This Should Go Without Saying...

....but Christians really shouldn't turn to the Huffington Post to inform their faith. Exhibit A is a post yesterday from a Christopher Cocca with the provocative and yet inexplicable title "Bernie Sanders Is the Most Christian Candidate in History". Apparently Mr. Cocca is a fan of Bernie and has dubbed him the most Christian candidate, not in this election year mind you but for all time. That is a pretty bold pronouncement but as you might expect I have a couple of issues with his assertion.

There are two problems here, one that is huge and the other that is pretty significant.

The first problem of course is that one cannot be "the most Christian cadidate EVER!" if one is not a Christian. That seems pretty self-evident but apparently in this day and age even the most obvious and common sense notions need to be reinterpreted on a daily basis. Senator Sanders is, as I understand, a Jew and not only Jewish but a non-practicing, secular Jew who is Jewish by ethnicity, not faith. As such he seems pretty vague on the notion of God in general and to the best of my knowledge has never proclaimed Jesus as Lord. The Bible is clear on this, if you don't declare Jesus you deny Him and anyone who denies Him has no part in eternal life. Jesus said:

So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 10:32-33)

That is a pretty unnuanced statement but that is kinda how Jesus rolled. If you do not say Jesus is Lord, if you have not been born again, you are not and cannot be a Christian and if someone is not a Christian in any sense of the word, it follows that one cannot be "the most Christian candidate EVER!" if one is not a Christian. One person on social media commented that Bernie is the "nicest" candidate in the race and that makes him Christian, which is totally ridiculous theologically and to be blunt whenever I see Bernie he seems mostly angry, wagging his finger at those who have a nickle more than the next guy, engaging is class warfare and racial pandering (White people don't know what it means to be poor!). 

The second problem is the definition Mr. Cocca has for what makes one Christian and what Christianity teaches. Let's look at some of his statements....

Yes, I do believe that health care is a human right. Yes, I do believe that gainful education is a basic human right. We are not granted these rights from "The Market," or from our navigation of it. These are birthrights.

OK. Why exactly now, in 2016, are these "basic human rights"? Who declared them as such? More importantly what does the Bible have to say on these issues? The answer to that question is "nothing at all". Zero. Zilch. Now a progressive might retort "Oh yeah, well the Bible doesn't say anything about abortion or gay marriage!" That is technically true but the Bible also doesn't talk about shooting someone with a gun but that doesn't make it less sinful. The Bible does speak at length about willfully murdering another human being, which is what abortion is at its most basic definition. Also with "gay marriage", while the Bible doesn't say anything about "gay marriage" by name, it does define marriage as being between a man and woman for life and it also declares unequivocally that homosexual behavior is a grievous sin. Regardless, what Mr. Cocca is apparently talking about is not merely health care and education but those being provided by the government and paid for by coercion.

He then launches into a rambling and incoherent tirade about why Matthew 6:26-34 is an economic treatise which is anti-capitalism and free markets. Read it for yourself, it is equal parts progressive bogeyman pseudo-economic mumbo jumbo and leftist religious talk dressed up as Christianity. What follows that is the most off the wall "interpretation" of the Genesis account you will ever read. It is pretty clear that Mr. Cocca is skeptical about the Genesis account but apparently the Garden was a socialist paradise until Adam and Eve turned to capitalism and ate the fruit, eating more than "Enough". As an aside it is pretty funny that Mr. Cocca randomly capitalizes words like "Enough" and "Secondary Marketplace". After this rambling trip through the fever swamps of progressive economic theology. Mr. Cocca ends with this:

In this election, don't be so surprised that the person most in keeping with the prophetic vision of Jesus is a so-called secular Jew. Bernie Sanders is standing with the ancient Hebrew prophets and in the tradition of our Lord, Jesus the marginalized Jew, but, unlike some other populist candidates, he's not running a campaign of identity politics. As a Christian, I cannot judge the hearts of others claiming to also follow Christ, but am also taught that the faithful will be known by their fruits. Bernie Sanders may be a secular Jew by the standards of the media or by other modern indentifiers, but he may just also be the most Christian person running for president, maybe ever.

Notice that Mr. Cocca identifies Jesus not as God but as "the marginalized Jew". Is that the primary definition of Jesus or even in the top ten? Also note that while he claims to not be able to judge the hearts of other candidates, candidates who openly profess their faith in Christ, he does seem able to judge the heart of a cultural unbelieving Jew. If that seems a little inconsistent to you, don't adjust your TV because it is.

Blogs like this are the result of unmooring Christianity as a faith community from rigorous and robust exegesis of the primary means God has communicated with His people, namely through His written Word. It is a sign of how Biblically illiterate we are as a people that articles like this get serious consideration. Bottom line, socialism is not a Christian economic system. Neither is capitalism or Marxism or Libertarianism. These are all secular attempts by society to form an economic system that provides structure to human interaction. Trying to fuse Christianity and socialism is bound to fail because the Bible simply doesn't call on Christians to use the coercive power of the state to take from some who have earned money to give to others who have not. Bernie Sanders is not the most Christian candidate ever. He is not even a Christian. Likewise his economic policies are not Christian and they are incredibly dangerous and naive.

In this election let's try to avoid compounding the circus we already have with bad theology and for Pete's sake stay away from  the Huffington Post.

I Take It Back Al!

Oh please Al Gore, I beg your forgiveness for ever doubting global warming! Five days before Memorial Day and this is the weather...

Some stuff is so patently dumb and demonstrably false that, in spite of the insistence of a tiny minority that it is "settled science", the only good and proper response is mockery.

Oh the irony, Episode #1,455: Quit farming the way we pay you to farm!

Our benevolent overlords in Washington, D.C. have turned their keen intuition to a new frontier in the fight against global warming climate change, our nation's agricultural system.

Federal agricultural officials announced Thursday voluntary programs and initiatives for farmers, ranchers and foresters meant to build on President Barack Obama's efforts to combat global warming — and they don't require congressional approval.

Gotta love the sweeping new powers that our President has granted himself. No Congressional approval needed. How long until "No Congress needed at all" is the law of the land? So how exactly are we going to conquer "climate change" via "voluntary" cutbacks to carbon emissions? Easy!

Specific actions include reducing the unnecessary use of fertilizer and methane emissions from cattle and swine, reforesting areas damaged by wildfire and disease and encouraging tree planting in urban areas. For methane reduction in particular, the federal program promotes installing more anaerobic digesters, which use naturally occurring bacteria to break down organic waste to produce biogas, a fuel similar to natural gas.

Oh the irony....

Our government subsidizes in every way the system of agriculture that demands huge machinery, confinement operations, massive chemical application, burning of enormous amounts of fossil fuels, going to war to keep that fuel "cheap", etc. and then wants those same farmers to "reduce emissions" to combat the mythical "climate change". Only in America does that inherent contradiction not seem apparent to any and all. People will mostly do what they have an incentive to do so if you provide an incentive to farm that way and disincentives to farm any other way (like armed raids on those who sell "raw milk").

Thanks to the "get big or get out" mentality, our farms have gotten bigger and bigger with each passing year. Our land grant universities put out a largely monolithic message that reinforces this because they are subsidized by the big agribusiness firms that profit from the industrial farming system. Our government pays farmers and subsidizes them in various ways that make it almost impossible to not have giant machinery that spew carbon, compact the soil and require massive doses of chemicals. The same is true of animal husbandry that makes it incredibly difficult to raise livestock profitably unless you accept the industrialized, subsidized system which requires you to cram more and more livestock into your facility which in turn concentrates methane, creates mountains or lakes of manure that need to be disposed of, requires unhealthy doses of antibiotics and depends entirely on cheap feed grains which in turn require....huge, carbon emission spewing tractors. We are paying people to do the very thing that we want them to do less of. America, what a country!

Stuff like this is why I appreciate writers like Joel Salatin, Wendell Berry, Gene Logsdon and David Kline. Rather than hipsters who want to farm so they can have a beard and be groovy, these are guys who are actually farming the way it can and should be done. I am under no illusion that a substantial portion of the population is going to start 20-30 acre farms, I mean seriously, we can't get a lot of people to even get a job and those that do want an exorbitant hourly wage for unskilled work. But if we can get more people to start farming like this it will certainly help to stem a small part of the tide and perhaps even avoid the seemingly inevitable food catastrophe that I see in our future.

It just kills me that the government says and does stuff like this and no one even sees how dumb it is.

A proto-socialist Jesus?

Once again reading the religion section of the Huffington Post so you don't have to!

So apparently Evangelical's hate Jesus. No really, that is what a writer asserts at the Huffington Post. Think I am engaging in hyperbole? Check out the article title: Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus. See, told ya so. So why does Mr. Phil Zuckerman, a sociology professor at Pitzer College (I had to look it up to see if it was a real college) think evangelicals hate Jesus? 'Cause they aren't lib'ral enuff! Read and wonder....

Jesus unambiguously preached mercy and forgiveness. These are supposed to be cardinal virtues of the Christian faith. And yet Evangelicals are the most supportive of the death penalty, draconian sentencing, punitive punishment over rehabilitation, and the governmental use of torture. Jesus exhorted humans to be loving, peaceful, and non-violent. And yet Evangelicals are the group of Americans most supportive of easy-access weaponry, little-to-no regulation of handgun and semi-automatic gun ownership, not to mention the violent military invasion of various countries around the world. Jesus was very clear that the pursuit of wealth was inimical to the Kingdom of God, that the rich are to be condemned, and that to be a follower of Him means to give one's money to the poor. And yet Evangelicals are the most supportive of corporate greed and capitalistic excess, and they are the most opposed to institutional help for the nation's poor -- especially poor children. They hate anything that smacks of "socialism," even though that is essentially what their Savior preached. They despise food stamp programs, subsidies for schools, hospitals, job training -- anything that might dare to help out those in need. Even though helping out those in need was exactly what Jesus urged humans to do. In short, Evangelicals are that segment of America which is the most pro-militaristic, pro-gun, and pro-corporate, while simultaneously claiming to be most ardent lovers of the Prince of Peace.

Is there some truth in this? Well yes although in a misguided, confused sort of way. What is glaringly obvious is that Mr. Zuckerman makes the mistake that is the other side of the "Jesus as Republican capitalist" coin, i.e. Jesus as a hippie who would embrace gay marriage and advocate for forcible income redistribution and centralized state control over the means of production. Not to mention a Jesus who would place a woman's "right to choose" as more important than the murder of an innocent child in the womb.

Neither side is giving an accurate view of who Jesus is revealed to be. Trying to co-opt Him for crass political gamesmanship, whether by Pat Robertson or Jim Wallis, is equally disingenuous. Jesus didn't come to serve as a political slogan or to bless your football team or to give one European country the ability to smite another. He came to seek and save that which was lost.

What is too bad is that Mr. Zuckerman raises some interesting questions that evangelicals need to face. Why do we seek for success and riches when those things have no place in the Kingdom? Why do we rightly fight for life for the unborn but turn around and beat the drums of war at the command of our country? Why do so many Evangelicals live lives of relative luxury while our brothers and sisters around the world suffer and starve? Important questions but questions that deserve more than political cheap shots. Quite disappointing.

Well when you are a professor at a college with this mission statement: Pitzer College produces engaged socially responsible citizens of the world through an academically rigorous, interdisciplinary liberal arts education emphasizing social justice, intercultural understanding and environmental sensitivity. and that has a "Cecil the sagehen" as a mascot, I guess you can't expect much. I just wish that people who are completely disinterested in Jesus as Lord and what He taught unambiguously about an eternal hell and the coming Judgment wouldn't try to co-opt Him as a posterboy for political liberalism. Jesus is a package deal, you take all of Him or none of Him.

An honest discussion on social justice

I have read quite a few blog posts dealing with the issue of “social justice” of late. I can certainly understand where they are coming from, as some proponents of “social justice” are mirror images of conservative pundits hiding a political agenda behind religious talk, in this case using the Biblical call for self-sacrifice and caring for the poor to push for government enforced wealth redistribution. Unfortunately, many of these posts strayed away from “why socialism is not Biblical” and into “why capitalism is Biblical”. Neither position is tenable from Scripture because Scripture doesn’t address secular economic issues but rather deals with the responsibility of Christians in light of their redemption to care for the poor, widows, orphans, etc.

I find it troubling that so many conversations starts with “Well of course we are supposed to care for the poor…” which is then followed by a whole bunch of reasons why that is not nearly as important as the Bible seems to clearly make it out to be. Unfortunately, in spite of the clear Biblical command to care for the poor and be self-sacrificial, we are often pretty darn selfish people. We trade the way of the cross for the American way of life and feel not the slightest qualm that we live in very self-centered lifestyles while fellow believers here and around the world suffer abject poverty. We can try to excuse it away by giving some money to foreign missions boards or claiming that our mandate only extends to members of our local church but that falls pretty short.

I find it odd that we spend so much time explaining why we are not really responsible to care for the poor and indeed that we are not called to be self-sacrificial beyond a meager offering on Sunday morning. While there certainly is no justification for using the state to seize money through taxes and under the threat of force to redistribute to people of a lower income, there is also no warrant for Christians to backpedal away from mercy ministries and constantly question ourselves regarding our commitment to being agents of mercy.

Perhaps “social justice” just carries to much baggage. When we mention the words “social justice”, it might just evoke such a negative response that we overreact to it. It certainly has been championed by people who take the Biblical doctrine of works of mercy to promote all manner of political social solutions. Or perhaps that is just a convenient excuse. While I do think that “social justice” has been compromised as a liberal religious slogan, I don’t that this is the core problem.

So what is the problem? One word: Money.

Every day Christians live out the exact behavior being condemned in James 2: 15-16:

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? (James 2: 15-16)

We are not called to outdo one another in our grandiose building programs or in bragging about our various ministries and how great they are. We are to be known for our love for one another, to boast about Christ (and that doesn’t come in the form of palatial buildings built “for the glory of God”) and to be marked by humility and self-sacrifice.

The reality when you strip away the political rhetoric and pragmatic backpedaling comes down to this:

- Scripture does not imply or directly call for the state to be either capitalistic or socialistic. Nor does the clear call to aid the poor envision a government mandated solution to that problem.
- Scripture likewise doesn’t excuse a consumerist, what’s mine is mine mentality. If you deny a brother in need, if you refuse to open your home to the downtrodden, if you think a small offering on Sunday makes your life of excessive consumption OK, you are completely misunderstanding what the Bible teaches about wealth, possessions and stewardship.

When we read about the day of judgment, one thing seems to stand out as being indicative of a faithful Christian. It is not “church membership” or even attending “church” on a regular basis. It is not being able to exposit a passage of Scripture or being on the right side of the debate over baptism or holding to the right confessional statement from the reformation. Nor is it that you chained yourself to a redwood or helped get “progressive” politicians elected or drove a Prius. The only thing that matters is that you rightly confess Christ as the risen Son of God who died for the sins of His people, a confession that is not merely lip-service but reflected in a transformed life.

Why are we so afraid of these words from our Savior? Perhaps because we find condemnation of our selfish lives in what He said and perhaps that is precisely why they were spoken.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25: 31-46)

Waging the wrong war for the wrong reasons

April Luebke linked to a post about the blind eye we turn to socially acceptable sin while railing against sins targeted in the "culture wars". From the blog Extreme Theology:

As long as those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, who zealously wage war with the forces of immorality in the culture refuse to understand that they are ambassadors of the Kingdom of God, not the Republican Party, and are called to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Name to ALL sinners left and right, socialist and capitalist then there will continue to be something TERRIBLY wrong with Conservative Evangelicalism!

There are a lot of very valid points in the post. Some of it is over the top. Are corporations “evil”? Are these faceless “corporate executives” evil? Eh. Not any more so than anyone else. Is capitalism an evil system that exploits the poor? Not any more so than socialism. Let’s keep in mind that every corporation is merely a legal construct and every corporate executive is an employee paid to do one thing: maximize profits. They act on behalf of shareholders who more often than not are ultimately the dentist who lives down the street and your retired parents living off a pension. Where corporate executives are complicit with breaking the law, either knowingly or through neglect, they should face the legal consequences. We should also realize that improving the working conditions for a child in India or Thailand might make their quality of life now better but leaves them in the same state for eternity absent the Gospel. Eliminating sweat shops is a noble goal, but it is not the Gospel.

Having said that…

It is very true that the culture war is the wrong war for the wrong reasons and is often used as a cynical tool of politicians to gain power. The culture war is not about taking the Gospel of Christ to the world, it is unfortunately mostly about conforming the world to a “Judeo-Christian morality”. The order is all wrong. I find homosexuality to be abhorrent and I oppose homosexual marriage as an abomination. I also abhor heterosexual couples living together and to the same extent my own frequent, catastrophic failings in this area. I find abortion to be a bloody stain upon our nation and I would do anything within the bounds of God’s Law to see it overturned. I similarly recognize that I have harbored hatred and resentment against others in my own heart. What it comes down to is this simple fact: the culture war will never be won because we were never called to this war in the first place. We are called to simple, humble, quiet lives where we live out the Gospel and proclaim the Good News to a lost and dying world. That doesn't mean we are disengaged from the political world but it does mean we recognize the limitations and realize that winning elections is not carrying out the Great Commission. The only way that we will see true change come to anyone is through the transformation of the Gospel and that is something that no Congress can legislate and no court can enforce.

Wealth redistribution is not charity

The new "papal encyclical" Caritas in veritate or "Charity in Truth" from Joseph Ratzinger (aka "Pope Benedict") has garnered some attention and a lot of concern for the language it uses.

Granted, I am not all that interested in theological ponderings from Joseph Ratzinger and I am even less interested in his economic theories. Much of the encyclical is filled with flowery pronouncements and reiterations of prior papal declarations, sprinkled liberally with quotes like this:

It is an expression of the prophetic task of the Supreme Pontiffs to give apostolic guidance to the Church of Christ and to discern the new demands of evangelization.

That reinforces the misguided notion that the men who style themselves “popes” somehow speak for all Christians everywhere. Regardless, there are some useful statements within this declaration. Certainly he is right that charity and love play a central role in the Christian life and all too often both are missing from those who claim the name of Christ. We all certainly need to reflect on our lack of charity, our failure to express love to those around us as Christ expressed love to the unlovely, i.e. redeemed sinners.

Where I have grave reservations is where Mr. Ratzinger applies how this should be practically lived out.

There are numerous statements that exhibit an misunderstanding of basic economics, like this one:

On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care.

Intellectual property rights in the private sector provide protection of investment, especially in health care. It is not like a new drug springs forth ready for market after an afternoon of brainstorming. The process is extremely competitive, very expensive and new drugs have limited protections before they become available for generics, so even a breakthrough drug must go through exhaustive regulatory hoops and then the clock starts ticking toward the day when the drug is able to be replicated as a generic. It is precisely because of patent protections that companies are willing to invest enormous sums of money that lead to life saving drugs. People have these drugs that save, extend and improve lives because of the right to intellectual property. Another example:

The repeated calls issued within the Church's social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers' associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honoured today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level.

Quite to the contrary. Rerum Novarum was written in 1891 when basic workers rights were absent. Today, we see the collapse of venerable institutions like General Motors and Chrysler and the crippling of Ford because of, in large part, these very same workers associations.

The words “redistribution”, “solidarity” and “exploitation” appear often in the encyclical and are not chosen by accident. When he writes: “What is also needed, though, is a worldwide redistribution of energy resources, so that countries lacking those resources can have access to them.”, one is forced to wonder how this is to happen, who is decide how much is to be redistributed and who is to receive these resources.

The strongest statement comes in this paragraph (emphasis added):

To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations.

Did you catch all of that? A centralized international authority with the power to ensure "security" and enforce "compliance". I am sure all of the end-times types are jumping all over this, but this is not a sign of the coming "rapture", it is a sign of a dangerous call for international authority over U.S. property and resources.

In the end, Christian charity is expected of Christians but nations are not Christian. They may contain many Christian citizens who are bound to demonstrate love and perform acts of charity not as a condition for but as a result of their salvation, but nations are not and should not be expected to behave in “Christian” ways. Even with that in mind, what Mr. Ratzinger proposes is not only economically unsound, it also misinterprets what the Bible teaches about charity. What he is proposing: wealth redistribution, class warfare, socialism/communism, authoritarian centralized international government are not the signs or the enablers of charity and love. Wealth seized by force or the threat of force is not charity. When the early church sold their belongings and gave the proceeds to the apostles, they did so freely and out of love for one another. A central international authority reallocating resources from "rich" countries to "poor" countries is not only doomed to failure, it is also foreign to what the Bible speaks of in regards to Christian charity.

Caring for the poor is noble but centralized governments and wealth distribution do not lead to positive economic equality but instead lead to shared misery. To expect countries and companies to behave in a Christian fashion is foolhardy and unrealistic, and ultimately is counter-productive. If Mr. Ratzinger is truly concerned for the poor, he should be encouraging the free market not calling for centralization. It is the free market, capitalism for lack of a better word, that has led to unprecedented increases in the standard of living for hundreds of millions of people. True, it has not been equitable but that is not a fault of free markets but of totalitarian governments. Without the free markets we would certainly have equity, but it would be equitable poverty and misery. (As a gratuitous cheap shot, if he is so concerned about the poor, maybe the Vatican can sell of some of its treasures and use the proceeds for hunger relief?)

Why do I care? I reject Joseph Ratzinger's claims as the "Vicar of Christ" and I see his office as contrary to Biblical teachings and an invention of men. His opinions to me are irrelevant and hold no authority or sway. So why does this warrant the attention of Christians? Many people outside of the church see Mr. Ratzinger as representing Christians, and I am sure that this encyclical will be put forth by some as a defense of socialism. Many Christians also don't recognize the unBiblical nature of the papacy and the use of Scripture quotes and "God talk" may confuse some people. Finally, anytime someone misrepresents the teaching of Scripture, it warrants a response.

So take my thoughts for what they are, my thoughts, and tell me what your thoughts are. Is Mr. Ratzinger correct? Is this who kerfuffle irrelevant? Is this encyclical a veiled call for one world government and socialism?

Caritas in veritate

I am reading through the "papal encyclical", Caritas in veritate "Charity in truth", from Joseph Ratzinger having to do with economics. Just a ton of stuff in here, not much stuff I care for. Lots of language that amounts to calls for international controls over the economic system, lots of language of wealth redistribution. I am going to put together some thoughts once I actually read it but I know that lots of Catholics already don't like what they are seeing. I think, based on a facebook comment, that Russell Moore might speak about this tomorrow while guest hosting on the Albert Mohler show...

Congrats!

As an American taxpayer you are about to become the proud owner of General Motors!

If this doesn’t scare you

There are a couple of planks in the Obama administration’s effort to “not waste a good crisis” and radically expand the scope and power of the Federal government. Part of that is increased spending and taxation, bringing more and more of the economic production of the country under the direct control of the central government. Another major part, and one that is less onerous to the average citizen, is a dramatic increase in the regulatory powers of the Federal government over the private sector. Set aside the idea that the Feds in an oversight function over the private sector is like a blind and deaf lifeguard who can’t swim. Set aside also the fact that the big collapses we have seen have included some already heavily regulated industries and a couple of companies that are creations of and were protected by the same government that wants MORE control (i.e. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Just read the following synopsis of former tax cheat and current Secretary of the Treasury Geithner’s plan for “fixing” the private sector.

The Treasury has been rolling out its proposals piecemeal. It announced Wednesday a central plank of the U.S. effort: a call to give powers to the Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to seize any company whose collapse could put the broader economy at risk.

Read that again:

The Treasury has been rolling out its proposals piecemeal. It announced Wednesday a central plank of the U.S. effort: a call to give powers to the Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to seize any company whose collapse could put the broader economy at risk.

So if you are too successful and get really big, the government can seize you. Of course, the details are a bit sketchy…

It isn't clear which companies would be brought under this umbrella. Administration officials believe they could include banks' parent companies, insurance conglomerates and certain hedge funds, among others. They said it would depend on a company's size, leverage, reliance on short-term funding and role in the financial system.

So the plan is pretty vague in terms of what this all looks like. I can tell you what it looks like, it looks like another step toward socialism. Given this vague plan, what is to stop the gubmint from seizing companies on whatever pretense they like?

"Because we have learned from the current crisis that destabilizing dangers can come from financial institutions besides banks, our plan will give the government the tools to limit the risk-taking at firms that could set off cascading damage," Mr. Geithner told the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday, the same day the Treasury laid out how such a process might work.

Government officials believe the new authority might give policy makers a powerful club to demand strategic or management changes at companies.

We already have limits on risk. It is called the market. If you take a bad risk, you fail and someone else wins. That is capitalism. Business is predicated on taking calculated risks, and there has always been a trade-off for risk and return. Nothing good comes from this intervention, where the government can decide that company A is too big for its britches, steps in and seizes it. Never mind that the biggest skewing of the risk-reward system is the Federal government stepping in to prop up failed companies, thus rewarding and subsidizing failure. Let’s give them more power (and more of our money) to tinker around with the financial system and the private sector!

The proposal would allow the FDIC to sell the company's assets and renegotiate or reject existing contracts. This could give the government leverage to ban bonuses at struggling firms, but it could also raise questions among counterparties as to whether existing contracts might survive government seizure.

The FDIC would also be able to replace directors and senior executives and "none of these actions would be subject to the approval of the institution's creditors or other stakeholders," the Treasury said.

That throws a monkey wrench into the whole system. Businesses operate by being able to raise capital. They raise capital by borrowing from banks and by issuing debt (which is basically what a bond is). They also raise capital by issuing stock to shareholders who become the owners of the company. They do business by entering into contracts with suppliers, customers and employees. When you add into the equation that the government can arbitrarily grab a business and toss all of the contracts out of the window, that means that doing business with bigger businesses becomes extremely risky. If you are an executive, you will shy away from working at a company where your employment contract and bonus structure can be negated by an act of the government. If you are a supplier, you will negotiate higher prices to offset the risk that the government will come in and redo your contracts. If you are a customer and contract for goods or services with a business, you have to build in the uncertainty that your business arrangements can be done away with at the stroke of a pen, leaving you with no legal recourse. In essence, this makes private companies wards of the state because the relationship between debt holders (people who hold corporate bonds) and stakeholders (people who own the company through stock, the shareholders) is radically changed. No longer will they have the final say on the way companies are run, now that power lies in the hands of bureaucrats

I actually think that President Obama and Secretary Geithner are fully aware of this. For all of his flowery talk of how he believes in the private sector, I don’t believe it for a second because his policies don’t match his rhetoric. His walk doesn’t match his teleprompter talk. As it becomes harder and harder for the bigger companies to do business, eventually the case can be made to nationalize them. One of the hallmarks of communism is the state holding the means of production. In a post-industrial society, it is less important to hold factories and farms, and far more important to control information and capital. That is the path we are on, as finances, the auto industry, socialized health care, control of our children virtually from the moment of birth with the “Zero to Five” plan, universal preschool and universal college, all adds up to the Federal government holding all of the strings of the economy. Think about the real means of production today and then look at the moves proposed by the administration. It becomes really easy to see that the dreams of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao and Castro are seeing their fruition. Not in Cuba or China or Venezuela, but right here in America. As America goes, so the world goes. The Marxist radicals have always known this and they have their greatest opening in 100 years right now, right here.

Oops!

For most of his brief administration, President Obama and his henchmen have spared no effort in demonizing Wall Street, bankers, captains of industry, pretty much any business that makes a profit. The rationale for flogging Wall Street? According to the Wall Street Journal, a lot of it has to do with opinion polls.

Mr. Obama and his aides regularly and publicly criticized financial firms for buying private planes and redecorating offices and hosting lavish parties. The talk was fueled in part by the results of surveys by New York pollster Joel Benensen, commissioned by the Democratic Party, which Mr. Axelrod regularly reviews. The polls consistently showed that the public blames big financial firms for the current mess, and is hesitant to offer aid.

As outrage directed at Wall Street starts to spill over to the politicians who loaned them hundreds of billions in tax dollars, and as they start to realize that a lot of what they plan to push through is going to require private sector cooperation, now the administration is “reaching out” to Wall Street. The problem is the same as with a dog you constantly kick, eventually it starts to flinch. In other words, the private sector is even more leery of the government than before. The administration is planning on enticing private investors (who want to make a profit of course) into buying devalued loan assets, with the expectation that they will increase in value and then the investor can sell them. The investor makes a profit, the government hopefully has limited exposure and banks can start to shed a ton of loans that are dragging them down. Sounds great, but if I am an investor with money to spend, do I really want to make a Faustian deal with the Federal Government as my partner? These same people who are trying to retroactively tax legal bonuses for AIG are sure to look at big profits from Secretary Geithner’s plan (accompanied by big risks) and say that these investors made a profit using tax dollars. Who wants to risk their profits on the forbearance of Congress? There are far less risky investment options out there. As the Journal pointed out, who wants to risk being the next person being deposed in front of Barney Frank and friends, eager to score political points for excoriating evil capitalists, investors who *GASP* dared to make a profit.

Much of this stems from the people that the President is surrounding himself with. Instead of filling up the ranks of the administration with business people, Obama has been picking academics and bureaucrats. Say what you will about the malfeasance of some on Wall Street, the worst run business is unarguably worlds more efficient than the Federal government and most of these academics are in academia instead of the business world because they don’t have what it takes to run a business and their economic theories prove disastrous in the real world (more on that in an upcoming post). These are not exactly the people you want to have making all of our nation’s economic policies. So we find ourselves in a time of crisis with a bunch of politicians, economists with theories that are laughable anywhere other than conferences and universities and opinion pollsters running the “recovery”.

Our problem is not that we have invested too little power in government, it is that we have invested too much. This was evident in the Bush administration where “compassionate conservatism” meant talk like a conservative but spend like a liberal. Now we have Obama, who talks like a liberal and spends like a socialist. Things are not getting better folks.

A billion dollars an hour!

Here is another sobering way to look at the new Administration has been spending our money from Elaine Chao:

The Obama administration's zeal to not "waste a good crisis," as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it, has been stunning even for Washington insiders to behold. In the first 50 days of Barack Obama's presidency, Congress approved $1.2 trillion dollars in new spending, or $24 billion a day. That's $1 billion every hour. The national debt now is $11 trillion and climbing.

A billion dollars in new spending per hour.

Wow.

Yet people say that Obama is not a socialist. That is what he has done in less than two months and we still have 46 months more to go. Maybe we should encourgae him to spend more time on Leno and working on his NCAA brackets, he can cause less mischief that way.

Fanning the populist flames

Hopefully anyone who is paying any attention at all can see right through the hypocrisy spewing forth from Washington over AIG. The single most fiscally irresponsible bunch of people in America (aka the United States Congress) being outraged over a couple hundred million in bonuses? Ridiculous. The overheated rhetoric is mostly from Democrats but more than a few Republicans (apparently intent on destroying the Grand Old Party once and for all) have joined the fray. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, only half in jest, suggested ritualistic suicide for AIG executives. That is responsible rhetoric and leadership from a United States Senator!

Now amidst the revelations of AIG bonuses, it turns out that Senator Christopher Dodd, champion of the people (never you mind that he got a sweet deal from now defunct Countrywide mortgage. No bias here!) suddenly remembers that he DID stick language in the bailout bill that exempted these very bonuses, a provision that in that fine Washington tradition he forget about and only “remembered” when he got called on it. These are the people safeguarding our financial system. A tax cheat as Treasury Secretary. A Senate banking Committee chairman writing loopholes in bailout deals and getting “favorable” mortgages from mortgage companies he is regulating. The House Ways and Means committee chairman who oversees tax policy neglecting to pay taxes on his vacation home. What is that old saying about the fox in the hen house?

The liberals might just find that in whipping up the flames of populist fury they may have started out with a controlled burn and ended up with a wildfire. The problem with wildfires of course is that you can’t control them and often what gets burned is not what you intended. Populist fury can be a useful tool for politicians, but it can get out of hand in a hurry. Just ask the French aristocracy.

Evan Newmark of the Wall Street Journal made this astute comment:

But the Washington populists ought to tread carefully. It’s one thing to stir up the mob, it’s another to control it. Eventually, the public will tire of the old outrages and look for new ones. And suddenly some of the things down in Washington will start to look pretty outrageous, too.

As I mentioned before, at some point when people start to settle down from this media induced panic about the financial crisis and start to look around, they might just realize that they were sold a bill of goods and saddled with a ton of debt during this whole debacle. The last few months may have been some of the most damaging to our long-term economic stability we have seen in a long time. When that time comes and the Congress runs out of fall guys to demagogue, all eyes will turn to Capitol Hill and maybe Americans will remember the freedoms this country was founded on and that have slowly been eroded by our public “servants” over the last century. When that day comes, there may be a lot of lifelong politicians who find themselves needing real jobs. That may be a false hope because I am not sure how many people actually know what freedoms this country was founded on in the first place. Decades of “education reform” have led to an ignorant population that thinks America was founded on repression and racism, not on freedom and liberty. An ignorant population is the bane of a free society.

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. Thomas Jefferson, Nov 13, 1787

Never let a crisis go to waste!

That is something of a mantra for the Obama administration. In an incredibly bold admission, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both stated publicly that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted. In other words, use the economic crisis and ensuing panic to push through your agenda that perhaps would be unpalatable during normal times. Rest assured that in these early days, President Obama and his puppet-masters in the Congress and liberal special interest groups will waste no time cramming as much socialism into place as possible. His poll numbers are waning fast, in spite of the rosy reports from the complicit media. Time is not on his side, so we find ourselves watching the spectacle of a two month overhaul of the relationship between the public and private sector that we have not seen in generations, perhaps ever.

The first two waves have been passed, the pork and social engineering filled “stimulus package” and the massive deficit expanding Federal budget. Next up for Obama is socialized medicine, accomplished through a vastly expanded Federal health insurance mandate along with the whispering of “The Return of Porkulus”. Already, before a nickel of the first “stimulus” bill has been spent, some loyal Democrats in safe seats (i.e. David Obey of Wisconsin) are hinting around at the need for a second stimulus package, likely as large if not larger, than the first one. This is a clever bit of old school politics as usual (weren’t we promised “change”?). Rather than the President coming right out and saying he wants another stimulus bill, he has his loyalist troops raise the issue, sort of easing you into it. Once the initial outrage starts to settle down, Obama can roll out his panic mode speeches, assuring us of calamities unimaginable if we don’t pass yet another stimulus bill. The threat of calamity worked well once, why not a second time?

One major piece of legislation that is a crown jewel in the Obama crown is the so-called card check legislation. It also is getting very little attention because the details would strike most Americans as being, for lack of a better word, un-American. In a nutshell, this legislation will change the way unions organize by allowing a workplace to be collectively bargained if they get more than 50% of employees to sign a card. This is not a secret ballot. It is Joe the local union organizer walking up to you and asking you to sign a card. If you don’t, that amounts to a vote against the union and you can be assured that your public vote of “no” will be remembered. Certainly there has never been even a whiff of intimidation tactics being employed by labor unions toward recalcitrant workers who didn’t sign on to the union agenda! Ask anyone trying to cross a picket line. The reason we have a secret ballot in this country for virtually ever election, including voting for class president and dog catcher, is to allow people to vote their conscience without fear of intimidation or reprisal. Now in a bold effort to take that basic American protection away from American workers, we see what amounts to a green light for intimidation of workers by union organizers. Funny, I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the party watching out for the working man? I guess that only applies if you are a union working man.

Ominously, the economy is showing early signs of recovery as the credit markets start to stabilize. That has nothing to do with anything done by the Obama administration (which has done nothing to address the credit crisis even though virtually every expert agrees that the credit market collapse was the impetus of the general economic malaise), but be sure that as the economy naturally rebounds as it always does and does so in spite of Obama’s policies, Obama and his media cronies will spin the recovery as a vindication of his big government policies, and give him the cover he needs to further march us down the road of European style socialism and economic ruin.

Redundancy Alert!

Chavez Urges Obama to Turn to Socialism

In a plea evoking Darth Vader's attempt to turn Luke Skywalker to the dark side, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday urged President Obama to join the socialist movement.

"I recommend to Obama -- they're criticizing him because they say he's moving towards socialism -- come Obama, ally with us on the path to socialism, it's the only road," he said on Venezuelan state television, according to a Bloomberg report.

"Imagine a socialist revolution in the U.S. Nothing is impossible," he added

Um, like he isn't aleady charging headlong that way as it is? Encouraging Obama to embrace socialism is like encouraging me to eat jelly donuts. Neither of us needs any encouragement.

It is bad and our “leader” is making it worse

We are in the midst of an economic collapse that is rapidly changing the financial landscape of America. Every day it seems we get more bad news. Today, we get the grim news that unemployment is at 8.1%, the economy lost 651,000 jobs last month and the total for the recession tips the scale at 4 million jobs lost. With the looming prospect of General Motors seeking bankruptcy protection and a number of banks in real danger of collapsing, the economy is really on the precipice of a serious turn for the worse (believe it or not). Americans, especially older Americans, are faced with a retirement date that is moving further away each day. These are scary times for a lot of people. America needs clear, positive leadership. That is not what we are getting.

As Peggy Noonan pointed out in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, President Obama sees this crisis as an opportunity to push through sweeping changes to our nation. Changes in how we do business, health care, taxes, banking, defense. Seismic changes to the relationship between the government and the people, with the government taking on a much larger and vastly more expensive role in American life. All under the guise of fixing what ails our nation. The recession is providing political camouflage for new policies of tax increases, socialized medicine, massive income redistributionist policies and an exploding national debt.

This is a time for leadership, a time for stabilization. Americans need to turn on the TV and see our President being frank and honest about the challenges we face, but also providing the leadership and vision we need to get out of the economic morass we are in. What we are getting instead is a man who is trying to build a legacy, making a name for himself at the expense of the economy and the long term future of America. Most Presidents, especially two term presidents late in their second term, start to worry about what their “legacy” will be. How will history and future generations of Americans view their Presidency? President Obama seems to be preoccupied with trying to forge his legacy RIGHT NOW, in March of 2009, a scant two months into his administration. Instead of being a leader, taking charge and leading this country forward, when Obama acts or speaks he seems to make things worse. The stock market should have stabilized by now, but it continues to drop because the policies being put forth by this administration are hurting America’s hopes for long term growth and economic vitality. We need solutions that will stabilize the economy and address the fundamental problems, painful though that will be. Instead we get massive pork spending under the guise of “stimulus”. The same institution that brings you the DMV is about to seize an enormous parcel of the economic system of this country and turn it into an inefficient, wealth destroying shell of itself that looks more like the weak economies of once great nations in Europe and a lot less like the economy that had been the envy of the rest of the world throughout my lifetime.

Millions of older Americans have seen their invested wealth evaporate. That is not a big deal for me. At 37, I am entering my peak earning years and this is a great time to sock money away. But for those who are approaching retirement age or are already retired, the stock market downturn has turned into a free for all. Where is the leadership? We cannot count on future generations making up the shortfall because the ranks of the elderly continue to grow and the replacement rate of new workers continues to fall, thanks to the new American worldview that children are a burden, an economic line item and a threat to the environment.

I am pretty sure that the Obama team, like most of America, has little idea what has gotten us into this situation and even less idea of how to get us out. I also don’t think that they care. This is an opportunity the likes of which the American Left has not had since before Nixon to radically reshape this nation and they are not wasting a minute in enacting it. One hopes that the enduring legacy of the Obama administration is not that they used the current recession as cover for a Leftward lurch because in normal times the American people would reject neo-socialism. This is a time for us to be getting the truth from our leaders, but unfortunately the truth is a scarce commodity that is becoming increasingly rare.

That flushing sound you hear...

...is the sound of some $13 billion in tax payer funded loans going down the toilet. After a series of huge loans to General Motors, it sounds more and more likely that they will have to declare bankruptcy anyway...

General Motors Corp.’s auditors have raised “substantial doubt” about the troubled automaker’s ability to continue operations, and the company said it may have to seek bankruptcy protection if it can’t execute a huge restructuring plan.
----
GM has received $13.4 billion in federal loans as it tries to survive the worst auto sales climate in 27 years. It is seeking a total of $30 billion from the government. During the past three years it has piled up $82 billion in losses, including $30.9 billion in 2008.

A company that has lost $82,000,000,000 over the last three years SHOULD go bankrupt and start over!

We could have done that months ago and saved the taxpayer exposure to billions in loans. A lot of the blame for this falls on Bush, not because of the failure of GM but because of the ill-conceived loans that were extended in the first place. The Federal government cannot keep its own house in order, it has no business bailing out businesses or industries with our money. The best thing that GM can do, and the only thing that makes sense, is to reorganize under bankruptcy protection, tear up those crazy union contracts, dealership agreements and other onerous burdens and start afresh as a leaner, more cost effective company. In the state of the U.S. these says we cannot afford to have GM as a perpetual ward of the state that can only survive if it receives constant financial backing from Uncle Sam.

The two pronged attack by liberalism

First, we had a panic induced piece of legislation pushed through that dramatically increased the size of the government. Labeled a “stimulus” bill, the reality is that what the bill contained was mostly pork, social welfare spending and income redistribution policies. Very little in the bill will create jobs and even less of it will lead to long term economic growth. That is the first wave.

Now we are seeing the other hand, a panic about the size of the deficit that is being created in large part by the giant spending bill that Obama just signed! That is the insidious genius of Obama, that he gets people in a panic to fix the mess he just made worse! What is the solution of the Obama White House to reduce the deficit? Cutting spending? Of course not!

Mr. Geithner said that the proposed budget will reduce deficits in part by "restoring fairness to the tax code." That will be accomplished by taxing the gains of Wall Street fund managers at ordinary income rates, instead of lower capital gains rates.

In Washington speak, “restoring fairness to the tax code” means big tax increases, but as pointed out before even taxing every taxable penny of “the rich” who already pay the lion’s share of taxes will not do the trick. It goes without saying that between the giant deficit spending bills Obama has pushed through in the first two months of his administration and the looming unfunded mandates of Medicare and Social Security, the only way to pull it off is going to be deeper and wide tax increases, some directly on your income and others indirectly or more subtly in gas taxes and the carbon emission “cap and trade” scheme that will pass enormous costs on to business and eventually consumers. Nothing like crippling a seriously damaged economy by punishing success, investment, innovation and risk taking,

Rest assured that we will keep hearing the refrain of this mess being Bush’s fault, but it is instructive to note that since Obama has taken office and especially since he announced this ludicrous $4,000,000,000,000 budget, the stock markets have plummeted to lows we haven’t seen since 1997. At some point, even an apathetic public is going to have to see beyond the media spin and realize that Obama is bent on driving this country into economic ruin and a mirror image of the failed Western European social welfare state.

More on the budgetary smoke and mirrors

It is pretty easy to put forth a budget and explain how you are going to pay for it when reality has no bearing on those numbers. In a masterful job of talking out of both sides of your mouth and getting away with it, President Obama is signing hundreds of billions in new pork barrel spending one day, calling for fiscal restraint and a reduction of the deficit on the next day and then proposing a massive budget with hundreds of billions in new spending on health insurance above and beyond what is already in place in an era of declining revenue. He claims that he can find savings in wasteful spending and by letting tax cuts expire on “the rich” and only impact the top 2% of taxpayers.

One word for you: Baloney!

In a piece titled “The 2% Illusion”, the Wall Street Journal lays to rest the notion that we can have an enormous increase in spending and only those rich fat cats are going to have to pay for it.

One of the most grotesque aspects of the modern Democrat Party is their faux populism. When you see filthy rich white liberals proclaiming the need for the rich to pay their fair share while riding in limos and flying first class, alarm bells should be going off. Although the Left doesn’t like facts, they are troublesome to set aside and these are the facts when it comes to the rich paying “their fair share”:

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

Even taking the neo-socialist agenda of Obama and company to its logical extreme and taking every taxable dime of the “rich” is not going to get it done…

But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

Ah those facts, so troubling and inconvenient!

A 2010 Federal budget of almost four trillion dollars (that is $4,000,000,000,000) means that given the approximately 300 million people in America, the Federal government is spending (and taxing and borrowing) on your behalf around $13,000+ for every man, woman and child. With a median household income in 2007 of $50,233 nationally, and presuming an average household size of four people (two adults and two kids) that means that we have approximately 75 million households in America. Thus the Federal government in 2010 is spending the equivalent of $52,000 per household, which is more than the media household income nationally. These statistics may be a little off, I am not using a scientific metholodgy here but the point remains that the Federal government in 2010 is proposing to spend more per household than the median household makes in a year. Does anyone else see a problem with that?

So what do you get for $787,000,000,000?

Not much. The Wall Street Journal put together a nice chart of the spending allocations for the Porkulus Bill. The Journal is about the only national paper that you can get news from that doesn’t have reporters screaming and fainting like teen girls at a Jonas Brothers concert over Obama. This chart does not drill down to the 9000 earmarked pet projects, this is just the “big picture”. The picture it paints is hardly what a rational person would expect to find in a bill that was foisted on us as being our only hope to stave off catastrophe. Here is a sample…

Salaries for staff to modernize IT system at Farm Service Agency: $50,000,000

Adult and child day care meals and snacks: $100,000,000

Extra money for Census: $1,000,000,000

National Cemetery renovations and repairs: $50,000,000

The internet is a big winner in the Porkulus Bill (which is only right since Al Gore invented it and he should have been President anyway because he should have won Florida even though none of the counts showed him getting more actual votes than George Bush) . In a time of economic crisis, nothing is more important than people being able to get high speed internet. How can we have a functioning economy without YouTube clips and illegally downloaded music!

Salaries and expenses for program to create broadband inventory map of the country: $350,000,000 (that is an expensive map!)

Grants to provide wireless and broadband infrastructure to communities, including public computer centers and sustainable adoption of broadband service: $4,350,000,000

Broadband grants to rural communities (farmers need YouTube too!): $2,500,000,000

Absolutely vital , each and ever line item. Think how catastrophic it would be if the Farm Service Agency didn’t get updated computers. Oh the humanity! Snacks for elderly daycare, yummy! Renovations to the National Cemetery. On and on and on. No wonder they crammed this thing through before people got a good look at it. How can we live without $85,000,000 for “Indian Health Services IT development and deployment” or $50,000,000 for “Grants to fund arts projects in non-profit sector”?

The best part is the money going back to states. So on our behalf, the Federal government is going to take almost $800,000,000,000 from us in taxes and debt. Then they are going to filter that through Washington, D.C. Then they are going to send a huge chunk of it to Governor Jennifer Granholm, paragon of fiscal responsibility and sound government (who else can brag that even though the whole nation is in a recession, Michigan has been in a deeper and worse recession than any other state. We’re number 1!). Once Jenny gets done tinkering around with our money, she and the state legislature are then going to dole it out to pet projects all around the state. Meanwhile, the average Michigander still won’t be able to sell their house, find a new job or send their kids to a decent school.

Remember that when this was passed, it was designed to head of economic collapse and food riots in the streets. Some of this spending is useful, some of it may be vital. But don’t sell us a bill that is designed to head of imminent collapse and then hide a bunch of random spending in it and still tell us it is a “stimulus” bill. It is nothing but a massive expansion of the Federal government and did nothing to fix the major issues that are crippling the economy, i.e. a train wreck in the consumer and business credit markets.

This is pork barrel spending on an unprecedented level, and it was sold to America by scare-mongering in D.C. with the willing participation and encouragement of the mainstream media. All that is left now is for the American people to pay back the $800,000,000,000 bill.