our debt

The US is in trouble. It's time for us to face the facts. We need to stop the class warfare so popular with with administration. We need to stop re-electing politicians on both sides who have already demonstrated an inability to face and deal with the tough issues. It's time to stop pretending this is a Republican v. Democrat issue and all we need is bi-partisanship (especially when that has simply become code for compromise to the most expedient acceptable option regardless of if it addresses the issue).

As Hal Mason has said back in March 2012:

1. Washington must admit the problem
2. Explain the problem to everyone
3. We must face the pain of fixing

While he speaks as an accountant, it's worth listening. This is simple.

fiscal cliff fear

Adam Davidson with some fiscal cliff wisdom ... let's not lock our politicians in a room to solve the fiscal cliff but rather compel them to have a 5 year plan.

more occupy lies

Seldom Wrong, Never in Doubt posted this insight on the top 1% and why even I know that numbers can be deceptive.

In what may be the most important opinion column of the year, Cato Institute's Alan Reynolds lays out the problems in citing individual income levels from federal tax returns as a means of tracking the prosperity of the 1% against the penury of the 99%. Specifically, Reynolds notes how changes in tax rates and tax law have over a generation removed the incentives that the rich have to shelter their incomes--via corporations and tax-favored investments--from federal taxation. Hence, what was once corporate income is now personal income, what was once sheltered in tax-free bonds is now is dividend-earning stocks, and so forth.

In other words, all those scary graphs about how much the rich have now versus then have mostly to do with the way the rich report their incomes. When rates are high, they shelter them. When rates are low, they unshelter them. When incomes are unsheltered, they seem to go up. "Seem" is rather important in this matter.

Why should you or we care about this, inasmuch as you and we don't have the kind of income that would ever be sheltered? Well, when the rich shelter their incomes, the shelters tend to be favored for tax purposes but not in and of themselves beneficial for economic purposes. That is, the tax accountants decide where to put the money to avoid taxes rather than the venture capitalists deciding where to put the money to make a lot more money. When more money is made, value has been added to the economy, making most people more prosperous in the long run.

So high tax rates may seem to rob from the rich and give to the poor, but they really just make the rich hide their money where it won't do anyone much good.

More concerning to me than the lack of clarity around the numbers is the deliberate distortions professing christians make to support their rebellious nature. SWNID writes:

Now to Jesus. The estimable Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, former prez of Chi Theo and now a fellow of the hard-left Center for American Progress, insists that Jesus Was an Occupier. Why? Because he raided the abusive temple and declared them robbers. And because from her seminary teachers she learned other interpretations of Jesus' parables that involve commerce, like the Parable of the Talents cited by some right-winger to say that Jesus is for the free market.

Honestly, people, do we still have to do this nonsense? "A plague on both your houses."

Dr. Thistlewaite, could you please acknowledge that Jesus' "robbers" statement is an obvious quotation of Jeremiah 7:11, that the word translated "robbers" means "rebels," that the combination of word and quotation shows that Jesus' indictment is about rejecting Israel's God, not about money as such (though abuse of money is always a consequence of rejecting Israel's God), that he goes on to elaborate in the Parable of the Tenants, which also has commerce in it but isn't at all about commerce, and that if Jesus was speaking about socialism versus capitalism here there or anywhere, he spoke with singular obscurity on the matter? Sheesh.

Theological conservatives, whether conservative or liberal politically, will you please stop abusing the Bible to prover your point about politics in the present? When you do, it only encourages the liberals to abuse the Bible too, something they're happy to do since they don't think much of it to begin with.

the poor among us

I care deeply for the poor. I'm vested in both time and money to help in several ways here in Cincinnati. Yet I hate how we have politicized the truth (or untruth) and then misapplied Scripture (or 'christianized myths') to what we need to do about it. I thought Frank Turk provided a decent analysis of the current occupy events.

Here Thomas Sowell, reminding us of the 1991 false declaration that "One in eight American children is going hungry tonight” also confronts the notion of the poor in America stating:

Those who believe in an expansive, nanny-state government need a large number of people in “poverty” to justify their programs. They also need a large number of people dependent on government to provide the votes needed to keep the big nanny state going. 

Politicians, welfare-state bureaucrats, and others have incentives to create or perpetuate hoaxes, whether about poverty in general or hunger in particular. The high cost to taxpayers is exceeded by the even higher cost of lost opportunities for fulfillment by those who succumb to the lure of a stagnant life of dependency.

While his comments were in regard to education, J. Greshem Machen wrote, "A public school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised." I think we could substitute government anything in place of education and come to the same correct conclusion.

don't occupy wall street

I'm not a big fan of the 'occupy wall street' gang. I've heard only one rationale issue that may be motivating some of the protestors but the rest of what I heard was rubbish. Regardless of what the point is and what I think of the specific issue, I think these wise words by John Mark Reynolds are overarching. 

Here are the money lines (pardon the pun).

Instead of occupying Wall Street, all Americans need to restore our ethics and our ability to self-govern.

Americans must recognize that greed and immorality come from “we the people” and not from outsiders. We have lived beyond our means. We have forgotten that just because a thing is legal does not mean it is good. We do not resent graft, but are angry we did not get our own cut.

Christian values are the solution, love of neighbor and self-restraint, but those values need to be lived in my life. God help us occupy ourselves in pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty in our own lines and only then dare help our neighbor.

Read the post here.