Morning Briefing
For December 14, 2012
1. The Evangelists’ Failure
Somewhere in America this week, Protestant Christ followers will donate money to fund missionaries. The offering for the Lottie Moon fund will be collected. Mission to the World will get a check. The Foreign Mission Board will be funded and prayed for. The Salvation Army bell will be rung.
Around the nation, Evangelical America will, throughout the year, hear tales of their missions, missionaries, and their money at work drawing people in foreign lands and occasional parts of the United States to Christ. They will hear of using their money to rebuild churches and homes after disaster, to care for the homeless, and to fund retirements of past preachers of the Truth. They will get lists of where their missionaries are, some with the word “Sensitive” in place of the name of China or Syria or Cuba. They will pray.
On Monday morning, many in Evangelical America will get up and take their kids off to a church affiliated school, having chosen to remove their children from declining, failing, and secular government schools. Others will wake and teach their children themselves, sometimes combining with other parents to homeschool.
On Sunday morning, many curious new comers will probably go into a church not called a church lest it deter them, where they will experience a Christ who may or may not be as they seek the Christ who is and was when they were young and more open to receiving him The conversion of the flock is not as difficult when done at an early age when the mind is still open to the miraculous. “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
What Evangelical America will most likely not do this week or this Sunday or any week or any Sunday is write a check to send a stranger’s child in a government school to a Christian school. This is one of the greatest failure of the evangelical church in the United States of America. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
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2. Why You Can’t Trade Taxes For Spending
Should Republicans trade tax hikes for spending cuts? Much of the debate over the current fiscal cliff standoff centers around discussions of “ratios”: Republicans will agree to X dollars of tax hikes, Democrats will agree to Y dollars of spending cuts, and so forth.
Much of this discussion is based on numbers that are misleading or worse, because Washington doesn’t calculate taxes and spending the same way. A tax hike will raise real, immediate costs on real taxpayers, whether or not it actually raises any more revenue. The targets of a tax hike are citizens, who do not have a choice whether to obey. By contrast, a “spending cut” may simply involve altering future projections of the rate of increase of spending, and thus agreements to cut spending rarely actually result in less spending. And the targets of such spending cuts are future Congresses, who can disregard them at will; they’re not binding.
The only real equivalents to tax hikes are (1) complete elimination of federal spending programs or (2) changes in the eligibility criteria or benefits formulas for entitlement programs. There are fair arguments about the best GOP strategy in managing the tax debate, but if a negotiated agreement is to be reached that will require Republican votes to pass, Republicans should not even consider agreeing to trade tax hikes in exchange for anything less. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
3. BTW: The GOP just took control of Washington’s state Senate.
One wonders how, given that the existing plan has been signed off on by the entire incoming GOP state Senate Caucus. The way the deal goes: Tom and Sheldon get to be in charge. The Republicans get to control crucial committees like Ways and Means, Commerce and Labor, Health Care* – and, here’s the fun one: they get to pick the majority floor leader. That’s the person who decides which bill goes to which committee, which is another way of saying “the person who can kill or save bills.” The Democrats get… to play with the parks and beaches, of which I understand Washington state has some very nice examples. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
4. Dog Bites Man. Man Bites Back: The UAW’s King made Michigan’s Right-To-Work bed.
When the union bosses and the institutional left look to assign blame for Michigan’s newly enacted Right-to-Work law, they can blame the enactment of the new law giving Michigan workers the freedom to choose whether or not to pay union dues on one particular Marxist lawyer. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
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