Please join us for a brief prayer service
for the Indiana General Assembly at Christ's Church on the Circle in downtown
Indianapolis on Wednesday, January 9, at 6 p.m.
This will be the third time we've gathered with legislators and members of
our Board of Directors along with IFI prayer network members and other friends
of the Institute.
INDIANAPOLIS -- More than 150 companies from across the state, the country and around the world committed to create more than 22,600 new jobs in the Hoosier state this year, breaking the state's previous job commitment record set just a year ago.
Huckabee opposes school choice, earning him the coveted endorsement of the National Education Association of New Hampshire, which is like the sheriff being endorsed by the local whorehouse.
He is, however, in favor of school choice for kids in Mexico: They have the choice of going to school there or here. Huckabee promoted giving in-state tuition in Arkansas to illegal immigrants from Mexico -- but not to U.S. citizens from Ohio. "I don't believe you punish the children," he said, "for the crime and sins of the parents."
Since when is not offering someone lavish taxpayer-funded benefits a form of punishment? That's almost as crazy as a governor pardoning a known sex offender so he can go out and rape and kill.
Our damning documents come courtesy of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS), which requires “humane societies” to annually report their euthanasia rates. PETA filed the required “Animal Record” reports from 1998 to 2005. These records show that during those years, PETA killed over 14,400 dogs, cats, and other shelter pets at its Norfolk headquarters.
PETA’s solution to what could generously be termed an ongoing “credibility problem” is brilliant in its simplicity: Just ignore the law.
PETA is no longer complying with VDACS’ legal reporting requirement.Let’s begin with one of the most famous phrases: "There’s no room at the inn." This phrase is often invoked as if it were a cruel and heartless dismissal of the tired travelers Joseph and Mary. Many renditions of the story conjure up images of the couple going from inn to inn only to have the owner barking at them to go away and slamming the door.
In fact, the inns were full to overflowing in the entire Holy Land because of the Roman emperor’s decree that everyone be counted and taxed. Inns are private businesses, and customers are their lifeblood. There would have been no reason to turn away this man of aristocratic lineage and his beautiful, expecting bride.
In any case, the second chapter of St. Luke doesn’t say that they were continually rejected at place after place. It tells of the charity of a single inn owner, perhaps the first person they encountered, who, after all, was a businessman. His inn was full, but he offered them what he had: the stable. There is no mention that the innkeeper charged the couple even one copper coin, though given his rights as a property owner, he certainly could have.
It’s remarkable, then, to think that when the Word was made flesh with the birth of Jesus, it was through the intercessory work of a private businessman. Without his assistance, the story would have been very different indeed. People complain about the "commercialization" of Christmas, but clearly commerce was there from the beginning, playing an essential and laudable role.
And yet we don’t even know the innkeeper’s name. In two thousand years of celebrating Christmas, tributes today to the owner of the inn are absent. Such is the fate of the merchant throughout all history: doing well, doing good, and forgotten for his service to humanity.
Clearly, if there was a room shortage, it was an unusual event and brought about through some sort of market distortion. After all, if there had been frequent shortages of rooms in Bethlehem, entrepreneurs would have noticed that there were profits to be made by addressing this systematic problem, and built more inns.
It was because of a government decree that Mary and Joseph, and so many others like them, were traveling in the first place. They had to be uprooted for fear of the emperor’s census workers and tax collectors. And consider the costs of slogging all the way "from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David," not to speak of the opportunity costs Joseph endured having to leave his own business. Thus we have another lesson: government’s use of coercive dictates distorts the market.
Moving on in the story, we come to Three Kings, also called Wise Men. Talk about a historical anomaly for both to go together! Most Kings behaved like the Roman Emperor's local enforcer, Herod. Not only did he order people to leave their homes and foot the bill for travel so that they could be taxed. Herod was also a liar: he told the Wise Men that he wanted to find Jesus so that he could "come and adore Him." In fact, Herod wanted to kill Him. Hence, another lesson: you can’t trust a political hack to tell the truth.
Once having found the Holy Family, what gifts did the Wise Men bring? Not soup and sandwiches, but "gold, frankincense, and myrrh." These were the most rare items obtainable in that world in those times, and they must have commanded a very high market price.
Far from rejecting them as extravagant, the Holy Family accepted them as gifts worthy of the Divine Messiah. Neither is there a record that suggests that the Holy Family paid any capital gains tax on them, though such gifts vastly increased their net wealth. Hence, another lesson: there is nothing immoral about wealth; wealth is something to be valued, owned privately, given and exchanged.
When the Wise Men and the Holy Family got word of Herod’s plans to kill the newborn Son of God, did they submit? Not at all. The Wise Men, being wise, snubbed Herod and "went back another way" – taking their lives in their hands (Herod conducted a furious search for them later). As for Mary and Joseph, an angel advised Joseph to "take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt." In short, they resisted. Lesson number four: the angels are on the side of those who resist government.
In the Gospel narratives, the role of private enterprise, and the evil of government power, only begin there. Jesus used commercial examples in his parables (e.g., laborers in the vineyard, the parable of the talents) and made it clear that he had come to save even such reviled sinners as tax collectors.
And just as His birth was facilitated by the owner of an "inn," the same Greek word "kataluma" is employed to describe the location of the Last Supper before Jesus was crucified by the government. Thus, private enterprise was there from birth, through life, and to death, providing a refuge of safety and productivity, just as it has in ours.
Consider this: The world population in 1 AD was about 200 million. By 1000 AD it had grown by less than forty percent to 275 million. In 1750 the population had grown another 154 percent to 700 million. That’s when it happened.Eric Schansberg's well researched article on eugenics is an excellent resource.
The world’s inhabitants began to multiply exponentially. By 1900 there were 1.6 billion people and that grew to 6.1 billion in the year 2000. Of those, 800 million were added to our planet between 1990 and 2000. The ten-year growth alone was more than the entire world population of 1750.
I find it significant that the beginning of the population explosion preceded the industrial revolution of the 1800s. There is a direct correlation. The more people on the planet, the more advanced we become. The parallel is undeniable.
So how does the increase in population drive the updraft in technology? The answer is simple. Not only are there more people; there are more smart people. When the population doubles, the number of intelligent people also doubles.
In 2005 there were 128 million geniuses (people with IQs in the top 2 percentile.) That’s the equivalent of 64 percent of the entire world population in 1 AD. We live in a world of geniuses. (The rest of us are along for the ride.)
The population explosion produced a swell of intelligence that, in turn, engendered technological advances. The knowledge explosion was predicted by Daniel as one of two characteristics that would signal the era of the latter day Antiochus. “Many shall run to and fro,” he wrote “and knowledge shall be increased.”
Ron Paul is no compassionate conservative. His supporters love him for it.
If there's been a phenomenon in this Republican presidential race, it's been the strength of a fiery doctor from Texas and his message of limited government. As the GOP front-runners address crowds of dispirited primary voters, Mr. Paul has been tearing across the country, leaving a trail of passionate devotees in his wake...
Mr. Paul isn't going to be president. He trails in national polls, in no small part because his lack of a proactive foreign policy makes him an unserious candidate in today's terror world. But his success still holds lessons for the leading Republican candidates, as well as those pundits falling for the argument that the future of the GOP rests in a "heroic conservatism" that embraces big government. Mr. Paul shows that the way to many Republican voters' hearts is still through a spirited belief in lower taxes and smaller government, with more state and individual rights...
In contrast, we have President Bush and much of the Republican representation in Congress...
"Compassionate conservatism" was a smart move on George W. Bush's part, maybe even necessary to win. The GOP was dogged by a reputation as the heartless party, amplified by the 1995 government shutdown and the clunky Dole campaign. And it had learned from the success of welfare reform that message matters. Many Republican voters believed Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was just that: a way of selling conservative reforms. Tax cuts would help the working poor. Vouchers would help minority kids. Charities would fare better getting people off drugs than government bureaucrats. Mr. Bush got his tax cuts, but voters found out too late that he was no small-government believer....
Strassel's wrap-up...
If Mr. Paul has shown anything, it's that many conservative voters continue to doubt there's anything "heroic" or "compassionate" in a ballooning government that sucks up their dollars to aid a dysfunctional state. When Mr. Paul gracefully exits this race, his followers will be looking for an alternative to take up that cause. Any takers?
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) had an opportunity to help deliver a victory at the ballot box in Utah in November, when voters decided whether to repeal the state’s universal school voucher program....
[Statewide] Vouchers have a poor track record at the ballot box....
Romney was uniquely positioned to lend a helping hand: His popularity in a state where more than 60 percent of citizens share his religion is obvious. While on the campaign trail, Romney has stated he supports school choice and vouchers. Skeptics might note that as governor, vouchers were not a priority for Romney.
The Utah initiative gave Romney the opportunity to prove his bona fides as a strong school voucher supporter at a critical time. By urging his supporters to give this program a chance, he could ensure that more parents control where their kids go to school and help Utah become a national model for universal school choice.
Hey, maybe Romney should have received the NEA's endorsement instead of Huckabee!A record eight million Americans moved from one state to another last year. Where is everyone going, and why? The answer has little to do with climate: California has arguably the nicest climate of any state in the nation -- yet in this decade more Americans have left the Golden State than entered it.
Migration patterns instead reveal which states have the most dynamic and desirable economies, and which are "has-been" states. The winners in this contest for the most valuable resource on the globe -- human capital -- are generally the states with the lowest tax, spending and regulatory burdens. The biggest losers are almost all congregated in the Northeast and Midwest. Liberals contend that tax rates, regulations, forced union laws and runaway government spending don't matter when it comes to creating jobs, high incomes and a higher quality of life. People tell us otherwise by voting with their feet.
Liberals generally claim to embrace logic, reason, and evidence. One would hope they'd do the same here...
Of all the policy variables we examined, two stand out as perhaps the most important in attracting jobs and capital. The first is the income tax rate. States with the highest income tax rates -- California and New York, for example -- are significantly outperformed by the nine states with no income tax, such as Texas and Florida. As a study from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Board put it: "Relative marginal tax rates have a statistically significant negative relationship with relative state growth."
The other factor for attracting jobs and capital is right-to-work laws. States that permit workers to be compelled to join unions have much lower rates of employment growth than states that don't. Many companies say they will not even consider locating a factory in a state that does not have a right-to-work law.
Our study also finds that states with antigrowth tax and spending policies don't just lose people. Noncompetitive states like New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois and New Jersey are plagued by falling housing values, a shrinking tax base, business outmigration, capital flight and high unemployment rates, and less money for schools, roads and aging infrastructure. These factors of decline hurt the poor the most.
Liberals often claim that their policies help the working poor and those in the middle class. That's rarely the case, in practice-- as evidenced (again) here...Finally, Laffer and Moore's punchlines...
The states losing population are in effect suffering from a slow-motion version of the economic sclerosis that paralyzed much of Europe in the 1980s and '90s, particularly France and Germany with their massive welfare systems. At least the European socialist nations are finally starting to change their taxing and spending ways to win back jobs.
No such luck in this country. Five of the states near the bottom of our competitiveness ratings -- Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey and Wisconsin -- have enacted major tax increases in the last two years. Maryland and Michigan just raised business and income taxes on upper-income earners, while arguing that raising the cost of doing business will attract more businesses. More likely it will induce companies to stay away, and people to move out.
I'm really proud of it. The history is very interesting; the philosophical and religious links are provocative; and the contemporary applications are important and wide-ranging.
I hoped the longer version would find a home at a larger newspaper, but there haven't been any takers yet-- not surprising given its length (1800 words). The longer version as well as a shorter version was released to newspapers state-wide today.
Uncle Uriah Marcus visited us on Thanksgiving. It took over a week to recover. He blames "the @#%$# unions" for most of our state's woes. Uncle Uriah asserts "them big unions scares businesses away from Indiannie."
A sample of his views:
High property taxes: It's the teachers' union fault because they keep pushing up their earnings and reducing their responsibility.
Well, it does contribute somewhat. We know that 1/4 of the recent 24% increase in property taxes connects to increased local spending-- and much of that is on schools, and some part of that is connected to that interest group. States with prevailing wage laws have it worse-- unions support laws that reduce their competition, increase their effective wages, and increase taxes.
From there, Marcus points to a litany of other (at most) minor issues-- before pointing to the political impact of public sector unions.
Government: Union members vote as they are told to, as a block, and thus can destroy or make any candidate in any election, anywhere in the state.
Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But beyond that, there is some/much truth to the claim: it is politically risky to run counter to the desires of a potent special interest group! Depending on the state/region-- and especially within local politics where fire and police interests are so strong-- this can be anything from a modest to an overwhelming issue.
What do unions bring with them? One thing is a questionable certainty: union members earn more than their non-unionized comrades. In 2006, the premium earned by union members was 30 percent over those not in unions. But that may not be comparing comparable jobs.
It may be that the specific industry is more important than the presence or absence of unions in determining wages. For a fair comparison, we'd have to have data for union and non-union workers doing the same jobs, in the same places. Rather than unions scaring businesses from Indiana, may be the firms already here which pay high wages discourage new entrants.
It should be noted that Marcus is careful here with data that are often abused.
Are unions a primary explanation for economic growth or its absence? No. But how can artificially higher wages and taxes be a good thing for an economy? The larger issue is that pro-union legislation is typically correlated with other policies which are harmful to an economy. (I'll blog on this, based on a recent WSJ article, shortly.)
"Democrats are committed to ending years of irresponsible budget policies that have produced historic deficits. Instead of compiling trillions of dollars of debt onto our children and grandchildren, we will restore pay-as-you-go budget discipline."--Speaker Nancy Pelosi, December 12, 2006
Well, as Emily Litella, the half-witted Gilda Radner character on Saturday Night Live, would have put it: "Never mind." Last week Congressional Democrats formally renounced their ballyhooed budget pledge to offset any new tax cuts with other tax increases or spending cuts. We're delighted to see this false promise go, but there's a larger lesson in this failure for the tax and spending battles of 2008.
Senate Democrats gave up on "paygo," as it's called, when they realized they lacked the votes to offset the $50.6 billion cost of protecting more than 20 million middle-class taxpayers from getting whacked by the Alternative Minimum Tax this year. They've spent the year floating all kinds of tax increases to make up the difference. But in the end they passed an AMT relief bill without a penny to pay for it. Paygo is now pay gone.
C-ya...
We should stress that this is the right decision for the economy and the federal budget. The AMT was never supposed to hit the middle class, and it only does so now because the Democrats who designed it failed to index it for inflation and raised AMT rates under Bill Clinton in 1993....
Politicians aren't typically good about seeing the long-term consequences of their actions, indexing things to inflation, and so on.
But paygo shouldn't be allowed to expire without everyone kicking sand on its grave. That's because it has been nothing but a confidence game from the very start. Paygo doesn't apply to domestic discretionary spending, and it doesn't restrain spending increases under current law in entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Its main goals are to make tax cutting all but impossible, while letting Democrats pretend to favor "fiscal discipline," a la Ms. Pelosi's boast above.
Boom!
Then there is the House farm bill awaiting action in the Senate. That spending marathon includes between $5 billion and $10 billion in fictitious paygo savings by shifting the date of farm aid payments from one year to another. If a Fortune 500 CEO did that sort of thing, he'd be indicted.
Maybe that's why they like Social Security too. In addition to being a brutal "investment" for the working poor, it's actuarially unsound.
House Democrats realize how humiliating this all is, so they're still vowing to make paygo work. Especially embarrassed are the so-called Blue Dog Democrats for whom "fiscal discipline" is a coat of political protection. John Tanner of Tennessee is so upset he says the Senate paygo abdication "is bordering on criminal," and about 30 Blue Dogs are threatening to vote against AMT repeal without offsetting tax increases. They'd have more credibility if they also opposed the various fiscal gimmicks in the Schip and farm bills, not to mention the 2008 Congressional budget outline that exceeded President Bush's budget request by $22 billion....
Blah, blah, blah...It'll be interesting to see how the "Blue Dogs" spin this.
The larger relevance of this episode concerns the 2008 campaign. Hillary Clinton in particular has made paygo a major campaign theme because it makes her sound like a fiscal conservative while helping to justify tax increases. But, lo, guess who was missing on Thursday when the Senate voted 88-5 to ignore paygo on the AMT? None other than the candidate herself, along with Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. To quote another Saturday Night Live character, "How convenient."
Good stuff...
Demand for the Bible is soaring in officially-atheist China, at a time when meteoric economic growth is testing the country's allegiance to Communist doctrine, the Times of London reports. Now, the demand in China for Bibles is such that Amity Printing, a joint venture between Chinese Christian charity and the United Bible Societies, a Protestant organization, can barely keep pace.
Early next year it will move into a new, much larger factory on the edge of the eastern city of Nanjing to become the world's single-biggest producer of Bibles.
"This platform has been built as a blessing to the nation. It will print Bibles for China for as long as it takes to do it," said New Zealander Peter Dean, of the United Bible Societies.
In careful adherence to China's laws that prohibit evangelizing, the Bible is not on sale in mainstream Chinese bookshops but through a distribution system managed by the official church, such as stalls set up for people attending morning service, according to the Times of London report.
Additional details in the article from the Times-- on the numbers, the rampant growth of Christianity presumably among younger people in China (and the implications for one's eschatological views), and the religious baggage of the "Cultural Revolution"...Of the 50 million Bibles Amity has printed, 41 million were for the faithful in Chinese and eight minority languages. The rest have been for export to Russia and Africa. Sales surged from 505,000 in 1988 to a high of 6.5 million in 2005. Output last year was 3.5 million and is expected to rise in 2007.
One of Mr Dean’s bestsellers is a pocket Bible, a version not suitable for the older generation to read and which may indicate a rapid expansion in the number of new, younger believers. He cited a surge in demand during the Sars crisis in 2003, but refrained from commenting. The enterprise has clearly flourished through its discretion and careful adherence to China’s laws that prohibit evangelising...
A country where the Communist ideology has lost much credibility is seeing an upsurge in conversions to Christianity. Li Baiguang, a prominent lawyer and Christian activist who was received by President Bush at the White House last year, said: “Rising wealth means that more and more people have been able to meet their material needs, the need for food and clothing.
“Then they are finding that they need to satisfy their spiritual needs, to look for happiness for the soul. In addition, they are seeing a breakdown in the moral order as money takes over. Thus, more and more people are turning to Christianity.”
In the ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, Bibles were burnt as tomes of superstition. Much has altered since the 1980s when government policy required tourists and visitors not to bring in Bibles “in excess of personal use”. Many faithful took to smuggling the book into China to meet demand....
It is such a sensitive issue that Chinese officials denied rumours recently that China would ban international athletes from bringing in Bibles to the Olympics in Beijing next August. However, the official Olympic website states: “Each traveller is recommended to take no more than one Bible into China.”
But...Ethnicity | 1990 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
All Races | 28.0% | 35.8% | 36.9% | 38.5% |
Whites | 16.9% | 24.5% | 25.3% | 26.6% |
Hispanics | 36.7% | 46.4% | 48.0% | 49.9% |
Blacks | 66.5% | 69.3% | 69.9% | 70.7% |
Indiana has a petition-remonstrance process that allows local taxpayers a say in whether a proposed bond issue will be allowed to proceed. Less than one-half of such remonstrances, however, are won by protesting taxpayers. Gov. Mitch Daniels has proposed replacing this with a referendum process whereby voters would decide proposed school bond issues up or down. But will it be any better?
The answer depends on the data used in whatever process is adopted.
Both sides of a proposed bond issue typically play to emotions. The school boards piously proclaim “it’s for the kids” and that the future of the community rests upon the approval of the proposed project. The remonstrators might just as loudly proclaim that businesses will leave and many retirees, poor people and even middle-class residents will lose their homes to foreclosure because they won’t be able to pay the higher property taxes.
School bond issue campaigns in Indiana are always long on rhetoric and short on facts. What is needed is just the opposite. The referendum process as proposed by the governor may be just as doomed as the current petition-remonstrance process. That is because it doesn’t matter which process is used.
The criteria and guidelines used by the state and local school boards are inadequate to answer that question....
Three indexes have been constructed to help a community address those questions: 1) a school-district affordability index; 2) a community-affordability index; and 3) an individual and family affordability index. These indexes incorporate 54 possible quantitative measurements as criteria for determining affordability.Without the use of such quantitative data, regardless of whether the governor’s reform is approved, Indiana school bond campaigns will continue to be long on rhetoric and short on facts-- to the detriment of Indiana citizens who must ultimately make decisions on school-construction issues.
The longer version-- a "white paper"-- is available here-- through the IPR's website.
"A new study suggests that the wave of illegal aliens is having a more serious impact — particularly on welfare spending — than commonly believed. Is anyone in Washington listening?" — IBD Editorial
Talk about fired up...
• Joe Biden said he opposed those who pit blacks and browns against each other (apparently feeling guilty about pitting Anita Hill against Clarence Thomas).
I got out my calculator.
• Edwards also suggested there were more illegal Irish immigrants than Hispanic. If I remember correctly (I could be wrong) he used sixty percent as the number of Irish illegally in this country.
