We are blessed to be a blessing

Buffalo Grove, IL : "Tesla car owners, dealerships and charging stations have been targeted nationwide by protesters and vandals because of CEO Elon Musk's involvement with the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to slash wasteful spending and fraud within the federal government."

Shocking. This story was about a suburban woman. The Left used to admire electric cars and tackling government waste and fraud. Obama and Clinton lauded it. Now we know that was all scripted by Soros and others who were drinking from the Government corruption hose. Our own citizens are having their brains warped and wounded by Trump Derangement Syndrome. They now hate what Democrats used to stand for.

 
I still want care for the environment. We forgot that in the "Green New Deal." Reduce waste and clean up after yourself. If we had a cabinet member for that we could all breath fresh air and not look at trash along every intersection. I want fair tariffs and honest government workers, and grants that go for worthwhile research instead of building academic empires. How did we end up with so much graft? The lower and mid-income in our country are the biggest, most generous (in percentage) and the two biggest corporate giants, Buffett and Musk , are the most generous in amounts. Rich or ordinary--we have been blessed to be a blessing. Let's get back to that value system.

Cook County woman allegedly vandalized Tesla service center in suburb | FOX 32 Chicago

Warren Buffett Tops List of Biggest Donations - Business Insider

Elon Musk: The Donations of the World’s Richest Individual Focus on Education and Innovation - CEOWORLD magazine

Giving Tuesday

Opinion: Giving Tuesday (following Thanksgiving, black Friday, small business Saturday and cyber Monday) might have been a good idea when it began, but it has become annoying. I think I deleted about 35 messages yesterday and threw out some snail mail. Some were from organizations I've already given to, and even though I know these are mass mailings, it irritates me to see begging and manipulating after I've already been generous. I'm of the opinion that, unlike true growth or the expanding economic pie, charitable dollars are probably fixed. We donate about 10 or 12% of our income and have for about 50 years. Our income and interests change (higher when we were employed) but our values haven't. Our cat died in 2017 so we don't contribute now to Cat Welfare. When Project Veritas dumped the founder, it lost our donation. When Pinecrest was taken over by Allure I no longer send a memorial to honor my parents. The money was shifted to Lutheran Bible Translators or Pregnancy Decision Health Center, saving babies from abortion.

Whether you give $5 a year or $5,000, getting an e-mail may move more for this orphanage or that little league team, but it may not change your overall percentage. There are only so many charitable dollars to go around. Does Giving Tuesday make people more charitable?

A few facts:  Now, AFTER I wrote the above paragraph, I actually checked my opinion against the AI fact checkers. I was told that 2012 was the first year with 2500 non-profits and over $12 million given/pledged. Now (2022) it's up to $3.1 billion, an increase of 15% over 2021. So what self-respecting manager of a non-profit wouldn't sign on for what appears to be an increase in gratitude and charity?

So, I ask you, are people more charitable than they were in 2012 or is it a shell game and the money just moves around, with the bigger and better advertisers getting the bigger share using a good gimmick, Giving Tuesday.

The Lakeside Pavilion—Giving Tuesday

Tomorrow is "Giving Tuesday," and my in-box is swamped. We'll be donating to Lakeside Foundation to help restore the pavilion built in 1988. It's special to us. We attend church there on Sundays during the summer, and I understand the east deck will be dedicated to Rev. Irwin Jennings, our summer time pastor. We had our 50th wedding anniversary there in 2010. Bob is a member of the sailing club which is tucked inside. It was a very hot summer in 1988 and we were strolling on Oak Street and saw a cottage for sale. The lakefront looked good -- better than anytime in our memory. The 1909 pavilion had been replaced by something really ugly in the early 1960s, and it was replaced by a fairly authentic replica. So we took the plunge and although loans were over 10% then, we became cottage owners. Here's the story of the Lakeside Pavilion.

https://blog.lakesideohio.com/2019/11/15/pavilion-east-deck-to-be-named-in-honor-of-the-rev-irwin-janet-jennings/

https://blog.lakesideohio.com/2019/11/26/history-of-the-lakeside-pavilion/

https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/08/antiques-roadshow-bruce-version.html

Today is Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday was established in 2012 to "counter the cultural trend of overspending and commercialism by focusing instead on a cause that you believe in." I suppose because it follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday the two most commercialized gift orgies on the planet. But does it? Or does it just rearrange the gifts that generous people would give anyway, and expose us to less worthy organizations? Is it one more layer of bureaucracy between us and the non-profit, charity or parachurch organizations we've been supporting?

"Giving Tuesday" creates a flood in my e-mail, and I can delete most since I know which agencies and organizations deserve my support. But when one comes through with one Christian group dissing another, I do sigh and pay attention. This is not the usual baptism--dunk, pour or sprinkle--or whether one must speak in tongues, or which Bible translation is authoritative, but did World Vision knowingly fund a terrorist organization with our tax money. This one required some research (although I didn't do much) and it's very messy with charges and counter charges.

Forty years ago we supported World Vision regularly, but then it was a much smaller organization (now works in 100 countries) and I don't think it distributed money from US government for foreign aid. Now it's a mega NGO and the bad guys really know how to manipulate large NGOs. Like many Christian relief groups it depends heavily on various governments--not just the U.S.--for its funding. And it's my belief that you "dance with the one who brung ya," and it's awfully hard to preach the gospel with the government overseeing your funding and hiring. Foreign relief is a tiny fraction of our U.S. budget, but it's a major source of funding for some NGOs who do the on the ground, down and dirty work of cleaning up and health care after hurricanes, floods and famine.

This is an update for November 2018 for a misuse of funding that started I think in 2014 or 2016. https://www.christianpost.com/voice/lost-in-sudan-world-vision-worked-with-and-for-terrorist-funding-organizations.html?

This story is about terrorists in Sudan, but before that it was about Hamas and an employee within World Vision reported by an Australian Christian site. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-faqs-the-world-vision-gaza-scandal/?

How the Clintons became so wealthy and powerful

An article from 2015 reminds us of how the Clintons became fabulously wealthy--and powerful. "Clinton Foundation has basically been a foreign money-laundering operation. The scheme works like this: collect millions of dollars in foreign money, dump it into a foreign charity, pretend that the law prohibits you from ever disclosing the identities of those foreign donors to the foreign charity, then have the foreign charity bundle all the cash and send it to the Clinton Foundation. Then, when the time comes–whether it be a Clinton Foundation conference or a lavish Clinton Foundation trip overseas–make sure those individuals get some me-time with the Clintons."

http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/29/is-the-clinton-foundation-just-an-international-money-laundering-scheme/?  Good links.

Together we can change the world

Isn’t that just about the dumbest slogan?  I’ve heard it or seen it many times in many phrases, and it isn’t true, of course.  Get three people in a room with a white board and marker and you have a case for an argument even to state which world you’re referring to. This invitation to change the world just happened to come in an alumni pitch from the University of Illinois. They want my money.  If Illinois graduates were going to change the world, we certainly would have done so by now.

I’ve seen similar slogans about education, about poverty, about child abuse, about suicide, about the opioid epidemic, about trash in the ocean, about trafficking in persons, about friendships with Muslims, about political parties right and left, and any societal or religious problem out there. 

Our church is doing a “launch out” campaign.  Our summer home at Lakeside is non-stop fund raising—sometimes we go to a dinner, sometimes we’re invited to a really nice cottage to listen to a pitch, sometimes they just pass the plate. Right now it’s $3 million for the new swimming pool and wellness center.

UALC—our church--is calling members to celebrate “how God has moved through the last 60 years of our church’s history, give our thanks as He continues to bless and use our church today, and praise Him for the vision He has revealed to us for the future.”  I don’t know what that vision is. In the late 20th century the vision was to expand to the west of the river and have multiple campuses plus a school, but then that didn’t look like a good idea, so the extra land was sold to pay the mortgage. I thought Peter and Paul and the church fathers had the church’s vision pretty well outlined. 

And the U. of I. wants alumni to “come together for our signature event to celebrate the launch of our most ambitious philanthropic campaign ever.” Claims it has a storied past and bold future.  Sounds a lot like my church launch and vision.

Soon I’ll be getting appeals in my e-mail to change a child’s life by buying a backpack with school supplies for a kindergarten student.  Oh, that it were so easy!

Help where you can; be compassionate and kind.  You will definitely not change the world or transform a life, but it will make you a better person.  And that glorifies God.

Charitable giving

We actually have 6 television sets.  And two are not connected to cable, so I see broadcast media whether or not I want to.  Today ABC Good Morning America (kitchen) is featuring companies that donate 1% of profits to charity, and give employees 7 days off to volunteer. Well, fine. That means the consumer is contributing in higher costs because the profits to donate come from us. Plus, most Christians I know are donating 10% or more and they volunteer on their own time. When was the last time ABC or the broadcast media featured tithing Christians or Jews in the corporate world--except when denouncing them for their abortion or contraception policies? (This is not to say the CEO/owners featured were NOT religious--it just wasn't the focus. Apparently virtue and morality appear magically out of nowhere.)