99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 2)
Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday.
During the second semester of my freshman year of college (Spring 1977) – the semester in which I was first exposed to economics – Bill Field (then a professor of economics at my alma mater, Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, LA) recommended that I read the writings of Milton Friedman. Of course, as an 18-year old who’d read very little of anything beyond the sports pages of the Times-Picayune (and, back then, also the sports pages of the States-Item), I’d never heard of Milton Friedman.
“Dr. Field” – as I’d called Bill for many years – loaned me his copy of Friedman’s collection of Newsweek columns, An Economist’s Protest. I was blown away by the logic, the sensibleness, and the passion channeled toward the goal of maximum human dignity.
That summer, I subscribed to Newsweek simply to get Friedman’s columns (which, if I recall correctly, appeared in every third issue). (I read Paul Samuelson’s Newsweek columns, too, of course; they left me cold.) I believe that the first column of Friedman’s that I read from an actual issue of Newsweek was the one in the July 4, 1977 issue. Its title is “Fair versus Free.” (Here’s a reprint.) It remains today just I recall it from 34 years ago: powerful and compelling. From it I extract today’s Quotation of the Day:
When “fairness” replaces “freedom,” all our liberties are in danger. In Walden, Thoreau says: “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.” That is the way I feel when I hear my “servants” in Washington assuring me of the “fairness” of their edicts.
Politicians last night announced the framework of a deal to increase the debt limit. In addition to authorizing about $900 billion more red ink right away, it would require immediate budget cuts of more than $900 billion, though “immediate” means over 10 years and “budget cuts” means spending still goes up (but not as fast as previously planned).
But that’s the relatively uncontroversial part. The fighting we’re seeing today revolves around a “super-committee” that’s been created to find $1.5 trillion of additional “deficit reduction” over the next 10 years (based on Washington math, of course).
And much of the squabbling deals with whether the super-committee is a vehicle for higher taxes. As with all kiss-your-sister budget deals, both sides can point to something they like.
Here’s what Republicans like:
The super-committee must use the “current law” baseline, which assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire at the end of 2012. But why are GOPers happy about this, considering they want those tax cuts extended? For the simple reason that Democrats on the super-committee therefore can’t use repeal of the “Bush tax cuts for the rich” as a revenue raiser.
Here’s what Democrats like:
There appears to be nothing in the agreement to preclude the super-committee from meeting its $1.5 trillion target with tax revenue. The 2001 and 2003 tax legislation is not an option, but everything else is on the table (notwithstanding GOP claims that it is “impossible for Joint Committee to increase taxes”).
In other words, there is a risk of tax hikes, just as I warned last week. Indeed, the five-step scenario I outlined last week needs to be modified because now a tax-hike deal would be “vital” to not only “protect” the nation from alleged default, but also to forestall the “brutal” sequester that might take place in the absence of an agreement.
This doesn’t mean there will be tax increases, of course, and this doesn’t mean Boehner and McConnell gave up more than Obama, Reid and Pelosi.
But as someone who assumes politicians will do the wrong thing whenever possible, it’s always good to identify the worst-case scenario and then prepare to explain why it’s not a good idea.
I am not too happy with the budget deal because I WANT TO SEE REAL CUTS. I knew when I heard President Obama say yesterday that there would be no cuts during this sensitive time that meant till after his Presidency was over. That means these are mythical cuts that are scheduled for 2013 and may never happen.
Michael Tanner notes, “those cuts would not go into effect until 2013, after the next election. Since the current Congress cannot bind future Congresses, it’s entirely possible – even likely – that those cuts will be rewritten, reduced, or done away with altogether.”
Michael Tanner sums up my views in his article, “A Deal, Not a Solution, August 1, 2011, Cato Institute:
The deal that President Obama and congressional leaders may well be the best deal that Republicans could get – and any deal that makes Paul Krugman this apoplectic can’t be all bad – but it should not be considered a solution to our fiscal problems.
In the face of a $1.1 trillion budget deficit, a $14.3 trillion official debt, and a real indebtedness of more than $120 trillion, the deal would reduce the baseline increase in planned spending initially by about $1 trillion, or an average of roughly $100 billion per year – less than the federal government will borrow this month. Moreover, the cuts are unspecific – apparently Congress still can’t find actual programs to eliminate – raising the specter that it will employ the same budgetary gimmicks as the Continuing Resolution last May, that promised $61 billion in cuts and delivered less than $8 billion.Any cuts that do occur are simply reductions in baseline increases, not actual year-over-year reductions. And most cuts are pushed far out into the future when they may or may not materialize.
The plan also creates a “”supercommittee – there’s an original idea – to propose an additional $1.2-1.7 trillion in spending cuts or tax increases, but few Washington observers expect it to be able to reach an agreement that could actually pass Congress. Of course, in theory, if that happens, there would be automatic cuts of about $1.2 trillion, split equally between domestic programs and defense. However, those cuts would not go into effect until 2013, after the next election. Since the current Congress cannot bind future Congresses, it’s entirely possible – even likely – that those cuts will be rewritten, reduced, or done away with altogether. Certainly there is no reason why we should count on them occurring.
The net result of this deal is that – if every penny of the proposed cuts actually occurs – our official national debt will rise to about $20 trillion by 2020. That it otherwise would have reached $23 trillion is scant comfort. With our country careening toward a fiscal cliff, Congress has chosen to tap on the breaks, not change direction.
More troubling, the deal fails to deal with entitlement reform. It is Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that are driving this country towards insolvency, but this plan does not include any structural reform of these programs. They are exempt from the first round of cuts, and the level of cuts that can be proposed by the supercommittee are far too small to encompass anything like the Medicare reforms that Paul Ryan proposed early this year. And both Social Security and Medicaid are exempt from the across-the-board cuts that kick in if the committee’s cuts do not occur. In that case Medicare would be trimmed, but only in terms of further reductions in reimbursements to providers.
Certainly, this deal could have been worse. There are no tax increases (yet). There are at least theoretical cuts in spending. We’ve moved a long way from when President Obama proposed an increase in spending as part of his 2012 budget. But no one should pretend that we’ve put our fiscal house in order.
I got a lot of useful information out of this article from the Wall Street Wall Street Journal The DebtCeiling ‘Skirmish‘
MONDAY, JULY 25, 2011
The Debt Ceiling ‘Skirmish’
We couldn’t help but be impressed with a column by Arthur C. Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute which is appearing in the Wall Street Journal. The column, The Debt Ceiling and the Pursuit of Happiness, probably won’t appear in the local daily but it sure spells out the reality of the current fight and what is at stake. With that said we suggest the following is mandatory reading for our conservative and liberal friends:
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“The battle over the debt ceiling is only the latest skirmish in what promises to be an ongoing, exhausting war over budget issues. Americans can be forgiven for seeing the whole business as petty, selfish and tiresome. Conservatives in particular are beginning to worry that public patience will wear thin over their insistence that our nation’s government-spending problem must be remedied through spending cuts, not by raising more revenues.
But before they succumb to too much caution, budget reformers need to remember three things. First, this is not a political fight between Republicans and Democrats; it is a fight against 50-year trends toward statism. Second, it is a moral fight, not an economic one. Third, this is not a fight that anyone can win in the 15 months from now to the presidential election. It will take hard work for at least a decade.Consider a few facts. The Bureau of Economic Analysis tells us that total government spending at all levels has risen to 37% of gross domestic product today from 27% in 1960—and is set to reach 50% by 2038.
The Tax Foundation reports that between 1986 and 2008, the share of federal income taxes paid by the top 5% of earners has risen to 59% from 43%. Between 1986 and 2009, the percentage of Americans who pay zero or negative federal income taxes has increased to 51% from 18.5%. And all this is accompanied by an increase in our national debt to 100% of GDP today from 42% in 1980.
Where will it all lead? Some despairing souls have concluded there are really only two scenarios. In one, we finally hit a tipping point where so few people actually pay for their share of the growing government that a majority become completely invested in the social welfare state, which stabilizes at some very high level of taxation and government social spending. (Think Sweden.)
In the other scenario, our welfare state slowly collapses under its weight, and we get some kind of permanent austerity after the rest of the world finally comprehends the depth of our national spending disorder and stops lending us money at low interest rates. (Think Greece.)
In other words: Heads, the statists win; tails, we all lose.
Anyone who seeks to provide serious national political leadership today—those elected in 2010 or who seek national office in 2012—owe Americans a plan to escape having to make this choice. We need tectonic changes, not minor fiddling.
Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R., Wis.) budget plan is the kind of model necessary. But structural change will only succeed if it’s accompanied by a moral argument—an unabashed cultural defense of the free enterprise system that helps Americans remember why they love their country and its exceptional culture. America’s Founders knew the importance of moral language, which is why they asserted our unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, not to the possession of property. Similarly, Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics, had a philosophy that transcended the mere wealth of nations. His greatest book was “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” a defense of a culture that could support true freedom and provide the greatest life satisfaction.
Yet today, it is progressives, not free marketeers, who use the language of morality. President Obama was not elected because of his plans about the taxation of repatriated profits, or even his ambition to reform health care. He was elected largely on the basis of language about hope and change, and a “fairer” America.
The irony is that statists have a more materialistic philosophy than free-enterprise advocates. Progressive solutions to cultural problems always involve the tools of income redistribution, and call it “social justice.”
Free-enterprise advocates, on the other hand, speak privately about freedom and opportunity for everybody—including the poor. Most support a limited safety net, but also believe that succeeding on our merits, doing something meaningful, and having responsibility for our own affairs are what give us the best life. Sadly, in public, they always seem stuck in the language of economic efficiency.
The result is that year after year we slip further down the redistributionist road, dissatisfied with the growing welfare state, but with no morally satisfying arguments to make a change that entails any personal sacrifice.
Examples are all around us. It is hard to find anyone who likes our nation’s current health-care policies. But do you seriously expect grandma to sit idly by and let Republicans experiment with her Medicare coverage so her great-grandchildren can get better treatment for carried interest? Not a chance. If reformers want Americans to embrace real change, every policy proposal must be framed in terms of self-realization, meritocratic fairness and the promise of a better future. Why do we want to lower taxes for entrepreneurs? Because we believe in earned success. Why do we care about economic growth? To make individual opportunity possible, not simply to increase wealth. Why do we need entitlement reform? Because it is wrong to steal from our children.
History shows that big moral struggles can be won, but only when they are seen as decade-long fights and not just as a way to prevail in the next election. Welfare reform was first proposed in 1984 and regarded popularly as a nonstarter. Twelve years of hard work by scholars at my own institution and others helped make it a mainstream idea (signed into law by a Democratic president) and perhaps the best policy for helping the poor to escape poverty in our nation’s history. Political consultants would have abandoned welfare reform as unworkably audacious and politically suicidal. Real leaders understood that its moral importance transcended short-term politics. No one deserves our political support today unless he or she is willing to work for as long as it takes to win the moral fight to steer our nation back toward enterprise and self-governance. This fight will not be easy or politically safe. But it will be a happy one: to share the values that make us proud to be Americans.”
Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future” (Basic Books, 2010).
I used to write letters to the editor a whole lot back in the 1990′s. I am pro-life and many times my letters would discuss current political debates, and I got to know several names of people that would often write in response letters to my published letters. One of those individuals was a Dr. William F. Harrison from Fayetteville. Later I found out from reading an article by David Sanders that Dr. Harrison was an abortionist.
Below I have included a moving article about a lady named Abby Johnson who moved from working for Planned Parenthood to the pro-life movement. Also I have listed many of my previous pro-life posts.
No demonstrations broke out; no graphic signs were thrust in the air, and protesters were nonexistent last week as about half-a-thousand Arkansans met to try to put an end to abortion in Arkansas.
The group gathered in Little Rock’s First Baptist Church to pray about it and to hear a story of how compassion changed one lady’s heart from a top-level executive with Planned Parenthood to an outspoken pro-life advocate.
“The beginning of the end of abortion could come from Razorback country,” said Shawn Carney, representing an organization called 40 Days for Life. The organization coordinates efforts across the country where pro-life activists peacefully demonstrate outside abortion clinics, praying for an end to abortion and making themselves available for counseling for women who would like to visit with them.
Carney credits the organization’s efforts for helping to close 14 abortion clinics across the country, including one in Arkansas — Fayetteville Women’s Clinic. William Harrison, who ran the clinic, announced last year he was retiring for health reason and closed his doors. The organization had been praying for months.
The only remaining surgical abortion facility in the state is now in Little Rock, just off the busy intersection of Shackleford Road and Chenal Parkway. On most days, there is a small gathering of participants in the 40 Days for Life program holding signs that read “Pray to End Abortion” as they pray for the women heading toward the clinic.
One lady who noticed the difference in this pro-life group was a rising star in the Planned Parenthood organization, Abby Johnson. An eight-year employee of Planned Parenthood, Johnson said she saw the impact of the peaceful, prayerful demonstrations.
When Johnson first began working for Planned Parenthood in College Station, Texas, she saw a different group of protesters outside the clinics, yelling at women walking in that they were “murderers” or “baby killers.” These demonstrations quickly turned her off to the pro-life movement. The effect was to drive the women seeking abortion away from the pro-life activists and into the clinics. Public anger was directed at the protesters, not the abortion clinics.
“When 40 Days for Life took over in 2004, that is when we saw a change. And that is when we actually started to see women making a different decision as well. We had never seen anyone change their mind at the fence. We had never had women come up and talk to the sidewalk counselors,” explained Johnson. “But when all of that radical extremism went away, and 40 Days for Life took over, all of a sudden — when it was just patience, compassion, mercy, love and kindness to the women going in — all of a sudden women were turning away from abortion and they were leaving.”
Still Johnson was not yet convinced that what she was doing was wrong. She convinced herself that the unborn babies were not lives at all and continued working for Planned Parenthood, counseling thousands of women to seek an abortion to end their pregnancies.
The focus of the organization was to push the clinic for even more abortion procedures during a time of major cuts to their budget, she said.
It wasn’t until she saw a surgical abortion performed using an ultrasound and saw what was occurring inside the mother’s womb that she experienced a transformation. She describes seeing the unborn baby literal pulling away from the abortionist’s surgical instrument as it fought for his or her life.
On that day, October 5, 2009, Johnson walked across the street to the 40 Days for Life activists in tears. She resigned from Planned Parenthood the next day. Planned Parenthood sued to try and seek an injunction from stopping Johnson from telling about what goes on inside the abortion clinics but the suit failed.
Johnson now travels in support of the pro-life organization and speaks about what goes on inside the world of Planned Parenthood. She has written a book called “Unplanned,” which tells her story.
In the meantime, 40 Days for Life still is praying for the closing of the last abortion clinic in Arkansas, which they believe will happen.
“It only makes sense to support life,” said Johnson.
The Arkansas Times article, “Putting the fetus first: Pro-lifers keep up attack on access, but pro-choice advocates fend off the end to abortion right” by Leslie Newell Peacock is very lengthy but I want to deal with all of it in this new series. click to enlarge ROSE MIMMS: Arkansas Right to Life director unswayed by […]
HALT:HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com A Ronald Reagan radio address from 1975 addresses the topics of abortion and adoption. This comes from a collection of audio commentaries titled “Reagan in His Own Voice.” I just wanted to share with you one of the finest prolife papers I have ever read, and it is by President Ronald Wilson Reagan. I […]
HALT:HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com Mike Huckabee interviews Abby Johnson who is an Ex-Planned-Parenthood Employee who left the organization after witnessing 13 week old fetus fighting for its life on an ultrasound monitor. To anyone who still thinks that a fetus is just a clump of cells, listen to this woman’s story and tell me that this doesn’t make […]
HALT:HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com Science Matters #2: Former supermodel Kathy Ireland tells Mike Huckabee about how she became pro-life after reading what the science books have to say. My good friend Dr. Kevin R. Henke is a scientist and also an atheistic evolutionist. I had a lot of discussions with Kevin over religious views. I remember going over […]
HALT:HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com “Jane Roe” or Roe v Wade is now a prolife Christian. She’s recently done a commercial about it. Around 1993 my wife Jill and I peacefully walked the streets of Little Rock with Rev Flip Benham who was working with Operation Rescue at the time. We held pro-life signs up and heard some moving […]
HALT:HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com President Obama on abortion Adrian Rogers (former President of Southern Baptist Convention): “I am not as afraid of the Communist, the Russians, the Chinese, as much as I am afraid of God. If God be for us, who can be against us? If God be against us, then who can be for us? It […]
Rep. Mike Pence and Rep. Chris Van Hollen join ABC’s “This Week” with Christaine Amapour on April 10th, 2011 I think one of the most important facts from the clip above is the statement that Rep. Pence made here: Planned Parenthood’s clinics focus mainly on abortion. In 2009, Planned Parenthood performed 977 adoptions, 7,000 prenatal, 332,000 abortions. […]
I feel strongly about getting the 364 million of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding removed since they are the #1 provider of abortions in the USA. I thought the Republicans were going to stick to their guns on getting Planned Parenthood’s funding removed but it did not happen. Yesterday Mike Huckabee on the Huckabee Show on […]
(Updated: If you want something really confusing then try to figure out where to go with this now after the show “This Week” with Christiane Amapour on ABC April 10th came out. On that show Mike Pence says that he will PROBABLY NOT VOTE FOR THE CONTINUING RESOLUTION this week.) Mike Pence on Feb 8 […]
Congressman Steve Pearce addresses the House of Representatives on April 7, 2011, on the eve of a government shutdown. Video clip part 1 I was very disappointed to learn that the Republicans did abandon their plans to cut the 364 million that Planned Parenthood got from the federal government. I knew that Planned Parenthood was […]
The pro-life position is very important to a great many of the freshmen members of the House of Representatives. As you can see above in the clip from the film series Whatever Happened to the Human Race? by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, the unborn baby is a child, but we are treating many […]
Donald Trump at CPAC Conference 2011 David Gibson in his article “Donald Trump, Family Values Conservative–Believe it or not,” PoliticsDaily.com, wrote about a month ago: Donald Trump stole the show on the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference — stealing the spotlight is his specialty, after all — and he did it by […]
My sons Wilson (on left) and Hunter (on right) went to California and visited Yosemite National Park with our friend Sherwood Haisty Jr. March 21-27. Here they are standing in front of the tallest waterfall in North America. The only surviving founding member of NARAL, Dr. Bernard Nathanson gives his testimony of NARAL’s foundation of […]
HALT:HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com President and Nancy Reagan talking to Mother Teresa in the Oval Office. 6/20/85. Ronald Reagan radio address from 1975 addresses the topics of abortion and adoption. Dr. Adrian Rogers was my pastor from 1975 to 1983 and he had a big impact on me and my views on abortion. Below is a video clip […]
HALT:HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com Emancipation Proclamation of Preborn Children video of Reagan’s statement President Reagan presents Mother Teresa with the Medal of Freedom at a White House Ceremony. 6/20/85. Why did I get so involved in campaigning for Ronald Reagan? Simply put it was a combination of factors. I will going through them the next few days. Today […]
‘Janis Joplin’ 2/5 from True Hollywood Story (Janis was having affair with Pigpen)
Jerry Garcia (guitar, vocals), Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (vocals, harmonica), Bob Weir (guitar, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass), Mickey Hart (drums), Bill Kreutzman (drums).
Grateful Dead
“Don’t Ease Me In”
Live @ Canadian National Exhibition Hall
Toronto, CA
June 27th, 1970
Grateful Dead Documentary – Can’t Take it With You – Pt 1
You have to drink a lot to develop cirrhosis at the age of 27. And unfortunately, singer and keyboard player McKernan, one of the founders of the Grateful Dead, drank a lot. Before his death, Pigpen was the definitive embodiment of the original, slapdash, wasted blues incarnation of the Dead, before psychedelia and experimental proficiency became their defining element. He helped form the group, but was surpassed in musical ability by later recruits. Even before he died, he represented a throwback to “the way things used to be” for fans to argue over — not unlike his fellow 27 clubber Brian Jones was for the Rolling Stones.
Saturday, the first news headline I saw was: “Amy Winehouse found dead at 27”. For some reason, it felt a little more crippling that it was supposed to.
“It was a long-time coming”, is what most say (someone won an iPod by predicting the date on the website whenwillamywinehousedie.com) and maybe it was a long-time coming, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that however you look at it, the music industry has lost a really good singer and one of the most influential artists of the late part of this decade; Lost a voice that embodied what Motown legends were made of; And essentially, if you believe in the oddidy of the so-called Forever 27 Club – we lost another talented musician to the club of dead rock stars — those that never lived to see 28. An age we cautiously outgrow, thinking of their fated (and un-fated) deaths at least once during the age of our own 27th year of life.
Essentially speaking, “27” seems to be rock and roll’s most unlucky number. Sure there are those who have passed at this age due to overdoeses and drug addictions and battles with depression, it’s the age that as we all know now took Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and now the second female in the club, Amy Winehouse.
There are more members of the Forever 27 Club; some died because of medical conditions, car accidents and just plain, weird occurrences, and tragedies. Any way you look at it, it is weird that so many musicians can’t seem to make it to the age of 28. Other members of the Forever 27 Club include: Ron “Pigpen” McKernan of the Grateful Dead, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Chris Bell of Big Star, even Robert Johnson a famous blues musician died at 27, cited for unknown reasons.
The creepiness of the amount of rock stars that die at this age poses the question, what about the age of 27 has put so many rock stars into the ground? Is it behavior we expect from them (abusing drugs and alcohol, making bad decisions, driving drunk, getting on small planes?). Is 27 an exceptionally hard age to live through when you are that famous (mine was a good year, but I am not famous)? Or is it a question of just wanting more and more and more. Twenty-seven is an age, after all that is old enough to be an adult, but still not old enough to understand the world. Although I am not sure that has happened to me yet, and I am 31.
For Amy Winehouse, the tragedy of being part of the Forever 27 Club means not having to slide into a vauge mediocre music choices to keep up with the wretched”singers” who would outsell her lovely, husky sound with computer generated vocals and gyrated movements with snakes and backup dancers.
In her death, she has left us with a small collection of music to take from — all beautiful, all tragic and all for us to keep our arms tight around. From her two Cd’s she inspired a sound that made music a little better, if only for a little while. Her sound brought out the funk and beat of a broken heart in a time when hipster, gothic, hang-yourself love songs were topping the charts, paving the way for singers like Adele, Cee Lo Green and Bruno Mars to get a little funky with broken hearts.
You can hear her fate in the song that made her a household name, “Rehab,” a smart, self-aware song about her struggle with going to get help for drinking, drugs and depression. A fight she would essentially lose.
Winehouse sounded wise and wounded beyond her years. And like Cobain, Hendrix and Joplin, Amy Winehouse’s music had a sense of strength and purpose that she — and they — failed to summon in their own lives.
I hope when I get to the pearly gates one day, I am greeted by the “Forever 27’s”, heaven’s best band ever. Well, either them…or the Beatles.
Members of the Grateful Dead are pictured in this 1969 photo. After thirty years of making music, the Grateful Dead, once the house band of the 1960s counterculture, is breaking up. The move came four months after the death of its founder and guiding spirit, Jerry Garcia. From left in the back row are, Tom Constanten, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzman, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and Phil Lesh. Jerry Garcia, left, and Mickey Hart, right, are in the front row. (AP Photo)
The keyboardist, singer and harmonica player from The Grateful Dead died in 1973 from a stomach hemorrhage as a result of years of heavy drinking.
When I was a little boy, my grandmother told me something I’ve never forgotten. I was probably about five, maybe six years old. She used to take care of me during the day when my mom worked. One day she said to me, ‘you know, Barry, one day when you grow up, you’re gonna know the truth, and the truth is gonna set you free.’ Now, I didn’t know that came out of the Bible. I didn’t even know there was a Bible. I was just a little kid. My grandmother told me that. And I knew she loved me, and boy, I knew I loved her. And when I grew up, sure enough, I wanted to be free. I mean who doesn’t want to be free? And certainly, a lie has never set anyone free. So if anything was gonna set me free, it had to be the truth.
Eve of Destruction was written by 19-year-old songwriter P. F. Sloan in 1965 and eventually became Barry McGuire’s one and only big Billboard chart hit song.
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And along came the 60s. And boy, I was the right age at the right time in the wrong place, you might say. And hey, I wanted to be free. Boy, I sang ‘Eve of Destruction’ lookin’ to be free. I went to Broadway. I did a show on Broadway called HAIR. I played the male lead in the original Broadway cast, lookin’ to be free. And the very lifestyle that we were promoting was killing us all. I looked around me I saw my friends, one, two, three at a time goin’ down: drug overdose, suicide, sexually transmitted diseases.
So I left Broadway, I came back out to California. And I was livin’ with a friend of mine, Denny Doherty, up on the Appian Way. And he used to joke and tease me, ’cause I was still lookin’ for truth, and every time a new teacher or sage or somebody, Meyer Baba, Sai Baba, Hadji Baba, any Baba would do, I mean I was down there in the front row, ya know, ‘Humna Baba, lay the truth on me, man!’ I was hummin’ and bobbin’ and goin’ for it. And Denny says, ‘Ah, you belong to the Guru of the Month Club.’ I mean, anybody, I didn’t care. If they had a word, I was down there tryin’ to learn the truth. And they said a lot of things that were true, but I just couldn’t somehow get it right inside of me.
And I was just about to give up, and one day I went over to a friend’s house, Eric Hord. He used to be the lead guitar player for The Mamas and Papas, and he always had a big bowl of marijuana under his coffee table. And man, I had this bowl out that morning; I had three papers glued together. I figured he’s only gonna lay one joint on me, so I’ll make the biggest one I can roll. And I look down on this particular day, there’s a little paper back book layin’ on the table next to the grass, and it’s called Good News for Modern Man. And I thought, ‘Hey, I’m a modern man. I could use some good news.’ I mean, everybody was dyin’ all around me. So I took the book home with me, didn’t know what it was. I got by myself, opened it up, and right on the first flyleaf page in the book it says, ‘The New Testament in Modern English.’ I got so angry. ‘Ah, look at this! Them Jesus Freaks, man! They’re diguisin’ the Bible!’ Threw it on the floor, I didn’t wanna read the Bible! Give me a break! And it laid there for days. I was hopin’ someone would come along and throw it away. I didn’t wanna throw it away, ’cause I knew what it was, the Bible, and just in case, you don’t wanna be responsible. Who knows? But it laid there for days, weeks, and months actually. I mean, when somethin’ hit the floor in my house; the next person to pick it up was an archaeologist. I mean, that was some future dig.
And I was there one day by myself. And there this little book somehow kept surfacing above the trash. And the wind was blowing through the window catching the pages. It was flickin’ its pages, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick. ‘Read me!’ it said to me. And truthfully, just out of bored, sarcastic curiosity, I picked up The Life and Times of Jesus Christ. And for the first time in my life, I stopped looking at Christians; I stopped looking at denominations, organizations, Catholics, Protestants, ya know, all this stuff that goes on in His name. And I took a look at Him, examined what He had to say. How He treated His personal friends. What He had to say to the people in the street, the alcoholics, the prostitutes, the homosexuals, the thieves, liars, and robbers. What he had to say about the military people, the political leaders, and the spiritual leaders (which is about the scariest thing he had to say to anybody). How He treated the little children when they came around. And everything that Jesus had to say, as I put it to the test against what I knew to be true through my own life experience, I couldn’t find anything wrong with His words. There’s no double meaning, no hidden agenda. It was all out front. And then He said thirteen words that changed my life, because I saw this was the answer to my personal eve of destruction. He said, ‘Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as your self.’
How simple can it get? And I realized that if all of us in the whole world lived according to those two simple instructions — I don’t care what your concept of God is, you could be a Buddhist, you could be B’hai, you could be, ya know, whatever it is, Christian, just your concept of God — love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as your self, and our world would change. How simple can it get? We wouldn’t need a police force anymore, and we wouldn’t need armies and navies and prisons and welfare systems. We wouldn’t need lawyers and politicians. Two simple pieces of instruction: Love God with all my heart, and love my neighbor as my self.
And I wanted to be like Jesus. I thought, ‘Man, this is my guy!’ But I didn’t wanna be a Christian, see. I wanted to be like Him, but I didn’t wanna be like all them. I thought if I said yes to Jesus I’d have to get a powder blue leisure suit — remember those? — White shoes, ya know, walk around smilin’ a lot. I couldn’t do that.
But then I wrestled with it for nearly a year. And one day I was up just off Mulholland Drive in Stone Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. And I’m bangin’ my head on the wall, my friends are all smokin’ dope, eating peyote, psilocybin, ya know, drinkin’ champagne and orange juice. And I’m over in the corner; I can’t have fun anymore. See, once you’ve been busted by the truth, you’ve been busted. You can’t fake it anymore. You can’t go around sayin’, ‘Well, who really knows?’ ‘Cause you really know. You don’t wanna know. But I knew. Jesus is the Lamb of God. His death paid my karmic debt. See, I had a debt I couldn’t pay. I had debt I could not pay. I mean, I’m a murderer, I’m a liar, I’m a thief, I’m everything you’re not supposed to be. I did it all. One time I was doing a newspaper interview, and the reporter said, ‘Well, what did you do?’ I said, ‘Well, ya know the Ten Commandments?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I broke ’em. All of ’em. A lot.’
That’s what I did. And that’s what we all did. And there has to be justice. How could God not allow justice to be? He couldn’t just arbitrarily say, ‘that’s okay, Barry. You’re forgiven.’ And Jesus said, ‘I will go. I will satisfy the demands of justice on his behalf.’ And now the Bible says if I should stumble, if I should sin, it says God is faithful and just. You know what that justice cost? It cost Jesus’ life. And He did that for me, He did that for you, He did that for every person that’s gonna ever hear these words. So that I could be forgiven and truly, truly be free. That happened in 1971. I fell on my face on the floor of that house in Stone Canyon. I said, ‘God, I don’t know why, how; if I wake up alive tomorrow I’ll follow You wherever You lead me.’ And within a week I was on a Greyhound bus out of Hollywood, and I’ve never looked back, except in awe and wonder at how He revealed Himself to me in my state of mind at that time.”
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If you feel that your life feels incomplete or unsatisfying, please follow this link: What is purpose of life?
Fox News is the number one by far because it does not take the liberal bias that everyone is sick of. However, liberals just can’t stand that Fox News has risen to the top.
People will try to tell you that all politicians are equally to blame for this political dysfunction by which our nation has flirted with downgraded credit, debt default and global economic turmoil.
They merely will be providing insulation for those really mostly to blame.
So let us peel away such insulation. Let us lay it out in order of blame:
1. Tea party extremists in the Congress, who are penny wise and pound foolish
2. Mainstream Republicans in the Congress, because they could have fallen in behind Speaker John Boehner’s twice-aborted adult discussions with President Obama. Instead they cowered and tucked tail as soon as the kook caucus on the right fringe invoked the specter of primary opposition from the strident extreme.
3. All of us in the great American apolitical center, “independents” who go one way in one election and the other in the next.
4. Fox News, because it exacerbates the above.
Why no blame for Democrats? I ran out of space. The strident leftists, moveon.org and the talking heads on MSNBC, would surely be coming up shortly.
I think that Brummett is looking at the wrong issue. The problem is overspending by Congress and we should be addressing that. I do think we have “political dysfunction” but I believe it is because the liberals in Congress are addicted to spending like a drug addict is addicted to his drugs. I think that his point number 3 is very good, but point number 4 is dead wrong. Fox News is doing everything they can to expose the liberals’ addiction to overspending which is the root of our problem.
In the clip above Reagan promises to cut the size of government, but look what Congress did to him a few years later.
The president had no interest in increasing taxes, but he agreed to consider some kind of compromise with Congress. His representatives began meeting with members of House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s team to find some way to hammer out a deficit-reduction pact. So began what, in our opinion, became the “Debacle of 1982.”
From the outset, the basic idea of the GOP participants was to trade some kind of concessions on the tax front for a Democratic agreement on spending cutbacks. The negotiators knew that Ronald Reagan would be hard to sell on any tax hikes. So they included a ploy they felt might overcome his resistance: a large reduction in federal spending in return for a modest rise in business (but not individual) taxes.
The ratio in the final deal — the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA) — was $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. It sounded persuasive at the time. Believing it to be the only way to get spending under control, most of the president’s colleagues signed on. He disliked the tax hikes, of course, but he agreed to it as well.
The cuts never came
You don’t have to be a Washington veteran to predict what happened next. The tax increases were promptly enacted — Congress had no problem accepting that part of the deal — but the promised budget cuts never materialized. After the tax bill passed, some legislators of both parties even claimed that there had been no real commitment to the 3-to-1 ratio.
In fact, spending for fiscal year 1983 was some $48 billion higher than the budget targets, and no progress was made in lowering the deficit. Even tax receipts for that year went down — a lingering effect of the recession, which the additional business taxes did nothing to redress.
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Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict because they are both addicted. A drug addict is addicted to his drugs and Washington is addicted to spending.
In the late ’60s, Woody Allen left the world of stand-up comedy behind for the movies. Since then, he’s become one of American cinema’s most celebrated filmmakers. Sure, he’s had his stinkers and his private life hasn’t been without controversy. But he’s also crafted some of Hollywood’s most thought-provoking comedies. Philosophical, self-deprecating and always more than a tad pessimistic, Allen adds another title to his oeuvre this Friday with Midnight in Paris. Whether it will be remembered as one of his greatest or another flop is too early to say, but its release gives us a chance to look back at some of his most indispensable works.
Love and Death (1975)
Allen’s Love and Death owes a lot to Tolstoy’s War and Peace and the films of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Death himself even makes an appearance, recalling the existential dread of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. But despite the movie’s many highbrow allusions, Allen is more concerned with simply having a good time. Gags and one-liners abound, making it, if not a comic masterpiece, a pretty good way to spend an hour and a half.
Annie Hall (1977)
Like Love and Death, this Oscar winner paired Allen and Diane Keaton as a couple. But unlike Love and Death, it’s less concerned with throw-away gags. Instead, Allen uses humor to explore the complicated nature of relationships and the difficulties of love and communication. And of course, there’s also his trademark pessimism. The film begins with a joke about two women on vacation in the Catskills. One says to the other, “Boy, the food in this place is terrible,” and the other replies, “Yeah I know, and such small portions.” Allen’s character, Alvy Singer, goes on to say, “That’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness—and it’s all over much too quickly.” In the end, Alvy’s salvation lies in art, for only there can he give life the happy ending it can’t have otherwise.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Allen continues the art-as-salvation theme in Hannah and Her Sisters, an ensemble drama about family and infidelity. The film tells three stories, one of which stars Allen as a hypochondriac named Mickey. Terrified of death, Mickey begins a search for meaning that takes him first to Catholicism and then the Hare Krishna movement. But it’s in a darkened movie theater playing the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup that he finds all the meaning he needs to face life. From a Christian perspective, this is a far from ideal conclusion—and yet, it’s not without an element of truth. The bulk of the Bible is historical narrative, not a list of rules, and Christ often used stories to communicate His message. In this, and every other movie where Allen finds life’s ultimate answers in art, we can disagree—but only partly.
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Match Point (2005)
The sanctity of art plays a role in Crimes and Misdemeanors, but it’s a minor one compared to Allen’s interest in the human conscience. Does God exist, his characters wonder, and if He doesn’t, can there still be objective morality? His characters have asked these questions before, but never have the stakes been so high as when Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau), a prominent New York ophthalmologist, finds his life turned upside by an act of violence he’s responsible for. In the aftermath, he’s plagued by guilt but still wonders if a guilty conscience is such a high price to pay for keeping his good name. His transformation as he struggles with this question is chilling to watch.
The same issue is at the heart of Match Point, Allen’s first movie set outside America. The particulars are different, but its trajectory is the same. When Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) commits murder to preserve his status and good reputation, we wait for him to be caught. But Allen subverts our expectations again, as in Crimes and Misdemeanors—not because he condones murder, but to illustrate his belief that, if there’s no God, life is a crap shoot. Maybe you’ll get caught, maybe you won’t, but either way you’ll have to live with what you’ve done. In both films, he shows more pointedly than most other American filmmakers what hell on earth must look like.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
The human conscience is also the focus of Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, though in a relatively smaller way. He’s also less concerned with the existence of God, but objective morality is still a question lingering in the back of his mind. As the two friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) consider their entanglement with the bohemian Spanish artist, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), they’re forced to re-examine the rules they each live by. Even though the movie unquestionably favors moral relativism, the character of Cristina, who was once so proud of her “liberated” spirit, comes away from her search for meaning with a more moral perspective. No longer content to live according to Juan Antonio’s eat-drink-and-be-merry philosophy, she ends her time in Spain determined to find “something else.” That something else isn’t likely to be conventional morality, but neither is it unrestrained passion. While still denying that life has any inherent meaning, Allen forces us to consider whether conventional morality is really so stifling after all.
Overall, Woody Allen can’t be called anything close to a Christian (or even a moral) filmmaker—his films often drip with pessimism (some would say nihilism). But most of his films also give viewers something to chew on, something all too rare at the movies.
Do you have a favorite Woody Allen movie?
Andrew Welch lives in Texas and has written for RELEVANT and Books & Culture.
Hiking Taxes to Pay for Entitlements Would Require Doubling Tax Rates
Everyone wants to know more about the budget and here is some key information with a chart from the Heritage Foundation and a video from the Cato Institute.
The cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is rising substantially. Paying for this spending solely through federal income tax increases would require more than a twofold increase of current tax rates, even for the lowest tax bracket.
The charts in this book are based primarily on data available as of March 2011 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The charts using OMB data display the historical growth of the federal government to 2010 while the charts using CBO data display both historical and projected growth from as early as 1940 to 2084. Projections based on OMB data are taken from the White House Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The charts provide data on an annual basis except… Read More
Authors
Emily GoffResearch Assistant
Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy StudiesKathryn NixPolicy Analyst
Center for Health Policy StudiesJohn FlemingSenior Data Graphics Editor
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
On May 11, 2011, I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
I just did. I went to the Senator’s website and sent this below:
House Republicans proposed some small cuts to the federal budget on their new YouCut website last week. I noted that the GOP cuts amounted to just 0.017 percent of the federal budget, and suggested that the conservative party in Congress could do much better. Below I’ve listed 10 terminations that would save about $380 billion a year, which is more than 10 percent of total federal spending.
Many politicians and congressional staffers will look at this list and consider the cuts too radical. But those folks should take a closer look at current budget projections, which show federal debt exploding to 100 percent of GDP within a decade and heading to the moon after that. Rising debt all but guarantees that there will be radical changes to the budget in coming years. So we can start making changes in an orderly way right now, or we can make then later when it’s harder to dig out from an even bigger pile of debt.
Besides, the 10 cuts proposed below are not radical. Canada doesn’t have a federal Department of Education, so why do we need one? New Zealand doesn’t hand out farm subsidies, so why should we? Britain’s new conservative-liberal government is cutting public-sector salaries, so why can’t we?
Cuts in subsidies will cause short-term dislocations for the groups dependent on them, but people will adjust quickly and society will be better off in the long run. Welfare supporters said that the reforms in 1996 would be a social disaster, but benefits were cut and low-income families prospered.
Americans don’t need subsidies, and the government obviously can’t afford them anymore. It’s time to start getting rid of them. The savings listed here are rough and rounded 2010 outlay amounts from the president’s budget.
1. Community Development Subsidies. The Department of Housing and Urban Development should not be funding local activities such as street repairs and parking lots. Save $10 billion.
2. Homeowner Subsidies. Federal subsidies for home ownership helped to cause the financial meltdown and recession by putting people into homes they could not afford. Save $10 billion
3. Energy Subsidies. Federal energy subsidies have a long record of waste and boondoggle. Private markets will invest in energy technologies when there is a reasonable chance for a return. Save $20 billion.
4. Higher Education Subsidies. Federal student aid contributes to college tuition inflation, and it can be replaced by private borrowing, family savings, and private charity. Save $20 billion.
5. Overpaid Federal Workers. Federal workers earn an average $120,000 a year in wages and benefits—twice what the average American earns. Federal wages should be cut 10 percent. Save $20 billion.
6. Farm Subsidies. More than 70 percent of aid goes to the largest 10 percent of farm businesses. With an average income 28 percent higher than the U.S. average, farm households don’t need federal welfare. Save $30 billion.
7. Public Housing and Rental Subsidies. Federal housing policies have damaged cities and created concentrations of poverty. They are based on a myth that markets can’t provide low-income housing. Save $35 billion.
8. K-12 Education Subsidies. Rising federal funding of the public schools has not improved test scores. It has only created large bureaucracies and stifled local control and innovation. Save $60 billion.
9. Transportation Subsidies. State governments and the private sector can more efficiently fund highways, airports, rail, urban transit, and air traffic control without federal subsidies and regulations. Save $85 billion.
10. Food Subsidies (Food Stamps and School Lunch). Low-income families often suffer from poor food choices and obesity, not a shortage of calories. Food aid for the needy should be left to private charities. Save $90 billion.
Letting Tax Cuts Expire Will Not Balance the Budget
Taxing the Wealthy to Cover Future Deficits Won’t Work
The Daily Hatch 