Star Tribune story raises question: Equality or Immorality?

A surprising story carried by the Star Tribune on events over this weekend regarding two men kissing on national television and a bearded cross dresser. Here are the final lines from the story.

Raynard Jackson, a conservative columnist who writes often about LGBT issues, connected last weekend's events to recent laws legalizing marijuana and allowing California schoolchildren to choose their bathrooms and sports teams based on their chosen gender identity.  

"When you connect the dots, you have a society being created in which there are no absolutes, no right or wrong, up or down, black or white," Jackson said. 

So where is guidance supposed to come from for our laws? "It used to be you could look to God, to the Bible," Jackson said.  

"Now it's almost illegal to mention God or Christian values "If you have no standards of right and wrong, then morally it's the Wild Wild West," Jackson said.  

"If everyone has laws that are unique to them, that's a recipe for disaster for society."

Only 7% of journalists say they're Republicans.

Here's story out of the Washington Post pointing out that only 7% of journalists identify themselves as Republicans while 28% as Democrats.  50% identify themselves as Independents.

Of course, journalists will argue they're still objective whatever their personal views. However, worldview, how a person sees the world, impacts what they perceive happening in the world.  Here journalists I suspect are overwhelmingly liberal whatever their political affiliation, even if they view themselves as Independents. 

Prayer at city council meetings still legal on 5-4 vote at Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that city council meetings can still be opened with prayer, at least for now. On a 5 to 4 vote the court said,

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said the prayers are ceremonial and in keeping with the nation's traditions.

"The inclusion of a brief, ceremonial prayer as part of a larger exercise in civic recognition suggests that its purpose and effect are to acknowledge religious leaders and the institutions they represent, rather than to exclude or coerce nonbelievers," Kennedy said.

At least for now the exclusion of God from the public square wasn't extended.  My how we've moved towards a judicially mandated secular state.  Looks like one vote from locking it in.  

Bad job market for college graduates in Minnesota.

Here's an interesting story on the state of the economy in Minnesota.

It points out the job market is very poor for young people.  60 percent of kids who graduated in 2011 with college degrees don't have full time jobs today.

I suspect the dramatic increase of the minimum wage in Minnesota will only the make the situation worse, particularly for non-college graduates. 

Income inequality and wealth redistribution. Doesn't everybody lose in the long run?

There's a lot of talk about what to do about income disparities as the percent of income in society is moving towards the wealthy.  The easy, almost knee jerk reaction of some is redistribution of wealth through raising taxes on the wealthy, raising minimum wage and so forth. 

But simply taking money from higher income people and giving it to another through a government welfare program often benefits no one in the long run.  Welfare, except for the truly needy, discourages work and initiative and encourages dependency.  The wealthy person taxed has less incentive to work hard and invest and create jobs, so there are fewer jobs for lower income folks.

Here's a discussion of this by columnist Robert Samuelson.  He references a French economist Thomas Piketty who dislikes income inequity so he wants to redistribute money.

He objects to extreme economic inequality because it offends democracy: Too much power is conferred on too few. His economic analysis sometimes seems skewed to fit his political agenda.

Take his tax increases. He doubts that they would hurt economic growth. This seems questionable. Incentives must matter, at least slightly. Or consider his predicted slowdown in the world economy.

This seems possible, but if it happens, capital owners would likely suffer lower returns. As for the power of the superrich, they hardly control most democracies. In the United States, where about 70 percent of federal spending goes to the poor and middle class, the richest 1 percent pay nearly a quarter of federal taxes. After-tax and post-government-transfer incomes are less unequal than Piketty's pretax figures.

Still, the present concentration of income and wealth instinctively feels excessive. It understandably stirs resentment. We'd be better off if the rich were less so and other Americans were more so. But it's doubtful that political action to force this transformation would be similarly beneficial. Class warfare is bruising; today, it would degrade the confidence needed for a stronger recovery. 

The "Brave New World" of surrogacy.

An issue in the Minnesota legislature and beyond is surrogacy, the treatment of children as a commodity and the exploitation of women.

Here's a good article on the topic by Jennifer Lahl and Christopher White. 

This wide-ranging and often confusing mix of surrogacy legislation shows that our laws have failed to keep up with ever-advancing reproductive technologies and the ways we use them, increasingly, to form our families. The fallout from the dearth of serious reflection on the ethics and uses of these technologies has allowed for the explosion of a lucrative, unregulated fertility industry in the United States, leaving women and children unprotected. Laws that aim to legitimize the practice are driven by the powerful partnership that those who are desperate for children form with the doctors and lawyers eager to profit from this pursuit.

What's the great economic engine? You might be surprised.

It's marriage.  That's the theme of this article by researcher Patrick Fagan of the Family Research Council.  Sadly, there's little to no discussion of the importance of marriage and family.  Many people are too busy trying to deal with the symptoms of the problem, redefining it, or simply ignoring it.

Family, church, and school are the three basic people-forming institutions, and it is no wonder that they produce the best results—including economic and political ones—when they cooperate.

Even if all the market reforms of the Washington think tanks, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes Magazine were enacted, we’d still need to kiss the Great American Economy goodbye. Below the level of economic policy lies a society that is producing fewer people capable of hard work, especially married men with children. As the retreat from marriage continues apace, there are fewer and fewer of these men, resulting in a slowly, permanently decelerating economy.

When men get married, their sense of responsibility and drive to provide gives them the incentive to work much harder. This translates into an average 27-percent increase in their productivity and income. With the retreat from marriage, instead of this “marriage premium,” we get more single men (who work the least), more cohabiting men (who work less than married men), and more divorced men (who fall between the singles and cohabiters).

All this is visible in the changing work patterns of our country, resulting in real macro-economic consequences. Fifty years ago family life and the economy were quite different.

Around 1960, just prior to the sexual revolution, the United States was the world’s heavyweight champion in economic productivity and earnings. Today we can still lift a lot, but, to extend the metaphor, we are moving down to the middleweight class. My colleague Dr. Henry Potrykus has shown that divorce alone has reduced the annual growth rate of the economy by at least one sixth since the mid-1980s, which with its compounding effect is by now quite significant.

No matter which way you look at it—through the lens of income, savings, or poverty—marriage is the great engine of the economy, with every household a building block that either contributes or takes away, millions of times over. Put all these families together, and we have the team that runs the American economy.

"Mozilla's Intolerance"

The CEO of Mozilla Brendan Eich was forced to resign from his position because he, get this, supported man, woman marriage.  Yes, for this act of "intolerance" he was forced out of his CEO position.  The Wall Street Journal has a good opinion piece on it as does Powerline blog.

Another example of the rising attacks on people's religious beliefs.  The land of the free is starting to look like the land of the persecuted.

Cutting through the fog of Obamacare signups.

President Obama is declaring Obamacare a success.  As Michael Tanner notes, the President did not take questions. 

But while the president basked in his success and predictably castigated his critics, he took no questions. Perhaps that’s because some of them would have been hard to answer. For instance:

How many new enrollees have paid their premiums? The numbers above include everyone who has “picked” a health plan, even if they haven’t yet paid for it, sort of like Amazon counting every item a shopper puts in their “cart” as a sale. Even Health Secretary Kathleen Sibelius concedes that only 80 percent of those who’ve picked a plan have actually paid the first month’s premium. Insurance executives also report that another 3 percent to 5 percent paid once, but then stopped.

If these numbers hold, it would mean that just 5.6 million Americans (and 312,000 New Yorkers) really bought insurance through the exchanges.

How many were previously uninsured? Seven million insurance sign-ups doesn’t mean 7 million more Americans with insurance. For starters, as many as 6 million Americans had to change their health plans because ObamaCare banned the policy they’d had before. Many of those whose plans got canceled bought new insurance through the exchanges, and are among the 7 million.

How many? Estimates vary, but Rand Corp. data suggest that barely a third of enrollees were previously uninsured. If so, that means fewer than 2 million Americans have actually gained insurance nationwide because of ObamaCare.

While data from New York’s Department of Insurance suggest that the state has done a better job of enrolling the actually uninsured, still, 41 percent of those signing up on the state’s exchange already had insurance. That means just 230,000 newly insured New Yorkers.

How many Americans lost their insurance? In addition to the newly insured, we also need to look at the newly uninsured. That includes some of the millions whose policies got canceled because they didn’t comply with ObamaCare. Most found new plans, though maybe more expensive or that no longer included their current doctor, but the Rand Corp. estimates that slightly less than 1 million Americans couldn’t find an affordable replacement plan, so are now uninsured. Somehow those Americans didn’t make it into the president’s remarks yesterday.

Who signed up? Far more important than the raw number of enrollees is the mix of people signing up. ObamaCare depends on young and healthy people overpaying for insurance in order to subsidize coverage for older and sicker individuals. In order to make that work, 38 percent to 40 percent of those enrolling need to be young and healthy.

In fact, estimates suggest that less than 30 percent of enrollees are under the age of 35. This will mean hefty premium hikes next year, and could eventually lead to a meltdown of the entire insurance market.

And we get all of this for the low, low price of just $2 trillion in taxpayer spending over the next 10 years.

The role of imagination and reason in faith.

CS Lewis is known for his Chronicles of Narnia book series and Mere Christianity.  Often apologetics is viewed as merely an issue of reasoning people to faith.  Here's an interesting discussion of the role imagination, stories and images play in faith and finding truth. 

Of course, everyone recognizes Lewis's great imaginative gifts. Often people will say that his great strength was his ability to present Christianity both rationally and imaginatively.

His rational approach is seen in The Abolition of Man, Miracles, and, at a more popular level, Mere Christianity. These works show Lewis's ability to argue: to set forth a propositional case, proceeding by logical steps from defined premises to carefully drawn conclusions, everything clear, orderly, and connected.

And his imaginative side, so the argument goes, is seen in The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and, at a more accessible level,The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. These works show his ability to dramatize: to set forth an attractive vision of the Christian life, proceeding by means of character and plot to narrate an engaging story, everything colorful, vibrant, and active.

By these accounts, Lewis's rational works and imaginative works are different and distinct. They are two discrete modes in which he presented the faith. And it makes sense that we would think this way: The dichotomy between reason and imagination is how we have been taught to think ever since the so-called Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Reasonable people don't need imagination. Imaginative people don't need reasons.

Yet in Lewis' thinking reason and imagination work together.

All our truth, or all but a few fragments, is won by metaphor," Lewis wrote in his essay "Bluspels and Flalansferes." Similitudes, seeing one thing in terms of another, finding meanings here which correspond with what we want to say there, are for Lewis the essence of meaningful thought. "For me, reason is the natural organ of truth," Lewis wrote, "but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination . . . is not the cause of truth, but its condition." In other words, we don't grasp the meaning of a word or concept until we have a clear image to connect it with. 

...Lewis took this one step further. For Lewis, meaning is "the antecedent condition of both truth and falsehood." In other words, before something can be either true or false, it must mean something. Even a lie means something, and a lie understood as a lie can be very instructive. Reason, "the natural organ of truth," is our ability to discern true meanings from false meanings. But the meaning comes first. So, imagination has to operate before reason. Reason depends on imagination to supply it with meaningful things that it can then reason about.

Missionaries, democracy, and economic and social development.

Here's a very interesting article on the role "conversionary Protestants" played in the economic, social and political development of countries outside the West.  A very thorough in depth study by sociologist Robert Woodberry asserts they were the primary influencers in this development.  While there were no doubt a few bad apples, by and large they played a significant positive, development role in the countries they lived in.

Woodberry already had historical proof that missionaries had educated women and the poor, promoted widespread printing, led nationalist movements that empowered ordinary citizens, and fueled other key elements of democracy. Now the statistics were backing it up: Missionaries weren't just part of the picture. They were central to it.

"The results were so strong, they made me nervous," says Woodberry. "I expected an effect, but I had not expected it to be that large or powerful. I thought, I better make sure this is real. I better be very careful."

...Three years later, Woodberry received half a million dollars from the foundation's Spiritual Capital Project, hired almost 50 research assistants, and set up a huge database project at the University of Texas, where he had taken a position in the sociology department. The team spent years amassing more statistical data and doing more historical analyses, further confirming his theory. With these results and his dissertation research, Woodberry could now support a sweeping claim:

Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations.

 He also found that certain types of missionaries had this influence.

There is one important nuance to all this: The positive effect of missionaries on democracy applies only to "conversionary Protestants." Protestant clergy financed by the state, as well as Catholic missionaries prior to the 1960s, had no comparable effect in the areas where they worked.

Independence from state control made a big difference. "One of the main stereotypes about missions is that they were closely connected to colonialism," says Woodberry. "But Protestant missionaries not funded by the state were regularly very critical of colonialism."

A sobering picture of the history of the Ukraine.

George Will recently wrote a sobering article on the experience of the Ukraine under Stalin.  Not only did it show the horrific terror Ukrainians experienced under Stalin but it gives a background to Putin and his experience.  He describes Putin thus:  "He is a barbarian but not a monster and hence no Stalin.  But he has been coarsened, in ways difficult for civilized people to understand by the continuities, institutional and emotional, with an almost unimaginably vicious past."

Do corporations have religious liberties?

One of the major issues before the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case is whether corporations have religous liberty protections.

In the Hobby Lobby case discussed by Scott earlier this morning, the substantive issue before the Supreme Court is the validity of an Obamacare rule requiring employers to provide health care plans for their employees that cover birth control and abortion procedures that violate the employer’s sincerely held religious-based beliefs. But there is a threshold technical issue — whether a corporation like Hobby Lobby has any religious freedom rights under the First Amendment.

I find the claim that owners of a company like Hobby Lobby can be forced to violate their religious beliefs simply because they have chosen to incorporate to be laughable (though not funny). Can you imagine the owner of a business telling his priest, minister, or orthodox rabbi that he’s not the one violating religious tenets by paying for abortions or staying open for business on the Sabbath; the corporation he controls is the culprit? The priest, minister, or orthodox rabbi would not be impressed. Neither would the Good Lord.

Jay Sekulow offers three reasons why corporations must have religious freedom. First, as the paragraph above suggests, corporations may have an independent legal existence but they are formed, staffed by, and act through individuals. As Sekulow explains:

A corporation’s expression is the expression of the people who work for it and lead it. The law recognizes this reality when it holds corporations liable for the acts of the individuals who work for it, so long as those individuals act within the scope of their employment.

When you allow an organization to speak, people speak. When you censor an organization, you censor people.

Second, when you restrict corporations First Amendment rights, you are restricting a vast amount of the speech and other forms of expression that we take for granted as being free from government mandates and control.

What’s a movie? Corporate expression. A television show? Corporate expression. What about hospital policies regarding end of life care or abortion? Corporate expression.
Third, if the Supreme Court rules against Hobby Lobby, in what sense will “private enterprise” ever again be truly “private?”

If the United States government can force the people running a corporation to use corporate resources to provide free abortion-pills to employees (especially when contraceptives are cheap and widely available on the open market), it is difficult to imagine the meaningful limits on government power in the marketplace. . . .

If government can regulate when it pleases, however it pleases, regardless of the strength of the owner’s convictions or the weakness of the government’s interests, then does anyone truly own a business any longer?

Thus, to deprive Hobby Lobby of its religious freedom based on the technicality of its corporate status arguably would do even more substantive damage than if the Court reaches the merits of the First Amendment claim. No doubt, the Obama administration would love that result.

Racial, ethnic divide and the Republicans and Democrats. Who will start to break the log jam?

This Gallup poll points out the major divide between the major political parties and the Republicans and Democrats.  Whites leaning Republican and minorities more towards Democrats.

A key question is will Republicans make a concerted effort to gain support among minorities.  If they do, that will change politics going forward. 

This is from the Gallup Poll.

This polarization could ease by the time Obama's term finishes, in three years. However, given the already large racial gap in party preferences in his first five years, unless there is a dramatic shift among whites toward the Democratic Party or among nonwhites toward the GOP in the next three years, party preferences will end up more racially polarized in Obama's presidency than in his two predecessors' administrations.

Education performance in Minnesota public schools over the last 40 years? Performance flat, Spending way up.

This is a newly released study by the Cato Institute on education performance on the state level.  With few execeptions the outcomes are the same wherever you live.  Academic performance is flat to slightly declining while spending is way up.

Here's a good summary of Cato's findings:

The performance of 17-year-olds has been essentially stagnant across all subjects since the federal government began collecting trend data around 1970, despite a near tripling of the inflation-adjusted cost of putting a child through the K-12 system."

While it's a multi-faceted problem, I point to a couple of considerations beyond the schools as critical but often neglected factors.  Strong faith commitment and intact families.  When these two factors are present in minority children the achievement gap is eliminated.

Today, faith is either dismissed or ignored and there seems to be little concern over the breakdown of the family.  In fact, family breakdown is celebrated by some people.  Until these two factors are given their due, I don't see the trend lines for academic performance heading in the right direction anytime soon.

Here's how things look in Minnesota.

Permalink for this state:
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/state-education-trends#/MN

Wisdom from a Russia prophet about atrocity and evil.

Though he passed away several years ago, the wisdom of Alexander Solzihenitsyn is still relevant and timely.  Here are some of his past observations.

Why did Russia face such awful atrocities under the Communist revolution?

If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”   —Interview with Joseph Pearce, 2003

And where does evil lie? 

 If only there were evil people somewhere insidi­ously committing evil deeds, and it were neces­sary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? —The Gulag Archipelago  

Some things never change.  If we fail to learn from the past, we'll repeat the consequences.

Bill Maher says God is a "psychotic mass murderer".

Bill Maher expresses big problems with God in a profane diatribe.

Late night comedian Bill Maher expressed disbelief Friday that 60 percent of Americans are “stupid” enough to believe the tale of Noah’s ark is literally true and questioned why individuals worship God, who he described as a “psychotic mass murderer.”

“Isn’t life hard enough without making s*** up out of thin air to f*** with yourself?” he asked.

Maher — who is atheist and produced an anti-religion film years ago — said he believes that the tale of Noah’s ark is not only false, but also “immoral.”

“It’s about a psychotic mass murderer who gets away with it and his name is God.”

The sex economy - moral relativism and free markets aren't the answer.

Here's a discussion by Anthony Bradley on an Urban Institute study on the sex industry/economy.  It's leaving in it's wake broken lives.

As much as progressives balk at the “imposition” of religious morality and the church in public and social spaces, the secular humanism’s moral relativism is not working in America and continues to leave children vulnerable to profound evil. For example, the Urban Institute recently released a report on the economy of America’s sex industry — and the numbers are astounding.

He also notes that markets aren't enough.

This study reminds us that markets alone do not produce a virtuous society. While the market is there to facilitate the meeting of demands it does not mean that all demands are equally moral. For this reason, the value of culture is a core principles at the Acton Institute:

Priority of Culture – Liberty flourishes in a society supported by a moral culture that embraces the truth about the transcendent origin and destiny of the human person. This moral culture leads to harmony and to the proper ordering of society. While the various institutions within the political, economic, and other spheres are important, the family is the primary inculcator of the moral culture in a society.

Ultimately, the sex economy will die in the US and around the world when moral virtue excels in individuals and in society at large. As longs as progressives reject the role of morals and the church in the public square the sex economy in the US is only going to get worse.

Obama's job approval numbers drop to record low.

According to a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, President Obama's approval numbers are at an all time low, 41%.

President Barack Obama is struggling to overcome widespread pessimism about the economy and deep frustration with Washington, notching the lowest job-approval ratings of his presidency in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The results suggest Mr. Obama could weigh on fellow Democrats in midterm elections this fall, particularly in the conservative states that will play a large role in deciding whether his party retains its Senate majority.

Mr. Obama's job approval ticked down to 41% in March from 43% in January, marking a new low. Some 54% disapproved of the job he is doing, matching a previous high from December, when the botched rollout of his signature health law played prominently in the news. The latest survey also showed the lowest-ever approval in Journal/NBC polling for Mr. Obama's handling of foreign policy.

What Millennials are like.

The Pew Research did an extensive survey on Millennials those from ages 18 to 33.   Pew describes them as "relatively unattached to organized politics and religion, linked to social media, burdened by debt, distrustful of people, in no rush to marry."    "Unattached", "unmoored" sound like operative adjectives from the Pew piece.

The Millennial generation is forging a distinctive path into adulthood. Now ranging in age from 18 to 33¹, they are relatively unattached to organized politics and religion, linked by social media, burdened by debt, distrustful of people, in no rush to marry— and optimistic about the future.

They are also America’s most racially diverse generation. In all of these dimensions, they are different from today’s older generations. And in many, they are also different from older adults back when they were the age Millennials are now.

Pew Research Center surveys show that half of Millennials (50%) now describe themselves as political independents and about three-in-ten (29%) say they are not affiliated with any religion. These are at or near the highest levels of political and religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the quarter-century that the Pew Research Center has been polling on these topics.

Is the "Son of God" movie Biblical?

Here's a discussion of the "Son of God" movie recently released and claims by some it's not Biblical.

Was football announcer fired for religious views on traditional marriage?

Craig James, former FOX sports football announcer was fired shortly after publicly stating his support for traditional marriage.  Was it a case of religious discrimination?  The state of Texas announced it was launching an investigation of James' claim it was religious discrimination.

The Texas Workforce Commission is launching an investigation into whether James suffered from religious discrimination when he was fired shortly after he said in a televised debate he supports traditional marriage.

The state agency, which which has authority over such employment matters in the Lone Star State, issued a “charge” document announcing its inquiry Thursday.

...As explained in detail in that report, when James was a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2012, he had been asked during a televised debate about his views on marriage, to which he responded that he believes marriage exclusively to be one man with one woman. That view is dictated by his Christian faith, and is a provision in the Texas Constitution.

Fox Sports fired James from his job as an on-air sports analyst days after this was brought to the network’s attention in 2013.

More evidence that Obamacare isn't working.

Here's more evidence that Obamacare isn't working out as planned, e.g. attracting uninsured to the health care exchanges.

The new health insurance marketplaces appear to be making little headway so far in signing up Americans who lack health insurance, the Affordable Care Act’s central goal.

A pair of surveys released on Thursday suggest that just one in 10 uninsured people who qualify for private health plans through the new marketplace have signed up for one — and that about half of uninsured adults has looked for information on the online exchanges or plans to look.

Taken together, the snapshots shown by the surveys provide preliminary answers to what has been one of the biggest mysteries since HealthCare.gov and separate state marketplaces opened last fall: Are they attracting their prime audience?

One of the surveys, by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., shows that, of people who had signed up for coverage through the marketplaces by last month, just one-fourth described themselves as having been without insurance for most of the past year.

War on poverty: winning, losing, making things worse?

Here's an interesting article by John Goodman on the 50th anniversary of President Johnson's announced war on poverty.    Goodman says poverty rates haven't dropped much from when the war started.  Going from 18% of population to 15% despite spending $15 trillion since its inception and now $1 trillion annually.  He argues we're in fact made things worse because the programs have undermined the factors which make it unlikely someone will remain poverty.

California Governor isn't too excited about legalizing marijuana.

It was interesting seeing California Governor Jerry Brown hesitating on legalizing marijuana in California. California legalized medical marijuana which has created headaches for the state.

Brown is for all things liberal so when he hesitates reality maybe hitting home.  As he says, "how many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation?”

What the media isn't reporting on Arizona religious liberty bill and Brewer's veto.

Here are couple of great pieces on the Arizona religious liberty bill.  Information one of course didn't hear in the general media treatment of the controversy.

One by Rich Lowry of National Review printed by Politico Magazine.

The other in the Federalist.

It's a shame when the media no longer seeks to give both sides of an issue.