Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus! I have been talking about 'freedom' in the last few blogs. Here is even a better way of explaining it from the 'Magnificat'.
He who obeys me dwells in security, in peace, without fear of harm. (Prv 1:33)
What is so new about the promised "mountain of the Lord" is not that the wolf and the lamb are both there, but that the wolf remains a wolf and the lamb a lamb, and yet they dwell together without harm or hurt in God's kingdom. Under God's rule, conversion and obedience do not mean the loss of identity but the discovery of our true identity as one in Christ.
Magnificat
And I would add to that last sentence that it is not only 'the discovery of our true identity as one in Christ' but the fullness of that identity.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
The Vatican and "A One World Bank"
Yesterday, the Vatican came out for a push in regards to a “central world bank” that would supposedly limit the various financial meltdowns that have occurred in the past five years, moving to a supra institution that will transcend national boundaries and will work independently for financial, and ultimately, I assume, for “social justice”, another watch word. The Pope is surrounded by people who are not concerned about Christ; either that or they are so inept in regards to looking at history, their own specifically, that they can’t see the forest for the trees. It is exactly this type of institution that has been predicted in Revelation. Not only are they, the hierarchy, not reading the Bible, but are ignoring some of the Church’s own historical encyclicals and bulls—especially the one on “subsidiarity” penned by, I believe, Leo XIII. It is neither the government nor some world wide entity that is responsible for taking care of our brothers and sisters. Christ did not go to the Roman occupiers to take care of the problems that were rampant during His days upon this earth. He led by example and then commanded the apostles to do likewise. And he calls us for and to the same purpose. It will not be the Roman Empire, or the Russian Bear or even the United States that will be judged, but we as individuals.
Some parts of the hierarchy of the Church are definitely responsible for this travesty. They are also responsible for pushing the current, most pro death President of the United States to be elected. And they continue to implicitly support him through inviting him to Catholic universities and thereby give a seemingly higher educational imprimatur by the Catholic Church. It is an outrage and incredibly detrimental to the lay people which are part of the Body of Christ.
No wonder there is such “smoke” surrounding the Vatican and the Church. But Christ Himself says that not even the gates of hell shall prevail. And we know that the Lord wins in the end.
Here’s the news release:
Vatican Calls for 'Central World Bank' to Be Set Up
Published: Monday, 24 Oct 2011 6:54 AM ET
The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a "global public authority" and a "central world bank" to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises.
A major document from the Vatican's Justice and Peace department should be music to the ears of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.
The 18-page document, "Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority," was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions.
"The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence," it said.
It condemned what it called "the idolatry of the market" as well as a "neo-liberal thinking" that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems.
"In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviors like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale," it said, adding that world economics needed an "ethic of solidarity" among rich and poor nations.
"If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid," it said.
It called for the establishment of "a supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policies and decisions.
Such an authority should start with the United Nations as its reference point but later become independent and be endowed with the power to see to it that developed countries were not allowed to wield "excessive power over the weaker countries."
Effective Structures
In a section explaining why the Vatican felt the reform of the global economy was necessary, the document said:
"In economic and financial matters, the most significant difficulties come from the lack of an effective set of structures that can guarantee, in addition to a system of governance, a system of government for the economy and international finance."
It said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) no longer had the power or ability to stabilize world finance by regulating overall money supply and it was no longer able to watch "over the amount of credit risk taken on by the system."
The world needed a "minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market" and "some form of global monetary management."
"In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of 'central world bank' that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks," it said.
The document, which was being presented at a news conference later on Monday, acknowledged that such change would take years to put into place and was bound to encounter resistance.
"Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation's powers to a world authority and to regional authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalizes world."
Some parts of the hierarchy of the Church are definitely responsible for this travesty. They are also responsible for pushing the current, most pro death President of the United States to be elected. And they continue to implicitly support him through inviting him to Catholic universities and thereby give a seemingly higher educational imprimatur by the Catholic Church. It is an outrage and incredibly detrimental to the lay people which are part of the Body of Christ.
No wonder there is such “smoke” surrounding the Vatican and the Church. But Christ Himself says that not even the gates of hell shall prevail. And we know that the Lord wins in the end.
Here’s the news release:
Vatican Calls for 'Central World Bank' to Be Set Up
Published: Monday, 24 Oct 2011 6:54 AM ET
The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a "global public authority" and a "central world bank" to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises.
A major document from the Vatican's Justice and Peace department should be music to the ears of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.
The 18-page document, "Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority," was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions.
"The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence," it said.
It condemned what it called "the idolatry of the market" as well as a "neo-liberal thinking" that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems.
"In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviors like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale," it said, adding that world economics needed an "ethic of solidarity" among rich and poor nations.
"If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid," it said.
It called for the establishment of "a supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policies and decisions.
Such an authority should start with the United Nations as its reference point but later become independent and be endowed with the power to see to it that developed countries were not allowed to wield "excessive power over the weaker countries."
Effective Structures
In a section explaining why the Vatican felt the reform of the global economy was necessary, the document said:
"In economic and financial matters, the most significant difficulties come from the lack of an effective set of structures that can guarantee, in addition to a system of governance, a system of government for the economy and international finance."
It said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) no longer had the power or ability to stabilize world finance by regulating overall money supply and it was no longer able to watch "over the amount of credit risk taken on by the system."
The world needed a "minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market" and "some form of global monetary management."
"In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of 'central world bank' that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks," it said.
The document, which was being presented at a news conference later on Monday, acknowledged that such change would take years to put into place and was bound to encounter resistance.
"Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation's powers to a world authority and to regional authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalizes world."
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Ocho Cinco and Life
True story. Also a funny one.
The 2009 National Football season began with the New England Patriots meeting in a home game opener against the Cincinnatti Bengals. As Bill Bellichick walked the sidelines to the Patriot side of warmups he happened to saunter by Chad Ocho Cinco, one of the wide receivers for the Bengals.
Slightly turning his head to Ocho Cinco while walking by, Bill Bellichick made the remark, "So not working tonight, huh?
"Wha d' yoo mean, Coach...."
"We're doubling you."
"Ahhhhhh jeeeeezzz......."
The 2009 National Football season began with the New England Patriots meeting in a home game opener against the Cincinnatti Bengals. As Bill Bellichick walked the sidelines to the Patriot side of warmups he happened to saunter by Chad Ocho Cinco, one of the wide receivers for the Bengals.
Slightly turning his head to Ocho Cinco while walking by, Bill Bellichick made the remark, "So not working tonight, huh?
"Wha d' yoo mean, Coach...."
"We're doubling you."
"Ahhhhhh jeeeeezzz......."
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
A Great Article Linking the High Cost of Housing with Government Regulation
But before the article saw a cute sign the other day on a fence post that read,
"Beware of the Dog. And the cat is untrustworthy too."
Don't Regulate the Suburbs: America Needs a Housing Policy That WorksBy Wendell Cox and Ronald Utt, Ph.D.
Despite the many accolades for President Barack Obama's swift action on a major economic stimulus package, an outline of a comprehensive financial rescue package, and his most recent proposal for another bailout for homeowners who might not meet their mortgage payments, a growing number of critics and global investors have questioned the effectiveness of these measures in helping to put the economy back on a path to faster growth.
Specifically, the costly stimulus plan is little more than a grab bag of congressional policy obsessions that other Presidents suppressed in the past; the financial rescue plan is a jumble of confused generalities; and, as currently proposed, the President's troubled homeowner relief program would further undermine any remaining notions of personal financial responsibility by requiring taxpayers who paid their bills to subsidize the many homeowners who didn't.
One of the chief failings of these programs is that they focus on symptoms, not causes. Nowhere among the host of initiatives is there any attempt to address the several underlying causes that undermined the stability of the housing finance market and the ability of ordinary American families to acquire affordable housing.
Indeed, based on President Obama's initial pronouncements on the issue, his Administration seems intent on exacerbating some of these causes by diminishing freedom of choice and making housing even less affordable. In turn, these policies will substantially slow the process of recovery in homebuilding and housing finance.
The President Takes on the Suburbs
In a mid-February speech in Florida to sell his stimulus plan to Americans, President Obama used the forum as an opportunity to express his support for more public transit (trolleys and buses) and linked this preference to a need to deter Americans' number one housing preference: living in the suburbs. The President argued that:
I would like for us to invest in mass transit because potentially that's energy efficient. And I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally, in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure. The days where we're just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that's not a smart way to design communities.[1]
The "smart way," as the President suggests, is supposedly through the policies of "smart growth" and "new urbanism," which many communities in America have adopted in recent years to limit growth and upgrade their demographics by making housing less affordable. Under the guise of deterring sprawl-i.e., preventing additional neighbors- many suburban communities have adopted exclusionary zoning, impact fees, involuntary proffers, mandatory amenities, growth boundaries, service districts, infrastructure concurrency, and large-lot zoning to discourage new construction. Inevitably, these strategies raise housing prices.
As the record reveals, states and communities that have implemented the land-use regulations common to "smart growth" strategies are the same states and communities that have seen their housing prices soar over the past decade and have experienced the most severe delinquency and foreclosure rates, as well as the sharpest declines in house values in the past year. In sum, these "smart growth" strategies are an important contributing factor in the housing finance mess and severe recession that now confront the United States and several other countries that have implemented the same abusive land-use regulations.
State and Local Land-Use Regulations
Because land-use regulations are largely local in nature and can vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another, attempts to compare one state, metropolitan area, or community to others face serious challenges in developing meaningful measures of the relative intensity of land regulations among the nation's thousands of jurisdictions.
Among the most comprehensive of such attempts is the one conducted by the Brookings Institution.[2] The Brookings typology assigns a metropolitan area's land-use regulations to one of four major categories and further divides the areas under review into 12 subcategories. By degree of intensity, they are:
Reform (Growth Management, Growth Control, Containment, Contain-Lite);
Exclusion (Basic, Plus Restriction, Extreme);
Traditional (Middle America, High Density); and
Wild Wild Texas (Dallas-San Antonio, Houston, Austin).
As is to be expected from basic economic theory, restricting the supply of a product (in this case, land) leads to shortages of it, which in turn leads to higher prices for land and, hence, higher prices for new and existing housing. Not surprisingly, house prices (and their affordability compared to local incomes) conform relatively closely to the intensity of land-use regulations described by the Brookings typology.
Impact of Land-Use Regulations
Among the areas described as part of the "Reform" category (the most restrictive) are the major metropolitan areas of California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona,[3] all of which experienced substantial house-price escalation from the late 1990s to mid-2007 and all of which are also rated "unaffordable" by the annual Demographia survey.[4] As a consequence of the price escalation in these areas, many Americans attempting to become homeowners could do so only by taking on levels of debt in excess of what they could comfortably afford.
Whereas the typical relationship between median house prices and median income was historically about three-to-one or less, this "median multiple" (the ratio of median house price to median income) in most urban areas of California rose to between seven- and 11-to-one at the peak of the market.
In 2007, the median-priced home in the metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego was more than 10 times the median income of households in those areas. In other areas with tight land-use regulations, that ratio was 5.5 for the Washington, D.C., area; 5.1 in Portland, Oregon; 5.9 in Las Vegas, Nevada; 6.0 in Seattle, Washington; and 7.1 in Miami, Florida, to name just a few of the many unaffordable places in the United States.[5]
In contrast to the high housing prices in regulated areas, less stringently regulated areas maintained their affordability during the past housing boom and bubble. In 2007, the ratio of median house price to median income was 2.3 in Indianapolis, 2.8 in Atlanta, 2.5 in Dallas, and 2.9 in Houston. In each of these areas, the median price for a house never exceeded $200,000-in contrast to $804,000 in San Francisco, $588,000 in San Diego, $430,000 in Washington, D.C., and $365,000 in Miami.
Not surprisingly, delinquency and foreclosure rates in the areas with tight land regulations and inflated housing prices are among the highest in the nation. They are also the areas that have experienced the greatest declines in housing prices over the past year, thereby further destabilizing regional housing markets and the national mortgage finance system.
According to house-price data collected by the National Association of Realtors for 159 metropolitan areas for the fourth quarter of 2008,[6] 26 metropolitan areas had experienced house-price declines in excess of 20 percent since the fourth quarter of 2007. Among these 26 metropolitan areas, 18 were in the land-use restricted states of California (seven); Nevada (two); Arizona (two); and Florida (seven), while six were in the hard-hit recession states of Michigan and Ohio.[7] In Michigan and Ohio, however, house prices generally remained at or below the 3.0 historical median multiple norm.
Given the high debt burdens that high housing prices have imposed on many homeowners in the four most heavily regulated states, it is not surprising to find that the highest foreclosure rates are also concentrated in the same high-cost, land-use restricted states: According to RealtyTrac, a leading real-estate reporting firm, nine of the 10 areas with the highest foreclosure rates were in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida,[8] while 18 of the top 20 were in urban areas that Brookings includes in its most restrictive category, including California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida.[9]
A similar analysis conducted by Demographia, using the same realtor data but measuring the price decline from each region's market peak to the fourth quarter of 2008 and categorizing the regions by an alternative measure of the intensity of land-use restrictions, found nearly identical results. Defining the more regulated markets as "prescriptive" and the less-regulated markets as "responsive," the analysis found that each market that experienced a price decline in excess of 35 percent from peak to trough was prescriptive and was located in California, Florida, Nevada, or Arizona-the top four states for 2008 foreclosure rates.
The Demographia analysis also focused on the magnitude of the potential loss per loan to lenders that may occur as a result of a foreclosure. For example, while the Atlanta area had the 17th-highest foreclosure rate in 2008, the affordable nature of its house prices meant that the peak-to-present decline in house prices entailed a median loss of only $24,800. By way of contrast, the median peak-to-present loss exceeded $230,000 per house in San Francisco and San Diego and was more than $200,000 per house in Los Angeles and San Jose.
In addition to the substantial monetary loss that each foreclosure in these areas imposes on mortgage lenders, these same areas seem likely to receive a disproportionate share of whatever federal subsidies are provided in a nationwide program of foreclosure mitigation, loan renegotiation, or loan refinancing. As a consequence, taxpayers nationwide are being placed in the position of having to bail out borrowers in those few regions whose abusive land regulations contributed to the bubble in home prices and its subsequent collapse.
The Administration's $275 billion foreclosure mitigation plan, proposed in February 2009, is silent on this type of self-destructive state and municipal behavior. Congress should ensure that the final plan recognizes this and should require that state and local governments revise their practices, which in some cases are getting worse. In California, legislators recently passed a bill to tighten land regulations further by compelling regional planning authorities to encourage higher-density housing served by public transit.[10]
A better plan would be to link any federal housing assistance to reform of a state's or a region's land-use and planning regulations. As Edward Glaeser of Harvard University and Joseph Gyourko of the University of Pennsylvania recently noted:
If some aid to expensive states is made conditional on permitting more construction, then pricey places will face incentives to permit more units and promote affordability. Those incentives will encourage restrictive cities and towns to look beyond their borders, and to make America more affordable by permitting more construction in the high-price housing markets that are undersupplied and unaffordable even to the middle class.[11]
Regrettably, President Obama's February 2009 Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan will do precisely the opposite, providing the largest taxpayer subsidies for areas with the most restrictive land-use regulations.
Land-Rights Abuses Not Unique to the United States
The United Kingdom. As bad as land-use regulations have become in the United States, they are even worse in the United Kingdom and have been that way since the end of World War II, when the Town and Country Planning Act was adopted by the Labor government in 1947. Operating under principles that have since been mimicked by America's "smart growth" and "new urbanism" advocates, this movement attempted to comprehensively restructure Britain's culture of living arrangements by directing people into new, dense, high-rise developments that combined employment opportunities, businesses, and housing into compact developments. In addition to the enhanced social interaction that ostensibly would occur among people forced into closer proximity, such developments were thought to preserve rural ambience by preventing construction of new housing in the countryside.
Reflecting the anti-suburb prejudices common to Britain's planners and artists in the 1930s, planner and university lecturer Thomas Sharp condemned suburban life for "its social sterility, its aesthetic emptiness, its economic wastefulness.... Suburbia is not a utility that can promote any proper measure of human happiness and fulfillment." George Orwell claimed in his 1939 novel Coming Up for Air that suburbia was a haven for "Tories, yes-men, and bumsuckers."[12]
The elitist nature of these views was more sharply expressed by economist P. Sargant Florence when he observed in his review of An Enquiry into People's Homes, a 1943 report on working-class attitudes on housing, that the report pointed to certain moral standards that "cannot safely be left to housewives who are not equipped with the necessary knowledge of what lies within the realm of possibility" and that"architects and planners must give the lead and the target must be placed higher than the inarticulate yearnings of the average working-class housewife, if the same ill-defined sense of dissatisfaction is not to be perpetuated."[13]
A half-century later, some of America's new urbanists would mimic these same prejudices. In 1996, James Howard Kunstler contended in the Atlantic Monthly that:
When we drive around and look at all this cartoon architecture and other junk that we've smeared all over the landscape, we register it as ugliness. This ugliness is the surface expression of deeper problems- problems that relate to the issue of our national character. The highway strip is not just a sequence of eyesores. The pattern it represents is also economically catastrophic, an environmental calamity, socially devastating, and spiritually degrading.[14]
As is often the case with schemes that attempt to impose the tastes and fancies of artistic elites on ordinary people, most of the British were opposed to the program. Based on a national survey conducted in Britain in 1950, a book titled Patterns of British Life concluded that:
Most people like living in houses rather than flats and they like having a house to themselves. They like their own private domain which can be locked against the outside world and, perhaps as much as anything, they are a nation of garden lovers. They want space to grow flowers and vegetables and to sit on Sunday afternoons and they want it to be private.[15]
Nonetheless, because the new socialist government had largely nationalized much of the future residential housing development, many British citizens had few choices of where they could live. As a result, the supply of new single-family detached housing was invariably below what was demanded by the public, and prices rose accordingly.
As a consequence of 60 years of intense land-use regulations, housing throughout the United Kingdom is some of the least affordable in the world, as the Demographia report reveals; its housing and housing-finance markets, like those in California, Florida, and other states with severe land-use regulations, are in collapse; and several insolvent banks and mortgage lenders have been nationalized.
Under Demographia's housing affordability taxonomy, urban areas with a median multiple of 3.0 or less are considered "affordable," places with a median multiple between 3.1 and 4.0 are considered "moderately unaffordable," those between 4.1 and 5.0 are rated "seriously unaffordable," and those with median multiples above 5.1 are rated "severely unaffordable." Of the 265 urban areas included in the 2009 Demographia study,[16] which covers the United States, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Australia, not a single British urban area managed to make it into the "affordable" or "moderately unaffordable" categories, which included 161 of the 265 areas covered in the report, all of which were located in the United States and Canada.
Of the 16 United Kingdom urban areas covered in the report, six were rated "seriously unaffordable" in 2007, and 10 were rated "severely unaffordable" and had median multiples that were nearly as high as those of most of the coastal California metropolitan areas. Included among the severely unaffordable areas (and measuring them at their price peaks in 2007) were Belfast (8.8); Exeter/Devon (8.2); London (7.7); and Bristol/Bath (6.9). The most affordable British area was Dundee with a median multiple of 4.4, comparable to Daytona Beach in high-cost Florida.
However, unlike some leaders in the United States who are endorsing policies that would make the situation worse, Prime Minister Gordon Brown recognizes that the U.K. has a housing affordability problem and that onerous land regulations are the prime culprit, and he intends to do something about it.
Based on the findings and recommendations of the Taylor Review,[17] which was conducted by British Member of Parliament Matthew Taylor and criticized Britain's planning policies and land use regulations, Prime Minister Brown is "preparing to sweep aside planning controls in villages and market towns to allow the biggest rural house building in a generation" and "has concluded that protecting the environment should no longer be the overriding consideration when decisions are made about whether to allow development in areas where locals are struggling to afford homes."[18] Under the new plan, local councils would be told to:
Earmark new building sites in every village and hamlet where affordable housing is needed;
Use sweeping powers to overrule normal planning curbs in protected areas;
Provide incentives for farmers to sell land to developers; and
Create a generation of new communities on the outskirts of market towns.
In a previous report, prepared for the Blair government, Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member Kate Barker blamed the nation's high housing prices on its land-use restrictions.[19]
Australia. Although Britain's land-use problems extend back to the early 1950s, Australia's problems with counterproductive land regulations are more recent and are a consequence of the same smart growth/new urbanist fads that have swept through the United States. Unlike in the United States, where the majority of communities rejected this more fashionable approach to planning, many of Australia's political leaders and urban planners were seduced by the concept and imposed rigid rules on communities that included regulation of the type and color of mailboxes and the type and location of plants used in landscaping. In one community, new home builders were prohibited from installing central heat and air conditioning in order to achieve a smaller "carbon footprint."
Not surprisingly, urban areas in Australia became every bit as expensive as those in the United Kingdom and California. As in the U.K., there are no Australian communities to be found among the "affordable" or "moderately unaffordable" rankings, and most of them are ranked in the "severely unaffordable" category in the most recent Demographia report.[20] Of the 27 Australian urban areas included in the report, 24 are rated "severely unaffordable," while the remaining three are "seriously unaffordable." At the peak of the market in 2007, the median multiple for Sydney was 8.6, while Perth was at 7.6 and Melbourne registered 7.3.
There is an increasing recognition of the role that smart growth has played in making housing in Australian urban areas unaffordable. A number of policy initiatives have been announced in recent years to liberalize land-use restraints. The most important is in the Melbourne area, Australia's second-largest urban area (population 3,500,000), where a regional plan that was to stop development on the urban fringe has now been virtually abandoned by a new policy that will allow construction of more than 130,000 new suburban houses.[21]
Conclusion
As housing-price trends in the U.S. over the past decade reveal, the intensity of a region's land-use regulations is a key factor in the region's relative house-price inflation, affordability, and recent foreclosure experience. Areas with less land-use regulation consistently sustain housing prices that are affordable, while regions with greater regulations consistently sustain prices that are unaffordable to the majority of the citizens living in the region.
A number of other English-speaking nations, notably the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, have land-use regulations that are more intense than those generally in force in the U.S.-and even higher housing prices as a result. In recent months, national and regional leaders in some of these overregulated countries have recognized the source of the problem and have announced a commitment to lessen the regulatory burden in order to reduce housing prices.
In the United States, however, there is still little recognition of the connection been regulatory limitations and housing prices, and prospective initiatives currently under discussion are likely to leave houses in many states with still higher price tags. Indeed, in the event that President Obama's interest in smart growth policies leads to federal involvement in land-use regulation, housing affordability in the United States could soon approach the levels now common in the United Kingdom.
"Beware of the Dog. And the cat is untrustworthy too."
Don't Regulate the Suburbs: America Needs a Housing Policy That WorksBy Wendell Cox and Ronald Utt, Ph.D.
Despite the many accolades for President Barack Obama's swift action on a major economic stimulus package, an outline of a comprehensive financial rescue package, and his most recent proposal for another bailout for homeowners who might not meet their mortgage payments, a growing number of critics and global investors have questioned the effectiveness of these measures in helping to put the economy back on a path to faster growth.
Specifically, the costly stimulus plan is little more than a grab bag of congressional policy obsessions that other Presidents suppressed in the past; the financial rescue plan is a jumble of confused generalities; and, as currently proposed, the President's troubled homeowner relief program would further undermine any remaining notions of personal financial responsibility by requiring taxpayers who paid their bills to subsidize the many homeowners who didn't.
One of the chief failings of these programs is that they focus on symptoms, not causes. Nowhere among the host of initiatives is there any attempt to address the several underlying causes that undermined the stability of the housing finance market and the ability of ordinary American families to acquire affordable housing.
Indeed, based on President Obama's initial pronouncements on the issue, his Administration seems intent on exacerbating some of these causes by diminishing freedom of choice and making housing even less affordable. In turn, these policies will substantially slow the process of recovery in homebuilding and housing finance.
The President Takes on the Suburbs
In a mid-February speech in Florida to sell his stimulus plan to Americans, President Obama used the forum as an opportunity to express his support for more public transit (trolleys and buses) and linked this preference to a need to deter Americans' number one housing preference: living in the suburbs. The President argued that:
I would like for us to invest in mass transit because potentially that's energy efficient. And I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally, in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure. The days where we're just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that's not a smart way to design communities.[1]
The "smart way," as the President suggests, is supposedly through the policies of "smart growth" and "new urbanism," which many communities in America have adopted in recent years to limit growth and upgrade their demographics by making housing less affordable. Under the guise of deterring sprawl-i.e., preventing additional neighbors- many suburban communities have adopted exclusionary zoning, impact fees, involuntary proffers, mandatory amenities, growth boundaries, service districts, infrastructure concurrency, and large-lot zoning to discourage new construction. Inevitably, these strategies raise housing prices.
As the record reveals, states and communities that have implemented the land-use regulations common to "smart growth" strategies are the same states and communities that have seen their housing prices soar over the past decade and have experienced the most severe delinquency and foreclosure rates, as well as the sharpest declines in house values in the past year. In sum, these "smart growth" strategies are an important contributing factor in the housing finance mess and severe recession that now confront the United States and several other countries that have implemented the same abusive land-use regulations.
State and Local Land-Use Regulations
Because land-use regulations are largely local in nature and can vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another, attempts to compare one state, metropolitan area, or community to others face serious challenges in developing meaningful measures of the relative intensity of land regulations among the nation's thousands of jurisdictions.
Among the most comprehensive of such attempts is the one conducted by the Brookings Institution.[2] The Brookings typology assigns a metropolitan area's land-use regulations to one of four major categories and further divides the areas under review into 12 subcategories. By degree of intensity, they are:
Reform (Growth Management, Growth Control, Containment, Contain-Lite);
Exclusion (Basic, Plus Restriction, Extreme);
Traditional (Middle America, High Density); and
Wild Wild Texas (Dallas-San Antonio, Houston, Austin).
As is to be expected from basic economic theory, restricting the supply of a product (in this case, land) leads to shortages of it, which in turn leads to higher prices for land and, hence, higher prices for new and existing housing. Not surprisingly, house prices (and their affordability compared to local incomes) conform relatively closely to the intensity of land-use regulations described by the Brookings typology.
Impact of Land-Use Regulations
Among the areas described as part of the "Reform" category (the most restrictive) are the major metropolitan areas of California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona,[3] all of which experienced substantial house-price escalation from the late 1990s to mid-2007 and all of which are also rated "unaffordable" by the annual Demographia survey.[4] As a consequence of the price escalation in these areas, many Americans attempting to become homeowners could do so only by taking on levels of debt in excess of what they could comfortably afford.
Whereas the typical relationship between median house prices and median income was historically about three-to-one or less, this "median multiple" (the ratio of median house price to median income) in most urban areas of California rose to between seven- and 11-to-one at the peak of the market.
In 2007, the median-priced home in the metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego was more than 10 times the median income of households in those areas. In other areas with tight land-use regulations, that ratio was 5.5 for the Washington, D.C., area; 5.1 in Portland, Oregon; 5.9 in Las Vegas, Nevada; 6.0 in Seattle, Washington; and 7.1 in Miami, Florida, to name just a few of the many unaffordable places in the United States.[5]
In contrast to the high housing prices in regulated areas, less stringently regulated areas maintained their affordability during the past housing boom and bubble. In 2007, the ratio of median house price to median income was 2.3 in Indianapolis, 2.8 in Atlanta, 2.5 in Dallas, and 2.9 in Houston. In each of these areas, the median price for a house never exceeded $200,000-in contrast to $804,000 in San Francisco, $588,000 in San Diego, $430,000 in Washington, D.C., and $365,000 in Miami.
Not surprisingly, delinquency and foreclosure rates in the areas with tight land regulations and inflated housing prices are among the highest in the nation. They are also the areas that have experienced the greatest declines in housing prices over the past year, thereby further destabilizing regional housing markets and the national mortgage finance system.
According to house-price data collected by the National Association of Realtors for 159 metropolitan areas for the fourth quarter of 2008,[6] 26 metropolitan areas had experienced house-price declines in excess of 20 percent since the fourth quarter of 2007. Among these 26 metropolitan areas, 18 were in the land-use restricted states of California (seven); Nevada (two); Arizona (two); and Florida (seven), while six were in the hard-hit recession states of Michigan and Ohio.[7] In Michigan and Ohio, however, house prices generally remained at or below the 3.0 historical median multiple norm.
Given the high debt burdens that high housing prices have imposed on many homeowners in the four most heavily regulated states, it is not surprising to find that the highest foreclosure rates are also concentrated in the same high-cost, land-use restricted states: According to RealtyTrac, a leading real-estate reporting firm, nine of the 10 areas with the highest foreclosure rates were in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida,[8] while 18 of the top 20 were in urban areas that Brookings includes in its most restrictive category, including California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida.[9]
A similar analysis conducted by Demographia, using the same realtor data but measuring the price decline from each region's market peak to the fourth quarter of 2008 and categorizing the regions by an alternative measure of the intensity of land-use restrictions, found nearly identical results. Defining the more regulated markets as "prescriptive" and the less-regulated markets as "responsive," the analysis found that each market that experienced a price decline in excess of 35 percent from peak to trough was prescriptive and was located in California, Florida, Nevada, or Arizona-the top four states for 2008 foreclosure rates.
The Demographia analysis also focused on the magnitude of the potential loss per loan to lenders that may occur as a result of a foreclosure. For example, while the Atlanta area had the 17th-highest foreclosure rate in 2008, the affordable nature of its house prices meant that the peak-to-present decline in house prices entailed a median loss of only $24,800. By way of contrast, the median peak-to-present loss exceeded $230,000 per house in San Francisco and San Diego and was more than $200,000 per house in Los Angeles and San Jose.
In addition to the substantial monetary loss that each foreclosure in these areas imposes on mortgage lenders, these same areas seem likely to receive a disproportionate share of whatever federal subsidies are provided in a nationwide program of foreclosure mitigation, loan renegotiation, or loan refinancing. As a consequence, taxpayers nationwide are being placed in the position of having to bail out borrowers in those few regions whose abusive land regulations contributed to the bubble in home prices and its subsequent collapse.
The Administration's $275 billion foreclosure mitigation plan, proposed in February 2009, is silent on this type of self-destructive state and municipal behavior. Congress should ensure that the final plan recognizes this and should require that state and local governments revise their practices, which in some cases are getting worse. In California, legislators recently passed a bill to tighten land regulations further by compelling regional planning authorities to encourage higher-density housing served by public transit.[10]
A better plan would be to link any federal housing assistance to reform of a state's or a region's land-use and planning regulations. As Edward Glaeser of Harvard University and Joseph Gyourko of the University of Pennsylvania recently noted:
If some aid to expensive states is made conditional on permitting more construction, then pricey places will face incentives to permit more units and promote affordability. Those incentives will encourage restrictive cities and towns to look beyond their borders, and to make America more affordable by permitting more construction in the high-price housing markets that are undersupplied and unaffordable even to the middle class.[11]
Regrettably, President Obama's February 2009 Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan will do precisely the opposite, providing the largest taxpayer subsidies for areas with the most restrictive land-use regulations.
Land-Rights Abuses Not Unique to the United States
The United Kingdom. As bad as land-use regulations have become in the United States, they are even worse in the United Kingdom and have been that way since the end of World War II, when the Town and Country Planning Act was adopted by the Labor government in 1947. Operating under principles that have since been mimicked by America's "smart growth" and "new urbanism" advocates, this movement attempted to comprehensively restructure Britain's culture of living arrangements by directing people into new, dense, high-rise developments that combined employment opportunities, businesses, and housing into compact developments. In addition to the enhanced social interaction that ostensibly would occur among people forced into closer proximity, such developments were thought to preserve rural ambience by preventing construction of new housing in the countryside.
Reflecting the anti-suburb prejudices common to Britain's planners and artists in the 1930s, planner and university lecturer Thomas Sharp condemned suburban life for "its social sterility, its aesthetic emptiness, its economic wastefulness.... Suburbia is not a utility that can promote any proper measure of human happiness and fulfillment." George Orwell claimed in his 1939 novel Coming Up for Air that suburbia was a haven for "Tories, yes-men, and bumsuckers."[12]
The elitist nature of these views was more sharply expressed by economist P. Sargant Florence when he observed in his review of An Enquiry into People's Homes, a 1943 report on working-class attitudes on housing, that the report pointed to certain moral standards that "cannot safely be left to housewives who are not equipped with the necessary knowledge of what lies within the realm of possibility" and that"architects and planners must give the lead and the target must be placed higher than the inarticulate yearnings of the average working-class housewife, if the same ill-defined sense of dissatisfaction is not to be perpetuated."[13]
A half-century later, some of America's new urbanists would mimic these same prejudices. In 1996, James Howard Kunstler contended in the Atlantic Monthly that:
When we drive around and look at all this cartoon architecture and other junk that we've smeared all over the landscape, we register it as ugliness. This ugliness is the surface expression of deeper problems- problems that relate to the issue of our national character. The highway strip is not just a sequence of eyesores. The pattern it represents is also economically catastrophic, an environmental calamity, socially devastating, and spiritually degrading.[14]
As is often the case with schemes that attempt to impose the tastes and fancies of artistic elites on ordinary people, most of the British were opposed to the program. Based on a national survey conducted in Britain in 1950, a book titled Patterns of British Life concluded that:
Most people like living in houses rather than flats and they like having a house to themselves. They like their own private domain which can be locked against the outside world and, perhaps as much as anything, they are a nation of garden lovers. They want space to grow flowers and vegetables and to sit on Sunday afternoons and they want it to be private.[15]
Nonetheless, because the new socialist government had largely nationalized much of the future residential housing development, many British citizens had few choices of where they could live. As a result, the supply of new single-family detached housing was invariably below what was demanded by the public, and prices rose accordingly.
As a consequence of 60 years of intense land-use regulations, housing throughout the United Kingdom is some of the least affordable in the world, as the Demographia report reveals; its housing and housing-finance markets, like those in California, Florida, and other states with severe land-use regulations, are in collapse; and several insolvent banks and mortgage lenders have been nationalized.
Under Demographia's housing affordability taxonomy, urban areas with a median multiple of 3.0 or less are considered "affordable," places with a median multiple between 3.1 and 4.0 are considered "moderately unaffordable," those between 4.1 and 5.0 are rated "seriously unaffordable," and those with median multiples above 5.1 are rated "severely unaffordable." Of the 265 urban areas included in the 2009 Demographia study,[16] which covers the United States, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Australia, not a single British urban area managed to make it into the "affordable" or "moderately unaffordable" categories, which included 161 of the 265 areas covered in the report, all of which were located in the United States and Canada.
Of the 16 United Kingdom urban areas covered in the report, six were rated "seriously unaffordable" in 2007, and 10 were rated "severely unaffordable" and had median multiples that were nearly as high as those of most of the coastal California metropolitan areas. Included among the severely unaffordable areas (and measuring them at their price peaks in 2007) were Belfast (8.8); Exeter/Devon (8.2); London (7.7); and Bristol/Bath (6.9). The most affordable British area was Dundee with a median multiple of 4.4, comparable to Daytona Beach in high-cost Florida.
However, unlike some leaders in the United States who are endorsing policies that would make the situation worse, Prime Minister Gordon Brown recognizes that the U.K. has a housing affordability problem and that onerous land regulations are the prime culprit, and he intends to do something about it.
Based on the findings and recommendations of the Taylor Review,[17] which was conducted by British Member of Parliament Matthew Taylor and criticized Britain's planning policies and land use regulations, Prime Minister Brown is "preparing to sweep aside planning controls in villages and market towns to allow the biggest rural house building in a generation" and "has concluded that protecting the environment should no longer be the overriding consideration when decisions are made about whether to allow development in areas where locals are struggling to afford homes."[18] Under the new plan, local councils would be told to:
Earmark new building sites in every village and hamlet where affordable housing is needed;
Use sweeping powers to overrule normal planning curbs in protected areas;
Provide incentives for farmers to sell land to developers; and
Create a generation of new communities on the outskirts of market towns.
In a previous report, prepared for the Blair government, Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member Kate Barker blamed the nation's high housing prices on its land-use restrictions.[19]
Australia. Although Britain's land-use problems extend back to the early 1950s, Australia's problems with counterproductive land regulations are more recent and are a consequence of the same smart growth/new urbanist fads that have swept through the United States. Unlike in the United States, where the majority of communities rejected this more fashionable approach to planning, many of Australia's political leaders and urban planners were seduced by the concept and imposed rigid rules on communities that included regulation of the type and color of mailboxes and the type and location of plants used in landscaping. In one community, new home builders were prohibited from installing central heat and air conditioning in order to achieve a smaller "carbon footprint."
Not surprisingly, urban areas in Australia became every bit as expensive as those in the United Kingdom and California. As in the U.K., there are no Australian communities to be found among the "affordable" or "moderately unaffordable" rankings, and most of them are ranked in the "severely unaffordable" category in the most recent Demographia report.[20] Of the 27 Australian urban areas included in the report, 24 are rated "severely unaffordable," while the remaining three are "seriously unaffordable." At the peak of the market in 2007, the median multiple for Sydney was 8.6, while Perth was at 7.6 and Melbourne registered 7.3.
There is an increasing recognition of the role that smart growth has played in making housing in Australian urban areas unaffordable. A number of policy initiatives have been announced in recent years to liberalize land-use restraints. The most important is in the Melbourne area, Australia's second-largest urban area (population 3,500,000), where a regional plan that was to stop development on the urban fringe has now been virtually abandoned by a new policy that will allow construction of more than 130,000 new suburban houses.[21]
Conclusion
As housing-price trends in the U.S. over the past decade reveal, the intensity of a region's land-use regulations is a key factor in the region's relative house-price inflation, affordability, and recent foreclosure experience. Areas with less land-use regulation consistently sustain housing prices that are affordable, while regions with greater regulations consistently sustain prices that are unaffordable to the majority of the citizens living in the region.
A number of other English-speaking nations, notably the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, have land-use regulations that are more intense than those generally in force in the U.S.-and even higher housing prices as a result. In recent months, national and regional leaders in some of these overregulated countries have recognized the source of the problem and have announced a commitment to lessen the regulatory burden in order to reduce housing prices.
In the United States, however, there is still little recognition of the connection been regulatory limitations and housing prices, and prospective initiatives currently under discussion are likely to leave houses in many states with still higher price tags. Indeed, in the event that President Obama's interest in smart growth policies leads to federal involvement in land-use regulation, housing affordability in the United States could soon approach the levels now common in the United Kingdom.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
The Perils of Philanthropy Thomas Sowell (a fabulous article)
The perils of philanthropy
Ideological clashes over particular laws, policies and programs often go far deeper. Those with opposing views of what is desirable for the future also tend to differ equally sharply as to what the reality of the present is. In other words, they envision two very different worlds.
A small but revealing example was a recent New York Times criticism of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs for not contributing to charity as much as the New York Times writer thought he should. The media in general are full of praise for business people and their companies for giving away substantial amounts of their wealth. Indeed, that is one of the few things for which many in the media praise businesses and the wealthy.
Americans in general – whether rich, poor or in between – have one of the most remarkable records for donating not only money but time to all sorts of charitable endeavors. Privately financed hospitals, colleges and innumerable other institutions abound in the United States, while they are rare to non-existent in many other countries, where such things are usually left to government or to religious organizations.
However, with charity as with everything else, it cannot simply be assumed that more is always better. A "safety net" can easily become a hammock. "Social justice" can easily become class warfare that polarizes a nation, while leading those at the bottom into the blind alley of resentments, no matter how many broad avenues of achievement may be available to them.
Judging businesses or their owners by how much wealth they give away – rather than by how much wealth they create – is putting the cart before the horse. Wealth is ultimately the only thing that can reduce poverty. The most dramatic reductions in poverty, in countries around the world, have come from increasing the amount of wealth, rather than from a redistribution of existing wealth.
What kind of world do we want – one in which everyone works to increase wealth to whatever extent they can, or a world in which everyone will be supported by either government handouts or private philanthropy, whether they work or don't work?
It is not an abstract question. We can already see the consequences on both sides of the Atlantic. Those who have grown used to having others provide their food, shelter and other basics as "rights" are by no means grateful.
On the contrary, they are more angry, lawless and violent than in years past, whether they are lower-class whites rioting in Britain or black "flash mobs" in America. Their histories are very different, but what they have in common is being supplied with a steady drumbeat of resentments against those who are better off.
(Column continues below)
Politicians, intellectuals and whole armies of caretaker bureaucrats are among those who benefit, in one way or another, from picturing parasites as victims and their lagging behind the rest of society as reasons for anger rather than achievement.
Leading people into the blind alley of dependency and grievances may be counterproductive for them, but it can produce votes, money, power, fame and a sense of exaltation to others who portray themselves as friends of the downtrodden.
Both private philanthropy and the taxpayers' money support this whole edifice of a make-believe world, where largesse replaces achievement and "rights" replace work. Trying to rope Steve Jobs into this world ignores how many other famous businessmen, whose achievements in business have benefited society, have created philanthropies whose harm has offset those benefits.
Henry Ford benefited millions of other people by creating mass production methods that cut the cost of automobiles to a fraction of what they had been before – bringing cars for the first time within the budgets of people who were not rich. But the Ford Foundation has become a plaything of social experimenters who pay no price for creating programs that have been counterproductive or even socially disastrous.
Nor was this the only foundation created by business philanthropy with a similar history and similar social results.
Let business pioneers do what they do best. And let the rest of us exercise more judgment as to how much charity is beneficial and how much more simply perpetuates dependency, grievances and the polarization of society.
Ideological clashes over particular laws, policies and programs often go far deeper. Those with opposing views of what is desirable for the future also tend to differ equally sharply as to what the reality of the present is. In other words, they envision two very different worlds.
A small but revealing example was a recent New York Times criticism of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs for not contributing to charity as much as the New York Times writer thought he should. The media in general are full of praise for business people and their companies for giving away substantial amounts of their wealth. Indeed, that is one of the few things for which many in the media praise businesses and the wealthy.
Americans in general – whether rich, poor or in between – have one of the most remarkable records for donating not only money but time to all sorts of charitable endeavors. Privately financed hospitals, colleges and innumerable other institutions abound in the United States, while they are rare to non-existent in many other countries, where such things are usually left to government or to religious organizations.
However, with charity as with everything else, it cannot simply be assumed that more is always better. A "safety net" can easily become a hammock. "Social justice" can easily become class warfare that polarizes a nation, while leading those at the bottom into the blind alley of resentments, no matter how many broad avenues of achievement may be available to them.
Judging businesses or their owners by how much wealth they give away – rather than by how much wealth they create – is putting the cart before the horse. Wealth is ultimately the only thing that can reduce poverty. The most dramatic reductions in poverty, in countries around the world, have come from increasing the amount of wealth, rather than from a redistribution of existing wealth.
What kind of world do we want – one in which everyone works to increase wealth to whatever extent they can, or a world in which everyone will be supported by either government handouts or private philanthropy, whether they work or don't work?
It is not an abstract question. We can already see the consequences on both sides of the Atlantic. Those who have grown used to having others provide their food, shelter and other basics as "rights" are by no means grateful.
On the contrary, they are more angry, lawless and violent than in years past, whether they are lower-class whites rioting in Britain or black "flash mobs" in America. Their histories are very different, but what they have in common is being supplied with a steady drumbeat of resentments against those who are better off.
(Column continues below)
Politicians, intellectuals and whole armies of caretaker bureaucrats are among those who benefit, in one way or another, from picturing parasites as victims and their lagging behind the rest of society as reasons for anger rather than achievement.
Leading people into the blind alley of dependency and grievances may be counterproductive for them, but it can produce votes, money, power, fame and a sense of exaltation to others who portray themselves as friends of the downtrodden.
Both private philanthropy and the taxpayers' money support this whole edifice of a make-believe world, where largesse replaces achievement and "rights" replace work. Trying to rope Steve Jobs into this world ignores how many other famous businessmen, whose achievements in business have benefited society, have created philanthropies whose harm has offset those benefits.
Henry Ford benefited millions of other people by creating mass production methods that cut the cost of automobiles to a fraction of what they had been before – bringing cars for the first time within the budgets of people who were not rich. But the Ford Foundation has become a plaything of social experimenters who pay no price for creating programs that have been counterproductive or even socially disastrous.
Nor was this the only foundation created by business philanthropy with a similar history and similar social results.
Let business pioneers do what they do best. And let the rest of us exercise more judgment as to how much charity is beneficial and how much more simply perpetuates dependency, grievances and the polarization of society.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Crawley Economic Maxim #34
Crawley Economic Maxim #34
I was watching the Fox News Report with Bret Braeher and I found it amazing that a farmer, who was being interviewed, and very incensed at Washington, wanted Washington to kowtow and come around to his viewpoint. Absolutely ridiculous. Here is an individual who is receiving some of the highest “goodies”, i.e. highest subsidies, that of agriculture, and actually expects his masters to listen to what he has to say. If he doesn’t realize it already he will in the not too distant future be paying the proverbial “Merchant of Venice” price. Not only does anyone who takes from the government in any way, in any minutiae, in any facet must, not maybe, give “his pound of flesh” but the blood that goes along with that proverbial pound of flesh. And unlike “The Merchant of Venice”, the government wants it from the cardial pulmonary part of the body. Why? Because when they take that, metaphorically, they kill the individual. If there is no heart, there is no individual. Why is it that the American people don’t understand this very simple concept, this maxim.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that the government ‘gives’, to an individual, that is ‘a break’, much less free. It is a lie. And the strings that are attached are huge. The interest rate that must be paid back is real and great. Just ask anyone with an SBA loan. Not only that, the interest rate, but the government wants everything for collateral including your wedding ring. For some, that may not be a bad idea. Being in the mortgage market for the past twenty plus years and another example, FHA has not only a huge premium that must be paid for borrowing the government’s money (currently one and half percent of whatever you need to borrow—and that’s up front but they’ll gladly finance that and will receive interest on it from whomever borrows), which is actually our money, but mortgage insurance that lasts for as long as you have the loan no matter if you have initially or ever built a twenty-percent equity position for that particular property.
I look at my children. One is an MD and the other two are or will be attorneys. I admire them greatly. They take after their mother. But they, especially the attorneys, have borrowed to the hilt, mainly from the government and supported by the post graduate institutions who say, ‘that with this degree the job market will grant you an open portal…that the red, or gold if you prefer, carpet goes all the way to Oz’. And just like Oz, the wizard, the government, in bed with most of the academic institutions, is lying. Recently we attended on of our son’s graduation exercises. There were four to five hundred newly minted lawyers. The president of the class proceeded to get up and give a speech about how they had been lied to by the very institution that they had attended. His entire speech was about the less than five percent of the graduates who actually had jobs waiting for them. And that is a microcosm of what is happening across America.
I have told the kids that whatever your passion is, direct your efforts towards that passion. In the end it will be worth it. The sacrifice may be great but the end results will be greater—that of autonomy, of freedom. Maybe it is I who am in the wrong in that I have never had that kind of passion for a ‘job’ or ‘occupation’, other than a particular lady and three children, and to provide for them. I learned that from my parents. And that particular lady’s parents. And it is has served me well.
I was watching the Fox News Report with Bret Braeher and I found it amazing that a farmer, who was being interviewed, and very incensed at Washington, wanted Washington to kowtow and come around to his viewpoint. Absolutely ridiculous. Here is an individual who is receiving some of the highest “goodies”, i.e. highest subsidies, that of agriculture, and actually expects his masters to listen to what he has to say. If he doesn’t realize it already he will in the not too distant future be paying the proverbial “Merchant of Venice” price. Not only does anyone who takes from the government in any way, in any minutiae, in any facet must, not maybe, give “his pound of flesh” but the blood that goes along with that proverbial pound of flesh. And unlike “The Merchant of Venice”, the government wants it from the cardial pulmonary part of the body. Why? Because when they take that, metaphorically, they kill the individual. If there is no heart, there is no individual. Why is it that the American people don’t understand this very simple concept, this maxim.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that the government ‘gives’, to an individual, that is ‘a break’, much less free. It is a lie. And the strings that are attached are huge. The interest rate that must be paid back is real and great. Just ask anyone with an SBA loan. Not only that, the interest rate, but the government wants everything for collateral including your wedding ring. For some, that may not be a bad idea. Being in the mortgage market for the past twenty plus years and another example, FHA has not only a huge premium that must be paid for borrowing the government’s money (currently one and half percent of whatever you need to borrow—and that’s up front but they’ll gladly finance that and will receive interest on it from whomever borrows), which is actually our money, but mortgage insurance that lasts for as long as you have the loan no matter if you have initially or ever built a twenty-percent equity position for that particular property.
I look at my children. One is an MD and the other two are or will be attorneys. I admire them greatly. They take after their mother. But they, especially the attorneys, have borrowed to the hilt, mainly from the government and supported by the post graduate institutions who say, ‘that with this degree the job market will grant you an open portal…that the red, or gold if you prefer, carpet goes all the way to Oz’. And just like Oz, the wizard, the government, in bed with most of the academic institutions, is lying. Recently we attended on of our son’s graduation exercises. There were four to five hundred newly minted lawyers. The president of the class proceeded to get up and give a speech about how they had been lied to by the very institution that they had attended. His entire speech was about the less than five percent of the graduates who actually had jobs waiting for them. And that is a microcosm of what is happening across America.
I have told the kids that whatever your passion is, direct your efforts towards that passion. In the end it will be worth it. The sacrifice may be great but the end results will be greater—that of autonomy, of freedom. Maybe it is I who am in the wrong in that I have never had that kind of passion for a ‘job’ or ‘occupation’, other than a particular lady and three children, and to provide for them. I learned that from my parents. And that particular lady’s parents. And it is has served me well.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Andrew Jackson and His Veto of the Central Bank
Andrew Jackson after vetoing a bill to renew the National Bank:
"Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country?...(Is there not) cause to tremble for the purity of our elections in peace and for the independence of our country in war?...Of the course which would be pursued by a bank almost wholly owned by the subjects of a foreign power, and managed by those whose interests, if not affections, would run in the same direction there can be no doubt…Controlling our currency, receiving our public monies, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence, it would be more formidable and dangerous than a naval and military power of the enemy.
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does it rains, shower its favor alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.”
Now as then, the problem with bankers in general and centralized banking specifically is that a few control the many. All in the name of money. It seems to be forgotten that government, and work for that matter, and especially banking, should be of a nature “of service”. What the Federal Reserve Bank is doing now is not service. The institution and those that run it could not be more selfish and self-centered. Sovereign debt, which is the debt owed by this country through its ridiculous and out of control spending has come to the tipping point. China is no longer buying our bonds. The Federal Reserve Bank is buying even though, now, QE2 has ended. Yes, they’re still buying; and in doing so cutting a check to the Treasury of which Congress goes out and spends. But when one understands where that money comes from that the Federal Reserve Bank is paying, then the horror really begins. You see that money is fiat money. In other words there is no backing to it. It is not backed by gold, or silver or any commodity. That money isn’t even backed by services or products. There is nothing but the faith (fiat) of the American people that upholds it. And one day, I think in the not too distant future, that money will collapse because of the lack of backing. What to do? Use your common sense
"Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country?...(Is there not) cause to tremble for the purity of our elections in peace and for the independence of our country in war?...Of the course which would be pursued by a bank almost wholly owned by the subjects of a foreign power, and managed by those whose interests, if not affections, would run in the same direction there can be no doubt…Controlling our currency, receiving our public monies, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence, it would be more formidable and dangerous than a naval and military power of the enemy.
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does it rains, shower its favor alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.”
Now as then, the problem with bankers in general and centralized banking specifically is that a few control the many. All in the name of money. It seems to be forgotten that government, and work for that matter, and especially banking, should be of a nature “of service”. What the Federal Reserve Bank is doing now is not service. The institution and those that run it could not be more selfish and self-centered. Sovereign debt, which is the debt owed by this country through its ridiculous and out of control spending has come to the tipping point. China is no longer buying our bonds. The Federal Reserve Bank is buying even though, now, QE2 has ended. Yes, they’re still buying; and in doing so cutting a check to the Treasury of which Congress goes out and spends. But when one understands where that money comes from that the Federal Reserve Bank is paying, then the horror really begins. You see that money is fiat money. In other words there is no backing to it. It is not backed by gold, or silver or any commodity. That money isn’t even backed by services or products. There is nothing but the faith (fiat) of the American people that upholds it. And one day, I think in the not too distant future, that money will collapse because of the lack of backing. What to do? Use your common sense
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
The Best Argument ever against Atheism and Agnosticism
Our Life in the Trinity
The Trinity seeks to share its bliss, its perfect joy with human beings. This, as revelation has shown us, was the first, the original intention in Creation. And certainly it was an admirable revelation, completely justifying the existence of Creation. By this I mean that if God had created beings with souls only to throw them back into nothingness after suffering them to live for a little while; if Creation really corresponded only to this early life in which we move, then it would certainly seem unworthy of a scheme inspired by love and wisdom. If this were the case, atheism would seem the most normal of postures, for Creation would be like a sort of enormous game in which all creatures would be pawns in God’s hands, lacking in any worthwhile destiny.
But revelation shows us that the Trinity breathed life into these beings that surround it and gave them radiance, the world of angels and the world of men, essentially in order to associate them with its own bliss, to lead them into its own infinite joy. When we realize this, the origins of Creation seem admirable. So does its end, since its only origin and only end is love, real love, a completely disinterested love—for God does not need us, it is we who have need of Him. There is an aspect of absolute gratuitousness in Creation. Its primary source lies exclusively in this love. Thus we exist only to the extent that we are loved. For us, in our innermost beings, existing is merely being the condition of an act of love within the Trinity, which communicates being to us only in order to associate us in its life.
Cardinal Jean Danielou, S.J.
The Trinity seeks to share its bliss, its perfect joy with human beings. This, as revelation has shown us, was the first, the original intention in Creation. And certainly it was an admirable revelation, completely justifying the existence of Creation. By this I mean that if God had created beings with souls only to throw them back into nothingness after suffering them to live for a little while; if Creation really corresponded only to this early life in which we move, then it would certainly seem unworthy of a scheme inspired by love and wisdom. If this were the case, atheism would seem the most normal of postures, for Creation would be like a sort of enormous game in which all creatures would be pawns in God’s hands, lacking in any worthwhile destiny.
But revelation shows us that the Trinity breathed life into these beings that surround it and gave them radiance, the world of angels and the world of men, essentially in order to associate them with its own bliss, to lead them into its own infinite joy. When we realize this, the origins of Creation seem admirable. So does its end, since its only origin and only end is love, real love, a completely disinterested love—for God does not need us, it is we who have need of Him. There is an aspect of absolute gratuitousness in Creation. Its primary source lies exclusively in this love. Thus we exist only to the extent that we are loved. For us, in our innermost beings, existing is merely being the condition of an act of love within the Trinity, which communicates being to us only in order to associate us in its life.
Cardinal Jean Danielou, S.J.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
One of the Best Short Articles on Central Banks and Taxation
Moving control of the quantity of money from private banks to the government is the best solution to prosperity for the country.
The two party system is propped up by the central banks. People watch the puppet show and complain after each party fails to have the citizen's interest. The National Debt continues to grow as we pay interest only on the loans from the central banks.
The bottom line: No More National Debt. All our money is created out of debt borrowed from the private corporation of the Federal Reserve System, or other private foreign central banks. But nations don't have to borrow money from the central banks. Sovereign nations can create their own money -- debt free -- just as Abraham Lincoln did to win the Civil War. This is the secret that’s been hidden from us for over 100 years.
Repeal the Federal Reserve Act and the problem is solved. Hunger, poverty, recessions. All over. Write your congressman. At least let them know that you know you're being scammed.
Write your representatives and the President and demand:
1) Debt-free US issued currency, not currency borrowed from the private corporation of the Federal Reserve System.
2) Increase fractional reserve banking to full reserve
3) AUDIT the Federal Reserve System.
4) Pass a Balance Budget Amendment to the Constitution
Research this information for yourself. The Grace Commission was formed by the Reagan administration to try to solve the national debt crisis.
"100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt ... In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government." -- Grace Commission Report Jan 12, 1984
“If fundamental changes are not made in Federal spending, as compared with the fiscal 1983 deficit of $195 billion, a deficit of over ten times that amount, $2 trillion, is projected for the year 2000, only 17 years from now. In that year, the Federal debt would be $13.0 trillion ($160,000 per current taxpayer) and the interest alone on the debt would be $1.5 trillion per year ($18,500 per year per current taxpayer).” – Grace Commission Report Jan 12, 1984
GOOGLE : Secret of Oz, Money as Debt, Creature from Jekyll Island, and America: Freedom to Fascism
GOOGLE : Why an Income Tax is Not Necessary to Fund the U.S. Government
There is hope, especially here in America. History has shown that America has fought to create its own money for the last 300 years. In fact, in no other nation on earth has the population fought for it as successfully and with such determination over the centuries as America. All we need in the face of this oncoming first depression of the 21st century is a little education. We can make this the new civil rights movement--the new human rights movement. The big bankers now stand more exposed than ever before. Let’s use history to guide our path today.
This hasn’t been an issue since the time L. Frank Baum wrote the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Why? Because after the William Jennings Bryan era (1920's), the bankers learned that in order to put the lid on this issue they had to buy up the nation’s press. And they did. But this won’t work in the Internet age. Television commentators are now asking just what is the Federal Reserve and where does their money come from? The answer is they make the money up out of thin air and then have the audacity to loan it to us. The interest that the government has to pay is where our income taxes go. That was the deal the Fed made with the government when the Federal Reserve Act was rammed through Congress on Dec. 23, 1913.
And what about the principal? The principle is never repaid, but the interest just keeps compounding. And it’s that interest that’s killing us. We’ll never be able to repay it. No nation ever has been able to do so--except for President Jackson in 1836.
The two party system is propped up by the central banks. People watch the puppet show and complain after each party fails to have the citizen's interest. The National Debt continues to grow as we pay interest only on the loans from the central banks.
The bottom line: No More National Debt. All our money is created out of debt borrowed from the private corporation of the Federal Reserve System, or other private foreign central banks. But nations don't have to borrow money from the central banks. Sovereign nations can create their own money -- debt free -- just as Abraham Lincoln did to win the Civil War. This is the secret that’s been hidden from us for over 100 years.
Repeal the Federal Reserve Act and the problem is solved. Hunger, poverty, recessions. All over. Write your congressman. At least let them know that you know you're being scammed.
Write your representatives and the President and demand:
1) Debt-free US issued currency, not currency borrowed from the private corporation of the Federal Reserve System.
2) Increase fractional reserve banking to full reserve
3) AUDIT the Federal Reserve System.
4) Pass a Balance Budget Amendment to the Constitution
Research this information for yourself. The Grace Commission was formed by the Reagan administration to try to solve the national debt crisis.
"100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt ... In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government." -- Grace Commission Report Jan 12, 1984
“If fundamental changes are not made in Federal spending, as compared with the fiscal 1983 deficit of $195 billion, a deficit of over ten times that amount, $2 trillion, is projected for the year 2000, only 17 years from now. In that year, the Federal debt would be $13.0 trillion ($160,000 per current taxpayer) and the interest alone on the debt would be $1.5 trillion per year ($18,500 per year per current taxpayer).” – Grace Commission Report Jan 12, 1984
GOOGLE : Secret of Oz, Money as Debt, Creature from Jekyll Island, and America: Freedom to Fascism
GOOGLE : Why an Income Tax is Not Necessary to Fund the U.S. Government
There is hope, especially here in America. History has shown that America has fought to create its own money for the last 300 years. In fact, in no other nation on earth has the population fought for it as successfully and with such determination over the centuries as America. All we need in the face of this oncoming first depression of the 21st century is a little education. We can make this the new civil rights movement--the new human rights movement. The big bankers now stand more exposed than ever before. Let’s use history to guide our path today.
This hasn’t been an issue since the time L. Frank Baum wrote the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Why? Because after the William Jennings Bryan era (1920's), the bankers learned that in order to put the lid on this issue they had to buy up the nation’s press. And they did. But this won’t work in the Internet age. Television commentators are now asking just what is the Federal Reserve and where does their money come from? The answer is they make the money up out of thin air and then have the audacity to loan it to us. The interest that the government has to pay is where our income taxes go. That was the deal the Fed made with the government when the Federal Reserve Act was rammed through Congress on Dec. 23, 1913.
And what about the principal? The principle is never repaid, but the interest just keeps compounding. And it’s that interest that’s killing us. We’ll never be able to repay it. No nation ever has been able to do so--except for President Jackson in 1836.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Oil Speculation
Ah, Obama is at it again. The evil oil speculators. He sounded like he was going to hang them all—especially since the oil industry’s now released most recent data shows an average profit of just over six percent. What a deal. Makes me want to go out and buy stock.
And then I realized. Right long with CEO, Tony Hayward, of BP, I’m also going to be on the giblet—somewhere on the Via Apia. Hanging in the hot sun. The only imaginable thing that could be possibly worse would be listening to Obama’s self aggrandizement. The reason: last summer, after winterizing my boat I filled it up to the rim (not with Brim) with premium plus gasoline. It takes a lot of octane to pull my ass out of the water. The price per gallon was $2.86. Now that summer is fast approaching, Obama’s lending Brazil’s oil industry a couple of billion to be their best customer, the absolute shutdown of the US’s oil industry in the gulf, and the arrogant refusal to break open, develop or drill anywhere in or close proximity to the contiguous states, ANWAR or the continental shelf off of California, Oregon or Washington; no wonder gas is the price it is—and it’s six bucks in Hawaii. Fortunately, you don’t need gas to surf.
Things are not going to change until the American people throw out the Washington apparchiks. And the chance of that happening is close to nil. Freedom is quickly being erased from this country’s mindset and it is because of the dumbing down of America, first through the schools, secondly, through the media and finally through the allocation from the government’s “goody basket” which are mere crumbs to the goodies the US gives away to the rest of the world. America—they, the government, who you elect, are taking from your right pocket and giving you back a miniscule percentage of what they take. They are also lending to the world our money which has no chance of being paid back, which profits the banks, and is guaranteed by us taxpayers if those loans go bad—and they will and do. It is only a matter of time. And that time is running ever shorter.
Wake up.
And then I realized. Right long with CEO, Tony Hayward, of BP, I’m also going to be on the giblet—somewhere on the Via Apia. Hanging in the hot sun. The only imaginable thing that could be possibly worse would be listening to Obama’s self aggrandizement. The reason: last summer, after winterizing my boat I filled it up to the rim (not with Brim) with premium plus gasoline. It takes a lot of octane to pull my ass out of the water. The price per gallon was $2.86. Now that summer is fast approaching, Obama’s lending Brazil’s oil industry a couple of billion to be their best customer, the absolute shutdown of the US’s oil industry in the gulf, and the arrogant refusal to break open, develop or drill anywhere in or close proximity to the contiguous states, ANWAR or the continental shelf off of California, Oregon or Washington; no wonder gas is the price it is—and it’s six bucks in Hawaii. Fortunately, you don’t need gas to surf.
Things are not going to change until the American people throw out the Washington apparchiks. And the chance of that happening is close to nil. Freedom is quickly being erased from this country’s mindset and it is because of the dumbing down of America, first through the schools, secondly, through the media and finally through the allocation from the government’s “goody basket” which are mere crumbs to the goodies the US gives away to the rest of the world. America—they, the government, who you elect, are taking from your right pocket and giving you back a miniscule percentage of what they take. They are also lending to the world our money which has no chance of being paid back, which profits the banks, and is guaranteed by us taxpayers if those loans go bad—and they will and do. It is only a matter of time. And that time is running ever shorter.
Wake up.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
God So Loved the World
God So Loved the World
Since all people cannot study science, a brief law has been given by our Lord, so that it can be known by all, and no one because of ignorance can be excused from its observance; and this law is the law of Divine Love…The law of Divine Love produces in man four very desirable things.
First, it causes spiritual life in him, for it is clear that the one loved is naturally in the mind of the one loving, and therefore whoever loves God has God in hi…Even the nature of love is such that it transforms the lover into the beloved. Wherefore if we love evil and earthly things, we become sinful and restless. But if we love God, we become divine, or Godlike…The soul operates virtuously and perfectly, when it operates through charity, by which God dwells in it, for without charity, the soul does not rightly operate….
Secondly, charity causes the divine commandments to be observed. Gregory says, “Never is the love of God a burden, for it does great things wherever it exists. Moreover if work is a failure, or despised, there divine love is not present. Hence, an evident sign of charity is promptitude in observing the divine commandments. For we have seen that the lover does great and difficult things for the sake of the beloved.”
The third thing which love accomplishes is that it becomes a stronghold against adversities. For to the one having charity, no adverse circumstance can injure him, but on the contrary, adversities become useful to him….Moreover adversities and trials become delightful to the one loving God, as we clearly see from everyday examples among us.
The fourth thing which charity does for us is that it leads us to happiness. For only to those having charity is eternal happiness promised; yea more, remembered therefore, that according to our degree of charity, will be our degree of eternal happiness; and not according to any other virtue.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Doctor of the Church
Since all people cannot study science, a brief law has been given by our Lord, so that it can be known by all, and no one because of ignorance can be excused from its observance; and this law is the law of Divine Love…The law of Divine Love produces in man four very desirable things.
First, it causes spiritual life in him, for it is clear that the one loved is naturally in the mind of the one loving, and therefore whoever loves God has God in hi…Even the nature of love is such that it transforms the lover into the beloved. Wherefore if we love evil and earthly things, we become sinful and restless. But if we love God, we become divine, or Godlike…The soul operates virtuously and perfectly, when it operates through charity, by which God dwells in it, for without charity, the soul does not rightly operate….
Secondly, charity causes the divine commandments to be observed. Gregory says, “Never is the love of God a burden, for it does great things wherever it exists. Moreover if work is a failure, or despised, there divine love is not present. Hence, an evident sign of charity is promptitude in observing the divine commandments. For we have seen that the lover does great and difficult things for the sake of the beloved.”
The third thing which love accomplishes is that it becomes a stronghold against adversities. For to the one having charity, no adverse circumstance can injure him, but on the contrary, adversities become useful to him….Moreover adversities and trials become delightful to the one loving God, as we clearly see from everyday examples among us.
The fourth thing which charity does for us is that it leads us to happiness. For only to those having charity is eternal happiness promised; yea more, remembered therefore, that according to our degree of charity, will be our degree of eternal happiness; and not according to any other virtue.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Doctor of the Church
Thursday, April 7, 2011
The Calcutta Cup
"The Calcutta Cup (a trophy given for championship rugby in the United Kingdom)has probably seen more debauchery than Hugh Heffner's pace maker."
Pregame
Pregame
Monday, March 28, 2011
The Prodigal Son
The Prodigal Son
In fact, our essential motive for asking God for things should change, so that it will no longer be simply that we want things, but that we are beginning to enter into the joy that God has in giving. God likes giving, and this, in the last analysis, is the foundation for all prayer of petition.
We are not told the end of the story of the prodigal son, but it is surely likely that, as he grew to appreciate his father’s love and generosity, he became more and more confident in asking for tings, not necessarily because he wanted them, but because it made his father happy. So sometimes he might go and ask for something utterly small, a bag of nuts or a new hat, simply to please his father. Peraldus has grasped a fundamental law of God’s creation when he says that “everything is for giving away.” This is why sometimes the saints seem to pray for such ridiculously small things, and even to demand and get miracles, just to satisfy a passing whim.
In fact, our essential motive for asking God for things should change, so that it will no longer be simply that we want things, but that we are beginning to enter into the joy that God has in giving. God likes giving, and this, in the last analysis, is the foundation for all prayer of petition.
We are not told the end of the story of the prodigal son, but it is surely likely that, as he grew to appreciate his father’s love and generosity, he became more and more confident in asking for tings, not necessarily because he wanted them, but because it made his father happy. So sometimes he might go and ask for something utterly small, a bag of nuts or a new hat, simply to please his father. Peraldus has grasped a fundamental law of God’s creation when he says that “everything is for giving away.” This is why sometimes the saints seem to pray for such ridiculously small things, and even to demand and get miracles, just to satisfy a passing whim.
Friday, February 25, 2011
The Sistine Chapel
It its original conception, the figures of the Last Judgment were planned as nudes. Two theological schools of thought existed regarding the body in the afterlife: those who believed that the glorified bodies of the elect would be nude and free of lust, and those who believed that the saints would not only be clothed but adorned. Believing in “the resurrection of the flesh,” Michelangelo belonged to the former group, and he originally depicted Saint Blaise and all the saints in the panoply of heaven without clothing and with powerful and vibrant physiques. The papal chapel at the time was not the tourist attraction it eventually became. It was a sanctuary in which the lofty ideas of art, theology, and symbolism catered to the taste of an intellectual elite. Nevertheless, some who had access to this sacred space disagreed vehemently with what they saw the artist painting, so much so that the fresco later ran the risk of being destroyed. The papal master of ceremonies himself, Biagio da Cesena, watched as the fresco was being painted, and declared that it was disgraceful to portray so many nudes in a chapel—that the art was better suited for a public bathhouse or tavern. When he heard of this, Michelangelo took his revenge by including Biagio’s portrait as one of the major demons of hell. When Beagio complained to the pope, the pontiff reportedly replied that had the artist placed the master of ceremonies in purgatory then perhaps he could have intervened, but since he had been consigned to hell, it was beyond his jurisdiction.
The Magnificat
The Magnificat
Friday, January 7, 2011
The Role of Education and Government
Education, in general, teaches to the lowest common denominator in any given or particular class. I know. I was once a teacher. And according to my children, a very poor teacher at best. But what I do know is that year by year, generation by generation, there is a definite dumbing down of students, surprisingly enough, by the parents, which are and should be the first line of defense in regards to education, and then secondly by the government schools themselves. I saw it when I left teaching almost thirty years ago and it has done nothing but get worse over the years. The answer, as far as the state or the teacher unions are concerned, is to throw more money at the problem. I find it interesting that like any top heavy corporation, about a third statistically of the teaching force in this country has opted out of teaching and moved into administration. That coupled with teachers being paid a greater amount to move into administration, unions getting their hands on the “pie”, and waste, the per capita cost of “educating” a student has gone through the roof. And still the education field wants more with less and less glowing results.
I’m not sure if this is being done on purpose or out of necessity because there have been for some time now families out of necessity having to have two wage earners in the family. Therefore send your kids to school. Families don’t sit down to dinner much anymore either. And that is where the first line of “teaching” and “educating” really begins. At meals. All meals. Then there are chores and homework that have fallen by the wayside as well. All in the name of what? More video, television, computers, what?
According to Chesterton and some of his works, the entire point of education is that it should give a person a set of standards, one, I believe, which should be incorporated, is critical thought. He makes the remarks that education should give a set of eternal standards that can be used to judge fugitive standards, i.e., critical thought in part. Modern education has no eternal philosophy, no eternal reference point. But the irony is that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. This is the same thing as saying that “the more doubtful we are about whether we have the truth, the more certain we are that we can teach it to children. The smaller our faith in doctrine, the larger our faith in doctors.”
And here is a man writing at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. “It is the great paradox of the modern world that at the very time when the world decided that people should not be coerced about their form of religion, it also decided that they should be coerced about their form of education.”
And again, “I think our coercive popular education has been uncommonly near a complete failure. Every education teaches a philosophy; if not by dogma then by suggestion, by implication, by atmosphere. Every part of that education has a connection with every other part. If it does not all combine to convey some general view of life, it is not an education at all. The truth is that the modern world has committed itself to two totally different and inconsistent conceptions about education. It is always trying to expand the scope of education; and always trying to exclude from it all religion and philosophy. But this is sheer nonsense.”
It is obvious, and critical thought would tell us this if we were taught how to think critically, that a complete education could not possibly leave out, theology, religion and philosophy.
By giving up our children to public education, over to the experts, we have undermined the natural authority of the family. Chesterton in essence states that the man in the street is wholly at the mercy of the “academic priesthood”.
And from there is just gets worse. Why? Because the poor, who need a complete and in depth education suffer far more because they can’t afford classes where the ratio of a math teacher is one to five; or English, or….dare I say it….a class on critical thought. Chesterton says, “In the case of comparative poverty, which is the common lot of mankind, we come back to a general parental responsibility, which is the common sense of mankind. We also come back to the parent as the person in charge of education….If you exalt education, you must exalt the parental power with it. If you deprecate the parental power, you must deprecate education with it….Private education really is universal. Public education can be comparatively narrow. The mother dealing with her own daughters in her own home does literally have to deal with all sides of a single human soul.”
On an additional note by a writer, whom I have met personally and is a famous commentator on Chesterton, Dale Ahlquist, paraphrases Chesterton by adding, “’The human house is a paradox for it is larger inside than out.” When we step out of the home, when we pass from private life to public life, we are passing from a greater work to a smaller one, and from a harder work to an easier one. And that is why most modern people wish to pass from the great domestic task to the smaller and easier commercial one. They would rather be in the business world serving the minor needs of a hundred different people than meeting all the major needs of just one person, which includes serving meals, conversation, and moral support. They would rather teach a course in trigonometry to a hundred children than struggle with the whole human character of one child. Chesterton says that anyone ‘who makes himself responsible for one small baby, as a whole, will soon find that he is wrestling with gigantic angels and demons.’ While public education suffers from the conflicting problem of not enough teachers and yet too many specialists, the result is a lack of results. Children actually keep learning less and less. ‘To say that the moderns are half-educated may be too complimentary by half.’”
Ultimately, education is about truth. Not politically correct nonsense. It’s also about the three “R’s”. And how to think critically.
I’m not sure if this is being done on purpose or out of necessity because there have been for some time now families out of necessity having to have two wage earners in the family. Therefore send your kids to school. Families don’t sit down to dinner much anymore either. And that is where the first line of “teaching” and “educating” really begins. At meals. All meals. Then there are chores and homework that have fallen by the wayside as well. All in the name of what? More video, television, computers, what?
According to Chesterton and some of his works, the entire point of education is that it should give a person a set of standards, one, I believe, which should be incorporated, is critical thought. He makes the remarks that education should give a set of eternal standards that can be used to judge fugitive standards, i.e., critical thought in part. Modern education has no eternal philosophy, no eternal reference point. But the irony is that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. This is the same thing as saying that “the more doubtful we are about whether we have the truth, the more certain we are that we can teach it to children. The smaller our faith in doctrine, the larger our faith in doctors.”
And here is a man writing at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. “It is the great paradox of the modern world that at the very time when the world decided that people should not be coerced about their form of religion, it also decided that they should be coerced about their form of education.”
And again, “I think our coercive popular education has been uncommonly near a complete failure. Every education teaches a philosophy; if not by dogma then by suggestion, by implication, by atmosphere. Every part of that education has a connection with every other part. If it does not all combine to convey some general view of life, it is not an education at all. The truth is that the modern world has committed itself to two totally different and inconsistent conceptions about education. It is always trying to expand the scope of education; and always trying to exclude from it all religion and philosophy. But this is sheer nonsense.”
It is obvious, and critical thought would tell us this if we were taught how to think critically, that a complete education could not possibly leave out, theology, religion and philosophy.
By giving up our children to public education, over to the experts, we have undermined the natural authority of the family. Chesterton in essence states that the man in the street is wholly at the mercy of the “academic priesthood”.
And from there is just gets worse. Why? Because the poor, who need a complete and in depth education suffer far more because they can’t afford classes where the ratio of a math teacher is one to five; or English, or….dare I say it….a class on critical thought. Chesterton says, “In the case of comparative poverty, which is the common lot of mankind, we come back to a general parental responsibility, which is the common sense of mankind. We also come back to the parent as the person in charge of education….If you exalt education, you must exalt the parental power with it. If you deprecate the parental power, you must deprecate education with it….Private education really is universal. Public education can be comparatively narrow. The mother dealing with her own daughters in her own home does literally have to deal with all sides of a single human soul.”
On an additional note by a writer, whom I have met personally and is a famous commentator on Chesterton, Dale Ahlquist, paraphrases Chesterton by adding, “’The human house is a paradox for it is larger inside than out.” When we step out of the home, when we pass from private life to public life, we are passing from a greater work to a smaller one, and from a harder work to an easier one. And that is why most modern people wish to pass from the great domestic task to the smaller and easier commercial one. They would rather be in the business world serving the minor needs of a hundred different people than meeting all the major needs of just one person, which includes serving meals, conversation, and moral support. They would rather teach a course in trigonometry to a hundred children than struggle with the whole human character of one child. Chesterton says that anyone ‘who makes himself responsible for one small baby, as a whole, will soon find that he is wrestling with gigantic angels and demons.’ While public education suffers from the conflicting problem of not enough teachers and yet too many specialists, the result is a lack of results. Children actually keep learning less and less. ‘To say that the moderns are half-educated may be too complimentary by half.’”
Ultimately, education is about truth. Not politically correct nonsense. It’s also about the three “R’s”. And how to think critically.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
New Quotes
Unattended children will be given an espresso and a kitten.
Sweet Cheeks-New Years Eve 2010
Get r' done.
Got r' did.
Dr. Brianna "Boose" Crawley Christmas 2010
Sweet Cheeks-New Years Eve 2010
Get r' done.
Got r' did.
Dr. Brianna "Boose" Crawley Christmas 2010
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