The Stimulus Package and Other Things

I know it's been awhile since I've last posted; my apologies. I've been quite busy with the new semester with school work, intramural sports, and the new seasons of 24 and Lost. Any who, I'm going to use this post to lambast the stimulus package, or should I call it the pork package, that was recently passed by Congress and signed by the all-knowing, messianic President Barack Obama. 

This bloated, pork-filled piece of hyper-partisan legislation is simply a way to reward many of the interest groups that supported Obama and the Democrats in the fall. Billions and billions are going to serve special-interests that cannot and will not affect, to any measurable extent, our current economic plight. I will be the first to say that I am not an economic major nor do I have any sort of economic expertise other than a college-level macroeconomics course I took in high school, but to give billions to special-interest groups, of which ACORN which is currently under investigation by the FBI for voter-registration fraud, and call it a stimulus package is flat-out dishonest to the citizens and tax-payers that elected these law-makers. Economic laws and principles dictate that this current recession will not last forever regardless of what kind of government intervention is employed, and when the economy is recovering sometime later this year or next, the Democrats will, without fail, claim credit for the recovery. Again, this will be flat-out dishonesty. Obama says that this stimulus package will create or save three and a half million jobs, but, in reality, no one really knows for sure how many jobs will or will not be created. The Obama Administration, to put it in the words of Karl Rove in an editorial in last week's Wall Street Journal, "is winging it." If you were to ask President Obama, himself, right now if he thought the stimulus package would create or save any jobs, he would probably rattle off some statistics or numbers that his economic team pulled from an outdated and extremely narrow study performed in the 1980s. 

The one thing we can unequivocally say about this stimulus package is that it will dramatically increase the size of the federal government. The package contains provisions for a vast expansion of medicare and medicaid, and also SCHIP, the program that gives free insurance to children whose parents can't afford it. These expansions, alone, greatly increase the future tax burden we are placing on the next generation of the American workforce. A workforce that I, myself, will be entering into in the next several years. Our current national debt is nearing eleven trillion dollars. That's close to seventy-five percent of our annual GDP. And with our current annual budget standing at over a trillion dollars for fiscal 2009, there seems to be no end in sight in which the budget is reigned. This cycle of deficit spending, begun by the Bush Administration, cannot continue indefinitely. Eventually our creditors will stop lending us money. According to Wikipedia.org, China holds close to seven hundred billion U.S. dollars of our debt. Woe be unto us when the day comes that China says that no longer wants to be the leading foreign creditor to the U.S. and floods the world economy with our currency, effectively sending the dollar into a hyper-inflation spiral upwards. The deficit spending must be stopped. The budget must be balanced, and the trend of increasing government involvement in personal life must be reversed. Thomas Jefferson, this nation's third president said, "The government that governs best, governs least." I think we'll all agree that times have changed since the infancy of this "noble experiment" but the premise is still the same. Massive government intervention in the economy and the private sector has never led to anything good. 

Switching gears, last week, Iran launched its first satellite into planetary orbit. U.S. officials basically ignored this launch and equated it with the launch of Sputnik that could only go "beep, beep, beep..." This view is naive and dangerous. The rockets used to carry Sputnik and Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, were the same rockets to which our early nuclear warheads were attached. Iran already possesses enough fissile material to create a nuclear bomb, and clearly, they possess the technology to shoot aforementioned bomb into a sub-orbital trajectory. The Obama Administration must act now in response to the launch. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a noted Holocaust denier, has said repeatedly that he would "wipe Israel of the map" if he had the means. Are we going to sit back and let this "president" dictate to us what it will do with its newly acquired WMD's? For our sake and for the sake of Israel, our strongest Middle East ally, I would hope not. 

Pakistan and Nuclear Deterrence

In today's issue of the Wall Street Journal in the opinion section of the front page, an editorial discussed the implications of a nuclear Pakistan and the possibility of buying its nuclear weapons from it. The idea is comes from the fact that Pakistan needs financial capital desperately, and in return for buying their nuclear weapons, the U.S. would provide a nuclear shield in Pakistan and give them tanks and jet fighters. That idea raises several questions, if this purchase actually came to fruition, could it serve as an example to other nuclear armed nations around the world such as India and some European nations, and what are the possible ramifications of a nuclear non-proliferation that excludes the super-powers like the U.S., Russia, China, and Western Europe? In answer to the first, a nuclear arms treaty would only work in nations that are trustworthy that would respond to economic sanctions. This description would exclude nations such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea. These nations, with the backing of Russia and China, have been able to side-step the brunt of the U.S.-led sanctions. Some nations that would take notice of a nuclear purchase would include India and maybe Israel. A disarmament between Pakistan and India would invariably decrease the odds of a nuclear war happening anywhere on the globe. The answer to the second question is that the world would become a much safer environment in which to engage other nations diplomatically. A guarantee of an American nuclear shield would become an enormous deterrent to any hostile nation. A nuclear shield would not stop conventional warfare, but merely act as a safe-guard against nuclear attacks by the opposing state. However, for the nuclear shield to be completely effective, the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal must be modernized. The last nuclear weapon to be commissioned was back in the 80's at the height of the Cold War. Nuclear weapons can only be a proper deterrent if they are reliable and safe to handle. Efforts by the Bush administration to modernize our arsenal were stymied in the Democratic Congress of the past two years, and with the Obama administration coming into power in a little over a month, the hopes of a modern nuclear arsenal are slim.

The time to act is now, while tensions in the hot spots of the world, namely between Pakistan and India, are not escalated to the breaking point. The Obama administration should take note of these options of nuclear purchasing and nuclear modernization. I paraphrase the words of Vice-President elect Joe Biden, the U.S. will be tested within the first six months of an Obama administration. Other nations do not know what Obama's breaking point is and will test him to discover how far he will go to deter a conflict. In short, the nuclear future of this nation rests on the shoulders of the new government. How it chooses to handle this issue will be telling of how it will handle foreign policy over the next four years.

Social Justice

One of the more controversial topics of this past election season. Social justice remains a major talking point in any debate of political ideology. This subject, however, goes much deeper than politics. Not only is social justice a topic discussed in the Bible, it is something ingrained into every person's mind. Everyone, including evil people like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, and Pol Pot have consciences, their's are just repressed and relegated to obscurity. The Bible speaks of social justice as an action that Christians are called to do. Back then, it entailed letting the poor and widows pick up the fallen grain during the harvest, and other such acts of care taking. The Bible, however, does not touch on the subject of free-government handouts, which have recently come to the center of political debate with the discussion of stimulus packages for auto companies, financial institutions, and the everyday citizen. Government handouts do not promote social justice; they never have, and they never will. Giving someone money for doing nothing only encourages that person to continue in his or her current path. People must work for their money, or they will never learn how to properly take care of themselves. Programs that promote this sort of "work for your money" mentality are very sucessful in promoting social change and social justice. Habitat for Humanity, one of Jimmy Carter's only good acts as president, is a program that I can believe in. The premise of the program is that they provide cheap housing for lower income people. The kicker is that the recipient must complete so many hours working on either their house or another Habitat house, and they must still pay some significant sum of money for the house. Not only does the family or individual receive a house that they have bought, but they also are learning the value of hard work.

All that is to say that I do not believe in just giving out money, but sometimes a pick-me-up is what someone needs to get back on his or her feet. This job, however, is not the government's but, rather, the church's. Prison ministries, inner city ministries, and ministries to the poor fulfill Christ's commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. The book of Amos in the Old Testament describes what happens to a people if they neglect or even take advantage of the poor and helpless. A lack of social justice was one of the reasons that the nation of Israel was destroyed. God used the Assyrian empire as his tool of judgement to punish Israel for her poor treatment of the poor.

Social justice is an important part of a Christian's life. To neglect it is folly that will lead to judgement and humility. At the same time, we must not let ourselves think that by throwing money at a problem will make it go away. I hate to use a cliche here, but it best exemplifies the situation. If you give a mouse a cookie, he will not simply take it and try to get his own food next time. He is going to ask for a glass of milk, and so begins the viscious cycle of dependence.

The Value of Science and Mathematics

In the United States today, science and math classes are looked upon in a less than favorable light. In the early grades, kids that are interested in math and science are looked upon as "geeky" or "nerdy." These negative connotations are further emphasized by television shows that depict aforementioned students as small, puny, and forever picked on by the bullies. While these shows may seem harmless, a subtle prejudice is formed against these fields of study. Hard statistics back up this assertion. I don't know the exact numbers, but the percentage of college graduates with degrees in math or the sciences has been falling since around the '80s. Math and Science are no longer considered "cool" as they were during the '50s and '60s at the height of the space race. These days, more and more degrees in math or science are going to foreigners. However, there has been no better time to get into the math or science fields. Technological advancements in chemistry, biology, physics, and math have made these fields explode with demand. Starting salaries in these fields are fairly high as well; however, many of these positions are filled with people of Indian or East Asian decent. Many see these fields as too difficult to comprehend. For example, organic chemistry is often considered a "filter" course in college; a course designed to filter out the weaker and lazier students. And while this is an exceedingly difficult course, some think of it as impossible, just as some people thought putting a man on the moon was impossible. Americans need to wake up and realize that the only difference between them and the Asians that consistently beat them in average test scores and college attendance percentages is diligence and work ethic. History has proven that Americans can overcome the largest obstacles when we strive together and put our noses to the proverbial grindstone. Some consequences from a shift from American to foreign scientists and mathematicians will be that more and more companies will move their businesses to these foreign countries to take advantage of the high labor supply. Another consequence will be a lagging behind in technological advancement in the U.S. compared to other countries. These problems can be averted with a few actions both from the top and the bottom. At the top, President-elect Barack Obama can introduce legislation to increase funding for math and science departments in the K-12 public school system. Another piece of legislation that could be introduced, could be to give incentives to college graduates with math or science degrees. Some actions at the bottom would be to instill, at an early age in a child's life, a love for learning and reading. Some kid's shows are already doing this, like Dora the Explorer. Much work remains to be done, however, if we are to reverse the current trends, if we are to remain the as the world leader in military power, political power, and technolical power. But it is work that is by no means impossible; it is work that can be accomplished with American will power and work ethic remeniscent of World War II, just one of the many lessons, this current generation can learn from the Greatest Generation.

The Holiday Season

So I was at Walmart today hoping to get some cheap Halloween candy, but, instead, I was greeted by the familiar red and green of the holiday season. What has this world come to where Christmas themes are put out hardly a week after Halloween. Seriously, Walmart and all of the other department stores need to keep the Christmas stuff down until later in November. Seeing those decorations makes me excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but then I realize that they're both pretty far off, and I get depressed. Although I don't get as depressed as the 2nd week after Christmas when all the bowl games are over and school starts up again. That really is depressing. And what's more, right after Christmas, Valentine's Day decorations go up, and after that St. Patrick's Day and Easter. Will I ever get a break from some sort of seasonal attraction. But alas, that is not the purpose of this post.

The holiday season is one of my favorite times of the year, as I'm sure is true of many people, second only to the summer time for several reasons. One, the food is absolutely amazing. Thanksgiving dinner might be the best meal of the year. Turkey and gravy, dressing, cranberry sauce, steamed oysters, shrimp cocktail, cheese and crackers, sweet potato suflett (spelling?), Sister Shebert yeast rolls, key lime pie, creamy and cold ice cream. You don't get much better than Thanksgiving dinner. Second, the entire family is always together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The family is always good for lots of laughs and backyard games. Third, there is always tons of football going on during the holiday season except during the time in early December after the conference championships and the start of the bowl games. Fourth, presents, presents, presents. Need I say more? Fifth, the singing...Christmas songs are fantastic, and that's including carols, hymns, and more contemporary stuff too. I love the Christmas radio station that starts up in November and doesn't stop until after New Year's Day. Sixth but by no means the least important, Christmas is the time of celebrating the birth of Christ which, by itself, would make the holiday season incredible. It is a time when Christians remember when Christ humbled himself to come down to earth from his lofty seat in Heaven. I don't want to get too preachy, so I'll end my sermon right here.

In short, the holiday season is fantastic and is only beaten by summer time. If only the U.S. were in the Southern Hemisphere, then I could have both at the same time.

The Election and the Future

Well, the election is over and all of the tension and stress that go along with it. Even though Obama will be the 44th U.S. president, I, for one, am glad that this election is over. I have certainly had enough election coverage and analysis for a month or two, and at least now there is no uncertainty about what the future holds for this country as far as leadership goes. A few key points from the general election and the congressional election: McCain lost several key states that Bush won in 2004, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado (there may be others, but I don't feel like checking the electoral map right now), and the GOP retains a 44 vote minority in the Senate. The first point should serve as a wake-up call to the GOP, that they cannot hold a usually red state to the most liberal presidentail candidate since Jimmy Carter. I should hope that the GOP will take a good, hard look at itself and construct a battle plan for the upcoming congress in January. The second point is important because it means that the GOP still has the power of the filibuster in the Senate. For those of you unfamilar with this term, a filibuster is stalling strategy used by senators to "kill" a bill in the Senate. A senator or a group of senators will talk on the floor of the Senate until the bill's proponents abandon it. In order to defeat a filibuster, sixty votes are needed. All of this is to say that while Democrats will control the presidency and both houses of Congress, they will not have complete control over Capitol Hill like the GOP in 1866 or the Democrats in 1936. Where do we go from here (I say we in the collective sense of conservatives)? We can take comfort in the forty-four member minority and hope that they can withstand pressures from above and below and hold out until the mid-term elections in 2010. By that time, Americans will hopefully have realized their mistake in electing a freshman senatory from Illinois to be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world and erode the Democratic majorities in Congress. All of that being said, I congradulate Sen. Obama for his victory, and am proud at the way race and cival rights have progressed in the past generation. As John McCain said tonight in his concession speech, we need to unite together and support the new president. That does not mean we necessarily have to agree with him, but God calls each and every one of his children to submit to the authority placed over us. And so I will support the future President Barak Obama, just as I have supported the troops fighting overseas. I am trusting in the sovereign might of our Lord and taking comfort in the knowledge that he is in control. I do not know what the next four years holds for me and this country, but I do know that God will work all things for his glory and his will. I will leave you with this thought, with God as our source of strength and our foundation, we, as Americans, can overcome any obstacle, ford any river, cross any valley, and climb any mountain. God has blessed this nation, and he will continue to bless it so long as its people remain faithful to him.

Rights and Freedoms

In this day and age, too many Americans take for granted the freedom they have to live each day the way in which they deem fit. The current generation is too far removed from World War II and the Greatest Generation to understand the true meaning of freedom. The events of 9/11 should have served to unite America, and give a wake-up call to those who believe freedom is a right instead of a privilege. And, indeed, in the month or two after the attacks, America did come together in a great outpouring of patriotism. But in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent mismanagement of the war, many on the far-left have come to see the U.S. as a war-mongering nation bent on subjugating other nations for oil and national security. They use divisive and hateful rhetoric to push their point across. They see no method as too extreme if it will convey their message and persuade others to join their cause. But at the heart of their movement, their intentions, their heart-attitudes, these people believe that man is basically good and that left alone, man will choose the right way. But what is this right way, These people would tell you that it is what ever you think is the right way. It's the psychological theory of relativity, there is no fundamental truth. Everything can be right or wrong depending on the point of view. This view, while embraced by those on the far-left, is contradicted by the very same people. You can believe what you want to believe is right so long as it lines up with what they believe. This pattern of logic and thinking has led them to decry American military efforts in Iraq as murderous. Some of them would even go so far as to put the U.S. military on par morally with Al Queda and the Taliban. These people would see the U.S. withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, Guantamano Bay, Germany, and anywhere where the U.S. has a military presence. They believe that the world is best left alone from the "policing" of the U.S. They don't understand that this "policing" has directly and indirectly been the leading cause of a lack of military conflict within American borders is over 180 years. I'm talking about the War of 1812. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the attack on 9/11 were attacks on our borders, but because of the actions of the brave leaders of our country, FDR and George W. Bush, the U.S. stood up to the evil that confronted her and hit it squarely in the chin. The far-left groups think that if America minds its own business, no one will try to hurt us, no one will still harbor hate in their hearts toward the U.S. This kind of thinking pervades through the minds of the far-left groups and has begun to grow upon the members of the Democratic Party. Politics aside, this kind of thinking can and will only lead to more and worse attacks on this nation unless, people like you and me stand up for the truth, stand up for moral absolutes, stand up for democracy and freedom, stand up for our military, no matter where they might be stationed, and lastly stand up for our president whether he be a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. This generation needs to see America for what she really is, a place where one can find life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as the Founders planned it. Regardless of the outcome of the election, the mindset now embraced by the far-left, which they are completely free to have, is dangerous to the future of America. One can only pray that God will continue to protect and bless this great nation.