Taxing the rich is not the solution

We saw even before the election how afraid of an Obama presidency the markets were. And it has only worsened. You can't say we weren't warned. You can't just blame out right subsidies for the poor and low income, lo these many years, a gravy train Obama wants to enlarge. For many, many years partnerships of private industry, city and state governments and the federal government have been encouraged at every level, especially in construction of housing stock and rebuilding the inner core of cities. Even churches got in the game with their non-profits. So what happens when all levels are struggling? Private businesses lay off workers, the state then gets less tax revenues, runs low on unemployment funds (scraping the bottom in Ohio), the church tithes are cut back and the federal government is bailing out the banks, insurance companies and Detroit who are calling in their markers and favors. It's not unlike when a married couple both work for the same company, living well in a nice house, SUVs and big vacations, and have all their retirement assets in company stock. When the company goes belly up, there's no plan B. Mr. Obama, you can't get blood from a turnip. Time to reject all your lefty buddies and do what's right. Keep the Bush tax cuts, and cut government spending to reinvigorate the economy.

A sermon on preparing to die

Martin Luther wrote some very practical material. This one written November 1, 1519, might be a good to read while listening to Henry Paulson and other government officials try to explain all the bailouts that will ruin us. Luther actually makes 20 distinct points, but only the first three matter, because 4-20 expands on three. At my other blog.

CityLiving Network and Homeport of Columbus

Here’s another one.

With this much money and effort over 20 years, how can there be a single person or family in the Columbus, Ohio, area who doesn’t have adequate, safe, dry shelter? The reason is federally or state supported housing programs are not just about housing, they are about changing lives. And what's this? October 24, 2008 grant for Homeport. Haven't we just been through a bailout?

Millions of dollars in tax credits will be steered towards the redevelopment of low-income communities in Ohio and Columbus thanks to a U.S. Treasury Department award.

Dear reader--housing doesn’t change lives. Marriage does. Parenthood does. Faith in God does. Employment does. Education can. Art and music can. Pets might. Leisure activities don't. Substance abuse will definitely change your life downward. But not housing. Ask any landlord who turned the keys over to a careless, slovenly tenant. Housing doesn’t create safe neighborhoods; it doesn’t get transportation issues funded; it doesn’t improve health; it doesn’t pass bond issues. In partnership with the private sector, this kind of housing for low income people creates jobs and profits for . . .the construction companies.

"Columbus Housing Partnership (CHP) is a private, nonprofit organization [when you see this term linked with housing, it means government grants fund it, but it hides how many workers are dependent on the government for their income] founded in the belief that a decent and affordable home is the cornerstone of family life and a healthy community. For over twenty years, CHP has provided quality, affordable housing and related services to low to moderate income households in Columbus and the surrounding area. CHP has developed over 4,000 affordable homes which have served over 23,000 people.

To further that belief and in 2004, CHP created Homeport the sales division, to build communities for sale that provide buyers with the blend of urban sophistication and suburban style. CHP’s Homeport division’s commitment is to provide quality homes at an affordable price. Our specialty is helping first-time homebuyers get the most value for their hard-earned money. Homeport partners with you to help you realize your dream of homeownership.”

North of Broad (NOBO)- North of Broad is a development in the King-Lincoln District, developed by Homeport and in collaboration with the City of Columbus and Trevor Custom Homes.

The Crossing at Joyce - Homeport has partnered with Rockford Homes to offer buyers a new suburban style home with an urban location at the intersection of Joyce Ave. and 24th Ave. Buyers can select from several models to build.

Restore Columbus is a comprehensive rehabilitation program to renovate existing homes throughout the City of Columbus and in partnership with the City's Home Again initiative.

Home Again was created in February, 2006 in an effort to eradicate the 3,200 vacant homes in the Columbus. Mayor Coleman has committed $25 million over 6 years with a goal of putting 1,000 vacant properties back into productive use by 2012.
"In 2006, Home Again was responsible for initiating 105 roof repair cases; 96 completed at a cost of $1,355,833.* The City demolished 27 properties at a cost of $117,112 and another 52 were demolished by private owners." Link

*Does that roof repair of 96 homes sound a tad high? That's over $14,000 a piece. Advent Lutheran Church at Tremont and Kenny Rds. in Upper Arlington had to have it's entire roof replaced after Hurricane Ike--and it cost $5,200--and it's very large with peaks and elevations.

Problematize--the word that invents problems

Did you ever wonder how we get meaningless jargon, particularly in government documents, feel-good academic fields such as women's studies and black studies, anthropology, and American literature? First you find a word or term that everyone understandands, like illegal immigration, and you declare that you have a problem with it. You problematize the term by writing scholarly papers with words no one would ever use, "denaturalize the reification of this distinction," (don't ask me, I just wrote it down). Then you start substituting words to cover up the phrase or term you have said is a problem (for you). If need be, you can even present a paper at a conference about the problem word or phrase.

Illegal immigration has two terms that had to be problematized by academics who write about it to get promotion, tenure and a paycheck: 1) illegal and 2) immigration. Both words imply someone is where he doesn't belong because someone has said so. In this case, you get rid of both. Illegal becomes undocumented, irregular, unauthorized or clandestine, or if really desperate you can use extra-legal. And immigration becomes migration, or labor, or worker, or visitor--choosing a less obnoxious term because there is no sense in academe that a nation might have rights to a border. Unless you're speaking of a non-western, socialist or communist nation. Alien absolutely is not a good choice, because that too has been problematized. It needs to sound sort of like the migration of birds, or seals. No boundaries. Freedom. No problema.

Notice I have not put quotation marks around the words that scholars problematize. But they do. And they do that to show the reader that they recognize the word or phrase is a problem, and will cause upset to the reader's sensitivities. So a scholar writing about illegal immigration would write it like this: "illegal immigration."

This has been a public service from a retired librarian.

The 2008 Election Map

Although they were out marketed by the Team Obama geniuses, money raisers and crooks, and totally bamboozled by the press and poling agencies, the voters didn't overwhelming elect Barack Obama--not even the much lauded and sought after youth vote. It wasn't even the record turn out that was predicted--all that early voting just was a cover to register more illegal voters. And most of the country had great weather on voting day (remember in 2004 Democrats blamed the rain in the midwest).

No, it was just like the Bush-Clinton election of 1992. It was the Republicans who stayed home and refused to vote or voted 3rd party because they didn't like the candidate they had. Republicans elected Bill Clinton; Republicans elected Barack Obama. That's who gave us the most far left President in our history. I'm sure they were out there somewhere, but I didn't meet a single supporter of the McCain/Palin ticket for whom McCain was his first choice. Only when Palin joined him was there any spark of enthusiasm. But Republicans have never had the party solidarity of the Democrats, who are the real mind-numbed robots, despite their self-image as sophisticated, astute, thinking voters. That's the number one thing I noticed when I changed party registration in 2000. It was almost culture shock. And although it was refreshing to not be chained to party-think, at election time it was a bit disconcerting.

When polled about the issues alone, voters rarely put Obama's plans on top. He and his fellow Democrats participated in the biggest economic meltdown since 1929 in the economy, yet only his coaches knew how to take advantage and blame it on Bush, or you the voter, or the greed of Wall Street. Have you looked at his list of bundlers or mega-donors? They are huge in Wall Street banks and hedge funds, whether Asian, Indian, middle eastern, or pork fed Americans. Why malign your own donors? Easy. 1) It takes the focus off Congress, who is the real culprit, and 2) To bring down and take over the smaller entities to reduce competition. The same reason the corporate giants support all the e-regulations and are dancing behind the green band wagon--it destroys the real competition--the smaller, innovative, quicker guys. It's not all that different than giving away your software at no cost to put the competition out of business, or offering two dollar off coupons to temporarily refocus the housewife's attention to your product at the market until they can't compete (and then raise the price when the competition is dead).

I don't blame Republicans for being angry that McCain wasn't their choice, but they sure shot themselves in the foot. Look at the map. Where are the major social problems in the country? Which cities and counties have been investing in and expanding the War on Poverty of the 1960s for forty years? Where are the expanding crime, the biggest job loss, the strongest unions, and the most fatherless households? The bluest of the blue states. That's the direction the whole country is moving.

Questions that found my blog today

Roten cheese and saling ships.

why isnt good for the health the fungus from the roten cheese

phil dirt and the dozers lyrics to aarp song

rachel carson silent spring professor sierra club 43 fiction years pheasant shell

short poems on saling ships std 1

look how fast i can type without even looking at the words i can type so so fast. i bet you are jealous! so, i can teach you for this one time fee of $25.99!!!

senior citizens earn their paychecks

Living with my 88 year old father-in-law is affectinf my health

Obama--the most anti-life official at any level in the USA

Whether or not the executive orders will come as fast as the press says--

• removing morality clauses from PepFAR funding (Africa where condoms are pushed for HIV protection, but don't work well in the culture),
• granting more government money for embryonic stem cell (it has never been illegal as the press loves to report and the majority of all stem cell research happens in the USA),
• or removing all the inroads the pro-life forces have made at the state level (1.2 million abortions performed in the USA in 2005, down 25% since 1990),

it was clear even in the campaign literature and speeches, that he will be the most anti-life President we've ever had, even considering the almost non-stop wars we've been involved in since the 17th century for a variety of power and political reasons.

To encourage more abortions when they have decimated generations of African Americans? Thirty-two percent of legal abortions are of African American babies, yet blacks are only about 12% of the population. I've never seen Barack Obama as a black man, and I wonder if he does either.

To promote embryonic stem cell research when great strides have been made for cheaper and better uses of other cells from skin to testes?

To remove the rights of parents to have a say in their female child's health? How anti-family and anti-life is that? To allow an aborted baby born alive to struggle without even palative care before it meets its pitiful end--what monster would vote for that fearing it might weaken Roe v. Wade? I don't think he's spoken to euthanasia of the terminally ill, Alzhiemer's patients, persistent vegetative state patients, or bloggers over 70, but I'm sure he'll provide guidance since we're all just taking up space and wasting health care dollars.

And for all you Roman Catholics who have a fantasy that by throwing even more trillions at WIC, food stamps, housing block grants, job training, and day care for infants, somehow you will reduce abortions and replace fathers, think again. It hasn't stopped the murder of millions of unborn in the last 30 years. And do you really want your Catholic hospitals performing abortions?

"Along with their theological opposition to the procedure, church leaders say they worry that any expansion in abortion rights could require Catholic hospitals to perform abortions or face legal sanctions. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago said the hospitals would close rather than comply.

During the campaign, many prelates had spoken out on abortion more boldly than they had in 2004, telling Catholic politicians and voters that the issue should be the most important consideration in setting policy and deciding which candidate to back.

Yet, according to exit polls, 54 percent of Catholics chose Obama, who is Protestant. The new bishops' statement is meant to drive home the point in a way that cannot be misconstrued. Link."

Abstinence--The Scarlet Letter of the Left

There are few things as political as AIDS and poverty. And sexual abstinence pretty much wipes out both, but since you can't tax it, and it has a religious and moral connotation, it is maligned as impractical at best and unconscionable at worst. Take PEPFAR reauthorization. That's the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and the original 2003 act was reauthorized on July 30, 2008. In just 5 years, the treatment with life saving medicine went from 50,000 to 1.73 million, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. This was applauded even by its critics. However, the most successful focus country in prevention was Uganda, which waged a strong abstinence (Africa style) program. And yes, now the "don't condemn the condom" troops are on full attack against the "zero grazing campaign" of Uganda, which is probably why the 2008 reauthorization caved on the abstinence funding. The powerful pro-abortion groups need more ways to reduce the populations of blacks, whether in the U.S. or Africa, and our new president will certainly be going along with this. According to the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute

"Uganda’s rejection of the condom-emphasizing approach, also known as the ABC model (Abstinence, Being Faithful, Condoms as a last resort), has earned it the enmity of the orthodox AIDS lobby. AIDS 2008 featured a symposium session chaired by Frances Kissling – the former president of “Catholics for Choice,” who stepped down last year – aimed at discrediting the ABC approach as “ideological.”

Still, the Ugandan model is attracting notice. India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training recently announced that it would embrace the Ugandan emphasis on abstinence and fidelity in its sex education curricula. Significantly, a study authored by a research team headed by Harvard’s Daniel Halperin that appeared in the May 2008 issue of Science magazine, “Reassessing HIV Prevention,” found empirical evidence supporting aspects of the Ugandan approach."

The 2003 requirement that 33% of prevention funds be spent on abstinence-until-marriage programs was removed in the 2008 renewal, reduced to "meaningful support of monogamy and fidelity." Critics consider abstinence and faithfulness programs a distortion of priorities (i.e., Christian moralizing), preferring instead the unreliableness of the occasionally used and leaky condom. Also, groups counseling abortion services may now get funding for HIV services. You will read hundreds of studies and documents saying women and children are at risk from abstinence based programs--but it's rare to see anything that says abstinence is really the only solution.

While western based liberals in both the government and the increasingly politicized medical field have wrung their hands over the "moralizing and constraining spending mandates" of PEPFAR (JAMA, Nov. 5, 2008 p. 2047), Uganda excelled in controlling AIDS by using the common sense approach--the African way. Helen Epstein’s new book, “The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the Fight Against Aids" is reviewed and linked at Abstinence Africa which may show just one more way Westerners have misjudged the African culture, particularly polygamy.

"In Africa, HIV spread among ordinary people who were nowhere near as promiscuous as high-risk Western groups such as prostitutes or gay men. By contrast, about 40 percent of Ugandan men and 30 percent of women have ongoing relationships with a small number of people -- perhaps two or three -- at a time. These ‘concurrent’ relationships might overlap for months or years, or even, in the case of polygamous marriages, a lifetime.

As Epstein explains, these concurrent relationships are at higher risk for spreading HIV for two reasons. First, a person recently infected with HIV may be a hundred times more likely to transmit the virus than someone who has been infected for a few months or years. Most Westerners tend to practice “serial monogamy,” having only one partner at a time, and will usually only infect a current partner. By contrast, a polygamous man who becomes infected with HIV is likely to infect all his concurrent partners.

Concurrent relationships are also at higher risk for spreading HIV because the degree of intimacy and trust in these relationships means that people don’t think they need to use condoms. Many faithful African women became infected with HIV because of their husbands’ behavior. Few health officials from international aid organizations were aware of any of this.

Many western AIDS researchers believe that promoting condoms among high risk groups, such as prostitutes and their clients is the best way to slow the spread of HIV. But HIV continued to spread throughout eastern and southern Africa, even when condom use soared. Epstein argues that some of the condom campaigns backfired. “By associating AIDS with beer drinking, premarital sex, prostitution … womanizing and rape, the lusty condom ads ... clashed disastrously with local sensibility concerning decency and self-respect,” Epstein writes. One of her African sources stated bluntly: “The campaigns were totally wrong. The message was you had to be a prostitute or truck driver to get AIDS.”

A Ugandan prevention campaign focused specifically on issues of concurrent relationships. They developed the slogans “Love Carefully” and “Zero Grazing” – meaning, in the words of the head of Uganda’s AIDS Control Program, “avoid indiscriminate and free-ranging sexual relations.” These slogans were posted on public buildings, broadcast on radio, and bellowed in speeches by government officials. The Ugandan Association of Co-Wives and Concubines -- hardly something any Western aid organization would have instituted -- contributed as well. These women policed the behavior of polygamous men, encouraging them to avoid the casual affairs that could endanger all their wives and future children. One of their messages was: “If your husband is unfaithful and is going to kill you with AIDS, you divorce him.”

The result of all this was a steep decline in the number of sexual partners, a basic step in controlling any sexually transmitted disease."

Of course, AIDS gets the focus and money, but that's not what kills most vulnerable African children--it's diarrheal diseases and malaria. In their concern over bird eggs launched by the non-scientist Rachel Carson over 30 years ago, western governments and companies were quickly pressured into removing DDT from the arsenal of weapons in the war against disease before anything else was available (this method continues today in most environmental issues). This killed millions of Africans and disabled millions more. Instead, the missionaries for malaria when viewing the havoc they created, moved to the mosquito condom--the bed net, which probably requires even more care with application than the other type on an eager body part. And of course, installing wells to pump clean water means someone has to take of them. Where's the money in that?

Yes, there's just not much money in clean water, dead mosquitoes and women taking control to guard their own and their children's health through chastity and faithfulness.

And on money, both the left and the right can agree.

Pray for another Carter

I noticed this at a comment at another blog--no identification, so I can attribute: "As for right now, Republicans should pray Obama is a new Carter. If he is the next FDR, prepare for forty years in the desert."

What Michelle Obama's example says to women

Michelle Obama is about to become one of the most powerful women in the world, with more influence than Oprah and more scrutiny than Hillary. She has an education and a husband, and that is the key to unlock the poverty door for women with children, and not a single additional nanny state program is needed for that. There are hundreds of grants, loans and scholarships for college; and for marriage, just hold out for the right guy and start the family after you tie the knot. I know it's not Hollywood's way, and all the Hip-Hoppers flashing bling will tell them otherwise, but all the studies show it to be true. The more we try to offer women Uncle Sam as a step-father and sugar daddy, the more we keep them in poverty.

An education : In 2006, the working poor rate for Black women workers with less than a high school diploma was 28.9 percent, compared with 15.4 percent for Black men.

Among high school graduates (no college), the working-poor rate of Black women (15.3 percent) was higher than that for Black men—9.0 percent.

Among both White and Black college graduates, differences in the working poor rates of men and women essentially disappear.

A husband : Married-couple families, regardless of whether the husband or wife was the family member in the labor force, were those least likely to fall below the poverty level (7.5 percent).

By comparison, 12.0 percent of families maintained by men and 22.4 percent of families maintained by women were below the poverty level.

2007 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS).

33 Minutes

After inking the deal with Poland in August, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice summed up its importance: “Missile defense, of course, is aimed at no one. It is in our defense that we do this.” Obama would be wise to follow that logic and build on the success as president.

Obama's mixed signals

Taken any tests lately?

Like HIV? Me either. At least, not that I know of. But apparently, according to CDC Guidelines health-care providers (i.e. doctors) should routinely screen all patients aged 13-64 years for HIV. I'm not sure about those of Medicare age--maybe we're too old to count and they like to bump us off the rolls, or we're staying out of bath houses and not shooting up. Here are the risk factors for HIV:

A man having sex with another man even just one time.

Taking street drugs by needle even one time.

Trading sex for money or drugs even one time.

Sex, even one time, with someone who would answer yes to any of the above.

You have hemophilia and have received clotting factor concentrations.

According to a report in JAMA (CDC/MMWR) Nov 5, 77% of persons with HIV risk factors were not tested in the preceding 12 months, and the recommendation for them is an annual test. However, 40% of the general population has been tested. 60.7% of pregnant women were tested for HIV in 2006 (lower than other infectious disease). In 2006, non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 49% of all reported cases of HIV/AIDS, and the HIV prevalence among non-Hispanic blacks was 2.1% compared with 0.4% in the over all U.S. population. (I'd cite the sources, but they aren't printed with the article which is really dumb.) Depending on how often you go to the doctor for allergies or the flu, you might be tested multiple times, and someone else scoring BINGO on all the risk factors, is never screened. Something's very wrong here. They can't keep track of the MSM who are doing all sorts of disgusting things with body parts, so they decide to test everyone? And they still can't get the gay and bisexual guys to come in for screening by changing the rules? These tests must be awfully cheap.

They don't need to have you sign anything or give you anything in writing either. Here's the rules.

Here's the take from the ACLU.

If you've gotten a 3 page list of "services provided" for the last time you were in the hospital, here's the coding guidelines.

These guidelines from 2006 were part of Bush's Domestic HIV Initiative. (Approximately $18.9 billion (83%) of the FY 2007 HIV/AIDS request was for domestic programs; $3.9 billion (17%) for global programs. Only 4% was for prevention, however. Here) The CDC allocated funds to: 23 jurisdictions in clinical settings; 67 grantees in 25 states through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; 41 family planning clinics grantees in 34 states through the Office of Population Affairs. And the funds were allocated primarily to test blacks. Of course, testing isn't research or treatment or behavior change--it's just to figure out if they have successful strategies in place to overcome barriers to--testing.

Test product

This is the only article I found on the cost effectiveness of testing the entire population. And obviously, if it's your life, or that of someone you love, you think the cost is worth it.

A collection of odds and ends

Extortion with your personal information

And it isn't even Joe the Plumber and Gov. Strickland's snoopers.

Express Scripts, which handles prescription drug benefits for millions of Americans, is the subject of an extortion attempt, and it has called in the FBI for help. Someone claims to have the personal information for millions of customers and is threatening to reveal it unless the company pays up.

I'm reading it here, and have forgotten if you need to register.

Reese Witherspoon

Watched her first movie last night, "Man in the Moon" (1991). Really good. She was 14 playing a 14 year old who falls in love with a neighbor boy who falls in love with her older sister. Sigh. A period piece. 1957.

Reworking and editing

Today I spent several hours pulling out my blogs on the housing crisis, CRA, faith based initiatives, etc. (28 pages) Had to stop and clean up some errors. Blogger dot com has a problem I wish could be fixed--or that I'd remember how to work around it. (Not difficult, just open 2 windows.) If you save your entry in DRAFT, then go out and check the internet for something and click back, you may be on an earlier DRAFT and not notice it. I don't know how this happens, but I kept reversing the words "National City" and "City National" then I'd correct it, but going back, I'd get the old draft and not notice it. So I found it today. Obviously, no one read it, because on the internet everyone is an editor or critic. To add to the problem, the mistakes don't actually go away when you correct and hit PUBLISH, even if you go back and correct.

Joined a new ministry this morning

I'm an early riser, so I joined the group at church (7 a.m.) that reads scripture and prays before the service. Nice, quiet, peaceful. Only four of us plus the pastors. My first time, but I liked it. And it's not like choir where I had to recover the voice I lost or never had. Nobody sounds too terrific at 7 a.m.

Fabulous art show

Thursday evening about 5 p.m. we went to the opening of the Ohio Watercolor Society 31st Annual Exhibition at the Riffe Center Gallery, 77 South High. It will run through January 11, 2009. Oh my. Made me swoon. Don't miss it. Not only that, but God was at his artistic best with a golden sunset over the city buildings which were glistening. That was twice in one week I'd been down town. Don't get around much anymore, as the old song goes.

When you leave down town during evening rush hour do you ever wonder if the civil engineers had stepped out for a break while designing that access to 315 North? One lane? Were they crazy? Asleep? Cruel? There must be 100,000 people trying to get to the NW suburbs. And to think there are people that do that every day.

What he'll miss about President Bush

"I remember coming to the West Wing one morning before the daily 7:30 senior staff meeting and seeing Mr. Bush at his desk in the Oval Office, reading a daily devotional. I remember the look of sorrow on his face as he signed letters to the families of the fallen. When he met with recovering addicts whose lives were transformed by a faith-based program, he spoke plainly of his own humiliating journey years ago with alcohol. When a Liberian refugee broke into tears after recounting her escape to freedom in America, the president went over and held and comforted her.

Little acts behind the curtain like these inspired intense loyalty by staff members. They spoke of someone never too busy or burdened to care -- like when he took time on Air Force One to call my wife when she was sick. The president's true character rendered his media image pure caricature."

Jim Towey writes a very touching remembrance of President Bush. He was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2002-2006 and is currently president of Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa. When I write analytically of the faith-based initiatives that are in almost every branch of the federal and state governments, I don’t do it to be mean or hostile to "good works." I am sounding an alarm based on Obama's promises. He may be too busy in the beginning dismantling the courts, but it will come.

People in social programs of housing, nutrition, food pantries, summer lunch programs, post prison work, nursing home ministries, fostering abused children, etc., particularly conservative Christians who are heavily involved in these areas to live out their faith with works, need to realize this can be taken away from you much faster than it was given (over a period of almost 20 years). Once you take government money (or, even if you don‘t) to train ex-convicts, or feed Somali immigrants, or provide outings for medicaid patients at the nursing home, the administrators of that program by law, law suit, regulation or political pressure can tell you who you have to hire (Obama has already said he will do this), can pull your tax exempt status which will destroy your funding, your building plans which need to pass code for an expansion, your retirement plans for your staff, your Medicare and Medicaid funding for the nursing home for your people, your right to have adoption programs limited to married heterosexual couples. And don’t forget what you’re allowed to preach from the pulpit about abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, stem-cell research, or any type of morality from polygamy to sex with children in a society whose values come from Hollywood, Wall Street and the Federal government bureaucracy.

Christians, we need to get back to the business of God. Gospel first, works resulting from faith second. And stop depending on kick backs from the government to change lives. The Bible never tells you to do this, nor does it ever say that even if you do it without government help, that the service you perform to clean up, feed or house a person on the outside will change his life or turn him to God. That's an inside job, and it belongs to God.

Business as usual in the Obama White House?

"Rahm Israel Emanuel, who turns 49 on Nov. 29, was born on Chicago's Far North Side, with his family moving to Wilmette when he was a youngster. He is a graduate of New Trier West High School, with an undergraduate degree from Sarah Lawrence and a master's in communication from Northwestern University. He is a ballet dancer and a swimmer.

Emanuel's Israeli father, Benjamin, is a pediatrician, and his mother, Marsha is a social worker. Emanuel is an observant Jew who did not, contrary to some of the mythology that has grown around him, serve in the Israeli army. Rather, Emanuel in 1991 volunteered for a few weeks in a program run by the Israeli army where civilians could help the Israel Defense Force with support work on an army base.

He is one in a trio of superachieving brothers: Ari is a Hollywood superagent, the chief at Endeavor, and Ezekiel, a breast oncologist, is the chairman of the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. An adopted sister, Shoshana is rarely mentioned.

Through his Wilhelm connection, in 1991, Emanuel joined the Clinton campaign as a fund-raiser, rewarded with the White House political director post. He flamed out in a few months, to be resurrected and end up as a senior adviser to Clinton.

After seven years in Washington, Emanuel moved to Ravenswood, making millions of dollars as an investment banker in a few deals, and making more money when tapped by Clinton for a plum spot on the Freddie Mac board." Sun Times.

Hmmm. I can see the beginning of a trend here. A Clinton third term. Well, I feel much better about Obama's marxism drift--Clintons we know. It's just old fashioned Democrat cronyism, Wall Street millionaires, and Fannie covering, so far so good. A ballet dancer? Other than that, same-old, same-old.

Obama's tax cuts for the middle class

This was published before the election, but still well worth reading. After all, it's not the conservatives who will be surprised.

"Just as Bill Clinton promised a "middle-class tax cut" in 1992 only to raise taxes on the middle class in 1993, Mr. Obama will quickly find that his tax-revenue math doesn't add up. Add in the demands on Capitol Hill to spend more and to offset the Alternative Minimum Tax, and our bet is that even $150,000 would soon prove to be a moving tax target. Remember when the AMT was only supposed to hit 21 millionaires? Next year, without relief, it could hit 26 million taxpayers. Tax increases always hit the middle class because that's where the money is."

Read Biden's Tax Truth
However, it was never about revenue, was it? It was about "fairness."

Dear Sarah Palin

That was the google search a few moments ago--I think I found 3,700,000. I was looking for an apology from John McCain for the way his staff has been scrambling for cover trying to find someone to blame. I even went down to the dregs--like page 57 or something--almost all were September and October. The vilification, misogyny, and sexism just went on and on. Like a huge leaky pustule on the nose of a Bush Derangement Syndrome Blogger. Really bizarre. I really didn't know there was such hatred and fear of capable, charismatic, talented women. I attended the rallies and did one volunteer shift--and from what I could tell, without her, he would have been lucky to draw 100 people. So I don't know what his staffers are upset about; she was a pure gift and they blew.
Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah

The purpose of a house

By poking around in the Plum Book for 2004, I think I've found the root of the housing problem. The government. The Plum Book explains the 7,000 Federal civil service positions, so as soon as the next one is published, Democrats will be all over it like flies on honey to see what's up for grabs. So anyway, I was browsing the Assistant Secretary for Administration of HUD, and came across the Center for Faith Based Initiatives and its Director, Ryan Streeter. Found this dandy little article by him about a viable return on housing investments (by the government) that he'd done for ROMA, Results-Oriented Management and Accountability (ROMA), U. S. Department of Health and Human Services in August 2001. He says there are two purposes for housing programs, but that they came about with no overarching plan (surprise!):

(1) There is the conventional view that says housing programs are a good in themselves, and
(2) There is the (more recent) perspective that says housing programs should promote the economic self-sufficiency of the people they serve.

Most federal housing is #1--designed to be shelter, with little plan or thought about the client's long term need. Block grants for shelter or for rehab or construction. But in the last 20 years (can we all say CRA?) HUD began to think more about self-sufficiency combining supportive services with housing services to get people off welfare (can we all say Republicans?). "These have become much more common in recent years. Approximately 1,200 local housing authorities sponsor a Family Self-Sufficiency program."

Of course, Mr. Streeter, continues, #2 is waaaaay more complex (and expensive) than #1. What he says the client gets is very vague--something about not living in an unstable environment and possibly increasing wealth if he becomes a homeowner. The other parties to this transaction are definitely not poor--they are developers, investors, contractors, the real estate market, surrounding homeowners and finally, we taxpayers. In other words, the government housing programs are a lot like the food assistance programs--they do a lot more for the producers than they do for the poor.

Ask yourselves how this has worked out in your own life. Unless you purchased investment/rental property, or were a home flipper in the last housing boom, owning a home didn't do diddly squat for your wealth. You think it did because of the home sale prices, but because of inflation and everything you poured into the house that you wouldn't if you had been a tenent, you are lucky to break even let alone accumulate wealth. What owning a home did for my family was provide shelter, a good school district for the kids, nice neighbors, a life style that suit my tastes and education, and a lot of job opportunities for other people in the housing field--real estate agents, plumbers, electricians, animal and pest control, house painters, pavers, lawn services, tree trimmers, and window salesmen.

We live in a lovely condo complex now with beautiful vistas, trees, ravine and creek, because in 1962 we purchased a dump--a 1912 duplex in a mixed zoning neighborhood in Champaign, Illinois. The student renters paid the mortgage, allowing us to eventually move out, rent both units and get a nicer place, plus have enough left to make a car payment. All other wealth we have accumulated in 48 years has come from salaries, savings, inheritance, and investments (one really strange one where we bought a building lot on a lake in Indiana for $10,000 and sold it the next year for $25,000 not putting a penny into it, except the guy who mowed the weeds, and never spending one night there.) We paid $28,500 for our Abington Rd. home in 1968, sold it in 2002 for $325,000 and paid $275,000 for this one. But we lived on Abington 34 years, put about $170,000 into various additions and remodeling, to say nothing of the general maintenance and decorating (taking out trees, putting up fences, taking down fences, putting in drive-way, replacing garage doors, fixing gas line leaks, rewiring the mess the previous owners had made, building closets everywhere (no basement or attic), treating carpenter ants, treating termites, mopping up after flooded toilets or washing machines, replacing things in the 90s that we'd replaced in the 60s, etc. We paid fees to sell it, and then had to put money into the condo to redecorate brown walls and red ceilings, bring it up to code with insulation, and got hit with a $7,000 roof assessment the first year. Just last week we had someone here to replace some rotting wood on the deck.

No, whether you do it for yourselves, for your children, for your parents, or the government does it for a low income mom with children from several boyfriends, you don't change lives through housing subsidies or grants. Take a tour through any prison, hospital, school or nursing home, and you'll see that it is not the building that changes lives or educates or makes people well. It's the same with us.

Now, will someone tell the government. Someone might need help with safe, comfortable shelter, but they probably don't need the nanny state trying to babysit and redirect their lives.

Setting the Record Straight on GSE's role in the economy

Since we're in for another round of FDR type "fixer-uppers" to weigh down the economy, the response to who's at fault is up at the White House Web page. Even if you're an avid Bush basher, you really ought to take a look, because your 401-k or 403-b has been just as damaged as mine, but for some reason, you just might think that by raising taxes, you'll get some back. Don't think it works that way--at least it didn't in the 1930s.

The chronology starts in April 2001 with the FY 2002 budget, "the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is "a potential problem," because "financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting Federally insured entities and economic activity." (2002 Budget Analytic Perspectives, pg. 142)" Democrats forget Bush inherited a recession and was probably trying to figure out how to fix it. Having poor people borrow both the mortgage and the down payment from the government was not a healthy way to go. Foreclosures were already showing that.

Read all the way through to August 2007 (chronology ends in September 2008), the last time I think this steam roller could have been halted and around the time I started blogging about it: "August: President Bush emphatically calls on Congress to pass a reform package for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying "first things first when it comes to those two institutions. Congress needs to get them reformed, get them streamlined, get them focused, and then I will consider other options." (President George W. Bush, Press Conference, the White House, 8/9/07)" I even wrote a poem about it in September 2007--not only were Barney and Chris not listening to the President, they weren't listening to Norma! Once the Democrats controlled Congress, there was no turning this thing around. Now they get the whole sticky wad.

Obama's team was much faster at taking advantage of this problem (by lying) than was the disorganized, flabby McCain team, so most of you bought into the, "it's the President/Republicans fault" meme and that action was needed immediately. I've spent more time deciding what to have for Thanksgiving Dinner than these Porkers did figuring this one out. We'll stay in this mess until someone smart about not raising taxes figures it out. I'm already retired, so please hurry up!

Too old and too female

There are a few old timers in the Senate and House who have become flabby porkers with 20-30 years of "service" to their country/state (in fact, one from Delware comes to mind). But too old and too female to own a gun? When her disabled husband who is older hasn't had the problem? Seems like state workers are just taking on a whole bunch of corrective and protective responsibilities never assigned to them.

"Delaware State Police stopped Alvina Vansickle from purchasing a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense because she was too old and a woman, said Superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish.

The outrage that followed led to the revelation that Delaware State Police had been keeping lists of gun buyers for years; state law requires them to destroy these records after 60 days.

Without so much as a traffic ticket, the 81-year-old Lewes resident should have sailed through the mandatory state police background check when she tried to buy a Taurus revolver from Charlie Steele's Lewes gun shop last August.

Problems started after Steele made the required phone call to state police for approval of the firearms transaction." Delaware online

Now check out this video by Dr. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp of Texas whose parents were killed by a gunman: "What the Second Amendment is REALLY For," October 2003