudly and effectively. The forces of egalitarian pluralism were beginning to fade, and selfish private special interests came back in force. Government began to enact laws that favored the rich and the mighty in business. As a result, we are now seeing an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Thus—the Occupy movement!

Over the last few years, while the country has been suffering from economic recession, the rich have gotten even richer. And not just a little bit richer; a lot richer. In 2009, the average income of the top five percent of earners went up, while on average everyone else's income went down. This was not an anomaly but rather a continuation of a 40-year trend of ballooning incomes at the very top and stagnant incomes in the middle and at the bottom. The share of total income going to the top one percent has increased from roughly eight percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today.

All of these changes have not been due to the efforts of the rich. Labor unions have had a share in the cause of economic disruption because of their ever-increasing demands for higher and higher wages and benefits. The unions have effectively caused overseas businesses to prosper and to draw capital out of the United States. The business that went overseas added to the incomes of the already rich in our country.
Obviously, I do not know the answer to this developing economic inequality in our America. Nevertheless, I hope that we, Americans, will recognize the issues and will respond with generosity and true patriotism. We cannot continue to grab for the money and expect our country to flourish.

For those who would further inform themselves on this subject, I would refer them to http://bit.ly/vwGRvi . Thanks for reading!

AUSTERITY—Are We Americans Allergic To It?

2011-11-12T05:57:00.000-08:00

As our country roils toward more and more economic chaos, I ask you, “Are we able to counter this profligate spending by tightening our belts and lowering our standard of living—or, are we just going on and on in a splurge of overspending?” Both Italy and Greece are showing signs of correcting their overly extravagant spending habits—can we, Americans do likewise?

Last Tuesday, the results of Ohio’s voting indicated that we cannot do it. Ohio voters, after a campaign fueled by union dollars, voted down Issue 2, a measure designed to shift the cost of health care and pensions for government workers back to the workers and away from the taxpayers of the state. Those same voters voted Yes on Issue 3, a measure to get rid of the health insurance mandate of the ObamaCare law in Ohio. In other words, Ohio voters voted for more continued Big Brother payments for their living benefits. They do not want to pay for their own health care or their pension benefits—they want the government to pay for their pension benefits; and they want the private health care sector to pay for their uninsured health care. I believe that these two moves by the Ohio electorate were driven by the same voter motivation, i.e., the wish for the government and the private sector hospitals to do more spending on their behalf.

To be fair in this accusation of mine, I must say that I, also, voted Yes on Issue 3. But…I voted that way for a far different reason. I voted Yes because I fear the overweening increase in government regulation that threatens to increase government costs to the taxpayer. The whole Obama plan for health care will not decrease costs—it will INCREASE it.

America will never get itself out of its financial woes and into its former position as world leader unless we change our ways. We must decide to take responsibility for our own personal family economies. We must tighten our belts and decide that we cannot have a free lunch. Getting more jobs and a better economy is a reasonable goal for each of us. It is not something that we must wait for the government to provide for us.

Can The Western Democracies Survive?

2011-11-09T07:04:00.000-08:00

Western Democracies from Greece to the United States are suffering from the “wants;” they are screaming “Gimme, gimme—more and more money!” (When there is no more money.) In the United States, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Ireland, and eventually, France, workers are calling for more and more government handouts in the form of entitlements. Even corporations in these countries are demanding to be on the government dole. None of this is news; we have heard it for years!

Greeks are demonstrating in their streets against government austerity programs. Ohioans voted yesterday to keep public employees on the government handout programs with health insurance and pension benefits. Nobody seems able to understand that THE MONEY IS GONE! All these demonstrations and votes for more entitlements are saying that they want everyone else to foot the bills for their benefits. This includes union members as well as corporations.

An unhappy byproduct of a welfare state is that it creates powerful interests that will fight to the last to preserve their free lunch, no matter the cost to the country. America’s federal debt was 35.7% of GDP in 2007, but it was 61.3% last year and is predicted to reach 90% by 2020 according to the Congressional Budget Office. These figures were arrived at based on President Obama’s 2011 budget submitted by the White House Office of Management and Budget in February 2011. For countries with debt-to-GDP ratios “above 90 percent, median growth rates fall by 1 percent, and average growth falls considerably more,” according to a recent research paper by economists Kenneth S. Rogoff of Harvard and Carmen M. Reinhart of the University of Maryland.

Democracies fall when the people finally realize that they can vote themselves financial benefits to be paid for by other people. Unless Americans begin to understand that they must sacrifice some of their affluence to the general good of the nation, as they did during World War II, our country is doomed.

Do We Need Moral Politicians/Leaders?

2011-11-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

In the past, America was founded on the idea of innate human goodness; this concept especially found prominence in the thinking of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. They believed that if the people of a democratic republic were left alone to carry on commerce in the world according to the dictates of common sense morality and ethics, all men would get along together. They even thought that wars would cease to be. Even up into the early 20th Century, both political parties were dedicated primarily to the goal of making a better American, one with better education, religion, and even morality.

Honesty, faithfulness, virtue, reliability, and trustworthiness were qualities that received widespread consensus in America. But, alas, those character qualities are long gone from the top of the American priority list. When the honesty of President Grant was questioned, he responded that to question the honesty of a United States President was tantamount to questioning the virtue and chastity of an unmarried woman. (WOW! How times have changed!) Now, as Francis Fukuyama has lamented, American thought is dedicated to increasing the gross domestic product and distributing it evenly. Long gone, it seems, is the value of moral integrity among our political leaders. Politicians seem convinced that if they were to commit some moral or ethical offense, the system of republican checks and balances will compensate for it--so…it is no longer necessary to mind one’s moral manners in private or even public matters.

We are seeing this kind of thinking manifesting itself in the present-day political scene with Herman Cain and his girlfriends taking center stage in a campaign for President. Many are saying that Cain’s behavior in private is just his private affair—what matters most is how he will behave in the business office of the President. Bill Clinton received just that kind of waiver even when he had to pay $850,000 to rid himself of the scandal of Paula Jones. After that was all over, he seemed to receive the approbation of the American people, who felt sorry for him. His comment in all that matter was, “My morals are the same as the morals of the American people.” Sad, but true!

I take strong exception to all of this. I believe strongly that if a man cannot be trusted in his moral life, if he cannot be faithful in his marriage, faithful to the most sacred of all human promises (marriage), he cannot be trusted to carry out the business of government reliably. One who can be trusted is worthy of commendation and added responsibility. Jesus recognized this principle, and in the parable of the talents, he said, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matt 25:21)

Is Suicide an Option?

2011-11-06T03:10:00.000-08:00

I realize that many who read this blog post will have had a loved one who was so hopelessly disabled by accident or illness that they and the family have seriously considered suicide as the best outcome for the situation. But…is that an ethical, spiritually justifiable, moral, solution to such a problem? I think not, and for the following reasons:

First of all, the Commandment says, “Thou shalt not kill.” Human life is not to be ended by men; and I think that this Commandment applies equally to one’s own life as well as to the lives of others. Two notable exceptions exist: Christians and others have long considered that it is permissible to take human life in a justifiable war and for self-defense. But, otherwise, there is no defensible reason for taking human life.

Secondly, we have a scriptural instruction on this subject in the second chapter of the book of Job (v.9,10). In the height of Job’s suffering, his wife said to him, “’Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.’ But he said to her, ‘You speak as one of the foolish women who speak. Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” Job refused to sacrifice his own life, even though he was suffering greatly.

Thirdly, justifying suicide leads to the further degradation of the respect for human life, in general; and it guides one to endorse other forms of disrespect for human life, e.g., abortion and euthanasia—death by committee!

Several years ago, I was practicing medicine in Detroit. A 55 year old nurse came to me complaining of severe back pain; the pain was said to be so severe that she was considering suicide—she had already consulted Dr. Kevorkian about killing herself. She told me that she wanted an unlimited supply of morphine and that if I did not give it to her, she was going to kill herself.

I made sure that all indicated diagnostic tests were made to find out what was causing the back pain, e.g., X-rays, CT scan, orthopedic and psychiatric consultations. The only finding was the presence of mild arthritis of the spine, which was appropriate for her age.

Not being willing to induce opiate addiction by supplying her with unlimited amounts of morphine, I refused to prescribe what she requested. She went to another doctor who supplied her with the drugs.

Three months later, she appeared on TV with Dr. Kevorkian testifying to the necessity and advisability of elective suicide. Within a few days, Dr. Kevorkian took her to the front door of the local police station in his van and helped her kill herself.

This case illustrates how liberal and permissive attitudes toward suicide lead to gross abuse of human life.

Suicide is not the answer to human suffering. God gives life; and only he has the right to take it away.

The REAL inequality in American Society

2011-11-01T03:20:00.000-07:00

I strongly recommend that everyone who is interested in understanding the real inequality in American society should read the New York Times editorial referred to in the link below. This news is especially appropriate for those who have children growing up, because I am sure that you want your children to be on the right side of the inequality divide. Social Inequality

Why Keynesians Keep Getting It Wrong

2011-10-30T02:17:00.000-07:00

Those who heaped high praise in Keynesian policies have grown silent as government spending has failed to bring an economic recovery. Except for a few diehards who want still more government spending and those who make the unverifiable claim that the economy would have collapsed without it, most now recognize that more than a trillion dollars of spending by the Bush and Obama administrations has left the economy in a slump and unemployment above 9%.

Why is the economic response to increased government spending so different from the response predicted by Keynesian models? What is missing from the model that makes their forecasts so inaccurate? There are four reasons for this miscalculation on the part of our leaders:

1) Big increases in spending and government deficits raise the prospect of future tax increases. This scares off investors.
2) Government spending programs redistribute income from workers/producers to the unemployed. This precludes an effect that would increase productivity. Unemployed people are less likely to be the ones to increase productivity.
3) Keynesian methods increases governmental regulations, and that increases costs without an increase in useful production.
4) The estimated cost of new jobs in President Obama’s latest jobs bill is at least $200,000 per job based on administration estimates of the number of jobs and their cost. How can that appeal to the taxpayers who will pay for those costs? Once the subsidies end, the jobs will likely end, too.

We have spent nearly a trillion dollars and have nothing to show for it in the form of new jobs. All we have is a bunch of IOU’s. Throwing a lot more money into this fiasco (in the form of President Obama’s jobs bill) and expecting a different response seems stupid to me.

This blog post was partly redacted from the Wall Street Journal 28 October 2011, page A17.

We Don’t Need Higher Taxes—We Need Lower Taxes!

2011-10-25T02:07:00.000-07:00

Congress’s Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is struggling to find $1.5 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. This is a unique opportunity to use tax reform to reduce future budget deficits while lowering individual tax rates.
The Tax Reform Act of 1986 showed how a tax reform that includes lower rates can change incentives in a way that grows the tax base and produces extra revenue for the federal government. In that law, the top tax rate in the U.S. was reduced from 50% to 28%.

After that law was enacted, there was an enormous rise in taxes paid, particularly by those who experienced the greatest reductions in tax rates. Taxpayers who faced a tax rate of 50% in 1985 were paying 50% of federal taxes. After 1986, they began paying 72% of the federal intake! That was because the decrease in taxes provided an incentive to invest and to take financial risks that grew the economy.

Our government should look at the experience of 1986. Lowering taxes will increase the federal intake of revenue monies.

This blog post was redacted from the Wall Street Journal of 24 October 2011, page A15.

Voter Fraud Perpetrated by ACORN/Project Vote in Colorado

2011-10-24T02:29:00.000-07:00

On 4 August 2011, Judicial Watch released documents obtained from the Coloraqdo Department of State showing that ACORN and its affiliate, Project Vote, successfully pressured Colorado officials into implementing new policies for increasing the registration of public assistance recipients during the 2008 and 2010 election seasons. Following the policy changes the percentage of invalid voter registration forms from Colorado public registration agencies was four times the national average.

The attempts of ACORN/Project Vote to upset the voter registration system in Colorado was spearheaded by Amy Busefink, who at the time was under indictment on 13 voter violation charges in Nevada.

Democrat, Bernie Buesher, who served as Colorado Secretary of State from January 2009through January 2011was complicit in these efforts to jury rig the Colorado voter registration system. He took measures to satisfy the demands of Project Vote related to the registration of public assistance recipients. Buescher sought a waiver from the Obama administration that would have allowed a delay in sending out ballots in time for military personnel to vote in the last election. The Department of Defense rejected the request. Apparently Colorado’s concern for voting rights of its citizens did not extend to military personnel in the state.

This blog post was excerpted from “The Judicial Watch Verdict” of October 2011.

The Obvious Manifestation of God’s Election

2011-10-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading a book that clearly describes God’s election to salvation of His people. The book is titled, “They Thought for Themselves.” This book is about ten Jews who heard God’s call and responded to it in faith. Most of them were orthodox in background and understood all of the basics and culture of Judaism very well.

The book is written in very simple, understandable, terms. These people are ordinary people. They speak in everyday language. They are not sophisticated theologians. They are simply people who have heard the words of God; they recognized Him, and they responded.

The various members of the ten faced great opposition from other Jews who believe that Jesus is a falsehood and a pretender to the goods of God. These ten people have answered the opposition of the Jews in various ways; but always with conviction and courtesy.

One argument that was occasionally used by these Jewish Christians is the passage in Jeremiah 33:14-26. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land….” I strongly recommend that all my readers carefully read that passage in its entirety; it is quite instructive and communicative to the Jewish mind.

One of the ten received this argument from a detractor: “You say that Jesus is the Messiah, but he is well known to have said from the cross where he was crucified, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ This passage is from the 1st verse of Psalm 22. If he were truly God in the flesh, why would he have said such a thing?” The answer, of course, is that He well knew that the people standing around the cross would have clearly recognized the source of that question; and they would have understood it in the context of the rest of the Psalm, which is one of the strongest statements of faith in the Bible.

Furthermore, the Jew who had converted to the faith asked the critic a question that stopped his mouth: “Do you remember who it was who first made that statement in the 1st verse of Psalm 22? It was King David. Do you intend to tell me that David questioned his faith, too?”

In view of fierce opposition, the ten converted Jews mentioned in this book stood their ground and became repentant, faithful, followers of Jesus, the true Messiah of the Jews. This could never have happened without the elective finger of God on them.

Do NOT Cut the Defense Department Budget

2011-10-17T07:16:00.000-07:00

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, staffed by 6 Congressmen and 6 Senators, half being Democrats and half being Republicans are tasked with cutting the federal budget by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. If they do not succeed in coming up with an acceptable compromise on this issue, automatic cuts will be imposed, amounting to $1.2 trillion. These mandatory cuts in the budget if this committee does not come up with other recommendations will include drastic cuts to the Defense Department.

The Defense Department has already taken severe cuts to their budget since the Obama administration came to power. If these new cuts take place, it is estimated by the DOD that the military will have to mothball over 60 ships, including 2 of our 11 carrier battle groups, ⅓ of our Army maneuver battalions and ⅓ of the Air Force fighter jets.

With the world situation as it is, we can ill afford to limit our country’s military fighting forces.

I would ask all my readers to contact each member of the Select Committee to vote to leave the funding of DOD as it is without any further budget cuts. The web page of the Committee is Deficit Reduction Committee. The members of the committee are listed below; and you can contact them by looking them up on Google.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), Co-Chair
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Co-Chair
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)
Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.)
Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.)
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.)
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio)
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.)
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.)
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)

Thanks for your attention to this important matter!

Green Jobs Brown Out

2011-10-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

The following is a quote from the Wall Street Journal 11 October 2011, page A16.

“The green jobs subsidy story gets more embarrassing by the day. Three years ago President Obama promised that by the end of the decade America would have five million green jobs, but so far some $90 billion in government spending has delivered very few.

“A new report by the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General (IG) examined a $500 million grant under the stimulus program to the Employment and Training Administration to ‘train and prepare individuals for careers in green jobs.’ So far, about $162.8 million has been spent. The program was supposed to train 125,000 workers, but only 53,000 have been trained so far, only 8,035 have found jobs, and only 1,033 were still in the job after six months.

“Overall, only 10% of participants entered employment. In the understatement of the year, IG says the program failed to ‘assist those most impacted by the recession.’

“The jobs record is even more dismal when you consider that many of the jobs classified as green aren’t even new jobs, much less green, according to a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. They include positions that have been ‘relabeled as green jobs by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.’“This means that bus drivers, Environmental Protection Agency regulators, university professors teaching ecology, and even the Washington lobbyists who secure energy loan guarantees count as green employees for the purposes of government counting.

The Oversight Committee finds that even a charitable assessment of the Labor program puts the cost of each green job at $157,000.”

John F. Kennedy on the Economy

2011-10-11T03:02:00.000-07:00

The following is a quote from President Kennedy’s State of the Union address Jan. 14, 1963. I only wish the present Democrat in the White House could understand what President Kennedy had to say!

“America has enjoyed 22 months of uninterrupted economic recovery. But recovery is not enough. If we are to prevail in the long-run, we must expand the long-run strength of our economy. We must move along the path to a higher rate of growth and full employment.

“For this would mean tens of billions of dollars more each year in production, profits, wages, and public revenues. It would mean an end to the persistent slack, which has kept our unemployment at or above five percent for 61 out of the past 62 months—and an end to the growing pressures for such restrictive measures as the 35-hour week, which alone could increase hourly labor costs by as much as 14%, start a new wage-price spiral of inflation, and undercut our efforts to compete with other nations.

“To achieve these greater gains, one step, above all, is essential—the enactment this year of a substantial reduction and revision in Federal income taxes….[A] net reduction in tax liabilities…will increase the purchasing power of American families and business enterprises in every tax bracket, with greatest increase going to our low-income consumers. It will, in addition, encourage the initiative and risk-taking on which our free system depends—induce more investment, production, and capacity use—help provide the two million new jobs we need every year—and reinforce the American principle of additional reward for additional effort.”

Dysfunctional Fathers

2011-10-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, while Nancy and I were still with the organization, Caring Hands Pregnancy Center in southwest Denver launched a program designed to help men become better fathers. We used the 24/7 Dad Program of the National Fatherhood Initiative as the template for our outreach.

As a first step in organizing that program, we recruited a group of twelve men from a large church in the Denver area to be mentors for the younger fathers who signed up to take the course. The mentors were selected based on the fact that they were successful fathers. They had intact families, a successful first marriage, and young adult children who were healthy and productive members of society. In the early phase of the course, these men were asked to present a short talk about their own fathers. They were asked how their father participated in the raising of the children, how he treated his wife, what was his disciplinary policy regarding the children, etc. They were asked about their general evaluation of their father’s fathering activity.

To my great surprise, I found that these mentor/fathers were largely dissatisfied with the fathering functions of their own fathers. Only two out of the twelve were happy with the fathering they had received from their own fathers. The elder fathers had been neglectful, authoritarian, sometimes abusive of wife and children; and almost all of them had failed to participate with their children in the growing-up stage of the children’s lives.

Organizing this course provided me with a disappointing perception of the fathering abilities of the past generation of fathers. During that course, we all learned that there are better ways to father children. Fathering is not something that comes naturally; good fathering ability is not an instinctive quality. Fathering skills must be LEARNED!

I recommend that if any readers of this blog would like to learn how to be a better father, he should consult Fatherhood.org

The Relationship of National Debt to Gross Domestic Product

2011-10-03T03:37:00.000-07:00

It is a well-known fact of national economics that increasing amounts of national debt produce ever-decreasing levels of economic growth. click here . Please consider the following quote from a book by Hunter Lewis, “Where Keynes Went Wrong.”

“There is a diminishing return to taking on debt. In the United States, we have operated on Keynesian principles since World War II. The government has printed money. Debt levels have grown. We have not only gotten inflations and bubbles. We have also gotten less and less growth for each increment of debt.

“During the decade 1950-1959, we added $338 billion in debt, and we got 73¢ in economic growth (increase in gross domestic product) for each $1 in new debt. For the decade 1990-1999, we added $12.5 trillion in debt, but got only 31¢ of growth per dollar of debt. For the seven plus years 2000-2008 (1st quarter), we added $24.3 trillion in debt, but got only 19¢ in growth for every dollar of debt. It thus required more and more debt to generate further growth.”

As the above link points out, a study by North Carolina State University Economics Department shows that if economic policy by the government continues as it is now, by 2020, the national debt/GDP ratio will be 110%; and the annual growth rate will be -.56%!

Growing national debt produces a negative growth in GDP, just because it costs more to service the debt than the increasing input of money can produce in growth.

During the present administration and the end of the Bush era, we have seen some $870 billion used to stimulate the economy; and the annual growth of the economy is still at only about 1%/year. Now we see that President Obama wants to inject another $470 billion into the economy in his “jobs bill.” When will he ever get the clue? More deficit spending will not do the job.

The First Step in the Road to Salvation, Foreknowledge: Romans 8:29 & 30

2011-09-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

I have often pondered the meaning and significance of these verses; but recently, I have listened to a sermon by Alistair Begg on this subject; and I want to share a point of that sermon with you—at least, this is the part I took home with me.

The passage says that there are several steps in the final salvation of a believer: First, there is foreknowledge of the one who will be saved from his sins. Next comes predestination followed by God’s effectual calling. Next comes justification, and, finally, glorification. Below, I wish to discuss foreknowledge, because this has been a stumbling block to me. I believe that God knows who will choose Him—but, on what criteria?

God’s foreknowledge is a knowledge borne out of his ability to know the future—a strange and unknown ability to us, mere humans, who cannot even conceive of such an ability. Nevertheless, God can do it. Well, what, exactly is it that God knows? He knows what he has, in advanced, ordained. But that is not all—He also knows what we are going to choose of our own free will. THE TWO GO TOGETHER. Free will and God’s sovereignty go together in this disposition.

In discussing this situation, it is necessary to understand that there are two scenarios, which do not exist. The first is a case in which a person wants to know God, who understands the principles of His teachings, who loves Him and the things that are His; but, since he is not one of the elect, he is excluded from heaven. We must remember that Jesus said, “…whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37) The second scenario is one in which a person is living a life of willful sin, who has no interest in Christ and no faith in God—but…because he is one of the elect , God admits him to heaven. Neither of these situations is true.

Somehow, in some mysterious way, the freewill choice of men and women and the supreme decision of God about election to his family coincide perfectly. Only those who will have the faith prescribed in the Bible will receive the eternal life that Christ promises. And…at the same time, God knows each one of us who will make that choice. It is a mystery; man’s freedom in Christ allows him to optionally go God’s way and at the same time to realize a measure of obedience to the Gospel admonitions of the Scripture. That is, to conform to God’s foreknowledge of his elected, salvational, condition.

Another important point from Mr. Begg’s sermon is that no matter what we think of or know about this so called chain or way of salvation, our own particular salvation has nothing to do with it. We are saved by believing in and having faith in the Savior—it is simply that and no more. So…I think we should not spend very much effort in understanding all the theological ins and outs of this complicated theology. Our relationship to the Savior is really all that counts in our eternal destiny.

An Open Letter To President Obama

2011-09-22T02:27:00.000-07:00

Mr. President,

I am writing this letter to tell you respectfully that I disagree with your administration’s fiscal policies. I think we have had far too much stimulus, bailout, and “quantitative easing.” These policies have held the interest rates from the Fed at near zero for 32 months. Still…the unemployment rate is above 9%. This indicates a failure of Keynesian economics to produce the results it aims to produce. WE NEED A DIFFERENT PLAN!! The Federal Reserve is trying to get money for the government by selling 10-year Treasury bonds at 1.88% interest—who in his right mind is going to buy such a low yield bond? There is no profit in buying government securities.

Lately, Congressman Barney Frank has proposed stripping the Federal Reserve Governors of all membership in the Open Market Committee, leaving all the votes on that committee in the hands of political appointees. They only had four votes out of twelve, anyway; and if they are eliminated, I fear that all voice for tighter money on that committee will disappear.

Monetary policy should not be left up to politicians. I believe that private sector should have more, not less, say so on the Open Market Committee.

What Is the Federal Reserve Bank; and How Does It Work?

2011-09-21T04:08:00.000-07:00

Today’s newspapers are full of references to economic news; and references to the Federal Reserve Bank are replete in those articles. But…many of us do not know what the Federal Reserve is and how it works. Here is a short primer:

The Federal Reserve is a bank that is established by Congress. It consists of the central bank of the United States. It includes a Board of Governors, 12 District Banks, 25 Branch Banks, and assorted committees. The most important of these committees is the Federal Open Market Committee, which directs monetary policy. The FOMC is made up of 12 voting members; eight of these members are political appointees of the President, and 4 are regional bank presidents.

The function of the Federal Reserve is to control monetary policy, which, in other words, is the supply of money for the country. The “Fed,” as it is called, puts money into our economy when recessions occur; and it takes money out of the economy when inflation is the problem. By doing these manipulations, the Fed is supposed to control overall prices and unemployment.

The Fed uses 3 mechanisms to control prices, inflation, and recession: The first is “open market operations,” which is the Fed’s option to buy or sell government bonds—by doing so, the Fed can either add to or subtract from the money supply in the country. The second is to manipulate the “discount rate,” which is the interest rate the Fed uses to loan money to other banks for them to lend the money to borrowers. The third method is to manipulate the “reserve requirements” of commercial banks, i.e., the amount of money the commercial banks are required to keep on hand to secure their deposits. By lowering or raising the reserve requirements the Fed can add to or subtract from the supply of money circulating in the economy.

If my readers are interested in learning more about economic principles and terms, I would suggest that they look at http://glossary.econguru.com/economic-term/reserve+requirements

What’s Changed in America Since the Revolution?

2011-09-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

Of course, many things have changed in America—technical things come instantly to mind. But the things that come to my mind as most important, are the things having to do with the basic attitudes, values, and abilities of our people. As an example, many have commented on the difference between the beliefs, purposes, and values between the founding fathers and the present day politicians who run our United States.

Many books are in print, which would seek to tell us that the founders of America were self-seeking bigots who had no altruistic purposes in mind when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. The books propounding these views began to appear in 1896 in an essay called “The Political Depravity of the Founding Fathers,” by John Bach McMaster. These books and writings continued for more than a century and seriously called into question even the things we take for granted about the founders’ desire to seek the democratic will of the people in establishing a representative form of government. In particular, many writers have claimed that the founders were not Christian to any great extent. They are said to have established a government completely separate from Christian faith and practice.

On the other hand, writings are in print, which tend to paint the founding fathers as near perfect, demigods with only the good of the country at heart. The truth is somewhere between these two extremes.

Gordon Wood, a professor of history at Brown University has written a book entitled "Revolutionary Characters, What Made the Founders Different." In that book, he points out that the founding fathers of our country were strongly influenced by the culture and the intellectual forces of their day. They were sons of the enlightenment. They sought to establish a country where freedom would prevail and where civil society would rein without hostile and harmful influences to destroy the hopes and aspirations of men and women of good intention. They appealed to reason as a foundational building block. They were always aware of a higher law than the "natural law" or "common law" of their day,i.e., the implicit and explicit laws of the Bible. . They strove to epitomize good manners and good faith among their co-workers in this project of establishing a new nation. For the most part, they would act in a respectable and honorable way toward those around them; and they always tried to leave the impression of being gentlemen in their actions.

The American founders knew well that the polite and sophisticated metropolitan center of the empire was steeped in luxury and corruption. England had sprawling, poverty-ridden cities, over refined manners, gross inequalities of rank, complex divisions of labor, and widespread manufacturing of luxuries, all symptoms of over-advanced social development and social decay. It was said of this society by Samuel Stanhope of Princeton University, “that human society can advance only to a certain point before it becomes corrupted, and begins to decline.” To many, England in the 1760’s and 1770’s seemed to be on the verge of dissolution. The North American colonists who came in direct contact with London were shocked at the notorious ways in which hundreds of thousands of pounds were being spent to buy elections. This “most unbounded licentiousness and utter disregard of virtue” could only end, as it had always had in history, in the destruction of the British Empire. The American founding fathers wanted with all their heart and energy to avoid such a society.

As a result of this motivation, our founders set up a system of government which was, at the time, the beginning of egalitarian democracy. The voices of ordinary white people began to be heard as never before in history. The founders, were, themselves, an elite aristocracy imbued with high ideals and aspirations for the good of the country. What they could not have suspected, however, was that when the voices of the common people were considered, many of their high-sounding ideals would be trampled underfoot; and political preferences, partisan politics, and the influence of social and economic pressure groups would overwhelm much of what they were so valiantly trying to achieve.

We are seeing this effect, today; and the high ideals of our founders will probably never, again, be visible in our American society. It has been posited by knowledgeable observers that as soon as the voting majority see that they can vote themselves significant benefits, they will do so; and social freedom and entrepreneurship will disappear from our society. I fear that those days are upon us.

It is my personal opinion that much of the gain in societal management which was so very salutary to our country in the beginning will never, again, be seen in its pure form. I believe that one reason for this is that the effect of Christian religion will not likely be infused into our behavior and policies as it was in the lives and actions of our founders. Such statements as the one uttered by John Adams, our second President, are not likely in our present day political climate. “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

What Can America Learn From Europe’s Problems?

2011-09-10T01:50:00.000-07:00

This blog post is largely excerpted from a speech made by Václav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic in a speech given to a group of Americans in Berlin on 11 June 2011.

Mr. Klaus sees Europe’s problems as an economic structural problem, which has embraced social permissiveness, anti-market practices, and a principle of money redistribution. Europeans have believed that the most favorable form of government is one of weakened nation-states with the concomitant strengthening of supranational institutions. He pointed out that only within states can democracy function effectively. The unification of Europe in the “Euro zone” was intended to accelerate economic growth, reduce inflation, and protect member states against external economic disruptions—it has failed in all three goals. Europe’s developing social democratic system with its generous social benefits, weakened motivation, shortened working hours, and lowered retirement age, have all diminished the labor supply and resulted in decreased productivity.

He said, “…we have witnessed a gradual shift away from liberalizing and removing barriers and towards a massive introduction of regulation from above, an ever-expanding welfare system, new and more sophisticated forms of protectionism, and continuously growing legal and regulatory burdens on business. All of these weaken and restrain freedom, democracy, and democratic accountability, not to mention economic efficiency, entrepreneurship and competitiveness.

“Europeans today prefer leisure to performance, security to risk-taking, paternalism to free markets, collectivism and group entitlements to individualism. They have always been more risk-averse than Americans, but the difference continues to grow. Economic freedom has a very low priority here. It seems that Europeans are not interested in capitalism and free markets and do not understand that their current behavior undermines the very institutions that made their past success possible. They are eager to defend their non-economic freedoms—the easiness, looseness, laxity and permissiveness of modern European society—but when it comes to their economic freedoms, they are quite indifferent.”

In conclusion, he pointed out that “…the way your American government has been going, you might be able to catch up with us—in terms of our problems—very soon. But you are not as far along, yet. So, maybe seeing Europe’s crisis today will at least help you in America turn back toward freedom.”

I would observe that our American system with its increasing regulation and taxation of business and its promotion of moral laxity is well on the way of adopting Europe’s problems.

What’s the Answer to the Immigrant Problem?

2011-09-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

On 6 September 2100, I specified the reason we are having a problem with illegal immigrants in the United States. Today, I intend to give my answer to this problem.

It must be realized that under the present circumstances with millions of illegal immigrants in the United States, they are collectively sending about $15-20 billion dollars home to relatives in Latin America yearly in the form of remittances. These illegal immigrants are facing increasing difficulties here in the U.S. finding jobs. States are cracking down on them; and even the Federal Government is taking some steps to discourage their presence here. From years of personal experience with these immigrants in southwest Denver, Nancy and I have seen first-hand the miserable circumstances in which these poor people live. It has seemed to me that there must be a better solution to this problem of illegal presence than allowing all the random chaos at the border, which we see today.

We need to find a win-win situation for these poor people as well, for Mexico, and for the United States. Fortunately, there is just such a solution to the problem.

I believe that the United States should start by building an impenetrable fence all the way across the southern border. Then, we should institute an immigrant guest worker program with specified numbers of workers allowed into the country to operate our agricultural and service industries. These guest workers should have temporary legal visas to stay here and work for a specified period of time, at the end of which, they must go home or get the visa renewed. Then these workers should be allowed to send as much money as they wish back home to Mexico; and that amount of money should be documented. Then, yearly, that amount of money should be subtracted from the $20 billion that is already flowing to Mexico and difference should be used to stimulate the Mexican agricultural, educational, and law enforcement economies under very strictly supervised programs. Employers who hire illegal immigrants should be severely fined and/or penalized.

As a corollary to this program, the practice of declaring “anchor babies” here in the states American citizen should be discontinued. (At present, any baby born to illegal immigrants in the United States is automatically designated as a legal citizen of this country. These babies are called “anchor babies.”) This practice is absolute nonsense; and it should be discontinued immediately!

I believe that measures such as the ones I have outlined would greatly mitigate the problem we have with illegal immigrants in the United States.

Why Do We Have an Immigrant Problem?

2011-09-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

Every day, hundreds of illegal immigrants pour across the Mexican border. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there are approximately 500,000 illegal entries into the United States yearly. Even considering that, however, the total number of illegals in the U.S. has been decreasing slightly in recent years—due to the fact that some of them are going home for one reason or another.

The main reasons for illegal immigration into the U.S. are several. First, there is not enough arable land in Mexico to support their food supply needs.
Mexico has two agricultural systems, operating parallel to each other. Producing foods as cash crops for export is the primary goal of large-scale farmers. Although only about 15% of Mexico's land is arable, or suitable for cultivation, 88% of the arable land is used for cultivation of export crops and for grazing cattle. What large-scale farmers produce is determined by what brings the highest prices in international markets. Since the 1970s, most large-scale farmers have been producing the non-traditional crops such as fresh flowers; fresh and processed fruits such as tomatoes, melons, pineapples, strawberries, and mangos; also produced are fresh vegetables such as artichokes, cucumbers, cabbage, cauliflower, green beans, peppers, broccoli, snow peas, and asparagus. Additionally, there are the traditional exports that feed Mexico's northern neighbors, such as sugar, coffee, bananas and cattle. During winter and spring, more than half the fresh vegetables consumed in the United States come from Mexico. They sell to transnational corporations that process or directly transport the products to warehouses and eventually to grocers.

Among those who benefit from the large-scale agricultural system are local wealthy farming cartels and transnational corporations such as Del Monte, Green Giant, Heinz, United Brands, Castle and Cooke, PepsiCo, Ralston Purina, Campbell's, General Foods, Beatrice Foods, Gerber, Kellogg, Kraft and Nestle. Rarely do these corporations own land. Instead, they contract with large-scale farmers. The corporations have capital to invest in technology, seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, transport systems, and marketing.

In recent decades, more and more of Mexico’s arable lands have been converted into the food export industry, so that Mexico is having a hard time producing the corn, beans, and cattle which are needed for the feeding of Mexico’s people, especially, the poor people. It is estimated by the World Bank that half of Mexico’s rural children are malnourished.

In other words, Mexico’s people are starving. Is it any wonder, then, that many young Mexican men are emigrating to the United States to find money to support their families back home? Of course, some of them end up in the larger Mexican cities working in the illegal drug and crime industries. Many Latinos, however, emigrate just because of the crime and violence they find at home. Recently, drug dealers have begun to demand half of the salaries of teachers in the public schools in some districts. They make these demands under threat of death.

Police and government corruption is rampant in Central America, even more than in Mexico, if that can be imagined. With all these incentives, we can understand why poor Mexican and Central Americans will do just about anything to escape such terrible circumstances.

My next blog post will specify what I envision as an answer to this problem.

The Legacy of the Blame America First Bunch

2011-09-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

American exceptionalism has been a target of liberals in America for decades. They have eschewed the whole idea ever since the 1960’s and the rise of the hippy generation. That is the generation that spawned our president, Barack Obama and others who came under the spell of such as Saul Alinsky in Chicago. These days, there are many in our country who carry a burden of guilt feelings about supposed social errors America has committed. They would prefer to call attention to America’s mistakes than to promote the good things that America has done.

America has been a beacon of security in a very unstable world. Nancy and I have seen how very beneficial the presence of American soldiers has been in stabilizing volatile situations in Africa. We have all seen the benefits of promoting free enterprise and entrepreneurism in the economies of many countries. America has been exemplary in its demonstration of the rule of law in a society. We have shown the world that a stable government does not need to change by shooting the political leader. Our economy has shown how to produce goods and services leading to the highest standard of living in the world.

Some would say, however, that these demonstrated benefits of the American way of life have come accompanied by an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. Those are the ones who would denigrate the American ideal.

Mr. Obama has made it clear that his idea of how and where to apply presidential power was shaped precisely by this brand of liberalism. He has shown this by his devotion to big government, his passion for redistribution, and his scolding and scapegoating of Wall Street and capitalism, in general. He would give up the whole idea of American exceptionalism.

That policy should make the liberals happy, but they should realize that the Obama administration is mediocritizing the United States in the view of the rest of the world. If this keeps up, nobody will come to us for support and encouragement in a difficult world. His policy of downgrading the United States will not make the world a better and more secure place for the peoples to live.

Ludicrous Conclusion by Scientist

2011-08-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

I have lately read a very interesting book by Ward and Brownlee entitled “Rare Earth.” The book is about the origins and life of the Earth. In it, the authors posit their belief that the factors that allow life of complex animals (including humankind) on Earth are so rare as to be practically impossible to reproduce elsewhere in the universe. They believe that very primitive life forms, such as bacteria and certain other one-celled organisms can probably live on other planets in the universe. However, they are convinced that complex life cannot exist on other planets in the universe. So far, so good. I can buy all that reasoning.

After describing all the complexity of animal and humankind development and all the factors that have allowed life to evolve on earth, the authors come to an astounding conclusion. They conclude that life so complex and of such a high order could not possibly have come about by means of an intelligent creator! !) They believe that all this interwoven and extremely complex world of ours must have come about by means of random chance and natural selection. It is unbelievable to me that such sophisticated and obviously skillful observers as these two could come to such a conclusion. I think the logical conclusion that would explain all this interactive complexity we see on the Earth would have had to arise as a result of a super-intelligent being. (Guess Who)

The authors point out that scientists have still not been able to synthesize a molecule of RNA or DNA. I would not be surprised to see, some day, that biochemists have finally synthesized that molecule; but of one thing I am sure: If scientists ever do accomplish this task, it will not be done as a matter of chance or “natural selection.” It will be accomplished by means of intelligence.

Keynesian Economics vs. Regular Economics

2011-08-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

This blog post is largely excerpted from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal of 24 August 2011 written by Robert Barro, an Economics professor at Harvard.

John Maynard Keynes was an economist of the 1930’s who propounded the theory that if the national economy begins to flag and recession is in the offing, the Federal Government should pump more and more dollars into the system. This supposedly will stimulate the economy and cause the recession to go away. To Keynes, it mattered not if the government had the money in the bank to spend on things in the economy. All the government had to do in such a situation was to print more money and spend it. He thought that by adding or subtracting dollar bills from the system, the government could control the economy and prevent radical swings from recession on the one hand and inflation on the other. He thought that the wealth of the government did not depend on how much gold it had in the bank; it depended only upon the strength of the general economy.

This economic philosophy has governed the fiscal decisions of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal government since Franklin Roosevelt to the present, and it is very much alive and well in the present administration.

The present government has posited that it is necessary to transfer wealth to the people, in such things as food stamps, believing that this transfer of money will cause the people to use the influx of money to consume more and thereby stimulate food producers to make more food and hire more people, thereby increasing per capita income and stopping the recession.

“Regular economics” denies that this effect is a true conclusion of the matter. “Regular economists” believe that food stamps and other perks from the government only serve to motivate less work effort because the incentive to work is less if the government will just give the money away.

The problem with Keynesian economics is that there is no evidence that it works. Actually, we know something specific and concrete about the effect of one such transfer of deficit-sourced money. In 2009, the government raised the unemployment eligibility to 99 weeks—a significant increase from the previous eligibility period. After that, the long term unemployed (more than 26 weeks) jumped to over 44%. This pattern suggests that the dramatically longer unemployment insurance eligibility period adversely affected the labor market. The message people received was, “If they are going to give away the money, why should I work for it?”

I think the Obama Administration should rework their thinking about stimulus and transfer money. It is not working.

Where Are the Millionaires Who Are Paying the Taxes?

2011-08-19T05:04:00.000-07:00

We hear a lot, these days, about the desirability of taxing the wealthy and leaving the lower income brackets out of the tax increase. But we need to also think about the little problem we have of paying for the activities of the government.

In 2007, 390,000 tax filers reported adjusted gross income of $1 million or more and paid $309 billion in taxes. In 2009, there were only 237,000 such filers who paid $178 billion in taxes; that was a decline of 39% in the number of millionaires. Almost four of 10 millionaires vanished in two years, and the total taxes they paid in 2009 took a drop of 42%.

The millionaires who are left still pay a mountain of tax. Those who make $1 million accounted for about 0.2% of all tax returns but paid 20.4% of income taxes in 2009. Those with adjusted gross income above $200,000 a year were just under 3% of tax filers but paid 50.1% of the $866 billion in total personal income taxes. This means the top 3% paid more than the bottom 97%. Yet the 3% are the people that President Obama claims do not pay their fair share. Before the recession, the $200,000 income group paid 54.5% of the income tax.

Government has discovered that the easiest way to produce income equality is to destroy trillions of dollars of wealth owned by a small proportion of the population. However, those destroyed dollars are taken out of the investment pool of the country leaving everyone out of luck. Those dollars would otherwise be useful to increase jobs. Everyone loses, but the rich lose relatively more than the poor and the middle class. By that measure, if few others, Obamanomics has been a raging success.

This blog post was excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 17 August 2011, page A14.

Are American Cities Headed For London?

2011-08-15T11:28:00.000-07:00

We have all been appalled at the happenings in London and other British cities lately—riots by young hoodlums with no respect for working people or personal property. They have shown no regard for law and order; and they have not demonstrated any kind of work ethic that would have demonstrated their desire to earn a living. They have been largely young, unemployed people who live off government and social service handouts and bask in a very lenient justice system that lets them off easy when apprehended for miscreant behavior.

British Prime Minister, David Cameron has said, “There is something terribly wrong with our young people.” The London Daily Mail comments, “The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values, or aspirations….Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community….Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its future.”

Contributing causes for all this disorder are several in British society: First, is a failing educational system that leaves out basic training in educational subjects. The average Pole who immigrates to England speaks better English than these young rioters after being in the country only six months. Secondly, England is importing foreigners to fill service industries at an overwhelming rate. It is said that one can hardly find any restaurants or hotels with young Brits doing the service work—only foreigners work in such jobs. Social charges on labor and the minimum wage are so high that no employer can extract from the young unemployed Briton anything like the value of what it costs to employ him.

Does any of this sound familiar to American ears? Do any of these social ills pervade our inner cities?

Nancy and I have lately been attempting to teach reading skills and Bible truths to a group of inner city minority group youngsters in Cleveland, OH. Even though the curriculum has been very well thought out and the staff has been skilled at teaching, the results are abominable. These youngsters are so disruptive, ignorant, disrespectful, and parentally deprived, that it has been all but impossible to impart useful information into their minds. They remind us of little time bombs just waiting for some British-type riot to break out so they can participate.

America is needful of a renewal of her biblical work ethic. We need the moral fiber that can only be imparted by sound religious values. We need to return to our ethical, Christian, roots. Only when our people resolve within ourselves to address the social problems of our country in a meaningful way can we ever hope to avoid a quick trip to London!

The Economy In the View of an Ordinary Citizen

2011-08-10T02:41:00.000-07:00

The country is awash in news and numbers about the national debt and the run-away spending habits of our government. I am not expert in fiscal affairs; but some things seem clear to me, which I would like to share with you.

We are all aware that the government has agreed among the various legislators to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. This is supposed to be accompanied by extensive cuts in federal government spending. (Who believes that?) In the past, we have seen the national debt rising by $3.95 billion every day since 9/28/07.

Now, a bond rating agency, Standard and Poor, has downgraded the value of our federal government’s promises to pay back its loans (bonds) to a AA+ rating. This means that S&P believes the government is becoming unable to pay back its loans.

We are told by our leaders that the answer to our financial problems is more spending “to stimulate the economy” and higher taxes to raise the money for the spending. Fortunately for us, there is an exact model for this kind of fiscal policy right in front of us. In 1997, Japan experienced the same problem as the United States is experiencing now; and they followed the same policy decisions as those being promoted by our leaders. The result for Japan was a horrendous double dip where its GDP contracted for five quarters and its banking system went down with it. As a result, the deficit, instead of contracting, increased by a whopping 68%! It took Japan ten years to climb out of this policy mistake. If Washington fails to learn from the Japanese mistake and stays the course along the August 2nd agreement toward fiscal consolidation when its private sector is still deleveraging, the probability of the US economy falling into double dip is not insignificant.

Right now, our national debt rests at $42,026 for every man, woman, and child in our country.

The President is urging us to disbelieve the predictions of Standard and Poor. He is still claiming that his old Keynesian policies of tax and spend are the answer to our debt problems. I would ask you: Whom do you believe the most, Standard and Poor or the federal government? Whom do you think has the most financial expertise? Well…I don’t think I, personally, have much doubt about the answer to those questions. The feds have lost credibility in my mind.

The administration is telling us that the whole problem is due to mistakes made by the Bush administration. But, I ask you, “Who was in charge of the money situation of this country when the excess spending took a marked increase?” The spending of the Obama Administration makes President Bush look like a tight wad.

As we look at this dismal situation, we should ask ourselves what we can do about it. THERE IS AN ELECTION COMING UP.

Teachers’ Union Fights Parents’ Rights

2011-08-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

The American Federation of Teachers, the teacher’s union, recently posted on its web site an internal document bragging about how it successfully undermines parental power in education.

In 2010, California voters passed into law a right of parents to hold petition drives to force reform in failing public schools. Under California law, a 51% majority of parents can shake up a failing school’s administration or invite a charter operator to take over a school. This law is commonly referred to as the “parent trigger.” The merit and utility of this law became obvious; and earlier this year parents in the state of Connecticut tried to institute an identical measure for the parents of that state.

AFT published the name of their effort on their web site—it was called “How Connecticut Diffused The Parent Trigger.” AFT began an intensive lobbying campaign to defeat the measure; and they succeeded by use of the subterfuge which they called “engaging the opposition.” They called together groups of legislators who were particularly vulnerable to union pressures and created a system of “school governance councils” to mediate the school problems instead of granting petition rights to parent groups. Interestingly, their conferences did not include any parent groups interested in promoting the petition process.

The AFT document on the web bragged that the name of the councils is “a misnomer: they are advisory and do not have true governing authority.”

It is obvious that the AFT does not want parental interference in their teaching and indoctrination activities in the public schools—never mind the quality of the education they are handing out.

Many are sympathetic with teachers because teachers are thought to be so underpaid. But according to the Department of Education statistics for 2007-2008, the average public school teacher brought in over $53,000 plus health insurance and retirement benefits. The Census Bureau reports that for 2008, the mean household income in the United States was $52,000.

God’s Different Attitude Toward Sin and Self-righteousness

2011-08-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

In 1 Corinthians 1:2, we see how the apostle, Paul addresses the believers in Corinth as “…those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy….” There are similar greetings to every other church to which Paul wrote with the exception of the Galatians. There seems to be a reason that Paul did not address the Galatians with such an apparently warm heart of love for them.

In the case of the Corinthians, Paul was writing to them to address some very serious sins that were being committed by the people there. They were divisions in the church, lawsuits among the believers, gross sexual immorality in the church, mishandling of marriage relationships, worshipping incorrectly, etc. The Corinthians were eating food sacrificed to idols and giving outsiders to the faith reason for believing that they were partaking in idol worship. Paul admonished them to give up those sinful practices. But…he never indicated that they were anything but very loved believers and members of Christ’s body.

To the Galatians, however, Paul was addressing a situation that apparently was more serious than all the sins of the Corinthians. They were beginning to rely on things of the law and on their own righteous activity to bring them the salvation that only Christ could gain for them through faith in Him. They were coming under the influence of the Judaizers who were encouraging them to observe special days, months, years, and seasons. They were, again, relying on circumcision to impart righteousness to them.

Salvation is by grace, through faith. Nothing we can do will ever merit Gods approval unless He empowers it. Oh, yes, sin is terrible; and God will never condone it. He warns us repeatedly in His word to avoid sin at all costs. But…there seems to be something even more grievous than the ordinary sins of the Corinthians in God’s eyes—that is relying on our own righteousness to gain heaven for us.

Equal Rights for All Human Beings

2011-07-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

(Excerpted from Christopher Kaczor in First Things August 2011)

In most states, young people can drive a car at sixteen. At 18, they can vote and serve in the military. At 21, they can drink alcohol. At 25, they can serve in the House of Representatives; at 30, in the Senate, and, at 35, as President of the United States. We gain rights as we age. Some hold that the unborn also gains rights as he ages in the uterus. They believe that an unborn person has fewer rights at the time of conception than he has just before birth. Many Pro-Life people like to adopt this attitude. This attitude is called the “gradualist attitude,” because it gradually assigns the right to life to the unborn as he/she ages.

It should be recognized that the gradualist attitude calls into question one of the most fundamental principles of democratic society: the basic equality of all human beings. The Nazi’s claimed that inequality when they considered Jews less than human. Thus, it can be seen that the gradualist attitude is a dangerous one for civilized society.

The rights listed in the first paragraph depend upon one’s ability to perform responsibly; and those things advance as one ages. The right to life, however, does not depend upon maturing intellectual and physical abilities. It is a right that is conferred simply on the basis that every living human being has the innate right to live, regardless of his/her level of dependency or his/her ability to feel pain (There are many other criteria that have been proposed by those eager to assign non-human status to early unborn babies.)

The gradualist viewpoint appeals to some because they think it is a view of moderation, which seems desirable to them. Aristotle pointed out centuries ago, however, that not everything admits of a virtuous mean—that is, moderation in the form of compromise between two radically different viewpoints is often not virtuous but vicious. As an example, the difference between killing 100 people and killing no people cannot be resolved by taking a “moderate” viewpoint and killing only 50 people. The moderation of the gradualist view is no evidence of its truth.

This is the reason that Pro-Lifers cannot compromise with gradualists or those who would assign life rights to some unborn babies and not others. An aborted baby is just as dead if it is killed at an early stage of fetal life as if it were killed later in its development.

Human life begins when the human genome is completed at conception by the23 chromosomes from the mother and 23 from the father, and that completed genome is encapsulated within a bath of cytoplasm and a cell membrane. That fertilized ovum only needs nutrition, oxygen, and time to become a fully developed human being. He/she is, indeed, a human being despite his/her size, level of development, and sentience.

What’s the Difference Between Public and Private Debt?

2011-07-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

I publish this blog post as a sincere question. I do not know the answer to the question; and I am hoping that some of my readers know the answer. What is the essential difference between public and private debt? Could it be that public debt is really a beneficial effect of our governmental system? It seems to me that government debt serves a good purpose in that it provides us, Americans who save money and buy treasury bonds, with a steady and safe source of income.

I know that private debt needs to be paid back with interest in order to establish a stable and safe family economy and to nurture a healthy banking system. One needs to save and budget the money one has in order to pay back his personal debts. It seems to me, however, that the government does not feel constrained to do these things, and I am wondering why. I am even wondering if it is good thing for the government to pay back its debts.

One might think of government pay-back money in the form of interest a sort of other “entitlement” program. We already have several entitlement programs, i.e., Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, government pensions, and now, Obamacare. We might now think of the interest being paid out to service the debt as another “entitlement” program. The main difference between this “entitlement” and the other entitlement programs is that this new “entitlement” is totally deserved by the recipients. In the case of this new “entitlement,” the people and agencies who receive the interest money are the ones who have saved and scrimped to save their money for a rainy day. The other, more traditional entitlements go to people who may or may not have saved money for a rainy day fund for themselves. These conventional entitlement moneys act more like a traditional insurance fund that only seeks to share risk so that everyone gets cared for, even though they may not have saved the requisite money, themselves.

If we think of government interest pay-back money as an “entitlement,” we should know that it is the very largest of all the entitlements—it is flowing out of the Federal Government at the rate of $1.13 billion daily. I know that the Federal government was never meant to be a wealth producer for the people. But I also know that many of us older citizens are using Federal treasuries as buffer money against an insecure economy. We always thought of government bonds as the most secure of all investments. These days, I am not so sure about the safety of government bonds. Nevertheless, many of us American citizens hold these securities, and we know that we are entitled to the interest that the government promised to pay us for the use of our dollars.

Governmental programs have a funny way of not producing the exact thing for which they were intended. For instance, the Medicaid program was intended to pay health care costs for the poor. As it turns out, however, about 70% of Medicaid dollars are used to pay for nursing home costs for all of our people. Medicaid dollars are doled out to any of us Americans who need nursing home care without a means test of our relatives. It can be seen, then, that Medicaid nursing home money is not necessarily reserved for the poor.

Government bonds were sold to the people in order to pay the costs of the government. However, it seems to me that they are now serving another purpose. They are paying for the financial support of many older persons who have saved money, invested it in a secure place, and now hope that the returns on that money will help them pay their way in their old age.

Am I thinking correctly or wrongly about this issue? I hope to hear from many of you about this question.

Notes on the State of our Nation

2011-07-18T20:08:00.000-07:00

I have received the following facts from Capt, Woddie Sprouse, USN/RET, a personal friend of Nancy and me. Capt. Sprouse is an experienced officer of the USN; and I deeply respect his understanding of our national condition. Please read the following and consider the significance of this information.
* 14.5 million Americans are unemployed, or 9.1% of the population this number equals the entire populations of Wyoming, Arkansas, Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, New Mexico, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
* The 7/1/2011 Gallup underemployment rate is an additional 9.2% of the population over 18 years of age.
* The national debt is over 14.5 trillion dollars.
* The interest that must be paid on this debt will equal 414 billion dollars in 2011, this amounts to 1.13 billion dollars in accumulated interest per day. Nothing is being paid on the principle.
* There has not been a national budget approved by Congress for the past two fiscal years.
* The current 2011 Federal deficit, income - expense, is in excess of 1.3 trillion dollars, the Federal fiscal year ends on September 31, 201. This1.3 trillion deficit must be financed by seeking addition credit, adding to the total national debt.
* The nation is engaged in three wars, or something that resembles war to this old warrior.
* None of the three wars were declared by Congress. And, I submit that had they never would have been declared had the Congress been asked to do so.
* The nation has no defined foreign policy, or doctrine, to deal with Iran's nuclear development.
* The Mediterranean Muslim region has undergone a significant, yet to be understood, transformation.
* The wealthy, Muslim Gulf and Arabic, states have deferred taking an active role in the Mediterranean transformation.
* The nation has no defined foreign policy to deal with the diverse aspects of the above transformation.
* With the exception of Germany, the major European economies are in financial, debt, distress.
* The European Central Bank is struggling to cope with the wide spread, Southern European National Debit crisis and protect the Euro common currency.
* The nation has permitted the value of the US currency to decline with respect to the Euro.
* With the exception of the Secretary of the Treasury, all the original, key, members of The Administration's Economic team have left the administration.
* The Chinese national defense expenditure is estimated to be in the range of 20% of their annual budget.
* China is expected surpass the US as the number one world economy in the next 10 years.
* The Japanese economy has been stagnate for the past decade.
* There is no regional economic or military power to counter, or balance, Chinese growth.
* Significant quantities of oil and gas reside in the South China Sea, a region of increased Chinese attention.
* Russia has proven not to be a predictable world player.
* Much of central Europe is now dependent on oil and gas supplies by Russia.
* There are 12-14 million undocumented aliens residing in the nation.
* There is no effective method(s) to control undocumented alien access to the nation.
* There is no comprehensive plan to address the status of the 12-14 million undocumented aliens currently in the nation.
* Currently, only four States: Alaska, Montana, Arkansas and North Dakota, will not have a state budget deficit in 2011. 46 States will have deficits and the majority of these will require significant cuts in their services and/or increases in state revenues to abide by their state constitutions to have a balanced budget.
* All aspects of the US housing industry continue to experience a prolonged decline.
* Over 50% of US families pay no income taxes.
* US College tuition is increasing at a rate exceeding the national inflation rate.
* US Medical care expense is increasing at a rate exceeding the national inflation rate.
* The future national supply of energy is in question.

These facts are not just so much dross and Republican haranguing at an objectionable government administration; these are REAL facts, and we, Americans absolutely must do something about them!

Two Ways to Look at Bin Laden’s Death

2011-06-02T18:14:00.000-07:00

Conservatives and liberals have reacted much differently to the Navy SEAL’s operation that killed Osama bin Laden. On the right there was pride in the capabilities, precision and bravery of an elite commando team. There were no illusions that victory had been achieved over international terrorism and islamist fanaticism. But there was a feeling of satisfaction, if not relief, that retributive justice was finally delivered to a heinous mass murderer. There was hope that this could be a turning point in a protracted and continuing war, along with renewed resolve that we persevere for as long as it takes.

On the left, there was no celebration. The liberal penchant for guilt was indulged with hand-wringing about a lack of due process in what may have been a planned “kill mission.” (So what? We are at war!) Abstract moralizers lamented the tragedy of any human life being taken. But even more revealing of the leftist mindset and their detachment from the real world was their indignation over continuing security precautions, which they regard as an affront to civil rights.

They fretted that bin Laden’s death might cause the Patriot Act to be continued, that the CIA and the FBI would still be allowed to conspire together (i.e., share information to thwart terrorist plots); that Gitmo would remain open; that the Transportation Security Administration would continue to inconvenience air travelers; that terrorist phone calls would be monitored without warrants (but with court approval under the Foreign Intelligence Act,); that captured terrorists might be subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques; that American troops will remain abroad, and so on.

These things are all true for the simple reason that we are still at war with suicidal fanatics who are intent on randomly killing innocent American civilians.

I think it is high time that we, Americans, quit being so guilt ridden with the fact that we need to protect ourselves and the ones we love. Let’s end this war on terror with a victory!

This blog post was largely excerpted from the Denver Post 2 June 2011, page 11B. It was part of an editorial written by Mike Rosen.

How To Fund The Welfare State

2011-06-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

On 5/30/11, I posted a blog on how America needs to fund defense spending in favor of spending more money on entitlements. Today, I want to mention more about the severity of our national financial problem.

America now has a debt burden of $14 trillion. $4 trillion more than just 2 years ago. In 2008, the ratio of public debt to gross domestic product was 40%. Today it is 68%! Unless we make hard decisions now, in less than a decade every dollar of federal revenue will go to covering the costs of Medicare, Social Security, and interest payments on our debt. We will sink even deeper in debt to pay for everything else, from national security to disaster relief. Our country will fall behind the productivity of other countries. Our currency will be debased, and our influence in the world will wane. Our security will be more precarious.

In order to resurrect this failing state, we need new leadership, leadership that will not be afraid to institute programs to reduce, reform, and in some cases end government programs—include some popular but unaffordable subsidies for agriculture and energy. We need leadership that will cut this wild spending on Medicare and accept the fact that we can no longer fund Social Security our of a “trust fund” that has no money in it (And it never has—all the Social Security “trust fund” has ever had in it has been a bunch of IOU’s from the Federal Government.)

We need to pursue free trade agreements with other countries, just as other countries now do. 95% of the world’s customers live outside the U.S. We will not remain the most productive economy in the world if we embrace the mistaken belief that we can prosper by selling and buying only among ourselves, while the other countries seize the opportunity for economic growth that the global economy offers.

Let’s do something about this deplorable financial situation now—before it is too late!

This blog post was largely excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 6/1/11, page A19.

Will It Be Welfare or Defense for America?

2011-05-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

Robert Gates is retiring from the office of Secretary of Defense after serving 2 years under President G.W. Bush and 2 years under President Obama. He has made several farewell speeches laying out his opinions about the U.S.’s ability to fund both defense and the welfare state. He has warned against cuts to weapon programs and troop levels that would make America vulnerable in “a complex and unpredictable security environment.”

This year, America is spending 4.5% of our gross domestic product (GDP) on defense when the cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars are included. On the other hand, we spent 9.8% of GDP last year on entitlement spending (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security).

If the United States were to cut our defense spending by 10%, which would absolutely gut the Defense Department budget, the cost savings would be only $55 billion. With a budget deficit this year of $1.4 trillion, that saving would not even make a dent in our fiscal problem of over-reaching debt. The financial problem we have is not over the Afghan/Iraqi war or even general spending on defense, it is obviously entitlement spending!

The Obama Administration has cut and slashed our defense budget in the last 2 years. The money for the F-22 fighter has been stopped and several promising missile defense programs have been discontinued. All this in a world where foreign powers are building up missile and nuclear war capability. I think we are going to be sorry for these administrative decisions.

There is something wrong with our democratic system of government. We send our politicians to Washington with instructions to “bring home the bacon,” in the form of entitlement, welfare, benefits for our short-term enjoyment. But when the pig is dead, there is no more bacon to bring home.

America’s global power begins at home with a strong economy able to generate wealth. The push for defense cuts reflects the weak recovery from recession and a national debt that has doubled in the last 2 years. The Obama Administration has made conscious decisions to squeeze defense while pouring money on everything else.

I think we should get back on the right track of funding defense instead of trying to fund and maintain a faulty and expensive health care bill and support an indefensible Medicare entitlement program.

This blog post was partly excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 5/28/11, pages A14 and A15.

Same-Sex “Marriage”, Why Not?

2011-05-28T05:08:00.000-07:00

Many in our country ask the question, “What is so wrong with same-sex “marriage”? I do not see that it is harming me. If someone wants to marry a person of the same gender, let him do it. It really makes no difference to anyone but himself.”

These arguments do not stand the test of careful scrutiny. Following are the reasons why same sex “marriage” is not good for our people:
1. For most Americans, marriage is a religious sacrament or ceremony. If the definition of marriage is changed to allow same-sex “marriage”, some religious individuals and groups feel that they will become at risk of having to violate their beliefs by being forced to marry same-sex couples.
2. Same-sex “marriage” violates what is obviously biologically abnormal.
3. Many religiously conservative researchers have found that children thrive best when reared in a home with a married mother and father. Boys and girls have needs that are uniquely met by parents of the opposite gender. Under same-sex “marriage” arrangements, more children will grow up fatherless and confused about what constitutes a normal marriage.
4. The role of marriage in society is a major topic taught in public schools. If SSM (same-sex “marriage”) is legalized, schools would be required to teach that SSM is equivalent to opposite-sex marriage, starting as early as Kindergarten. That would violate the beliefs of many parents.
5. Legalizing same-sex “marriage” will force government, industry, and business to financially subsidize an institution to which they have moral objections, thereby intruding on the people’s ability to make moral judgments. Business will have to raise prices in order to insure significant others.
6. Legalizing same-sex “marriage” will lead to the legalization of polygamy and other abnormal forms of “marriage.”

In his 1934 work, Sex and Culture, British anthropologist, J.D. Unwin studied 80 societies, analyzing their cultural beliefs and practices, especially as related to sex and marriage. He concluded that the more sexual opportunity a society had—that is the fewer restraints placed on sexual habits—the less energetic that society would be. In other words, the more sexually promiscuous a society is, the less it will accomplish constructive works in literature, law, inventiveness, etc. When sexual opportunity began to be extended in both pre-marital and extra-marital sexual freedom, Unwin found that such cultures began to decay.

Our society, today, is playing loose with our sexual morals, including allowing same-sex “marriage.” We can expect on the basis of Unwin’s discoveries that our society will, also, suffer cultural loss as a result of these social mistakes.

I can testify that in my personal experience, the above conclusion is true. Nancy and I have been largely occupied fighting sexual infidelity since the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in America in 1973. We have spent untold hours and dollars combatting perversions of sexual practice, including abortion. Those hours and all that money might have been better used if we had not had such a blatant offence to common decency operative in America.

Would that morality would return to the shores of America once more, so that those of us involved in the Pro-Life movement could spend our time and resources on something else!

You Can Help Cut Health Care Costs, Yourself!

2011-05-21T06:31:00.000-07:00

Often, patients do not realize that doctors have no idea what their medical orders and prescriptions actually cost. Helping your doctor understand what his orders cost you will help cut health care costs.

In the May issue of Archives of Surgery, a study was published from Rhode Island Hospital in Providence. The authors simply informed the staff doctors of the cost of “routine” lab tests, which the doctors were ordering.

At the beginning of the 11 week study, the daily cost per non-intensive care patient was $147.73. At the end, the daily cost had dipped to $108.11.

Staff doctors were not coerced into ordering fewer tests. They were only informed of the cost of the lab tests. This simple procedure decreased hospital costs dramatically.

You can do essentially the same thing with your doctor. Just let him/her know how much his prescriptions are costing. Tell him how much out-of-pocket money it cost you, and tell him what the actual, total, cost of the medicine was, which was paid by your insurance.

You might be surprised how this simple action will decrease your health care costs.

Should Christians Be Political?

2011-05-17T05:19:00.000-07:00

(A reprint from the pen of Jordan Sekulow and posted in the Washington Post 5/13/11)

Christians often struggle with Romans 13:1-5, which talks about a Christian’s duties to the state.

“Everyone must submit to the governing authorities,” the passage reads, “for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist are instituted by God.” After reading that passage, some ask “why, then should we be involved in politics, support wars, or campaign for human rights?“ If we stop reading there, it is easy to conclude that not only is it unimportant but that it is actually wrong for Christians to be active in politics, whether through grassroots electoral efforts, lawsuits protecting religious freedom or questioning the government.

Eric Metaxas, author of the celebrated, comprehensive biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer shed some light on this tension on my radio show this week.

“God forbid that the church would just hide in little religious issues and say, you know, ‘That’s not my business, I can’t get involved in politics,’ ” Metaxas said. “Not getting involved in politics is just as bad, just as heretical, as making an idol of politics.”

How do we get from Romans 13:1 to calling the church’s political silence heretical?

Bonhoeffer himself, as well as the verses that follow Romans 13:1, help us get there. Let’s begin with the Scripture:

“So then, the one who resists the authority is opposing God’s command, and those who oppose it will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do good and you will have its approval. For government is God’s servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong.”

The government in Romans 13 is a godly government. This does not mean that to meet this definition a government needs to be Christian, nor should it be a theocracy. A Romans 13 government promotes justice, provides security, and protects the freedom of its people, regardless of religious belief or background. In the United States, we shape the government with our votes. Thus, it is our responsibility to do what we can to ensure that our government lives up to these basic principles.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and outspoken opponent of the Third Reich. When the Nazis found out that he was assisting Jews, he was thrown in jail and later transferred to and executed in a concentration camp because of his role in a plot to kill Hitler.

Fortunately, many of Bonhoeffer’s speeches, personal notes, and letters are accessible to all of us thanks to Metaxas. As he worked to build church opposition to the Reich, Bonhoeffer offered “three possible ways in which the church can act towards the state.” Metaxas explains:

First: The church must, Bonhoeffer says, “continually ask the state whether its action can be justified as legitimate action of the state, i.e., as action which leads to law and order, and not to lawlessness and disorder.” In other words, it is the church’s role to help the state be the state…

If the state is creating “excessive law and order,” then “the state develops its power to such an extent that it deprives Christian preaching and Christian faith . . . of their right . . . The state which endangers the Christian proclamation negates itself.”

Second, the church must “aid the victims of state action.” We have an “unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.”

Third, the church should not merely “bandage the victims under the wheel, but … put a spoke in the wheel itself.” As Metaxas explains,

“It is sometimes not enough to help those crushed by the evil actions of a state; at some point the church must directly take action against the state to stop it from perpetrating evil. This, he [Bonhoeffer] said, is permitted only when the church sees its very existence threatened by the state, and when the state ceases to be the state as defined by God.”

In America, individual Christians and the church have an “unconditional obligation” to be involved in politics. The government of the United States is a direct reflection of the people of the United States. We elect our leaders and are to a great extent responsible for their conduct. Unlike Bonhoeffer and others who to this day are forced by their conscience to put their lives at risk and join resistance movements, in America, we can “put a spoke in the wheel” of our government by simply casting a vote and speaking out for what we believe in.

(And now, a note from myself: In America the people ARE the state. We absolutely MUST take part in the deliberations and activities of our government. Ed Manring)

National Health Preview

2011-05-14T05:27:00.000-07:00

I have been all in favor of several features of the new ObamaCare bill at one time; but now I am beginning to have second thoughts. The state of Massachusetts has a law called CommonwealthCare, which is an almost exact copy of the new ObamaCare bill. We can learn a lot about how ObamaCare will work by looking at CommonwealthCare.

A survey of medical care delivery in Massachusetts was recently done by the Massachusetts Medical Society. Following are some of the results of the survey:
Fewer than half of the state’s primary care practices are accepting new patients, down from 70% in 2007 before the Massachusetts law came into being. The average wait time for a check-up with an internist is 48 days. It takes 43 days to secure and appointment with a gastroenterologist for chronic heartburn, up from 36 last year. It now requires 41 days to secure an appointment with an OB/GYN, up from 34 last year.

Health insurance premiums in Massachusetts are among the highest in the nation.

Emergency room visits jumped 9% between 2004 and 2008, due, probably, to lack of access to primary care providers.

Medical care providers are refusing to accept CommonwealthCare payments for treating patients. Only 43% of internists and 56% of family physicians accept CommonwealthCare in payment for their services. The respective figures for acceptance of price-controlled Medicaid are 53% and 62%.

ObamaCare looked good at first to many people; but I think we should all take a hard second look. This thing will begin to effect the health care delivery system in the whole nation exactly as it has affected Massachusetts.

Is Your Ideology Transcendent?

2011-05-10T07:21:00.000-07:00

Or, in other words, does everyone believe your world view? Is your way the way everything should work? Almost all of us human beings have pre-set opinions of how things should be; and we almost always react to changes in public policy, ethical changes, moral issues, etc. with a knee-jerk response conditioned by our pre-set opinions. As we grow older, our responses become even more stereotyped—we do not waste any more time carefully evaluating the things we do and say. In other words, we have made up our minds about what we think.

We all like to think that we rationally evaluate all the choices we see washing over us in the media; but, in truth, we are usually dominated by our preconceived ideological determinants. Once fully formed, our ideologies are durable things; but sometimes we will have second thoughts.

How are our world views (ideologies) formed in the first place? Most of us adopt the views of our parents. Not a few, however, adopt just the opposite views from their parents, because they have not liked what they have seen in their primary families. Of course, there are also other influences, e.g., economic and social interests, racial and ethnic characteristics, religious convictions, genetic predispositions, the influence of peers and respected authority figures (especially college professors), and last—but not least—there may be some rational thinking.

We need to remember that other people go through the same processes in forming worldviews; and we must consider their views. We must, also, learn to doubt our own views to some extent, at least, if we are to live in a social world and come to the best consensus.

One thing the Enlightenment thinkers added to our armamentarium of useful ideas was that in the aftermath of Reformation wars about religion, it was necessary to develop a domesticated Christianity purged of the doctrinal certainties and intensities that had torn Europe apart for decades. Society had to learn that it was not God’s will that we kill each other over disagreements about God’s will.

We should, of course, always try to keep our eye and heart on God’s revealed word in making decisions and always try to apply the Golden Rule in our thoughts and actions. But…we must, also, at the same time recognize that there is a broad scope of civilizing tasks before us. We must do the best we can, using common sense, in the attempt to solve our every-day problems as they arise.

This blog post was excerpted from First Things May 2011, pages 3 & 4.

Want To Help Pay Down the National Debt? You can do it!

2011-05-07T06:29:00.000-07:00

Did you know that there is a fund to which anyone can contribute that will help pay off the national debt—now estimated to be about $14.7 trillion? The fund is established by the Treasury Department and can be accessed at 202-622-2000. Or, you can ask your tax advisor about it. Some states also have similar funds, i.e., Arkansas, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

It is interesting that those who would have the United States Government raise taxes very seldom contribute to this fund. Last year a grand total of excess money contributed to lower state and federal debt totaled only $300 million, just a pittance compared to the amount of money in the pockets of the very rich—many of whom are spending millions of dollars lobbying for higher taxes. (I’m not kidding! There is a group called Responsible Wealth that spends millions of dollars yearly trying to get legislators to raise taxes! It seems to me that if they really meant it, they would give that money to the debt-reducing project.)

America has a rich heritage of voluntarism; and volunteering to reduce the national debt would be an appropriate place for volunteer contributions, it seems to me. During the Revolutionary War, many Americans gave their fortunes to help finance the cause of Independence. Today, thousands of volunteer soldiers are risking their lives to defend American values on the battlefield.

I am afraid that raising taxes will not do America any good. I am afraid that raising taxes will only finance government expansion and take the pressure off Congress to make the deep spending cuts that are so urgently necessary. I am afraid that higher taxes will decrease private investment in infrastructure and increase unemployment.

This blog post was largely excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 6 May 2011 page A15.

Government Should Quit Shooting the CIA in the Foot!

2011-05-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

I think that the Justice Department should cancel the prosecutions of the CIA officials who interrogated terrorists, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi in Poland and Romania after the 9/11 event. Those investigators gained useful information by their “harsh” techniques that very probably aided the extermination of Osama bin Laden. Those CIA interrogators should not be punished for the work they did to contribute to the safety of the American people and of the whole world.

Any of my readers can write to the Department Of Justice to express their opinion on this matter. Send an e-mail to AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Government Creates Poverty; Freedom Creates Prosperity

2011-04-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

(Reprinted from Reason.com 4/28/11 by John Stossel)

The U.S. government has "helped" no group more than it has "helped" the American Indians. It stuns me when President Obama appears before Indian groups and says things like, "Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans."
Ignored? Are you kidding me? They should be so lucky. The government has made most Indian tribes wards of the state. Government manages their land, provides their health care, and pays for housing and child care. Twenty different departments and agencies have special "native American" programs. The result? Indians have the highest poverty rate, nearly 25 percent, and the lowest life expectancy of any group in America. Sixty-six percent are born to single mothers.

Nevertheless, Indian activists want more government "help."

It is intuitive to assume that, when people struggle, government "help" is the answer-- the opposite is true. American groups who are helped the most, do the worst.
Consider the Lumbees of Robeson County, N.C.—a tribe not recognized as sovereign by the government and therefore ineligible for most of the "help" given other tribes. The Lumbees do much better than those recognized tribes.

Lumbees own their homes and succeed in business. They include real estate developer Jim Thomas, who used to own the Sacramento Kings, and Jack Lowery, who helped start the Cracker Barrel Restaurants. Lumbees started the first Indian-owned bank, which now has 12 branches.

The Lumbees' wealth is not from casino money. "We don't have any casinos. We have 12 banks," says Ben Chavis, another successful Lumbee businessman. He also points out that Robeson County looks different from most Indian reservations. "There's mansions. They look like English manors. I can take you to one neighborhood where my people are from and show you nicer homes than the whole Sioux reservation."

Despite this success, professional "victims" activists want Congress to make the Lumbees dependent—like other tribes. U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.), has introduced the Lumbee Recognition Act, which would give the Lumbees the same "help" other tribes get—about $80 million a year. Some members of the tribe support the bill. Of course they do. People like to freeload.

Lawyer Elizabeth Homer, who used to be the U.S. Interior Department's director of Indian land trusts, say the Lumbees ought to get federal recognition. "The Lumbees have been neglected and left out of the system, and have been petitioning for 100 years. ... They're entitled, by the way."

People like Homer will never get it. Lumbees do well because they've divorced themselves from government handouts. Washington's neglect was a godsend.

Some Lumbees don’t want the handout.

The Mexican Immigrant: The Stress Recipient

2011-04-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

Nancy and I work with Mexican and Central American immigrants every Tuesday and Thursday mornings at Crossroads of the Rockies, a food and clothing bank. Most of these people are illegal immigrants.

We receive various reactions from friends and associates about that work. The reactions vary. “You should never do that—you are only encouraging illegal immigration.” Some say, “We think what you are doing is commendable.” Well…both reactions are wrong.

The first comment is wrong because the Bible clearly instructs us to care for and help the immigrant living in our midst. We are not instructed to first consider the immigration laws of our federal legislature to see if we are acting correctly. We are to show mercy first and foremost.

The second response is also incorrect, because the work we do is to be done as to the Lord; and commendation is not the goal.

We, American Christians, should consider who it is who comes through the doors of Crossroads and other compassionate ministries in our country. The Mexicans/Central Americans in these ministries are suffering from lack of money, few jobs, poor education, and systematic discrimination from society in general and the government in particular. In addition to all the above, these poor people live in a drug, alcohol, and violence/crime-soaked society. Their children go to schools where many bad forces influence them. TV and movies encourage them to participate in immoral activities. Their families are riven with spousal abuse and desertion. In addition to all this, they do not have the Spirit of Christ to guide them through the difficulties in life.

We, Christians, need to help these people as long as they are on our doorsteps. However, I must say, that constructive government policies and enforcement of good laws would help this immigration situation immeasurably. Unfortunately, we have neither. Correct government policy could stop a lot of the pain, which these very poor people suffer.

Blanket amnesty for these people would not help them much. They need to be selectively admitted to U.S. citizenship and to a reasonable guest worker program.

It Costs Too Much To File Taxes

2011-04-22T04:11:00.000-07:00

On 18 April 2011, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial called “The 30¢ Tax Premium,” indicating that for the average taxpayer, it costs him $1.30 to send the government $1.00 of tax revenue. This added cost comes from the need to pay the government $1.00 of tax plus the cost of his own time spent filing and complying with the tax code plus the tax collection costs of the IRS plus the tax compliance outlays that individuals and businesses pay to help them file their taxes.

I can identify with these facts, because in our personal 2010 tax returns to the Feds and to the State of Colorado, Nancy and I paid $6,313 while paying $261.75 to H & R Block for our filing costs. That amounts to paying 4% of our money trying to comply with the tax codes. Four percent does not seem like a lot of money; but, for us, $261 is a big bite. We would like to avoid that outlay of money if possible.

Some might say that we should have filed our tax returns by ourselves and not used H & R Block. Although our tax return was relatively simple, one of our 1099’s from an income source did not arrive in our mailbox until 15 April. This caused a last minute need to file an amended tax form, a much more complicated procedure than we are capable of performing. We are glad we used H & R Block, but it costs us too much to file our income tax reports.

What is the solution to this problem? A tax reform to a simple flat-rate tax with no deductions would significantly reduce the current complexity inherent in our progressive tax system, which is full of loopholes, exemptions and special interest carve-outs.

Parental Effects On Their Children

2011-04-17T03:54:00.000-07:00

In 2003, I did a study on the sex habits of young adults in Nigeria. An interesting and useful fact came out of that study that is worth revisiting.

One question was asked on my research questionnaire was, “Have you ever heard your pastor tell you to avoid sexual intercourse outside of marriage?” A “yes” answer on that question had absolutely no correlation with the avoidance of illicit sex.

Another question was asked of my respondents: “Have your parents ever told you to avoid sex outside of marriage?” A “yes” answer to that question had a positive correlation with abstinence of sex outside of marriage.

The point is that parents have a decided and important role to play in guiding their children away from sex outside of marriage. Teenagers may not appear to be listening to their parents, but often they are. Pastors have relatively little influence on sex habits; but parents should certainly exert all the influence they can muster to help their children reach the wedding day with integrity and without a load of guilt on their consciences about their past behavior.

The Best Pro-Life Experience Ever!

2011-04-12T04:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Nancy and I spent most of the day at an event on the Auraria College Campus in downtown Denver. The event was the showing of huge Pro-Life signs and posters by the college organization, Justice For All. The pictures revealed very graphic portrayals of actual abortion results and asked pointed questions of the observers about their attitudes toward abortion.

Nancy and I and about 30 volunteers circulated through the crowd asking the people what they thought about the demonstration and dialoguing with them about their attitudes toward abortion. Of course, we found that the majority of the students there were “Pro-Choice,” but their Pro-Choice position was only relative in many cases, i.e., a lot of them were opposed to late term abortions but in favor of early abortions.

The striking thing about those “interviews” on the street was that many of the people we talked to had not adequately thought out their position. One young man told me that he had no objection to the killing of unborn babies. Nor did he object to the idea of killing babies who were already born, nor anyone else, for that matter. He even told me that he would not even object if someone were to kill him! (Now, THAT, is dedication to a belief, if you ask me!!)

Of course, some in the crowd had actually done some deep thinking about the issue, and they sometimes concluded that abortion is an acceptable procedure. Nancy and I and the other counselors would reason with them, trying to show them that it is really important to defend unborn human life; but their beliefs were almost always deeply ingrained in their minds. We concluded by asking them to look closely at the pictures and ask themselves the question: “Do you think that, looking at those pictures, abortion can be a right decision?”

The day was exhilarating to both Nancy and me. The opportunity to speak the words of Christ and His truth into a harsh culture and to practice reasoning with hard hearts was an inspiration to us.

We were very impressed with the organization, Justice For All. If any of my readers would like to get more information about this organization, I would invite them to look at the organization’s web site. www.JFAweb.org.

How to Influence the Government via E-mail

2011-04-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

We, Americans have the privilege of freedom of speech. We are entitled to express our opinions to our government representatives. They have the right to pay attention to what we say or to ignore our opinions. Sometimes, they actually listen to what we are saying. Especially, they will listen when large numbers of constituents write to them on the same subject. Following are some directions on how to contact our government and our representatives:

Go to USA.gov. You will see a list of contacts you might like to make on the left side of the page starting with the President and Vice President of the United States. Below, you will see listed U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, State Governors, State Representatives, and then agencies you might like to contact. Follow the links, and you will be able to contact the person to whom you might want to speak.Here are a few tips on what to say:

1) Write each e-mail concerning only one issue.
2) Put the main point in the subject line. Very likely that is all that your addressee will read. For instance, your subject line should read something like this—Vote Yes on S. 528, the STAND UP Act.
3) Whenever you can, always refer to legislative bills by number as well as name.
4) Familiarize yourself with Thomas.loc.gov, the web page for the U.S. Congress and Senate, you should read at least the summary of a bill you are petitioning about. Often, advocates for a bill may unfairly represent that bill on the web or in an e-mail. Always try to look at the bill, yourself—it only takes a minute to do that.
5) In examining state legislation, go to USA.gov and choose State Legislators; choose the state; then, choose bills. I have found that in most states, when looking for a concise and accurate summary of a bill, it is best to look at “fiscal impact” in the bill menu.
6) Limit your message to one or two short paragraphs. The longer your message, the less likely it will be read.
7) Be sure to mention how this issue will affect you.
8) Write to legislators whom you know disagree with your point of view—they need to hear from you, too; and they are the ones you really want to influence, anyway.
9) Be sure to include the President or the Governor in your addressee list. Do not write only to Senators or Representatives.
10) Write to the same representatives repeatedly on the same issue. This is especially important when writing to United States legislators or the President. Those representatives will seldom read your e-mail; but they have aides who read and tabulate issues for their bosses. The legislator will only see the tabulation of the issues.
11) Be courteous always.

Is Common Sense Returning to Government?

2011-04-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well, well, it seems that the longer the Obama Administration remains in power, the more it returns to the policies of George W. Bush. How strange!

Ever since President Obama took office, our problems with the economy have gotten worse. Major spending increases have failed to deliver promised jobs. The safety net for the poor is coming apart at the seams. Government health and retirement programs are growing at unsustainable rates. The new health-care law is a fiscal train wreck. And a complex, inefficient tax code is holding back American families and businesses. (However, that last problem can hardly be laid at the foot of President Obama, alone.)

The president’s recent budget proposal would accelerate America’s descent into a debt crisis. It doubles debt held by the public by the end of his first term and triples it by 2021. It imposes a $1.5 trillion in new taxes, with spending that never falls below 23% of the economy. His budget permanently enlarges the size of government. It offers no reforms to save government health and retirement programs.

Now, we are seeing more and more of President Bush’s policies being resurrected to remedy the problems we have at this time. Even the closing of Guantanamo seems to have been cancelled.

In my opinion, the most problematic part of the current governmental formula is its discouragement of private business. As I noted in my last blog post, Blacks in America are recognizing these problems with the welfare state; and they are migrating to parts of the United States where business and employment possibilities are better.

I think the new GOP Path to Prosperity being proposed by the House Budget Committee is very probably the best policy for our country at this time. I think we should try it. The current policy is just not working.

This blog post was partly inspired by articles in the Wall Street Journal of 5 April 2011, pages A15 and A13.

Demographic Changes in the United States

2011-04-02T05:14:00.000-07:00

This blog post was written by William Sowell and published on Townhall.com 3/29/11.

The latest published data from the 2010 census show how people are moving from place to place within the United States. In general, people are voting with their feet against places where the liberal, welfare-state policies favored by the intelligentsia are most deeply entrenched.

When you break it down by race and ethnicity, it is all too painfully clear what is happening. Both whites and blacks are leaving California, the poster state for the liberal, welfare-state and nanny-state philosophy.

Whites are also fleeing the big northeastern liberal, welfare states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as the same kinds of states in the midwest, such as Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.

Although California has long been a prime destination of Asian immigrants and the homes of their descendants, the 2010 census shows a striking increase in the Asian American population of Nevada, more so than any other state. Nevada is adjacent to California but has no income tax nor the hostile climate for business that California maintains.

The movement of the black population-- especially educated young blacks-- is the most striking of all. In the past, the massive movements of millions of blacks out of the South in the early 20th century was one of the epic migrations of a people-- comparable in size with the millions of the Irish who fled the famine in Ireland in the 1840s or the millions of Jews who fled persecution in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In more recent decades, blacks have been moving back to the South, however. While the overall black population of the northeastern and midwestern states has not declined in the past ten years, except in Michigan and Illinois, the net increase of the black population nationwide has increasingly been in the South. About half of the national growth of the black population took place in the South in the 1970s, two-thirds in the 1990s and three-quarters in the past 10 years.

While the mass migrations of blacks out of the South in the early 20th century was to places where there were already established black communities, such as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, much of the current movement of blacks is away from existing concentrations of black populations.

Blacks are moving to suburbs, and even to cities like Minneapolis. Overall, the racial residential segregation patterns are declining in the great majority of the largest major metropolitan areas.

Among blacks who moved, the proportions who were in their prime -- from 20 to 40 years of age-- were greater than in the black population at large, and college degrees were more common among them than in the black population at large. In short, with blacks, as with other racial or ethnic groups, those with better prospects are leaving the states that are repelling their most productive citizens in general with liberal policies.

Detroit is perhaps the most striking example of a once thriving city ruined by years of liberal social policies. Before the ghetto riot of 1967, Detroit's black population had the highest rate of home-ownership of any black urban population in the country, and their unemployment rate was just 3.4 percent.

It was not despair that fueled the riot. It was the riot which marked the beginning of the decline of Detroit to its current state of despair. Detroit's population today is only half of what it once was, and its most productive people have been the ones who fled.

Treating businesses and affluent people as prey, rather than assets, often pays off politically in the short run-- and elections are held in the short run. Killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy.

As whites were the first to start leaving Detroit, its then mayor Coleman Young saw this only as an exodus of people who were likely to vote against him, enhancing his re-election prospects.

But what was good for Mayor Young was disastrous for Detroit. There is a lesson here somewhere, but it is very doubtful if either the intelligentsia or the politicians will learn it.

The Price of Taxing the Rich

2011-03-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

The more I look at the economic situation of the United States, the more sympathy I have for economists and politician/bureaucrats—their task seems almost impossible.

The genius of the American economic experiment has been that our society has ever sought to increase the gross domestic product and to distribute the benefits evenly.

Most states are funded mainly by income taxes. Now, we are facing a situation where the incomes of some few families are going up rapidly, and this should be producing lots of tax money for the states. However, state/federal budgets are in deficit. Why has this happened?

Californians have studied this phenomenon most closely, where the distress over the economy is most acute. In California, before the recession, half of the state’s income came from the top 1% of its earners, i.e., those households with incomes above $490,000/year.

It has been found that the highest income groups experience the greatest income volatility when anything happens to the economy or to the progressive tax structure, which we have in almost all states and in the Federal income tax system, i.e., the higher the income, the higher the tax bracket.

Many people, mostly Democrats, have thought that to save failing state and national economies, it is necessary to tax the wealthy as heavily as possible in order to fund lots more government programs and to distribute wealth more evenly. This sounds very logical; but this approach has its difficulties.

The situation that now exists is one in which the top earners are paying very high taxes; and those taxes are driving the people with the least money in the high tax bracket out of the high bracket because their income has volatilized downward. The others in that high tax bracket, however, have figured out how to make lots of money due to the exit of their lower income competitors. This effect is producing an even greater spread in the income of Americans, with the very rich becoming even richer. Of course, the very rich are paying lots of income tax; and they are keeping the government tax income up. But…the problem is that as the income of the people who are losing net value and income declines, they are not investing in the economy. For that reason, the economy is lagging—despite the fact that the very rich are making a lot of money.

The logical imperative for government and economists, today, is to keep the base of upper income people very broad and the tax rate low. That goal is hard to reach; but raising taxes at a time like this is only exacerbating the problem. It is driving many rich people out of the investment mode and making the very rich even richer, though fewer in number.

This blog post was inspired by articles in the Wall Street Journal, 26 March 2011, pages C1 and C2.

Foolish Decisions at the End of Life

2011-03-26T05:16:00.000-07:00

As a geriatric physician and an old man, myself (I am 75 years old.), I feel constrained to share with my readership some observations I have made over the years concerning end-of-life decisions. I have repeatedly seen terrible decisions made by former patients, their families, and, now, with my friends and peers. As we grow older, we have a tendency to deny that our physical lives are nearly over; and we often find ourselves making unwise decisions that do not prolong life. Sometimes, these bad decisions only prolong death. Very often bad decisions strain the financial and social lives of our survivors to the point that they may even wish we were already deceased. Most of these bad effects can be avoided by looking at our lives realistically, having assurance that Christ has come to take us home with Him, and trusting Him to do it for us. Following are some specific bad decisions about which we should think before we make them, ourselves.

1)I will have my cancer treated with all the radiation and chemotherapy available. Patients need to understand that their doctors are pledged to defend life to the very last ditch. Many of them look at death in their patients as a personal defeat. Some, unfortunately look at advanced cancer as an opportunity to make money from hurting people. (Fortunately, this is probably an unusual situation.) Many doctors are willing to allow patients and their families push them into ill-advised treatment methods, which they know are fruitless and even harmful. This latter group of doctors rationalizes their treatment activities by saying that they are only carrying out the sincere wishes of their patients. And patients, after all, should have sovereignty over their own treatment options. (There is some truth in this attitude.) Far too many doctors are victims of overactive curiosity about new drugs and new treatment options. They want to try every new drug that comes on the market. Unfortunately, many new drugs prove themselves no better than the older, standard drugs with which there are known complications and success rates. Many cancers, however, are only slightly affected by chemotherapy and radiation; and those treatment modalities are often not advisable. Patients should develop the practice of asking the doctors specific questions about survival and side effects of the treatments they are contemplating. Following is a list of questions that patients should ask their physicians:

a)What are the one year and the five year survival rates for my cancer if I accept this treatment? What are the survival rates without this treatment?
b)What are the complications and side effects of this treatment?
c)How long has this treatment been in use?
d)How many times have you, personally, used this treatment?
e)What is the microscopic grade and the anatomical stage of my tumor; and how does that affect my outlook for life expectancy and general life quality?
f)Where can I read about the success and the complications of this treatment?
g)Is this treatment accepted as standard treatment? If not, why not?
h)Do other doctors have recommendations to make about this treatment? Where can I find those recommendations?
i)Does the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommend this treatment? What about the recommendations of the American Board of Oncology? (Bear in mind that oncologists have a reputation for very aggressive and sometimes ill-advised treatment.) What are the recommendations of the specialty board that is concerned with the organ system giving rise to the cancer that I have? (For instance, the American Board of Urology for cancer of the prostate)
j)What are the alternative forms of treatment available?

Remember that a consultation with a geriatric specialist who has no vested interest in radiation or chemotherapy might yield an unbiased and impartial opinion about these kinds of treatment.

If your doctor feels threatened by the above questions or if he/she reacts defensively or adversely toward them, perhaps you should consider changing doctors. The answer to these questions is a privilege you have as a patient. This is all your business; do not be hesitant to ask these questions.

2)I want every possible treatment modality available used to the uttermost to keep me alive as long as possible. Sometimes patients with incurable diseases and the family members of those patients do not realize that the complications and side effects of some treatment methods do not warrant their use. Two examples of this follow:

a)Chronic hemodialysis (use of the artificial kidney) is often abused as an end-of-life measure because patients believe that it makes life longer and more comfortable. This treatment can certainly make life longer; but the price in symptoms and side effects of the treatment is often not worth it. Patients on this kind of treatment usually live with constant thirst, muscle cramps, nausea, and itching all over the body. They have to submit to 2-3 hour sessions on the artificial kidney twice weekly. The artificial kidney should be used in cases where the patient’s kidneys are expected to recover in the near future and the patient is expected to be able to get off the kidney machine soon. Chronic use in old age for permanent kidney failure is not a good decision. Conditions which should certainly prevent the decision to use chronic hemodialysis are congestive heart failure, advanced dementia, and any other incurable disease that will soon lead to death (such as cancer). It is my opinion that chronic hemodialysis should not be used in patients over the age of 75 years or in anyone else with a life expectancy of less than 3 years.
b)Coronary artery bypass grafting is often used to excess in the elderly to keep the heart working just a little longer. I have seen this procedure used in patients over the age of 90 in the vain hope that it will prolong life significantly. What a dream, if only it were true! Opening the chest to repair arteries to the heart is no small procedure; and in aged patients, it is fruitless. The placement of coronary artery stents, on the other hand, is often effective and useful in the aged. That procedure is quite invasive, but it does not entail much in the way of side effects—it is often effective in producing desirable results. Patients often go home within a day or two.
c)One caveat to remember about desperate, life-sustaining, procedures is that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in nursing homes has an almost zero survival rate after 3 months. This fact has been ascertained in repeated studies around the nation. All nursing homes ask patients if they want to be resuscitated in the case of cardiac arrest; and, unfortunately, in many cases, patients will indicate that they want that procedure done. That decision is a mistake when it is made in a nursing home—the procedure is worthless, costly, and often inflicts a lot of pain.

3)I will never turn off life-support machinery being used in the care of my loved one. That would be the same as murder. There is a great difference between pulling the plug on a respirator and actively causing the death of a patient by deadly injection—which is, indeed, murder. We are called on to defend life to the last ditch—unless it involves using extraordinary means. What are “extraordinary means?” Extraordinary means are any treatments that involve advanced medical measures, which are not expected to produce life-giving results in the future. Extraordinary means certainly include the use of respirators in brain-dead patients—respirators can keep these patients “alive” with pulse and blood pressure for years. But—-is that life? I do not believe so. Even the use of feeding tubes inserted through the abdomen or nose may be considered extraordinary means, in my opinion. If those tubes are used to keep a permanently unconscious patient alive indefinitely, I think they should be removed.

We come down to the difficult question of what does it mean to be “alive.” Of course, medical people often use the presence or absence of pulse, blood pressure, and brain waves on an electroencephalogram as criteria to determine whether a patient is alive or dead. Personally, I think that the ability or disability to give and receive love should be strongly considered in the determination of whether a person is alive or dead.

4)I will go to Mexico to obtain the very best and most advanced treatment available. (This decision is almost too ludicrous to even discuss.) There are, along the Mexican border, several unscrupulous and unethical doctors who advertise that they can cure almost anything with treatments that have been outlawed or found ineffective in the United States. They charge high fees for treatments that do no good, at best, and that have dangerous side effects at worst.

I remember one doctor, in particular—-a doctor in Piedras Negras, a small town across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas. We, doctors in the southwestern U.S., called him “the bad guy from black rock.” He claimed he could cure arthritis. I noticed that his patients, returning to my practice, appeared from their side effects, to be taking huge doses of cortisone. They came back to me for treatment of their high blood pressure and broken bones apparently caused by osteoporosis—-well known complications of improper cortisone treatment. I called him on the phone one day and asked if he were treating patients with cortisone—-he denied it, saying that he was using only Valium and aspirin. I obtained some of his pills from a patient and had them analyzed at a laboratory in Denver. They were found to consist of the extract of a Mexican yam plant that is the crude material from which cortisone is produced. He was overloading arthritis patients with cortisone—-a well-known toxic form of treatment.

Some of these Mexican border doctors are treating cancer with useless dietary restrictions; another I have heard of is supposedly using stem cells on an out-patient basis to treat chronic lung disease. I know of no chronic lung disease that responds to stem cell treatment, although papers were published as late as 2007 indicating that experimentation with stem cells shows some promise in mice with certain lung diseases. (To be effective, stem cell treatment is one of the most highly technical treatments available. A course of treatment requires weeks to accomplish. To be using it frivolously in an out-patient setting is obviously fraudulent. Furthermore, I seriously doubt that any genuine stem cells are being used in the first place!) Going to Mexico to have advancing disease treated by one of these border doctors is like going to West Africa to have diabetes treated by a witch doctor.

5)I will never go into a nursing home or assisted living home—-those places do no good; and I know patients just go there to die. Of course, people die in nursing homes. They die anyway—-some time and some place; but nursing homes do not hasten their death. Nursing homes make life more comfortable when advanced care is necessary. My mother resisted nursing home placement energetically in her advanced old age. She was having a difficult time caring for her basic needs at home. When she finally entered the nursing home, however, her comment was, “Why did I not do this earlier? It is such a relief to me to be cared for like this!”

6)I will not accept hospice care. It does no good; and they won’t treat my disease, anyway. They will only let me die. Hospice care, on the other hand gives considerable relief to intractable symptoms in advancing, incurable diseases at the end of life. Hospice care avoids unnecessary side effects of useless treatment and relieves pain and suffering in a major way. Hospice care should be enlisted early in the course of advancing, incurable disease. Although it is designed to alleviate symptoms, hospice care does not preclude treatment of the disease present if the treatment can prolong life and relieve symptoms. Hospice care aims to keep patients in their homes where they can be made comfortable by frequent home visits by skillful nurses and home health helpers.

7)I don’t need to make out a will. I’m not that bad off, anyway. Wills are not only necessary for people who are “bad off;” they should be written long before a person even becomes ill. To avoid writing a will makes life miserable for survivors who have worked hard to help a dying patient in his last days. Patients who resist making a will are only denying what is inevitable, i.e., that we all die some day. One of the kindest and most helpful things that we can all do for our survivors is to make out a thoughtful will.

Readers of this blog may think that I am personally in favor of health care rationing. If you think that way, you are right. I believe that health care dollars can be used much more effectively to produce health for the American people without spending thousands of dollars extending the life of 90 year olds for an extra few months.

I would invite you all, especially if you are in the elderly age group to read the following book: Nearing Home: Comforts and Councils for the Aged by William Edward Schenck available from Amazon.com for $27.93 in paperback. This book is not a scientific tome; it is a book for Christian believers; and I think that it presents a philosophy on the subject of death that should be comforting and practical to help us all make better end-of-life decisions.

Can’t Find A Christian Job?

2011-03-21T04:40:00.000-07:00

I have recently run across some blog posts and blog comments that, although the writer wants very much to be strongly oriented on Christ and wants to do some Christ-honoring work, he/she cannot find anything to do in the world of Christian work or ministry. This blog post is designed to alleviate that problem.

There is a world of constructive, Christ-oriented, work in our country; and with the resources available, there is no excuse for anyone to have difficulty finding multiple sources for many kinds of Christian work.

I would suggest that anyone looking for Christian ministry look first at Google and search “Christian ministries (then enter the name of your city); that will produce more ideas than you can ever digest. Another very good source is USAChurch (your city). Christian matching services are available to help you find the best match for your skills and available Christian positions. Those services can be found at Intercristo and Finishers.com. If you are looking for work in a pregnancy center, look on Google for Care Net and Heartbeat International. If you are looking for Christian missionary work, look at the web sites for SIM International and TEAM (The Evangelical Alliance Mission).

Happy browsing, and may God bless you in your search for things to do for Him!

How Committed Are We To The Word of God?

2011-03-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

You have heard me speaking about a book I have been reading recently—Radical, by David Platt. That book is a challenge to really live the Christian life. Anyone who reads that book and takes it to heart cannot help being motivated and moved to practice the admonitions of Christ! Below, I have quoted one paragraph:

“Meanwhile, we hold the matchless Word of God in our hands, and it demands a superior position in our lives, our families, our small groups, and our churches. Do we realize the battle that is waging around us? There is a true God over this world who wants all people to bow at the feet of a loving Savior, and there is a false god in this world who wants all people to burn in hell. The battle is intense, and it cannot be fought with the little thoughts in a daily devotional or petty ideas from a preacher on Sunday. It certainly can’t be fought with minds numbed by the constant drivel of entertainment on television, DVDs, video games, and the Internet. If you and I are going to penetrate our culture and the cultures of the world with the gospel, we desperately need minds saturated with God’s Word.”

A European’s Warning To America

2011-03-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

Daniel Hannan wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on March 12; it appeared on page A15. Mr. Hannan has been a member of the European Parliament for 11 years; he is a Briton. He wrote to warn the United States to avoid the mistakes that the European Union has been making for the past few decades.

Mr. Hannan notes that the United States has been following the European example for several years, i.e., we have embodied in our society and our government higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracy, and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions. Many Americans seem to genuinely believe that it would be a good idea to make our country less American and more like the rest of the world—namely, more like Europe. These changes are seen as the way to a more comfortable and peaceable way of life.

In America, we have traditionally designed our government to limit the power of the state by recall mechanisms, ballot initiatives, balanced budget rules, open primaries, localism, states’ rights, term limits, the direct election of public officials from the sheriff to the school board. The EU places supreme power in the hands of 27 unelected Commissioners invulnerable to public opinion.

Mr. Hannan notes that as the U.S. applies a European-style economic strategy based on fiscal stimulus, nationalization of businesses, bailouts, and the regulation of private-sector remuneration, unemployment in the U.S. has leaped to European levels.
Legislation in the U.S. is increasingly implemented through executive orders, bypassing the Congress and Senate. In short, we are losing our freedoms to big government.

Many people don’t even see America as a good place to live—can we blame immigrants who come to our shores for refusing to acculturate into American society?

Let’s get back at it, America! Let’s stop this trend toward big government and the “blame America first” attitude. We have a great country! It is worth sustaining and supporting.

How To Live Longer

2011-03-09T05:10:00.000-08:00

A new book called The Longevity Project by Friedman and Martin seeks to identify childhood traits that lead to long life. The best childhood predictor of longevity, it turns out, is a quality best defined as conscientiousness: “the often complex pattern of persistence, prudence, hard work, and close involvement with friends and communities that produces a well-organized person who is somewhat obsessive and not at all carefree.

High intelligence and advanced educational degrees did not correlate with long life. Rather, the ability to navigate life’s challenges was a better predictor of longevity.

Cheerful children turned out to be shorter-lived than their more sober classmates. These children died more often because they had a tendency to throw caution to the wind when it came to life-shortening habits like smoking, drinking, and driving fast cars. The chipper types were also more likely to die from homicide, suicide, or accident.

The early death of a parent had no measurable effect on children’s life spans or mortality risk, but the long-term health effects of broken families were often devastating. The grown children of divorced parents died almost 5 years earlier than children from intact families.

Long-livers had a higher level of physical activity and a habit of giving back to the community, a thriving and long-running career, and a healthy marriage and family life.

Those with a dark disposition, i.e., those who viewed every stumble as a calamity were the most likely to die sooner.

(The above was excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 3-9-11 page A15.)

In looking at this book, I am reminded of the admonition in the book of Ecclesiastes 7:2,3 “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting. for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter because a sad face is good for the heart.”

The Illegal Immigration Argument Marches On!

2011-03-06T05:29:00.000-08:00

The United States still tussles with illegal immigration; and it seems that the states are making some progress despite the languor of the Federal government.

Utah is probably going to pass a bill that will allow illegal immigrants to stay in the state and work legally if they pass a criminal check, pay a fine of $2500, and apply for a permit from the state’s Department of Workforce Services. This program is very reminiscent of the Bracero Program that allowed alien Mexicans to come into the U.S. legally for limited periods between 1942 and 1964. Those Mexicans were imported temporarily to work in agricultural venues, for the most part. The Bracero Program decreased illegal immigration by 95% between 1952 and 1959.

My wife and I work with illegal immigrants twice weekly in a food bank; and there is one problem we see with this Utah solution: We do not know a single undocumented Mexican who can raise $2500 to pay the fine required. But…this idea of Utah’s is a start back to sanity on the part of the U.S. concerning illegal immigration.

The other disincentive for illegal immigration that is cooking through U.S. legislative channels is a move to eliminate the automatic awarding of citizenship to babies born to illegal immigrants in the U.S. About 340,000 babies are born to illegal Hispanics in the U.S. each year; and these “anchor babies” serve as justification for keeping their parents in the U.S. permanently, despite that fact that the parents are illegals.

If you wish to contribute to the passage of this kind of legislation, I would appeal to you to write to your Congressional representative and ask him/her to vote for and support the passage of the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011 (H.R. 140).

Sermon on the Mount. Do Christians Obey It? NO! Why?

2011-03-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

A question is often asked by Muslims: Do you Christians obey the Sermon on the Mount? If we answer 'yes', he will believe we are hypocrites, for nobody does and nobody can. If we answer 'no' then he will tell us to go home and practice what we preach before trying to teach it to him.

So…what can we say about the Sermon on the Mount, a real cornerstone to our Christian faith? The uncompromising absolutism and perfectionism of our Lord's ethical teaching in the Sermon on the Mount can be most clearly seen in his conception of the holiness of God. It is because we believe that Jesus reveals God to us in all that He was, said and did--including his ethical teaching--that we can accept the Sermon on the Mount into our faith experience with Him. We see that the ethics of Jesus show us what man is NOT and what God IS. Our Lord's teaching does not relate man to man so much as it relates God to man. Put in another way, when a man stands in the presence of God, after having had Jesus as his Teacher, he realizes that his ethics are not God’s ethics. Man’s ethics were designed to help and protect man against man in the crosscurrents of conflicting social claims. Man’s ethics come from the practical efforts to control the explosions caused by aggressive egoism, and they are not the ethics of pure love and absolute, infinite perfection. Man’s ethics are but the makeshift measures of a corrupt humanity in its effort to control and suppress the grosser forms of evil in society. The man standing in the presence of God, as Jesus presented Him, understands that he will be judged, not by the standard of his own very best efforts, but by the standard implied and expressed in the ethics of Jesus.

For the Christian, the Sermon on the Mount is the inspiration and the motivating force behind his every ethical decision-—achievable or not-—these principles are the things that should motivate our every decision. The principles of the Sermon on the Mount should, also, motivate and drive every policy decision made by our government and by other organizations to which we belong.

The Golden Rule in Islam?? Not a chance!

2011-02-22T05:27:00.000-08:00

Howard P. Kainz of Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin writes in First Things March 2011, page 10:

“In my research, I have found that there are clear cognates to the Golden Rule in Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Judaism but that Islam mandates reciprocity and amity only among fellow Muslims—not with unbelievers. In fact, one finds in the Qur’an the exact opposite of the Golden Rule. For example, Surah 48:29 reads, ‘Muhammad is the messenger of Allah; and those who are with him are strong against unbelievers [but] compassionate among each other.”

Refuting the Liberal Press

2011-02-14T04:06:00.000-08:00

On 2/12/11, the Denver Post, no friend of conservatives in this city, ran a very misleading article on their front page reporting what they called a “sea change” in policy at Focus on the Family toward the abortion industry. They reported that Mr. Jim Daly, the president of Focus was going to dialog with Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains to try to help them reach their goal of making abortion “rare.” Below is a letter I wrote to Mr. Daly concerning that article:

Dear Mr. Daly,

My wife and I have been long time supporters of FOTF; and we will continue to support that fine Christian ministry. We have been deeply involved in the Pro-Life movement since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973; and we are the founders of Caring Hands Pregnancy Center in southwest Denver.

I read with deep angst the article in the Denver Post of 2/12/11 which referred to the “sea change” of policy in FOTF. The article implied that Focus would begin to compromise with Planned Parenthood on the abortion issue. I listened to that program; and determined that the Post’s article was a gross misstatement, obviously designed to diminish conservative support for the FOTF ministry. It did not seem to me that Focus is even thinking about changing its attitude toward this horrendous problem in our country; and I am very thankful for that.

I sent an e-mail to Electa Draper, the author of the article protesting her misleading article.

All that being said, I think it is pointless to try to dialog with leaders of the abortion movement about their purported goal of making abortion “rare.” If they really wanted to do that, they have had many opportunities to do it in the past, which they have not done. As a matter of fact, they have done everything they could do to make abortion a common procedure in the United States. Their condom education program in schools and media has encouraged young people to have more and more sex outside of marriage; this produces ever more abortion business for them—which makes them more and more income. They know very well that the most effective way to get a teenager pregnant it is to put her on birth control pills, and that is just another avenue through which they are advancing their grizzly business.

If you really want to talk with the leaders of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains about how you can help them make abortion “rare,” I guess there would be no harm in that; but I would not expect anything good to come of those talks. I do not recommend talking with them!

Your colleague in saving unborn life,
Edward Manring, M.D., M.S.

States Are Finally Getting The Republican Message

2011-02-07T06:12:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal reported today on its 1st page the following couple of paragraphs:

“Governors around the U.S. are proposing to balance their states’ budgets with a long list of cuts and almost no new taxes, reflecting a goal by politicians from both parties to erase deficits chiefly by shrinking government.

“On Monday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a newly elected Republican, is expected to issue a budget that cuts state spending by $5 billion and overhauls public employee pensions.

“A democratic governor, John Kitzhaber of Oregon, has proposed a two-year budget that would make cuts to mental health institutions and reduce state Medicaid reimbursements to doctors and hospitals. Cuts to Medicaid, a joint state-federal program, are some of governors’ largest proposed reductions.”

Unfortunately, Colorado’s governor and legislature do not seem to be following this national trend. The Denver Post reported today that, “The total budget in the current fiscal year, which ends in June, is $18.2 billion. While Ritter's proposal for the 2011-12 year would be nearly $1 billion larger, revenues have not grown fast enough to keep up with school and college enrollment and human services caseload growth.”

The Governor presented his proposed budget to the state legislature's Joint Budget Committee on Nov. 2, 2010. The committee will draft its own budget and the legislature will vote in March 2011.

Readers of this blog post could do well to contact their state legislators and tell them to cut the state spending—there is no more money around to pay for expensive government.

You Can’t Get A Job in Egypt!

2011-02-05T04:48:00.000-08:00

And that is one of the main problems. Despite the fact that there is an overabundance of highly educated young men, there is not infrastructure in the Arab world to support their trained workers. What a frustration for millions of restless, college-trained young people!

What results from that problem? Protest and riot. It seems like the only solution for dissatisfied potential workers.

Governments across the Middle East have expanded universities and educated a swelling cohort of youth, without laying the groundwork to employ them. In the Middle East and North Africa, unemployment tends to increase with schooling. In the U.S. the opposite is true. In Egypt, high school graduates account for 42% of the work force but 80% of the unemployed. One in seven college graduates in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia is unemployed; many more are overqualified for the jobs they have. Egypt’s unemployment rate in people under age 25 stands at 24.5%.

China and other booming economies are cultivating private sector jobs. Egypt has clung to a state-dominated model of economy. Outside of agriculture, 70% of Egyptian workers work for the government. The number of graduates has overwhelmed the government’s capacity to hire, leaving many without job options.

It seems to me and many others that the solution to the political unrest in the Middle East would be the development of a Western-style economy with free enterprise. Such an economy would enable businesses to create jobs that would keep restless hands busy. More jobs would allow people to realize some material benefit from the effort they have expended getting an education.

This post was excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 2/5/11, page A11.

Anemic Christians

2011-02-03T16:20:00.000-08:00

I am ever more concerned with the weak status of so very many Christians in our world. They just do not seem to understand that they are called by the Maker of the world to a life of sacrifice and service to Him and to their fellows.
David Platt’s book, Radical, is an indictment of this kind of anemic Christianity. He writes, speaking about the church:

“When we gather at the building we learn to be good. Being good is defined by what we avoid in the world. We are holy because of what we don’t participate in (and at this point we may be the only organization in the world defining success by what we don’t do). We live decent lives in decent homes with decent jobs and decent families as decent citizens. We are decent church members with little more impact on the world than we had before we were saved. Though thousands may join us, ultimately we have turned a deaf ear to billions who haven’t even heard His name.”

When Christ propels Christians into the world to risk their lives for the sake of Him and others around them, their focus changes; and they gauge success in the church not in the hundreds or thousands whom they can get into their buildings, but on the hundreds or thousands who are leaving their buildings to take on the world with the disciples they are making.

Is My Service to Christ Enough?

2011-01-29T13:50:00.000-08:00

Have you ever examined your motives and activities in the light of the above question? Are the things you do daily in keeping with the sacrifice your Savior made for you? We, Christians, need to examine ourselves in this light. One thing is for sure: Many in our religion spend far too much time playing golf or bridge or watching spectator sports and very little time in self-sacrificing activities for the Christ!!

Said Musa is a 45 year old Afghan who has been in a Kabul, Afghanistan prison since May 2010. He has been beaten, and tortured for converting to Christianity; and now he is being denied the services of a lawyer in Afghan courts, where he will likely be condemned to death according to sharia law.

Another Afghan Christian, Shoib Assadullah, age 25, is in prison in northern Afghanistan for giving a New Testament to another Afghan, who turned him in to the authorities. Assadullah has been locked up since October 21 for that serious crime; he has reportedly not been tortured.

All this is going on despite the fact that Afghanistan is a signatory to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulating religious freedom, including the freedom to change one’s faith.

www.compassdirect.org/english/country/23987/29549/

If any of my readers are convicted by the above story, I would suggest that they read a new book: RADICAL by David Platt. This book challenges Christians to wake up, trade in false values rooted in the American dream, and embrace the fact that God blesses each of us for a global purpose…. This is a must read for every believer!

Family Situations Worsening in America

2011-01-27T04:35:00.000-08:00

A good look at America’s children should tell us that all is not well with the American family: One third of our children are overweight or obese. Nearly a third drop out or cannot finish high school in 4 years. 75% of our youth are ineligible for military service because of poor health, drugs, criminal records, or lack of education.

What is the reason? Poor schools—maybe. Poverty—maybe. But there is a more ubiquitous and insidious reason. 41% of our newborns are born to unmarried mothers. (up from 5% a half century ago). The fact is that young, adult, Americans are just not getting married. For the first time since the census began tallying marriage, the proportion of Americans age 25-34 who had never married exceeded the proportion of those who had been married. Evidence is overwhelming that children of single mothers—particularly teen mothers—suffer disproportionately high poverty rates, impaired development, and low school performance.

A large majority of never-married mothers had close relationships with a partner when their child was born. Many of these women have said to me something like, “I know he loves me; and we are going to get married just as soon as we have enough money—any day now!” WHAT A BUNCH OF NONSENSE!! Those guys are not going to marry their girlfriends when they can get what they want without commitment. The statistics bear out my observation—by the time illegitimate children are 5 years old, most of the fathers are gone, and the children have little contact with them. These unmarried mothers go on to new relationships, and the children are hampered by repeated transitions that do more harm to their development.

America MUST do something about this deplorable situation. We are raising a generation of helpless young adults. If this situation had obtained in 1941, America would not have survived World War II. Our young people would not have been able to serve effectively as soldiers or as civilian defense workers. This country must return to its Christian roots. I believe that Christ and the Bible are the only answer to the problems facing America, today.

This post was largely excerpted from USA Today 1-25-11, page 8A.

Our Mentally Ill Population is Dangerous

2011-01-19T06:15:00.000-08:00

During the 1960's, all of the states practically emptied their mental hospitals in order to avoid encroaching on the civil rights of those inmates who were hospitalized wrongly for supposed mental illness and whose civil rights were being violated by their detention. Hoards of disabled and mentally ill people were turned out on the streets of America to fend for themselves in a society where they were practically helpless. As a result, they became the homeless of America. Many were encarcerated in prisons or just left to forage in the streets, living under bridges and in gutters. In my own experience, many were housed in special wards of low income nursing homes. Their maintenance there is inadequate. These nursing homes do not provide locked environments for the violent and dangerous, so...these patients are free to roam the neighborhoods, acting in bizarre ways--sometimes dangerous to others in the society.

Very inadequate provisions were made for their out-patient care and supervision.

One such person described in the first paragraph is Jared Loughner, the alleged killer of six persons in Tucson. Laughner had exhibited strange behavior causing him to be expelled from his community college because the students and teacher were afraid of him. A few days later, the fatal shooting began.

About 16,000 murders occur in the United States yearly. 10% of these are committed by persons with serious mental illness.

It is far past the time when America should pay adequate attention to the needs of our liberated mental illness patients by providing out-patient care for them. One problem with out-patient care, however is that many patients with chronic mental illness refuse to take medications that are capable of normalizing their behavior.

New York has a law that makes provision for involuntary admission to a mental hospital if the patient refuses to take his court-ordered psychotropic medications.
Other states should follow New York's example in this kind of legislation. Our society should have mercy on these mental patients and on others around them by providing adequate care and supervision.

Much of this blog post was excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 1/12/11, page A15.

How To Treat Aliens and Strangers

2011-01-07T23:40:00.000-08:00

My wife, Nancy, and I are members of the Board of Directors of Caring Hands Pregnancy Center in southwest Denver. Caring Hands is a Christian compassionate ministry which attempts to help young women with unplanned pregnancies develop other choices for their unborn babies than abortion. In the process of doing that, we offer them free maternity clothes, baby items, counseling services, and community referrals for medical care. One of our main priorities is introducing them to the Savior. Most of our clients are illegal immigrants from Mexico or Central America; they are the poorest of peoples living in the United States. They are under extreme social and economic distress.

Frequently, we ask people to volunteer as counselors or Board members of our organization. Occasionally, Christian people will refuse to work with us, because they think that we are encouraging law breaking and more illegal immigration. They think that instead of helping these unfortunate people with their problem, we should be reporting our clients to the law.

In answer to that objection, we are not a law-enforcement agency; and there is no government regulation that tells us to report these people to the law. Indeed, it is against the law to hire these people; but we are not in the business of hiring anyone. All we are trying to do is to relieve their pain.

Furthermore, the paltry amount of material aid we deliver to our clients is so small that nobody in her right mind would immigrate all the way from Mexico or Central America to get it. Indeed, if all the aid from every compassionate agency in Colorado were poured upon them, it would not add up to anything significant which might stimulate more illegal immigration.

The problem with illegal immigration is a weak and ineffectual Federal Government that is not doing its job of stopping the chaos at the border and that does not establish a useful guest worker program. The job of Caring Hands is to help relieve social and economic pain among our very poor neighbors and to introduce them to Christ.

As Christians, we see very clearly mandates from the word of God for taking care of the alien and the stranger within our gates. For instance, Ex 22:21, 23:19, 23:12; Lev 19:10, 19:33 & 34, 23:22, 24:22; Num 15:16; Deut 10:18, 23:7, 24:14, 17, 19, 20, 21; 26:12 & 13, 27:19; Ps 146:9; Jer 7:6, 22:3; Ezek 22:7; Zec 7:10, the book of Ruth; Matt 25:35, 38, 43, 44.

Strict border regulations in combination with a meaningful foreign aid and guest worker program are not in opposition to Christian principles. But…neglecting the poor and needy among us is in absolute contradiction to Christian principles and practice.

Do We Need More Taxes or Less?

2011-01-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

Liberals say we need more and higher taxes to finance the government. Conservatives say we need fewer taxes to stimulate businesses which will then pay more taxes in the aggregate. Which is true? Let’s take a look at other countries to see how their tax rates effect business.

On 1 January, Canada cut their corporate tax rate to 16.5% from 18% compared to the United States federal rate of 35%. (If you add state corporate taxes to the federal levy, you come up with 40% of total income that United States companies must pay to the government in order to operate in this country.) As a result of these lower corporate tax rates, Canada has enjoyed a boom in investment, job creation, and growth since 1990 when their liberal government started cutting the taxes in order to attract investment to Canada. This is all because companies send capital where it can achieve the highest returns.

The United States ranks second highest in corporate taxes just behind Japan, which is still struggling to correct its economic downturn of the 1990’s.

The high taxes in America prevent hundreds of billions of dollars from coming to the United States in off-shore investments.

Who needs more taxation?!!

How To Have A Conversation

2010-12-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

Conversation is an art form that we all use daily. We should learn how to do it in a constructive and enlightening way, while keeping it enjoyable to all involved.

Many people seem to be talking at others rather than talking with them. Their “conversation” is one-sided, never taking into consideration what the other person might have to offer or might enjoy.

A good conversationalist will listen actively to the other person and ask penetrating and thoughtful questions as the discourse goes on. Conversation is more about listening intelligently than in talking about oneself.

There are times when two people are together; and no real bond is established between them indicating common interests for discussion. At times like those, one should change the subject repeatedly until some common interest is uncovered; and then, a real conversation can begin.

I believe that conversation should very seldom consist of “small talk” about inconsequential subjects, such as the weather or what was on sale at the grocery store. Surely, intelligent people can find subjects to talk about that have some real and important significance! We have all met someone who has the gift of sniffing out real subjects to talk about. With those people, it is virtually impossible to waste time talking about superficial subjects. To me, those people are to be sought out for inspiring and informative conversation.

Some lead-in comments or questions for initiating a good conversation might be such things as, “Tell me what you have been concerned about lately.” Or, “Have you been reading any books recently?” “Where do you go to church?” There are an infinite number of opening questions that might stimulate good conversation.

Always watch your respondent for signs of “listener fatigue:” Not maintaining eye contact or looking at the wrist watch or shifting stance from one foot to another might indicate that the respondent is tired of the subject being discussed.

Practice good conversation and think about it in advance: What do I want to discuss with the other person? Happy listening and talking!

Try Journaling—You Will Appreciate it Later

2010-12-28T15:46:00.000-08:00

This post is to recommend to our young correspondents the value of journaling your life experiences and daily activities. We have a friend who has journaled his life daily since graduating from high school. He can tell you where he and his family spent Christmas in 1984, who was there, what were the significant gifts, what happened, what dinner was like, etc., etc. The information he can glean from his journal is most interesting and even inspiring. He and his wife have fun looking into that old journal after fifty plus years of notations.

Twenty years ago, my wife and I were missionaries in West Africa. We had many very interesting experiences in those days; but, alas, we did not keep a record of them in written form, and now we cannot remember many of them. I wish we had kept a journal!

I recommend that journals be kept in an old-fashioned logbook. It would, perhaps, be easier and more economical of space to do it on a hard drive or in some other electronic medium; but one never knows in these days of rapid technology advancement, if hard drives or CD’s will be around in 40 years.

Happy journaling!

The Rewards for Street Picketing

2010-12-23T07:32:00.000-08:00

For years, my wife, Nancy, and I have picketed abortion clinics. We have had some interesting experiences, which I would like to share with you.

The responses from the traffic on the streets to our picketing with Pro-Life signs has been about equally divided between positive approval of our activities by thumbs-up signs and other less mentionable finger signals of disapproval. One abortionist tried to hit us with his car as he was coming out of his office parking lot. Another angry man pulled a knife on Nancy several years ago. Some have thrown paint balls at us—-fortunately for us, the paint balls did not burst. Several people have stopped to yell at us and argue with us about our beliefs concerning life issues. Their arguments are always of a rather crude and un-thought-out nature, mostly because they have not taken the time to organize their thoughts well. They almost always bring up the issue of “It’s a woman’s body; she can do as she sees fit with it.” This argument, of course, is easy to refute; but, alas, our vocal opponents never seem to be convinced. One man stopped, approached one of our fellow picketers, grabbed his sign and tore it up. Then he raced off in his car. We, of course, called the Lakewood police; and they apprehended him before he had gone four blocks. He was brought into court, fined $100, and required to pay for the destroyed sign. In these confrontational situations, we always call the police; and they have always protected us.

On the other side of the leger, we have also had people park their cars, and come over to us to express their appreciation of what we are doing. Some of them have offered to take us out to lunch, and others have brought us hot chocolate on cold days. One restaurateur invited us to eat at his pizza shop free, which we did on many occasions.

Most recently, a teenaged boy, who was obviously homeless, crossed Union Avenue with his elderly homeless companion deliberately to tell us that he and his friend approved of our street message. Then the boy reached into his pocket and gave us
89¢. It was like receiving the widow’s mite!

We picket every Monday morning from 11 AM to 12 noon. We have counted the cars and multiplied by the average number of people per car. We have calculated that in one hour, we expose our signs to 3000 people. We hope that we are doing some good on the street; at the least, we are helping to keep the Pro-Life message alive and well in our community. Come out and help us some time!

The Purpose of Music

2010-12-17T10:23:00.000-08:00

“The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. If heed is not paid to this, it is not true music but a diabolical bawling and twanging.” Johann Sebastian Bach 1685-1750

Will More Taxes or Less Taxes Help the Country?

2010-12-13T03:45:00.000-08:00

Democrats are convinced that the United States needs more taxes to dig us out of the current recession, unemployment problem, and run-away national debt.

Nancy Pelosi claims that the "tax cuts for the rich" cannot be continued because it would be "too costly." Former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey says, "Demagoguery beats data" in politics, here are some data to help us evaluate the Democrat claim.

The first big cut in income taxes came in the 1920s, at the urging of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. He argued that a reduction of the tax rates would increase the tax revenues. What actually happened?

In 1920, when the top tax rate was 73 percent, for people making over $100,000 a year, the federal government collected just over $700 million in income taxes-- and 30 percent of that was paid by people making over $100,000. After a series of tax cuts brought the top rate down to 24 percent, the federal government collected more than a billion dollars in income tax revenue--and people making over $100,000 a year now paid 65 percent of the taxes.

How could that be? The answer is simple: People behave differently when tax rates are high as compared to when they are low. With low tax rates, they take their money out of tax shelters and put it to work in the economy, benefitting themselves, the economy and government, which collects more money in taxes because incomes rise.

High tax rates which very few people are actually paying, because of tax shelters, do not bring in as much revenue as lower tax rates that people are paying. It was much the same story after tax cuts during the Kennedy administration, the Reagan administration and the Bush Administration.

The New York Times reported in 2006: "An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year."

This country needs LESS taxation, not more!!

(This blog post was excerpted from Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com, 11/16/10)

Common Sense at the Airport Body Scanner

2010-12-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

I have just passed through the Transportation Security Administration passenger inspection routine at the Denver and Detroit airports; and I have some advice to offer my readers.

The body scanning devices being used in airports are low voltage X-rays that read the scan by backscatter from the radiation contact. They deliver about the same amount of radiation as an ordinary chest X-ray; there is a difference, however. The scanners at the airport do not deliver deeply penetrating ionizing radiation—all of the radiation is concentrated in the skin and the tissues immediately under the skin. Therefore, the radiation exposure is concentrated in that area, resulting in a significant amount of damaging radiation there—more than a chest X-ray. The scan reader sees the body in what appears to be its naked state.

The people running the scans told me that there is no ionizing radiation exposure, but they are mistaken in this matter. The scanners are X-ray machines.

In going through the airports, I have opted to have the “pat down” instead of the body scanner. That procedure was more invasive than the “wand” procedure used to check passengers who fail the metal detector test; but I did not find it to be offensive or objectionably invasive. For this reason, I recommend that my readers refuse the body scanner and have the “pat down.” My wife, also, chose to have the “pat down;” and she did not find the procedure offensive, either.

It was interesting to me that in Detroit, the airport had provided a Muslim woman to do the “pat downs” for other Muslim women. This was obviously because Muslim women are taught to demand higher levels of modesty than other women. I am fairly sure that most women feel modest, too. We seem to think in this country that Muslims deserve special privileges. Never mind the fact that if it were not for Muslims and their suicide bombs, there would not be any bomb danger in airplanes in the first place.

U.S.A. Today Looks Like Rome Yesterday

2010-11-30T16:10:00.000-08:00

As President Obama steps down the leadership role of America in world affairs and emphasizes domestic priorities, he begins to look very much like the emperors of the latter part of the Roman Empire.

Rome was the only world superpower in the late 2nd Century, A.D.; but 100 years later Rome was terminally ill, weakened first by internal corruption and unsustainable spending and then destroyed by the emergence of multi-polar contenders for power. Roman currency had been debased; and inflation was out of control. In those 100 years, the Roman bureaucracy grew about 35 fold. Military spending and commitments were scaled back, and Roman citizens were demanding all sorts of government programs to give them the things they desired. Moral life was deteriorating and Roman citizens were being entertained by the most horrible, violent, and degraded forms of sport.

External forces sensed Rome’s weakness, including its shrinking military and its lack of will. Persia’s ruler judged an unusually favorable peace offering from Rome as a reason to attack rather than negotiate. Other enemies reached the same conclusion.

By the mid-5th Century, multiple powers contended for world leadership; and it took 1000 years before the world matched the stability, technological progress, and prosperity enjoyed under Rome’s leadership.

Do you see any similarity of the United States to the situation that pertained in ancient Rome?

(This blog post was excerpted from a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal 11-2-10 by Mike Hall of Gainesville, Fl.)

The Bathroom Bill Comes Home to Roost

2010-11-20T14:34:00.000-08:00

The American Family Association of Pennsylvania has contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to protest its recent decision to allow men and women who have not undergone sex reassignment surgery to identify as the sex of their choice on drivers’ licenses and state-issued identification cards.

“[In late August] media reports indicated that PennDOT has changed its policy concerning those sexually confused individuals who believe they were born in the wrong body,” said Diane Gramley, president of the group. However, she said the issue is not addressed on the government Web site.

In response to the policy change, Gramley wrote a letter to Department of Transportation secretary Allen D. Biehler. She included the account of a Western Michigan University nursing professor. The woman found a man who thinks he is a woman standing naked next to her in the shower area of a health club. The victim wrote that she felt violated and worried about her dignity and privacy, even having nightmares that the man was in her house.

“As we noted in the letter to PennDOT,” Gramley said, “citizens should at minimum be able to trust their state government to tell them the truth. This is a fundamental honesty-in-government issue.”

(The above was copied from the American Family Association Journal December 2010 p.7.)

It should be noted that this kind of transgender threat to women’s shower rooms is legal in Colorado according to the recent Senate Bill 200, which passed the legislature and Governor Bill Ritter’s signature in June 2010. http://bit.ly/dsVEMC

Illogical Result at Planned Parenthood

2010-11-16T15:59:00.000-08:00

A clearly distressed new mother, seeking to take leave of her newborn under North Carolina’s Safe Surrender law, made the mistake of leaving the child outside the entrance of her local Planned Parenthood clinic. Tragically, the premature infant did not survive the abandonment; it died on the doorstep.

The clinic’s reaction was, to put it gently, twisted. With its workers apparently distraught after having encountered the dead infant, the clinic closed its doors the following day and sought counseling for staff members who witnessed the child’s last moments. Employees whose business it was to snuff out the lives of infants just weeks or months younger than this poor abandoned child needed counseling when they witnessed an unvarnished reminder of their trade. It figures.

(The above account was copied from First Things November 2010 p87.)

It seems to this writer that, logically, they should have rejoiced at the death of another baby, since that is the product of their business. Except…for the fact that they did not make any money from this one.

The Effect of the Stimulus on Foreign Trade.

2010-11-12T06:02:00.000-08:00

The United States’ activity in stimulus financing is drawing sharp criticism from the Euro zone, China, Japan, and Brazil. What is it about U.S. stimulus money that is making our allies and business associates so uncomfortable? The money chain policies hold the answer:

1. In order to stimulate the economy and create jobs, the U.S. prints lots of money and spends it on projects that require jobs. This, theoretically, puts money for spending in the private sector into the pockets of the American people. (So far, almost a trillion dollars of spending has not produced much of a dent in the unemployment rate.)

2. With lots of dollar bills floating around, prices are predicted to go up in an inflationary response. So far, inflation is not going up very rapidly—1.4% per annum when last checked in September. However, the rate of inflation is bound to rise considerably with all the newly printed money in the economy. This inevitable inflation is what is worrying the leaders in other countries.

3. The large amount of money in the system will make each dollar worth less—at home and abroad. For that reason, Americans will not be able to buy international products as freely as before. That will cut into the sales for exporter counties, such as China, Japan, Germany, several other Euro countries, and Brazil. Neither Americans nor foreigners will be happy with that result.

4. American products will become more affordable to foreign buyers, because their currency will be worth more relative to the dollar value of our products. This would be a desirable thing for the U.S.

5. To compensate for the loss of U.S. sales, other countries will be tempted to print more money and thereby devalue their currency to support the sales of their products. (This is exactly what the U.S. is doing, now.)

6. This whole process is likely to produce a domino effect on world economies. Each country will try to devalue its currency just to keep up with the sales deficit they will experience when other countries cannot afford to buy their products.

7. Worldwide inflation will be detrimental to everyone in the end. Devaluing currency is only a temporary fix for a sick economy. The huge effect the U.S. has on other nations’ economies could tip the whole world into a dangerous situation. I think it is a bad idea.

In the long run, a free economy without the tough government regulations seems to me to be a better idea. The fix will be difficult for many in the short term; but free markets have performed better in the past; and I think they would perform better now.

Why Does God Always Demand Praise?

2010-11-09T05:29:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered why God frequently seems to demand that we praise Him? Is He some kind of egomaniac who seeks out praise and adulation, even though He is the one who needs absolutely nothing? That kind of self-admiration is something that we think unattractive in one of our own kind.

The Psalms are particularly troubling in this respect, for in the Psalms, we are repeatedly admonished to praise God. The Psalmists often say something like this, “God, you like praise. Do this for me and you shall have some.” It even sounds like the Psalmist is offering a bribe to God—how repulsive!! The amount of praise even seems to be important i.e., “…seven times a day do I praise thee.”

There must be a reason for this continuing demand for praise. Much of the reason lies in the fact that if we do not admire God, we shall be insensible losers; we shall have missed something beautiful and deserving of admiration. The omission of admiring God and its undesirable consequence is similar to the omission and undesirable consequence we experience when we walk by a famous painting in an art gallery and fail to appreciate its beauty—we have missed something that others have known.

Furthermore, in the act of worship, God communicates His presence to men. In our worship of God, He actually gives Himself to us in a concrete way.

It is a fact of the character of humankind that all of our enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. We praise all things we enjoy. Those who cannot praise are the malcontents of society; and they are the ones who seem to enjoy nothing. Praise seems to be the completion of our joy and appreciation of whatever the object of our joy is. We want others to appreciate the thing we appreciate. Thus, the Psalmist calls out to others to see and appreciate the thing he sees—God.

Our duty to praise God exists so that we might have the delight of knowing God, Himself. Remember, He lives in the praises of His people. We can only know Him if we frequently praise Him.

This blog post was excerpted from C.S.Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms.

Is America Being Dismantled?

2010-11-06T05:20:00.000-07:00

For years, liberals and other “progressives” in our country have been involved in a project to erode both respect for this country and the social cohesion of our people. This erosion is what has set the stage for today's dismantling of America that is now approaching the point of no return.

Over 100 years ago, progressives began to speak about changing our Constitution so that a more elite group of intellectuals could dictate our laws and customs. They did this under the mantra of the “needs of the times.” By the early 20th Century, the movement to subordinate the constitution to the wishes of our betters was led by our only President with a Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson. He thought that judges should not take the Constitution as meaning what its words plainly say, but "interpret" it to mean whatever it ought to mean, in order to meet "the needs of the times."

In our present times, this movement is still very much alive; and it is taking some subtle twists and turns. We now have a President who has, for years, been soaked in the society of those who strongly disdain our country and its traditions—they have seemingly preferred the principles of other countries to the republican form of government that has been established in the United States.

To get their way, our leaders must erode or dismantle the Constitution, bit by bit, in one way or another. This has been going on piecemeal over the years but now we have an administration in Washington that circumvents the Constitution wholesale, with its laws passed so fast that the public cannot know what is in them, its appointment of "czars" wielding greater power than Cabinet members, without having to be exposed to public scrutiny by going through the confirmation process prescribed by the Constitution for Cabinet members.

But the greatest challenge this administration has presented to the people of our country has been in international relations, where it is alienating our long-time allies, dismantling our credibility by reneging on our commitment to putting up a missile shield in Eastern Europe and--above all-- doing nothing meaningful to stop the leading terror-sponsoring nation in the world, Iran, from getting nuclear weapons.

We could deter the Soviet Union with our nuclear weapons, and now we must design methods to deter suicidal fanatics, whether they are international terrorists of the sort that caused 9/11 or suicidal fanatics in charge of the government of Iran, who have long been supplying international networks of suicidal fanatics.

Conservatism may not be popular with large segments of the United States population; but if we do not return to our democratic and republican roots, we will lose a great country that has served our fore fathers and us well.

Whence Prosperity? The Government?

2010-10-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

Many people think that government spending can create jobs and shovel our economy out of the doldrums. It is true that the government can hire people to do jobs and supply them with money for their work. But…where does the money to pay them come from? It comes from taxes that the people pay. In other words, all the government is doing is shifting money around (these days from the wealthy to the lower economic classes). No new product is being brought forth. Rarely it may be necessary to shift money around in our republic by artificial means by government action. However, that money would shift anyway as the poor are hired by the wealthy to produce real goods and real services.

Our government is soaked in the notion that when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. If you believe that line, then you believe that creating wealth causes poverty. The truth is that creating wealth causes more wealth. If somebody opens a very big successful company in your small town do you think that that would be bad news for the people in the town? Would that business suck up all the available money and leave the people poor? No! The people in the town would be more prosperous because they have more jobs and income. The businesses in our country are not causing our economic woes—the government is causing the woes.

If the government wants to encourage a business, there are several things that it can do:
1. Cut taxes and give tax breaks.
2. Decrease regulation.
3. Buy the company’s products for governmental tasks.
4. Subsidize the company.
If the government wants to discourage a business, there are several things it can do:
1. Raise taxes.
2. Increase regulation.
3. Buy the company’s products from another supplier, perhaps from a supplier overseas.
4. Encourage union domination.
Our government seems to be doing everything it can to discourage business. It is time we act to do something about this anti-business climate in which we live. Write to your Congressman and Senator to ask them to act in a pro-business way.

Sexting

2010-10-25T05:02:00.000-07:00

Many parents are unaware of the frequency of what is called “sexting,” that is the sharing of sexually explicit pictures and messages on cell phones—most often posted or sent by teenagers or young adults. The prevalence of this practice is frightening! A study done by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, http://bit.ly/bDLcMM, showed that 22% of teen girls and 18% of teen boys have shared nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves, attached either to a text message or by posting them online.

Young people are often not mature enough to grasp the truth and the relevance of God’s word in this matter; but they should be led to understand: Proverbs 5:20-23 says, “Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man’s wife? For a man’s ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all his paths. The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast. He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.”

Teenagers need to be taught that explicit sex on cell phones, the internet, magazine, or other medium is damaging to their characters; and they should avoid it. Furthermore, they should be aware of the fact that anything posted in cyberspace is there forever, and always available to future employers and university admission committees who will evaluate people for admission or employment.

Parents have an obligation to monitor this activity and protect their children from such contamination. Children will often imitate their parents’ practices in such activities, also. If children see their parents watching sexually suggestive scenes on TV or hear them telling or laughing at dirty jokes, you can be sure the children will imitate their example.

To read more about this subject, I would recommend that you refer to Randy Alcorn’s discussion, http://bit.ly/daMUyg.

Churches Timid in Elections

2010-10-23T05:56:00.000-07:00

I have been very disappointed during this election season by the churches of Denver because of their unwillingness to address the Christian issues on the ballots. Their lack of support for things that are clearly designed to protect and advance Christian ethics and morals in our society is a shame to them and to the Christian people of our state.

Somehow, the pastors and the elder boards of the churches think that it is against the law for them to speak out on Christian issues and even Christian principles. They think that they will lose their coveted tax exemptions if they speak out on anything that comes up on the ballot. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there is nothing in the law that would prohibit them from actively advocating for issues in an election that concern our faith. The following link from the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization, describes what can and what cannot be proclaimed from the pulpit during an election season: http://bit.ly/9O13mh.

I think that part of the problem with churches and pastors is ignorance of the issues. I spoke to one pastor who had already voted in Colorado. He told me that he was surprised to find the Personhood Amendment on the ballot when he got to the polling place. This issue, which would define the beginning of human life at the point of conception, is clearly a Christian issue of life. The pastor had not taken the time to inform himself of the issues on the ballot. (He did take the time, however, to deny me the privilege of informing his church on this issue.) In these days, ballots are so very complicated that one cannot decide intelligently on most of the issues by simply going to the polling place and seeing what one might vote on. One has to inform oneself of the issues long before going to vote.

This appalling situation would not have obtained during the early days of America. Preachers and churches were not afraid to proclaim the truth from the pulpits of pre-revolutionary America. Every one of the 27 reasons for revolution elucidated in the Declaration of Independence was clearly presented to the American people by the preachers of America in the 10 years before the revolution. Without the leadership of our churches, the American Revolution might not have ever happened. What a difference from the situation today when the churches are afraid to even mention Christian issues from the pulpit! GOD HELP US ALL!!