If we want outcomes that are better for society and the economy, I’m 100-percent confident that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk can spend their wealth better than the hacks and clownsin Washington.
But what if rich people get money from government cronyism? What if they became wealthy because of special favors from politicians?
Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journalwrote about this issue a couple of years ago and included this chart showing that cronyism is a small problem in the United States but a big problem in Russia.
Here’s some of what Mr. Ip wrote about Russia’s cronyism.
How a billionaire earns his or her fortune matters, of course. Some are “rent seekers,” meaning they skim off the productive efforts of others via corruption, royal prerogative or control of some valuable market or resource. That’s why Russia is an outlier in Ms. Freund’s research: lots of oligarchs, with not much economic benefit to show for it.
Since he wrote that article well before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he wasn’t focused on the geopolitical considerations that are dominating the discussion today.
So now let’s look at a very recent report from the U.K.-based Economist. Here are some key excerpts.
…the sanctions levied at Russian oligarchs have intensified scrutiny on the origins of tycoons’ wealth. …Rent-seeking entrepreneurs tend to use their relationships with the state to maximise profits. …Our index uses 25 years of data from Forbes’s annual stock-take of the world’s billionaires. …We have classified the main source of each billionaire’s wealth into crony and non-crony sectors. …Russia’s crony economy sticks out like a blinged-up Muscovite… Some 70% of the 120 Russian billionaires, who together hold 80% of its billionaire wealth, fall within our crony-capitalist definition. Wealth equivalent to 28% of Russia’s gdp in 2021 came from crony sectors, up from 18% in 2016.
The bottom line is that Russia’s “oligarchs” are not like the self-made billionaires that we’re fortunate to have in the United States.
Here’s the accompanying chart from the article. Russia does stand out…in a very bad way. If the numbers are accurate, getting in bed with politicians is the way to get rich.
Now that we’ve established that Russian billionaires generally don’t earn their money, this leads us to the more challenging issue of whether nations such as the United States should freeze and/or expropriate the wealth of the oligarchs in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?
Since I’m not a lawyer or an expert on foreign and defense issues, I don’t pretend to know the best approach. I want Putin and his cronies to suffer, but I also have some qualms about the current approach.
Is the “rule of law” being overlooked and “due process” getting trampled in the rush to go after the assets of wealthy Russians, some of whom may have emigrated because of their opposition to Putin?
Are people being targeted simply because of their Russian ethnicity, just as an awful president targeted Americans of Japanese descent during World War II?
In this video, Professor Steve Horwitz advocates for free market economic policy. He refutes the often recited claim that “What is good for General Motors is good for America” by explaining that pro-business legislation encourages behavior that is not beneficial to society or the business itself. He suggests that, in a free market, factors such as profit and competition encourage behavior that ultimately benefits society. Professor Horwitz illustrates that pro-business legislation restricts progress and therefore caters to the interests of industry rather than to consumers, whereas “supporters of free markets are ultimately pro-human and pro-people because it is through markets that we get the most innovation and we get the most goods and the cheapest prices.”
But some folks reflexively think that wealth is bad and they would like us to believe that the economy is a fixed pie, meaning that the rich have more money because the poor have less money.
If you think I’m exaggerating, check out a new report from Oxfam, a UK-based group that was created to alleviate poverty but has largely morphed into a left-wing pressure group.
The folks at Oxfam complain about the supposed “capture of opportunities by the rich at the expense of the poor and middle classes” and that “tax rates for the richest have fallen in 29 of the 30 countries.”
As the world’s richest and most powerful men and women prepare to meet in the Swiss resort of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum on Wednesday (22 January), the British development charity, Oxfam, has issued a new report on global inequality. According to its findings, the wealth of the world’s 85 richest people – €81.2 trillion – amounts to that of the poorest half of the world population, or 3.5 billion people. …”In Europe, austerity has been imposed on the poor and middle classes under huge pressure from financial markets whose wealthy investors have benefited from state bailouts of financial institutions,” the charity said. Financial deregulation in the US has contributed to the situation, in which the richest one percent of the population has more money than ever since 1933. …The charity said Davos participants should reverse the trend and pledge to support higher taxes for the rich, while refraining from using their wealth to seek political favours.
There are several parts of this excerpt that deserve attention, including passages that are correct (such as bailouts giving undeserved money to the rich) and passages that are nonsensical (the financial crisis was caused by intervention, not deregulation).
But I want to focus solely on the inequality issue. Let’s assume Oxfam is right and that the world’s 85 richest people have $81.2 trillion of wealth. The group obviously wants us to think this accumulation of wealth is bad and that it somehow comes at the expense of the rest of us.
Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner hits the nail on the head, explaining that there’s a big difference between honest wealth and riches obtained through government coercion.
…is it a bad thing for a country to have some really rich people? Again, it depends on how they got rich. Sutirtha Bagchi of the University of Michigan’s business school and Jan Svejnar of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs studied how inequality correlates with economic growth. In general, more inequality meant slower growth, and less inequality meant faster growth. But in many countries, over various time periods, growing inequality had no effect on economic growth. The new study suggests that an increase in inequality hurt the economy when the rich were getting rich through political connections. That is, inequality hurts the economy when “a large share of the national wealth is held by a small number of politically connected families,” as the authors put it. …Bagchi and Svenjar took pains to classify political billionaires as narrowly as possible. …The political billionaires were only people who “would not have become a billionaire in the absence of political connections that resulted in favoritism and/or explicit government support.”
The oft-missed lesson here is that undeserving wealth generally is obtained because of big government.
Which reminds me of a very astute observation by a former Cato colleague, who wrote that, “…the more power the government has to pick winners and losers, the more power rich people will have relative to poor people.”
Carney continues, pointing out that wealth obtained through markets is good. Such success creates a bigger pie and helps boost living standards for everyone.
But wealth achieved via government is cronyism, and that contributes to economic stagnation.
When a country’s wealthiest got wealthy through market means, the resulting inequality has no negative effect on economic growth. This jibes with what we know about free markets. If people can get rich by providing valuable things at good prices, then society will get more valuable things at good prices—and people across the income spectrum benefit. But if people get rich by pocketing subsidies and using the state to crush competitors, then they gained their wealth at the expense of everyone else. Bill Gates became a billionaire by making and selling something that makes regular people more productive and more connected. Buffett got rich largely by providing capital to underfunded but well-run businesses. If Bagchi’s and Svejnar’s findings are correct, then the bottom line is this: Inequality itself doesn’t hurt the economy. Cronyism hurts the economy.
I fully agree with Tim’s analysis, though I would have drawn a distinction between the younger Warren Buffett, who was a savvy investor and the older Buffett, who has climbed into bed with the political elite.
The bottom line is that the poor aren’t poor because of honest rich people. The poor are suffering because of big government, including the cronyism that lines the pockets of dishonest companies and individuals that feed at the public trough.
Unfortunately, many insider leftists are perfectly content with those policies and they use inequality to distract voters from the real problem.
There are honest leftists, of course, and they presumably would be outraged by the sleaze in national capitals. Their problem is that they genuinely think the economic is fixed pie. Or they think that inequality is such a bad thing that they would be willing to reduce incomes for the poor if it meant the rich suffered even more.
P.S. In its report on inequality, Oxfam also went after tax havens and said more revenue for government would help reduce poverty.
Oxfam also estimated that €15.5 trillion of the wealth is hidden from the taxman in offshore accounts, at a time when governments are cutting public spending. …tax avoidance by EU and US corporations in Africa is depriving its governments from resources which could be use to fight poverty.
I wrote a study years ago exposing Oxfam’s sloppy methodology on tax competition issues. No wonder they’ve been labeled as being part of the “tax taliban.”
But what really irks me about that passage is the assumption that bigger government reduces poverty. That’s nonsense. The data shows that growth is the best way of helping the poor.
P.S. I wrote yesterday about Chris Christie’s problems in New Jersey. I said his real challenge was the need to reduce the burden of government, not the bridge scandal.
But I’m a sucker for good political humor, so enjoy this image that appeared in my inbox.
P.P.S. Since Oxfam criticized tax havens, I can’t resist calling your attention to my video tutorial on tax competition and tax haven.
Simply stated, we need some external check on the greed of the political class.
________ Dan Mitchell is right and we must reduce the size and power of Government!!!! Thanks to Obamacare and the IRS, You’re at Risk of Having Your Identity Stolen and Your Bank Account Emptied December 3, 2013 by Dan Mitchell There are many reason I don’t like Obamacare, including its punitive impact on taxpayers and the […]
________ Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has noted, “I’m all in favor of bringing federal government spending back down to about 18 percent of GDP, which is where it was when Bill Clinton left office.” The Rise (and Upcoming Fall) of the Welfare State in the Western World November 12, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. It is sad to see our federal government spend away our children’s future but when some of the states are doing that […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Government Stupidity Defies Satire When a $50 Light Bulb Wins an Affordability Prize March 16, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I’ve written about the […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Two More Excellent Political Cartoons April 26, 2011 by Dan Mitchell I praised Michael Ramirez a few days ago for his clever political cartoons, […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. A Humorous Look at Obama’s Green-Energy Boondoggle March 12, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Actually, I’m not sure this is humorous. Whether we’re looking […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. I thought it was great when the Republican Congress and Bill Clinton put in welfare reform but now that has been done […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. When I think of President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment it makes me think of this cartoon below. Sure enough he […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Concerning the French overspending problem Dan Mitchell states, “There are obvious lessons from Europe for the United States. If politicians don’t reform […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. When Government Replaces Santa Claus December 25, 2011 by Dan Mitchell Chuck Asay is a superb cartoonist, and he produced one of my […]
That low ranking is where the state’s tax code was as of July 1, 2021, so it obviously doesn’t reflect the reforms enacted earlier this year.
So where will the state rank with the new flat tax?
The Tax Foundation crunched the data and shows the state will jump to #15 in the rankings.
The above table shows that the jump is even more impressive when you factor in some modest pro-growth changes that took place a few years ago.
What a huge improvement over just a few years. The only state that may beat Iowa for fastest and biggest increase in tax competitiveness is North Carolina, which jumped 30 spots in just one year.
P.S. Politicians in New York must be upset that there’s no way for them to drop lower than #50. But at least they can take comfort in the fact that they are worse than California.
One of the great things about federalism, above and beyond the fact that it both constrains the power of governments and is faithful to the Constitution, is that is turns every state into an experiment.
I particularly enjoy comparisons between Texas and California. Michael Barone, for instance, documented how the Lone Star State is kicking the you-know-what out of the Golden State in terms of overall economic performance.
The real moral of the story, though, is that the poor are the biggest victims of Obama’s statism. They’re the ones who have been most likely to lose jobs. They’ve been the ones to suffer because of stagnant incomes.
Sort of brings to mind the old joke that leftists must really like poor people because they create more of them whenever they’re in charge.
P.P.S. To close on a serious point, California would be deteriorating even faster if it wasn’t for the fact that the state and local tax deduction basically means that the rest of the country is subsidizing the high tax rates in the not-so-Golden State. Another good argument for the flat tax.
P.P.P.S. At the bottom of this post, you’ll find a great Kevin Williamson column dismantling some sloppy anti-Texas analysis by Paul Krugman.
Sarah Weddington—seen here onstage at Glamour magazine’s 2017 Women of the Year Awards on Nov. 13, 2017, in Brooklyn, New York—went to great linguistic lengths to deny the personhood of the unborn when she argued for abortion rights before the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade 45 years earlier in 1972. (Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images)
When lawyer Sarah Weddington stood up in the Supreme Court on Oct. 11, 1972, to present the pro-abortion argument in the case of Roe v. Wade, she was legalistically careful in the language she used to describe whom exactly an abortion aborted.
She avoided normal human terms like “unborn child” or “baby”—and, most importantly, “person.” She preferred “fetus.”
Presumably, this was because the 14th Amendment states, “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Justice Byron White, one of only two justices who would end up dissenting from the court’s opinion that there was a “right” to abortion, pushed Weddington on the precise question of whether the unborn children killed by abortions were in fact people.
“Several of the briefs before this Court would also argue that this Court, in deciding the Vuitch case, which has allowed abortions to continue in the District of Columbia, certainly the Court would not have made that kind of decision if it felt there were any ingrained rights of the fetus within the Constitution,” Weddington told the court.
After she said that, White engaged her in a pointed line of questioning. “Is it critical to your case that the fetus not be a person under the due process clause?” asked the justice, who had been nominated by President John F. Kennedy.
“It seems to me,” Weddington said, “that it is critical first that we prove this is a fundamental interest on behalf of the woman, that it is a constitutional right, and, second … .”
White interrupted her. “Yes, but how about the fetus?” he asked.
“OK, and second, that the state has no compelling state interest,” she said, evading his question. “OK, and the state is alleging a compelling state interest.”
White persisted. “Yes, but I’m just asking you, under the federal Constitution, is the fetus a person for the purpose of the protection of the due process clause?”
“All of the cases, the prior history of this statute, the common law history, would indicate that it is not,” said Weddington. “The state has shown no … .”
White interrupted her again. “Well,” he said, “what if … Would you lose your case if the fetus was a person?”
“Then you would have a balancing of interests,” Weddington responded.
“You have anyway, don’t you?” said White.
“Excuse me?” said Weddington.
“You have anyway, don’t you?” White repeated. “You’re going to be balancing the rights of the mother against the rights of the fetus.”
But Weddington would not concede that a “fetus” had constitutional rights. “It seems to me that you do not balance constitutional rights of one person against mere statutory rights of another,” she said.
A moment later, however, she conceded that the situation might be different if the state could establish that a fetus was a person. “If the state could show that the fetus was a person under the 14th Amendment or under some other amendment or part of the Constitution, then you would have … a state compelling interest which, in some instances, can outweigh a fundamental right,” she said.
“This is not the case in this particular situation,” she claimed.
In December, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that challenges the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The Biden administration opposes the Mississippi law. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar participated in the oral arguments against it that were presented in the Supreme Court.
Justice Clarence Thomas confronted her with a fundamental question.
“The court has never revoked a right that is so fundamental to so many Americans and so central to their ability to participate fully and equally in society,” Prelogar said in her argument. “The court should not overrule this central component of women’s liberty.”
“General,” Thomas asked her, “would you … specifically state what the right is? Is it specifically abortion? Is it liberty? Is it autonomy? Is it privacy?”
Prelogar, in responding, was not as circumspect as Weddington had been in the terminology she used to describe the target of an abortion.
“The right is grounded in the liberty component of the 14th Amendment, Justice Thomas,” she said, “but I think it promotes interest in autonomy, bodily integrity, liberty, and equality. And I do think that it is specifically the right to abortion here, the right of a woman to be able to control, without the state forcing her to continue a pregnancy, whether to carry that baby to term.”
So, the target of an abortion, according to the argument President Joe Biden’s solicitor general made in the Supreme Court, is “that baby.”
Is “that baby” a human being? Is “that baby” a person? Does “that baby” have a right to life? Of course.
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Abortion: When Does Life Begin? – R.C. Sproul
Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race? Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
________________
______________________
September 25, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which can be found on You Tube. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.
Today I want to respond to your letter to me on July 9, 2021. Here it is below:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 9, 2021
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
Alexander, AR
Dear Mr. Hatcher,
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts on abortion. Hearing from passionate individuals like me inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America. I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story. We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America. If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.
Sincerely
Joe Biden
Mr. President, my wife was born in JEFFERSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Adrian Rogers tells a story about another lady that was born in that same hospital: “They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF?”
Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)
I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):
(both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer mentioned Carl Sagan in their books and that prompted me to write Sagan and expose him to their views.
For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.
The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.
Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.
In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?
Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.
Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?
As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?
——-
End of Sagan Excerpt
When I was in high school the book and film series named WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? came out and it featured Doctor C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer and they looked at the issues of abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia and they looked at comments from such scholars as Peter Singer and James D. Watson.
C. Everett Koop pictured above and Peter Singer below
Peter Singer, an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
James D.Watson
In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”
Carl Sagan
On August 30, 1995 I mailed a letter to Carl Sagan that probably prompted this discussion on abortion and it enclosed a lengthy story from Adrian Rogers about an abortion case in Pine Bluff, Arkansas that almost became an infanticide case:
An excerpt from the Sunday morning message (11-6-83) by Adrian Rogers in Memphis, TN.
I want to tell you that secular humanism and so-called abortion rights are inseparably linked together. We have been taught that our bodies and our children are the products of the evolutionary process, and so therefore human life may not be all that valuable to begin with. We have come today to where it is legal and even considered to be a good thing to put little babies to death…15 million little babies put to death since 1973 because of this philosophy of Secular Humanism.
How did the court make that type of decision? You would think it would be so obvious. You can’t do that! You can’t kill little babies! Why? Because the Bible says! Friend, they don’t give a hoot what the Bible says! There used to be a time when they talked about what the Bible says because there was a time that we as a nation had a constitution that was based in the Judeo-Christian ethic, but today if we say “The Bible says” or “God says “Separation of Church and State. Don’t tell us what the Bible says or what God says. We will tell you what we think!” Therefore, they look at the situation and they decide if it is right or wrong purely on the humanistic philosophy that right and wrong are relative and the situation says what is right or what is wrong.
This little girl just 19 years old went into the doctor’s office and he examined her. He said, “We can take take of you.” He gave her an injection in her arm that was to cause her to go into labor and to get rid of that protoplasm, that feud, that little mass that was in her, but she wasn’t prepared for the sound she was about to hear. It was a little baby crying. That little baby weighed 13 ounces. His hand the size of my thumbnail. You know what the doctor did. The doctor put that little baby in a grocery sack and gave it to Maria’s two friends who were with her in that doctor office and Said, “It will stop making those noises after a while.”
(Adrian Rogers pictured above)
Pine Bluff, ArkansasMy wife was born in main hospital in Pine Bluff, Arkansas
They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF? The same life!!! Are you going to tell me that is not a baby? Are you going to tell me that if that baby had been put to death it would not have been murder? You will never convince me of that. What has happened to us in America? We have been sold a bill of goods by the Secular Humanists!
Carl Sagan was elected the HUMANIST OF THE YEAR in 1982 by the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION
Carl Sagan asked, “Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?”
This message “A Christian Manifesto” was given in 1982 by the late Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer when he was age 70 at D. James Kennedy’s Corral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Listen to this important message where Dr. Schaeffer says it is the duty of Christians to disobey the government when it comes in conflict with God’s laws. So many have misinterpreted Romans 13 to mean unconditional obedience to the state. When the state promotes an evil agenda and anti-Christian statues we must obey God rather than men. Acts
I use to watch James Kennedy preach from his TV pulpit with great delight in the 1980’s. Both of these men are gone to be with the Lord now. We need new Christian leaders to rise up in their stead.
To view Part 2 See Francis Schaeffer Lecture- Christian Manifesto Pt 2 of 2 video
The religious and political freedom’s we enjoy as Americans was based on the Bible and the legacy of the Reformation according to Francis Schaeffer. These freedoms will continue to diminish as we cast off the authority of Holy Scripture.
In public schools there is no other view of reality but that final reality is shaped by chance.
Likewise, public television gives us many things that we like culturally but so much of it is mere propaganda shaped by a humanistic world and life view.
_____________________________
I was able to watch Francis Schaeffer deliver a speech on a book he wrote called “A Christian Manifesto” and I heard him in several interviews on it in 1981 and 1982. I listened with great interest since I also read that book over and over again. Below is a portion of one of Schaeffer’s talks on a crucial subject that is very important today too.
A great talk by Francis Schaeffer:A Christian Manifesto by Dr. Francis A. SchaefferThis address was delivered by the late Dr. Schaeffer in 1982 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is based on one of his books, which bears the same title._________
Infanticide and youth enthansia ———So what we find then, is that the medical profession has largely changed — not all doctors. I’m sure there are doctors here in the audience who feel very, very differently, who feel indeed that human life is important and you wouldn’t take it, easily, wantonly. But, in general, we must say (and all you have to do is look at the TV programs), all you have to do is hear about the increased talk about allowing the Mongoloid child — the child with Down’s Syndrome — to starve to death if it’s born this way. Increasingly, we find on every side the medical profession has changed its views.
The view now is, “Is this life worth saving?”I look at you… You’re an older congregation than I am usually used to speaking to. You’d better think, because — this — means — you! It does not stop with abortion and infanticide. It stops at the question, “What about the old person? Is he worth hanging on to?” Should we, as they are doing in England in this awful organization, EXIT, teach older people to commit suicide? Should we help them get rid of them because they are an economic burden, a nuisance? I want to tell you, once you begin chipping away the medical profession…
The intrinsic value of the human life is founded upon the Judeo-Christian concept that man is unique because he is made in the image of God, and not because he is well, strong, a consumer, a sex object or any other thing. That is where whatever compassion this country has is, and certainly it is far from perfect and has never been perfect. Nor out of the Reformation has there been a Golden Age, but whatever compassion there has ever been, it is rooted in the fact that our culture knows that man is unique, is made in the image of God. Take it away, and I just say gently, the stopper is out of the bathtub for all human life.
______________________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on April 16, 2011. First you will see my letter to him which was mailed around April 9th(although […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
When I think of the things that make me sad concerning this country, the first thing that pops into my mind is our treatment of unborn children. Donald Trump is probably going to run for president of the United States. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council recently had a conversation with him concerning the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min 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, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason 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 […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age 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 […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
First, his so-called stimulus was approved last year, adding $1.9 trillion to the nation’s fiscal burden. The president and his team claimed it would lead to four million additional jobs, but the net result was a drop in employment compared to the White House’s own projections.
Regarding the third item, the president so far has not been able to convince all Democratic senators to support the scheme. And with the Senate evenly split between the two parties, Biden needs all of their votes to get his plan approved.
The most important part of the statement is that bigger government would “reduce the number of people working, badly misallocate capital, and hobble economic growth.”
Based on research from the Congressional Budget Office, the damage would be enormous, reducing worker compensation by $1.6 trillion over the next ten years.
What about the other issues mentioned in the statement, such as debt and inflation?
It’s not good that debt goes up, of course, but that’s a symptomof the bigger problem, which is government consuming a greater share of the nation’s output.
Also, at the risk of being annoyingly pedantic, I don’t actually think Biden’s budget would increase inflation. That only happensif the Federal Reserve adopts bad monetary policy.
That being said, central banks are more likely to adopt bad monetary policy when politicians are following bad fiscal policy. So the core assertion is correct.
P.S. I don’t know whether to characterize this as absurd, pathetic, addled, or dishonest, but Joe Biden actually claimedhis budget plan has zero cost.
Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race? Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
________________
______________________
September 6, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which can be found on You Tube. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.
Today I want to respond to your letter to me on July 9, 2021. Here it is below:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 9, 2021
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
Alexander, AR
Dear Mr. Hatcher,
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts on abortion. Hearing from passionate individuals like me inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America. I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story. We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America. If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.
Sincerely
Joe Biden
___________________
I especially noted this from your letter:
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more OPTIMISTIC for the future of America.
President Biden, you have chosen to abandon your Christianity and pursue humanist concerns!! So how can you say humanism has an OPTIMISTIC POINT OF VIew?
H. J. Blackham was the founder of the BRITISH HUMANIST ASSOCIATION and he asserted:
“On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).
I wanted to reach out to because of some of the troubling moral issues coming out of your administration. I recently read this article about the Humanist group that enthusiastically supported you for President:
The group hopes to reach atheists, agnostics and other religiously unaffiliated voters who make up the largest belief group in the Democratic Party.
Materials line a table during a gathering of atheist, humanist and secular leaders in Temecula, California, for the first SoCal Secular Leadership Summit, which was held from March 1-3, 2019. Photo courtesy Heather AdamsSeptember 28, 2020By Jack JenkinsShareTweetShare
(RNS) — A new group is launching an effort to court nonreligious voters for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, hoping to mobilize a fast-growing — and deeply liberal — community to benefit Democrats in November.
The “Humanists for Biden” group, a project of the Secular Democrats of America, unveiled its plans on Monday (Sept. 28). The group is chaired by Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“The humanist and nonreligious community is poised to be a very significant part of this presidential election in that we represent maybe 30% or so of Democratic voters,” Epstein told Religion News Service.
The group also announced a slate of co-chairs that includes Sarah Levin, who also co-chaired the Democratic National Convention’s Interfaith Council and heads Secular Strategies, an organization that mobilizes secular voters.
“Humanists for Biden marks the first time representatives of the nation’s growing number of secular Americans have been invited to participate in a coalition of communities of faith and conscience, working together on a Presidential campaign,” read a press release from the group. “The Biden-Harris campaign is working to create the most inclusive campaign and administration in the history of American politics, and we are honored to take part in this effort.”
Epstein said Humanists for Biden hopes to reach a broad swath of atheists, agnostics and other religiously unaffiliated voters who make up the largest belief group in the Democratic Party, constituting around 28% of its members, according to political scientist Ryan Burge.
While some are atheists and agnostics, other unaffiliated Americans still believe in God or pray regularly, according to a 2019 Pew Research study.
Even so, Epstein argued that the many nonreligious Americans are united by “humanistic values,” such as a belief in science as “the best tool that we have to create a healthy world,” as well as support for racial justice, pluralism and inclusion.
“We stand as humanists and people united by humanistic values for basic human decency, empathy and compassion that we feel that the Biden-Harris campaign represents far more than its competition,” he said.
Religiously unaffiliated voters, despite backing Democrats over Republicans in the 2018 midterms 75% to 22% according to Pew, have been criticized in the past for relatively low turnout on Election Day compared to other groups.
But Epstein pointed to new research that suggests religiously unaffiliated turnout is heavily impacted by the fact that it is largely made up of young voters who are also known for underperforming on Election Day.
What’s more, he said the group can only benefit from targeted mobilization, something Democrats have rarely done in the past.
“With a group like that that supports you so strongly and leans so heavily in your direction, you want to mobilize that group as much as possible,” he said.
Humanists for Biden is not officially part of the presidential campaign, but Epstein said campaign staff — including national faith outreach directors for both the Biden-Harris campaign and the Democratic Party — are slated to appear at the group’s first official event on Thursday.
“We feel supported and valued, and that has absolutely never been the case before for our community at this level,” he said, adding that Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and humanist, will also speak at their upcoming event.
The group has even selected a swing state where it can target its efforts: Arizona, where around 27% of the population is unaffiliated, according to Pew.
Epstein pointed out that Arizona is home to lawmakers such as Athena Salman, a state House member who identifies as an atheist and as a humanist. The state is also represented by Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat and the only U.S. Senator who identifies as religiously unaffiliated.
The ultimate goal of the initiative, Epstein insisted, was not only to generate “historic turnout” among secular and nonreligious Americans, but also to build a stronger coalition with religious liberals.
“We recognize that their deeply held religious values resonate strongly with our humanist values,” he said. “We simply want to be a part of the conversation. We want to be in the tent. We want to be able to fully help as equals.”
Francis Schaeffer in CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO shows how today’s secular religion of humanism is now the most influential in the world today:
CHAPTER 4 THE HUMANIST RELIGION (Page 445)
The humanists have openly told us their views of final reality. The Humanist Manifesto I (1933), page 8 says
Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.
Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any super-natural or cosmic guarantees of human values.
And Carl Sagan indoctrinated millions of unsuspecting viewers with this humanistic final view of reality in the public television show Cosmos: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” The humanist view has infiltrated every level of society.
If we are going to join the battle in a way that has any hope of effectiveness – with Christians truly being salt and the light in our culture and our society – then we must do battle on the entire front. We must not finally even battle on the front for freedom, and specifically not only our freedom. It must be on the basis of Truth. Not just religious truths, but the Truth of what the final reality is. It is impersonal material or is it the living God?
(page 445)
The HUMANIST MANIFESTO I and II both state that humanism is a religion, a faith. [Manifesto I: pages 3 and 7; Manifesto II: pages 13 and 24.] Manifesto I, page 9, very correctly says: “Nothing human is alien to the religious.” Christians of all people should have known, taught, and acted on this. Religion touches all of thought and all of life. And these two religions, Christianity and humanism , stand over against each other as totalities.
The HUMANIST MANIFESTOS not only say that humanism is a religion, but the Supreme Court has declared it to be a religion. The 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins specifically defines secular humanism as a religion equivalent to theistic and other non theistic religions.
On page 19 the HUMANIST MANIFESTO II says: “It [the state] should not favor any particular religious bodies through the use of public monies…” Ironically, it is the humanist religion which the government and courts in the United States favor over all others!
______________________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on April 16, 2011. First you will see my letter to him which was mailed around April 9th(although […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
When I think of the things that make me sad concerning this country, the first thing that pops into my mind is our treatment of unborn children. Donald Trump is probably going to run for president of the United States. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council recently had a conversation with him concerning the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min 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, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason 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 […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age 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 […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., speaks to the press after a U.S. House Jan. 6 committee hearing. She’s joined by Reps. Elaine Luria, D-Va.; Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.; and Jamie Raskin, D-Md. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Who’d believe that two liberal-left newspapers might keep former President Donald Trump out of the slammer?
Certainly not this reporter. But it’s true. Unlike many conservatives, I relish reading The Washington Post and The New York Times. Sure, they can be biased and deserve the harsh condemnation they frequently receive from their critics. But every once in a while, they will produce something that smacks of honest journalism.
I’ve written previously about how the Post conducted a stunning investigative report quoting respected and impartial legal experts that Trump was not obviously guilty of any criminal act on Jan. 6. Not one.
The Post took every major accusation tossed by Trump’s political enemies—including Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.—and had an answer for each and every charge.
Did he urge the crowd to riot? The Post didn’t think so. When he told the crowd to march to the Capitol, did he know that a number of participants were going to smash their way into the building and assault police officers? The response: “[T]here is no evidence that he knew they were going to storm the building.”
What about the pressure he put on Vice President Mike Pence to overrule Congress’ decision to approve Joe Biden as president, one of his most controversial actions?
Former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason told the Post: “The key in pretty much all these crimes would be proving corrupt intent, because Trump is going to come in and say, when he was pressuring Pence, ‘I was told by my advisers that he had this legal authority, and I was just repeating that.’”
Eliason added, “That could be pretty difficult [for a prosecutor] to overcome.”
What also might be pretty difficult for a prosecutor to overcome is that Democrats have been aggressively challenging Republican presidential winners since 2000. Beginning with George W. Bush’s victory in the 2000 presidential race, Democrats have contested three Republican victories in the 21st century, with two Democrat House members opposing Trump’s victory on the grounds that the Russians had illegally interfered in our elections.
Democrats, however, are trying to use the House select committee, whose sole purpose is to find out what happened on Jan. 6, to prosecute the former president and his advisers for a crime they have yet to discover.
A big problem facing the former president is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s committee may poison the well with its report that is scheduled to be released close to the off-year elections.
In a lead front-page story in The New York Times, the reader is told that the committee is employing prosecutorial techniques “typically used against mobsters and terrorists” as it seeks to “develop evidence that could prompt a criminal case” against Trump and his allies.
“In what its members see as the best opportunity to hold Mr. Trump and his team accountable,” the Times continues, “the committee—which has no authority to pursue criminal charges—is using what powers it has in expansive ways in hopes of pressuring Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to use the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute them.”
“Sentence First—verdict afterward” is not apparently a notion confined to the Queen in “Alice in Wonderland.” Her view of justice has been wholly embraced by Pelosi’s Democrat-stacked panel.
The vice chair of the committee, Cheney, has already delivered her verdict, long before the committee has concluded its investigation. What Trump asked Pence to do, she wrote in The Wall Street Journal, was not only “unconstitutional” but “illegal.”
If Pence had supported Trump, the Supreme Court might well have found his actions unconstitutional, since an overwhelming majority in the legal community agrees that the vice president has no power to overturn the Electoral College vote. But it was neither unconstitutional or illegal for the president to tell Pence to carry out a policy some of his key advisers believed was lawful. (See Eliason’s supporting view above.)
Late last year, Cheney, more the vengeful accuser than an impartial observer, according to many who heard her carry on about Trump, was moving to have him prosecuted. Couldn’t he be charged, she argued, with obstructing Congress while it was counting the electoral votes that would remove him from the White House? (Informed sources tell this reporter she’s still maneuvering to get him behind bars.)
From its inception, the committee has been stacked against Trump sympathizers. Under its rules, Pelosi has complete authority, without the need to consult any Republican, to appoint eight of its members. The minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, can appoint five, but only with the speaker’s consent. The Republicans on the select committee, chosen by Pelosi, are Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who have been in lockstep with the House leader.
Here’s a perfect example of how Cheney is tilting the committee against Trump and her own party. On July 21, 2020, Pelosi blocked two of McCarthy’s choices, Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, each of whom supported Trump’s decision to contest the election, which they had every legal right to do. Cheney had a chance here to partially reingratiate herself with fellow Republicans by coming to the defense of McCarthy’s two picks.
Cheney could have told Pelosi that the panel would be seen as far less partisan by both the public and her GOP colleagues if she’d reconsider her decision to block two of Trump’s most vigorous and effective supporters. His people, she could have stressed, need to see that the committee is not the lynch mob they strongly suspect it has become.
Democrats, she could have argued, would still outnumber Republicans on the panel by an 8 to 5 margin. Moreover, Pelosi would know that she had an effective 9 to 4 majority, since Cheney, whose anti-Trump rhetoric is boundless, could be counted on to line up with the speaker on any important issue. Cheney, however, was not in a charitable mood for her party or for elementary fairness.
She rushed to issue a statement on the Capitol steps, remarking: “I agree with what the speaker has done.” It’s hard to get more partisan on behalf of the Democrats and more anti-Republican than that.
There are many things the select committee needs to investigate other than Trump and his advisers, though their actions need to be fairly assessed as well. But there are a few other questions that need to be answered.
Were there federal employees who acted as agents provocateurs on Jan. 6, urging those at the rally to break into the Capitol? A video that surfaced is certainly incriminating. When Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., asked Garland if this accusation were true, Garland ducked the question completely.
Fourteen Republican members of the House have also made a convincing case that many defendants convicted in connection with the Jan. 6 attacks did not engage in any violence, had no past criminal records, and, after their arrests, were denied standard medical care and access to attorneys.
Many told the lawmakers they had been held in solitary confinement for several months. Surely these charges need to be pursued?
Jordan had also voiced concerns that the select committee has to do more than focus on Trump. He’s a big supporter of the former president but he’s not opposed to a fair inquiry. Since Jordan had been blocked from asking questions of any witness when Pelosi threw him off the committee McCarthy had appointed him to, he said he hoped that the Democrats would actually find out why there wasn’t a proper security presence that day.
“And frankly,” he added, “only the speaker can answer that question, so let’s see if the Democrats bring that up.”
That’s also a critical question that deserves an answer. But does anyone think the select committee’s report will be honest, thorough, and fair, as every American should desire, if Pelosi and Cheney are running the show?
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October 24, 2021
The Honorable Representative Liz Cheney, Wyoming, Washington D.C.
Dear Representative
I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.
I recently read about your impressive pro-life record:
Liz Cheney is the representative for Wyoming’s at-large district (WY-AL). Congresswoman Cheney has voted consistently to protect the lives of the unborn as well as the consciences of taxpayers who don’t want their hard-earned tax dollars paying for abortion domestically or internationally. Rep. Cheney has defended the Trump administration’s pro-life regulatory efforts from pro-abortion attacks to prohibit their implementation.
Congresswoman Cheney participated in a press conference calling for a vote on H.R. 962, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. She also offered a unanimous consent request for consideration of, and participated in the minority hearing on the Born-Alive bill.
It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:
Roger Kimball Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion
Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words:
That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.
Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”
There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.
Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.
From left: Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
More
Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.
Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.
The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.
Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.
Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.
I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.
Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.
As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.
Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.
I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed:
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
________________
______________________
March 23, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too. Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.
___________________
The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.
Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland) when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION
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Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture
Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer
http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.
“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”
Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.
The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.
“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”
This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”
That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.
The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.
I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.
On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.
Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.
As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.
Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.
He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.
“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”
“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.
“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.
The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”
And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.
______________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min 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, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason 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 […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age 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 […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Social Security urgently needs systemic reforms if it is to avoid benefit cuts to current and future recipients and tax increases to retain solvency. Pictured: The Sebring, Florida, offices of the Social Security Administration. (Photo: Jeffrey Greenberg/Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
Social Security is extremely popular, but most people don’t realize how much more income and opportunity they could have without Social Security’s high taxes, lack of ownership, and limits on when people can access money and how much they can receive.
Moreover, Social Security has long been unsustainable. Beginning just 11 years from now, Social Security’s past and current excesses will have caught up with it, and the program will only be able to pay out about 75% of scheduled benefits.
Protecting people already receiving benefits at that time from immediate and permanent cuts would require everyone who is 55 or younger today to receive only 55% of their scheduled Social Security benefits, while still paying 100% of Social Security’s 12.4% tax rate throughout their entire working lives.
Add to that numerous other constraints imposed by Social Security. The program’s high taxes make it difficult for many people to have money left to save on their own and spend across their lifetimes based on what’s best for them.
And the fact that people’s access to Social Security benefits is determined by when politicians say they can access them and how much they can get means that people who have lower life expectancies (disproportionately blacks and lower-income earners) can lose out on tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars that they paid in taxes and otherwise would have had to pass on to their children or grandchildren.
That’s a raw deal, and Americans deserve better.
Americans also deserve to have not so much as another penny added to the $19.8 trillion in unfunded obligations that Social Security has accumulated. With Social Security already having $154,000 in unfunded obligations for every household in the U.S., Americans can’t afford further delay.
That’s why The Heritage Foundation’s Budget Blueprint tackles Social Security reform head-on, with the goal of creating a better system that protects the most vulnerable and minimizes the drag on the economy. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Heritage’s Budget Blueprint would gradually shift Social Security toward a universal benefit that would keep more people out of poverty, use a more accurate inflation measure, increase its normal retirement age to account for changes in life expectancy, and eliminate parts of the program that discourage older Americans from working.
To address the Disability Insurance program’s many failures, inefficiencies, and lack of integrity, the Budget Blueprint calls for more than a dozen reforms, including eliminating factors such as age, education, and work experience from the qualification factors and instead relying solely on physical and mental capabilities; strengthening continuing disability reviews; and providing better-targeted and needs-based benefits.
These changes would not only make the programs solvent for the long run, they also would allow for a roughly 25% reduction in Social Security’s tax rate over time, and a nearly 40% reduction compared with what would be required to keep Social Security solvent through tax increases alone.
Worth noting is that Social Security originally took 2% of workers’ paychecks, and promised to never take more than 6%, but it currently takes 12.4%, and it requires an immediate increase to 15.8% to remain solvent over the next 75 years.
A key component of a better Social Security program should be ensuring that Americans can keep more of their earnings, to save and spend as is best for them, instead of what a one-size-fits-all government program claims is best.
In addition to making the program solvent and reducing the tax burden it imposes on working Americans, it would also help grow the economy.
The Penn Wharton budget model estimates that a bigger Social Security program—higher taxes and higher benefits—would cause the economy to be 2% smaller in 2049. On the other hand, the model predicts that a smaller, better-targeted Social Security program similar to what we propose in Heritage’s Budget Blueprint would cause the economy to be 5.3% larger in 2049.
That difference, of 7.3% of gross domestic product, translates into $10,740 more income per household, per year across the U.S.
A solvent, smaller, and better-targeted Social Security program is crucial to protecting the most vulnerable while also limiting Social Security’s restrictions over people’s lives.
But for most people, Social Security will always be a raw deal, because it strips people of the opportunity to earn a positive rate of return on their savings, and it prevents them from accumulating wealth that they own and can pass on to their families.
For example, a Heritage Foundation analysisshowed that a low-income earner would have $4,300 more per year in retirement than Social Security can provide, if only they were allowed to keep their Social Security taxes and invest them in a conservative mix of stocks and bonds. And a middle-income earner would have nearly $48,000 more per year during retirement, if they were allowed to keep and invest their Social Security taxes.
Thus, we also propose giving workers the option to stop accumulating additional Social Security benefits and to instead be allowed to put part of their Social Security taxes into a retirement account that they own and can control, including being able to pass it on to others.
With Social Security expanding from a program that took 2% of workers’ paychecks and sent benefits to fewer than 2% of the population to one that now takes 12.4% of workers’ paychecks and sends benefits to more than 20% of the population, the program has done more to limit Americans’ paychecks and restrict their retirement incomes than to truly protect individuals from poverty.
Social Security’s fiscal shortfalls tripled over just the past decade. They will only continue to get worse.
Policymakers must act immediately to make Social Security solvent for those who need it, and less of a burden on the incomes and opportunities of current and future Americans.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
Social Security: Universal or selective? (1971) – with Milton Friedman …
Americans would be better off keeping their payroll tax contributions and saving them in private retirement accounts than having to contribute to the government’s broken Social Security system. Social Security’s design has, over the decades, presumed that many Americans are too incompetent to make informed decisions for themselves, but few Americans believe that the government knows better than they do what is best for them and their families. Moreover, Social Security’s financial structure effectively guarantees that workers will receive extremely low—or even negative returns—on their payroll taxes.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
This report compares what Social Security can provide and what workers could receive if they had ownership of their Social Security payroll taxes.
This information can help individuals of all ages understand what they can expect to receive from Social Security or from private savings.
Virtually all Americans would be better off keeping their payroll taxes and saving them in private retirement accounts.
Social Security began as an anti-poverty insurance program, aimed at preventing workers from outliving their savings when they were no longer physically able to work. As such, Social Security was limited in nature, beginning as only a 2 percent payroll tax—and promising to never take more than 6 percent of workers’ pay. Today, Social Security’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) retirement program takes 10.6 percent of workers’ pay, and its Disability Insurance (DI) program takes another 1.8 percent, for a combined total of 12.4 percent. This is more than most Americans pay in income taxes.
As Social Security has grown in size and scope, it has become more than just an insurance and poverty prevention program—and with millions of seniors living below the federal poverty line, it is not doing a great job even at that. Having reduced the incentive to save for retirement, Social Security now represents a significant portion of most workers’ retirement savings. Despite the fact that Social Security was intended to be an insurance program, providing a secure retirement income, individuals have no legal claim to their scheduled Social Security benefits, as the program can only pay out as much money as it has on hand and Congress can change benefit levels if it wants. Not surprisingly, more than 60 percent of workers under the age of 50 do not think Social Security will be able to pay them a benefit when they retire.
With Social Security consuming such a large component of workers’ paychecks and offsetting their own private savings, it is important that workers receive a valuable benefit from Social Security—one at least as good as they, as a whole, could obtain from saving on their own. This analysis looks across the United States and across generations to see if Social Security does in fact provide that.
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Utilizing federal government data on life expectancy and earnings in each state, Heritage analysts found that:
On average, personal retirement savings significantly outperform the current Social Security system. Taking an average of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the average worker receives significantly less from Social Security than he would have if he had conservatively invested his Social Security payroll taxes in the market.
Foregone benefits vary across generations.For average-earner males in Florida (a median-income state), lost investment earnings equal over $600,000 for those born in 1955; over $700,000 for those born in 1975; and over $1.1 million for those born in 1995. For average-earner females living in Florida, Social Security will provide over $190,000 less in lifetime income than personal savings for those born in 1955; over $230,000 less for those born in 1975; and over $420,000 less for those born in 1995. (See Appendix Tables.)
Individuals with lower life expectancies often lose greatly. This occurs because they receive little or nothing in benefits and cannot pass along all their lost contributions to their surviving family members. Consequently, certain areas of the country, including Washington, DC, have significantly lower returns from Social Security.
Younger workers face lower, and even negative, returns from Social Security compared to older workers. This comes as a result of paying higher average Social Security tax rates over their lifetimes, coupled with a two-year increase in Social Security’s normal retirement age—as well as the benefit cuts that will occur if Social Security’s trust fund runs dry.
To see if Social Security is a worthwhile program for Americans—across generations and states—researchers at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis created a statistical model, The Heritage Foundation Social Security Rate of Return Model, to examine Social Security’s costs and benefits. We compare these results to what workers would have earned (including estimates on what younger workers likely would earn) in personal retirement savings accounts.
Social Security: Origin and Intent
Established during the Great Depression in the 1930s as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, Social Security is a federal program designed to protect against poverty in old age. At that time, Social Security’s eligibility age of 65 was higher than the average life expectancy.1
Centers for Disease Control, “United States Life Tables, 1998,” National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 18 February 7, 2001, Table 11, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr48/nvs48_18.pdf (accessed April 20, 2018).
Social Security’s payroll tax began at a rate of 2 percent and was never intended to rise above 6 percent.2
Those taxes seemed sufficient because life expectancy was 17 years lower then than it is today; not many people lived long enough to collect benefits, and those who did collected them for less time than retirees today.3
Life expectancy for men in 1935 was 59.42 years compared to 76.07 in 2016; for women it was 63.32 years in 1935 compared to 80.45 years in 2016. See Felicity C. Bell and Michael L. Miller, Life Tables for the United States Social Security Area: 1900–2100, Social Security Administration, Table 10, pp. 162–166, https://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/pdf_studies/study120.pdf (accessed April 20, 2018).
However, what started out small has morphed into a nearly $1 trillion annual program that redistributes income to 61 million people—or about one out of every five people in the United States (including about 50 million OASI beneficiaries and 11 million DI beneficiaries).4
Social Security Administration, The 2017 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees.
When Social Security first began, there were 42 workers paying into the system for every one retiree receiving retirement checks. Today, there are only 3.4 workers per OASI beneficiary.5
Ibid., Table IV.B3, p. 61.
The program has long been on an unsustainable path and will run out of funds to pay promised benefits in 2029 according to the Congressional Budget Office6
and in 2035 according to the Social Security Trustees.7
Social Security Administration, The 2017 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees.
Absent reforms, benefits will decline by over 20 percent across the board after the Trust Fund runs dry.8
Ibid.
Knowing the estimated benefits workers will get from Social Security versus what they could get by saving on their own can help workers and policymakers better assess what types of Social Security reforms would be most beneficial.
Social Security’s payroll tax consumes 12.4 percent of workers’ paychecks (10.6 percent for the OASI program and 1.8 percent for the DI program)—but that is not enough to sustain the programs.9
For the period between 2016 and 2018, 0.57 percent of the 10.6 percent OASI , or retirement, program payroll tax is being reallocated to the DI program, meaning the OASI payroll tax is temporarily 10.03 percent and the DI tax is 2.37 percent. However, for the purposes of this analysis, we assume that the OASI payroll tax remains constant at 10.6 percentage points and the DI tax remains constant at 1.8 percentage points. See Social Security Administration, “Social Security Tax Rates,” https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/oasdiRates.html (accessed October 14, 2016).
Maintaining current benefit levels for both OASI and DI would require the payroll tax to rise to 15.33 percent.10
Social Security Administration, The 2017 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees, Table IV.B5, p. 70. Although the stated actuarial deficits for the OASI and DI are 2.59 percentage points and 0.24 percentage points of taxable payroll (a combined total of 2.83), the Social Security Trustees note that the combined OASDI payroll tax would have to rise by 2.93 percentage points because of behavioral responses. We distribute the additional 0.10 percentage point increase proportionally across the OASI and DI programs, resulting in tax increases of 2.68 percentage points and 0.25 percentage points, respectively.
Unfortunately, the payroll tax reduces workers disposable incomes and provides many with an incentive to save less. Therefore, a significant percentage of older individuals today rely primarily on Social Security for retirement income.11
More than 33 percent of aged beneficiaries receiving Social Security benefits had less than 10 percent additional income to their social security checks during retirement. Social Security Administration, “Income of the Aged Chartbook, 2014,” https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/income_aged/2014/iac14.html#chart9 (accessed July 29, 2016).
Because Social Security no longer functions primarily as a poverty-prevention program for individuals who are too old to work, and since it consumes so much of workers’ savings capacity, it is important to quantify whether or not Social Security is a valuable savings program.
Why Rates of Return Matter
“Rate of return” is a widely used metric to measure the performance of an investment—that is, how much a given dollar returns over a specified period of time. If $100 invested today is worth $110 in one year, then it has a 10 percent annual rate of return that year. Since workers contribute payroll taxes and expect to receive something in return, Social Security is considered an investment by many people.
In reality, however, Social Security is not an investment. For starters, today’s cash-flow deficits within the program mean that all incoming payroll taxes go immediately out the door to pay promised benefits. Moreover, Congress ultimately determines what workers pay into the system and receive from it—leaving workers with no control.
Social Security’s rate of return, or what workers get back in comparison to what they pay in, is entirely determined by Social Security’s benefit calculation formula as well as its Trust Fund assets. Consequently, the “returns” individuals receive from their Social Security contributions vary wildly across individual workers and across generations. While Social Security provided a high return on payroll taxes to its early beneficiaries, it promises a much lower return to future beneficiaries—and, under certain scenarios, the actual return that it can currently afford to pay to millions of future retirees can even be negative.
We used the Heritage Foundation Social Security Rate of Return Model to compute the program’s internal rate of return under two scenarios: (1) current law (which assumes the trust fund runs dry in 2035 and benefits are cut by over 20 percent);12
Social Security Administration, The 2017 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds, Table IV.B1, p. 54.
and (2) maintaining promised benefits through an across-the-board payroll tax increase. Although some individuals do not live long enough to collect Social Security benefits, we only report rates of return for those who live to at least age 66 (the current full, or normal retirement age). Consequently, our results overstate Social Security’s actual rate of return because they exclude individuals who die before age 66 and receive little, if anything, in return for their Social Security contributions.13
We compare these Social Security returns to a third scenario in which workers are hypothetically able to invest their payroll taxes in private accounts made up of stocks and bonds, as opposed to relying on benefits paid from other workers. These private account simulations assume that workers conservatively invest 50 percent of their existing payroll taxes in federal government bonds and the other 50 percent in large stocks.14
Large stocks are based on those of the Standard & Poor’s (S&P’s) 500 Composite index as used in Roger G. Ibbotson, 2017 SBBI Yearbook: Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation: U.S. Capital Markets Performance by Asset Class, 1926–2016 (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2017), Chapter 4. Returns for large stocks are the inflation-adjusted capital gains or losses plus reinvested dividends of large-cap stocks as reported therein. Government bonds are those used by Ibbotson to calculate annual returns on long-term government bonds, and usually consist of 20-year treasury bonds.
We applied historical rates of return for stocks and bonds through 2016 and projected forward the historical average (from 1954–2016) for 2017 and beyond (2.75 percent for government bonds and 7.04 percent for large-cap stocks). Full details are available in our methodological appendix.
Key Assumptions and Methodology of Heritage Foundation Social Security Rate of Return Model15
See, infra, “Appendix: Basic Assumptions and Methodology,” for a more complete explanation of the methodology of these calculations.
This analysis utilized the Heritage Foundation’s Social Security Rate of Return Model, which incorporates the following assumptions:
The hypothetical amount invested in personal retirement savings accounts equals Social Security’s payroll tax, which is 10.6 percent under current law (which requires benefit cuts beginning in 2035 to maintain solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund), and 13.28 percent under a financially solvent system that can maintain “promised” benefits. We do not make any changes to Social Security’s Disability Insurance (SSDI) program in this exercise, nor do we include the 1.8 percentage point SSDI payroll tax in workers’ hypothetical personal retirement account contributions.
We display results separately for both male and female individual workers with: (1) average earnings; (2) 50 percent of average earnings; and (3) the taxable maximum ($127,200 in 2017).
For state-by-state analysis, we make use of the fact that average incomes and life expectancies vary by state.
We account for future increases in life expectancy and wages. Unless otherwise stated, we use the intermediate assumptions reported in the Social Security Trustees’ 2017 annual report.16
Social Security Administration, The 2017 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees, Table VI.G6, pp. 216–217. AWI for years not presented in the five-year forecast were interpolated based on the growth rates of these forecasts themselves.
We adjust all Social Security benefits for inflation according to the Social Security Administration’s use of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). For discounting previous and future values of wages, investments, and returns, we use the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) to remain consistent with our source for inflation-adjusted returns (2017 SBBI Yearbook).17
Ibbotson, 2017 SBBI Yearbook, Chapter 4.
We use the Congressional Budget Office’s January 2017 projections for future inflation in the CPI-U.18
Congressional Budget Office, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2017 to 2027,” January 24, 2017, p. 54, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52370 (accessed May 5, 2017).
We include both the employee’s and employer’s shares of payroll taxes in the calculations.19
We do not address taxation issues upon withdrawal of retirement funds. We treat investments in personal savings accounts the same as payroll taxes under current law, meaning the employee portion of taxes is not tax deductible (Roth treatment), while the employer portion is tax deductible. Both these accounts, as well as some Social Security benefits, may be subject to post-retirement income taxes.
The rate of return on private investments listed in the tables assume a conservative mix of 50 percent large-cap U.S. stocks and 50 percent U.S. Treasury bonds. We also provide information about how much workers pay in OASI payroll taxes over their careers and how much they receive in Social Security benefits (assuming they live the average life expectancy), compared to how much they could have accumulated in a private retirement account had they invested their payroll tax dollars.
National Analysis
We used the Heritage Foundation Social Security Rate of Return Model to determine how American workers born in 1995 and with differing life expectancies fare in terms of the expected rate of return they receive from Social Security (the amount they receive from Social Security compared to what they paid in payroll taxes, all in 2017 dollars):
These results illustrate that Social Security provides extremely poor—often negative—rates of return for younger workers all across the country, especially for individuals with lower life expectancies. In comparison to the current system, private retirement accounts would provide significantly higher returns to Americans, regardless of their life expectancies.
State-by-State Analysis
We also used The Heritage Foundation Social Security Rate of Return Model to conduct a state-by-state analysis of the rate of return of Social Security versus a hypothetical simulation assuming payroll taxes used for Social Security were instead invested in private accounts. The following tables provide, by state of residence, the rate of return of Social Security compared to private accounts.
These tables, as well as the more detailed tables in our appendix, show workers’ estimated total lifetime Social Security benefits compared to their accumulated personal retirement account balances under two scenarios—tax increases or benefit cuts—that would make Social Security solvent over the long run. We also break total benefits and accumulated account balances down into monthly benefits and monthly annuities that workers could purchase using their personal retirement account balances. For both measures, we show workers by state, gender, and income level:
Our results demonstrate that younger workers (born in 1995) of all income levels would receive between two and seven times as much in retirement income from personal savings as they would from Social Security. Because Social Security paid out more in benefits than it collected in tax revenues to earlier generations, the gains would not be as large for older workers (those born in 1955 and 1975); however, they would still receive more from personal retirement accounts than from Social Security.
Why Private Savings Produce Higher Retirement Incomes than Social Security
Our results establish that personal investment accounts provide a significantly greater rate of return compared both to what Social Security can afford to pay as well as what it has promised to pay. Prior research comes to the same conclusion.20
1. Higher Returns and Larger Retirement Incomes. Investment returns in the private market are two to three times the rate of return of U.S. Treasuries (what Social Security used to invest in when it ran surpluses). Consequently, even most low-income earners who get the most back from Social Security (relative to what they contribute) would end up with higher retirement incomes if they had personal investment accounts. This phenomenon was not always true in the past under Social Security’s unsustainable promises, but it is true for anyone in their 40s or younger today.
For example, a 23-year-old female, born in 1995, living in Florida and earning the average wage can expect a monthly Social Security check of $1,393 in 2017 dollars when she retires at age 67 in 2062. However, if her payroll taxes had been invested half in large-cap stocks and half in Treasury bonds, based on historical averages she could buy an inflation-adjusting annuity (similar to Social Security) that would provide $2,524 per month in year 2017 dollars.21
The single female earner in Florida would have $709,461 saved at retirement in 2017 dollars. If she purchased an annuity paying her a monthly payout until death, which adjusts for CPI-U each year, it would pay her an estimated $2,524 in monthly income in 2017 dollars. Rate is based on ImmediateAnnuities.com annuity quotes in effect October 21, 2016, https://www.immediateannuities.com/ (accessed May 5, 2017).
This amount represents almost twice the amount Social Security will be able to pay.
The same is true for other earners. A 23-year-old male, born in 1995, living in Florida and earning only half the average wage throughout his working years would accumulate enough in a personal account to receive an annuity that would pay $3,093 per month in 2017 dollars. Social Security can only provide him significantly less at $1,551 per month.22
The single male earner in Florida would have $781,910 saved up at retirement in 2017 dollars. If he purchased an annuity paying him a monthly payout until death, which adjusts for CPI-U each year, it would pay him an estimated $3,093 in monthly income in 2017 dollars. Rate is based on ImmediateAnnuities.com annuity quotes in effect October 21, 2016, https://www.immediateannuities.com/ (accessed May 5, 2017).
Even low-earning females (born in 1995) who tend to receive the most bang-for-the-buck from Social Security would receive 40 percent more from a personal account than from Social Security ($1,262 per month from a personal account vs. $902 from Social Security).
2. Continued Wealth Growth Post-Retirement.A second advantage of private retirement savings is that savings that are not withdrawn at retirement can continue to earn investment returns during retirement. Even with conservative investments, savings can continue to grow and provide for larger disbursements in subsequent years and bequests to help support family members, friends, or charities after death.
3. The Ability to Leave Bequests. Social Security prevents workers from passing on their “saved” payroll taxes to their heirs if they die before collecting benefits or shortly afterwards. Under the current system, a mean-income worker pays about $4,700 per year into Social Security’s retirement program.23
In the first quarter of 2017, the mean usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers was $855. This translates into $44,460 annually and would amount to $212,074 over a 45-year career, assuming the worker begins at age 22 and retires at age 67. Mean earnings come from U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Table 1: Mean Usual Weekly Earnings of Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers by Sex, Quarterly Averages, Seasonally Adjusted,” https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm (accessed June 29, 2017).
Over a 45-year career, that is up to $212,000 that he could potentially lose if he dies before collecting benefits. Personal savings, on the other hand, do not disappear if their owners die before using them. Shifting some or all of Social Security’s taxes to personal savings could have a particularly large and positive impact on lower-income earners as well as on many other groups that tend to have lower life expectancies and are more likely to get little to nothing back from their Social Security taxes. Bequests can serve as more than windfall benefits; they can change individuals’ and families’ lifetime trajectories by providing money that can help a child or grandchild attend college, start a business, or make other investments in their futures.
4. Larger Paychecks, Greater Incomes, and Increased Wealth. Social Security could accomplish the goal of preventing poverty in old age with significantly lower taxes than it currently extracts. A smaller Social Security program would leave workers with bigger paychecks that they could use for current consumption, gaining education, pursuing business opportunities, building wealth, and generating higher retirement incomes. More income and wealth would make low- and middle-income communities more dynamic and prosperous places to live and work.
5. Increased Productivity. Personal savings that support private investments allow companies to create productivity-enhancing capital in the form of new machines, technology, and facilities. This increases the output of workers, which leads to better jobs and higher wages.24
The current Social Security system—which immediately spends all incoming revenues on retirees’ benefits—fails to accomplish the same productivity- and opportunity-enhancing effects.
Conclusion
This report provides workers with a comparison between what Social Security can provide and what they could receive if they had ownership of their Social Security payroll taxes. This information can help individuals of all ages understand what they can expect to get from the program in the long run.
The results are overwhelmingly clear. Americans would be better off keeping their payroll tax contributions and saving them in private retirement accounts than having to sacrifice them to the government’s broken Social Security system. Social Security’s design has, over the decades, presumed that many Americans are too incompetent to make informed decisions for themselves, but few Americans believe that the government knows better than they do what is best for them and their families. Moreover, Social Security’s financial structure effectively guarantees that workers will receive extremely low, or even negative, returns on their payroll taxes.
—Kevin Dayaratna, PhD, is Senior Statistician and Research Programmer in the Center for Data Analysis, of the Institute for Economic Freedom, at The Heritage Foundation. Rachel Greszler is Research Fellow in Economics, Budget, and Entitlements in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies of the Institute for Economic Freedom. Patrick Tyrrell is Research Coordinator in the Center for International Trade and Economics of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation.
By the way, that’s not necessarily a disparaging description. A Ponzi Scheme can work if there are always enough new people in the system to pay off the old people.
How serious? The Social Security Administration finally released the annual Trustees Report. This document has a wealth of data on the program’s financial condition, and Table VI.G9 is where the rubber meets the road.
As you can see from this chart, there will be an ever-increasing burden of Social Security taxes and spending over the next 75 years. And these numbers are adjusted for inflation!
The good news (relatively speaking) is that the economy also will be growing over the next 75 years, both in nominal terms and inflation-adjusted terms.
The bad news is that spending on Social Security will grow at a faster rate, so the program will consume a larger share of the economy’s output.
And because Social Security spending is growing faster than the economy (and also faster than tax revenue), this next chart shows there is going to be more and more red ink in the future. Once again, you’re looking at inflation-adjusted data.
As indicated by the chart’s title, the cumulative shortfall over the next 75 years is nearly $48 trillion. That’s a lot of money, even by Washington standards.
And with each passing year, the problem seems to worsen. The 75-year shortfall was $44.7 trillion according to the 2020 report and $42.1 trillion according to the 2019 report.
I’ll conclude by observing that today’s column focuses on the big-picture fiscal problems with Social Security.
But let’s not forget the program’s second crisis, which is the fact that Americans are deprived of the ability to enjoy much higher levels of retirement income.
P.P.S. I once made a $16 trillion dollar mistake on national TV when discussing Social Security’s shaky finances.
P.P.P.S. Much of the news coverage about the Trustees Report has focused on the year the Social Security Trust Fund supposedly runs out of money. But this is sloppy journalismsince the Trust Fund has nothing but IOUs (as illustrated by this joke).
And rather than hit the brakes, Biden wants to step on the gas with new giveaways, especially his plan to gut Bill Clinton’s welfare reform by creating new per-child handouts that would subsidize idleness and family dissolution.
But that doesn’t mean the problems can’t be fixed. We simply need to replace fiscal profligacy with spending restraint.
To set the stage for this discussion, here’s a look at what’s happened to the budget over the past several decades. You can see how the burden of federal spending has steadily increased, with noticeable one-time bumps in 2008-2009 (TARP and Obama’s so-called stimulus) and 2020-2021 (coronavirus).
The chart also includes projections between 2021 and 2031, based on new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office.
For today’s column, I want to focus on the next 10 years and show how the current fiscal mess can be averted with some modest spending restraint.
This second chart shows that spending actually drops over the next two years as coronavirus-related spending comes to an end. But once we get to 2023, the orange line shows that “baseline” spending (what happens to the budget if things are left on autopilot) climbs rapidly, more than twice the rate needed to keep pace with inflation.
But if there’s any sort of fiscal restraint (a freeze or some sort of spending cap), then the numbers look much better.
More specifically, a freeze or a 1-percent spending cap would actually produce a budget surplus by the year 2031.
But I’m not fixated on getting to a balanced budget. What’s more important is that the burden of government spending shrinks when the budget grows slower than the private sector.
In other words, we get good results when policy makers follow fiscal policy’s Golden Rule.
P.S. While it’s difficult to convince politicians to support spending restraint, it’s worth noting that the nation enjoyed a five-year spending freeze between 2009-2014.
I have written my Congressmen and Senators over and over about the debt ceiling increase requests by you and I have urged them to turn them down. This video below shows why I wanted them turned down.
Congress’s dance with the debt limit can be confusing and, frankly, the details can be a real snooze fest for many Americans. Sometimes a little humor clarifies the absurdities of Washington antics better than flow charts and talk of trillions.
The 31-second video and accompanying infographic “The Debt Ceiling Explained” by Bankrupting America offers the facts, leavened with a dose of levity. The conclusion is serious, however: The country’s debt threatens economic growth, and spending cuts are the answer.
_________________________
Senator John Boozman, 320 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Phone: (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371
It is obvious to me that if President Obama gets his hands on more money then he will continue to spend away our children’s future. He has already taken the national debt from 11 trillion to 16 trillion in just 4 years. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over I have written Speaker Boehner and written every Republican that represents Arkansans in Arkansas before (Griffin, Womack, Crawford, and only Senator Boozman got a chance to respond) concerning this. I am hoping they will stand up against this reckless spending that our federal government has done and will continue to do if given the chance.
What would happen if the debt ceiling was not increased? Yes President Obama would probably cancel White House tours and he would try to stop mail service or something else to get on our nerves but that is what the Republicans need to do.
TRY BORROWING AT A BANK WITH A FINANCIAL CONDITION LIKE THE USA HAS:
The problem in Washington is not lack of revenue but our lack of spending restraint. This video below makes that point. WASHINGTON IS A SPENDING ADDICT!!!
Please take the time to read Mo Brooks’ words and respond to me and tell me if you will vote against the debt ceiling increase. It is the only leverage we have on President Obama. Others have responded to me in the past including you and for that I am very grateful.
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
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Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 35) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 34) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 33) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 32) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Congressmen Tim Huelskamp on the debt ceiling Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 31) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 30) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 29) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 28) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 27) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 26) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
Uploaded by RepJoeWalsh on Jun 14, 2011 Our country’s debt continues to grow — it’s eating away at the American Dream. We need to make real cuts now. We need Cut, Cap, and Balance. The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 25) This post today is a part of a series […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 23) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 22) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 21) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 20) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 19) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 18) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 17) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 16) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, […]
That’s not a smart strategy when inflation already is at 40-year highs.
President Biden did address the topic of rising prices during his speech, but his approach was so incoherent that even Larry Summers (Treasury Secretary for Bill Clinton and head of the National Economic Council for Barack Obama) felt compelled to share some critical tweets.
This is remarkable. I’ve spent the past three decades fighting against some of Summers’ bad ideas on fiscal policy (he was a big supporter of the OECD’s anti-tax competition project, for instance).
But now we’re sort of on the same side (at least on a few issues) because Biden has embraced a reckless Bernie Sanders-type agenda of budget profligacy, class-warfare taxes, regulatory excess, and crass protectionism that is too extreme for sane people on the left.
Along with a head-in-the-sand view of monetary policy.
In a column for Canada’s Fraser Institute, Robert O’Quinn and I addressed Biden’s strange comments on inflation.
Here’s some of what we wrote on that topic.
After a disastrous first year pursuing an agenda that became increasingly unpopular, President Biden had an opportunity to reset his administration in a centrist direction as part of his first State of the Union Address. But he didn’t.On every domestic issue, he catered to the Democratic Party’s hardcore left-wing activists… Inflation, as Nobel laureate Milton Friedman observed, is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. …In his speech, Biden ignored the true cause of inflation. Instead, he offered a grab bag of statist ideas such as aggressive antitrust enforcement, price controls on prescription drugs, and tax credits for energy conservation and green energy—policies that, whatever their merits, have little or nothing to do with inflation.
Our basic message is that Biden ignored the real cause of inflation (bad monetary policy by the Federal Reserve) and instead came up with ideas (either bad or irrelevant) to addresses the symptom(s) of inflation.
We also noted that Biden’s nominees to the Federal Reserve are underwhelming.
Moreover, he has been pushing three controversial nominees to the Federal Reserve Board—Sarah Bloom Raskin, Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson—who lack monetary expertise and are generally regarded as inflation doves. Raskin’s primary “qualification” is her support for using the Fed’s regulatory powers to divert credit away from oil and natural gas production. Cook and Jefferson have primarily written about poverty and race, which are outside of the Fed’s legislative mandate.
Instead, we have a president who thinks it’s a place where left-leaning activists should get patronage appointments.
P.S. If you have the time and interest, here’s an 40-minute videoexplaining the Federal Reserve’s track record of bad monetary policy.
P.P.S. If you’re constrained for time, I recommend this five-minute video on alternatives to the Federal Reserve and this six-minute video on how people can protect themselves from bad monetary policy.
This meant that voters either were old enough to personally experience the benefits of Reaganomics, or they managed to learn some history (in spite of a biased education establishment).
Well, now I have another reason to be happy. According to a new poll shared by Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner, nearly 70 percent of respondents have a favorable impression of Reagan, easily the best result for all recent presidents.
Reagan also is disliked by the smallest percentage of respondents, a fact that almost surely irks some of my Reagan-hating friends.
My two cents for today is that the current fight between Trumpism and establishment Republicanism is merely stylistic. If you crunch the numbers, you’ll see that both camps are big spenders.
Let’s wrap up with this cartoon strip that captures my sentiments.
P.S. Here’s an amusing story from Reagan about socialism (h/t: Don Boudreaux).
Not quite as good as this video, and it’s not even good enough to get added to this collection of Reagan videos, but it is a good description of why socialism is a failure.
Ross Kaminsky of KHOW and I discussed how this is already happening.
I hate being right, but it’s always safe to predict that politicians and bureaucrats will embrace policies that give more power to government.
Especially when they are very anxious to stifle tax competition.
For decades, people in government have been upset that the tax cuts implemented by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatchertriggered a four-decade trend of lower tax rates and pro-growth tax reform.
That’s the reason Biden and his Treasury Secretary proposed a 15 percent minimum tax rate for businesses.
And it’s the reason they now want the rate to be even higher.
Though even I’m surprised that they’re already pushing for that outcome when the original pact hasn’t even been approved or implemented.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will press G20 counterparts this week for a global minimum corporate tax rate above the 15% floor agreed by 130 countries last week…the global minimum tax rate…is tied to the outcome of legislation to raise the U.S. minimum tax rate, a Treasury official said.The Biden administration has proposed doubling the U.S. minimum tax on corporations overseas intangible income to 21% along with a new companion “enforcement” tax that would deny deductions to companies for tax payments to countries that fail to adopt the new global minimum rate. The officials said several countries were pushing for a rate above 15%, along with the United States.
Other kleptocratic governments naturally want the same thing.
A G7 proposal for a global minimum tax rate of 15% is too low and a rate of at least 21% is needed, Argentina’s finance minister said on Monday, leading a push by some developing countries… “The 15% rate is way too low,” Argentine Finance Minister Martin Guzman told an online panel hosted by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. …”The minimum rate being proposed would not do much to countries in Africa…,” Mathew Gbonjubola, Nigeria’s tax policy director, told the same conference.
Needless to say, I’m not surprised that Argentina is on the wrong side.
And supporters of class warfare also are agitating for a higher minimum rate. Here are some excerpts from a column in the New York Times by Gabriel Zucman and Gus Wezerek.
In the decades after World War II, close to 50 percent of American companies’ earnings went to state and federal taxes. …it was a golden period. …President Biden should be applauded for trying to end the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates. But even if Congress approves the 15 percent global minimum corporate tax, it won’t be enough. …the Biden administration to give working families a real leg up, it should push Congress to enact a 25 percent minimum tax, which would bring in about $200 billion in additional revenue each year. …With a 25 percent minimum corporate tax, the Biden administration would begin to reverse decades of growing inequality. And it would encourage other countries to do the same, replacing a race to the bottom with a sprint to the top.
I can’t resist making two observations about this ideological screed.
Even the IMF and OECD agree that the so-called race to the bottom has not led to a decline in corporate tax revenues, even when measured as a share of economic output.
Since companies legally avoid rather than illegally evade taxes, the headline of the column is utterly dishonest – but it’s what we’ve learned to expect from the New York Times.
The only good thing about the Zucman-Wezerek column is that it includes this chart showing how corporate tax rates have dramatically declined since 1980.
P.S. For those interested, the horizontal line at the bottom is for Bermuda, though other jurisdictions (such as Monaco and the Cayman Islands) also deserve credit for having no corporate income taxes.
P.P.S. If you want to know why high corporate tax rates are misguided, click here. And if you want to know why Biden’s plan to raise the U.S. corporate tax rate is misguided, click here. Or here. Or here.
P.P.P.S. And if you want more information about why Biden’s global tax cartel is bad, click here, here, and here.
I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980’s and it all came about as he said it would when Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts took place. I wish we would lower taxes now instead of looking for more revenue through raised taxes. We have to grow the economy:
Mitt Romney repeatedly said last night that he would not allow tax cuts to add to the deficit. He repeatedly said it because over and over again Obama blathered the liberal talking point that cutting taxes necessarily increased deficits.
Romney’s exact words: “I want to underline that — no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”
The fact of the matter is that we can go back to Calvin Coolidge who said very nearly THE EXACT SAME THING to his treasury secretary: he too would not allow any tax cuts that added to the debt. Andrew Mellon – quite possibly the most brilliant economic mind of his day – did a great deal of research and determined what he believed was the best tax rate. And the Coolidge administration DID cut income taxes and MASSIVELY increased revenues. Coolidge and Mellon cut the income tax rate 67.12 percent (from 73 to 24 percent); and revenues not only did not go down, but they went UP by at least 42.86 percent (from $700 billion to over $1 billion).
That’s something called a documented fact. But that wasn’t all that happened: another incredible thing was that the taxes and percentage of taxes paid actually went UP for the rich. Because as they were allowed to keep more of the profits that they earned by investing in successful business, they significantly increased their investments and therefore paid more in taxes than they otherwise would have had they continued sheltering their money to protect themselves from the higher tax rates. Liberals ignore reality, but it is simply true. It is a fact. It happened.
Then FDR came along and raised the tax rates again and the opposite happened: we collected less and less revenue while the burden of taxation fell increasingly on the poor and middle class again. Which is exactly what Obama wants to do.
People don’t realize that John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest Democrat presidents, was a TAX CUTTERwho believed the conservative economic philosophy that cutting tax rates would in fact increase tax revenues. He too cut taxes, and he too increased tax revenues.
So we get to Ronald Reagan, who famously cut taxes. And again, we find that Reagan cut that godawful liberal tax rate during an incredibly godawful liberal-caused economic recession, and he increased tax revenue by 20.71 percent (with revenues increasing from $956 billion to $1.154 trillion). And again, the taxes were paid primarily by the rich:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So we get to George Bush and the Bush tax cuts that liberals and in particular Obama have just demonized up one side and demagogued down the other. And I can simply quote the New York Times AT the time:
WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.
A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.
Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.
Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”
The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.
And of course the New York Times, as reliable liberals, use the adjective whenever something good happens under conservative policies and whenever something bad happens under liberal policies: ”unexpected.” But it WASN’T ”unexpected.” It was EXACTLY what Republicans had said would happen and in fact it was exactly what HAD IN FACT HAPPENED every single time we’ve EVER cut income tax rates.
The truth is that conservative tax policy has a perfect track record: every single time it has ever been tried, we have INCREASED tax revenues while not only exploding economic activity and creating more jobs, but encouraging the wealthy to pay more in taxes as well. And liberals simply dishonestly refuse to acknowledge documented history.
Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.
Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s. From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:
In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history. Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment. High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).
Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.” And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”
And what happened?
“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent. These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies. Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains. President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.
Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue. In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million. In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark. Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).
Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935). See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.
FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.
It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.
Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever. Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964
“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.
“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill
Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.
So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan. Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Did Reagan’s tax cuts decrease federal revenues? Hardly:
We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts. And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASEof revenue.
So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue. But who paid the increased tax revenue? The poor? Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall. But that was exactly wrong. In reality:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So Ronald Reagan a) collected more total revenue, b) collected more revenue from the rich, while c) reducing revenue collected by the bottom half of taxpayers, and d) generated an economic powerhouse that lasted – with only minor hiccups – for nearly three decades. Pretty good achievement considering that his predecessor was forced to describe his own economy as a “malaise,” suffering due to a “crisis of confidence.” Pretty good considering that President Jimmy Carter responded to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering,“It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”
Reagan whipped inflation. Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.
Displaying photos of Cuban missile sites, then-President Ronald Reagan called Russia “the evil empire” at a March 23, 1983, press conference. (Photo: Penelope Breese/Liaison/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Regardless of what any American feels about what steps we should take in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive incursion into Ukraine, for sure most are appalled by what he has done.
As Putin moves to regain Russian control over nations that once were part of the Soviet sphere, we ought to think about the circumstances under which the Soviet Union collapsed to consider how it all might be reversed.
In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan spoke to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, and delivered what would famously become known as the speech in which he called the Soviet Union the “evil empire.”
Discussing America’s efforts to confront the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal, he said: “I urge you to beware the temptation of pride … declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire … and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
Reagan spoke more than powerful words of truth that day. He spoke almost as a prophet.
He noted further: “While America’s military strength is important, let me add here that I’ve always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.”
Some eight years later, the Soviet Union, which for years during the Cold War was thought to be the superpower rival to the United States, collapsed.
There was no war. There was just resolve and Reagan’s unwavering commitment to the principles he articulated that day in 1983. And eight years after that speech, in 1991, Ukraine, now under siege by Putin, was freed from subjugation under the Soviet regime and declared its freedom, independence, and sovereignty.
As Putin tries to reverse history, it is incumbent upon us to not forget that Reagan declared the global struggle as first and foremost a spiritual struggle, a struggle of good against evil.
As Americans watch events unfold in Ukraine, we must refocus on what is going on in our own country. If we lose a sense of the importance and relevance of Reagan’s words as they apply at home, we surely will not know how to relate to events as they transpire in the rest of the world.
And there is plenty of reason to believe we are losing that perspective at home. We see a direct correlation within our own borders, in our own country, of the decline in faith in the eternal principles that keep us free, and with this decline, Americans are gradually but decisively choosing to abandon their freedom.
In a survey published at the end of last year, Gallup reported that 69% of Americans self-identified as Christians in 2021, compared with 90% who self-identified as Christians in 1971. Twenty-one percent said they have “no religion” in 2021, compared to 4% in 1971. In 1965, 70% of Americans said religion is “very important” to them. By 2021, this was down to 49%.
Coincident with the decline of the importance that Americans give to religion, Americans have turned their lives increasingly over to government control. In 1950, government at federal, state, and local levels took almost 23% of the American economy. In 2020, this reached almost 45%.
Turning back again to Reagan’s words, “But we must never forget that no government schemes are going to perfect man.” Our struggle, said Reagan, is about good and evil.
It’s no accident that as America retreats in this struggle, as Americans increasingly believe that government can perfect man, and as we relinquish our freedom, despots like Putin will step forward and try to move the world back to a darker time.
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Ross Kaminsky of KHOW and I discussed how this is already happening.
I hate being right, but it’s always safe to predict that politicians and bureaucrats will embrace policies that give more power to government.
Especially when they are very anxious to stifle tax competition.
For decades, people in government have been upset that the tax cuts implemented by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatchertriggered a four-decade trend of lower tax rates and pro-growth tax reform.
That’s the reason Biden and his Treasury Secretary proposed a 15 percent minimum tax rate for businesses.
And it’s the reason they now want the rate to be even higher.
Though even I’m surprised that they’re already pushing for that outcome when the original pact hasn’t even been approved or implemented.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will press G20 counterparts this week for a global minimum corporate tax rate above the 15% floor agreed by 130 countries last week…the global minimum tax rate…is tied to the outcome of legislation to raise the U.S. minimum tax rate, a Treasury official said.The Biden administration has proposed doubling the U.S. minimum tax on corporations overseas intangible income to 21% along with a new companion “enforcement” tax that would deny deductions to companies for tax payments to countries that fail to adopt the new global minimum rate. The officials said several countries were pushing for a rate above 15%, along with the United States.
Other kleptocratic governments naturally want the same thing.
A G7 proposal for a global minimum tax rate of 15% is too low and a rate of at least 21% is needed, Argentina’s finance minister said on Monday, leading a push by some developing countries… “The 15% rate is way too low,” Argentine Finance Minister Martin Guzman told an online panel hosted by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. …”The minimum rate being proposed would not do much to countries in Africa…,” Mathew Gbonjubola, Nigeria’s tax policy director, told the same conference.
Needless to say, I’m not surprised that Argentina is on the wrong side.
And supporters of class warfare also are agitating for a higher minimum rate. Here are some excerpts from a column in the New York Times by Gabriel Zucman and Gus Wezerek.
In the decades after World War II, close to 50 percent of American companies’ earnings went to state and federal taxes. …it was a golden period. …President Biden should be applauded for trying to end the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates. But even if Congress approves the 15 percent global minimum corporate tax, it won’t be enough. …the Biden administration to give working families a real leg up, it should push Congress to enact a 25 percent minimum tax, which would bring in about $200 billion in additional revenue each year. …With a 25 percent minimum corporate tax, the Biden administration would begin to reverse decades of growing inequality. And it would encourage other countries to do the same, replacing a race to the bottom with a sprint to the top.
I can’t resist making two observations about this ideological screed.
Even the IMF and OECD agree that the so-called race to the bottom has not led to a decline in corporate tax revenues, even when measured as a share of economic output.
Since companies legally avoid rather than illegally evade taxes, the headline of the column is utterly dishonest – but it’s what we’ve learned to expect from the New York Times.
The only good thing about the Zucman-Wezerek column is that it includes this chart showing how corporate tax rates have dramatically declined since 1980.
P.S. For those interested, the horizontal line at the bottom is for Bermuda, though other jurisdictions (such as Monaco and the Cayman Islands) also deserve credit for having no corporate income taxes.
P.P.S. If you want to know why high corporate tax rates are misguided, click here. And if you want to know why Biden’s plan to raise the U.S. corporate tax rate is misguided, click here. Or here. Or here.
P.P.P.S. And if you want more information about why Biden’s global tax cartel is bad, click here, here, and here.
I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980’s and it all came about as he said it would when Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts took place. I wish we would lower taxes now instead of looking for more revenue through raised taxes. We have to grow the economy:
Mitt Romney repeatedly said last night that he would not allow tax cuts to add to the deficit. He repeatedly said it because over and over again Obama blathered the liberal talking point that cutting taxes necessarily increased deficits.
Romney’s exact words: “I want to underline that — no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”
The fact of the matter is that we can go back to Calvin Coolidge who said very nearly THE EXACT SAME THING to his treasury secretary: he too would not allow any tax cuts that added to the debt. Andrew Mellon – quite possibly the most brilliant economic mind of his day – did a great deal of research and determined what he believed was the best tax rate. And the Coolidge administration DID cut income taxes and MASSIVELY increased revenues. Coolidge and Mellon cut the income tax rate 67.12 percent (from 73 to 24 percent); and revenues not only did not go down, but they went UP by at least 42.86 percent (from $700 billion to over $1 billion).
That’s something called a documented fact. But that wasn’t all that happened: another incredible thing was that the taxes and percentage of taxes paid actually went UP for the rich. Because as they were allowed to keep more of the profits that they earned by investing in successful business, they significantly increased their investments and therefore paid more in taxes than they otherwise would have had they continued sheltering their money to protect themselves from the higher tax rates. Liberals ignore reality, but it is simply true. It is a fact. It happened.
Then FDR came along and raised the tax rates again and the opposite happened: we collected less and less revenue while the burden of taxation fell increasingly on the poor and middle class again. Which is exactly what Obama wants to do.
People don’t realize that John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest Democrat presidents, was a TAX CUTTERwho believed the conservative economic philosophy that cutting tax rates would in fact increase tax revenues. He too cut taxes, and he too increased tax revenues.
So we get to Ronald Reagan, who famously cut taxes. And again, we find that Reagan cut that godawful liberal tax rate during an incredibly godawful liberal-caused economic recession, and he increased tax revenue by 20.71 percent (with revenues increasing from $956 billion to $1.154 trillion). And again, the taxes were paid primarily by the rich:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So we get to George Bush and the Bush tax cuts that liberals and in particular Obama have just demonized up one side and demagogued down the other. And I can simply quote the New York Times AT the time:
WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.
A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.
Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.
Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”
The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.
And of course the New York Times, as reliable liberals, use the adjective whenever something good happens under conservative policies and whenever something bad happens under liberal policies: ”unexpected.” But it WASN’T ”unexpected.” It was EXACTLY what Republicans had said would happen and in fact it was exactly what HAD IN FACT HAPPENED every single time we’ve EVER cut income tax rates.
The truth is that conservative tax policy has a perfect track record: every single time it has ever been tried, we have INCREASED tax revenues while not only exploding economic activity and creating more jobs, but encouraging the wealthy to pay more in taxes as well. And liberals simply dishonestly refuse to acknowledge documented history.
Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.
Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s. From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:
In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history. Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment. High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).
Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.” And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”
And what happened?
“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent. These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies. Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains. President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.
Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue. In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million. In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark. Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).
Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935). See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.
FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.
It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.
Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever. Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964
“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.
“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill
Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.
So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan. Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Did Reagan’s tax cuts decrease federal revenues? Hardly:
We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts. And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASEof revenue.
So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue. But who paid the increased tax revenue? The poor? Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall. But that was exactly wrong. In reality:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So Ronald Reagan a) collected more total revenue, b) collected more revenue from the rich, while c) reducing revenue collected by the bottom half of taxpayers, and d) generated an economic powerhouse that lasted – with only minor hiccups – for nearly three decades. Pretty good achievement considering that his predecessor was forced to describe his own economy as a “malaise,” suffering due to a “crisis of confidence.” Pretty good considering that President Jimmy Carter responded to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering,“It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”
Reagan whipped inflation. Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.
He’s bad on the issues where Trump wasbad (spending and trade).
He’s bad on the issues where Trump was good (most notably, taxes).
And he’s bad on the issues where Trump had a mixedrecord (regulation).
Based on his track record as a long-time Senator, none of this is a surprise. According to vote ratings from the Club for Growth and National Taxpayers Union, Biden was to the left of even Crazy Bernie.
Unfortunately, a bad president (anyone remember Nixon?) can do a lot more damage than a bad senator.
Today is Part I of a series of columns analyzing Biden’s failure.
We’ll start with his so-called Build Back Better plan. Joe Biden didn’t explicitly mention “BBB” is his State of the Union address, but he did promote almost all of the specific policies that are in that plan.
And he even made the preposterous argument that some of those policies would help bring inflation under control.
I’ve repeatedlyexplained why the president’s plan for a bigger welfare state is bad news, but this tweet from Americans for Prosperity’s Akash Chougule does a great job of debunking Biden’s argument in a very succinct fashion.
In areas where the free market operates, by contrast, prices actually tend to decline.
I’ll close with the observation that Biden’s Build Back Better is a clunky amalgamation of new and expanded entitlements. His per-child handout is the most expensive, and it’s especially pernicious because it would undo the success of Bill Clinton (and Newt Gingrich’s) welfare reform.
But if there was a prize for the most economic damage per dollar spent, Biden’s scheme for government-dictated childcare would be the worst of the worst since he subsidizes demand while also restricting supply. If it gets approved, the chart may need a new vertical axis because Biden will screw up the market for childcare even more than the government has screwed up the markets for health care and higher education.
The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.
Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger,
I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.
Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.
Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia.
It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:
Roger Kimball Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion
Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words:
That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.
Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”
There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.
Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.
From left: Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.
Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.
The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.
Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.
Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.
I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.
Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.
As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.
Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.
Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.
“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”
The full text of the letter can be found here and below.
June 7, 2021
The Honorable Merrick B. Garland
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Garland:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.
We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability. As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans. Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States.
During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1] A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2] Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3]
In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:
“One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]
Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties. According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]
DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7] DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol. This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8] No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests. It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.
Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning. In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:
Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:
Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020? If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?
How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:
Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach? If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed:
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
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______________________
March 23, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too. Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.
___________________
The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.
Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland) when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION
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Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture
Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer
http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.
“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”
Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.
The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.
“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”
This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”
That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.
The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.
I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.
On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.
Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.
As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.
Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.
He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.
“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”
“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.
“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.
The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”
And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.
______________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min 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, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason 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 […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age 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 […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Feb., 18, 2022 (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
President Joe Biden is nominating federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, the White House said. If confirmed by the Senate, she will be the first Black woman selected to serve on the high court.
Biden is filling the seat that will be vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, who is retiring at the end of the term this summer.
The President tweeted his announcement Friday morning.
“I’m proud to announce that I am nominating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court. Currently serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, she is one of our nation’s brightest legal minds and will be an exceptional Justice,” he wrote.
Jackson, 51, is currently a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. She would be the current court’s second Black justice — Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative, is the other — and just the third in history.
Biden introduced Jackson in remarks at the White House Friday afternoon.
Jackson would be only the sixth woman to serve in the court’s history, and her confirmation would mean that for the first time four women would sit together on the nine-member court.
She would replace one of the more liberal justices, so she would not tip the balance of the court, which some say leans 6-3 in favor of conservatives, or 3-3-3 right down the middle, depending on who you ask.
Her nomination is subject to confirmation by the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority by a razor-thin 50-50 margin with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker. Party leaders have promised swift but deliberate consideration of the president’s nominee.
“With her exceptional qualifications and record of evenhandedness, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a Justice who will uphold the Constitution and protect the rights of all Americans, including the voiceless and vulnerable,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Reverting Back to Identity Politics?
Two years ago, Biden pledged in a South Carolina debate to nominate a Black woman to the high court if presented with a vacancy.
“Everyone should be represented,” Biden said. “We talked about the Supreme Court — I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure we in fact get everyone represented.”
But that statement received pushback from Republicans and other conservatives. Last month, former Housing Secretary Ben Carson who served under President Donald Trump, accused Biden of “reverting back to identity politics.”
“This is America. Many people fought and gave their lives to bring equality, and now we’re reverting back to identity politics,” Carson said on WMAL radio’s Vince Coglianese Show when asked about the impending court vacancy. “And as we continue to do that, we’re bringing more division into our country.”
A Judicial Activist?
Meanwhile, Biden’s nomination of Jackson to fill the seat being vacated by Justice Breyer received criticism as well.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson to the appeals court last year, had pushed Biden to nominate a different candidate from his home state, Judge J. Michelle Childs. He said earlier this month that his vote would be “very problematic” if it were anyone else, and he expressed disappointment in a tweet Friday that Biden had not nominated a more moderate choice.
“It means the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again,” the South Carolina senator wrote. “The attacks by the Left on Judge Childs from South Carolina apparently worked.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in a statement he looks forward to meeting with Jackson and “studying her record, legal views, and judicial philosophy.”
“Senate Republicans believe the Court and the country deserve better than Senate Democrats’ routine of baseless smears and shameless distortions. The Senate must conduct a rigorous, exhaustive review of Judge Jackson’s nomination as befits a lifetime appointment to our highest Court. This is especially crucial as American families face major crises that connect directly to our legal system, such as skyrocketing violent crime and open borders,” McConnell said.
“I voted against confirming Judge Jackson to her current position less than a year ago. Since then, I understand that she has published a total of two opinions, both in the last few weeks, and that one of her prior rulings was just reversed by a unanimous panel of her present colleagues on the D.C. Circuit. I also understand Judge Jackson was the favored choice of far-left dark-money groups that have spent years attacking the legitimacy and structure of the Court itself,” the statement concluded.
Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO, and chief counsel for First Liberty Institute, warned the president has selected “a judicial activist” for the Supreme Court.
“In nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden is selecting a judicial activist for the Supreme Court,” Shackelford said. “Her record from the beginning of her career shows hostility to religious liberty, free speech, and other constitutional rights. The American people do not want a liberal extremist on the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Judge Jackson’s judicial activism will place the constitutional rights of all Americans in jeopardy.”
But Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who currently serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, promised during the confirmation process Judge Jackson would be “given the dignity and respect she deserves” rather than the pattern of mistreatment leveled by Democrats against conservative nominees.
“Ultimately I will be looking to see whether Judge Jackson will uphold the rule of law and call balls and strikes, or if she will legislate from the bench in pursuit of a specific agenda,” Cornyn said in a statement. “No matter what, Judge Jackson will be given the dignity and respect she deserves. The American people will see a starkly different process from the treatment of Justice Kavanaugh and other judicial nominees during the previous Administration.”
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Abortion: When Does Life Begin? – R.C. Sproul
Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race? Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
________________
______________________
September 25, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which can be found on You Tube. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.
Today I want to respond to your letter to me on July 9, 2021. Here it is below:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 9, 2021
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
Alexander, AR
Dear Mr. Hatcher,
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts on abortion. Hearing from passionate individuals like me inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America. I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story. We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America. If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.
Sincerely
Joe Biden
Mr. President, my wife was born in JEFFERSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Adrian Rogers tells a story about another lady that was born in that same hospital: “They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF?”
Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)
I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):
(both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer mentioned Carl Sagan in their books and that prompted me to write Sagan and expose him to their views.
For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.
The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.
Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.
In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?
Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.
Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?
As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?
——-
End of Sagan Excerpt
When I was in high school the book and film series named WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? came out and it featured Doctor C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer and they looked at the issues of abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia and they looked at comments from such scholars as Peter Singer and James D. Watson.
C. Everett Koop pictured above and Peter Singer below
Peter Singer, an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
James D.Watson
In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”
Carl Sagan
On August 30, 1995 I mailed a letter to Carl Sagan that probably prompted this discussion on abortion and it enclosed a lengthy story from Adrian Rogers about an abortion case in Pine Bluff, Arkansas that almost became an infanticide case:
An excerpt from the Sunday morning message (11-6-83) by Adrian Rogers in Memphis, TN.
I want to tell you that secular humanism and so-called abortion rights are inseparably linked together. We have been taught that our bodies and our children are the products of the evolutionary process, and so therefore human life may not be all that valuable to begin with. We have come today to where it is legal and even considered to be a good thing to put little babies to death…15 million little babies put to death since 1973 because of this philosophy of Secular Humanism.
How did the court make that type of decision? You would think it would be so obvious. You can’t do that! You can’t kill little babies! Why? Because the Bible says! Friend, they don’t give a hoot what the Bible says! There used to be a time when they talked about what the Bible says because there was a time that we as a nation had a constitution that was based in the Judeo-Christian ethic, but today if we say “The Bible says” or “God says “Separation of Church and State. Don’t tell us what the Bible says or what God says. We will tell you what we think!” Therefore, they look at the situation and they decide if it is right or wrong purely on the humanistic philosophy that right and wrong are relative and the situation says what is right or what is wrong.
This little girl just 19 years old went into the doctor’s office and he examined her. He said, “We can take take of you.” He gave her an injection in her arm that was to cause her to go into labor and to get rid of that protoplasm, that feud, that little mass that was in her, but she wasn’t prepared for the sound she was about to hear. It was a little baby crying. That little baby weighed 13 ounces. His hand the size of my thumbnail. You know what the doctor did. The doctor put that little baby in a grocery sack and gave it to Maria’s two friends who were with her in that doctor office and Said, “It will stop making those noises after a while.”
(Adrian Rogers pictured above)
Pine Bluff, ArkansasMy wife was born in main hospital in Pine Bluff, Arkansas
They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF? The same life!!! Are you going to tell me that is not a baby? Are you going to tell me that if that baby had been put to death it would not have been murder? You will never convince me of that. What has happened to us in America? We have been sold a bill of goods by the Secular Humanists!
Carl Sagan was elected the HUMANIST OF THE YEAR in 1982 by the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION
Carl Sagan asked, “Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?”
This message “A Christian Manifesto” was given in 1982 by the late Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer when he was age 70 at D. James Kennedy’s Corral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Listen to this important message where Dr. Schaeffer says it is the duty of Christians to disobey the government when it comes in conflict with God’s laws. So many have misinterpreted Romans 13 to mean unconditional obedience to the state. When the state promotes an evil agenda and anti-Christian statues we must obey God rather than men. Acts
I use to watch James Kennedy preach from his TV pulpit with great delight in the 1980’s. Both of these men are gone to be with the Lord now. We need new Christian leaders to rise up in their stead.
To view Part 2 See Francis Schaeffer Lecture- Christian Manifesto Pt 2 of 2 video
The religious and political freedom’s we enjoy as Americans was based on the Bible and the legacy of the Reformation according to Francis Schaeffer. These freedoms will continue to diminish as we cast off the authority of Holy Scripture.
In public schools there is no other view of reality but that final reality is shaped by chance.
Likewise, public television gives us many things that we like culturally but so much of it is mere propaganda shaped by a humanistic world and life view.
_____________________________
I was able to watch Francis Schaeffer deliver a speech on a book he wrote called “A Christian Manifesto” and I heard him in several interviews on it in 1981 and 1982. I listened with great interest since I also read that book over and over again. Below is a portion of one of Schaeffer’s talks on a crucial subject that is very important today too.
A great talk by Francis Schaeffer:A Christian Manifesto by Dr. Francis A. SchaefferThis address was delivered by the late Dr. Schaeffer in 1982 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is based on one of his books, which bears the same title._________
Infanticide and youth enthansia ———So what we find then, is that the medical profession has largely changed — not all doctors. I’m sure there are doctors here in the audience who feel very, very differently, who feel indeed that human life is important and you wouldn’t take it, easily, wantonly. But, in general, we must say (and all you have to do is look at the TV programs), all you have to do is hear about the increased talk about allowing the Mongoloid child — the child with Down’s Syndrome — to starve to death if it’s born this way. Increasingly, we find on every side the medical profession has changed its views.
The view now is, “Is this life worth saving?”I look at you… You’re an older congregation than I am usually used to speaking to. You’d better think, because — this — means — you! It does not stop with abortion and infanticide. It stops at the question, “What about the old person? Is he worth hanging on to?” Should we, as they are doing in England in this awful organization, EXIT, teach older people to commit suicide? Should we help them get rid of them because they are an economic burden, a nuisance? I want to tell you, once you begin chipping away the medical profession…
The intrinsic value of the human life is founded upon the Judeo-Christian concept that man is unique because he is made in the image of God, and not because he is well, strong, a consumer, a sex object or any other thing. That is where whatever compassion this country has is, and certainly it is far from perfect and has never been perfect. Nor out of the Reformation has there been a Golden Age, but whatever compassion there has ever been, it is rooted in the fact that our culture knows that man is unique, is made in the image of God. Take it away, and I just say gently, the stopper is out of the bathtub for all human life.
______________________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on April 16, 2011. First you will see my letter to him which was mailed around April 9th(although […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
When I think of the things that make me sad concerning this country, the first thing that pops into my mind is our treatment of unborn children. Donald Trump is probably going to run for president of the United States. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council recently had a conversation with him concerning the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min 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 […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min 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, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason 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 […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age 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 […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE 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 […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
meaning they skim off the productive efforts of others via corruption, royal prerogative or control of some valuable market or resource. That’s why Russia is an outlier in Ms. Freund’s research: lots of oligarchs, with not much economic benefit to show for it.
…Our index uses 25 years of data from Forbes’s annual stock-take of the world’s billionaires. …We have classified the main source of each billionaire’s wealth into crony and non-crony sectors. …Russia’s crony economy sticks out like a blinged-up Muscovite… Some 70% of the 120 Russian billionaires, who together hold 80% of its billionaire wealth, fall within our crony-capitalist definition. Wealth equivalent to 28% of Russia’s gdp in 2021 came from crony sectors, up from 18% in 2016.
This upsets many people, and perhaps with some justification. After all, bad things often happen when big business and big government intersect.
Unfortunately, many insider leftists are perfectly content with those policies and they use inequality to distract voters from the real problem.
P.S. I wrote yesterday about Chris Christie’s problems in New Jersey. I said his real challenge was the need to reduce the burden of government, not the bridge scandal.
Materials line a table during a gathering of atheist, humanist and secular leaders in Temecula, California, for the first SoCal Secular Leadership Summit, which was held from March 1-3, 2019. Photo courtesy Heather AdamsSeptember 28, 2020By 
The Daily Hatch 