The Obama Administration - An Opportunity Squandered

Recent events surrounding the civil war in Syria have followed a strange path, but one that was readily predictable from President Obama's disappointing tenure in office.

Since taking office, President Obama has consistently picked big fights only to back down at the last moment and avoid confrontation through compromise cast as significant victory. He pushed hard for healthcare reform, then caved to the demands of insurance and pharmaceutical companies. He took hardline stances on budget and debt issues, then compromised at the last minute surrendering large budget cuts to important programs. The most recent of those compromises gave us the so-called budget sequester.

In typical fashion, this latest trouble with Syria was occasioned by his "red line" stance on chemical weapons. He announced that any use of those weapons by the Syrian government would be a game changer, then for three days he watched as the Syrian army prepared to gas it's fellow countrymen a second time. When he finally did respond - ten days after the latest incident - he announced military action, then sought an international coalition, then Congressional approval, meeting with defeat on all fronts. Every other president since World War II would have acted first, then commented later. We should have known when he started talking about a military response that none would be forthcoming.

President Obama loves debate. He relishes the exchange of ideas and he likes to talk. But while he was talking and posturing, the moment for action evaporated and any tactical advantage that could have been gained by a military strike slipped through his fingers. Perhaps that's what he wanted - to talk, to posture, to pontificate but take no real action. After all, talking but doing nothing of substance has been the hallmark of his administration. This time, however, he talked himself into a corner.

That the Russians and Syrians had to come to his rescue with a compromise is telling of how poorly the current situation was handled and yet one more indication of how much he has squandered the opportunity of his two-term presidency.

The Looming Federal Budget Crisis - Again

The federal budget process is a complicated affair but usually begins with a proposal sent to Congress by the president. Lately, however, that process has been anything but usual. As September approaches we once again face the twin issues of authorizing federal spending and raising the debt limit to pay for it.

Contrary to popular opinion, President Obama has proposed a budget, albeit sometimes late, for each year he has been in office. All of those proposals, however, have been rejected by Congress. Having refused his suggestions, the House, for most years, has then drafted its own version of the budget. Those House-originated budgets have been rejected in the Senate.

To keep the federal government functioning, Congress, with House approval, has regularly passed legislation known as a Continuing Resolution which says, in effect, “we approve budget authorization for this year at last year’s levels.” However, a continuing resolution grants only budget approval. It's not a funding mechanism. Because those resolutions approve budget amounts at current levels, which exceed current federal revenue, they also continue the budget deficit, requiring an issuance of federal debt to cover the shortfall.

Lately, this process has produced a strange result, particularly in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Conservative House members regularly approve continuing budget resolutions – supposedly to keep the government open – but balk at raising the debt to cover the resulting deficit created by those resolutions. This practice of saying yes on the one hand and no on the other makes for a confusing situation, one that adds a measure of uncertainty to our economy and regularly roils world credit markets. It's a dangerous situation, and one created solely by Congressional action, but I think I’ve figured out why this happens.

Members of the House of Representatives stand for re-election every two years. Most Republican seats in the House are safe from Democratic challenge. However, any budget plan that would stand a chance of gaining Senate approval would increase the debt. Voting in favor of a budget that increases the public debt would make a Republican Congressman, even from a safe district, vulnerable to attack from the right. Supporting a continuing resolution, though also increasing the debt, is a stop-gap, short-term measure that puts House members in a much more defensible position - that is, saving the government and fighting the good fight. Defunding or re-purposing programs – the real budget solution - poses a much greater risk. (Ask someone over the age of 50 about means-testing Social Security retirement benefits and you’ll see what happens when you touch a constituent's favorite program).

So, when a conservative member of Congress votes in favor of a continuing resolution, he's not thinking about sound public policy. He’s thinking instead about the next election and about protecting himself from voter backlash over cutting a constituent's favorite government program.

When he votes against an increase in the federal debt limit - an increase occasioned by the continuing resolution he just approved - he’s not taking a stance for smaller government. He's actually only protecting himself from the accusation of a challenger (a fellow conservative) who could say “you aren't conservative enough." That is, his stance on either topic - budget authorization or debt limit increase - isn’t really a substantive position. It’s actually a campaign event.

Statesmanship – taking a course of action with the good of the people in mind – is no longer a motivating factor for House members (if it ever was). Getting elected and staying in office is the sole goal. That they gamble with their personal reputations for self-aggrandizement is one thing. But risking the national credit rating for the sake of gaining re-election shows just how small-minded politics has become.

Politics

Politics in the US is no longer guided by politicians seeking an honest dialogue of ideas as a means of enlightening us all to the truth - if it ever was - rather, it has become a profession, in and of itself, dominated by political practitioners who use half-truths and lies to incite in us fear and hatred as a means of imposing their opinion on us - in other words, we are now at the mercy of politicians who rule by violence under the guise of defending doctrinal purity.

Baseball

Baseball is an interesting sport. A player who hits the ball at the rate of 3 out of every 10 times at bat will earn a multi-million dollar salary and, upon retirement, be voted into the hall of fame on the first ballot. A manager whose team wins at the rate of 3 out of 10 games will get fired.

Regarding The Arab-Israeli Conflict

I'm reading about the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 - the war for Israel's independence - and it leaves me with a question that gets to the present conflict.

In 1948 the UN voted to partition Palestine into an Arab state and an Israeli state, with Jerusalem as an international city. The Arabs were not satisfied and chose to fight rather than accept the deal. The Arabs lost the war and in the course of that they lost control of much of the land they'd been granted by the UN partition. So here's the question - if the fighting had gone the other way - with an Arab victory - would the Arabs have given back enough land for an Israeli state?

Fried Bacon - Maybe It's Not So Bad After All

Not too long ago I read an article about longevity that indicated some of the longest lived people reside in Asia, particularly in Japan and China. In studying them, researchers found several noticeable traits in their lifestyle that differ from the typical Western lifestyle. One of those was the practice of preparing meat by boiling it, which was thought to remove much of the fat. 

 

Here in Texas, we love fried bacon, especially on Sunday morning. Usually, the task of preparing it falls to me. Bacon, being pork, contains more fat than you’d like to know about. As a result, a pound of bacon fried in a skillet on the stove produces a large quantity of grease. While frying a pound this morning I thought of the long-lived people in Asia and about how they reduce the fat from their diet by boiling it. And it occurred to me that frying meat in its own grease accomplishes the same thing. So doesn’t it follow that by frying bacon, and thereby extracting the fat, I have turned greasy pork bacon into a healthy component of a low-fat diet?

Minutemen, Cowboys, and American Gun Policy

The current debate about “gun control” in America isn’t really about controlling guns. On the surface, we use the language of control, sure, but the discussion is finally moving beyond merely limiting the sale of certain rounds of ammunition or certain types of weapons and moving on to wrestle with a definition for gun ownership in 21^st Century – post revolutionary – America. Like every other challenge we face, finding that definition requires us to let go of the past and face the future – a future that looks very uncertain and very scary. And that’s the problem. America is afraid.

In the 1700s, the United States had no standing army. Armies were raised on an “as needed” basis, mostly from volunteers who were expected to supply their own weapons. True citizen soldiers, men who responded for military service fought until the issues were settled, then returned home to plow or feed the chickens or tend their store. They served our forebears well.

Before the American Civil War, an American farmer with a good hunting rifle was as well-equipped as any regular troop from any army in the world. Together they formed that “well-armed militia” referenced in the Second Amendment and they were the nation’s only source of security against unrest from within and armed attack from without. That’s why the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, to protect the right of citizens to “keep and bear arms” – because the nation depended on well-armed individual citizens for its defense. They were the army.

Today, that is no longer the case. Now we have a standing, well-trained, full-time army. Defense of the nation no longer rests on a “well-armed” citizen militia. But the myth of the American Minuteman lives on and the notion of unlimited individual gun ownership has morphed into a principle seen by many as the “bedrock of all liberties,” the foundation upon which all freedom stands – suggesting that so long as we own our own weapons we will one day have the means of leading an armed defense against terrorists from abroad, or an armed revolt against the tyranny of politicians in Washington, DC. One look inside a Stryker vehicle or an M1 tank would quickly disabuse you of that notion. The citizen soldier is no longer our primary means of defense. It’s time for our national firearms policy to leave the past and catch up with the age in which we live – a highly mobile, exceedingly urban, media-influenced, violence-prone age.

Think about this for perspective – there was a day when those who worked on cattle ranches needed to perfect the skill of breaking and training horses. Horses were their means of transportation and a vital tool for the cowboy trade. Over time, certain cowboys developed a knack for riding rank unbroken stallions. Today, ranching has changed and horses aren’t used much. Traditional cowboys are all but gone from the West. Horsemanship has become a hobby. But the art of riding unbroken stallions lives on in rodeos held all across the country. What once was a vital work skill has now become sport.

The same thing happened with hunting. Killing wild game was once essential for survival. In centuries past, it was the settler’s primary, and many times only, source of animal protein. Now, except in remote areas like Alaska and northern Canada, hunting is no long essential for survival. Yet the practice lives on as a sport. And so it is with the citizen soldier – long since eliminated as a factor in national defense policy, but lingering now in the American gun owner.

This argument we’re having about gun ownership isn’t about the need for a “well-armed militia,” or the notion that our freedom rests on access to the means of armed rebellion. And it’s not about taking away all firearms – no one wants to take away hunting rifles and shotguns, and not many want to limit the use of handguns. The argument is about something far scarier than that. It’s about coping with life in a rapidly changing world and grappling with a future – a very uncertain future – that’s rushing toward us at an incredible speed. We no longer live in the Minuteman age. We live in the age of Now and it’s time we addressed the real problems we face rather than struggling to hold on to the past.

The Real Cliff We Face

This so-called “fiscal cliff” we face resulted from an agreement reached last year between Democrats and Republicans in Congress to increase the debt limit high enough to fund the government past the 2012 election. Now that the election is over, the result of that agreement - about $670 billion in budget “adjustments” - is upon us. Those “adjustments” will come, unless Congress acts sooner, in the form of $135 billion in across-the board cuts to discretionary spending, and $535 billion in TAX INCREASES.

What we’re actually debating here is how to pay the tab for things we’ve done since 1980 (before then, the budget was more or less balanced) but for which we lacked sufficient revenue to pay as we went - those things include, a military incursion in Grenada, deployment to Lebanon, the S & L collapse, military intervention in Panama, the First Gulf War, Kosovo, invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq, two tax rebates (stimulus), homeowner mortgage rescue plan, financial system rescue funding during the 2007-2009 meltdown, automotive bailout, a second round of banking and mortgage bailout, and a general stimulus spending package - all of it facilitated with borrowed money.

Congress is on the verge of dealing with the situation the way Congress always does - at someone else’s expense. They’ll wring their hands and fret over the terrible mess we’re in, but in the end, they’ll pass a bill that does most of what will already occur - raise tax rates and cut domestic spending, which translated means paying for it with middle class money and the poor’s misery. Congress created this problem - both the underlying fiscal issues and the looming automatic changes. All this talk about “fiscal cliff” and “second recession” is nothing more than an advertising campaign to cover the real cliff we face, which is Congress’ pitiful lack of leadership.

Evil Begins With A Premise You Accept

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

The words of Martin Niemoller, a German pastor and theologian who endured the Holocaust in a concentration camp, reflecting on how the Nazis, with the help of the church and typical German citizens, implemented their policies and committed the atrocities of that era.

Evil is always incremental. It starts from an easily acceptable, but subtly deceptive, beginning and moves logically from one step to the next, until even the faithful find themselves embracing a goal that they would have easily rejected earlier. That's how the Nazis did it. They started with something that almost all Germans agreed with - the economy was bad - and then they took them to an end no one could have imagined - the systematic murder of over 6 million foreign immigrants, blacks, gays, disabled, and infirmed.

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.