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The primaries have come to NC, and I have to tell you, I never thought I’d pull for a Clinton, but if I weren’t for McCain I’d have to vote for Hillary. Obama is slick, inexperienced and elitist. He’s like one of those infuriating Sprite ™ commercials that tell you “Image is nothing” while using the image of sports stars to sell it to you.

He models “politics as usual” with his empty rhetoric of “run against Washington,” and “vote for change” that uses sound bytes, charm and slogans to pander to voters who think a president can solve all their problems. (Frankly, I already have a Messiah. )

Let’s look at oil, for example. One of his ads claims:

“Since the gas lines of the ’70s, Democrats and Republicans have talked about energy independence but nothing’s changed — except now Exxon’s making $40 billion a year and we’re paying $3.50 for gas. I’m Barack Obama. I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore.”

As reported at the “Chicago Tribune’s” blog this “ad is factually correct. He does not take money from oil companies. A 1907 federal law bars all corporations from giving money to political candidates. However, oil company employees can make donations.” Further, “Obama has taken at least $263,000 from oil company executives, family members and employees since entering the presidential race last year, including $46,000 last month. At least $140,000 has come in chunks of between $1,000 and $2,300, the maximum permitted under federal law.”

He is perfectly willing to take oil money and then dumb down the debate about energy while attacking an easy corporate target. This is the worst sort of political maneuvering. He points to an “enemy,” grossly oversimplifies and distorts the issue and says “They are to blame for your problems, and I am the solution.”

I am not a fan of giant multinational corporations. I am way more Paleo-conservative than neo-conservative, but the oil companies are not responsible for the high cost of gasoline at the moment. Anyone who really wants to education himself on the subject should visit the Energy Information Administration, and especially read their Primer on Gasoline Prices.

According to professor of economics, Mark J. Perry, oil companies only receive about 10% profit per gallon, and he says that figure comes from the EIA itself . By contrast, the government received about 20% in taxes. According to economist Thomas Sowell “The government collects far more in taxes on every gallon of gasoline than the oil companies collect in profits. If oil company profits are ‘obscene, as some politicians claim, are the government’s taxes PG-13?”

Another “lie” by misrepresentation is the unquestioned assumption that oil companies make all their profits from the sale of gasoline. The fact is that gas profits are not “windfall” or out of balance with profits by other industries. The factors that really drive the cost of gasoline, like increased demand, global turmoil, commodity speculation and supply are mostly outside of any one government’s control.

To the extent that our government has any influence, Congress has the greatest, but that body is currently controlled by Democrats hoping to get a Democrat elected President. If you listen to the House Energy Independence & Global Warming Committee’s ” Hearing on Oil CEOs and Price Issues,” you’ll get a real feel for the complexity of the issue and the limitations of government. Even so, Congress still has a bigger role. They are participating in Obama’s “politics as usual,” though, and sitting on their hands to help him win the election.

Imagine for a moment that oil prices became stable overnight. Imagine further that oil companies began selling gas at cost. How long would it take them to be broke? If you look at the EIA’s page for petroleum, Americans probably consume about 400 million gallons of gas a day. That’s 146 billion gallons a year. That’s 14.6 billion dollars in profit, from gasoline sales.

If, suddendly, they did not have that revenue, and did not try to recover it by increasing prices on other products, in about 10 years or so, there would be no oil companies, besides OPEC. In the meantime there’d also be no R&D, no investment in refining capacity, no exploration for new supplies and no investment in alternative energy, all things oil companies spend profits on.

The point of this is that the oil companies are not Satan and Obama is not Jesus Christ. By acting as if this issue is really very simple and characterizing the oil companies as the “enemy” Obama is engaging in the worst sort of typical election-cycle pandering.

There’s been some talk recently about a new stimulus package. “Consumers may be more interested in saving than spending, muting some of the immediate positive impact from tax rebates in the first economic stimulus package, lawmakers worry. So Democrats are considering a second economic stimulus plan that could extend unemployment insurance benefits.”

In a discussion I heard today on a cable news channel about that proposal one of the commentators, and I’d post his name if I could remember it, said that this would only encourage unemployed people not to look for work. This is the kind of bigoted bunk that gives Republicans and conservatives a bad name.

Has the guy ever been on unemployment? For many years my wife has been the primary income earner in our family. She is an engineer and manager (and an Air Force Reserves Squadron Commander), and I stayed home and raised the five kids, two adopted with special needs, and home schooled one of them. Twice in a five year period she was unemployed due to a slowing economy.

Let me tell you: She didn’t sit around watching air heads on cable news shows get paid enormous sums to prattle on mindlessly about things they know nothing about. Unemployment does not pay the bills, and it does not provide insurance. No one sits around waiting for it to run out before looking for something else.  Proving Republicans have advocates blinded by ideology just as Democrats do.

Extending benefits during an almost-recession should be something both sides can agree about.

Dear Senators Burr and Dole and Representative Jones,

Last week I listened on C-SPAN to the testimony of oil executives from the big five oil companies. As a father of five who is forced to drive a large van, this issue is of great concern to me. I recognize that there are things that I as a consumer can do, and I have been trying to do them. I combine trips, make as few trips as possible, and use one of our more fuel-efficient vehicles when I can.

However, you know there is very little consumers can do when they have to get to their jobs and they have long commutes. America is not laid out like Europe. We often have long drives to church, grocery stores, jobs, and extended family. This is especially true of rural Americans of whom I am one.

There also seems to be very little that citizens can do. The political process has become so layered and policy issues so complex that many Americans feel the best they can do is to get through their day-to-day lives and hope that their leaders are wise enough, diligent enough, and courageous enough to do something about national and global issues that lie way outside the average citizen’s grasp or control.

It seems the only thing that we can do as citizens is write the occasional letter to our elected representatives and give them our input. Here’s mine.

I do not now remember if the hearings were held before the House or the Senate, but one of the Congressional questioners said that we need short-term, medium-term, and long-term approaches to this very difficult problem. Score 1 for wisdom.

I am a Republican and an evangelical Christian, and I am also a student of history. Capitalism was built on a foundation of integrity, frugality, and standards. Large corporations often provide a lot of jobs, a lot of economic growth, and a lot of innovation, and free trade is not the bugaboo it’s often made out to be. (Auto mechanics, teachers, doctors, lawyers, grocers, dentists, and a host of other jobs are quite safe from the threat of being moved to India.) However, a corporation’s final loyalty is to the shareholder, and the shareholder thinks short-term.

In the early days of capitalism, religious and cultural standards and personal integrity helped offset the desires of personal gain at all cost. Early corporations understood that they had obligations to their employees, their community, and their nation. Today, unfortunately, large multinational corporations need incentives to do what it would have been unthinkable not to do in the past.

With that in mind, Congress needs to realize that while the free market ultimately brings increased prosperity, innovation, and opportunity there is a place for judicious political oversight on behalf of the citizenry.

It seems clear that America must lead the way in searching for, developing, and utilizing alternative energy sources. It also seems clear that a much needed short-term solution to the current rising cost of gas is an increase in supply. How can that be accomplished while encouraging the oil companies to not merely focus on short-term profit? I think Congress needs to immediately pass legislation to allow greater access to American oil sources such as those in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and in the Pacific Ocean.

If you do that, however, what is to stop the oil companies from just exploiting those resources for the short-term gain of their shareholders? I suggest that in the legislation that opens those resources it be mandated that any corporation that develops those resources be required to put 20% of the profits made on those resources into developing alternative energy sources and the infrastructure to accommodate them. (more…)

I was just browsing the position papers at the National Youth Rights Association, where, under the topic of entertainment, they write:

While we understand the need to warn viewers about the content of a show, movie or game, we feel that age-based ratings systems not only fail to do so properly, but deprive young people of the ability to choose their own entertainment with their own money based on the whims of secret ratings boards, accountable to no one.

The National Youth Rights Association supports efforts by young people to use our economic strength to bring about an end to age-based ratings systems. We call for strict enforcement of antitrust and fair business practice laws to prohibit any group from strong-arming any business into following an age-based ratings system.

I see several objections here. First, the language is intellectually dishonest and falsely characterizing. The ratings aren’t based on ‘whims’ nor is the board ’secret,’ nor is there any ’strong-arming.’

Secondly, besides the fact that the movie theater can’t be asked to determine who earned what money, those under-18 teens who may actually be paying with money they earned probably don’t realize that if someone else weren’t paying for their food, housing, utilities, health insurance, car payments (most of the time), car insurance (most of the time), etc. that they wouldn’t be able to pay for that movie.

No one has true “economic strength” who is dependent upon others for most of his or her real income, measured in those things received but not paid for.

Finally, “age-based ratings systems” are sub-sets of a general philosophical position that one can only assume they take as axiomatic based on their desire to also lower drinking, driving and voting ages; that is, that there is no sound basis for “age-based” anything. They give a wink and a nod to the idea that there is a justified “need to warn viewers,” but they don’t really expound upon that, nor do they bother to support their conclusion that “age-based ratings systems… fail to do [that] properly.”

Maybe I haven’t seen it yet, but at some point they’re going to have to address the general questions of if and when the state has a legitimate basis for passing laws based on age. They seem to be avoiding that general philosophical line drawing. Either there is to be no line drawn ever or a line is justified. If it’s justified, they have to argue why, say, 16 is better than 18.

But it’s in those kinds of specific, concrete arguments that they’d need something besides high-minded Obamaesque rhetoric.

If a 16 year old–with or without–a job wants to go see an R-rated movie all she needs to do is take her mom with her. Philosophically, they’re trying to reduce family and citizen relationships to ones of mere economics, hoping to cut parents out of the loop. However, if that’s the case, they undermine their very objective, because those who pay for all those others silly things like medical insurance (i.e. ‘parents’) will always have the upper hand economically.

They need some other grounding for the position. If “it’s my money” is the best they have then they have nothing.

In Jesus’s day, publicans were often tax collectors, and Scripture lumps them in with sinners as in Mark 2: 16: “When the teachers of the Law, who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors [publicans]… ” They were despised and looked down upon as corrupt and greedy.

Jesus tells The Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican in Luke 18:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Today it is no longer Thank God I am not like that Publican, but Thank God I am not like that Republican. In “Bleeding Hearts But Tight Fists,” columnist George F. Will exposes the harsh truth behind liberal rhetoric. It turns out that, according to Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, “liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives.” Here are some of the data:

• Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

• Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.

• Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.

• Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.

• In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.

• People who reject the idea that “government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality” give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

Will concludes that “using public office to give other people’s money to government programs,” is “charitable, as liberals increasingly, and conveniently, understand that word.” Indeed, this is the new Pharisaism, the belief that an ideology of spending is the same as loving one’s neighbors, giving lots of alms publicly so that you can get on your high horse and proclaim how wonderful, kind and giving you are, saying I thank You that I am not like the Republican.

“The single biggest predictor of someone’s altruism is religion,” and those who are familiar with Jesus’s model of giving in Matthew 6 know that giving that honors God is done in secret. Looks like the secret is out.

Of course, some will say much of that “charitable” giving is to the church instead of directly to the poor, but so what? Most churches have excellent outreach programs and service projects, not to mention poor people go to church and churches minister to their members. Charities have overhead, just like churches: buildings, staff and utilities, among others.

The sad truth is that the media characterize Republicans as greedy and heartless and Democratics as saints. If you were bit by a snake who’d you want to help, the one who talked about taking you to the doctor or the one who picked you up and took you?

Apparently conservatives are putting their money where the liberals’ mouths are.

When are we going to realize that if men are not moral markets can’t be. The idea of markets, of freedom in general, are moral, but their operation will only be as moral as the people who use them. Free markets don’t make men moral; moral men make free markets.

I support free markets, but just because we are a capitalist country doesn’t mean we are fated to allow the market to dictate all our choices, or that we should leave God’s work up to the “Invisible Hand.” “We are His workmanship, created for good works in Christ.” He called us, His disciples, to be his hands in this world, not a system. We can do that by establishing an economic and political system that maximizes freedom, but not by pretending the system creates morality.

The moral life is not one of striving; rather, it is one of surrender, surrender to the Lordship of Christ, over men and markets.

This does not mean government has to replace markets. There are other, self-imposed, alternatives to government intervention, but the advertising paradigm and profit maximization are so pervasive and accepted that no one will seriously consider challenging them.

I listen to a listener supported radio station; Hillsdale College which refuses to accept any government money; bookstores that refuse to sell porn even though it would sell well, a small businessman who refuses to take the money and run when a big company wants to buy him out and close him down, there are many examples of people voluntarily not doing something even though doing so would turn a bigger profit.

Once people stop making choices based on principles other than profits then they cease to be free markets and we become slaves to them.

I was just handed a copy of this book by my pastor, who won’t have time to read it until after Lent. Apparently Rick Hathaway lives somewhere near me, and he came by the church and gave the pastor a copy. I’ve skimmed it and read the first two chapter just now at lunch, and it is one of those right-books-that-fell-into- my-hands-just-when-I-needed-to-read-it kind of moments.

I’ve been struggling with the concept of blessings. I’ve been praying that God make me able to be trusted with good things. Life has been a real struggle the past couple of years, not least of all on the financial front, and this book is a much needed tonic that takes “a fresh look at blessing.”

I am not and have not been looking for abundance, only “provision and preservation” (31), and I have been struggling with the theology of providence for some time. This book isn’t so much about that as it is a reworking of the concept of blessings, contra Jabez, I suppose, but he has yet to mention that particular book, and also morality, self-esteem and mentorship.

Of late I have also been praying that God’s grace be sufficient to me (2 Cor 12:9) and today’s reading in Streams in the Desert is on just that. The devotion comes from someone who had just been saying the same prayer when it it him:

In one moment the message came straight to my soul, as a rebuke for offering such a prayer as, “Lord, let Thy grace be sufficient for me”; for the answer was almost as an audible voice, “How dare you ask that which is?” God cannot make it any more sufficient than He has made it; get up and believe it, and you will find it true, because the Lord says it in the simplest way: “My grace is (not shall be or may be) sufficient for thee.”

Legacy of Faith came right on the heels of that reading today.

[more later, saved for now, back to work]