We lost the war on poverty

After 48 years, it is time to run up the white flag on the War on Poverty.

The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent. The speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty.

But we lost that war.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

It was the most expensive war America has ever fought:

Fifteen trillion dollars: That’s how much American taxpayers have forked over in the name of helping the poor since 1964. And what do we have to show for it? A poverty rate that has barely budged, an entrenched bureaucracy, and a population — like that of Greece and Portugal, two welfare-state basket cases — increasingly dependent on government handouts.

So who lost the war? The poor, obviously, whose numbers are on track this year to exceed the highest number ever. But also the taxpayers.

Needless to say, taxpayers have been the big losers in the war. Federal welfare spending has risen 375 percent (in constant 2011 dollars) since 1965. Total welfare spending has climbed almost as much: Governments are now disbursing $908 billion a year to alleviate poverty, up from $256 billion (also in constant dollars) in 1965. Moreover, notes Tanner:

Over the last decade the increase has been even more rapid. Federal welfare spending increased significantly under the Bush administration, but President Obama has thrown money at anti-poverty programs at an unprecedented rate. Since taking office, the Obama administration has increased spending on welfare programs by more than $193 billion.

While some of the spending hikes under Obama can be attributed to the recession, Tanner writes, “part of the program’s growth is due to conscious policy choices by this administration to ease eligibility rules and expand caseloads.” This, he points out, “undid many of the incentives contained in the 1996 Clinton welfare reform, which helped states to reduce welfare rolls.” As a result, the administration projects that “combined federal and state welfare spending will not drop significantly once the economy fully recovers,” with the annual tab reaching $1 trillion in 2014 and the 10-year total hitting $10.3 trillion — an amount that, Tanner calculates, comes to “$250,000 for every American currently living in poverty, or $1 million for every poor family of four.”

The entire US government operates on the principle enunciated by British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeili: "Never complain, never explain." Here's a quote from a speech made almost 50 years ago asking a very good question and giving the same answer we get now. The more things change, the more they stay the same:

Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer -- and they've had almost 30 years of it -- shouldn't we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing? But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater.

The actual purpose of the federal government's anti-poverty programs is not to decrease poverty. "Federal anti-poverty programs" are a prime example of Newspeak. Because the very last thing they want to do is actually decrease the number of poor people. The purpose is to grow the government and enhance its power and budget.

Got skin cancer? The government made it happen

Study: Exposure to CFL bulbs harms healthy skin cells | The Daily Caller:

New research funded by the National Science Foundation has scientists warning consumers about the potentially harmful effects energy-saving CFL light bulbs can have on skin.

Making it quite literally true that if you get skin cancer because of CFL bulbs, you didn't get there on your own. The government made it happen.

Fracking's oponents' mythical science

Why the Left loves "freedom of worship" but not of religion

Freedom of Worship’s Assault on Freedom of Religion | First Things:

Faith retention rates by religion

Found this over at Alan Bevere's site:

It strikes me that only the two oldest Christian denominations, Catholic and Greek Orthodox, have anything like acceptable figures. And they both have clear standards and expectations of their members. We Methodists are not even retaining half. And almost every Christian denomination ranked lower than us has looser standards of faith and practice.

(I also wonder whether the source data also show how many Methodists, for example, stay active in the Christian faith, but in another denomination.)

Understand also that there is no functional, theological or philosophical difference between "nones" and "atheists." Combined, they retain the same percentage as Catholics.

Update: A lot more info about the study at Patheos, including these two observations:
The information comes from the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey — and there you can find a “Protestant” category.  53.9% of Americans say that they were affiliated with Protestantism as children, compared to 51.3% now — a drop of 2.5% in absolute value, or a decline of 5% proportionally.  Most of the loss has come from Baptists and Methodists.


Also, while there are more people joining the atheist and agnostic ranks than leaving, it doesn’t bode well for atheists that 60-70 percent of those who are raised atheist renounce their atheism.  If it were so compelling a solution over the long term, one would think the retention rate would be higher.

Excellent Indian Ocean tsunami documentary

As you recall, a massive earthquake offshore Indonesia on Dec. 26, 2004, caused enormous tsunami waves against Indian Ocean shores all the way to Africa. The exact death toll is not known. The estimate is that in a matter of hours, 250,000 died, 167,000 of them in Indonesia alone. Youtube has an outstanding documentary of the disaster in eight parts, about 80 minutes altogether, and worth every minute of viewing. It uses extensive home video of the scenes before, during and after the waves struck and compelling interviews with survivors, including a woman who was swept far out to sea but incredibly survived. None of her entire, extended family did. Here is part one:

Bibles and bars

Yogi Berra is reputed to have said about a couple of events, "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence." So how coincidental that two days before we sponsor "Connect: A Meetup for Spiritual People" at Fairview's Detour Sports Grill, there is a front-page story in today's Tennessean, "Churches take their message to taverns."

Every Monday night, Uncle Charlie’s bar in Cheyenne, Wyo., hosts “Bibles and Beer,” a discussion that routinely pulls in people of all faiths — and an atheist. 

As many as 45 people have shown up, some toting Bibles. Some might have a drink; others stick to water. Some talk; others mostly listen. There are only a few ground rules: Avoid debate and stick to the text to be discussed that week. 

“There really is not a focus on drinking,” insists the Rev. Rodger McDaniel, a Presbyterian minister who organized the weekly gathering more than a year ago. “But at the same time, it is a much more relaxed atmosphere than in a church basement. If I put this on in my church, I don’t think we would have five or six people.” 

Across the country, faith is becoming bar talk. The trend combines the traditional religious charge to go where the people are with the reality that a lot of them are in bars. Organizers include those from mainline churches, those building churches and bar owners and brewers. Some are trying to push the model nationally, taking an ageless yearning for meaning and purpose to places where people often go to try to wash their worries away. 

“It is good to bring the word to wherever God is, and God is everywhere, and people are everywhere, too,” says Joe Beene, owner of the Drunk Monkey Tavern in the Tulsa suburb of Glenpool, Okla. Last year, Beene began live streaming Sunday morning services from Tulsa’s Celebration Church into his bar. “The people who come in here on Sunday mornings are people who want to hear the word but won’t go to church.”

More at the link. The last thing Jesus told his apostles to do before he returned to the Father was, "Go!" And the apostles went - over almost all of the Roman-ruled world at the time. They did not hang a sign outside the Upper Room saying, "Holy Spirit comes here weekly, join us."

According to the Tennessean's June 18 edition, about half of Nashville-area people are not affiliated with any church, and a large number of them self-identify as Christian. For too long, churches have been like Little Bo Peep, thinking, "Leave them alone and they'll come home." But that's not happening.

Meanwhile, the oldline churches intensify fiddling while Rome burns around them. I already wrote about the United Methodists' death throes. This morning an Episcopalian friend sent me the link to a WSJ op-ed, "What Ails the Episcopalians."

Its numbers and coffers shrinking, the church votes for pet funerals but offers little to the traditional faithful.

Far be it from this United Methodist to point out a speck in the Anglicans' eyes while ignoring the plank in our own. But it just goes to show how widespread the problem is.

This is a good summary, too.

 

 (Text's author unknown.)

 

Scopes "Monkey" Trial was a setup from the beginning

This month marks the anniversary of the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tenn., in 1925. John Scopes was charged and tried with violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which forbade the teaching of evolution in Tennessee’s public schools. The Butler Act had been signed into law earlier that year by Governor Austin Peay, one of the most pro-education governors Tennessee has ever had. Austin Peay Normal School, later Austin Peay State University, was named after him for that reason. The newspapers recorded that Governor Peay thought the Butler Act was ridiculous. He publicly commented, “Nobody believes that it is going to be an active statute.”

The Butler Act came to the attention of the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which decided to challenge the act in court on First Amendment grounds. The ACLU issued a press release stating that intention. A few days later they were contacted by Mr. George Rappelyea, a civic booster in Dayton and an adherent of evolution theory. The result was the famous Scopes Trial, argued by two of the most famous figures of American law: William Jennings Bryan, defending the Butler Act, and Clarence Darrow, defending Mr. Scopes.

The Hollywood movie about the trial, “Inherit the Wind,” presented the enlightened forces of progress and virtue, portrayed by Darrow and Scopes, heroically resisting the harsh, repressive ignorance of Christian fundamentalism, portrayed by Bryan and the people of the town. Naturally, Hollywood got it completely wrong.

 

In fact, the trial was a fund-raiser for the town of Dayton. After being promised the ACLU’s support, Mr. Rappelyea contacted Dayton’s town fathers to meet him in F. E. Robinson’s drugstore where he explained his idea about a big trial. They all agreed it sounded like a good way to put Dayton on the map and make some tourist money. Mr. Scopes was not even a regular teacher, but a substitute. (In fact, he wasn’t even present at the school on the specific day cited in the indictment.) Mr. Scopes was summoned to the drugstore and asked to be the patsy. Everyone already knew Scopes was teaching evolution because every science teacher in town taught it, causing no religious turmoil there. Whatever the good Christians of Dayton were, they weren’t the mindless fundamentalists Hollywood later made them out to be. 

At first Scopes hesitated to join the case, but Rappelyea described a grand trial to bring fame and fortune to the small town. He said, “Let’s take this thing to court and test the legality of it. I will swear out warrant and have you arrested. That will make a big sensation. Why not bring a lot of doctors and preachers here? Let’s get H. G. Wells and a lot of big fellows.” With Scopes’ agreement, Rappelyea wired the ACLU that the stage was set for the drama to open.

The trial was, of course, every bit the circus the town leaders hoped. Newsmen descended from all over the country. The courtroom was so sweltering the judge moved the trial onto the town quadrangle, which simply made more room for more people to come and spend their money. Finally, Scopes was found guilty as charged and fined a hundred dollars by the judge, which was paid by the town’s leaders.

 

Darrow appealed Scopes’ conviction to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which threw out the conviction in 1927. However, the court overturned the conviction not on the merits of the case, but on the technicality that only a jury, not a judge, could set any fine more than fifty dollars. The Butler Act actually survived because the court made no ruling on the act’s constitutionality. It was not until the 1968 that the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to prohibit the teaching of evolution in public schools.

When the fall semester of 1925 began in Dayton, the teachers there went right on teaching evolution, and the good people of Dayton were as equally unperturbed by it as before, having laughed all summer all the way to the bank.

Beyond Label or Category

Beyond Label or Category « United Methodeviations:

I sat with a table of clergy and laity leaders talking about reaching “young people.” In frustration, I asked them to define for me who these “young people” are and what they are like. It became apparent that the “young people” we want to reach are a generic, bland hash of upper-middle-class, calm, well-behaved “newer” versions of ourselves. The expectation is that “young people” will either share, or quickly adopt, our values, that they will enjoy what we enjoy, think what we think, and not question or challenge the way things are. Oh, and they will all nicely and cleanly fit simple categories — easy to label and control. This conversation is a glimpse into a huge problem we face — trying to reach and relate to people we don’t know or understand at all.

There's more - read the whole thing.

The Aghast Chorus Grows

I wondered in my first (and until now, only) post on the Supreme Court's ruling on Obamacare why conservatives were not aghast at the radical expansion by the Court of Congress' taxation power.

The point I don't see other commentators getting is this: the ruling means that Congress now has unlimited power to tax. Congress now has the power to tax absolutely any activity or inactivity by individuals.

Now law Professor William Jacobson cites several commentators who say the same, for example, the editors of the Wall Street Journal:

[E]ven the five votes limiting Congress under the Commerce Clause pale against the Chief Justice’s infinitely elastic and dangerous interpretation of the taxing power. Nancy Pelosi famously said we need to pass ObamaCare to find out what’s in it. It turns out we also needed John Roberts to write his appendix.

Tax law Prof. Paul Caron, writer of TaxProf Blog, has more, including a link to this observation by John Yoo, professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law:

Some conservatives see a silver lining in the ObamaCare ruling. But it's exactly the big-government disaster it appears to be. 

Worse still, Justice Roberts's opinion provides a constitutional road map for architects of the next great expansion of the welfare state. Congress may not be able to directly force us to buy electric cars, eat organic kale, or replace oil heaters with solar panels. But if it enforces the mandates with a financial penalty then suddenly, thanks to Justice Roberts's tortured reasoning in Sebelius, the mandate is transformed into a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to tax.

Which is exactly what I said Thursday:

So does the Congress have the authority to make us eat broccoli, as one justice asked the solicitor general during the hearing? Now we know the answer: without question the Congress now enjoys the power to make us buy broccoli, whether we eat it or not. Don't buy it? Pay a special tax. 

Congress has the power now to make everyone drive a white car - or pay a special tax if they don't.

Ilya Somin, associate professor of law at George Mason University Law School, who wrote an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down the law, wrote in The New York Daily News:

Today’s 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding the individual health insurance mandate shows that the Supreme Court takes constitutional limits on federal power seriously - but not seriously enough. As a result, Congress now has the power to impose a mandate to do almost anything, so long as it is structured as so-called “tax.” 

That ruling both misreads the Constitution and gives Congress a dangerous new power. ... 

Pretty much any other mandate could be magically converted into a tax by the same sleight of hand - so long as the penalty for violating it is a fine similar to the one that enforces the individual mandate. The danger here is not just theoretical. Numerous interest groups could potentially lobby Congress to enact a law requiring people to buy their products, just as the health insurance industry did.

And because of this state of affairs, the last shred of national sovereignty passed on Thursday from the hands of the people of the United States to the desks of the Congress and by extension the executive. We are now subjects, no longer citizens. 


 

England braces for "circumcision tourism"

The Telegraph:

In what has been described as a landmark decision, a court in the city of Cologne said circumcision violated a child's "fundamental right to bodily integrity" and that this right outweighed the rights of the parents. ... Jewish groups [protesting the decision] were supported by leaders of Germany's large Muslim population "I feel the decision is discriminatory and counters efforts to promote integration," said Ali Demir, chairman of the Islamic Religious Community in Germany. "This is a harmless procedure that has thousands of years of tradition and a high symbolic value. "We will end up with circumcision tourism to neighbouring countries," he added.

Here is one of the most interesting things in the article.

The court case revolved around a four-year-old Muslim boy who was circumcised at the request of his parents but was later admitted to hospital with bleeding. The doctor was charged and tried for grievous bodily harm but was acquitted on the grounds he had parental consent. Prosecutors appealed against the decision but the doctor was again acquitted, this time owing to the imprecise nature of the law.

Get that? The first trial ended in acquittal, so the prosecution got to try him again. "Double jeopardy" ain't a game hosted by Alex Trebek; it's a living legal principle in most of Europe.

Syrian Christians under the gun

I wrote earlier this month that if the so-called freedom fighters attacking Assad's regime gain victory, "expect a bloodbath of non-Sunnis, especially the Alawites and Christians." Now the New York Times understands that, too.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Earlier this month, reports came from the Syrian city of Qusayr of an ominous warning to the town’s Christians: Either join the Sunni-led opposition against Bashar al-Assad or leave. Soon after, thousands of Christians fled the town.

After decades of protection by a secular-leaning dictatorship, the Qusayr ultimatum warned of a dark future for Syria’s Christian community. As the 15-month conflict rages with no end in sight, Syria’s many minorities have come face to face with the emerging threat posed by radical Sunni Islamists. These elements have established themselves as a key factor in Syria’s future, backed by immense political and economic support from the Arab world and indifference from the West.

Throughout the years, Christians, like many other minorities in the region, have lent their support to those regimes that have guaranteed their security and religious freedom. In Iraq, Christians rose to the highest levels of society under Saddam Hussein’s regime, while in Egypt, Coptic Christians were protected from ultraconservative Salafists under Hosni Mubarak. As secular leaders from the secretive Alawite sect, the Assad dynasty largely preserved Christian life, protecting Syria’s minorities from what was perceived as a collective threat from the country’s Sunni majority.

Watching their once-shielding dictators fall like dominos across the region, Christians have suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of history. Faced by a rising tide of radical Sunni Islam, Christians in Iraq and Egypt have fled by the thousands. In Syria, concern over Christian repression has fallen on deaf ears, drowned out by popular support for the country’s opposition in the face of the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown.

This March, months before the Qusayr ultimatum, Islamist militants from the opposition’s Faruq Brigade had gone door to door in Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan neighborhoods of Homs, expelling local Christians. Following the raids, some 90 percent of Christians reportedly fled the city for government-controlled areas, neighboring countries or a stretch of land near the Lebanese border called the Valley of Christians (Wadi al-Nasarah). Of the more than 80,000 Christians who lived in Homs prior to the uprising, approximately 400 remain today.

The cleansing of Homs’ Christian neighborhoods occurred as the Syrian military bombarded the Sunni opposition stronghold of Baba Amr, naturally focusing the international media on stories of children maimed by Assad’s artillery shells and sniper bullets. At the United Nations, Assad’s opponents could not afford to highlight Christian persecution in Homs, as they risked catering to a Russian-led campaign to preserve the dictator’s rule by de-legitimizing the Syrian rebels for their atrocities.

As rebel forces continue to chip away at Assad’s control over the country, Syria’s Christians continue to be expelled or held at the mercy of an increasingly extremist Sunni opposition.

For the newest generation of Sunni jihadists, Syria has become the latest front in the struggle to wrest control of the region from rival religious sects and foreign occupation. Many of these fighters hail from the vast reaches of North Africa and the Gulf, arriving in Syria with weapons, funds and a radical ideology.

Inside Syria, the reluctance of the international community to thwart Assad’s onslaught has left the Sunni population with feelings of isolation and abandonment, driving large swathes of youth into the arms of radical clerics. This uncompromising ideology leaves little place in Syria’s future for the country’s many minorities — including Christians.

Saving Syria’s Christian community is coherent with Western strategic interests. If the experiences of Iraq and Egypt are any indication, religious intolerance breeds insecurity and volatility. The Syrian case is no different. Assad’s opponents on both sides of the Atlantic must prevent radical Islamists from embedding themselves in the Syrian opposition and should adopt a firm stance against their patrons in the Gulf.

As Kamal Jumblatt, the former leader of Lebanon’s Druze minority, once said, “In the Middle East there is space for all men, just not their ambitions.” Jumblatt himself was eventually assassinated at the hands of Hafez al-Assad, but his words ring true to this day.

The ousting of the Assad regime has become a global moral obligation, but so has the duty to ensure that Syria’s future holds a place for all minorities.

Consider that last sentence. Because absolutely no nation is both willing and able to accomplish the entire sentence, the whole sentence is made false. There is no moral obligation to oust Assad's regime only to see it replaced by another, Sunni-Islamist regime that will likely be even more ruthless and bloody.

I say again: Stay out of Syria!