A Pastor's Thoughts on Christianity, Current Events, & Politics

Church got cancelled because of snow so I thought I'd chime in here instead. 

We are at the one year anniversary of the stimulus package and there is a lot of talk about it.  Obviously every article that you read on the subject is going to be biased based on whether a person is a democrat or republican.    Democrats claim that the stimulus has created jobs and therefore was a success.  Republicans say that people don't like it and it increased the deficit significantly so it was a waste of money.  I'd like to offer a different perspective as an independent.

The stimulus package was necessary on account that it gave people hope.  It was passed when the stock market was spiraling downward and many people were scared.  For the time being, people needed to feel as if the government had a handle on things and the stimulus package provided that.  It may have been just as effective with a smaller price tag or could have been more effective if even more money was spent, I don't know.  The stimulus package gave people hope however and the stock market soon rebounded in March, giving people the impression that things were on the upturn.

People are now turning against the stimulus package because it was not everything that they had hoped for.  It is possible that the stimulus will deliver absolutely everything that President Obama said it would but the American people expected more.  They expected that unemployment would have dropped instead of risen.  And more importantly they expected that the economy would be in better shape overall by this point.

What about actual numbers?  The stimulus passed in 2009 was said to have a hefty price tag of $787 billion.  Recently this price was raised by $75 billion.  To be honest I'm not clear why the price was raised except it seemed as if no one figured in the interest that this would cost us on the deficit. 

The first report that was issued by the government after the third quarter stated that 640,000 jobs had been created or saved as a result of the stimulus.  The reports that were received contained numerous factual errors including many instances where reported congressional districts did not ever exist.  Because of this and other problems, the accuracy of the jobs created was called into question.  The fourth quarter report claims that just under 600,000 jobs were created or saved as a result of the stimulus.  This gives us 1.24 million jobs that have been directly saved or created as a result of the stimulus package.

The Obama administration is touting a number of jobs created between 1.5 and 2 million as a result of indirect jobs created.  The reports only reflect jobs directly created with the money spent.  It is only fair to reason that these additional jobs created causes a need for more supplies, construction equipment, fast food meals, etc.  This indirectly adds to the job total as those companies must have more workers to deal with increased demand.

So far $263.3 billion has been spent of the stimulus money.  Using the most optimistic 2 million jobs number, this means that the cost of each job has been $131,650.  Mind you, this is not salary that has been paid to each worker for a year's labor but reflects only what has been spent in six months of reports.  When projects are finished and completely paid for, that number will likely rise.  So yes, the stimulus has created jobs as promised.  And yes, the stimulus has come at a tremendous price tag.  One would think that we could create jobs at a much smaller price tag than $131k per job, especially considering that a third of those jobs were indirect jobs with no official government spending.  It also looks like the proposed $5,000 small business incentive to hire workers look like a pittance even at an overall price tag of $33 billion.

Not that a 10% unemployment rate isn't a big problem for those who are out of work, but 90% of Americans are getting little to nothing for their tax dollars.  I believe that we can provide stimulus and provide lasting value for Americans.  Our infrastructure is crumbling.  Bridges and roadways are in bad repair.  The engineers who inspect these things give our infrastructure a grade of D.  They estimate that it will take $100 billion to repair our infrastructure to where it should be.  I say write the check.  $100 billion to repair our roads will provide real, tangible benefits to everyone as well as lasting value.  It will provide more jobs, even if they are mainly construction and manufacturing ones.  And the price tag seems like a drop in the bucket compared to what has been spent in the last six months and even smaller compared to the overall price that hasn't even been paid yet.

One final note on all of this government money.  Not that anyone is a fan of big banks these days but they've mostly held up their end of the bargain.  Of the $700 billion provided by the Bush administration in TARP funds, only $99 billion is still outstanding.  Granted this is a huge chunk of change and would almost fully fund by proposed infrastructure improvements, it is much better off than the stimulus.  As mentioned earlier, the price of the stimulus package was just raised another $75 billion for a total of $862 billion.  The Obama administration keeps blaming the Bush administration for the current problems.  What is never mentioned is that it was a democratic congress that passed the bills and Bush just signed them into law.  Just comparing the two bills, it appears that Bush was far more financially smart.  That doesn't account for anything else passed during his watch, just that TARP looks like the better of the two bills right now.

Filed under: Politics

As I had planned, my new website production has slowed down since the spring and summer of 2009.  I really hadn't planned on launching a new website any time soon and was going to focus more on my devotions.  But the best laid plans get distracted when I'm behind them.

First of all, I'm finally caught up on my devotions and have everything posted for January.  This is the first time since Thanksgiving that I've been caught up I think.

I'm actually launching a couple of new web projects but there's no telling when I will make them live.  My best guess is that it will take a couple of weeks at least.  There is one new address to offer, but it's not a new site.  I registered the name theonlinebibledictionary.com for the Bible dictionary.  The dictionary has been around for some time and even my new, updated site has been up since the fall.  However this domain will take anyone directly to the dictionary instead of having to navigate around the spreadinglight site.  In all, not a big deal but I thought it was worth the investment.

My current website project is something that has come out of a sermon series.  I've been preaching from the gospel of John and have been using the details in the other gospels to fill in the holes of some of the stories.  I suddenly had an idea - wouldn't it be nice to have every story put together in order to read all of the gospel accounts of the story in one place?  So that is my project.  There are 233 separate stories recorded in the four gospels.  I am not only posting all of the relevant verses to each story but will be adding some commentary about why the story is significant and how the gospel accounts differ.  In other words, 233 webpages written by me.  It will definitely take a while to get the site finished but I'll be sure to add the link here when I'm done.

I already have plans for another future project.  I purchased the domain name for it already so there's a good chance that I'll get it done as well.  It will be my attempt to consolidate the business/affiliate side of Spreading Light Ministries.  Ultimately there are some Christian business sites that I'd like to launch but I don't want to clutter up the ministry site with links so this will be a new launching platform.  Once again, this will be a long term project but I will likely put up a smaller scale site to get things started.

Filed under: Spreadinglight Light Ministres

In a new year I like to focus on God's newness.  The old has passed, the new has come.  January first marks a time to put the old behind us.  No matter how bad the previous year was, we can say that it was last year and we are in a new year with endless possibilities.

It's for this reason that I am focusing January's devotions on newness and things that God declares to make new in the Bible.  Despite my liking of newness, I was very surprised at something new today.

I live on the east coast and got two feet of snow a week before Christmas.  Currently the temperature has been dropping into the teens and single digits overnight and the high hasn't made it out of the 20's in several days.

All of this left me absolutely shocked to look out my office window in my basement and see four irises popping up out of the ground by about an inch.  Even in the middle of winter (actually only two weeks into it!) I'm reminded that spring is coming.  Soon blossoms will be out in full force and all of the oldness will be replaced by something new and beautiful.

Of course all of this serves as a reminder of how God makes us new as well.  He takes something that it is cold and dead and not that pretty and makes something wonderful out of it.  Praise God for His newness!

Filed under: Christianity

I love bulletin bloopers. They're humorous and a safe topic to joke about in church. I actually have a collection of bulletin bloopers on another website.

Yesterday my wife pointed out that I had made a pretty bulletin blooper myself. I'm so proud and hope that it means everyone will go Christmas caroling now:

CHRISTMAS CAROLING: We will plan on going Christmas caroling on Monday December 21st.  All those who are interesting should meet at the church at 6:30.

I hope that gets everyone in the Christmas spirit with a good laugh.

Filed under: Christianity

Climate change is in the news again and not just because of an upcoming conference in Copenhagen or continued discussion by Congress to pass "cap and trade" laws.  Files from the University of East Anglia were hacked and uploaded onto the internet.  These files include numerous emails and internal documents on the discussion over climate change.

It's no surprise that scientists disagree on the issue and it is no real revelation that there is even childish namecalling among dissenting views.  What is cause for concern is the accusation that scientists manipulated data to support their view rather than deriving their view from an objective evaluation of the information.

Among the more interesting bits leaked was a statement implying that scientists can't account for a lack of global warming going on currently. “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”  Another alarm comes from the fact that examination of tree growth rings stopped when they did not support their thermometer readings.  The New York Times writes here:

"Through the last century, tree rings and thermometers show a consistent rise in temperature until 1960, when some tree rings, for unknown reasons, no longer show that rise, while the thermometers continue to do so until the present."

There may be a good reason for abandoning the tree rings but no explanation is offered as to why the tree rings show different data and why that data is not attempted to be reconciled rather than disregarding it.

Scientists point out that the timing of this information leak is suspicious at best given the climate change conference coming up.  But that seems beside the point.  The information was obtained illegally and obviously was meant to damage backers of the climate change position.  The point is that these conversations happened and the public has been told that climate change is universally accepted and all scientific data backs this up.  Instead there are dissenting opinions and apparently data that contradicts what the climate change supporters want us to believe.

Before this seems like an isolated event with a few bad apples, in my search for actual information about these climate change emails, (I first read about this on CNN yesterday, almost two weeks after the emails were first reported about elsewhere on the web - and CNN offered no information about the actual contents of the emails) I uncovered that this is not the first set of damaging leaks.  This site discusses leaked emails from the EPA and a demand for more information to be released to the public. 

In the EPA emails, a scientists was told not to speak about climate change outside of the National Center for Environmental Economics.  Another email forbid him from researching the topic any further.  A third email gives the impression that the organization's position was set and releasing data to the contrary would only cause trouble.

We should be good stewards of God's creation.  We certainly have an impact on our environment and there are things that we can do to cut down on pollution that should be done.  Clouds of smog over Mexico City and Los Angeles are not naturally occurring and it doesn't take scientific data to prove this.  Perhaps we need to be a bit less trusting when science tells us that something is a proven fact and that everyone agrees with it.  It sounds very similar to the story of evolution that we've been told as well.

Filed under: Current Events