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News

How well did Obama’s green jobs spending work out for taxpayers?

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From Investor’s Business Daily.

Excerpt:

As solar panel manufacturer Solyndra was sliding into a long-predicted bankruptcy, Energy Department officials began negotiations with the company and two of its main investors about restructuring its $535 million loan to keep afloat the business that was supposed to be a good investment.

Under the restructuring agreement, Solyndra’s private investors were moved to the front of the line and taxpayers were put on the hook for at least the first $75 million if the company should default. Subordinating taxpayers to private investors in recovering loan money is an “apparent violation of the law,” according to Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

During hearings last week, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and other Republicans noted that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 says obligations, or loan guarantees, shall not be subordinated to other financing.

In other words, taxpayers get first dibs on any money recovered and private investors take a number.

Why was the Solyndra loan restructured in this way? Was it because a major donation bundler for President Obama’s 2008 campaign was also a principal investor in Solyndra? Is that why the administration ignored repeated warning’s of Solyndra’s insolvency?

A 2009 report by the Energy Department’s inspector general warned that DOE lacked the necessary quality control for the $38.6 billion loan-guarantee program. In July 2010, the Government Accountability Office said DOE had bypassed required steps for funding awards to five of 10 loan recipients.

[…]Solyndra was the third U.S. solar manufacturer to fail in a month. SpectraWatt Inc., a solar company backed by units of Intel Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection Aug. 19, and Evergreen Solar filed Chapter 11 on Aug. 15.

Other failed companies receiving stimulus funds include Mountain Plaza Inc., which took $424,000 in grants to install “truck stop electrification systems” so truckers could plug in and shut off their idling diesel engines, and Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Acquisition Co., which were handed $10 million.

[…]The administration claims that as a whole this loan guarantee program, which was supposed to create 65,000 jobs, was a success, creating or “saving” some 44,000 jobs. An analysis by the Washington Post says the actual number of permanent jobs created is 3,545.

[…]Even if you accept the administration’s questionable job accounting, divide the $38.6 billion by 65,000 and ask yourself if the administration is spending your money wisely — or honestly.

The Obama administration has already spent about half of the 38.6 billion set aside for Democrat cronies. I mean green energy. If you divide 17.5 billion by 3,545 jobs created, that’s $5 million per job. That’s sound Democrat fiscal policy. Bible-thumping morons like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann could never think of intelligent policies like spending $5 million per job created. To get to that level of intelligence, you need to have degrees from Columbia and Harvard Law School (grades never released). And to vote for Obama’s policies, you need to be smart enough to watch the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on the Comedy Channel, and think that it’s news.

So we took billions of dollars out of the private economy, in order to punish those evil oil companies and coal companies, and we spent it on magic beans – sold to us by Obama’s Democrat cronies. Instead of lowering energy prices, Obama’s policies have resulted in higher energy prices. Was this unexpected?

Actually, for anyone who was paying attention, Obama made clear that he was OK with higher energy prices before he was elected in 2008.

And that’s what we got:

Gas Prices under Obama and Bush
Gas Prices under Obama and Bush

Only two kinds of people voted for Obama in 2008 – the people who were informed about Obama’s record by watching Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and the people who were about to receive stimulus grants for the green energy companies. The people who think that Michael Moore tells the truth about health care, and that Al Gore is an authority on climate science. The people who think that the New York Times is unbiased news.

Commentary

Historian Michael F. Bird assesses the historicity of Matthew 27

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Australian historian Michael F. Bird responds to the Geisler/Licona dust-up on the Euangelion blog, a blog that “exists for the purpose of promoting the gospel by commenting on issues relating to the Christian Scriptures and evangelical faith in contexts of the academy and the church”. (H/T Near Emmaus)

Excerpt:

But people need to evaluate the debate for themselves. Here is the text in question, Matt. 27.51-53:

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split
52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.
53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
(NIV)

What is the fuss? Well, Lincona calls Matt. 27.52-53 a “strange little text” (p. 548). Many strange phenomena like earthquakes and cosmic portents were said to accompany the death of great leaders in ancient sources. Licona writes: “[I]t seems to me that an understanding of the language in Matthew 27:52-53 as ’special effects’ with eschatological Jewish texts and thought in mind is most plausible. There is further support for this interpretation. If the tombs were opened and the saints being raised upon Jesus’ death was not strange enough, Matthew adds that they did not come out of their tombs until after Jesus’ resurrection. What were they doing between Friday afternoon and early Sunday morning? Were they standing in the now open doorways of their tombs and waiting?” Lincona then regards “this difficult text in Mathew as a poetic device added to communicate that the Son of God had died and that the impending judgment awaited Israel” (pp. 552-53).

In my chapter about the resurrection in How Did Christianity Begin: A Believer and Non-Believer Examine the Evidence, co-authored with James Crossley (London: SPCK, 2008/ Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010), I said in a footnote about Matt. 27.51-53: “My understanding of this text is that it is not historical and it blends the present and the future together so that Matthew provides a cameo of the future resurrection at the point of Jesus’ death to underscore its living-giving power” (p. 69, n. 30). That was my off-the-cuff thought, but I stand by it, since Matt. 27.51-53 is a strange story that is reported nowhere else in Christian or non-Christian literature.

I don’t see any reason why Licona’s or my interpretation of Matt. 27.51-53 does not conform to a view of scripture as infallible, inspired, and authoritative. I think it explains the text and it explains why you don’t hear Josephus or Tacitus talking about the day that many Jewish holy men came back to life.

But I see further problems with Licona’s critics. If I can give another example, is the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16.19-31 a “true” story or a “parable”? Now the word parable does not occur! What if I said that it was a true, literal, and factual story about the afterlife in Hades and everyone who called it a parable about riches and possessions was using ancient genres to dehistoricize the Bible and deny the existence of the intermediate state? Does believing that Luke 16 is a parable violate inerrancy? To employ the logic of Geisler and Mohler, I’d have to say, “yes”. But is it hermeneutically responsible to rule certain literary genres out of bounds based on theological prolegomena, rather than discern them based on the phenomenon of the text and its relationship to extant biblical and non-biblical literature? Moreover, Geisler and Mohler are systematicians, not New Testament scholars, and most of those who came to Licona’s aid in his open letter are New Testament scholars. I think there’s a big lesson to be learned in that!

About Michael F. Bird:

Biography:

Dr. Michael Bird (Ph.D University of Queensland) is Lecturer in Theology and New Testament at Crossway College in Brisbane, Australia. He is the author of several books including Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission (2006), The Saving Righteousness of God (2007), A Bird’s-Eye View of Paul (2008), Colossians and Philemon (2009), Crossing Over Sea and Land: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (2009), and Are You the One Who is to Come? The Historical Jesus and the Messianic Question (2009). He attends Acacia Ridge Presbyterian Church where he preaches regularly. He is married to Naomi and has four children.

Michael F. Bird is an evangelical historian, and has debated atheist James Crossley on the Unbelievable show (part 1, part 2). I have the book he mentions, which is a debate with Crossley, but haven’t had a chance to dig into it, yet. I really enjoyed the Bird/Crossley debates though. Sometimes, Unbelievable picks a bad defender of the Christian side, but Bird was solid. If I recall correctly, the Matthew 27 passage came up in that debate, and it came up in Crossley’s debate with William Lane Craig as well.

By the way, the other passage that is disputed a lot in the New Testament is the guard at the tomb in Matthew. I wrote a post about it before, featuring a clip from William Lane Craig. William Lane Craig wrote an essay about the guard at the tomb story. My take on that one is that the guard is historical, although I would not want to defend that tradition as a minimal fact in a debate, because it fails all the tests. However, the genre there is clearly historical, not apocalyptic imagery. I do understand the case against the guard story being an apologetics response to the Jewish accusation that the disciples stole the body.

New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham has debated Crossley as well, and you can find the shows here.

 

News

If you defend your home from armed intruders in the UK, you get arrested

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Story here in the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Officers were called to Vincent Cooke’s house in the affluent Stockport suburb of Bramhall, just before 8pm on Saturday following reports of a break-in.

Mr Cooke, 39, a married father of one who has run a number of small courier and logistics companies, was relaxing alone in the detached interwar property when the two intruders struck, Greater Manchester Police said.

His wife Karen, 34, and 12-year-old son returned home during the incident but escaped unharmed. Police said that during the break-in Mr Cooke was threatened and one of the intruders, Raymond Jacob, 37, of was stabbed.

Mr Cooke, who is one of five children, was being questioned on suspicion of murder on Sunday night.

I thought the response of the police was interesting – self-defense is murder:

“Clearly this is a serious incident in which a man has lost his life and at this time we believe the dead man was one of two men who were attempting to carry out a burglary at the house.”

The other suspected intruder fled in a small white Citroen van. Police last night confirmed a second man had been arrested in connection with the incident.

On Sunday afternoon relatives of Mr Jacob, of Northern Moor, Greater Manchester, laid flowers outside Mr Cooke’s home.

One read: “To my baby boy who will always be my baby boy. I will miss you, but never stop loving you. Mum.”

Last night friends and relatives also left tributes for Mr Jacob social networking websites.

“Still doesnt feel real, cant believe your gone we will all miss you,” said Danielle Leach on Facebook.

Just to be clear about the facts, here’s the UK Sun.

Excerpt:

Two knife-wielding intruders burst into the home of company director Vincent Cooke, 39.

Burglar Raymond Jacob, 37, is believed to have been stabbed with his own knife.

Mr Cooke was later arrested in Bramhall, Cheshire. His wife and son fled the house unhurt.

Isn’t the mother’s reaction interesting? It’s not unexpected coming from the feminized UK, though, where no one is responsible for anything they do. In fact, the one who judges and refuses to bail others out is the bad one. How mean! Defending your home from armed intruders! Just let them kill you! After all, the government already takes your money, so why not not ban self-defense so they take your life as well?

This is not unusual in the new Harriet Harman-onized UK. It happens all the time.

Consider this story from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Miss Klass, a model for Marks & Spencer and a former singer with the pop group Hear’Say, was in her kitchen in the early hours of Friday when she saw two teenagers behaving suspiciously in her garden.

The youths approached the kitchen window, before attempting to break into her garden shed, prompting Miss Klass to wave a kitchen knife to scare them away.

Miss Klass, 31, who was alone in her house in Potters Bar, Herts, with her two-year-old daughter, Ava, called the police. When they arrived at her house they informed her that she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an “offensive weapon” – even in her own home – was illegal.

Jonathan Shalit, Miss Klass’s agent, said that had been “shaken and utterly terrified” by the incident and was stepping up security at the house she shares with her fiancé, Graham Quinn, who was away on business at the time.

He said: “Myleene was aghast when she was told that the law did not allow her to defend herself in her own home. All she did was scream loudly and wave the knife to try and frighten them off.

You can read more about how the 1997 ban on handguns in the UK doubled violent crime in the four years after the ban at Reason magazine. Similarly, in the United states, legalizing the concealed carrying of firearms resulted in dramatic declines in violent crime. But that is just common sense. The more people who own guns and can defend themselves, the less crime there will be. But I think that the feminized state is just hostile to men acting in their traditional role as protectors, and they don’t like the idea that anyone is judged for doing evil things – like criminals.

The left, feminism and “equality”

And I can tell you what’s behind this. The secular left believes in equality. So if one person has money, and another doesn’t, it doesn’t matter what their personal decisions were. The poorer person should be allowed to take things from the richer person, and without getting hampered by laws and “self-defense”. That’s their view. That’s why they are soft on crime and release criminals early instead of punishing them. And this doesn’t just apply to criminals – this attitude goes right into the education system (“we need to make sure that families have no choice except the public schools, that way all the children will be equal”) the day care system (“we need to nationalize day care so that all the children are raised equally instead of by their own mothers”) the health care system (“we need to nationalize health care so that chaste men who are saving for their future marriage and children can pay for the abortions, sex changes, breast implants, contraceptives and IVF”), and so on.

I think Christians need to be especially careful with this compassionate impulse for “equality”, and consider whether equality might not make achieving Christian goals like liberty, marriage, and family more difficult. I don’t think it’s good for families to vote for higher taxes and bigger social programs that make men unnecessary as providers, protectors and leaders. All the responsibilities of the man to provide, protect and lead morally and spiritually are being handed off to the government, via police, schools, etc. That’s wrong.

Replacing men with government is bad for children – you don’t want to make it easier for women to not prepare to be mothers and wives, to not be careful about choosing the right men for marriage and parenting, and to not perform as wives and mothers once they are married in order to support men in their male roles. And that’s not my opinion – single motherhood by choice is known to increase child poverty and child abuse. And I don’t think that replacing men with government helps God any, either, since fathers are important for passing religion on to kids. You don’t serve God by undercutting his goals just because it feels good to you. You serve God by delivering results. His goal is not for you to feel good, but to do good. I recommend that anyone who votes based on feelings read more economics to find out what really works, and what strengthens marriage and family.

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