I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen.
PART 3 OF 7
Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors.
This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, provide an excellent test of where the depression originated. If the depression had started in Europe or somewhere else in the world, the U.S. would have lost gold, more gold would have flown out of the country then came in. If, on the other hand, the depression started in the United States, the opposite would happen. More gold would come in from abroad as the effects of our depression spread there then went out abroad, in reality that is exactly what happened.
When the international money system was based on gold, the rules of the game were these. The gold in the United States was supposed to control the amount of money issued by the Federal Reserve. In turn, the amount the Federal Reserve issued controlled the amount of money issued by the commercial banks which in turn controlled the amount of money that individuals, businesses and industry could get from the banks. The result, a monetary structure all supposedly tied to the amount of gold in the vaults in the United States. But in 1930 the Federal Reserve didn’t play by the rules. It stood by as banks started to collapse and with each one that went the money supply fell. Businesses and industry inevitably began to fail. Americans, now poor, bought less from abroad. Britain was one of the countries effected. Like the United States, Britain had its own monetary structure tied to gold. The trouble was that Britain could now sell less abroad. It cut down the amount it bought from abroad but not by enough. Under the rules of the gold standard, it had to pay the difference in gold. With every bar of gold that was shipped out of Britain, the amount of money decreased.
A depression that was already underway in Britain got worse. British gold flowed into the United States, supposedly to form the foundation of a new slice of the monetary structure. But the Federal Reserve didn’t let it. The gold was simply locked away. The results, Britain remained in trouble until in 1931 it went off the gold standard cutting the link between the amount of gold and the amount of money. In the United States, suffering the worst depression in history, there was plenty of gold, but to no avail.
Although these events happened almost 50 years ago, many of our policies today derived directly from them. Central bankers throughout the world, government officials everywhere, are afraid of a new great depression. They, have therefore, moved the opposite direction. Instead of the problem of too little money, we are faced with the problem of too much money. The problems of inflation that plagues us today trace directly from the problem of deflation that plagued us from 1929 to 1933.
People came to believe that free market capitalism had failed. Something was needed to replace it. At Cambridge University in England, a new orthodoxy emerged in the 30’s one that has remained powerful to this day.
It owes its influence to the brilliance of one man. John Manrd Kane was unquestionably one of the greatest economists of all time. Like other economists of his generation, he found The Great Depression both a paradox and a challenge. It was a paradox because it seemed to contradict some of the fundamental principles that economists have come to take for granted. Kane rose to the challenge by constructing a complex and sophisticated hypothesis which not only explained what had been going on, but also offered a way out way to end The Great Depression and to avoid similar episodes in the future. The core of his theory was that what happened to the quantity of money didn’t matter. What really mattered was a particular category of spending. In economists jargon, autonomous spending. What kind of spending is that? It might be investment by business enterprises in building factories and adding to the number of machines and adding to inventories. It might be spending by individuals to build houses. Or, most important of all, it might be deficit spending by government. If private spending on investment, on house building, is not enough to maintain full employment, then government could always step in and spend enough to make up the difference. The theory of pump priming was born. The theory was a godsend to politicians who had been grasping at any expedient. After all, throughout the ages, politicians had been only too willing to spend money provided they didn’t have to tax their citizens to pay for it. And here along came a scientific theory offered under the most responsible of auspices that justified what they had been wanting to do all along. Is it any wonder that government spending has exploded ever since or that deficit spending, even without the excuse of war, and on a large scale, has become the order of the day?
In America, the new Roosevelt administration adopted the Keynesian approach. It authorized massive spending on government projects. It involved government increasingly in the running of the economy. It developed programs designed to provide security for every individual. In England too, the idea that only the government could bolster the economy was firmly established as this film at the time makes clear.
With the assistance of the national government, work was restarted on the great Granada, 534. And we all hope that this is a prelude to a period of increasing prosperity in the industry. Exports of cotton goods to India have increased and as a result of the quota system in the colonies, which the national government introduced in order to diminish the dangers of Japanese competition, exports of cotton good to those colonies have been more than doubled. One of the most important contributions which the national government has made toward the improvement of social conditions has been a housing campaign without parallel in our history.
Though some of these measures may have been useful and indeed needed during the depression years, the length to which they have since then carried would have horrified Kane.
Kane died in 1946. I have always regarded it as a tragedy that they did not live another decade. He was the one man who had the standing, the personality, the force of character to persuade his disciples not to carry too far some ideas which were good for the 1930’s but which did not apply in the post war situation. That he might have done so is suggested by an article he wrote just before his death. The last article he ever wrote published after his death. In that article he expressed strong reservations about the lengths to which some of his disciples had been carrying his ideas. If he had been able, if he had lived another decade, the postwar inflationary explosion might have been avoided.
Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were prophetic (jh29)
What Ever Happened to the Human Race?
I recently heard this Breakpoint Commentary by Chuck Colson and it just reminded me of how prophetic Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were in the late 1970’s with their book and film series “Whatever happened to the human race?”
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Twin Killings
Haggling over Price
By: Chuck Colson|Published: September 21, 2011 7:38 AM
I know there are plenty of bioethicists who believe in the sanctity of life. Tragically, as one disturbing trend shows, there are also plenty who don’t.
As my late good friend Richard John Neuhaus once wrote, “for the most part, bioethicists are in the business of issuing permission slips for whatever the technicians want to do.”
A less charitable friend of his put it more bluntly: “a bioethicist is to ethics what a [prostitute] is to sex.” A recent article in the New York Times shows why one could be so harsh.
The story is about the rising number of what are euphemistically called “twin reductions”: Women who are carrying twins decide to kill one of their unborn children while allowing its sibling to live.
This demonic procedure was the unintended but not unforeseeable consequence of reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization. Women undergoing IVF often found themselves carrying four, five, and even six children at a time.
The medical response was to “reduce” the number of fetuses to a more “manageable number.” “Reducing” in that case meant a shot of potassium chloride to the heart of one of the three-month old fetuses.
And do I have to tell you that the definition of what’s “manageable” has shrunk over the years? In a blink of an eye, reducing meant from going from whatever number of children there were to twins.
At this point, bioethicists became uneasy: Dr. Mark Evans, a pioneer of the “reduction” procedure, helped draft guidelines for the industry. According to the guidelines, “most reductions below twins violated ethical principles.” Evans wrote that performing these reductions turned doctors into “technicians to our patients’ desires.”
Do I have to tell you that Evans himself now performs twin reductions? He justified his reversal by saying that he understood why “women didn’t want to be in their 60s worrying about two tempestuous teenagers or two college-tuition bills.”
In other words, as New YorkTimes columnist Ross Douthat noted, Evans had become a technician to his patients’ desires.
Douthat spelled out why none of us should be surprised at either Evans’ reversal or the growth of “twin reduction.” What he calls “liberal bioethics” is always “adapting” to meet patients’ desires. What was unacceptable yesterday will be “understandable” tomorrow. Bioethicists acknowledge our concerns and promise that they will draw the line tomorrow. But, as Douthat says, “tomorrow never comes.”
That’s because, outside the Christian view that all human life is sacred, they have no real basis on which to draw that line. For all the talk about “human dignity,” this brings to mind a joke told by Winston Churchill: a woman asked if she would sleep with a man for 5 million pounds, replies “yes.” When asked if she would do it for 5 pounds, she replies, “What kind of woman do you think I am?” to which the man replies, “we’ve already established that, now we’re just haggling over price.”
Bioethicists have already conceded that killing an unborn child for reasons that have nothing to do with saving the mother’s life or even her health is acceptable. They’ve given their sanction to medical procedures that make this procedure inevitable. Now they are haggling over details: how patients’ desires should be worded before they write the permission slip.
Maybe Neuhaus’ friend was right, after all.
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Francis Schaeffer is a hero of mine and I want to honor him with a series of posts on Sundays called “Schaeffer Sundays” which will include his writings and clips from his film series. I have posted many times in the past using his material.
Philosopher and Theologian, Francis A. Schaeffer has argued, “If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is absolute.” Francis Schaeffer, How Shall We Then Live? (Old Tappan NJ: Fleming H Revell Company, 1976), p. 224.
“We stand today on the edge of a great abyss,” they wrote. “At this crucial moment choices are being made and thrust on us that will for many years to come affect the way people are treated. We want to try to help tip the scales on the side of those who believe that individuals are unique and special and have great dignity.”
This year marks the 25th anniversary of “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop. The anniversary serves to remind us just how unaware and unawake most evangelicals really were 25 years ago — and how prophetic the voices of Schaeffer and Koop were.
Whatever Happened to the Human Race? was both a book project and a film series, the fruit of an unusual collaboration between Francis Schaeffer, one of the truly significant figures of 20th-century evangelicalism, and C. Everett Koop, one of the nation’s most illustrious pediatric surgeons. They were an odd couple of sorts, but on the crucial issues of human dignity and the threat of what would later be called the “Culture of Death,” they were absolutely united.
Francis Schaeffer, who died in 1984, was nothing less than a 20th-century prophet. He was a genuine eccentric, given to wearing leather breeches and sporting a goatee — then quite unusual for anyone in the evangelical establishment. Then again, Schaeffer was never really a member of any establishment, and that is partly why a generation of questioning young people made their way to his Swiss study center known as L’Abri.
Big ideas were Schaeffer’s business — and the Christian worldview was his consistent framework. Long before most evangelicals even knew they had a worldview, Schaeffer was taking alternative worldviews apart and inculcating in his students a love for the architecture of Christian truth and the dignity of ideas.
Key figures on the evangelical left wrote Schaeffer off as a crank, and he returned the favor by denying that they were evangelicals at all. They complained that he did not follow their rules for scholarly publication. He pointed out that people actually read his books — and young people frustrated with cultural Christianity read his books by the thousands. They were looking for someone with ideas big enough for the age, relevant for the questions of the times, and based without compromise in Christian truth. Francis Schaeffer — knee pants and all — became a prophet for the age.
Dr. C. Everett Koop, on the other hand, is a paragon of the American establishment — a former surgeon-in-chief at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia and later surgeon general of the United States under President Reagan. In 1974 Koop catapulted to international attention by performing the first successful surgical separation of conjoined twins. A Presbyterian layman, Koop lives in quasi-retirement in Pennsylvania. His surgical procedures remain textbook cases for medical students today.
Whatever Happened to the Human Race? awakened American evangelicals to the anti-human technologies and ideologies that then threatened human dignity. Most urgently, the project put abortion unquestionably on the front burner of evangelical concern. The tenor of the times is seen in the fact that Schaeffer and Koop had to argue to evangelicals in the late 1970s that abortion was not just a “Catholic” issue. They taught many evangelicals a new and urgently needed vocabulary about embryo ethics, euthanasia and infanticide. They knew they were running out of time.
“Each era faces its own unique blend of problems,” they argued. “Our time is no exception. Those who regard individuals as expendable raw material — to be molded, exploited, and then discarded — do battle on many fronts with those who see each person as unique and special, worthwhile, and irreplaceable.”
Every age is marked by both the “thinkable” and the “unthinkable,” they asserted — and the “thinkable” of late-20th-century Western cultures was dangerously anti-human. The lessons of the century — with the Holocaust at its center — should be sufficient to drive the point home. The problem, as illustrated by those who worked in Hitler’s death camps, was the inevitable result of a loss of conscience and moral truth. They were “people just like all of us,” Koop and Schaeffer reminded. “We seem to be in danger of forgetting our seemingly unlimited capacities for evil, once boundaries to certain behavior are removed.”
By the last quarter of the century, life and death were treated as mere matters of choice. “The schizophrenic nature of our society became further evident as it became common practice for pediatricians to provide the maximum of resuscitative and supportive care in newborn intensive-care nurseries where premature infants were under their care — while obstetricians in the same medical centers were routinely destroying enormous numbers of unborn babies who were normal and frequently of larger size. Minors who could not legally purchase liquor and cigarettes could have an abortion-on-demand and without parental consent or knowledge.”
Schaeffer and Koop pointed to other examples of moral schizophrenia. Disabled persons were given new access to facilities and services in the name of human rights, while preborn infants diagnosed with the same disabilities were often aborted — with the advice that it would be “wrong” to bring such a baby into the world.
Long before the discovery of stem cells and calls for the use of human embryos for such experimentation, Schaeffer and Koop warned of attacks upon human life at its earliest stage. “Embryos ‘created’ in the biologist’s laboratory raise special questions because they have the potential for growth and development if planted in the womb. The disposal of these live embryos is a cause for ethical and moral concern.”
They also saw the specter of infanticide and euthanasia. Infanticide, including what is now called “partial-birth abortion,” is murder, they argued. “Infanticide is being practiced right now in this country, and the saddest thing about this is that it is being carried on by the very segment of the medical profession which has always stood in the role of advocate for the lives of children.” Long before the formal acceptance of euthanasia in countries like the Netherlands, Koop and Schaeffer saw the rise of a “duty to die” argument used against the old, the very sick and the unproductive. They rejected euthanasia in the case of a “so-called vegetative existence” and warned all humanity that disaster awaited a society that lusted for a “beautiful death.”
“Abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia are not only questions for women and other relatives directly involved — nor are they the prerogatives of a few people who have thought through the wider ramifications,” they declared. “They are life-and-death issues that concern the whole human race equally and should be addressed as such.”
How did this happen? This embrace of an anti-human “humanism” could only be explained by the rejection of the Christian worldview. “Judeo-Christian teaching was never perfectly applied,” they acknowledged, “but it did lay a foundation for a high view of human life in concept and practice.” Through the inculcation of biblical values, “people viewed human life as unique — to be protected and loved — because each individual is made in the image of God.”
Two great enemies of truth were blamed for this loss of biblical truth — modern secularism and theological liberalism. The secularists insist on the imposition of a “humanism” that defines humanity in terms of productivity, arbitrary standards of beauty and health, and an inverted system of value. Theological liberalism, denying the truthfulness of the Bible, robs the church and the society of any solid authority. The biblical concept of humanity made in the image of God is treated as poetry rather than as truth. But, “if people are not made in the image of God, the pessimistic, realistic humanist is right: The human race is indeed an abnormal wart on the smooth face of a silent and meaningless universe.”
Everything else simply follows. “In this setting, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia … are completely logical. Any person can be obliterated for what society at one moment thinks of as its own social or economic good.” Once human life and human dignity are devalued to this degree, recovery is extremely difficult — if not impossible.
The past 25 years has been a period of even more rapid technological and moral change. We now face threats to human dignity unimaginable just a quarter-century ago. We must now deal with the ethical challenges of embryo research, human cloning, the Human Genome Project and the rise of transhuman technologies. Even with many Christians aware and active on these issues, we are losing ground.
Francis Schaeffer and Everett Koop ended their book with a call for action. “If, in this last part of the twentieth century, the Christian community does not take a prolonged and vocal stand for the dignity of the individual and each person’s right to life — for the right of each person to be treated as created in the image of God, rather than as a collection of molecules with no unique value — we feel that as Christians we have failed the greatest moral test to be put before us in this century.”
In this new century, that warning is even more threatening and more urgent. The challenges of the 21st century are even greater than those faced in the century before. This should make us even more thankful for the prophetic witness of Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop — and even more determined to contend for life. Humanity still stands on the brink of that abyss. –30– Adapted from the Crosswalk.com weblog of R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Related Posts:
E P I S O D E 1 0 How Should We Then Live 10#1 FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be led by an elite: John Kenneth […]
E P I S O D E 9 How Should We Then Live 9#1 T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads to Pessimism Regarding a Meaning for Life and for Fixed […]
E P I S O D E 8 How Should We Then Live 8#1 I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas) and Post-Impressionism (Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, […]
E P I S O D E 7 How Should We Then Live 7#1 I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act on his belief that we live […]
I have made it clear from day one when I started this blog that Francis Schaeffer, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan and Adrian Rogers had been the biggest influences on my political and religious views. Today I am responding to an unfair attack on Francis Schaeffer’s book “A Christian Manifesto.” As you can see on the […]
Woody Allen, the film writer, director, and actor, has consistently populated his scripts with characters who exchange dialogue concerning meaning and purpose. In Hannah and Her Sisters a character named Mickey says, “Do you realize what a thread were all hanging by? Can you understand how meaningless everything is? Everything. I gotta get some answers.”{7} […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in Modern Science. A. Change in conviction from earlier modern scientists.B. From an open to a closed natural system: […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live 5-1 I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there was a unique improvement. A. […]
How Should We Then Live 4-1 I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to how to be right with […]
How Should We Then Live 3-1 I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so many problems today with this excellent episode. He noted, “Could have gone either way—with emphasis on real people living in […]
The Federal Reserve has existed for almost 100 years and it has created depressions, recessions, inflation, and bubbles. This CF&P Foundation video explains the origin of central banking and mentions possible alternatives that will be discussed in subsequent mini-documentaries.
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I have wondered who gave the Fed money to buy anything? There is no money in the federal budget for them. It seems to me that all they are doing is causing inflation. Here is a view from Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute.
In a move that some are calling QE3, the Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it will engage in a policy called “the twist” — selling short-term bonds and buying long-term bonds in hopes of artificially reducing long-term interest rates. If successful, this policy (we are told) will incentivize more borrowing and stimulate growth.
Here are two related questions that need to be answered.
1. Is the economy’s performance being undermined by high long-term rates?
Considering that interest rates are at very low levels already, it seems rather odd to claim that the economy will suddenly rebound if they get pushed down a bit further. Japan has had very low interest rates (both short-run and long-run) for a couple of decades, yet the economy has remained stagnant.
Perhaps the problem is bad policy in other areas. After all, who wants to borrow money, expand business, create jobs, and boost output if Washington is pursuing a toxic combination of excessive spending and regulation, augmented by the threat of higher taxes.
Perhaps the problem is that banks don’t want to lend money because they don’t see profitable opportunities. After all, it’s better to sit on money than to lend it to people who won’t pay it back because of an economy weakened by too much government.
The Fed announced that through June 2012 it will buy $400 billion in Treasury bonds at the long end of the market—with six- to 30-year maturities—and sell an equal amount of securities of three years’ duration or less. The point, said the FOMC statement, is to put further “downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and help make broader financial conditions more accommodative.” It’s hard to see how this will make much difference to economic growth. Long rates are already at historic lows, and even a move of 10 or 20 basis points isn’t likely to affect many investment decisions at the margin. The Fed isn’t acting in a vacuum, and any move in bond prices could well be swamped by other economic news. Europe’s woes are accelerating, and every CEO in America these days is worried more about what the National Labor Relations Board is doing to Boeing than he is about the 30-year bond rate. The Fed will also reinvest the principal payments it receives on its asset holdings into mortgage-backed securities, rather than in U.S. Treasurys. The goal here is to further reduce mortgage costs and thus help the housing market. But home borrowing costs are also at historic lows, and the housing market suffers far more from the foreclosure overhang and uncertainty encouraged by government policy than it does from the price of money. The Fed’s announcement thus had the feel of an attempt to show it is doing something to help the economy, even if it can’t do much. …the economy’s problems aren’t rooted in the supply and price of money. They result from the damage done to business confidence and investment by fiscal and regulatory policy, and that’s where the solutions must come. Investors on Wall Street and politicians in Washington want to believe that the Fed can make up for years of policy mistakes. The sooner they realize it can’t, the sooner they’ll have no choice but to correct the mistakes.
Let’s also take this issue to the next level. Some people are explicitly arguing in favor of more “quantitative easing” because they want some inflation. They argue that “moderate” inflation will help the economy by indirectly wiping out some existing debt.
This is a very dangerous gambit. Letting the inflation genie out of the bottle could trigger 1970s-style stagflation. Paul Volcker fires a warning shot against this risky approach in a New York Times column. Here are the key passages.
…we are beginning to hear murmurings about the possible invigorating effects of “just a little inflation.” Perhaps 4 or 5 percent a year would be just the thing to deal with the overhang of debt and encourage the “animal spirits” of business, or so the argument goes. The siren song is both alluring and predictable. …After all, if 1 or 2 percent inflation is O.K. and has not raised inflationary expectations — as the Fed and most central banks believe — why not 3 or 4 or even more? …all of our economic history says it won’t work that way. I thought we learned that lesson in the 1970s. That’s when the word stagflation was invented to describe a truly ugly combination of rising inflation and stunted growth. …What we know, or should know, from the past is that once inflation becomes anticipated and ingrained — as it eventually would — then the stimulating effects are lost. Once an independent central bank does not simply tolerate a low level of inflation as consistent with “stability,” but invokes inflation as a policy, it becomes very difficult to eliminate. …At a time when foreign countries own trillions of our dollars, when we are dependent on borrowing still more abroad, and when the whole world counts on the dollar’s maintaining its purchasing power, taking on the risks of deliberately promoting inflation would be simply irresponsible.
Last but not least, here is my video on the origin of central banking, which starts with an explanation of how currency evolved in the private sector, then describes how governments then seized that role by creating monopoly central banks, and closes with a list of options to promote good monetary policy.
Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) — David Addington, vice president at the Heritage Foundation, and Ryan McConaghy, economic director at Third Way, discuss President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan. They speak with Deirdre Bolton and Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” (Source: Bloomberg)
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We have been hearing about how the stimulus saved jobs that would have been losted even though unemployment went up after the stimulus was passed. Now we are hearing about the money Obama’s plan will save.
Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and coauthor of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution.
Back when Barack Obama was running for president, he famously told Joe the Plumber that his goal was to “spread the wealth around.” Judging from the deficit-reduction plan that the president introduced on Monday, he really meant it.
The president’s plan barely makes a pretense of reducing spending. The Obama administration claims that its proposal would reduce future budget deficits by roughly $4.4 trillion. But that includes $1.1 trillion in savings from troop draw-downs in Afghanistan and Iraq that were already going to occur. This is an old trick by which the president gets to “save” money that was never going to be spent. The president also reaches back to include $1.2 trillion in savings from the debt-ceiling deal that was signed into law last month. And, he includes $430 billion in savings from lower interest payments as a result of the reduced debt.
The president’s actual cuts total less than $580 billion over the next ten years. That amounts to less than 1.3 percent of expected total federal spending over that period. It barely offsets the cost of the new stimulus bill he announced last week.
The American welfare state is alive and well.
Entitlement reform, once the supposed basis for a grand compromise, is now off the table. Social Security is running a deficit and facing more than $20 trillion in unfunded liabilities, but the president makes no changes to the program. Medicaid would be cut by roughly $72 billion over ten years, barely more than $7 billion per year in a program that today costs $276 billion annually. The president would trim Medicare by $248 billion over ten years. Depending on which accounting measure you use, that program is facing unfunded liabilities of $30–90 trillion, meaning that under the best-case scenario, the president is proposing a reduction of less than 1 percent. And none of the president’s proposed Medicare savings amounts to structural change in the program, which is what is needed. Instead, the president falls back on the usual grab-bag of cuts in provider reimbursements. Those cuts are likely to drive providers out of the program, making it harder for seniors to see a doctor, while doing nothing to change the program’s path towards insolvency.
The American welfare state is alive and well.
On the other hand, the president throws his weight fully behind tax hikes. His plan would increase taxes by $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. That’s on top of $450 billion in tax hikes that the president proposed last week to pay for the stimulus package. In total, the president is seeking nearly $2 trillion in higher taxes, compared to $580 billion in spending cuts. That amounts to nearly $4 in taxes for every $1 in cuts.
And, let’s look at those taxes. The president continues to focus his rhetoric on millionaires and billionaires, but his proposal includes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for people earning as little as $200,000 per year. That tax hike would also fall heavily on small businesses and almost certainly would slow job creation.
The president’s other big tax initiative is, of course, the new “Buffet rule,” a new alternative-minimum tax designed to ensure that “millionaires and billionaires” pay the same effective tax rate as middle-income workers. While that populist pitch may well prove politically popular, numerous studies have shown that it is highly misleading. Few millionaires and billionaires actually pay taxes at such low effective tax rates. Those that do are receiving the majority of their income from capital gains, income that has already been taxed multiple times before it is subject to the capital-gains tax.
Besides, we should never forget that investment is both risky and necessary for job creation. It is exactly the sort of thing we should be encouraging.
But in the end, economic growth and job creation is secondary to the president. So is deficit reduction. This proposal is about the president’s idea of “fairness,” as he has said over and over. The president sees the wealthy as achieving their success not through hard work and initiative but by exploiting the less well-off or through pure luck. They are the winners of life’s lottery, in his view. It is his job, therefore, to remedy this injustice. That means taking money from some and giving it to others.
One third of Americans believe Hillary Clinton would have been a better president than Barack Obama, and two-thirds view her favorably, according to a new Bloomberg News poll.
“The most popular national political figure in America today is one who was rejected by her own party three years ago: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” Bloomberg News’ John McCormick wrote on the poll’s findings, which were released Friday.
While 34 percent of those polled believe “things would be better under a Clinton administration,” McCormick wrote, “almost half–47 percent–say things would be about the same, and 13 percent say worse.”
By contrast, “35 percent of those polled believe the country would be worse off if John McCain had been elected president,” Holly Bailey reported at The Ticket.
“Clinton remains the most popular political figure on the national scene, with 64 percent of those polled saying they have a ‘favorable’ view of the Secretary of State, Bailey wrote.
“Obama’s favorable rating is at 50 percent—even though 49 percent of those polled disapprove of the job he’s doing as president. A majority of Democrats say Obama is their best candidate in 2012, though just under a third—30 percent—say they’d prefer to have someone else on the ticket.”
It is my view that if the economy keeps stinking that Republicans will have a field day in November of 2012. However, the same principle holds true that challengers to Democrats will be very successful in Democratic primaries.
In Arkansas many have longed for another Clinton in the White House. Could it happen? It is my view that it is a foregone conclusion that the Republicans are heavy favorites to take the Senate back and win the presidency in 2012. Nevertheless, it would not surprise me if there are some big surprises in the Democratic primaries. Matthew Dickinson wrote a fine article, “Run Hillary, Run,” Salon, August 4, 2011 and in that article he makes three points:
1. “To begin, her stint as secretary of state has done wonders for her approval rating, as indicated by Gallup poll surveys dating back to her time in the White House.”
2. “Her second advantage relates to the first: She’s not part of the mess at home. She didn’t weigh in on the stimulus bill, or healthcare, or the banking overhaul, and she certainly bears no responsibility for the state of the economy.”
3. “This leads to a third point: buyer’s remorse. It’s not one she can directly bring up (after all, she’s above politics), but others will certainly remind voters that she did warn you. Remember that 3 a.m. phone call?”
Senator Mark Pryor is part of the establishment too and will face the same problems that President Obama faces in 2012, but that could not be said about Mike Beebe. Beebe is very popular and won with overwhelming numbers in Arkansas when many other big names in the Democratic party went down like Broadway and Lincoln.
Dr. Jay Barth with Hendrix College comments on our latest poll results on Arkansas politics (clip from Talkbusiness) Talk Business reported today in the article “Poll Shows Beebe Strength, Pryor Shaky,” the following: A new Talk Business-Hendrix College Poll shows Gov. Mike Beebe (D) maintaining his high job approval rating, while Sen. Mark Pryor (D) […]
U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor at the 2009 Democratic Party Jefferson Jackson Dinner, Arkansas’s largest annual political event. Mark Pryor is up for re-election to the Senate in 2014. It is my opinion that the only reason he did not have an opponent in 2008 was because the Republicans in Arkansas did not want to go […]
Governor Rick Perry got in trouble for calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme and I totally agree with that. This is a series of articles that look at this issue.
This article appeared on Forbes.com on August 17, 2011.
recently had the pleasure of reading The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America. The authors are Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, the former and current editors (respectively) of Reason magazine. They follow in the footsteps of Brink “liberaltarian” Lindsey, whose 2007 book The Age of Abundance portrayed libertarianism as the ideology of the sensible center in American politics, equally immune to the left’s enthusiasm for big government and the right’s enthusiasm for theocracy. The basic thrust of the Reasoneditors’ book is that the growing fraction of American voters who identify themselves as independents are really libertarians—at least in temperament if not explicit self-identification—and that what they want first and foremost is for the government to leave them alone.
This is the kind of book you’d expect the editors of a libertarian magazine to write, and they do a good job. The book has three sections. The middle section is the longest, and also the best. It tells some fun stories about ways the world has gotten freer over the last few decades. It tells how Czechoslovakia’s underground (and illegal) music scene inspired dissident Vaclav Havel and hastened the fall of communism. It explains how cartel-busting deregulation in the Carter era made air travel more affordable and beer more delicious. And it tells how the Internet is knocking traditional media off its pedestal.
The final third of the book, called “operationalize it, baby!” (yes, with an exclamation point), takes a curious turn. The opening chapter, called “we are so out of money,” makes two major points: government spends a lot of money on trains, and government spends a lot of money on benefits for public employees.
Timothy B. Lee is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He covers tech policy for Ars Technica and blogs at Forbes.com.
At this point, a lot of readers must be scratching their heads. Aside from that section on airline deregulation, the first two-thirds of the book doesn’t say anything about transportation policy. Nor is the book a treatise on public pensions. So in what sense do these complaints about government spending “operationalize” the book’s previous arguments about the value of individual liberty?
Of course, I’m playing dumb here. I’m familiar enough with libertarian theory to know what the connection is supposed to be: the government spending more money on transportation infrastructure and the government telling you what kind of beer you can drink are both infringements of economic freedom. This line of reasoning is rooted in the work of hard-core libertarians like Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, for whom all taxation was theft. (Rothbard was an anarchist, Rand had some confused ideas about financing government non-coercively)
If all taxation is theft, then the government subsidizing trains is as much an infringement on your freedom as the government banning small breweries. The problem is that Gillespie and Welch insist they’re not that kind of libertarians. In their epilogue, they write that they “went to public schools for all or part of our educations (as do/will our kids), walked without a second’s hesitation on public sidewalks, and are still not averse to calling tax-funded fire departments.” Evidently, they believe there are at least some kinds of public services that should be provided with tax revenues.
But if the government is going to provide fire departments and public sidewalks, then presumably it’s going to have to hire some employees. And those employees will probably expect some health care and retirement benefits. To be sure, there’s a need to reform public pensions, but this is a basically technocratic question that has little to do with economic freedom as such.
As for trains, not only does the subject have no obvious connection to economic freedom, but Gillespie and Welch don’t make a very compelling case that trains are particularly prone to mismanagement and boondoggles. To be sure, there have been a lot of wasteful train projects, but it’s easy to find examples of mismanaged projects involving other modes of transportation, all of which are also heavily regulated and subsidized by the government. The problem is that large bureaucracies are inefficient, not that there’s something uniquely bad about rail transportation.
More to the point, one of the big reasons train-based transit tends to perform poorly is that the government systematically discourages the kind of high-density development patterns that make trains economically viable. Trains are an efficient and popular mode of transportation in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and DC because there’s a critical mass of people within walking distance of each stop. But today, rules about minimum parking, setbacks, maximum building heights, and so forth effectively make it illegal to build neighborhoods like the high-density parts of Northeastern cities. Repeal those rules and wait a couple of decades, and some of these train boondoggles might start to make more sense.
In any event, the perennial argument between people who like trains and people who like cars has about as much to do with individual liberty as the Yankees-vs-Red Socks feud. Decisions about which modes of transportation the government should subsidize, and how, involve boring trade-offs between costs and benefits. There’s no reason libertarians, as such, should have a dog in the fight.
This isn’t really Gillespie and Welch’s fault. There are lots of libertarians who (like Friedman and Hayek) support more government than the night-watchman state, but who haven’t given a ton of thought to what that actually entails. The result tends to be haphazard advocacy of cutting whatever government spending is most visible at any particular point in time. This approach often has unintended consequences. For example, Matt Yglesias points out that efforts to reduce the federal government’s headcount has led to huge windfall profits for federal contractors. Good fiscal policy requires not only cutting wasteful spending (and to be sure there’s a lot to cut) but also making sure that those cuts don’t hinder the performance of the worthwhile government activities that remain. Thinking about government spending as a question of economic liberty can be more a hindrance than a help to that effort.
Why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion).
On my blog www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, I did not see any of them in the recent debt deal that Congress adopted. Now I am trying another approach. Every week from now on I will send you an email explaining different reasons why we need the Balanced Budget Amendment. It will appear on my blog on “Thirsty Thursday” because the government is always thirsty for more money to spend.
No objective is more important for the new Congress than putting America on course toward a balanced federal budget. We used to balance our budget regularly but, except for a short period during the late 1990’s, Congress has been unable to accomplish what should be a clear-cut mission. Americans understand that deficit spending may be unavoidable in wartime or in a Katrina-like emergency, but we also believe that in the absence of these events, there is no excuse for irresponsibly increasing our national debt.
Unfortunately, our national agenda no longer seems to include a balanced budget. President Obama established a national debt commission (whose report I will address in a future column), but that was only after cranking up federal expenditures and deficits to previously unseen levels.
We all know that the big enchiladas in the Federal budget are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and national defense. That still leaves a lot of money to be saved elsewhere, yet even these opportunities are far too often belittled by elitists. For example, Jackie Calmes, a New York Times reporter, wrote that while there is general agreement on an earmark ban, “… [it] would hardly dent the projected annual deficits.” Paul Krugman, her colleague at the Times and the current economic guru of the left, routinely dismisses any savings at all, his most recent tantrum being Obama’s proposal for a two-year freeze on pay raises. He states “The actual savings, about $5 billion over two years, are chump change given the scale of the deficit.” These are two examples that occurred within days – and I could probably cite hundreds more, from both sides of the aisle.
The United States has a budget crisis that should be met by expenditure reductions, but our government has acted only with foolishness and cowardice. Let’s say your employer came to you and said “Look, the company is struggling, but I can keep you on if we reduce your annual salary from $80,000 to $70,000.” You would go home, sit down with your spouse, and figure out where you can start saving money. You could skip the Saturday night movies and join Netflix. You could learn to live without HBO. You could stop getting water delivered to the house. The bottom line is that you would adjust your expenditures because you have no choice; after all, you can’t print money or sell bonds to your neighbors. Not even to China.
What our government is doing has been going on for hundreds of years, ever since the Rothschilds made their fortune lending monies to the monarchies of Europe, and it has become an international problem of gargantuan proportions. Political leaders all over the world are making fiscal promises that they cannot keep, and this irresponsible practice has exploded in the past seventy-five years with the advent of left-wing, socialist governments. Overspending has become so pervasive that our society makes fun of it. In his recent HBO special, Dennis Miller spoke about not understanding the deficit. Miller said that he asked his son if he was upset that his generation would be saddled with the national debt. His son replied “Christ no Dad, I’m just going to saddle my kids with it.” It was good for a laugh – but Miller would never force his own kids to pay his credit card bills.
Virtually every parent I have ever met worries about what will be left for their children or grandchildren when they die. These people understand that it is immoral and sinful to leave their kids a pile of debt. Yet when it comes to the government – for which we are all responsible – people perceive it as some amorphous entity that can merrily spend more each year than it takes in without any consequences. They believe government, apparently, can pay for everything.
And unfortunately we do. Prodded by spineless and corrupt politicians who consider power far more important than responsibility, government has become the fixer of all our problems. People can live in a flood plain without insurance and then get paid by the government to rebuild in that same flood plain only to be wiped out again in the next flood. Every challenge that we have in this country is being discussed by a commission that lasts forever without ever solving the problem. Responsible Americans put their hand out when they hear of a government program because they rationalize they want their share, and if they don’t get it now someone else will. The sense of communal cost has disappeared.
The numbers are staggering. If the U.S. government had to employ the same accounting standards used by major corporations, it would report an annual deficit between $4 and $5 trillion. 41% of our current federal expenditures are paid for by borrowing money, and by 2015, America will be about $20 trillion in debt.
Our elected officials must face these facts, along with the immoral and pathetic aspects of their reckless behavior. Polls that say that taxpayers demand certain things need to be disregarded, and responsible leaders with some backbone must instead broadcast the simple truth: The jig is up and we need to reverse course. You cannot have everything you want. You can have Social Security, but you should expect less and start saving for yourself more. Medicare will help with your retirement healthcare, but you should have something saved for that as well. If you have a catastrophe, you’d better have an insurance policy because we cannot guarantee every one of your risks. And if your parents get ill in their old age, you’d better be prepared to take care of them just as they took care of you.
Saddling our kids with more and more debt is just plain wrong. The debt is bad enough now and we need to stop it from getting worse. The time is now and this Congress was elected to do just that thing.
Bruce Bialosky
Bruce Bialosky is the founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition of California and a former Presidential appointee.
English soccer player David Beckham arrives with his wife Victoria Beckham for the wedding service of Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey, London, April 29, 2011.(Credit: Pool,AP Photo/Jasper Juinen)
NEW YORK – (CBS) If the British tabloids are right, former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham is about to get some major bling.
Published reports say that her husband, soccer star David Beckham, is prepared to spend up to 2.9 million pounds on jewelry for his wife from the collection of the late film legend Elizabeth Taylor.
Taylor, known for her fabulous jewels, died in March at age 79. Her jewelry, art, designer clothing and other memorabilia will sold at auction Dec. 13-16 at Christie’s in New York. It will tour the country for two months before the auction.
A portion of the proceeds from the exhibition admissions and publications related to the sales will be donated to The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.
Beckham and the singer known as “Posh” Spice have been married since 1999. They have four children, including daughter Harper Seven, who was born in July. Harper Seven has three brothers.
The 36-year-old Beckham, who models as well as plays soccer for the L.A. Galaxy, told talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres last week that he would welcome a fifth child.
“Soccer Saturday” Best Goals 2010 World Cup Part 1 2010 FIFA World Cup – Best Goals So Far…. Pt 1 Uploaded by jacob8898 on Jun 15, 2010 These are all the best goals scored in the 2010 FIFA World Cup in the first 5 days. Please rate, leave a comment, and Subscribe!!! 2010 FIFA World […]
Soccer Saturday: Highlights of USA v Brazil 2011 World Cup Womens World Cup 2011 + USA vs Brazil – Megan Rapinoe to Abby Wambach 2:2 goal in the 122′ USA VS Brazil 2011 Womens World Cup Highlights Hope Solo & Abby Wambach – U.S. Soccer Team (FIFA) *Interview (July19/11)
Goalkeeper is lucky sometimes (Soccer Saturday) Vegalta Sendai were up 1-0 in the first half of their J-League match against defending champions Nagoya Grampus Eight when the losing home side’s keeper, Yoshinari Takagi, came out of his area to collect the ball. He took too long to clear it., allowing Atsushi Yanagisawa to take the ball […]
Vegalta Sendai were up 1-0 in the first half of their J-League match against defending champions Nagoya Grampus Eight when the losing home side’s keeper, Yoshinari Takagi, came out of his area to collect the ball. He took too long to clear it., allowing Atsushi Yanagisawa to take the ball off him for a seemingly […]
My 10th best player is Brian McBride and I think this video clip says it all. Brian McBride – US soccer legend Brian McBride From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For other people of the same name, see Brian McBride (disambiguation). Brian McBride Personal information Full name Brian Robert McBride[1] Date […]
World Cup 2010 – Spain – All Goals Wilson’s 10th pick for the greatest soccer team ever! Every other player is a superstar!!! Everette Hatcher says that Italy in 2006 had the 10th best team. By the way, the USA tied them!! Italy – 2006 World Cup Highlights _______________________________________ World Cup 1958 Final – Sweden […]
I thought about this one to be number one but I changed my mind. George Best- ‘The Best Tribute’! George Best _______________________________ Wilson’s 1st pick is both Young Lionel Messi – Rare Clips HD shows rare clips of the best player ever, Messi!!! Lionel Messi 2011 – This is my life story I love this […]
I have been asked and I don’t have an answer for why there has been no updates whatsoever since September 9th on the investigation concerning Dexter Williams death.
The Democrat-Gazette reported this morning: Man in Maumelle tub asphyxiated, police say By Sean Beherec LITTLE ROCK — The state Crime Laboratory determined a 24-year-old man found dead in a bathtub with a Little Rock meteorologist in a Maumelle home died from asphyxiation, police said Thursday. The manner of death of Paul Dexter Williams of […]
I welcome the input from those that read my blog. Recently I received some criticism from readers and Jordan is probably more of the most vocal. He wrote today, “I hardly see a ‘tragic’ death as you call it, a morally sound reason to throw in people’s faces what drugs do to people…You know as […]
In today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Linda Caillouet wrote: LITTLE ROCK — When news broke of the death of Dexter Williams over the Labor Day weekend at a Maumelle home visited by then-KARK meteorologist Brett Cummins, most local news media reported details from the police report. This newspaper, KATV and KTHV reported that police said the body of […]
What started out on Sunday night September 4 as a local story now has grabbed national attention through both CNN and Fox News. Brett Cummins, 33, is seen in a photo on the website of Little Rock station KARK-TV. Cummins works as a meteorologist for the station. Police Probe Death of Arkansas Man Found in […]
KATV reported: Ark. weatherman quits after found with body in tub Posted: Sep 09, 2011 5:45 PM CDTUpdated: Sep 09, 2011 6:00 PM CDT By JEANNIE NUSS Associated Press LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – An attorney for an Arkansas meteorologist who was found in a hot tub with a dead body earlier this week says his client […]
I have mentioned before that I thought it was sad that KARK ignored the fact that Brett Cummins was snorting coke with the young man, Dexter Williams, on Sunday night and that Williams died as a result. Now at least the other stations in the Little Rock Market have been covering the story. Rival Stations […]
KARK’s website includes these words: Thursday afternoon, Brett Cummins released the following statement to CNN through his attorney: Brett Cummins is devastated by the tragic death of his friend Dexter Williams and extends his sincere condolences to Dexter’s family. They remain foremost in his thoughts and prayers. Mr. Cummins deeply regrets the grief this incident […]
Today’s THV channel 11 in Little Rock reported: MAUMELLE, Ark. (AP) – An attorney for a local meteorologist says no foul play was involved in the death of a 24-year-old Mountain Pine man. Little Rock-based lawyer Mark Hampton said Thursday that KARK meteorologist Brett Cummins is innocent. Authorities say Cummins and the body of 24-year-old […]
Drugs and alcohol have always been a pitfall that many of the wealthy fall into. We see rock bands that become famous have lots of temptations thrown their way and many fall into these traps. Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Barry McGuire fell into these traps. One joined the “27 Club” and the other left the […]
The recent events in Little Rock concerning KARK TV’s top weatherman Brett Cummins and his experience of drinking alcohol and snorting coke has left a lot of people asking questions. Since the evening ended in the tragic death of one of Brett’s friends, Dexter Williams, many questions have centered on the use of illegal drugs. […]
These are some pictures of Dexter Williams. Unfortunately his life was cut short while drinking and snorting coke with KARK weatherman Brett Cummins. (Cummins has resigned as of Friday.) Dexter Williams (Photo from family) Dexter Paul Williams (facebook photo) Related posts: Should recent events in Little Rock be reason to blog about the dangers of […]
Both Arkansas and Alabama have the very best coaches in the SEC in my view. I look for future SEC Championships from both of these guys. Of course, when I say SEC Championships then you know it is a small jump and hop to national championship too.
LITTLE ROCK — Don’t let the final 22:28 of the Troy game color your opinion of Arkansas.
If you thought the Razorbacks would give the Crimson Tide fits, zero in on 31-7, and dismiss the 38-28 final. If you thought Arkansas would win the Western Division of the Southeastern Conference, continue to believe.
Negative reverberations to Troy’s point total are over the top.
Do not turn on defensive coordinator Willy Robinson after heaping praise on him and his group for holding the first two opponents to a total of 10 points.
One Troy touchdown came after Zach Hocker’s errant kickoff provided the Trojans with a short field, one was courtesy of Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson, and the third came in the final seconds when there was confusion in the secondary.
Bobby Petrino has addressed those points.
The essentials for beating Alabama are unchanged. The Razorbacks must tackle the Crimson Tide running backs and force A.J. McCarron to beat them. On the other side, Arkansas must protect Wilson. All the playmakers in the world are not worth a first down if the quarterback can’t get them the ball.
Despite the 102,000 fans in Tuscaloosa, Arkansas can prevail. The easiest way to win on the road is to be superior. In Arkansas’ case, that does not apply.
The No. 2 choice is to play superb defense. For example:
—Concentrating on quarterback Chris Relf, LSU held Mississippi State to 52 yards rushing and 193 total in a 19-6 victory in Starkville where Dan Mullen has revitalized the fan base.
—Oklahoma limited Florida State to 27 yards rushing in a 10-point victory at Tallahassee in front of almost 85,000.
One given is that Petrino’s play-calling will be flexible. So far this year, he has been adamant about throwing on first down.
In fact, Nick Saban’s minion who broke down film on Arkansas’ play selection probably double-checked his findings before presenting them to his boss.
The Alabama coach will accept the skewed numbers, digest them, and concoct some counter moves. Getting an opponent into third-and-long is the rallying cry of defensive coaches and that often begins with digging in against a first-down run.
A financial analyst based in Nashville, Tenn., called attention to Petrino’s propensity for throwing on first down in the season opener and that trend has continued. Against Missouri State, Arkansas called 17 passes and two runs on first down in the first half.
A week later, a couple of trick running plays led to a quick touchdown and Marquel Wade’s 85-yard kickoff return was worth another six points so the Razorbacks only snapped the ball 13 times in the first period. In the second quarter, Arkansas called 15 passes and four runs on first down.
Arkansas’ first three plays against Troy were passes, two of them good for first downs on the way to a touchdown. On the second possession, the Razorbacks called a pass each of the first five times they had a first down and scored another TD. In the second quarter, Arkansas was seven pass, two run on first down.
Saban once said his philosophy on first and second down is to stop the run and play good zone pass defense. Occasionally, he said, his team will play man to man against the pass and blitz.
Both Petrino and Saban will win a fair share of the guessing game; equally important is ability of the players.
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Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.
English soccer player David Beckham arrives with his wife Victoria Beckham for the wedding service of Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey, London, April 29, 2011.(Credit: Pool,AP Photo/Jasper Juinen)
Dexter Williams (Photo from family)
The Daily Hatch 