15% corruption in govt giveaways and how to fix some of it

 

COVID19 spawned govt payments; Corruption stole much of it. People got scared with Covid19 and shut down all manner of things, then to compensate USA spent $2T to help people in addition to the money they already hand out.  When that much money is thrown out to the public, there is bound to be fraud.  Now we find out that SNAP (Food stamps) programs doubled (now at 15% of the spending) the fraudulent claims, TANF(welfare) did the same. Then came the COVID payments and we still don’t know how much went outside the country.  Federal govt estimates $281B was lost by the Feds in 2021 just due to overpayment of legitimate recipients.  How much went to the Prince in Nigeria? Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which oversaw the outflow, says, “Typically Government doesn’t have much of an incentive to prevent fraud.” No kidding, Sherlock!  Add to this the constant 13% fraud in Medicaid and other procurements, and the time is ripe for a new administration to start tackling waste.  Here’s some solutions: Equip those EBT cards they use for SNAP for user security like banks with debit cards. No more “apply by internet”; must be in person or by authorized representative. Make contract vendors have insurance bonding for reimbursing recipients when their identity is stolen. If some outfit wants reimbursed for 1000 wheelchairs they claim they sold to Medicaid people, make they prove their identity, show expenses, and provide a list of recipients. If a bureaucrat authorizes a system that hands out over 5% of the money to fraudsters, give him a pink slip. I guess I’m a taxpayer and am ticked over being fleeced.

Don't get me started about the $6T that Biden spent mainly on green stuff.

A letter to a church about RISK

 This is part of a letter we are getting ready to send to our church congregation.  I'm posting it so you can see the tie between the business of church and spirituality. I thought I would let you  in on the logic used to expand ministry..

Do you know when elite, wealthy entrepreneurs make most of their money? It’s during Recessions. They purchase broken businesses and fix them, buy on the cheap, or start a new venture, hang on, and see it come to fruit when things return to normal. Thus they are one-up on the market and development. FLCS is somewhat like a business.  Income and expenses fluctuate, sometimes like a roller coaster. Yet we know God’s kingdom grows most during tough times—the first 3 centuries, China’s last 70 years. Is this counter-intuitive? No, Christians hold forth the gospel message when the world loses hope.

            God calls us to risk for our faith, not build a fur-lined nest. People often save for retirement thinking they’ll siphon off a bit of interest to make golden years golden.  But businessmen don’t think about savings this way.  They save to have a backstop.  If I try something risky and it blows up in my face or starts too slowly, then there is a savings backstop. Jesus’ final parable was the Parable of the Talents.  3 slaves each received an allotment of talents of gold.  Two of them doubled their money, but one got scared and buried his talent gaining nothing. The master took that slave’s talent away and gave it to the guy with the most. So too must our faith be exercised and shared or it withers.  A church must  find fresh ways of sharing the faith, or it is on its way to death and having its doors closed.

            There’s no way around risk.  But we have the ultimate backstop.  Jesus death and resurrection forgives us, and His relationship lasts forever. Wa Hoo! FLCS, like a business, possesses true faith and a monetary backstop for recession, inflation, and rejections of Christianity. Tough times coming? It is time to find bold new ways to give the world hope. But what would that mission be?

            We’ve appointed a team of 10 people to study this, who have especially followed the clue that we have a young, energetic, Master of Arts, Theology Deaconess in our midst. They’ve seen how a deaconess could play a significant part in this.  What would a bold venture be?  Perhaps it would be an initiative to expand our scholarships and greatly increase the size of our school, thereby teaching our faith.  Perhaps it would be a ministry to young moms and parents of the 71 family units who send kids to our school but have no church home.  Or would it be to serve assisted living and nursing care in a substantially greater way? Or what?

            Here’s where we need your input.  Enclosed is a quick congregational survey.  The last line asks you to dream about new outreaches and ministries. Please take time to think carefully and fill this out. You’ll find a return box for surveys in the narthex. Results will be shared with Pastor, elders, and our mission study team.

The banking broohaha

 

Let me explain this banking confusion if I may. Imagine you have only a stash of long-term bonds to live on.  But then you have creditors knocking at your door demanding to be paid for this or that.  Since you bought the bonds, the government has raised the interest rate rapidly and now your bonds discount, that is they are worth far less, because market expects more interest.  You will have to sell your bonds at a loss in order to pay all the people making a run on your funds.  That’s the dilemma that banks like SVB and Signature and New Republic are having as people make a run on their bank.  And because they have to sell everything at a loss, they are essentially bankrupt.  But another larger bank says, “No, we have money to pay the run.  We could take you over with a merger.  Thus we don’t have to sell your bonds—just keep them until they have matured and return their original principle.  The troubled bank has value.”  But federal government refused to allow these offers of merger.  They want to bail out bonds of the troubled bank, thus becoming the Hero.  Political stunt  But then, gov’t has to treat everybody alike and bail out every bank. This will add trillions to the national debt and spur more inflation.  And bail outs green-light banks to make even riskier investments.  Buy Junk Bonds! And it ‘nationalizes’ banking where everyone is dependent on the government.  Clearly, bail outs should be the last resort when all else has crashed.

            Obama did a similar thing in 2010. His first act was to bail out auto companies with gov’t loans. Chrysler and GM took them. Then 2 months later, the sly Prez called the loans which of course the auto guys couldn’t pay, so he forced them into gov’t-in-charge bankruptcy, nationalized under a car czar.  This was exactly Mussolini in 1922! Apparently the Car Czar discovered gov’t couldn’t run an auto plant, however, so they gifted a majority ownership to the UAW and sold Chrysler to Fiat, the nationalized auto company of Italy.

Ugh! sports

 I'm not the greatest sports fan except for baseball which no one cares about any more.  But it was cold and what else to do?  I noticed that Big 12, which interestingly is just 10, got only 2 teams in the sweet 16.  Texas and K-State made it, but KU, Iowa State, and Baylor didn't.  And then TCU got beat by some outfil called Gonzaga. Not much of a movie watcher either, but isn't that the radioactive lizard that terrorizes Japan? However Creighton of Omaha got in.  But I never could understand what kinds of crates they made. Still, was interesting to see so many from mid-continent while all the big names from the coasts are where? 

 On the other hand, USA baseball is great, though the really good pitchers are nowhere to be found.  Despite which old man Wainwright went 4 innings and Mikolas the reclaimed pitcher from Japanese league went another 4 innings and  between the two had only 2 runs.  It was interesting to see so many fat Cuban players.  Evidently the Cuban communists give out seconds if you play baseball well, so you aren't skin and bones..One-sided game USA 14, Cuba 2.  

New guy needed

 

VERY SATISFIED WITH TRUMP but he needs to retire.  Studies show that most people don’t vote someone; they vote against someone.  And Trump attracts Dems to the polls like a lightning rod. Otherwise they are chagrinned over the old guy, Biden, and polls show they are unlikely to get out the vote much.  They’ll hate the next Republican too, but won’t have much real ammunition. Most R governors did a very good job.  DeSantis is leading but he’ll have to prove he can attract blue-collar voters and suburban moms at the same time.  That’s Trump’s forte.  Stagflation/recession, a foreign policy scare, or EV prices going into the stratosphere would cook Biden and the Dems.  The Senate 2024 map favors Republicans. A R-victory would bring along the House. And we’d be set for normalcy once more. Back to drilling, Back to building the border wall, back from scary cities, and very slowly back from inflation. Trump will bring out the antifa guys, the media, the fear-mongering among the Dems.

The Nero of Social Security

 

BIDEN WON BIG AMONG DEMOCRATS WHEN HE TAUNTED Rs AS WANTING TO TAKE  AWAY SOCIAL SECURITY.  Now nobody will talk about it.  He may go down in history as the guy who, like Nero, fiddled as Social Security burned. Charles Blahous of George Mason U. and former Deputy Dir. Of  National Economic Council as well as the CBO are warning that SS and MC will both go insolvent by 2033.  It’s not that there is a real SS trust fund, it’s just that the curve of funding dies out faster while number of recipients continues to rise. It’s simple math. There will be 2.14 workers per SS recipient by 2050 implying a required FICA taxof over 30% to make the entitlement whole.  OR raid general revenues of income taxes for so much money there won’t be any discretionary spending.  It will all be eaten by entitlements and interest on the debt. No funding for defense.  Better learn Mandarin Chinese.

            Ds for a long time have thought that they could just raise the threshold age or raise the amount of earnings subject to SS tax.  Raise the threshold age to about 77 and upper limit on FICA withholding to $1 million.  Nor do the Ds want to be the one party responsible for this.  Rs must be made to share the blame. Only 5% of people make more than the max tax.  That’s not enough people to get significant funds from.

            I was born under Truman, remember Medicare and Medicaid passing and was in college in the 1960s-70s. First I wanted to be a teacher, then a physicist. Physicists are like monks.  You have to take vows of chastity and poverty. So I concluded that when I got to retirement age there probably wasn’t going to be anything for me. And thus endeavored early on, to make some side money and now after 50+ years of work, have what looks like a fortune (to me).  It will feed me in my old age rather than make me dependent on the Nero government. The SS I once put in amounts to about 1.5% return over my 40-year working life.  That amount, invested at 6% would generate 5 times as much. In W. Bush’s 2004 campaign he ran on fixing SS and proposed that 20% of your FICA tax be put in a 401K-type account, payable at age 65. The rest stayed in present plan. That would have dead flat fixed it. But even R’s in Congress and the majority of people balked. Dems went ballistic and nothing got passed. The 3^rd rail, they scorned him. That same kind of fix today would require 50% of your FICA and work-until-70 to make the system come out equal.

            Meanwhile I’m a rare duck with my savings.  But it just makes me sad.  Half the people live to be 65. Of those who take SS, ¼ are living on SS only. Start counting a room of gray heads.  Every 4^th one has nothing but SS. This is a tragedy that could have been avoided.  As the Psalmist wrote, “Trust not in princes, they are but  mortal.”

Longshot Lincoln

 

LONGSHOT LINCOLN 

Democrats claim that the parties have ‘flipped’ and they are now the party of civil rights and they really love Lincoln.  If so, why do they only like his slavery stance and hate his reasoning about why slavery “should be placed in the course of ultimate extinction”? Why do they dislike limited government and low taxes and the Bill of Rights? Maybe Rs should ask them how Lincoln got elected. He was mostly a loser—lost the House Speakership in Illinois, had one term as a Congressman, helped Taylor get elected President and was passed over for any post, lost twice to the Senate.  Most people thought of him as just a good stump speaker with a up-from-humble-roots story and a has-been.  Thus the Rs placed their convention in Chicago thinking there was no home state favorite son. That was important in those days since conventions were closed affairs and the gallery could be packed with locals cheering on a favorite son.  Lincoln ran and did just that. Remember, in those days candidates did not go to conventions but depended on floor managers and allies. Seward was supposed to win and he was a firebrand abolitionist.  Horace Greeley thought he was too radical and so did Southerners, anticipation of whom caused part of their reason for secession. Lincoln, recognizing he was nobody’s favorite, positioned himself as the guy everybody thought of secondly. Nice guy, never attacks anybody.  First ballot Seward won by plurality.  Second ballot, Bates rose, but many thought him wishy-washy and too moderate. Bates’ floor manager was Browning and on the 3^rd ballot, he gave a rousing endorsement of Lincoln.  Gallery went wild.  Lincoln had let it be known he would put rivals, Cameron as secretary of war, Seward, Bates and Chase in other positions.  Lincoln was humble and quoted Scriptures a lot (ask your Dem friends if they love this)—qualities that made him seem more moderate and reasoned than Seward. Lincoln carried the majority of votes.

            On the campaign trail, Lincoln wrote his positions about slavery.  If a man works to raise corn, why can’t he get to keep part of it for his family. You say slavery is because of skin color? Well, sooner or later you’ll meet someone lighter than you are.  Should you be his slave? Or it’s intelligence.  Sooner or later you’ll meet someone smarter.  Should you then be enslaved? Lincoln’s logic won the vast majority of northern farmers who in those days were 80% of the vote. He won 39% and a bare majority of electoral votes. 3 Dems split the rest.  Lincoln was elected. Had Lincoln been a Jimmy Carter, he would have waffled and compromised leaving the South permanently slave.  Had he been an uncompromising Biden, a Seward, he would have not retained neutrality of the border states and the North would have lost in 1862.  USA would then have been two weaker squabbling countries, fighting again over the West and never achieving great development—rather like Argentina and Chile. Instead, Lincoln’s resolute principles yet personal humility found a way to win, first by fighting for union, then slavery, then designing a peace that Grant put in place that brought the two countries back together under the Constitution we know. It gave the party a nickname, Grand Old Party, because it espoused the grand old principles---liberty, rights, and limited government--that Americans could rally around.

How much support for Ukraine?

 

When we talk about our support of Ukraine, we have to realize what is taking place in Eastern Europe.  People in the Baltic states are very on-edge and resolved not to let Russia retake their lands. Lithuania hosts enormous numbers of refugee Ukrainians and had no trouble getting 2% GDP spending on defense.  The legislature upped it to almost 3%.  (2% is what Trump trumpeted) Estonia does 4%. Gun carry permit applications have tripled in Latvia.  And everybody says that Russia won’t stop if they take over Ukraine.  Balts are next. So while we may groan about how USA is spending so much more than our NATO allies, just how much can Estonia with 1 million people and an economy still recovering from communism support?  During the Soviet era, Russia removed half the populations of the Baltic countries to Siberia and replaced them with Russians. After 1992, some came back but large enclaves of Russians live in their countries--many of whom agree with the Balts that they don’t want Putin. If USA doesn’t defend the Baltic countries, we will be the horse’s ass of the world.  Likewise Finns want to join NATO in the worst way, yet Ergodamn of Turkey won’t vote for them.  Finland is very well-armed. EVERY young man must serve in the military. It’s unlikely that Russia would attack Finland.  They tried during WW II and failed.  And if Estonia is attacked, look for Finland to come in. They are the same people with the same language and culture.  Poland and Ukraine were once the same culture and people, split over religious denomination and leadership.  Poles are harboring something like 5M Ukrainian refugees. They wanted to give old MIGs to Ukrainians and Biden drug his feet.  Moldova is another small country full of half-Germans and half swamp.  Russia craves their land on the southwest of Ukraine because it is a staging ground for influence into Slovakia and Serbia. (Slavs.  Russia claims to be lord of all Slavic people the way Hitler claimed any country with a large German minority should be his.)

            What do we make of this?  Yes, we are spending a lot in a proxy war and need to watch this.  Yes, there needs to be a plan to win and an end game. But the people who have lived under Russian dominance are very willing to fight. Dither and Europe will lose. But as each day goes by, Europe becomes more united against Putin.  The Macaroon guy and the Socialist Democrat Sargeant Scholtz guy are coming around.  Europe’s economy is recovering better than USA (less inflation!) and Ukraine is full of talk about how they have to become more democratic and leave behind the oligarchs they had like Russia. And we face a mixed choice of what to do. But so did France in 1781 over the rebels in America.  Support or get involved or what? They showed up just in time to blockade the Chesapeake, denying British resupply of Cornwallis at Yorktown.  Washington and the other people much-motivated to fight for their country, did the rest. If that French commitment hadn’t happened, we’d be singing “God save the King” (Charles III and his messy outfit), drinking tea with cakes instead of having a good steak for supper ( or enchiladas or lasagna) and we would have had slavery much longer to support their lousy textile industry.

Recreational Marijuana

I must vote against recreational marijuana tomorrow!  OK has a referendum and I fear the people who want to smoke will turn out big while most other people will be apathetic.  We already have “medical” marijuana and such law gets abused, but the real problem is farms, cartels and violent crime.  Because KS prohibits cannabis, the northern tier of counties of OK have a huge marijuana farming business in order to reach across the border. OK charges only 7% tax while other states charge 30% or so. Grow it here! Cropland is cheap in OK.  The Chinese, through corporate entities hide their identity and buy most of this, growing it in hoop greenhouses. Why Chinese? They have other things to sell like fentynal and meth that is also hidden by this business. A friend of ours is a tall, 300 lb. guy who intimidates most people, told about building a stockade fence around one of the farms and said it was like working around armed MS-13 gangsters.  He said he was never so glad to get that job done in his life.  The only thing this industry does that is beneficial is drive up the price of farmland. 

     And then there is the violence in society.  I once belonged to our local jail ministry and one day a criminologist visited one of our gathering in the felony cell that houses violent guys.  He whispered to me, “*0% of these guys are marijuana users.”  Why was that?  In 2000 we didn’t know why, but now research shows that people who are paranoid schizophrenic, the main mental problem that fuels mass murders, have their syndrome increased by marijuana use. And today’s Mary Jane is a dozen times as potent as what college kids smoked in the anti-war years of the 70s. The Sheriffs and Law Enforcement groups are against this, the DAs too.

    Thus I can’t think of any good reason on God’s green earth to encourage this. 

How to fix the economy

8 points to raise us back to 4%+ growth per year—by Larry Kudlow

1.     Extend the Trump tax cuts perpetually adds 1+ % per year by giving certainty to business, incentives to do research, bring business home to USA by lower corp taxes.

2.     Or do modified flat tax +2% per year.

3.     20% cuts in discretionary spending adds 1/3%

4.     Open up oil production and drilling to add 2-3M bbls per day adds 1/3%

5.     Put workfare back into welfare benefits.  People find jobs and add to growth. 1/3%

6.     Repeal most Biden regulations that are killing small businesses adds 1%

7.     Reach M2 goals by Fed policy to bring inflation to 2% adds ½% and much certainty to business.

8.     Index capital gains 1/3%

None of this repeals the green stuff directly but by spending and regulation cuts.