The best model for fixing the safety net for the poor is the model already worked out by the Mormon Church. Mormons have a system of welfare that lets almost no one fall through the cracks while at the same time ensuring that its beneficiaries do not become lifelong dependents.
The Mormon system includes a 15-acre warehouse on the outskirts of Salt Lake City that contains a 2 year supply of food to support the church’s welfare system in the U.S. and Canada (primarily for church members in need) and its humanitarian program, which sends food, medical supplies and other necessities to the needy of all faiths world-wide.
In addition to goods from canned peaches to emergency generators, the facility also houses the church's own trucking company, complete with 43 tractors and 98 trailers, as well as a one-year supply of fuel, parts and tires for the vehicles. Just in case.
Most of the inventory in the central storehouse, though, goes to supply more than 100smaller storehouses around the country, plus hundreds of soup kitchens and homeless shelters of other religious communities around North America.
This whole system is manned and supplied with money from volunteers and church donors. It is designed to rehabilitate to working status rather than to keep its aid recipients on the dole with perpetual unemployment insurance.
If you would like to learn more about this wonder of efficient welfare supply, go to http://on.wsj.com/zQliuP
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The War On Christians
Newsweek 18 February 2012 published an article with the above title by a 42-year-old woman who escaped Somalia in 1992 and lived in the Netherlands. She speaks 6 languages and served for a time as an MP in the Netherlands. She now resides in the United States. To read her bio, go to http://imdb.to/zAeaYp . (Her bio is, perhaps, the most interesting part of this post.)
In recent years, the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries, it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.
In Nigeria, a Muslim organization called Boko Haram is spearheading the thrust to eliminate Christians from that country. In the month of January, Boko Haram was responsible for 54 deaths. In 2011, its members killed at least 510 people and burned down or destroyed more than 350 churches in 10 northern states. They used guns, gasoline bombs, and machetes. They have attacked churches, a Christmas Day gathering (killing 42 Catholics), beer parlors, a town hall, beauty salons, and banks. They have so far focused on killing Christian clerics, politicians, students, police officers, and soldiers, as well as Muslim clerics who condemn their mayhem. While they started out by using crude methods like hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes in 2009, the latest AP reports indicate that the group’s recent attacks show a new level of potency and sophistication. Boko Haram has stated that its goal is to kill all Christians in Nigeria.
This kind of mayhem has been evident in Sudan, Egypt, the Middle East, Pakistan, the Punjab, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. To read more about this, go to http://bit.ly/ApSjFU.
In recent years, the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries, it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.
In Nigeria, a Muslim organization called Boko Haram is spearheading the thrust to eliminate Christians from that country. In the month of January, Boko Haram was responsible for 54 deaths. In 2011, its members killed at least 510 people and burned down or destroyed more than 350 churches in 10 northern states. They used guns, gasoline bombs, and machetes. They have attacked churches, a Christmas Day gathering (killing 42 Catholics), beer parlors, a town hall, beauty salons, and banks. They have so far focused on killing Christian clerics, politicians, students, police officers, and soldiers, as well as Muslim clerics who condemn their mayhem. While they started out by using crude methods like hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes in 2009, the latest AP reports indicate that the group’s recent attacks show a new level of potency and sophistication. Boko Haram has stated that its goal is to kill all Christians in Nigeria.
This kind of mayhem has been evident in Sudan, Egypt, the Middle East, Pakistan, the Punjab, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. To read more about this, go to http://bit.ly/ApSjFU.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Is The President Being Fair?
A very thought-provoking editorial appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 7 February 2012. Following are a few excerpts from that editorial:
“President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?
“Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?
“Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?
“Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?”
”Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy-pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is ‘subsidized’?”
“Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?”
Well, these are just some of the excerpts. If you want to read the whole editorial, go to http://on.wsj.com/wrwCvo.
“President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?
“Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?
“Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?
“Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?”
”Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy-pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is ‘subsidized’?”
“Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?”
Well, these are just some of the excerpts. If you want to read the whole editorial, go to http://on.wsj.com/wrwCvo.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
ObamaCare Oversteps American Liberties!
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.”
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.”
Monday, February 6, 2012
It’s Time To Quit Low Interest Rates
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.
“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.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Removing God From the Public Square
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.
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.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Why Does God Want Us To Praise Him?
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.
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.
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