A Word About Egypt

I want to start out by saying that I believe religious liberty (for people of ANY faith or NO faith) should be a basic premise of any culture. 

I am a Christian.  I believe deeply what Jesus Christ said in John 14:6 – “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Those who do not follow Christ have every right to believe as they do, but as a Christian, I want all who do not follow Christ to have every opportunity to do so – and their misdirected faith is a source of sadness to me, rather than anger.  As a Christian, my primary function in life is to spread the good news of the salvation brought by Jesus, not to drive non-believers away from it.

With that said, I want to emphasize that non-belief should be respected and tolerated, not supported.  This subject is brought to mind by a news item that I read today.  In Egypt, a woman and her seven children have been sentenced to 15 years in prison for their conversion to Christianity.

Nadia Mohamed Ali was raised as a Christian.  She converted to Islam 23 years ago when she married Mohamed Abdel-Wahhab Mustafa, a Muslim.  After his death, she decided to convert back to Christianity.  It is that action that precipitated the sentence against her and her children.  As a Christian, I could succumb to the temptation to question her faith and her religious conviction – whether to Christianity or to Islam.  But the Bible clearly teaches me that the relationship between any individual and God is judged only by God – so I will leave it where it belongs.

My real issue in this story is something else.  Something not directly involved in the story.

The United States government has, currently does, and clearly plans to continue to send aid to the Egyptian government.  Beyond any cash aid, the US is scheduled to start deliveries later this month (January, 2013) of 10 F-16 fighter jets and 200 Abrams tanks.  That is about $213 million in military aid to a country that has no interest in religious liberty.  The deal was made some time ago – when Hosni Mubarak was President of Egypt.  Since it was approved by Congress at that time, it can only be withdrawn by the President.  Obama has shown no interest in rescinding the aid, thought, even though it is now destined to go to a regime headed by Mohamed Morsi, who in 2010 said of Jews and Israelis that they were “Descendents of Apes and Pigs” and “Bloodsuckers.”

To those that would say it is not the function of the United States to dictate the policies of other governments, I would respond with complete agreement.  I would further respond, though, that it is not the function of the United States to support governments that promote policies so diametrically opposed to our own, and have policies so antagonistic to our firm and long-term allies.

When we look at the importance of religious liberty in the community of nations and at the attitude of the Morsi regime toward Israel, our staunchest ally in the region, it makes no sense at all for the United States to follow through with this aid.

Free Speech vs. Hate Crimes

I’m not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar. I am an average American Citizen with an interest in the future of our country. A citizen that tries to apply common sense and historical truth to the issues of the day to determine appropriate paths for national progress. This piece – and anything else I might write – is written from that perspective.

It is time (far past the appropriate time, actually) for a return to Constitutional rights in this country. Equal rights and equal opportunities for all. That’s a concept that pretty much everyone is ready to support – until they start looking at what it really means.

First and foremost, equal rights and equal opportunities for all means no special rights or special opportunities for any. If some group has rights that others don’t have, there is clearly no equality of rights.

Probably the first target of such a movement would be hate crimes legislation. Murder is a crime. It doesn’t matter who was murdered, who committed the murder, or what the motivation for the murder was. The victim is no more dead because of one motivation than because of another. Libel and slander are crimes. Whether committed for financial or political benefit, or to simply cause harm to the victim out of ill will, the crime is the same. The idea that there should be a special punishment because of the state of mind of the person uttering the statements is absurd. While existing – and proposed – hate crimes laws cover a variety of crimes, my focus at this time is the area of speech.

The very first amendment in our “Bill of Rights” says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

It is interesting to note that laws have been passed and remain in effect that are clearly in defiance of this simple constitution tenet. And many in our country clamor for even more such laws. In slander and libel laws, truth is a defense. That is, if I am accused of slandering you, an effective defense would be that I told the truth, regardless of my motivation in telling that truth.

In a nation of people largely ignorant of our Constitution and the Federalist Papers, which give great insight into the Founding Fathers’ intent in establishing the Constitution, phrases like “freedom of speech” have taken on entirely new meanings that are significantly divergent from their original meanings. At the time of the establishment of our Constitution, the idea that one might freely speak his mind on almost any subject with impunity was so established as to not require any mention.

There was, however, one area of speech where the British Parliament and colonial governments did not allow speech – even true speech – with impunity. That was the area of seditious libel. To be guilty of seditious libel, the accused need not have said anything untrue. Simply speaking truth that was unfavorable to the government (or individuals in that government) was a crime. That was clearly the area addressed in the first amendment.

So, does that mean that our freedom of speech in other areas is not absolute? Certainly not. It means that our right to freedom of speech in other areas is so clear, and so absolute, that it did not need addressing. Just as we were not given a specific “freedom to breathe” because questioning or limiting one’s right to breathe would have been patently absurd.

That having been said, our legal system seems to have established over the years some situations where an abridgement of free speech is deemed to be appropriate. In those cases, though, it is not the speech itself that is abridged, but rather the commission of a crime in which the speech is simply the manner of committing the crime. An example of this would be inciting a riot. Urging others to commit a crime is a crime. Speech (whether verbal, written or hand signals) is simply the tool used to commit the crime.

All of that brings me back to the area of hate crimes laws. There are a multitude of statements that may be subject to criminal prosecution on hate crime laws. Some of these statements might be simply incorrect. Others might be tasteless. Some might be offensive to some part of the population, whether a great part or a small part, even though they are completely true. But if they do not aim to incite violence against some individual or group, they simply amount to a person speaking his mind – whether a brilliant mind, a narrow mind, a shallow mind, or an incompetent mind.

There was a time within my memory when the reaction of most people to someone making an outrageous statement would be either “He’s sure got that right!” (I don’t care WHAT you say, there will be people who agree) or “What an idiot,” in which case they would argue the point or simply walk away – which includes turning off the radio or TV. The reaction was not an attempt to silence the speaker. That was in the day when people still stood by the idea “I detest what you’re saying, but will defend to my death your right to say it.”

Is There Any Hope For Our Economy?

My comments today are so painfully obvious, they shouldn’t even need to be expressed, but it is clear that many Americans either are unaware of the problem (maybe they’ve been living in a cave for the past few years) or are in such a state of denial that they’ve convinced themselves that the United States government can simply decide to repeal all know rules of economics and common sense.

It’s interesting that many people don’t give much thought to the finances of our country. Maybe these same people don’t give much thought to their personal finances. I don’t know. But a disaster in our nation’s finances is even worse than a disaster in your personal finances, because no matter how well you handle your personal finances a bad national economy is going to hurt you.

To be candid about it, I don’t like economics. Don’t like thinking about economics, don’t like talking about economics. This is a hangover from taking economics classes that seemed eternally bound to make the simple complex. But the truth of the matter is when you get down to looking at it, most of economics is common sense. Maybe that’s why the application of it is lost on Congress. To the extent that economists – or our elected representatives – work hard to make the application of economics to our national finances sound difficult or arcane, you know they are telling you to “be quiet and let the grownups take care of these things.”

If you earn $1,000 this month, but spend $1,724, you have a DEFICIT of $724. You have borrowed $0.42 of every $1.00 you spent. Since you spent the money that you don’t have, you have a DEBT of $724. Now you have less than $1,000 available the following month, because you have to make a payment on the debt. If you have the same income and spend the same amount the next month, your deficit is LARGER than $724, because part of your income went to service the debt incurred in the first month, and now your debt is more than your monthly income. You are borrowing money to continue the same lifestyle, and you are borrowing money to make payments on the debt you’ve incurred to maintain that lifestyle. If you continue to do this, at some point you will find that creditors are unwilling to extend credit to you any longer. Additionally, creditors will probably start using any means at their disposal to accelerate the repayment of your debt. Maybe they start repossessing things that were purchased on credit.

That is exactly where the United States is now. We have a national debt of $13.562 trillion as of September 30, 2010. That’s a LOT of money. I heard a description recently to help envision $1 trillion. If you covered a football field seven feet deep in neat stacks of $100 bills, that would be about $1 trillion. Didn’t really help me. I still can’t conceive of that amount of money.

I came up with another one. If it was your job to count $100 bills eight hours per day, five days per week, 50 weeks per year (even from counting money full-time, you’d want a vacation), and you did that for 30 years – you wouldn’t count to $1 trillion. Let’s say it’s a hereditary job and you pass it on to your child when you retire, and they pick up where you left off and count for 30 years. Still not there. It would take over 46 generations (46 plus 9 years into the 47th) to count just ONE trillion dollars. Pretty amazing, but even that didn’t help. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think human beings can actually grasp numbers that big.

Anyway, with those mental pictures in mind, consider that our Gross Domestic Product (on a national level, pretty much the same as your household income on an individual level) was $14.256 trillion for 2009. Basically, putting it down to an individual level – we owe as much as we make in a year. And the debt levels are rising.

At rates projected by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management & Budget, our national debt will nearly double by 2020. Now, that wouldn’t be quite as bad as it sounds if our GDP increased at a rate to keep up – a rate where the debt as a percentage of GDP decreased, even though the absolute debt number increased – but that isn’t happening.

For the past nine years (including this year), debt as a percentage of GDP has increased every year. Projections for this year put debt at 94.27% of GDP – the highest it has been since the years of WWII.

To make a long story short (I know – too late for that), the United States is badly in need of a financial diet. For all the talk about whether to increase taxes and if so, how much, the clear fact is that no amount of increased tax revenues is going to solve the problem. Even if leaving taxes alone permitted the GDP to grow faster and produced more tax revenue because the whole economic pie became larger, that is not enough to solve the problem.

Only spending cuts can do it, and those can only be accomplished on the needed scale by reducing the size of our government (meaning reducing federal employment and eliminating agencies) AND by working out ways to reduce the cost of both social programs and national defense. Not one or the other – both. A diet is never pleasant. Cutting back on personal spending is always uncomfortable. Cutting back on our national spending is going to hurt a lot. And frankly, if it isn’t done in such a way that EVERYBODY hurts, it will not have been done right.

Another Point of View

My very recent post about acrimony in public discourse immediately led me to think about something I heard (in part) yesterday and today. It was about the Democrats in the House of Representatives bringing up for a vote bills regarding the future of the “Bush Tax Cuts” that were doomed to failure because they will certainly not make it through the Senate.

Much was said about that being a hollow gesture, a play to placate their political base, etc. All of which I agreed with.

Then, in the mood of my last post, I realized.

Yes, it is a play to placate their political base – but is absolutely no different from what I desire from the Republicans in the early days of the new Congressional session. I want Republicans to pass a bill in the house to start the process to repeal the health care bill. I know it will almost certainly not pass the Senate, and in the highly unlikely event that it was to do so, it would certainly be vetoed by Obama. And the votes would not be there to overcome a veto. So why do I want it done? To put the “other guys” on record, and for the Republicans to show that they are listening to their political base.

Exactly the same thing the Democrats were doing on their votes.

Some games are absolutely necessary in politics.

The Role of Government - And Acrimony in Public Discourse

A few days ago, I was exchanging comments on a forum. In thinking about some of them regarding the role of government, and some of the comments I’ve made to others recently about the lack of civil discourse between those with opposing political views, I have an idea forming that I really need to think through – but I’m laying it out here while I think about it. Maybe some others might actually give it some thought.

I said at the time “The federal government should be involved in ONLY those areas that cannot be handled well at a more local level – like national defense and securing our borders. And in fact, that is essentially what the 10th amendment states. State government should, in turn, be involved in those areas that cannot be handled well at the county or city level, etc.” What I didn’t go on to say was that government at ANY level should be involved in only those areas that simply cannot be handled without government intervention.

In more than one recent conversation, I have bemoaned the lack of civil discourse between Republicans and Democrats. Usually, I’ve been referring to our elected officials. But the fact is, the lack of civility goes all the way down to We The People in our discussions among ourselves.

I’ve often wondered what caused the change from the “old days” when there was a general condition of civility and respect between people of differing political views, and I think I have come up with at least a partial answer. For me, that beginning of an answer arose from thinking about the legitimate role of government and human nature.

Another part of my comments: “I want a VERY limited government. The appropriate legislative body passing only the laws that are truly necessary for the proper functioning of society at that level. If that were the case, I am confident that almost all of the laws on the books at every level would be eliminated. I would be very happy with that state of affairs. But I am confident that the nature of most human beings – the desire to impose our will on others – would soon put them back.”

Therein, I think, lies at least the origins of the problem – “the desire to impose our will on others.” Once upon a time, that was a minimal problem because government’s intrusion into our “personal” lives was minimal. Federal government dealt with the nation’s military, with relations with other countries, and with raising the funds needed to handle the (at that time) minimal business of government.

Today, our government intrudes into more and more of the “personal” areas of our lives. Without spending even a moment in thought on the subject, medical care and abortion come immediately to my mind. There are MANY others. On some of these issues, there is simply no room for compromise.

A case in point: Abortion. I believe that a human being is a human being from the moment of conception. Actually, I KNOW that. All scientific information and logic makes it abundantly clear. And I know that killing a human being is morally and legally wrong. Before I go on, I want to make it clear that I am not moved to anger at women who undergo abortions, my heart breaks for them. Someone else believes it is appropriate to abort the birth of a child at some point during the term of pregnancy. Some even believe it is appropriate even up to time when the mother is in the process of giving birth. They either disagree about the time when we acquire our “humanness” or find it expedient to disregard the issue, giving abortion some sort of special case status on the issue of taking a human life. Taking or arguing a stand on any of these points of view isn’t what this is about. Acknowledging that they exist is the point.

There is simply no middle ground, no point where a compromise can be struck, between those views. With my beliefs, even the “morning after” pill or IUD take the life of fertilized egg – a human being in their early hours of existence. That being the case, I’m certainly not willing to compromise on the point in a pregnancy when an abortion can appropriately be done. You don’t have to agree with me. I hope you do, but if you don’t you just have to realize that it is the unshakable belief of millions of people in this country. Realizing it might at least help you understand why “the other side” is so intractable on the issue.

My first thought was to look at the attitude that abortion should not be illegal. Then abortion would be a matter between the mother and her conscience. Of course, I immediately jumped to the idea that if abortion were to be no longer illegal, it should also no longer be specifically legal. That is, the law should be totally silent on the issue of abortion – meaning, among other things, that government would in no way pay for abortions. But abortion is, among other things, a medical procedure. That means that if the government is involved in medical care (which it certainly is), it must define procedures that will be paid for and circumstances under which they will be covered. Which, in turn, means that the government cannot be silent on abortion if it is involved in medical care.

Without trying to sort out and analyze the whole can of worms that is government involvement in medical care (this is, after all, a blog entry – not a lengthy treatise bound for publication), I realize that there certainly are within that particular area of government activity many areas equally unavailable for compromise as abortion. One that immediately to mind is at the other end of life - euthenasia. And that is as far as I'll go on that one, or just those two points WILL make this blog post a book.

So what can we do when government enters an area of our lives where there are multiple points of view that simply don’t lend themselves to compromise? We fight over them endlessly, because each side is convinced of its rectitude and convinced that this is a MORAL issue over which there is no room for any compromise. Each side feels the need to impose its will on the other, and because it is a moral stand, the disagreement can (and usually does) become acrimonious.

There are those who argue that government has no business trying to “legislate morality.” I would respond that virtually all laws are attempts to “legislate morality.” It only becomes an issue when there is disagreement on the appropriate moral standard to be enacted into law.

So what answer have I come to? What formula have I come up with that will banish the uncivil discourse that is the norm today? Absolutely nothing. Okay, maybe not ABSOLUTELY nothing. There is an answer, but I believe it takes us back to any earlier stage in our national psyche. The answer is to always endeavor to disagree without being disagreeable, but that is far removed from the mindset of most Americans today. The norm today seems to be to actually seek to be disagreeable in the pursuit of our desires. The more thought I give to it, the more hopeless it appears. I haven’t given up. I will continue to think about it. I will pray about it. But I will do so with a prevailing premonition of failure clouding my deliberations.

Your State Has No State Income Tax? Now You'll Be Paying California Taxes

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming have no state income tax. New Hampshire and Tennessee come close - they only tax dividend and interest income.

Well, it looks like there is a good chance that ALL of us - including residents of those enlightened states - are going to wind up paying California taxes.

Our Federal Government is probably going to wind up supporting California. California spends money in ways that would have me camped out in my state legislator's office in protest. We non-Californians have absolutely no way to impact the way that state's legislature spends money, though, and our tax dollars are going to be spent on all of those California projects that we would never tolerate at home.

If that isn't TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, what is?

Where is the USA Going?

WOW! That’s a broad question!

But it’s the one that keeps running through my mind lately. Every day – even multiple times every day – things come to my attention that cause me to fear for the future of the USA as I have known and loved it through 65 years of being an American.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a conservative. I generally vote Republican, and I’m registered as a Republican, but that is not out of loyalty to a party. I generally vote Republican because the Republican candidates are generally more conservative than their Democrat opponents.

That is to explain that in observing the state of our nation, both politically and culturally, I really don’t look at it from a partisan point of view. I look at it from a conservative point of view, and from a point of view shaped by my own personal values. Consequently, I know there are many intelligent, well-intentioned people who will disagree with much of what I think and say because their own point of view is so different. I just hope that if you are one of those people you will read what I have to say with the same respect that I would grant to your point of view. We don’t have to agree to examine and respect an opposing point of view.

My concern of the hour is the bank stress test results that were released yesterday.

I started to go on to say that I can’t quite understand the reason for this set of stress tests being made public. My problem is that I DO think I understand.

First of all, bear in mind that these stress tests are really nothing new. The FDIC does them all the time. We never hear about them, and most people are completely unaware that they are a routine procedure.

So why did the government announce these? I believe this group of stress tests was announced because once they were announced there would be a public outcry to know the results. Our government wanted the information made public.

And why did the government want the information made public? Here is where my concerns rise.

Of 19 banks on which test information was released, 10 of them were deemed to require additional capital. A total of almost $75 billion among them. The top five were deemed to require the bulk of it - Bank of America Corp - $33.9 billion, Wells Fargo & Co. - $13.7 billion, GMAC LLC - $11.5 billion, Citigroup Inc. - $5.5 billion, and Morgan Stanley - $1.8 billion. $66.4 billion needed by those five banks.

June 8 is the deadline for the banks to develop a plan and have it approved by regulators. If they are unable to raise the money on their own, the administration has said it is prepared to dip into the bailout fund.

So what is the reality of the situation? These banks are almost certain to be unable to raise the money. To raise capital, they can sell off assets (not likely in the current economy to produce the capital required) or they can attract additional investor money. That is also unlikely, when the banks have been labeled by the government as being at risk.
Depending on how you might feel about the test criteria used for the stress tests, you might not even agree that these banks are at risk. The fact remains that our government saying that they are at risk poses a serious threat that the public perception of their stability. That hampers their ability to raise additional capital, and makes their need to go to the government virtually a certainty.

Trying very hard not to fall into the category of a “conspiracy theorist,” I am lead to consider where this is leading, what is at the end of the path, and whether that ultimate destination was planned all along.

First of all, simply borrowing money from the government doesn’t solve the capital problem. Add cash and add debt and capital is unaffected. The issue is not the amount of cash the banks have – it is their capital position. No, the government will have to invest in the banks.

The intro investment vehicle has been a preferred stock position. That makes the US government (you and me) owners of the banks. Owners with no voting rights, but owners nonetheless. The direction this is likely to go next is to convert that preferred stock to common stock. Then the government has a voting interest in the banks. In other words, our government has some level of control (how much control depends on how much ownership) over the operations of the banks.

That, my friend, is tantamount to nationalization of the banks. And nationalization of various industries is the hallmark of socialism. I’m not going on a rant here about Soviet Union style socialism (though one can certainly find reason to wonder just how far down this path the administration is prepared to go). I am talking about the garden-variety socialism rampant in Europe.

It is obvious that there are many Americans that don’t see that outcome as a terrible thing. My personal opinion is that they only feel that way because they don’t really understand what it is to live under socialism. A closer look at life in any of the world's socialist states might change their minds. But more about that another day.