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Possible schism between conservative and liberal United Methodists

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From the Christian Post.

Excerpt:

Hundreds of United Methodist clergy are expressing deep concerns over a pledge made by a large group of fellow ministers to marry same-sex couples. They argue that if the pledge is carried through, the future of the denomination is in jeopardy.

“We do not know how many, if any, marriages or ‘holy unions’ of same-sex couples will be performed by UM clergy in the near future,” reads a letter, currently signed by more than 400 pastors, to the Council of Bishops. “But we do know the destructive effects that will result in our local churches and throughout the denomination if such services are performed by UM pastors.”

The concerned clergy are referring to a pledge that some 900 ministers have endorsed in support of same-sex civil unions. By signing the pledge, they agreed to defy the denomination’s ban on blessing same-sex unions.

If you’re wondering whether you are in a liberal denomination, here’s a Touchstone Magazine article listing the ones that are soft on homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

Excerpt:

Debates over homosexuality within the Christian community are largely confined to the liberal-led mainline or oldline Protestant denominations: the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the American Baptist Churches, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and the United Church of Christ.

To me, a liberal denomination is one where these disputes occur. Homosexuality and same-sex marriage should not even be up for discussion, in my view.

There are conservative Presbyterians (PCA), conservative baptists (SBA), and conservative Lutherans (LCMS) that are better on these issues. I don’t know of any conservative Episcopalians or Methodists in North America. Other ways to tell if a denomination is conservative is by looking at their position on abortion, on wealth redistribution, on war, and on the ordination of women.

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Obama’s $1.5 trillion in taxes on the rich will hurt the middle class most

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Sen. Jim Demint
Sen. Jim Demint

Consider this editorial from senator Jim DeMint.

Excerpt:

Here are the facts.

Americans who make $200,000 or more a year make up about 3 percent of the country. Those 3 percent earn roughly 30 percent of our national income and pay 52 percent of all income taxes.

Raising taxes on these top brackets would mean that nearly 40 percent of all new tax revenue would be taken from hundreds of thousands of small businesses. About half of the top 3 percent, around 750,000 Americans, report business income on their personal returns.

The president talks about Warren Buffett, but his planned tax hikes would hit Mom & Pop businesses that employ your friends and family.

It boils down to simple economics. If we want the millions of jobs that small businesses create, then we cannot confiscate an even greater share of the incomes that generate those jobs.

When politicians talk about “the rich,” they want to conjure an image in your mind of an idle, entitled elite somehow exploiting the rest of us.  (That actually sounds more like the U.S. Senate.)

But the real picture is more like that of a man or woman who owns a small, local business, who started with little but has done well, and who now has a handful of employees with decent incomes and health insurance.

The fiction behind the “tax the rich” ideology is that these folks have extra money just lying around, and that the government can take a big chunk of it without harming anyone.

What the liberals fail to recognize is that the money isn’t just lying around, stuffed in a mattress.  It’s out in the world, growing the economy.  Rich people, like everyone else, put their money to productive use.

The top 5 percent of American earners account for 37 percent of all consumer spending, about as much as the bottom 80 percent put together.

The top 10 percent of families hold 64 percent of all major investment assets. Those making over $200,000 give 36 percent of all charitable contributions.

This is the heart of the liberals’ misunderstanding.  Raising taxes on America’s job creators who spend, invest and donate will punish  the middle class, not the rich.  It will hurt the local businesses they patronize, the companies they invest in, and the charities they support.

Money that used to create jobs, wealth, and opportunity will instead be sucked into the economic black hole of the federal bureaucracy, never to return.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that it costs businesses about $63,000 to create one job.  Put another way, every $63,000 in new taxes risks an American job.  And every $100 billion in tax increases – on the rich or anyone else – could threaten nearly 1.6 million jobs.

Now, who do you think loses those jobs?  Will it be “the rich,” or will it be the clerk at their grocery store, the mechanic at their gas station, and the receptionist at their dentist’s office?

Make no mistake: When the taxman aims at “the rich,” he ends up hitting everyone else instead.

Obama keeps talking about making people pay “their fair share”, so he has plenty of money to hand out hundreds of millions of bailout dollars to solar power companies linked to his Democrat fundraisers. But nearly half the people in this country don’t pay federal taxes. Are they paying their fair share? Why isn’t Obama going after them? Well, if what DeMint says is true, he will be going after them – but most of them don’t realize it.

There’s a reason why companies are not hiring domestically, but are instead expanding operations abroad, where corporate taxes are lower and regulations are less of a burden. Companies create jobs where they can make a profit. If the Obama administration attacks their profit-making ability, they will stop creating jobs here and move their production and capital elsewhere. Obama’s rhetoric isn’t going to change the way the world works.

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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.