Debt Ceiling Crisis: Cutting off your nose to spite your face

Could this be what the Republicans/TeaPartiers had in mind all along? If politics is like a chess game, the players plan their moves long ahead of their actions. But to force such a constitutional and economic nightmare upon the American people seems more like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The Debt Ceiling Crisis: Approaching the Witching Hour

by Geoffrey R. Stone,

Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago

As the clock runs down toward the witching hour on August 2, I see three possible solutions to the crisis. First, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress can agree on a compromise plan that raises the debt ceiling for a reasonable period of time and deals with at least some of the issues of spending cuts and new revenues that have thus far so furiously divided the parties. I suppose this is still possible, but it seems unlikely.

Second, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress can agree to increase the debt ceiling for a reasonable period of time without addressing any of the bitterly divisive spending and revenue issues. This is pretty much what has always happened in the past. Congress has separated the debt ceiling issue from the more difficult and more contentious issues of taxing and spending. At this point, that might be the best solution, but it too seems unlikely because of Republican intransigence.

Third, Congress can remain paralyzed and simply do nothing. If they follow that approach, which now seems likely, the current debt ceiling will remain in place and as of August 2 the government will not be able to borrow any more money and thus will no longer be able to pay its bills -- for the first time in American history. What happens then?

The most obvious outcome is that for as long as that state of affairs exists, the president will have to decide which bills to pay and which to ignore. In other words, the president would have to decide whether to suspend Medicare payments, cancel Social Security payments, withhold the salaries of government employees (including the military), default on our debt obligations, etc. With each passing day, the spending cuts would need to be deeper and deeper.

Some people have argued that, even if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling, these cuts and non-payments don't have to happen, because the president can ignore Congress' action and just keep on borrowing to pay the nation's bills. Some have argued that a little-noticed provision in section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes precisely this course of action. This provision states: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

This provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was enacted shortly after the Civil War, was intended, in part, to prevent the former Confederate states, when they resumed their positions in Congress, from attempting to cause the federal government to renege on the debts the Union incurred to put down the "rebellion." A careful reading of the text, however, reveals that the provision goes well beyond that. It does not say that the validity of the public debt incurred to put down the rebellion "shall not be questioned," but that the public debt more generally "shall not be questioned," citing the Civil War issue as merely an illustration.

So, what is the relevance of section 4 to the current crisis? What it seems to say is that the government must honor all public debt "authorized by law." This suggests that non-payment of our existing debt is not a constitutionally-permissible option for the president. As a result, in making spending cuts beginning on August 2, the President apparently cannot constitutionally decide not to pay our outstanding debt. Rather, all of the cuts must come from ongoing expenditures. This would, of course, dramatically magnify the impact of the crisis on government programs, services and operations.

Faced with this dilemma, what is the president to do? There are those who argue that this entire controversy is much ado about nothing, because the President can simply "raise the debt ceiling on his own." They argue that, in light of "the president's role as the ultimate guardian of the constitutional order," President Obama should disregard Congress' failure to authorize additional debt and assume the authority to do the "right thing" for the nation. As Justice Robert Jackson observed more than half a century ago, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."

This is a dangerous argument. Its proponents point to the one dramatic instance in American history in which a president openly exercised this extraconstitutional authority. (President Bush II, by the way, attempted to exercise this authority secretly when he authorized the use of torture and the NSA surveillance program in violation of federal law.) But that earlier instance, involving President Abraham Lincoln, was quite a different situation. It arose at the very outset of the Civil War, when Union troops needed to get to the nation's capital to protect it from possible Confederate attack.

Confederate sympathizers in Maryland were tearing up the railroad tracks in order to prevent the Union troops from moving south to the capital. Because the local authorities, who were sympathetic to the Confederates, did nothing to prevent this interference, the only way to end the obstruction was for Lincoln to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and authorize the military to arrest and detain those who were preventing the army from reaching Washington.

The problem was that the Constitution authorizes only Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. But Congress was not in session, and in 1861 it could not be convened quickly. Faced with this crisis, historians and legal scholars agree that Lincoln was justified in doing what he did, even though it was not expressly authorized by the Constitution.

Even if one thinks that the danger to the national interest today is comparable to that facing Lincoln in 1861, the situations are importantly different. Today, Congress is in session and is refusing the raise the debt ceiling, even though it could easily do so. Because the Republicans in Congress refuse to do this, President Obama (unlike Lincoln) is faced with a "decision" by Congress. It may be a reckless and irresponsible decision, but it is a decision and it is much harder to justify ignoring a decision than to act in a situation where no congressional action was possible.

Having said this, I think the president is likely to (and should) take control of the situation and do the "right thing" for the nation, even though he has no express constitutional authority to do so. But to suggest that this crisis is much ado about nothing because the president can avoid a calamity by extra-constitutional means, and by doing something that no other president in American history has been called upon to do, is absolutely no excuse for the conduct of the Republicans in bringing us to this point.

Moreover, even if the president does this, there may be serious repercussions. First, the Republicans in the House may well attempt to impeach the president for acting "unconstitutionally." Even though this would go nowhere in the Senate, the very act of impeachment would exacerbate the dire state of politics in the United States today. Second, there will almost inevitably be litigation challenging the constitutionality of the president's action. (Note that in 1861, Chief Justice Taney held Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland unconstitutional and ordered him to lift the suspension. Lincoln ignored the Taney's ruling.). Is that a crisis we want to repeat?

The plain and simple reality is that unless the Republicans agree to raise the debt ceiling in the next two days, they will throw the nation into a constitutional and economic nightmare. If nothing else, they should have enough sense and self-discipline to know that they will pay dearly for this with the American people

QUOTE: On the National Debt

"My advice to Congress. If your car is spinning on the ice don't slam on the brakes or you'll flip it. Steer into it to get control of the vehicle." --Brad B.

JUST WONDERING about the Federal Debt

I was curious to see how many times the debt ceiling was raised under the previous administration, and I found this, dated Sept 29, 2008:

On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That's a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush's watch.

The bailout plan now pending in Congress could add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt – though President Bush said this morning he expects that over time, "much if not all" of the bailout money "will be paid back."

But the government is taking no chances. Buried deep in the hundred pages of bailout legislation is a provision that would raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt to $11.315 trillion. It'll be the 7th time the debt limit has been raised during this administration. In fact it was just two months ago, on July 30, that President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which contained a provision raising the debt ceiling to $10.615 trillion."

Consistency is not a virtue for political parties, is it?

Even more interesting are charts dealing with federal spending, federal debt, and GDP, available here. Isn't it curious how Ronald Reagan was able to get by with the following % increases in federal debt, while Obama's 12.5% hike in 2010 is being heralded as the end of the republic?

Percentage increase in Federal Debt under Ronald Reagan
1983: 15%
1985: 12.3%
1986: 13.9%

Curious.

A Simply Amazing Rebuttal to the Simply Amazed Obama Skeptics, or "Oh Yes They Can"

So here's the latest nonsense being passed around:

Isn't it amazing that, within only one week of Tiger Woods crashing his Escalade, the press found every woman with whom Tiger has had an affair during the last few years? And, they even uncovered photos, text messages, recorded phone calls, etc.! Furthermore, they not only know the cause of the family fight, but they even know it was a wedge from his golf bag that his wife used to break out the windows in the Escalade. Not only that, they know which wedge! And, each & every day, they were able to continue to provide America with updates on Tiger's sex rehab stay, his wife's plans for divorce, as well as the dates & tournaments in which he will play.
Now, Barack Hussein Obama has been in office for two years, yet this very same press:

· Cannot find any of his childhood friends or neighbors;
· Or find any of Obama's high school or college classmates;
· Or locate any of his college papers or grades;
· Or determine how he paid for both a Columbia & a Harvard education;
· Or discover which country issued his visa to travel to Pakistan in the 1980's;
· Or even find Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis on racism
They just can't seem to uncover any of this.
Yet, the public still trusts that same press to give them the whole truth!
Simply amazing, isn't it?

Here's my rebuttal:

Simply amazing how stubbornly some people cling to lies, and perpetuate gossip! Of course, if one is a skeptic, no amount of memory, testimony or sense experience will convince him. Just try proving to a skeptic that he is not the only one with a mind, and that other people aren't robots! Or try proving to him that the world wasn't created five minutes ago! If one prefers doubt, then not even God himself can change his mind--as Jesus demonstrated when he walked among us. http://bible.cc/luke/13-34.htm

Not that it will probably change many minds, but just for the record, here are responses to all the allegations:


Now, Barack Hussein Obama has been in office for two years, yet this very same press:

1) Cannot find any of his childhood friends or neighbors;

Oh yes they can!

http://obamasneighborhood.com/friends.html

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2989722&page=1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/2637523/Barack-Obamas-childhood-friends-deny-he-was-a-Muslim.html

http://www.barackobamahawaii.com/

2) Or find any of Obama's high school or college classmates

Oh yes they can!

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=3082803&page=1

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/columbia.asp
 
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2081836/posts

3) Or locate any of his college papers or grades

Oh yes, they could if it were legal!

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/columbiathesis.asp

http://www.oxy.edu/x7992.xml

here's another perspective:
http://www.redstate.com/davenj1/2011/04/28/farewell-birthers-hello-transcripters/

I have been a college instructor for over 20 years.The 1974 federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (34 CFR Part 99) protects the privacy of student education records. Remember how teachers used to leave graded papers and tests outside their office doors for students to rifle through and pick up? Thanks to this act, it is illegal for instructors to reveal student info to anyone except the student, without his or her permission. Think of it as HIPPA for education.

I've thrown out my own papers, and I routinely throw out student papers/tests if they are not reclaimed after one semester. It is only recently that computers have been around to easily store information. Now that that is possible, I do have student's online work.

4) Or determine how he paid for both a Columbia & a Harvard education;
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/money.asp

Oh yes they can!

Per Obahma's book Audacity of Hope, p194 "Where Americans do need help, immediately, is in managing the rising cost of college-- something with which Michelle and I are all too familiar (for the first ten years of our marriage, our combined monthly payments on our undergraduate and law school debt exceeded our mortgage by a healthy margin)."

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_Barack_Obama_pay_for_his_extensive_education#ixzz1SlYT3ybk

How did W pay for his education?

5) Or discover which country issued his visa to travel to Pakistan in the 1980's;

Yes, they have a good idea:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/passport.asp

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/more-birther-nonsense-obamas-1981-pakistan-trip/

(One good question deserves another: Exactly where was George Bush during the Vietnam War, particularly 1972-73?  http://www.google.com/search?q=Oh+yes+they+can%21&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8&rlz=   )
6) Or even find Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis on racism.

Oh, yes they can!  This is too easy:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/columbiathesis.asp


Michelle LeVaughan Robinson Obama's Princeton thesis is available for you to read here:

part 1: http://www.politico.com/pdf/080222_MOPrincetonThesis_1-251.pdf

pert 2: http://www.politico.com/pdf/080222_MOPrincetonThesis_26-501.pdf

part3: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8642.html

part 4: http://dyn.politico.com/pdf/080222_MOPrincetonThesis_76-981.pdf

Rob Bell: crypto-Covenanter?

Okay, so I finally broke down and read Bell on hell. I don't usually read the latest evangelical best sellers until at least a couple of years go by. That way anything that isn't worthwhile will be remaindered and forgotten, and I won't need to waste my reading time. If something is still around, then it merits my attention.

However, Bell's Love Wins has created quite a fuss among some New Hope students and faculty. Wayne Cordiero, NHCC president, is a close friend of Francis Chan, who has recently written his own book in response to Bell. I certainly didn't want to be drawn into discussions and pull a Piper so I figured I should have a look.  (I am grateful that a good friend loaned me the book, so I could save my money for something more deserving, like James Dubay's The Evidential Power of Beauty or Peter Leithart's Defending Constantine. )

Anyway, it's my first Bell book. It's easy to read, full of questions, very, very popular and deliberately non-scholarly. In fact, it's downright sloppy about exegesis. That's really frustrating!  find myself agreeing  with Kyle Small, writing in the June 2011 Covenant Companion, that the book isn't really about heaven and hell: it is about election, and that Bell is reacting against his Reformed Calvinist tradition. This might explain Bell's stridency at various points. For those of us who do not share that tradition, reading "Love Wins" is not all that upsetting or enlightening.

I had to laugh at Kyle's observation:

This book is anything but radical for the Evangelical Covenant Church. The Covenant has held strongly to a view of the atonement where “God’s love for the world is magnified” and less so to the more classic substitutionary model of atonement where “the wrath of God is satisfied.” Covenant theology rejoices that God came to love the world and generously gave himself fully to us. I would venture to say that Bell becomes a Covenanter in his middle chapters. He even sounds like P.P. Waldenström in a few places (who was also wrongly criticized for being a universalist). As I re-read sections of the book, I wondered if the Covenant Church (via the Communications Department) had been invited to edit the work, especially the tone and phrasing, would this book have be more palpable? Perhaps!

Kyle is spot on as he concludes his review:

This book that many of us cannot understand. I continually felt like I had entered another family’s argument. Bell is overly polemical throughout these pages. Several friends have commented that wherever Bell says something clear and helpful he uses the next page to make a point that resembles a sword and not a ploughshare. He seems to write as if embattled from the outset.

I think Bell is responding to his theological past—a past that many North American young people continue to revolt against—in profound ways. Bell is a Reformed guy with a love for C.S. Lewis. If you grew up Baptist, Bible church, Reformed Church, or even conservative Presbyterian, this book might deeply resonate with you. And most Americans have a Reformed view of God in their back pocket, even when they are not aware of it (see Sydney Ahlstrom’s A Religious History of the American People). Lutherans would be one of the few groups to be somewhat disengaged from the topic altogether.

Reformed theology is centrally concerned with the theological topic of election. Bell’s tradition most often stresses certainty of salvation and election, including predestination. Reformed folks, like John Piper, read the Bible through the lens of election, asking, “Who has God chosen and not chosen? God chose Israel, God chose Jesus; did God choose me?” This question strikes fear in the heart. This fear responds by seeking salvation because the other options scare the hell out of us.....

American Calvinism has this interesting acronym for their theology called TULIP. I don’t necessarily understand it, but it has to do with the question, “Who is in/out?” If you resonate with John Piper, your perspective is primarily on “Who is in?” and “How do we assure ourselves of this?” If you resonate with Bell, the perspective is “Who is out?” and “How do we welcome them in?” If you resonate with neither and wonder why this book has produced such a firestorm, perhaps it is because you believe in a God who blesses the world, inside and out, or possibly because regardless of debates about heaven and hell, open or closed, you believe that Jesus Christ is the world-concerned story of how love wins.

Precisely. Reformed theology has nominalist DNA.   One of the by-products of nominalism is individualism, and a preoccupation with the problem of how it is possible to "group" individuals. This leads to a focus on a sovereign God who becomes the ultimate agent for grouping. "Either/or" thinking prevails. However, those of us whose theology is informed by a realist metaphysic delight in the way all things are related and ultimately relate to God, who Himself is a perfect community of Three Persons. Sin ruptures relationship, and separates us from God, and this leads us to focus on Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate agent of reconciliation.  As Waldenström writes,

When we started to speak of reconciliation, we raised the question if it was God, or man, or both parties, who was, or were, to be reconciled. Now we have searched the Bible and have found that it does not speak of God as being reconciled. The love of God had not been diminished through man's sin, so that it needed to be improved, increased or restored; nor could God's hatred of sin be done away with, for if He did not hate sin, He would not be righteous; neither could God's displeasure to those who live in sin be done away with, because even yet, this very day, God is displeased with all who live in sin. No change has taken place in Him. He remains the same; with Him there is "no variableness, neither shadow of turning." He is the eternally faithful, unchangeable God, whose name is Jehovah (that is, "I am that I am").

On the contrary, man needed to be reconciled to God....The Scriptures testify that man, as estranged from God, is carnal. It is not the Spirit of God that fills and rules him, but the flesh. But "the carnal mind" ("the mind of the flesh," according to the Revised Version) "is enmity against God," says Paul (Rom. 8:7). That is the chief trouble; not this or that transgression or misdeed; nay, but the very mind, is enmity against God: "for it (that is, this mind) is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be." Of the same thing the apostle speaks in Col. 1:21, where he says to the Christians: "Ye were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works." "The wicked works" of the ungodly are never isolated; they are expressions of the wicked, or evil mind. And the evil mind is enmity against God. This the natural man will never admit. Even though he may admit that now and then in his life and in his works he may be at fault or be mistaken, still he will hold that in the depths of his heart he is good. But no, says the apostle, the natural mind itself in man is enmity against God. It is a terrible judgment which the apostle by these words pronounces upon all that bears the name of man; but it is a true judgment.
In short, the heart of the world is estranged from and dead to God, averse to him; and this makes it unblest. Here, as we have said, a reconciliation must take place, a reconciliation which brings man into an entirely different relation to God, if he is to become happy. But how, then can such a reconciliation be brought about? By the removal of sin, and by the justification of man. That which separates must be removed. Otherwise there can be no reconciliation. But that which separates is sin. From this fact we understand why "the reconciliation of the sinner to God" always depends on "the atonement of the sins," that is, on removal of the sins. We repeat it again: By being cleansed from sin, the sinner comes into a right relation to God. In no other way can such a relation be brought about.

 Hell, then, is that condition of being estranged from, averse to and dead to God, just as heaven is that condition of being in a living, loving relation to Him.  Rob Bell gets it right when he writes,

There are individual hells
and communal, society-wide hells,
and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously. (p. 79)

Eternal life doesn't start when we die;
it starts now.
It's not about a life that begins at death;
it's about experiencing the kind of life now that can
endure and survive even death. (p. 59)

Jesus invites us
in this life,
in this broken, beautiful world,
to experience the life of heaven now.
He insisted over and over that God's peace, joy, and love
are currently available to us, exactly as we are...

There's a heaven now, somewhere else.
There's a heaven here, sometime else.
And then there's Jesus's invitation to heaven
here
and
now,
in this moment,
in this place. (p. 62)
       

Bottom line:  IMO Bell asks good questions, but doesn't have the personality, mind and theological tradition to provide good answers.  I'm going to look for Jerry Wall's Hell: The Logic of Damnation. It's been out for 9 years now, and it has infuriated some Calvinists, so it ought to be good. ; )

RECIPE: Spinach and strawberry salad

Ingredients:

2 bunches of spinach, rinsed and torn into bite-sized pieces

4 cups sliced strawberries

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. paprika

1/4 cup sesame seeds

1/8 cup poppy seeds

Mix the last 6 ingredients to make the dressing.

VARIATIONS: when strawberries are expensive, I sometimes add canned mandarin oranges, or substitute them entirely for the strawberries. For those who like nuts, I sometimes add sliced almonds.

"Rupert Repents" Conversation

In response to my previous message, "Rupert Repents, or Why we need Government,"  a student wrote me:

I think anyone who says "the government doesn't help me" is either speaking in a very general term, or is a moron. What the guy pointed out is fine, and I don't think that's the hot issue. From what I know, no one has asked to quit building roads, quit producing power, quit producing water, cut police and fire, etc. Those are seemingly the very things that government wants to take FROM! You don't hear "Let's cut back PERS, and governor salaries, presidential salaries, congress salaries!". Although I can't say for certain but I have a feeling that I do more work each year than many politicians do, I'm not say all, or even most, but many; yet they receive decent (even BIG) salaries and perks that most mortal men would LOVE to have! (I could be wrong on that, but that's just a feeling/perception I have.) Anyway, I digress...

My main thought of the article was that it was pretty shallow, didn't really dig into "serious" or even "controversial" issues that are ACTUALLY being discussed. Or the other option is that I'm misinformed, which is possible!

My response:

... The whole libertarian movement is about holding government to the minimum and attracts people who take themselves to be sovereign as individuals. See the Libertarian Party Platform. Joel Salatin, self-described ""Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-​lunatic-Farmer" is typical of this viewpoint.

Trust me: in the name of efficiency, cost effectiveness and free markets, I have heard people argue for the privatization of social security, and/or prisons and/or schools and/or utilities and/or police and fire departments. (Just do a google search, "privatization + fill in the blank, and you'll see what I mean. ) For example, The Ludwig von Mises Institute (an extremely influential think tank ) promotes the privatization of roads and highways! (See this)

Part of the reason we are in the economic mess we are in is because of the financial degregulation of the financial sector. (See this and this.)

I grant you that politicians are a lot of the problem. Unfortunately, if we conflate politicians with government (as many people seem to be doing) we will be in worse shape than before. That is why I think it is important to be reminded of the positive things government does. If we are upset with politicians, we should also be upset with CEOs and multinational businesses that buy them off, and only care for their own profit, at the expense of the middle class. (See this.)

Rupert Repents? or Why We Need Government

Pardon my cynicism...but I wonder, is Rupert Murdoch doing damage control? Or has he found religion, as he enters his eighties?

In 1999, The Economist reported that Newscorp Investments had made £11.4 billion ($20.1 billion) in profits over the previous 11 years but had not paid net corporation tax. It also reported that after an examination of the available accounts, Newscorp could normally have been expected to pay corporate tax of approximately $350 million. The article explained that in practice the corporation's complex structure, international scope and use of offshore tax havens allowed News Corporation to pay minimal taxes. -- The Economist, BBC

Nevertheless, this Fox News Opinion makes some much needed points. (See also my June 16, 2010 entry, "Too much Government?

Government Helps You -- Whether You Like It Or Not




By Sally Kohn
Published July 12, 2011
FoxNews.com

When I hear conservative critics of government getting in the way of business, I always think about a trucking executive I know who shared the same complaints -- until I pointed out that he made his fortunate running rigs across the government highway system.

How’d you get to work today? Did you drive on a road dug and paved by the private company you work for? Or maybe you took a bus or train that your employer personally invested in?

Over 90% of American school children attend public schools. Over 89% of Americans get the water in their homes from public water systems. One-in-ten households get electricity from public power plants, and those households are disproportionately located in rural, hard-to-serve communities that lack the incentives for private investment. Plus, recall that originally, even most private electrical grids were public investments --- before they were sold into private hands. Plus don’t forget about the police and firefighters and search and rescue teams that hopefully you don’t need everyday but fortunately are there when you do need them.

In fact, researchers at Cornell University found that many Americans who even more directly benefit from government spending deny that government helps them personally.

Did you know that so-called "529" savings programs for your kids’ college tuition are subsidized through favorable tax status with the government? Well, 64% of 529 investors don’t think they use government programs.

Do you own a home and benefit from favorable mortgage interest deductions? At least 60% of Americans who do also don’t think they get government help.

Even 44% of Social Security recipients, 39% of Medicare recipients, and a whopping 27% of welfare recipients --- the mother of all government social programs that conservatives love to hate -- don’t believe they are beneficiaries of government social spending.

Political rhetoric is one thing. Facts are another.

The fact is that while the private market is undoubtedly the best way to create wealth and innovation in America, we know that left to its own devices and unchecked by any other forces, the market will also produce enormous inequality impossible for subsequent generations to surmount.

Chances are your kids will not become one of the 400 very, very wealthy millionaires and billionaires in America but one of the 307,000,000 of the rest of us who serve them. If that’s your idea of success, then by all means support conservative anti-government rhetoric that denies your children the government stepping stools on which big business and the rich so heavily depended.

Of course government isn’t perfect. But every time there’s a corporate scandal or even, say, excessive risk-taking and profit-seeking on Wall Street threatens to crash the entire economy, we don’t throw out capitalism, do we?

The fact is that, whether you want to admit it or not, it was government spending on social programs --- from the crop insurance and housing subsidies to the GI bill --- that got our nation out of the Great Depression, put the private sector back on its feet an created fairly prosperous decades for America thereafter. Oh, and do note that during that recovery, the ratio of government debt to GDP was even higher than it is now.

An all-powerful government is not the solution. But slashing government in order to provide more and more resources to big business and the super-rich who our government already bailed out and who are now reaping historic profits but still aren’t creating jobs --- that’s not a solution, either. Just as we need the private sector, we need government programs that shore up the middle class and create a fair ladder of opportunity for all. Like it or not, you need government, too.

Sally Kohn writes frequently for Fox News Opinion. She is the founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab, a grassroots think tank. You can follow her on Twitter@sallykohn.

Spiritual Nomads

I recently had a conversation with a woman who seems to have been bouncing around the Body. She started out Lutheran, then attended several popular charistmatic churches in our area, then sojourned among the Baptists, then then Presbyterians, and now is hanging out with us. Why does this happen? She became upset with doctrine at some places, upset with divine laughter and "slaying in the spirit" at another place, at dispensational dismissal of the charismatic gifts  at another place, upset with the pastor at another place, and at lack of fellowship at another.

I wonder how long she'll sojourn with us?

Every tradition has its distinctive doctrine. Christian sub-groups foster their identity through the cultivation of distinctive doctrine. Not only do they have a distinctive take on this doctrine, but they also place a distinctive emphasis on it. The unique gift that each group offers the church universal is its distinct doctrinal emphasis. Yet, the temptation of each tradition is to turn their distinctive doctrine into a trump card that subjects every other Christian doctrine to its service. The challenge for each tradition is to offer their gift to others while at the same time reformulating their doctrine in light of the whole Christian faith.

 --John L. Drury

That is part of the challenge of each tradition. It is the challenge for each Christian to decide what part of the garden they will plant their seed, and stay there long enough for their plant to bear fruit.

Dependence, not Independence

excerpt from today's Sermon
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene, Oregon
by Pastor Steve Bilynskyj
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj

Romans 17:13-25
“Law Good, Sin Bad”July 3, 2011 - Third Sunday after Pentecost


"...Law is like adult diapers. It’s a treatment for the symptoms of moral incontinence, not for the problem. And like a diaper it probably only makes you that much more aware of what you can’t control. Like a diaper it only makes you carry around your sin with you that much more closely. What’s needed is a cure for sin, not a better diaper to hold it in.

No, it is not the primary mission of Christian people, of the Church of Jesus Christ, to get whatever country we live in to adopt and enforce good laws. Law is good, but it doesn’t change people. It doesn’t help people do what is right just to know what is right. No, the mission of the Church is to proclaim the Good News of a Savior who changes people, who can set us free from the power of sin.

As I said, in verse 23 Paul asks for a rescue, for freedom from the “body of death.” As anyone with physical incontinence knows—and I don’t mean at all to make light of an embarrassing and frustrating condition—the only answer may be a new body. We’re promised just that for the future in the resurrection of Jesus. But for right now, we are promised and given an escape from our bigger problem. The last verse of the previous chapter, 6:23, says “the wages of sin is death.” That verse then says, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord,” and verse 25 of our text gives the same answer, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Freedom through democratic government and just law is a good thing. God bless the United States of America. But freedom from sin in Jesus Christ is the best thing, the most important thing. It’s available even where there is no just law. Freedom in Christ can be had when no other freedom is offered. Freedom from the law of sin is the gift of God in Jesus Christ to all of us who fail to keep the law of God.

It’s Jesus who delivers us from the slavery Paul pictures at the end of our text. No matter how much we celebrate independence, we are spiritual slaves to both the good law of God and the bad law of sin. But faith in Jesus Christ calls us out of both slaveries, not into independence, but into dependence on Him."

Song: "In the Blazing Summer"

Yesterday, while waiting to board our flight from Denver to Eugene, a fellow passenger told us that her car thermometer had read 111 degrees in Omaha. Today, Brad Boydston posted the above photo of his thermometer in Phoenix, at 2:15 pm.

I have  noticed a lot of hits on a song I previously posted, entitled "I Hate Summer,"  (sung to the tune of "I Love Paris." ) It's time for a new song, I think, and so in honor of all of you who are suffering, I offer you "In the Blazing Summer," to be sung to the tune of "In the Bleak Midwinter." (CRANHAM, by Gustav Holst.)

1. In the blazing summer
mercury makes moan,
temp is oe’r 100
in this torrid zone.
Sweat is falling, sweat on sweat,
sweat on sweat,
It’s the hottest summer
Ever yet.


2. The sun: the sky can’t hold it,
Nor earth sustain;
What we’d give to have some
hard and cooling rain!
In the blazing summer
here’s some good advice:
Keep yourself hydrated,
and use lots of ice.


3.Those without some A/C
wince at old Sol’s glare,
vainly try to escape
July’s burning air.
Shall we see a movie?
Swim or shower or shop?
It’s too hot to move, I think
I’m going to drop.


4.Where can I find some shade?
I am getting charred!
(If I weren’t so fat
this might not be so hard.)
If I were a wise man
I would do what’s best,
Leave this wretched hell-hole,
Move to the Northwest!