Last Call For The Church

In this election, we, as Christians, are invited to support Mitt Romney, a man who is a member of a religion that by any traditional, classic definition is decidedly non-Christian, and to support a party whose agenda emphasizes the pursuit of money, power, and wealth. We now are told by leaders of the faith - many of them long regarded as bastions of the evangelical Christian faith - that because Romney is a virtuous person, we should ignore Biblical truth - against which the untruth of Mormonism is obvious - and support him over a candidate whose primary domestic goal has been to address the needs of the poor, the needy, and the sick. We are urged to do this, not because of some new found theological insight, but solely for the purpose of removing one president from office and installing another.

Theology, in one sense, is our statement of what Scripture means and how it applies to our lives. For almost two thousand years we've said that it is the standard by which we as Christians know and determine the truth, and that our actions should conform to it rather than twisting it to conform to the things we want to do. If we cast aside that standard - both as it applies to the religion of the candidate, and to the candidate's agenda - merely for political advantage, how can we then claim Scripture as an objective authority for anything? Has not our goal become our standard? Are we not forcing our faith to conform to us, rather than us to our faith?

What This Election is Really About

In assessing this current presidential election, many of you have suggested we as Christians should cast our vote based on abortion, gay marriage, and the economy. Those are serious issues, but something far more serious is at stake.

As to abortion and gay marriage – we lost the abortion battle in the 70s and 80s when we opted to support elected officials who only gave lip service to the issue. And we lost our position on marriage when (contrary to Jesus’ teaching) the Church found a way to accommodate serial divorce and remarriage. Now, divorce rates are the same for the Church as for society at large, reflecting society’s value of marriage rather than that of Scripture. And not even conservative justices or politicians are willing to risk their appointments or elected careers to un-do Roe v. Wade. Time and the human context have moved on. The day for addressing those issues has passed.

Today, America stands at a precarious moment, and the question we face, both as a nation and as the Church, is, "Will you care for the poor, treat the immigrants among you (legal or illegal) as you treat yourselves, and care for the sick?" This is the question Jesus described in Matthew 25:31ff, the answer to which defines what it means to be a member of the Kingdom of God – a Christian. Those who care for the poor, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned, are in. Those who don’t, are out. How we as Christians answer politically on those issues determines how we define America and ourselves. The stakes couldn't be higher.

We're at a turning point in history - the turning point. One way - defining America in terms of conservative economic policy and consumerism (idolatry), turns us toward Babylon and the end (Revelation 17ff). The other, defining America as a country of compassion for the poor, sick, and foreign (Matthew 25:31ff) allows the moment to pass and human history to continue. That's what this election is about.

Billy Graham Move Toward Romney Is Deplorable

As many of you are aware, Mitt Romney recently traveled to North Carolina where he met with Billy Graham. Following that meeting, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association removed references from its website that classified the Mormon religion as a cult. Franklin Graham has issued a statement suggesting that America is at a crossroads and that we should all vote for a candidate who supports Biblical principles and the worship of God. His message implies not so subtlety that our support should go to Mitt Romney. This statement from the Grahams is deplorable.

Since the founding of our nation, America has been a place where truth is valued, liberty prized, and justice (however imperfectly) has prevailed. We have been a nation of that character because Christianity has been the bedrock of American culture and the core of that Christianity has been the Church of Bible-believing Christians, primarily evangelicals. But for the past thirty years, the evangelical wing of the Church has defined Christianity solely and only in terms of personal piety, and has woefully disregarded and discarded what Jesus said about the poor, the imprisoned, and the foreign among us. In place of that truth, we have adopted conservative Republican economic and political philosophy – which vilifies the poor, castigates the imprisoned, and excoriates the immigrants among us. Now, we see the result of that choice as America has become a primarily secularized society with no collective consciousness of the Christian values that made us great. But instead of repenting of our error and turning to the truth we have only redoubled our flight to politics and political action, competing for votes, legislation, and government initiatives rather than the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens.

Franklin is correct. America is at a crossroads, and so is the Church. The question before the Church is whether it will hold to the truth of the Gospel and rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s will in the world, or cast aside the truth and run in fear to the arms of politicians who promise one thing and do quite another. That the Mormon religion is a non-Christian religion is beyond denial. That the Grahams would forsake the truth and suggest otherwise, merely so they can feel comfortable about supporting Romney, is a travesty. We, and they, shall live to rue this day.

I Will Not Vote For Mitt Romney

Since the age of eighteen, I have seen myself as an evangelical Christian voter. I believe in the authority of Scripture, and I consider issues like abortion, national defense, budget deficits, health care, and immigration when deciding which candidate to support in presidential elections. In the upcoming presidential election of 2012, I will not vote for Mitt Romney, and here's why.

First, on the abortion issue, beginning with Ronald Reagan, every Republican presidential nominee has campaigned as the pro-life/anti-abortion candidate. But none of those nominees who actually reached office did a single thing to effectively change the law on the topic. All they did was campaign on the issue, raise money on the issue, and use it to incite voters to vote for them. I’m tired of being manipulated. So, I’m not basing my vote on the abortion issue.

Mitt Romney, a former Wall Street fund manager, is the Corporate America candidate, backed by powerful people with lots of money. Most conservatives think his ties to the business world are a good thing and are convinced that what’s good for major corporations is somehow good for private individuals. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The people and entities bankrolling Romney’s candidacy - major multinational corporations, banking and finance companies, and super wealthy individuals - are bent on making government nothing but the lapdog of multinational business interests. They already control Congress. If Romney wins this election, they will control the White House and all but the smallest sliver of the Supreme Court. If Romney wins, profit and profit alone will rule. Privatization will be the watchword but it will be code for "looting the public property." Everything - health care, the poor, illegal immigration, funding for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the use of federal lands - will be analyzed on a cost-benefit ratio.

Social Security will be privatized in a plan marketed as an attempt to give individuals greater control over their financial future and the opportunity to participate in investment vehicles that offer attractive returns. In reality, it will be nothing more than a government-enforced income stream directed toward Wall Street firms operated by the same people who caused the financial meltdown of 2008 - all in the name of profit. They will squander that income stream on complex transactional schemes that have no underlying value - much like the ones that fueled the 2008 meltdown - and when the money evaporates and you’re left with nothing, the Republican-led government will say to you what they say to the poor now, “Too bad. You made wrong choices. You bear the consequences.” Even though the “wrong choices” were decisions made by money managers in New York over which you had very little control.

The prison system will be outsourced also, and turned over to for-profit corporations, many of which are already operating prisons in several states. In order to subsidize the cost and bolster profit, inmates will be charged exorbitant fees - the imposition of which will carry the force of law and which they will have no means of paying. Release, even after serving the statutory criminal sentence, will be conditioned upon payment of those fees. Being unable to pay, they will be forced to work for wages, at or below the minimum standard, and will become a source of permanent, government-enforced, slave labor.

Illegal immigrants will be rounded up in a Holocaust-style military operation, much of it outsourced to private security firms who perfected their craft in Iraq and Afghanistan and who already have a ready cadre of trained personnel willing and able to do the job. Like the outsourced inmates in prison, illegal immigrants will be charged excessive fees to cover the cost of finding and detaining them. Those who can pay will be deported or allowed to immigrate to another country. Those who can’t will be shunted into the outsourced prison system where they will become part of the slave labor pool. This is how the Nazis treated the Jews before World War II and we’re well on our way to doing the same thing.

The court system will be radically transformed in the name of “tort reform” and reduced to little more than a corporate-controlled arbitration system, ostensibly to contain the cost of litigation but the real motive will be the limitation of risk and a reprieve from accountability for business, all to maximize profits. The real loser will be the American individual, who will lose the last opportunity for individual justice.

Government programs to assist the poor will be drastically curtailed, and in most cases eliminated, in the name of budget reform. All who are physically able to work will be told to get a job or starve.

Health care rationing, which conservatives fear will be imposed by the liberal left, will actually come from the conservative right as part of the never-ending lust for lower taxes and greater profits. Already, Romney is proposing to transfer Medicaid funding to the states, a move that will lead to the elimination of the program (states have no money to fund their own programs, much less a program the size of Medicaid).

The agenda is already in place. The will to do it is creeping up on us. Conservative politicians have energized their right wing base with rhetoric vilifying the poor and illegal immigrants. Evangelical churches - churches that actually believe the Gospel and understand that Jesus really meant what He said - have bought into the conservative political viewpoint, equating conservative politics and national loyalty with the Gospel. This election is the watershed moment for our nation. If Romney wins, the American story will become one of the saddest stories in history - the greatest democracy in the history of the world deceived into voting itself out of existence, all in the name of profit.

And that’s why I will never vote for Mitt Romney, and neither should you.

The Real Story Behind The Unemployment Rate

While unemployment remains stuck around 8.5 to 9 percent, and many analysts continue to insist the economy is in dire straits, corporate profits are at an all-timehigh. The reason profits are high is quite simple. Corporations have fired many of their employees and have required more production from those they retain. Those mighty corporations, who tell us they need lower taxes and less regulation to spur employment, are the very ones shrinking the number of available jobs. But they aren't shrinking their workforce because they can't afford to retain the employees. They're reducing the number of employees because executive compensation is tied to quarterly profits and firing employees is the quickest way to affect the bottom line. This is why major corporations oppose labor unions and support right-to-work laws - getting rid of the unions gives executives much greater latitude in firing employees, which provides greater flexibility in reaching those target numbers for the quarter, resulting in million-dollar bonuses for executives at the expense of hourly wage earning American workers.

Secularization of the Christian Right

In the 1970s, as the Carter administration took office and American politics moved beyond the Watergate era, conservative Christians began to exert renewed influence in American elections. Always a political force, the 1970s saw an organized effort to corral evangelical Christians and harness their votes as a force for change. Much of that effort focused on opposition to abortion and attempts to counteract the Supreme Court’s (at the time) recently announced ruling in Roe v. Wade. Chief among the organizers was Jerry Falwell. His Moral Majority organization became the standard bearer for that effort.

As a primary strategy, leaders of emerging conservative Christian political groups sought to target key elections and issues as a way of injecting a Christian worldview into the political process. By electing Christian leaders, it was supposed that the direction of government policy could be turned from what was perceived to be godless secularism to an embrace of Biblical values.

Initially, the effort was energized by Jimmy Carter’s rise to the presidency but when Carter went along with the Democratic Party’s position on abortion and when he failed to pursue policies on school prayer and education that Falwell and others supported, the Moral Majority turned its attention to the Republican Party and, more specifically, to Ronald Reagan.

Through the Reagan administration’s two terms, the Moral Majority remained at the forefront of the conservative Christian political movement and continued to provide a voice for evangelicals in their attempts to exert influence over the political process. But as the Reagan era came to a close, public sentiment regarding the group’s primary issues waned. The broader context of the Christian church moved towards opinions more in line with the general public. Many evangelical political groups found themselves marginalized.

In the late 1980s, the Moral Majority ceased to exist as a formal organization and the group splintered into what is now identified simply as the Christian Right – a loose confederation of Christian leaders and organizations. The Christian Right, however, has moved one step beyond Falwell’s Moral Majority and has focused less on electing Christians to office and more on marrying Christianity with secular conservatism. The Christian Right still coalesces around the pro-life issue, but spends most of its energy promoting traditional conservative positions on lower taxes, less government regulation, and opposition to increased government control over health care. As a result, what were once merely political positions on taxes and government regulation now have become articles of Christian faith for many evangelicals. It is this shift of perspective that has marked the end of the Christian Right.

In the 1980s, no pro-choice candidate ever obtained the Christian Right’s endorsement. Indeed, most evangelical political groups were organized specifically for the opposition of that very position. At the same time, no candidate who did not profess to be a Christian ever received that group’s support. Now, things have changed.

That Mitt Romney is a Mormon is well-known. His position on abortion prior to his entry into his first presidential campaign is equally well-known. In spite of efforts to morph Mormonism away from the writings and influence of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, Mormonism is not a Christian organization. The traditional, bright-line distinction between what is and is not Christianity comes from the apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans and consists of two points – the exclusive deity of Christ and His physical resurrection. Mormon beliefs fail on the question of Christ’s exclusive claim to deity.

Today, members of the Christian Right find themselves endorsing a candidate for president who is neither Christian nor opposed to abortion. And they offer that support not because they think Romney will advance the pro-life position, but because they think he will reverse recent legislation that attempts to provide health care insurance coverage for 40 million Americans who are without it. In the process, those in the Christian Right have abdicated their claim to Christianity and have become nothing more than conservative political lobbists masquerading under the name of God, in an attempt to manipulate voters, solely for the purpose of maintaining their supposed political power. They have ceased to be Christian and proved once and for all that they are more devoted to political power than to the standards of the Christian faith.

A Thought For Good Friday

Jesus didn't say, "Love the sinner, hate the sin."

What He actually said was, "Love the sinner. And when you've done something about the sin in your own life, then you can talk about theirs."

The Myth About Drilling For Oil

In the current election cycle, we’ve heard from Republican candidates about how we can reduce high gasoline prices by drilling more domestic oil wells here in the US. You should know that suggestion is nothing short of campaign myth.

Refining capacity and domestic consumption aside, the price of crude oil is the single biggest factor affecting gasoline prices. As oil prices rise, gasoline prices rise, too. However, prices for crude oil are not set by a national market. As a general rule, oil produced from a well in Texas goes into the global bucket with oil from every other region in the world. Minor variations in price are based on sulfur content of the oil and transportation costs, not simply on the region from which it came. For more US drilling to change the price of oil, we would have to increase our production to a level high enough to lower the global market price (by increasing the amount of oil available in the market, therefore driving down prices). Based on oil production alone, moving gasoline prices from $5 per gallon to $2.50 per gallon would require a doubling of current global oil production.

Global oil production stands at a rate of 74 million barrels per day. In order to double global oil production, thereby reducing the cost of oil by one-half, the US would have to produce 74 million barrels of oil per day. US production, already the third largest in the world, is currently 6 million barrels per day. Moving the global market price low enough to drop oil prices to half the current price would require the US to raise its production by 12 times its current rate. The US currently has about 530,000 oil wells in production. Increasing production levels to twelve times the current rate would require more than 6 million new wells. Even if the US had the reserves to exploit, drilling that many new wells would be physically impossible.

Merely meeting US demand with US oil, a presupposition behind the call for additional drilling, would be equally impossible and do little to affect the price of oil. Currently, the US consumes about 19 million barrels of oil per day. With production at 6 million barrels per day, the US would have to triple domestic production in order to meet current demand. That alone would require the addition of a million new wells and would still not insulate US consumers from the effect of global oil prices. Simply producing as much oil as we consume would yield no market dynamic that would force oil companies to sell their oil at prices below that fixed by the global market.

Penn State

I want to believe the Penn State trustees acted from righteous indignation, but the cynic in me wonders if they weren't merely attempting to get ahead of the lawsuits, the NCAA, and the media. That doubt about their motives stems from the fact that everyone associated with the situation failed, and they failed because of the potential consequences that doing the right thing might have had on their own careers.

The graduate assistant - told his father and Paterno, and left it at that. Paterno - told a school official the next day, and left it at that. School officials - took away Sandusky's locker room privileges, and left it at that. Yet NO ONE CALLED THE POLICE - and meanwhile, a kid is getting his anus ripped out.

Paterno, being Paterno, could have called the police that night and they would have responded immediately. He could have had the grad assistant drive him over to the locker room, then to Sandusky's house. They could have made a huge deal out of it right then because a child was involved and the threat was immediate.

But they didn't. And I think they didn't because they knew that if Sandusky wiggled away from the charge, they would all see their careers evaporate. This is "winning is everything" taken to the extreme and it's an attitude and culture that permeates the entire school - you can see it in the reaction of the students - and it permeates all of college football. No one cares about anything except winning.

If there was ever "lack of institutional control" this is it. And I, for once, hope the NCAA gets into this case and closes the program and goes on a rampage through the ranks of college football and cleans house and rids the entire system of its obsession with winning and money. But they won't. And they won't for the same reasons no one acted to stop Sandusky - they're afraid of what will happen to their own status and position.

STAGES OF VOTING IN THE ELECTORAL PROCESS

Even though the next presidential election is still more than a year away, political pundits are busy trying to figure out who the current Republican frontrunner might be and which of the contenders might have a realistic hope of obtaining the Party’s nomination and a realistic possibility of unseating President Obama. Having observed elections both up close and from the ease of my sofa, I have found that voting for candidates occurs in lengthy selection process that includes at least five stages. The outcome of each round in that process narrows the field of candidates and provides clues to the identity of the potential winner.

The first votes in an election are cast by political operatives. Working in the backrooms and back roads of America, they scour the country for candidates who will stand for election to offices at every level – city, county, state, national. Some of these operatives are party loyalists who see it as their duty to ferret out candidates who agree with their positions. Far more are paid employees of large corporations or influential political action committees. These operatives make their living locating candidates who agree with their employers’ political positions and facilitating their rise to office. Once they locate the right candidate, they offer inducements to entice the candidate to seek elected office. Those inducements include campaign contributions, technical assistance, and election expertise. The selection process by which these operatives find their candidates comprises the first round of voting. Candidates who are selected in this manner have a far better chance of success than those who choose to run for office simply on their own decision.

After professional political operatives vote, the potential candidates vote. They vote in the affirmative for themselves by agreeing to seek office. They signify that decision by filing the necessary documents to form a campaign committee and qualify with their party. That is the second round of voting.

At the third stage, major donors cast their votes. This is the point at which wealthy individuals, corporations, political action committees and the like make their choices from the field of candidates already winnowed by the previous stages of the process. In almost all elections, candidates who raise the most money – and raise it early – win the election. They get that money from a select group of major donors. You can see some of the major donors for President Obama and John McCain from the 2008 election by clicking on the links.

Then, in the fourth stage, those citizens who are registered voters enter the process. In elections for state and national offices they make their initial selections from among a slate of candidates in a party primary election.  That first round of voting narrows the field of candidates further, reducing the field to just one candidate per party for each office.

Finally, after these four rounds of selections are made, the electors go to the polls in the general election and cast a concluding vote. In many ways, Election Day isn’t a choice among candidates, pure and simple, but a ratification of decisions made by others long before the first campaign speech was delivered.

So, if you want to know which candidates have the best chance of success, just follow the professional political operatives and the money.

HAS THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT LOST ITS MIND?

With candidates lining up for a chance to unseat President Obama, Republican rhetoric has begun to take shape. One of the key elements in that rhetoric is a distinct dislike for “government programs.” Mitt Romney, among others, has shown a fondness for stressing the supposed error of those who think government can do things better than private business. This is part of the standard Republican campaign message echoing a strong belief in capitalism as the solution to every problem and a belief that business, left to its own designs, will eventually rectify every ill. This message is then wrapped in the cloth of the Founding Fathers and presented as the great American gospel. It is a message echoed by conservative Christian organizations such as Eagle Forum and the Christian Coalition.

It is true that those who crafted the Declaration of Independence held government in disdain and were skeptical of government’s ability to do much besides wage war. But the men who drafted the Constitution were equally skeptical, not of the ills of government but of the ills of mankind. They knew that individuals and private business COULD solve any ill, but they were skeptical that they WOULD unless compelled. The government created in our Constitution emanates from their point of view. Men may consider lofty ideals for the common good, but they are prone to act from selfish motives.

Those who oppose government programs and regulations need only look to the reasons behind those programs to understand why they were created and why they must exist. Social Security was enacted because the nation’s elderly, most of who were from the working class, were forced to live an impoverished, miserable life after their bodies were spent from physical labor. Employers, who reaped great profits from the labor of their employees, had done nothing to address the situation. Medicare was enacted for much the same reason. Elderly, who faced greater medical challenges, found they were unable to acquire health insurance and unable to afford medical attention. Private insurers could have offered insurance to them, physicians could have solved the problem on their own, but they didn’t (or wouldn’t) because there was not enough profit in the age group. The EPA was created because industries and developers chose profit over the environment. Automobiles were regulated because manufacturers chose profit over safety. And the list goes on.

This same scenario was repeated in the area of civil rights. Southern states, left to their own devices, refused to offer equal protection to persons of color. Had they done so on their own, there would have been no Civil Rights era. But they did not. And so, the federal government stepped in. Desegregation, school busing, affirmative action and the like were all instituted because people left to themselves chose to do the wrong thing.

In more recent years, we saw an unregulated mortgage industry loan its way to the bottom of the housing market. Securities firms then purchased those mortgages, packaged them as investment securities and sold them to investment banks and mutual funds. Banks and funds then securitized the risk of default in the underlying mortgages and sold that risk to each other as credit default swaps. All of that happened outside the veil of government regulation and proved once again that offered a choice between profit and common sense, private business will choose profit every time.

The problems we face aren’t the work of a left-wing conspiracy out to regulate us into submission. The problem we face is the ancient problem humanity has always faced. Mankind has a profound propensity for choosing self-interest over common interest. Conservative Christians – that part of Christendom that actually believes in the authority of Scripture – ought to know this better than any. Classic Reformed theology is grounded on the notion that human nature is totally and absolutely corrupt. Yet, in the current political cycle, conservative Christians lead the parade chanting the Republican-Tea Party privatization-deregulation mantra. They, who ought to be wary of trusting their lives to any mere mortal, want to hand themselves over to the care and whim of Wall Street executives, captains of industry, and titans of retail sales – the very people who have proven time and time again to be incapable of acting responsibly and sorely in need of a watchful eye.

TEA PARTY ISSUES IN PROPER CONTEXT

The Tea Party push for a smaller federal government and less onerous tax structure rests on the issue of state sovereignty. This issue is not new in American politics and has been the subject of rigorous debate since before our Republic was formed. Unfortunately for Tea Party supporters, the state sovereignty side of the argument has lost every time, and for good reason.

After the Revolution, the American central government operated under the Articles of Confederation which held state sovereignty supreme and created a very weak national government. That approach proved ineffectual in dealing with national defense and interstate commerce, two areas vital to the new nation’s survival. As a consequence, Congress threw out the Articles of Confederation and started over.

The Constitution that Congress drafted gave a nod to state sovereignty but created a strong federal government with final authority in the areas of national defense, foreign policy, and interstate commerce. It forced states to recognize the lawful acts of their fellow states and gave the federal government authority to levy its own taxes without state approval. The central government worked much better, but the tension between federal authority and state sovereignty continued to simmer. The issue came to a boil in the middle of the 19^th century and erupted in the Civil War – a war fought over the fundamental question of how to interpret and apply the federal constitution.

At the time it was ratified in 1789, the federal constitution was seen as a wall around the central government defining the limits of that government’s authority. Hemming it in, as it were, and restraining it from subsuming the authority of the states. But by the mid-1800s, life in the United States was quite different from the previous century. Industrialization was well on its way to transforming the economies of most western nations. The issues of commerce, foreign policy, and national defense had acquired a subtle complexity.

States in the southern half of the country were situated in a region where soil and climate conditions favored agricultural production. Cotton and tobacco grew well there. Southerners found a lucrative market for both commodities in Europe. Exports grew and the economies of the Southern states flourished.

By contrast, states in the northern half of the country were located in a region where conditions were less favorable to agriculture but more conducive to emerging industrialization. However, cost and quality issues hampered the North’s access to European markets. If industrialization was to continue in the United States, northern industry would have to find a profitable place to sell its goods. The southern states were a natural market for those goods, but as the South’s export trade to Europe increased their import trade did as well – partly as a matter of convenience but also because the southern plantation culture saw itself as a reflection of European aristocracy which it reinforced through the purchase of European wares. To remedy the situation, President Lincoln proposed a tariff that would have effectively ended Southern trade with Europe.

Whether Lincoln could have rallied enough support to win a war over the issues of trade and taxation is questionable. After all, these were the identical issues that lay at the heart of the Revolutionary War. Arguments advanced in support of colonial independence were easily transferable to the economic issues that the South faced in the 18^th century. But there was a twist to the complexity of these issues. The economic advantage held by southern agriculture was obtained on the backs of slaves.

In order to gain approval of the current Constitution, delegates and drafters had to sidestep the great moral issue of slavery. To do that, they relegated it to the control of the individual states. Those who were bent on securing approval of the new constitution viewed the move as a way of securing ratification. Those who valued state sovereignty saw it as a victory for their cause. In reality, the treatment of slavery in the Constitution put the issue of state sovereignty to its most crucial test – the morality test. Few, if any, state sovereignty proponents realized that the future of their argument for interpreting the Constitution hung in the balance.

All government, regardless of its structure, rests on the moral authority of its leaders – their ability to do what is right, even when it means opposing the interests of those whom they were elected to serve. Even monarchs and dictators derive their political power from their moral authority. That has not always been readily obvious but the steady erosion of monarchical forms of government attests to it, as does the collapse of communist governments in all but a few nations. They failed not because the form of government was inept but because their leaders failed the moral test. The Southern Confederacy met with the same fate.

Had leaders of the southern states exercised their moral authority properly and disbanded the practice of slavery, the map of North America might look quite different. Instead, they put the force and effect of their central government squarely behind the ownership of slaves and perpetuation of the plantation lifestyle slavery afforded. With it they staked the future of state sovereignty. When Lincoln finally made the abolishment of slavery the focus of the war, both the Confederacy and the notion of state sovereignty as the controlling doctrine for constitutional interpretation were doomed.

A century later, the state sovereignty argument resurfaced as a defense to state-enforced racial segregation. What little remained of the argument was sacrificed on the altar of prejudice and bigotry. Attempts by southern states to defend institutional segregation offered convincing proof that state leaders could not be trusted to appropriately exercise their moral authority.

Book Listed Among Most Influential in Affecting Congressional Policy

Not all of you would agree with this, but the 2008 biography I wrote about Sarah Palin was recently listed as one of the top five Christian books affecting Congressional policy.

http://tiny.cc/qp84b

Locked In The Garage

One afternoon last week my son, Jack, and I went out to the garage for our usual afternoon exercise routine. We walked out from the kitchen into the garage and pulled the door closed behind us. About an hour later we were finished and ready for a drink of water. That’s when we realized the door into the house was locked. We had the remote to raise the garage door but it was cold outside and getting dark. I already knew the other doors and windows were locked, so there we were, stuck in the garage with no keys, no cell phone, and no one else at home.


The garage got reorganized last year when we started going out there regularly to exercise, which meant we knew where everything was located. Rather than mope about it, I dug out a basket of art supplies, converted a cardboard box into a table, and set up Jack with a sketch pad and pencils. I found the extra Coca Colas and divided one between us (using a cup from some extra dishes stored on a shelf - wiped out with the tail of my shirt), then used the empty Coke can for an art lesson in perspective, etc. While Jack drew 2 versions of the can, we talked – about everything.

After an hour of that we were getting cold, so we went back to the treadmill and sit-up bench for a second round of exercise. Then we got out the tennis balls and made up a game. Finally, after almost four hours in the garage, our liberators arrived with supper.

Just the night before I had been talking to Jack about how we work hard to make memories, but the best memories turn out to be the ones we make on the way to making memories.

Will Republicans Sell Their Soul To Win An Election

The 2010 Midterm Election saw the Republican/Tea Party Alliance take control of the House of Representatives. Had they offered more credible candidates in several key Senate races, they may well have taken control of Congress. That said, the party faces a serious dilemma as it looks ahead to the 2012 presidential race.

As I outlined in my earlier post (Midterm Elections Show Republican Party in Crisis, see below), the Tea Party has brought fresh energy to the Republican effort. Credible Tea Party candidates did well, and their supporters voted. Their grassroots effort created a block of voters through which any successful Republican Party presidential candidate will have to pass. And that block is strongly motivated by opposition to President Obama, a fact reflected by the similarity between Obama’s Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll disapproval rating – 41% (http://tiny.cc/dwxcn) and the number of voters in 2010 House elections who identified themselves as Tea Party supporters – 41%.

A Republican/Tea Party presidential candidate, holding Tea Party policy positions, could expect to receive the support of everyone to the right of those positions – immigration reform, lower taxes, curb federal spending, repeal of recent healthcare changes. Those issues worked well in the House races which targeted individual candidates and compartmentalized voter choices. To get to the presidency, a Republican/Tea Party candidate would have to appeal to voters closer to the center. Not many issues offer the option of a move to the left of Tea Party positions. One possibility might be abortion.

Once the decisive issue among Evangelical Christian voters, opposition to abortion has faded as a motivating factor for the way Christians view and decide political issues. For instance, in opposing healthcare reform, only 3% of those polled said they opposed it because of the possibility of increased funding for abortion (Pew Forum http://tiny.cc/x8by5). Most said they opposed it because of the cost and increased government intrusion on their lives.

Opposition to abortion is not the primary motivating factor among Tea Party faithful. Their motivation comes from strong, deep-seated opposition to Barack Obama and is expressed through economic issues. Blue-blood Republicans, another faction of the Republican coalition, have longed for a day when they could jettison the Christian right. Now, they might have that opportunity.

A pro-choice Republican candidate, with genuine pro-choice credentials, running on a platform that stresses economic and personal liberty issues, would open the Party’s appeal to progressive voters nearer the center of political opinion. Evangelical Christians would be forced to decide between not voting, and handing the election to President Obama, or voting for a pro-choice Republican based on other issues. It’s a strategy that just might win.

Which leaves the Republican/Tea Party alliance, and Evangelical Christians, facing an interesting question: Will you sell your soul for the sake of opposing Barack Obama?

Midterm Election Results Show Republican Party In Crisis

According to 2010 Midterm Election exit polls, 41% of those voting in House elections favored the Tea Party. 31% opposed it. 25% had no response. Overall, 53% opposed the Republican Party – yet the Republican Party won control of the House of Representatives. Traditional Republicans see this election as a referendum on the Obama administration and a mandate to undo many of the things that have been done in the past two years. Tea Party leaders see the election results as placing them in the driver’s seat for the presidential election in 2012. Actually, the 2010 Midterm Elections revealed a political party in transition and crisis.

In this election, Tea Party candidates ran as Republicans and were a big part of the Republican success in taking control of the House. But they did not run with impunity. Credible Tea Party candidates did well, but most of their candidates lost – many of them because of a lack of credibility. Yet, with 41% of voters identifying themselves as Tea Party supporters, the Tea Party has emerged as the source of energy in the Republican Party.

For the past thirty years, the Republican Party found its strength in a coalition of traditional conservatives and evangelical Christians. Those groups were bound together by hot-button issues like abortion, national defense, and lower taxes. Now, that coalition is changing and the emerging Republican alliance is an uneasy one – a fact revealed in the poll results showing 53% of voters identified themselves as opposing the Republican Party, even though a significant number of that opposition voted for Republican candidates.

The Tea Party tapped into voter anger over the direction of the economy, immigration, same-sex marriage, and a general distrust and dislike of President Obama. Fueled by that anger, the Tea Party turned to the familiar tactic of street protests to build support for its positions. (They called their gatherings ‘rallies’ instead of ‘marches’ but they served the same function just as well). Though somewhat ill-defined, the Tea Party has loosely coalesced around several charismatic spokesmen – Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh among them. They offered a hard-line, uncompromising, decidedly conservative message that energized supporters to hold local rallies, work for approved candidates, and vote.

As a result, the coalition under the Republican umbrella has now become a Tea Party-Traditional Conservative-Evangelical Christian coalition. However, the galvanizing issues for that coalition are no longer opposition to abortion, lower taxes, or military support, but opposition to President Obama and the undoing of measures passed during the first two years of his administration. This shift in motivation gave the Republican/Tea Party success in the midterm elections, but it puts them in a precarious position for 2012.

Assuming 2010 voter patterns hold in the 2012 election, any presidential candidate hoping to win from the Republican Party will have to do so with Tea Party approval. The Republican candidate will be a Tea Party candidate. That gets the Republicans a theoretical 41% of the vote, which leaves them 10% shy of victory. To attain a majority, the Republican/Tea Party candidate would have to appeal to half of the 21% who identified themselves as having no position for or against the Tea Party or the Republicans – essentially, undecided voters. Assuming the Tea Party’s 41% support lies to the right of center, a Republican/Tea Party presidential candidate would have to find motivating issues through which he or she could appeal to those slightly to the left of current Tea Party policy – without alienating supporters on the extreme right. Very few issues offer the potential for even a slight shift to the center and none of the potential candidates who have appeared so far seems capable of accomplishing the task. Getting from 41% to 51% will be a monumental task for the tenuous Republican/Tea Party alliance, one that will require a candidate who has yet to step forward.

The Walk, by Shaun Alexander

Earlier this year I had the privilege of assisting former NFL running back Shaun Alexander with preparation of his latest book The Walk (from WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House). The book is now available at your local bookstore and online at all the usual places.

The End of Dual Citizenship

For perhaps the first two hundred years of our American republic, Christians had the luxury of holding dual citizenship. Christians arguably could maintain a commitment to the Kingdom of God and the United States without jeopardizing their allegiance to the former by their allegiance to the later. That is no longer true.

When Christians in America turn to the question of civic involvement, they are faced with only two realistic choices. On the one hand, they can express their political interest by supporting candidates of the Democrat Party, a party that not only supports the right to abortion-on-demand, but which seeks to use government to promote that practice. Those not satisfied with that option can express their civic opinions through the Republican/Tea Party, which still has a pro-life stance but has adopted a Darwinian economic policy that damns the poor to a miserable existence for the sake of the wealthy, and a Draconian immigration policy fueled by racial hatred and division. The options posed by both parties place Christians at odds with Scripture.

In the end, religion has become merely one more tool by which politicians motivate their electoral base. And though that effort may have influenced the outcome of elections, it has done little to influence government policy. All the while, the church has grown more and more like secular society, reflecting the same rates for premarital sex, infidelity, divorce, and preoccupation with wealth.

Jesus wasn't kidding when he said, “You cannot serve two masters.”

The Place To Be - By Roger Mudd

Last night, I finished reading The Place To Be (Public Affairs/Perseus Group 2008), by former CBS News correspondent and television anchor Roger Mudd. I purchased the book from the $2 rack at Books A Million in Pensacola. What a surprise! After reading the first few chapters at my desk I resolved to limit myself to one chapter per night. It was a book I wanted to read, but I did not want it to end. Those evening chapters became a private conversation with Mudd about politics, politicians, the 1960s and 70s, media, news, and journalism. In the course of which I caught a glimpse of Mudd's life and the lives of the many people he knew. This book was a treat. I hope Roger Mudd writes more. You can find the book in hardback and paper at all the usual locations.

Barack Obama and the Ancient Prophets

When the ancient Hebrew prophet Daniel was a young man, Nebuchadnezzar led the Babylonian army into the Levant and conquered Israel. After ravaging the countryside, the Babylonians gathered up the brightest and best of Israel's young men and took them back to Babylon. No doubt, Daniel would have rather stayed in Jerusalem. He would have rather had a Jewish king over him, and he would have preferred to have known Nebuchadnezzar only from a distance. But God had other things in mind.

In Babylon, rather than being forced into slavery, Daniel was placed under the care of Ashpenaz, Nebuchadnezzar's chief court official - his chief of staff. Daniel was fed the best food, offered the best living quarters, and afforded the best instruction available in the Kingdom of Babylon. After a while, Nebuchadnezzar experienced a series of troubling dreams and when he sought an interpretation from his court magicians he found them unable to answer his questions. As events unfolded, Daniel was able to interpret the dreams. In interpreting one of those dreams, Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar, ". . . the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes." (Dan. 4:25)

That was a message for the king - he served at the pleasure of Another - and it was also a message for Daniel. God rules the kingdoms of man and He orders them for His own purposes.

Rather than fight against God's purposes, Daniel did his best to discern what God was doing and then joined God in that work. As a result, Daniel lived a long and successful life. He never returned to Jerusalem, but through him, God turned the heart of Nebuchadnezzar to Himself, which led to the Hebrews' eventual return to the Levant. And much later, a remnant of those who learned about God from Daniel came from Babylon to Jerusalem as the Maggi when Jesus was born.

Daniel didn't spend his days wandering the streets of Babylon searching for every opportunity to discredit the king. He didn't spend his time plotting to replace Nebuchadnezzar, and he didn't slink off to the corner and sulk. Instead, he yielded to God's purposes in placing him under the authority of Nebuchadnezzar, discerned every opportunity to join God in furthering those purposes, and submitted to God's choice of leadership.

Many of you spent the 2008 election cycle praying that someone other than Barack Obama would be elected president. Some of you worked diligently in an attempt to see that he did not win the office. But in the end, he won. If you believe God is at work in the world, if you believe that He still rules the kingdoms of man and sets over them whom He wills, then it is time to submit to His purposes, discern what God is working to accomplish through President Obama, and join Him in His work.

Abstract Abstraction - The Nature of Banks in the Current Era

Banks are often viewed as repositories of cash, evoking images of vaults with currency stacked to the ceiling. And we talk about the money banks hold as if it actually had substance. In reality, the concept of money is quite ethereal. Money, after all, derives its 'substance' solely and only from our confidence. Money has always been abstract.

Banks, on the other hand, were always places of substance. You put your money in there and they locked it in a safe. "Here for you anytime you need it." They also kept important documents for you and the image of that safe with the big doors made you feel like not only were your documents and money safe, you were, too. But, alas, times haves changed. Now, banks have gone over to the abstract side. Today, banks are not institutions with cash in the vault. Instead, they have become Government-Authorized Digit Allocation Centers.

Think of it this way - the bank operates a computer server on which, for a fee, one is allowed to create an account. Using a numeric code assigned to that account, customers may execute a defined set of transactions with other accounts on similarly authorized servers located around the world. Digits may be shifted from the simplest account (a time deposit, for instance) to specialized accounts through which complex transactions may be executed (brokerage accounts, for instance). At any given time, all or a portion of the digits in those accounts may be converted to a national scrip - paper currency or metal coin - or converted to a printed or handwritten draft drawn upon the institution that operates the server.

In this way, pizza can be ordered from the local pizzeria by entering the correct numeric code on the pizzeria's server authorizing it to notify the bank's server to subtract digits from a hungry patron's account and add them to the pizzeria's account. This is abstract abstraction. You can obtain pizza - actual, real, tangible food for your hungry belly - by entering a numeric code on your computer that tells the pizzeria's computer to notify the bank's computer to create a numeric image on the pizzeria's computer screen.

Family In an Age of Transition

We live at a time in history when many issues seem particularly polarizing. One of those issues is same-sex marriage. Conservatives find it easy to pontificate on the subject, railing against it as an attack on the traditional family. Liberals advocate for it from the high ground of civil rights and the inclusiveness of love.

I was born and reared in a traditional family - a traditional Southern family. My parents were decidedly heterosexual. They were married only once - to each other - and produced children who followed that same path. Yet, when I hear people talk about same-sex marriage as an "attack on the family" something in me recoils. And I think I've found out why.

Our family isn't traditional. I doubt yours is either.

Some of our family members live in relationships with members of the opposite sex, without benefit of marriage. Several of us were born out of wedlock. Two are from foreign countries. We have children from previous marriages, who have their own children, and no one thinks of them as anything other than child, niece, nephew, cousin, grandchild and great-grandchild. If we asked, a couple of us are of dubious family lineage, but we don't ask - and you better not either. And, our family includes two babies for whom we were a surrogate mother. Even though they now live thousands of miles away, and we may never see them again, we still oooh and aaah over the baby pictures. Don't try to tell us they aren't "really" part of our family. Someone will whack you in the head with a pot.

So, as I looked around the room at a recent family gathering of our "traditional" family, I realized that same-sex marriage can't and won't redefine family for us. We've already done that for ourselves. And I suspect your family has, too.

More Praise For WHAT THE RED MOON KNOWS

What The Red Moon Knows - WOW! A great read.

James Almand
San Francisco

Praise for WHAT THE RED MOON KNOWS

I'm on Chapter Nine and can't put it down. Wow!

Tom Sinclair
Fairhope, Alabama

Praise for WHAT THE RED MOON KNOWS

Fans of Joe Hilley will revel in his latest novel What The Red Moon Knows. Audacious and fun to read, Hilley sinks his teeth into the reader and promises to keep you guessing. There should be little doubt that Hilley is one of the most significant Alabama writers working today.

Lee Peacock
Evergreen Courant

What The Red Moon Knows

The Latest Novel From New York Times Best Selling Author Joe Hilley

Almost ten years ago, I walked away from the practice of law to write novels full time. My first book was published in 2004. Since then, the publishing industry and I have gone through a number of changes. One of those changes has been the rising influence of e-books; books released in electronic format, many that are quite successful but never introduced in traditional print format. This month, I am joining the ranks of those e-book authors.

What The Red Moon Knows, my latest novel, tells the story of Ruth England, a seventy-five-year-old widow who sees a man she is certain was once her teenage boyfriend. The only problem is that boyfriend was Elvis Presley. She knows Elvis is dead - she read newspaper articles about it, saw reports on television, watched the funeral on video - but she is certain the man she's seen is him.

Telling her things about their relationship only Elvis could know, he convinces her to go with him on a trek across Florida in search of a friend whom "Elvis" is certain faces grave danger. Together they follow a trail of clues that lead them far from accepted reality and deep into the secrets of powerful people.

When a reporter tells Ruth the man she's with is really Bobby Wayne Pugh, an Elvis impersonator who witnessed a murder no one was supposed to see, she quickly dismisses his concern. Then she notices the men in the car following their every move. Unwilling to abandon the man she now loves - whoever he is - Ruth holds on until the surprise ending and learns that even late in life dreams really do come true.

What The Red Moon Knows is available from Amazon as a Kindle Book. You can read a sample there for free. And it is available at Smashwords.com in multiple download formats.

For more information go to http://www.joehilley.com/

Age of Economic Transition

In the 2nd Century AD, Ptolemy devised a theory of the universe that placed the earth at the center of the solar system. That theory accounted for all information known about the universe and allowed for accurate prediction of the seasons. It was an incorrect model but provided a result that was adequate for its time.

As science continued to develop new information about the universe, Ptolemy's model came under criticism. Copernicus suggested an alternative model that placed the sun at the center of the solar system. His theory accounted for all known information but did so in a much simpler manner than Ptolemy. Galileo later proved Copernicus correct but the transition from a Ptolemaic orientation to Copernican was traumatic.

In the 17th Century, Newton provided theories about motion that explained the movement of objects in the heavens and objects on earth. His theories accounted for all the information available at the time. Later, Einstein reconstructed theories about motion and the universe in a way that replaced much of what Newton put forth as law. That transition threw much of physics in disarray but ultimately led to even greater discoveries.

Today, American culture is emerging from a period of transition easily as traumatic as the transition from Ptolemy to Copernicus or Newton to Einstein. We have witnessed this in every area of life. Now, that transition has reached our economic system.

When we began this Great American Experiment, Adam Smith Capitalism was in vogue. At the time, individualism reigned and Smith's theories fit well with America's worldview. Using his ideas, America was propelled to great heights of economic power. But American culture is not stagnant. It has continued to develop. Now, American culture is no longer driven by individualism but by relationalism - the notion that value and meaning are derived from relationship. Fact is no longer seen as absolute fact, but as interpreted fact with the interpretation determined by one's relationship to the 'fact' in question.

Cultural shifts are risky and both Liberals and Conservatives are running scared. Conservatives have rallied around a Darwinian view of capitalism - only the strong survive. While Liberals promote a collective policy - the State should insulate everyone from risk. Neither approach is adequate for American society. Both are passing away. In their place a new era of American Entrepreneurship is emerging. Old forms of employment, business and economics are passing from the scene. New theories and forms are rising to take their place. Just as the ideas of Copernicus, Newton, and Adam Smith replaced those of their predecessors, so also new ideas and forms are replacing theirs.

We live in an era of empowerment and that empowerment reaches to the most vulnerable levels of society. In the coming century, that empowerment will unleash American creativity in an explosion of ideas, solutions, and commerce unlike any in the history of mankind.

Capitalism's Forgotten Moral Responsibility

Communists forgot that economies rest on individual choices. Forgetting that one simple truth left Communism relegated to the trash pile of socioeconomic theories.

In the United States, Capitalists gloated over Communism’s demise and spent the last two decades touting the power of individual choice and the wonders of economic freedom. And along the way, the Capitalists became forgetful, too.

Capitalism’s advocates have forgotten that no individual choice stands alone but rather stands in relationship to every other choice by every other person. Taken together, the individual choices that drive economies form communities. The freedom to attain wealth of immeasurable portion carries with it the moral obligation to address the needs of those who cannot succeed in a system in which success is the product of competition. At its heart, Capitalism produces great wealth, but it also produces an inherent economic disparity between those who thrive on competition and those who don’t.

The American economy moves on two trends. On one track, the trend is toward greater and greater efficiency, empowerment, and access. Yet the same things that promote those qualities – technology, information, and complexity – take the economy on a second trend toward exclusion of those with less skill, less ability, and limited access to education. The kind of Darwinian Capitalism promoted today would see no problem with grinding up those who cannot or will not pull themselves up to the required level of competition. That lack of moral imperative will be the end of our capitalist system.

In the 19th Century, pro-slavery advocates used state sovereignty arguments in an attempt to defend the immoral practice of slavery, and sacrificed the Tenth Amendment doing so. Segregationists of the 20th Century used a similar argument to defend the equally immoral American Apartheid, and sacrificed what remained of state sovereignty in that effort. Now, Darwinian Capitalists are sacrificing the remains of American Capitalism to defend their devotion to materialism. Capitalism can rouse itself to remember its moral obligation, or it can die. The liberty that grants to some the means of attaining great wealth comes at the price of caring for those who cannot, for whatever reason, exercise that liberty.

Democrats Take Us To The Gulag

Over the past several weeks Democrats in Congress have threatened to conduct hearings into interrogation techniques used on terror suspects during the Bush Administration. Congressional hearings are nothing knew and often produce useful information. On this subject, however, Congress already knows all there is to know. Congressional leadership on relevant committees was briefed well in advance of implementation of the policies.

More troubling is the threat of criminal prosecutions against those who signed off on the policy and who prepared action memos authorizing the practices.

Memos authorizing implementation of policy are not mere opinions. They are the means by which policy is implemented. They carry with them a detailed account of the legal authority that permits the proposed action. In this case, the memos were prepared by attorneys and approved by the appropriate Justice Department officials.

The practice of law is an art, not a science. Ask three attorneys a legal opinion and you’re likely to get three different answers. Responses often differ depending on an attorney’s area of practice. When the attorneys in question are political appointees, the matter takes on a new twist.

Private attorneys look for precedent to answer legal questions and advise their clients. They have no real ability to shape the law except the long and expensive judicial process. Attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the President in the White House and at top positions in the government are in a different position. They operate within the bounds of the law but their ability to shape the law and policy is much more expansive. When they shape the law, they do so from a particular political point of view. That is their job. Republicans did this under Bush. Democrats are doing it under Obama.

Now, after sitting on the sidelines for eight years, Democrats want to prosecute Republican political appointees for the Republican shape those attorneys gave the law while Bush was in office. This goes beyond political payback.

Using criminal prosecutions to imprison political appointees solely because their political opinion differed from the officials in power is nothing short of Soviet era use of the Gulag. The Democrats can carft their own policy. They can rail against Bush era practices. They can impose their opinions on current terror suspect treatment, which they have. But imprisoning someone for crafting policy from a political perspective that differs from your own is contrary to everything this country and our legal system was established to preserve.

Castro Needs Us As The Enemy

In spite of rhetoric to the contrary, neither of the Castro brothers want to normalize relations with the U.S.

Normalizing Cuba’s relationship with the United States would open the streets of Havana to thousands of tourists. Their seaside marinas would be jammed with sport fishermen. Bars and clubs would be packed with Cuba-Libre-drinking vacationers. Cigar lovers would flock to buy hand-rolled Cuban cigars. With billions in foreign investment, Cuba’s economy would flourish. And that is the problem.

By freeing the Cuban economy to participate fully in an exchange of commerce with the U.S., the world would see first-hand the failures of Castro’s policies. They would see the failed health care system and the ruinous effect of his collective economic policies. With tourists and businessmen on the island, Cubans would learn of the life beyond. Knowing how others live, they would be empowered to speak out against their conditions. At the same time, Castro would have to come clean about the fate of the many political prisoners who have disappeared.

So, no matter how many handshakes you see between Cuban and U.S. officials. Regardless of the press releases and the joint communiqués, Castro will not agree to normalize relations with the U.S. Imposition of the embargo gave him an enemy on whom to blame all the ills he foisted on the Cuban people. Without us, he would be forced to admit responsibility for the condition of his people. He wants us as the enemy. He needs us as the enemy. Without us, he has no country to rule.

Pass The Tea

Today is Tax Day – the day by which we must pay Uncle Sam for the privilege of living in our own country. And it is the day of the great Tea Party Protest.

At the original Boston Tea Party, Sam Adams led a group of men aboard a British ship. In protest over a recently imposed British tax on tea, Adams and his cohorts seized the ship’s cargo of tea and threw it into the Boston harbor. The crux of the protest wasn’t to throw tea in the harbor. The point was to prevent the tea from being unloaded, to render it worthless, and to deprive the Crown of the despised tax. Their protest subjected Adams and his friends to the possibility of criminal prosecution.

Today, angry citizens are gathering at sites across the nation to once again protest the imposition of ever-increasing taxes. However, unlike the historic tea party protest, today’s protest consists of driving to the grocery store, purchasing tea, taking it to the designated gathering point, and throwing it in the harbor, bay, river, creek, swimming pool.

My, how far we have come.

Throwing my own tea into the bay reduces the brave act of Adams to mere symbolism. It deprives no one but myself of anything (the tea I purchased with my own money). Yet, somehow this symbolic act is supposed to send a message. It sends a message, but not the one the protesters intend.

The message of today’s Tea Party Protest isn’t one of angry defiance. Instead, today’s message says, “We am not willing to take any step that threatens our own comfort.” We have nothing but gestures and hollow words. We are all about rhetoric and not about substance. What about throwing our tax returns in the bay? What about a massive refusal to file a return? What about filing but not paying? That would cost us something, but it would send our elected officials a message they would understand. We don’t need symbolism, we need substance.

Economy Set To Rebound

Since October 2008, news outlets have inundated the country with reports detailing how poorly our economy is performing, forecasting dismal economic results in coming quarters, and calling for desperate measures to address our dire circumstances. The federal government has responded, pumping trillions of borrowed dollars into the economy. Yet, reports continue to focus on bad news.

Fear not, genuine help is on the way.

Election Day, 2010 is less than 19 months away. Already, political strategists and fundraisers are hard at work planning mid-term election campaigns. The entire House of Representatives will be up for re-election. A third of the Senate, too. And therein we shall find the relief we desperately need.

No, we won’t throw our elected officials out of office, though that might be an interesting remedy. Instead, the economic stimulus we need most will come in the form of a change in the story.

For the past 8 months, politicians have used bad news to bolster their claims for more spending and to defend the accretion of greater power to the federal government. Under the cover of pending financial doom, politicians have borrowed more, spent more, and claimed more power than at any other time in our nation’s history. That strategy has a short life. Its effectiveness lasts only as long as the momentum from the previous election. As the new election cycle gears up, the story will change.

With mid-term elections approaching, candidates for re-election will begin to tout the effectiveness of their efforts. The White House will lead a chorus of praise for the recent stimulus initiatives. Every shred of positive news, every hint of profitability, every glimmer of good news will be highlighted, polished and made to glow with the fires of hope and prosperity. Sectors of the economy that have remained sound but ignored will be trotted out as evidence of the effectiveness of government stimulative efforts and a harbinger of coming economic prosperity. All of which will be attributed to the work and wisdom of our elected officials. When you hear the rhetorical shift, don't despair. That new and positive message will be our salvation.

America’s economy is a confidence game. Trust is the key. We have no fixed standard for determining economic value. No fixed benchmarks for determining the value of our currency. The true wealth of our economy rests not on gold or silver but on our mutual trust for each other.

You give paper currency to the pizza store in exchange for something to eat. The paper isn’t worth the cost of one pepperoni slice, yet the store takes it in exchange for enough food to feed a family of four. The store takes that piece of paper only because the owner knows the pizza dough supplier will accept that same piece of paper as payment for the store’s supply account. Over the past twelve months our confidence in each other has taken a big hit. A constant mantra of bad news has settled doubt and gloom on us like a heavy, thick cloud. But take heart. The fog is about to lift.

As the politicians switch from a message of fear and failure to one of better-days-ahead, newscasters will follow suit. With a prosperity chant ringing in our ears, the fog of despair will lift. Our confidence will return. Not confidence in the politicians, but confidence in each other. And the economy will rebound.

One Person Can Make A Difference

In 1913, Booker T. Washington was president of Tuskegee Institute. Though an African-American, and a former slave, Washington was well-educated. At the time, most blacks in Alabama were not so fortunate. Schools in Alabama and across the South offered little or no opportunities for African-Americans.

To address that situation, Washington asked Julius Rosenwald to invest in a modest effort to construct simple, one-room school houses in predominantly black communities. Rosenwald was intrigued by the idea and in 1913 began funding the construction of one and two-room school houses across the state. By the time he was finished, he had expanded the program to 15 states and constructed more than 5300 schools.

The buildings made possible by Rosenwald’s generosity became houses of learning and hope to generations of young minds. Hundreds of thousands of students found in those simple buildings a doorway to a future that only a few years earlier seemed impossible.

Washington was just one man who saw a seemingly insurmountable problem and decided to do something about it. When Rosenwald saw the problem, he decided to help. The next time you see a need in your community and think the situation is hopeless, remember Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington and remind yourself that one person with an idea really can make a difference.

Can We Really Borrow Our Way Out of Debt

Current analysis of economic conditions in the United States centers on the need for businesses to obtain financing. Tight credit is supposedly the root of our current economic recession. America, so we are told, runs on credit. At the same time, we are told that consumer debt is a serious threat to our economic health and should be avoided. Credit card debt, so we hear, is a huge problem for most American households.

Can anyone see the conflict in this message?

It’s okay for General Motors or Chrysler or AIG or any other company to amass huge amounts of debt. After all, debt – dressed up as financing – is essential to the life of American business. It’s okay for a business to incur debt, but not okay for an individual? It’s okay for the federal government to borrow billions from China, yet not okay for the consumer to borrow thousands from MasterCard?

If American consumers can’t borrow their way out of debt, chances are, the federal government can’t either.

China's Monetary Role Portends Global Shift

In recent weeks, China has sent not-so-subtle messages to the U. S. and to the world. First they warned the United States against devaluing the dollar, a move that would devalue the hundreds of billions of dollars in U. S. debt currently held by China. Then, they suggested the world should adopt a reserve currency not based on the economy of any single country – calling for a shift away from the world’s dependence on the dollar as that reserve. China’s rumblings about the dollar might be seen as an attempt to stake out their role as a critical economic player prior to the G20 meetings. And they might have been an attempt to test the mettle of the United States’ new and young president. Whatever the immediate aim, the suggestion of a larger and more permanent role in world financial affairs goes far beyond China’s concerns over the current economic crisis.

For the past fifty years, China has been growing toward a market-oriented economy. Using low wages to its advantage, China has transformed itself into the world’s manufacturing center. From its huge export trade, China has amassed foreign exchange reserves in excess of $1.5 trillion. At the same time, it has carefully developed its own domestic economy, raising growth of domestic demand to 4-6% per year. As a result, China and the United States are reversing their historic fiscal and monetary roles. At the close of World War II, the U.S. loaned money to other nations to enable them to purchase American goods. Today, China loans money to the U.S. to enable the U.S. to purchase Chinese goods.

As this century unfolds, the symbiotic relationship between China and the United States will profoundly influence U.S. foreign policy. With loyalties re-forming along commercial lines, the United States will come to view its relationship to all other countries through a China/trade-and-commerce prism. As the U.S. orientation turns increasingly toward Asia, a power and influence vacuum will develop in other parts of the world. The U.S. will become increasingly reticent to participate in solving Middle Eastern and European problems. Countries in other regions will move to fill the gap left by the U.S. absence, realigning along trade and commercial interests.

What you hear now in China’s warnings about U. S. fiscal policy and its call for an independent international reserve currency are but the first rumblings of a coming global realignment of nations.

Time To Regulate Credit Card Interest Rates

The Obama Administration has used every means available to impose tighter and tighter regulations on companies receiving Stimulus Funding. In the financial industry, they have sought to limit executive pay and eliminate bonuses. In the automobile industry they have used federal assistance as leverage to restructure General Motors, even ousting officials elected by General Motors’ stockholders. Most recently, some in the administration have suggested the government should regulate salaries of all executives in all industries. But one thing they haven’t sought to regulate is credit card and consumer loan interest rates.

Over the past twenty years, the banking industry has lobbied for increasingly favorable rules controlling the interest rates they are allowed to charge for credit card debt. As a result, in some states interest rates are unlimited. In addition, banks and credit card issuers are permitted to tack on fees and late charges and they are permitted to increase interest rates for customers who, though current at the time, fail to meet certain criteria not directly tied to their account.

Not satisfied with that, in 2005 after years of intense lobbying, banking officials convinced Congress to tighten bankruptcy laws to prohibit consumers from liquidating credit card debt. Now that many in the financial industry have run the banking sector into the ground, imperiling the U. S. and the world, these same companies turn to Congress for assistance.

In the past 12 months, the federal government, through one agency or another, has pumped trillions of dollars into the banking industry. Banks have received generous injections of capital, either through the sale of preferred stock or loans from the Federal Reserve, at all but an interest-free rate. Every dime of that money is taxpayer money. If banks get all of this free of charge, why are consumers forced to pay usuriously high interest rates?

Republicans Need Pro-Life Consistency

Since the emergence of politically active Evangelicals in the late 1970s, the Republican Party has presented itself as the pro-life/anti-abortion political party. For the past thirty years, a pro-life stance has been essential for Republican candidates. So much so that Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, both of whom previously held pro-choice positions, were forced to morph themselves into pro-life candidates as they entered the 2008 Republican presidential primaries. The Republican Party, however, is not truly pro-life.

Pro-life advocates argue that life begins at conception and that abortion brings that life to an unnatural end. They argue that the inherent and intrinsic value of human life requires state protection for those who cannot speak for themselves. The fact that the value of human life is “inherent” means the value of life does not arise from the age, wealth, status or character of the human – not even the character of one accused of a capital crime.

Most Republican candidates and elected officials support imposition of the death penalty for heinous crimes such as murder, rape, and arson. Thirty-five states agree with them, arguing that defendants convicted of those charges have forfeited the right to live or that the punishment acts as a deterrent to future crime. Many Republican candidates who voice support for an end to abortion adamantly support the death penalty. And therein lies the contradiction that robs the pro-life argument of power. If life is inherently valuable, then the right to live is one of those inalienable rights we hold dear and, being inalienable, it is a right which no one can surrender – willingly or unwillingly.

In truth, most Republican politicians are not interested in ending abortion. They merely want to campaign on the issue, using it to raise money and motivate their voter base. If they were interested in ending abortion they would actually use their elected positions to do something about it. Republicans have held a majority in Congress for most of the last 30 years, yet unfettered access to abortion on demand remains the law of the land. Conservatives hold a majority on the U. S. Supreme Court, too. Yet all of the justices support the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.

A consistent, authentic pro-life position would argue not only for the life of the unborn but for the life of the elderly, the infirmed, and those accused of crimes for which they face the death penalty. That the accused are currently left out of the right-to-life equation belies the political nature of the Republican Party’s pro-life position. It’s not about life, it’s about getting candidates elected to office.

Census 2010 - Republicans a Permanent Minority

While potential Republican candidates jockey for media exposure and position themselves for the 2012 election cycle, the real battle for the future of the Republican Party is being waged without them. That battle isn’t in Iowa or New Hampshire. And it’s not in the studios of cable news networks. The battle for the future of the Republican Party is taking shape in the Department of Commerce and in the halls of Congress. No, the battle is not over the Stimulus Bill or the Bailout Bill. The real battle is over the Federal Census.

By the terms of our Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states based on the Federal Census. Districts for those House seats are periodically redrawn by state legislatures using Census data to ensure equal representation. All of that will be determined in the second half of the Obama Administration's current term using 2010 Census data. But more is at stake than mere House seats.

Over the past thirty years, political strategists have become adept at using election law to position their candidates in an advantageous posture. One of their favorite techniques for presidential campaigns involves the timing of state party primaries. Candidates with real political muscle can get primary dates moved to their advantage. Bill Clinton did it in 1992. Hillary tried it. Others have as well. To adjust those election dates, the candidate’s party must have control of the given state’s legislature. The coming reapportionment and redistricting will help make that possible. But I think a more critical strategy may be in play.

The Supreme Court has ruled that only a nose-count method will pass Constitutional review for the Federal Census. Statistical modeling is not allowed for counts used to apportion House seats. But the Census Bureau still uses statistical modeling to check the accuracy of their nose count. Accuracy of that count is determined by comparing the modeling results to the actual count to check for an under-count or over-count. Based on that information, the Census Bureau can send Census Takers back to re-canvass areas thought to have produced an erroneous nose-count. I say all of that to suggest there’s room for error. The counting method isn’t air tight. It has slack.

In the slack between total accuracy and approximation, the Party in power has the latitude to adjust not only district lines but perhaps even the ability to adjust the apportionment numbers for House seats. It all depends on the manner in which the counting is done.

Counting that produces an undercount in rural Republican states, for instance, in Louisiana, Alabama or Mississippi – or in New York and Ohio where the Democrat margin is not in jeopardy – might actually produce an over-count in other states. Say, for instance, North Carolina, Florida, or Nevada. Redistricting for those new seats might mean that districts could be realigned to give the Democrats a majority of all the districts in each of those states.

Those three states – North Carolina, Florida, and Nevada – voted Republican in 2004 but switched to Democrat in 2008. By reapportioning seats to those states and realigning districts there, the Democrats could solidify their hold on those states. So much so that they would remain in Democrat hands for the foreseeable future, not only for district elections but for national elections as well.

That kind of power shift could put the Republican Party in the minority, permanently.

Voter Registration No Longer Effective Campaign Tool

In preparation for the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, Republican strategists pursued voter registration with a vengeance. Much to the dismay of the Democrat Party, registration efforts proved overwhelmingly successful for the Republicans. With increased voter counts in strategic locations, they were able to shift vote totals in key states, handing the presidency to George W. Bush in both of those elections. Now, that tactic may have run its course.

During the 2008 election cycle, an interesting phenomenon occurred here in Alabama. In several municipal elections, and later in several counties during the presidential election, more votes were cast than the Federal Census predicted for the total number of voters. Being a native Alabamian, my first thought was, “They voted the graveyard.” Alabama, like many southern states, has a reputation for election-night shenanigans. But as I pushed the thought a little further, I came to a different conclusion.

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing through the 1980s, Democrats pursued voter registration as a way of increasing their voter base. The two Clinton campaigns emphasized it as well. Republicans took that effort to new heights with the George Bush campaigns. Then, with Barack Obama’s candidacy, Democrats went even further, hiring, encouraging, and facilitating the use of outside agencies and organizations in a massive effort to identify and register as many new voters as possible. Because of this prolonged emphasis from both parties, I think voter registration has invaded the margin of error for the Federal Census. Voter registration has reached so deep that the total number of registered voters in many local wards and precincts is a more accurate reflection of the local population count than the Federal Census.

That means, for many areas in the country, voter registration has reached its maximum potential for influencing the outcome of an election. In the future, both parties will be forced to develop new tactics and strategies for shifting electoral advantages.

Will AIG Debacle Result in Criminal Prosecutions?

Tell me the difference between the Madoff scheme and AIG. I don't think there is one.

According to the allegations, Madoff took money from investors in exchange for an obligation to invest that money and pay them a return. He met that obligation, part of the time, by using money from new investors to pay his obligations to older clients. This process, apparently, was repeated many times over until the plunging stock market of 2008-2009 drove up demands for liquidity beyond what he could meet and brought the scheme to an end.

AIG, according to reports, sold credit default swaps guaranteeing the liquidity of mortgages that had been bundled and sold as securities to investment funds, banks, and other financial institutions. Apparently this worked in much the same way as insuring a municipal bond offering increases the marketability of an issue. If news reports are true, AIG sold far more in credit default obligations than the company held in assets available to cover the total risk. This practice created income for AIG but amounted to a gamble, betting the company against the income "float" that the risk would never imperil the life of the corporation. This position posed no problem until the collapsing real estate market caught up with the scheme. As mortgage default rates rose, AIG's obligations on the default guarantees rose as well, pushing the company to the brink of disaster.

Just as Madoff's alleged practices threatened his investors equity, so also AIG's practices impinged upon the financial condition of both their investors and those who purchased the mortgage-backed securities for which AIG guaranteed against default losses. Madoff's scheme fell apart when falling asset values brought greater demand for liquidation from clients. AIG's scheme fell apart when rising defaults drove up claims for redemption on the default guarantees. Both were extended on obligations far beyond their ability to pay. Both were meeting former obligations with later arriving capital - Madoff before the situation was discovered, AIG after.

Madoff is going to jail for what he did. If his conduct deserves punishment, why isn't he sharing a cell with someone from AIG?

Nothing makes an impact like a good story. So, when Alabama writer Joe Hilley wanted to focus attention on the international sex trade, he turned to fiction.

"Fiction does more than entertain. It places information within a context. Not just any context, but one developed by the reader's own imagination. The reader actually becomes part of the story." Having the reader participate in the story was important for Hilley.

"Each year, thousands of women around the world are kidnapped and forced to work in the sex industry. Many of them end up right here in the United States where they are sold and traded like slaves. This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens in someone's neighborhood. As long as it’s just an ‘issue,’ then it’s just words on a page. To make a difference you have to own it. You have to know, ‘this could happen right here.’ That’s what a story does. It helps you experience an issue in a personal context."

Beaten and drugged into submission, women primarily from Asia and Eastern Europe are sold and traded from country to country. According to conservative estimates, 15,000 of those women are smuggled into the United States each year where they are forced to engage in prostitution and pornography.

Think it can't happen where you live? Read Electric Beach and think again.

Set along the Gulf Coast and ripped from the latest headlines, Electric Beach, the new legal thriller from attorney-turned-author Joe Hilley, takes you beneath the congenial veneer of everyday life to a world of prostitution, pornography, and sexual slavery - and it's happening in places you'd never expect.

Electric Beach was released in May (2006). You can read a sample chapter now at www.joehilley.com

See Joe's videos at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=JoeHilley