Thinking Like a Christian: An Introduction

This Sunday, November 14, I will be beginning a series of lessons from the book Thinking Like a Christian by David Noebel. Each week I hope to add to this blog a summary of the lesson for those who are unable to attend Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Taylors, South Carolina, to hear it in person. The topic is of primary importance to Christians. The series will recess in January and, God-willing, be resumed later in 2012.

The introductory lesson discusses the importance of the topic. The textbook defines "worldview" as any ideology, philosophy, theology, movement, or religion that provides an overarching approach to understanding God, the world, and man's relationship to God and the world (p. 6). Furthermore, every worldview has an answer to the three most basic questions:

Where did we come from?

What's wrong with the world?
What is the solution to man's basic problems?

The worldview promoted by the book (and by me, of course) is biblical Christianity: The worldview that comes directly from the Word of God. It answers all three questions clearly, and does so in a way that offers hope and eternal security to every man and woman.

Everyone has a worldview. Most can't explain their own worldview clearly or concisely, but everyone has one. Many Christians today are not taught, and frequently do not even consider, the importance of thinking biblically...which is probably why most Christians are not functioning as salt and light, and most are having little influence on the world around them—some, sad to say, have little influence even among their own families and friends. Most Christians today are more impacted by the world's worldviews than by the Bible's. If we are to reach the world for Christ, this must change.

The textbook divides a biblical worldview into ten categories, around which the text and the lessons are organized:

Theology
Philosophy
Biology
Psychology
Ethics
Sociology
Law
Politics
Economics
History

We will forego any discussion of whether a more suitable organization exists, except to say that many of the topics do overlap in our world, and all are important for the Christian to understand and discern. I think this organization works well.

Each of these ten categories is addressed in the Bible. Each has ramifications in our own lives, and demands that we understand how to biblically interact with it. Each impacts the others, and each demands some basic assumptions about the nature of reality—the reality of the creation in which God has placed us. We will see in subsequent lessons that each of them is dealt with even in the earliest chapters of Genesis and throughout the Bible; furthermore, Christ is manifested in His Word as having significance in each area.

Once upon a time, America, for the most part, had a biblical worldview. That is clearly not the case today. Every topic in the list above, in our country today, is dominated or under attack from perspectives which eminate from non-biblical worldviews. We Christians lament this. But we shouldn't just whine and lament: We need to educate ourselves, our fellow Christians, and the world about what the Bible says on these things! Sure, the world needs Christ, and we need to share the Gospel with everyone, as Scripture clearly teaches. But we also need to be making clear what the Bible says about the other aspects of life; the Holy Spirit can use this kind of teaching, too, to impress upon the hearts of the unsaved the truth of His Word and the need of His salvation. Think of it as teaching the "all the counsel of God" (Acts 20:27).

1 Peter 3:15 says that we must "sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." Understanding and having a Christian worldview will help you to do that. Remember, too: There is no difference between the sacred and the secular in the Christian's life; all of life is sacred to the Christian.

The other worldviews do not provide satisfaction. Colossians 2:4-8 reminds each of us that the "wisdom of this world" will "spoil" you—literally, it will carry you away captive! Only in Christ and His Word can mankind find joy and happiness, as well as a rational, adequate, and consistent explanation of reality. It doesn't require a Ph.D., nor immense intelligence. Even a child can understand the teachings of the Bible.

Learn the biblical worldview. Live it. Share it with others.

Remember These Votes!

The debt bill that our president signed today is not now, nor will be, good for our economy. In about 15 months, most of the people who voted Yea or Nay on this bill will be up for election.

You should know how they voted.

And as a service to all the blog readers, you can click below to find out how your representatives and senators voted. And of course, the president signed it.

How the House of Representatives voted

How the Senate voted

The NFL Players Association

The NFL owners and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) are locked in mediation regarding a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The current one is set to expire on Friday night. Failure to reach an agreement will precipitate a lockout, litigation, or a combination of the two--and put the 2011 NFL season in doubt.

I have no problem with the owners and the players (and even their union) enjoying the capitalistic enterprise of negotiating salaries--very large salaries, in many cases. Certainly, it makes sense that free-market principles are brought to bear, and that greater talent and success generate greater incomes.

But this evening, I read an article on espn.com that, among other things, outlined many of the demands that the NFLPA is making of the owners. Most of the ones mentioned in the article are issues of "transparency;" basically, the NFLPA wants to know every little nitty-gritty detail of the incomes, expenses, and profits of the league and its 32 franchises.

And here, I believe, they have crossed a line. The owners of the NFL franchises are the ones that have taken the financial risks: They build (or co-opt state and local governments) stadia and other facilities; they make multi-million dollar marketing decisions; they choose, sign, and pay players. Without their financial investments, the NFL does not exist. The NFL and its 32 teams have no obligation whatsoever to disclose their sensitive financial information to anyone to whom they do not wish to do so. (Well, except maybe the IRS.)

To hear the head of NFLPA speak, however, you would think it is absolutely necessary for the union to have access to all such information...you know, so they can make "more informed" decisions in the bargaining process.

I don't think so. If the NFLPA really thinks it can do so much better, why doesn't it take all of its players and start another football league? Since football is still likely to be popular, and since the player talent level would remain about the same, surely they, too, could make mountains of money?

But they won't. They would prefer to squeeze the golden goose. Let's just hope they do not suffocate it.

It's Time For Me To Leave Michigan, Part 2

As I wrote in my prior post, I am moving out of Michigan this month to take a position at Bob Jones University Press in Greenville, SC. While I believe this is the providential plan of God, and am therefore happy to go, there are some lessons here to be considered for the folks in Lansing.

1. The job environment, quite frankly, is poor. Those of us who want to live here—including people like me with multiple college degrees—are having a difficult time finding jobs that pay enough to support our families. Much of the blame for this belongs in Washington D.C., but the policies that flow out of Lansing have not helped much and have hurt plenty.

2. The job environment is poor because the business climate is poor—especially in comparison to other states. One thing I did some research on was starting my own business (a non-starter due to a lack of capital, especially after Fall, 2008); and even I, as a tax preparer, found much of the paperwork to be boggling.

3. With Granholm in office, there is simply no reason to be hopeful of improvement. Thankfully, she will be replaced with someone else in several months; but if that someone is another like-minded democrat, hope will again evaporate, and many others (like me) will head to greener pastures.

Perhaps I will add more thoughts on this later.

National Debt Clock...back in the day

The picture below, as you can see from the date, was taken just five months ago.

The National Debt reached $13,000,000,000,000 this week.

Who Was Obama's 2nd Biggest Donor in the Presidential Campaign?

The politically naive may be surprised, but when we realize all the favors the Obama administration has done for this company, it does make a lot of sense.

Some may say, "But his administration is threatening to fine them a lot of money!" Whatever. I think it was mostly hot air and PR for the financial "reform" Obama wants. The fine wouldn't hurt them all that much anyway.

Who is this donor? Click here to learn.

From irs.gov....

When you make money doing other people's tax returns and read information from the IRS, sometimes you encounter facts like these [data is the most recent available]:

Individual income tax returns reporting a tax liability in 2007 faced an average tax rate of 13.8 percent, the same as in 2006. Taxpayers with AGI of at least $410,096, the top 1 percent of taxpayers, accounted for 22.8 percent of AGI in 2007, an increase of 0.8 percentage points. These taxpayers accounted for 40.4 percent of total income tax reported in 2007, an increase from 39.9 percent in the previous year.

Points to note:

1. "reporting a tax liability" means that all those people who did not make enough money to owe the IRS are eliminated from the statistic. In other words, their "taxable income" was zero.

2. Does it bother you that 1% of the taxpayers are paying 40.4% of all the income taxes? On the other end, over 40% of "taxpayers" are paying no income taxes...and in many cases, claiming credits, such as the Earned Income Credit, that provide them with robust refunds anyway.

Obama's 2011 Proposed Budget: An Interactive Look

I'm not a big fan of the New York Times, but someone there did a fabulous job with this interactive display that shows the 2011 budget proposed by the President, along with a neat comparison with 2010. It also allows you to distinguish mandatory from non-mandatory spending (a distinction which would surprise nearly every American citizen—and not necessarily in a good way) in each year.

The total numbers of dollars is still overwhelmingly bloated, but this gives us a better "picture" of where the budget is and how large its parts are relative to one another.

I encourage everyone to take a few minutes to look and learn.

International Environmental Control? It's Being Discussed

I don't tend to believe most of the stories floating around about various groups (e.g., Jews, Swiss, bankers) on the verge of exerting imminent global control of governments, the world economy, etc. Most of them are of dubious credibility.

But then I read this lengthy foxnews.com article describing how a group loosely allied with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has produced a paper...

The ambitious paper, entitled "The UNEP That We Want," was the product of a select group of 20 top environmental bureaucrats and thinkers, including UNEP's current No. 2 official, Angela Cropper. The document was later delivered to UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

The paper contained this statement:

Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion "as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity"

It's been pretty obvious to the observant that the radical environmental movement is, indeed, strangely similar to a religion (or more properly, a cult) in that it has its own doctrine, preachers, and prophets. This cult's members, however, ignore the truth of Scripture about Who created our earth, Who sustains it, and how He decided to grant mankind stewardship over it. The article itself is longer than average, and worth the reading; here are a few excerpts from it (completely unedited):

The purpose of the paper, put together after an unpublicized day-long session in Switzerland by some of the world's top environmental bureaucrats: to argue for a new and unprecedented effort to move environmental concerns to "the center of political and economic decision-making" around the world — and perhaps not coincidentally, expand the influence and reach of UNEP at the tables of world power, as a rule-maker and potential supervisor of the New Environmental Order.


[The document argues for] —a new position in the international power game for UNEP, reaching far beyond the member governments that currently finance its core budget and make up its normal supervisors. "It will have to make itself relevant well beyond the world of those already concerned with the environment, including very prominently its own formal constituency," as the Swiss paper puts it.

—a major restructuring of international institutions to merge environmental issues with economics as the central priority. "We require an Environmental Bretton Woods for the 21st Century," Halle argues — a reference to the meeting that laid the foundations of Western international finance and economic regulation after World War II. "The linkages between environmental sustainability and the economy will emerge as a key focus for public policymaking and a determinant of future markets opportunities," according to the UNEP strategic plan.

—new environmental rules, regulations and standards, and the linking of existing environmental agreements, in a stronger global lattice-work of environmental law, with stronger authority to command national governments. The Swiss paper calls it a series of "ambitious yet incremental adjustments" to international environmental governance. Indeed, the document says, UNEP's "role is to 'tee up' the next generation of such rules."

The official four-year plan uses more restrained language in declaring that "civil society, including children and youth, and the private sector will be reached through tailor-made outreach products and campaigns....

Does this trouble you yet?

National Debt Reaches $12 TRILLION Dollars

Yes, today the national debt is believed to have reached $12,000,000,000,000.00. According to the twitter site @NationalDebt, it increased by a mere $40 billion dollars YESTERDAY.

This is an astonishing amount of money. Let's break it down into more manageable pieces.

For some time now I have had a "National Debt Clock" at the bottom of this blog. (Scroll down and enjoy those rapidly increasing numbers at your leisure.) Given the estimated U.S. population of 307,710,000, that averages out to about $39,100 for every man, woman, and child. My family of six? Our share of that is $234,600. Ouch.

If this debt stopped growing immediately and were paid off at a rate of $1,000,000 per day, without any interest, it would be paid off in the year 34,863 A.D. At $1,000,000,000 per day, it would still take 33 years.

Our current penny weighs 2.5 grams. How much would $12 trillion in pennies weigh? 30 million metric tons!

Another Picture of What Universal Healthcare Might Look Like

According to a story broken by Business Week earlier this week, a number of large, well-known companies, such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, have received quantities of the H1N1 vaccine to provide to their employees who belong to high-risk groups, as defined by the federal government.

It should be noted that, at this time, it appears that these companies participated in the acquisition process in a perfectly legal manner, and are bound to distribute the vaccine only to those with the greatest need. In other words, they have done nothing wrong.

Of course, this does nothing to quell the criticism and the rumor-mongering that these companies have somehow gamed the system to garner more benefits than they are due. When I first heard about this on the Today show yesterday morning, you would have thought the mob was involved.

This story is instructive, however, in one way: It gives us a glimpse into what the world of government-run healthcare might look like. There will be times when the demand for a healthcare supply or service will exceed the demand. Some will obtain the supply or service; others, for whatever reason, will not. Those who are "in the know" or have connections will be more likely to receive it; others will not. Furthermore, it is likely that some will not only be "in the know" but will be able to circumvent whatever bureaucratic-nightmare procurement process will be in place.

You may not be near the front of the line. You may not even be told where the line is. You may see others obtain healthcare while you or your loved ones do not. You may not be able to do anything about it.

Americans will respond to this predictably: Some will complain; others will establish a "black market" (as it will inevitably be called by some) to provide healthcare and related supplies outside of the government's bureaucratic system. Some will make use of this market.

And those of you my age and older will start to wonder how similar this is to the Soviet Union of the 1970's and 1980's.

Healthcare, Democrat-style. Just a peek into your future.

Another Bad Congressional Spending Idea

In a sweeping 98-0 vote, the U.S. Senate voted yesterday—with the U.S. House possibly voting today—to expand and extend the Homebuyers' Credit that gives first-time homebuyers up to $8000. The AP story was brought my way on comcast.net, and is consequently light on details, but here's the basic idea:

Buyers who have owned their current homes at least five years would be eligible for tax credits of up to $6,500. First-time homebuyers — or anyone who hasn't owned a home in the last three years — would still get up to $8,000. To qualify, buyers in both groups have to sign a purchase agreement by April 30, 2010, and close by June 30.

The current credit ends next month. I found it interesting that three senators were quoted in the article. Here's one of them:

"This is probably the last extension," said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., a former real estate executive who championed the credits.

Really?? Whatever makes him think that?

This bill is expected to cost the Treasury $10,800,000,000. Given the state of our deficit right now, this does not seem like a good idea, especially considering this quote:

Extending and expanding the tax credit for homebuyers is projected to cost the government about $10.8 billion in lost taxes. While the measure passed the Senate by a 98-0 vote, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., questioned its efficiency in stimulating home sales.

"For the vast majority of cases, the homebuyer tax credit amounted to a free gift since it did not affect their decision to purchase a home," Bond said. "And for the small minority of buyers whose decision was directly caused by the credit, this raises the question of whether we are subsidizing buyers who may not have been able to afford buying a home in the first place." [Emphasis mine]

Exactly!! We can probably conclude that much of that $10.8 billion is going to go to people who have no real entitlement to it, while the rest is going to encourage a lot of people to make a financial decision that helped get us and our economy to the place we are at now!

Note also that Sen. Bond voted for the bill...just like everyone else.

Another reason why we need change in Washington D.C.

Why Conservatives Should Appreciate the N.Y. Yankees

The New York Yankees won the World Series last evening, completing a 4-2 defeat of the Philadelphia Phillies. Those of us who have been longtime Yankees fans are quite happy about this, but there are others who, for various reasons, bitterly express the following wayward opinion:

Well, they just buy championships!

That's not exactly true. Anyone who watched the games realizes that the Yankees won because of superior pitching, hitting, and fielding (and despite lousy umpiring). The team they defeated has a fine collection of talent and should be commended for their successes this year and last. Money did not decide the outcome of any game.

Republicans, conservatives, and Christians should all be perfectly OK with this (unless you are a Phillies fan—then just be gratified that your team had the level of success it did). The Yankees demonstrate several features that these groups should admire:

• They are an example of capitalism at work. They invest in players, expecting a profitable return. This entails risk. They accept this risk willingly.
• They attempt to get stronger and improve their market share every year. What good company doesn't?
• They play by the rules. ["They" in this sentence refers to the organization. Yes, they have had individual players who have not always kept the rules. Neither I nor the team endorses that.]
• They pay their taxes, including the MLB "luxury tax," which is essentially a form of socialism for the league. I can relate to that—I pay my taxes, some of which are supporting socialist plans beyond my control.
• They bulldoze some of their profits back into the team, attempting to make it bigger and better.

There is nothing wrong with any of these things. Of course, others in this industry have a degree of envy for the Yankees' success both financially and on the field. If anything, this should encourage them to mimic the Yankees' ability to assemble a good team on the field while producing a profit for the ownership.

To those of you who are bitter baseball fans (yes, that includes most of you who root for the Twins, in particular): Please don't whine about "buying" championships. Those are decided on the field, not the business office. The Yankees are able to get it done.

What's Up With a 90% Pay Cut?

Today we learn from foxnews.com (and others):

The Treasury Department is expected to formally announce in the next few days a plan to slash annual salaries by about 90 percent from last year for the 25 highest-paid executives at the seven companies that received the most from the Wall Street bailout. Total compensation for the top executives at the firms would decline, on average, by about 50 percent.

The seven affected companies are: Bank of America, American International Group, Citigroup, General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial.

Smaller companies and those that have repaid the bailout money, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., are not affected.

On the one hand, it can be argued that since these companies have essentially sold (or leased, or mortgaged, or whatever term you prefer) their souls for government bailout money, and since "the borrower is servant to the lender," that the government is perfectly entitled to keep these companies' executives' pay at whatever level it sees fit.

On the other hand, it can be argued that government interference in the compensation of law-abiding company employees is a gross violation of civil and corporate rights, and sets a horrific precedent for future government interference.

So which side of the argument is correct? I would suggest that both sides are correct.

How is that so? This entire argument is based on a false premise: The idea that government should ever have "bailed out" the aforementioned companies in the first place. Whenever the government gets involved in an area that is beyond its constitutional boundaries or that interferes with the God-given rights of its citizens, it spawns a new set of issues...issues which generally have no simple means of resolution.

American citizens should be angered both by the arrogance of corporations to lavish wealth on executives who are taking their money while running these corporations into the ground, and also on the government, for interfering in the process. Their greatest anger should be directed toward the fact that we ever got here in the first place.

Hiding Money Offshore? Be Warned!

As a professional tax preparer for part of the year, I have signed up for the IRS e-mails that are put out several times a week. This one I received struck me as rather interesting.

Context of the e-mail: In its never-ending quest to see that all income taxes are, in fact, collected, the IRS will soon be "cracking down" with greater penalties for those who are caught hiding money in foreign ["offshore"] bank accounts.

The e-mail is copied below. It is also found on the IRS website here. Consider this a sort of public service announcement.

WASHINGTON ─ The Internal Revenue Service today announced a one-time extension of the deadline for special voluntary disclosures by taxpayers with unreported income from hidden offshore accounts. These taxpayers now have until Oct. 15, 2009.

Under special provisions issued in March, taxpayers with these hidden accounts originally had until Sept. 23, 2009 to come forward. Those taxpayers who do not voluntarily disclose their hidden accounts by the new deadline face much harsher civil penalties, where applicable, and possible criminal prosecution.

IRS officials decided to extend this deadline after receiving repeated requests from tax practitioners and attorneys around the country following an influx of taxpayer requests. By extending the deadline for a short period of time, the IRS is providing relief for those taxpayers who had intended to come forward prior to the deadline, but faced logistical and administrative challenges in meeting it. The extension will allow tax preparers and attorneys the necessary time to interview and advise their backlog of taxpayers with these hidden accounts, and prepare the necessary paperwork to qualify for the special penalty provisions.

The IRS also announced that there will be no further extensions.

Michigan is 41st in "Top States for Business"...Why?

In a survey reported by NBC on its Nightly News broadcast this evening, and found here at the cnbc.com website, Virginia and Texas finished as the top two states in the nation for business, based on an analysis of the following ten factors (Michigan's 50-state rank in parentheses):

Cost of Doing Business (31)
Workforce (39)
Quality of Life (40)
Economy (45)
Transportation (20)
Technology & Innovation (7)
Education (34)
Business Friendliness (39)
Access to Capital (10)
Cost of Living (23)

I decided to order these categories in this manner: From those which the government is most obligated to have a role in, to those which the government should least be involved in. Here's what I got* (Michigan rankings still in parentheses):

Economy (45)
Business Friendliness (39)
Cost of Doing Business (31)
Transportation (20)
Education (34)
Workforce (39)
Cost of Living (23)
Quality of Life (40)
Access to Capital (10)
Technology & Innovation (7)

*The ranking is my own subjective interpretation, and I won't be at all offended if you would choose to engage in a little reordering of your own. The data sources are not explicitly noted and consequently, I'm not certain precisely how these rankings were obtained or what precisely they measure...although they seem reasonable.

Do you notice a trend here? If the categories were simply numbered from 1 to 10 (using my order) and a linear correlation were completed, it would be -0.67, implying that the more government involvement, in general, the lower the rating. [Disclaimer: Rigorous statistical analysis would demand more work on my part. This is only an estimate from an estimate.]

Observations, beginning at the top of my list:

The government is inescapably tied to the economy by its policies related to taxation, spending, and legal regulation of economic activity. This is clearly tied to business friendliness and the cost of doing business. Michigan is doing poorly in these categories.

Government—especially at the state level—has responsibilities for transportation (roads, airports, other infrastructure) and for public education. In this survey, however, I suspect that "education" measures the attainments of the populace, which is a collective measure of choices people make. That is why transportation comes ahead of education in my list.

The workforce metric is probably tied to the education metric to some degree, as the overall measure of a workforce is in a large degree tied to its level of education. A large manufacturing sector generally doesn't rate well in this kind of metric.

Cost of living is tied to a variety of factors beyond government, including such things as geography, natural resources, and whether an area is rural or urban.

Quality of life, in my book, is founded primarily on things spiritual and familial—areas which are properly outside the scope of government. Yet, economic issues impact quality of life, so the government has a tangential effect on this. (And if we get Obamacare, it will be a lot more than tangential!)

Access to capital and Technology & Innovation are free-market qualities which, aside from policing illegalities, are usually outside the proper realm of government. Michigan was a top-ten state in both of these areas...and only in these areas.

Notice, by the way, which two categories Michigan finished best in. There is still hope...if we get active and vote!

How did Ohio do? Some interesting observations here.

Michigan Unemployment Rises Again! Ugh!

15.2% is the new ugly number. Almost makes you wish for the "good old days" when it was only 8.1%...which it was, twelve months ago. Was this the "hope and change" we bargained for?

As I mentioned in my last post regarding Michigan unemployment statistics, we are moving toward the highest unemployment rate Michigan has had since 1976 (when the current statistics, in their current form, were first tracked), when it was 16.9% in November 1982. The only other state to have unemployment over 15% since 1976 was West Virginia, whose unemployment peaked at 18.2% in March 1983.

Many believe we will surpass that rate before the end of 2009. Ugh.

Detailed data regarding Michigan employment and unemployment:
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LASST26000003

Here are a couple of very telling graphs from that site...first, the number of unemployed in Michigan:

And the unemployment rate, expressed in terms of percents:

Perhaps Governor Granholm was wrong...maybe it will only be three years until we're blown away!

And If That Last Post Doesn't Make You Mad Enough....!

The title of the foxnews.com article says it all:

Senate Bill Would Fine People More Than $1,000 for Refusing Health Care Coverage

Yes, that's right: The proposed legislation says that if you choose—for nearly any reason, it appears—not to purchase health care for yourself (and your family if you have one), you will be forced to pay a fine.

"Called "shared responsibility payments," the fines would be set at least half the cost of basic medical coverage, according to the legislation."

On top of that, the fines will be collected through the income tax system...people are going to really love April 15 if that enters their tax picture.

This is a new low for the Democrats in the Senate (and White House), and represents a huge step toward a socialist/communist economic system in our country. And, yes, it gets worse; here's the final paragraph from the article:

"At their heart, all the bills would require insurance companies to sell coverage to any applicant, without charging higher premiums for pre-existing medical conditions. The poor and some middle-class families would qualify for government subsidies to help with the cost of coverage. The government's costs would be covered by a combination of higher taxes and cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending."

The poor's health care will be paid by everyone else. Those of us who live clean lives and are blessed with good health will be underwriting the smokers, the obese, the sexually promiscuous—and I suspect the abortion seekers, too.

And then I'll really be mad.

Oh My, the Hypocrisy!

Do you remember not that very long ago, when congressmen and congresswomen berated the car company executives for flying private jets to Washington D.C. (so that those same congresspeople could berate them for other things)?

Do you remember that even more recently, large banking companies' executives were blasted by the congresspeople for their lavish lifestyles on the company dime?

Then this article might make your blood boil when you read about the outrageous and expensive trips taken by many of our members of Congress. Some facts and statistics from the article:

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

The article also states that expenses are up 70% since 2005, when it became illegal for lobbyists to fund such travel. Who's paying for all this travel?

The congressional trips are possible thanks in part to an unlimited fund created by a three-decade old law. Nearly two dozen government officials work full-time organizing the trips. Much of the costs are not made public, including the cost of flying on government jets. The Air Force maintains a fleet of 16 passenger planes for use by lawmakers.

Documents obtained by the Journal show that the cost of flying a small group of lawmakers to the Middle East is about $150,000. Larger trips on the Air Force's version of the Boeing 757 cost about $12,000 an hour. Two federal agencies pay for most of the travel -- the Defense Department and the State Department.

Yep, that would be us, the taxpayers. That's at least $13 million, plus the undisclosed flight costs. I didn't highlight those numbers above just because statistics amuse me, either.

Where are your Congresspeople going? I'm glad you asked. Here are some examples.

• "In mid-June, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D., Hawaii) led a group of a half-dozen senators and their spouses on a four-day trip to France for the biennial Paris Air Show. An itinerary for the event shows that lawmakers flew on the Air Force's version of the Boeing 737, which costs $5,700 an hour to operate. They stayed at the Intercontinental Paris Le Grand Hotel, which advertises rooms from $460 a night." They also met with some presumably important people and declined to comment for the WSJ article.
• "In February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of Democratic lawmakers to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan for a day. Before landing in Kabul, the eight lawmakers and their entourage of spouses and aides spent eight days in Italy, spending $57,697 on hotels and meals." Her spokesperson added that she also visited the pope while in Italy.

A number of the trips have been to Iraq and Afghanistan, which seems a bit more in line with their official duties, and where the hotels don't cost much (VIP's rarely stay in those countries overnight). But this one has to be the worst example of pork-filled travel in the article:

Last summer, Rep. Brian Baird (D., Wash.) took a four-day trip to the Galápagos Islands with his wife, four other lawmakers and their family members. The lawmakers spent $22,000 on meals and hotels, records show. Mr. Baird, a member of the House Science Committee, said the trip was to learn about global warming.

On the first day, lawmakers toured a breeding center for giant tortoise and land iguanas before dining with scientists, according to an itinerary for the trip. The next morning, lawmakers headed to the Galápagos National Park while their family members had the option of hiking, swimming or shopping. That afternoon, the group boarded a boat to visit a sea-lion colony and search for white-tip sharks.

Ridiculous!

Jobs "Saved or Created"? Pure Fiction!

I read an excellent opinion article today in the Wall Street Journal online. The thesis of the article is found here:

"Saved or created" has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs -- and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will "save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years." [Emphasis mine]

It is not too difficult either to understand the concept of, or to measure, job creation. We have government departments that track job creation, and there are monthly reports of this data. But what does it mean to "save a job"? How is this measured? And if a job can indeed be "saved," how can the credit be objectively placed?

There are a few forces at work here:

1. First and foremost, "saved jobs" is nothing more than fiction. Or fantasy. There is no objective way whatsoever, short of omniscience (which the President most assuredly does not have), to credit anything the government has done with saving any number of jobs. This is simply a made-up figure that makes a good talking point.
2. The Obama Administration is, at best, misleading us; and at worst, they are lying through their teeth. They know that there is no data to back up their claims. Which brings us to...
3. The press would never, ever have let Bush get away with such foolishness. And quite frankly, had Bush been so foolish as to try to sucker the American people with this sort of baloney, they would have been right to jump all over him for it. So, um, why aren't they jumping all over Obama right now? [Moment of silence to ponder the question.]

Sadly, many of the American people are not paying attention like they should to the propaganda coming their way. On the other hand, at some point, reality should strike them in the head. That will probably be blamed on Bush, too.