Why the outcry?

Shawn asked a great question that deserves a better response; more or less, why is there such an outcry about Circuit City's firing of 3400 workers because they're earning (!!!) about 50 cents more per hour than others? Shouldn't the company be free to hire the cheapest labor possible?

While we can't ignore class envy and populism, I think it goes deeper. First of all, the action is a kick in the teeth of the American dream--work hard, do well, get promoted, get fired. Second, it's likely that Circuit City negotiated--I mean "extorted"--tax breaks from cities to get stores based on the promise of good jobs. If you pay taxes in part so your neighbors can be gainfully employed, the broken promise is another kick in the teeth. (my libertarian tendencies don't support such giveaways, but I can certainly understand why people would be ticked when promises made to get tax breaks aren't kept)

Third, Circuit City's numbers don't add up. They're claiming that the fired earned at least $0.50/hour more than the industry average--multiply that by 3400 employees replaced at lower wages and 2000 hours per year, and you're talking about only about $3 million, not $110-140 million as claimed by the company. Probably the actual number is somewhat higher than $3 million, but the total wages of 3400 employees in this field are less than $110 million, so it's duplicitous (and worthy of outrage) that they chose to misrepresent this.

And finally, all of these incompetent kicks in the teeth from Circuit City executives are more than sufficient evidence that there's a better way to save a few million bucks; fire the executives that developed a business model that didn't work.

Logic in the government schools

Apparently a school district in Rhode Island has banned the Easter Bunny because it's "too Christian," and the local ACLU is arguing that government schools shouldn't mention Easter at all because it's a religious holiday.

So if you want your children to grow up stunningly ignorant of the historic and religious roots of our culture, I heartily recommend the Tiverton, Rhode Island public schools. Another option is School District 112 here in Minnesota, which banned Santa Claus from Christmas observations for more or less the same reason.

If you don't want your kids to be subjected to rigorously enforced ignorance, here's another option.

A Very Expensive Way to Save Money

It seems that Circuit City is choosing a very expensive way to save money; by firing 3400 of their highest paid (= most productive, most experienced) employees. In doing so, they appear to have opened themselves up for age discrimination lawsuits in California--a state where tort law is notorious for awarding billions on flimsy evidence. Ouch.

Along these lines, I had a discussion about this kind of thing with an older gentleman at my church. He used to sell appliances for Sears and quit because they cut his pay to the point where it wasn't worth it to him anymore--about 20 years back. A lot of his colleagues quit as well, and were replaced by young men in their teens and twenties who, charitably speaking, had never bought an appliance in their lives and had the knowledge to prove it.

The result? A store that used to sell more appliances than any other in the state (one of the tops in the nation) is now a virtual ghost town. The man who left? He still drives a bus part-time and is one of the most spry 80-year-olds I've ever seen. He could be selling a lot of Kenmore appliances if they made it worth his while.

Just like with Circuit City, Sears chose a very expensive way to save money. Hopefully it'll open up opportunities for their competitors to clean their clock.

Frozen Four Update

Since apparently most of my readers are from the Deep South--places like Florida, Colorado, and so on--perhaps it will be of interest to note some goings-on important up north. Specifically, the Western Collegiate Hockey Association has been exposed by Michigan State and Boston College as the posers they are. There are no WCHA teams in the national championship game this year. In fact, only one of the Frozen Four teams was from the WCHA.

Yes, friends, the WCHA appears to be the MAC of hockey. :^)

If you think you have a right to privacy,

...try telling the IRS that they have no right to know how much money you earned come April 17.

Disruptive technology in the church,

and a good one at that, I think. WorldNetDaily's Jim Rutz takes a look at church growth in China and suggests that dispensing with most of the visible characteristics of the traditional church--buildings, programs, etc..--is greatly responsible for the wonderful growth of the church in China.

Perhaps he's going a bit beyond what he can actually prove, but consider; when the Roman persecution stripped the church of all but the Bible and love, the church grew to conquer Rome. When the Bible was re-released to the people in the 1500s by Tyndale, Luther, Hus, and others, it spread despite the attempts of great powers to supress it. Joel Rosenberg has sources that claim that underground churches are growing rapidly in Muslim lands.

Maybe we need more of a bunker mentality in the church, not less.

The data are in,

and they show that daylight savings time does NOT save any energy. I eagerly await the end of this ill-advised program.

Want to preach a great sermon?

Sure you do, right? But you've got all kinds of objections--you're not a good teacher, you haven't lived up to the qualifications for deacon, let alone elder/bishop/overseer, your personal study of the Word is lacking, you name it. Right? Or perhaps, simply said, your church hasn't recognized the gifts that God's given you.

Even so, you can preach a sermon that might resound like one of those of Spurgeon. No kidding. If you want to reach the lost, and let them know that God loves them, love your wife.

It's not just about "focusing on the family," to abuse Dr. Dobson, or day to day happiness, or even obedience to Ephesians 5. Rather, do it because it's a picture that God gives for His love for His people. The church is the "bride" of Christ. Israel's idolatry is characterized as adultery and fornication.

So if you want to preach, treat your wife with tenderness and lead her. Let the world see a radiant woman filled with her husband's love, and let them then contemplate the goodness of her Creator.

What does it mean...

....when the windows at a daycare center are bulletproof? Evidently the windows did their job recently near Orlando, but it's troubling to think that the proprietor had enough evidence to justify installing them (they're not cheap) before this nut-job came to visit. Any former daycare workers out there care to comment?

Religion and politics

Lots of people out there will eagerly tell you that one of the banes of public life today is the convergence of religion and politics. Upon further thought, however, I'm convinced that the opposite is true.

Now what I'm getting at here is not that pastors need to endorse candidates--or James Dobson, for that matter. Rather, I'd suggest that churches need to instruct members on holy obligations towards government, especially when they're blessed to live in a republic like ours.

Some applications? Well, for starters, perhaps it would be a good idea to remind congregants that theology matters in politics. It is not as if the Scriptures have nothing to say about the death penalty, criminal justice, the sanctity of human life, and more, right? Certainly the Scriptures define the central role of government, right?

And in the same way, churches certainly have an obligation to discipline wayward members, even those in the halls of power. Imagine, for example, a church disciplining Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich for adultery, or a church disciplining John Kerry or Nancy Pelosi for supporting abortion and such.

Certainly doing this might cause an uproar in the short run, but in the long run, I think it's better that politicians get seriously rebuked for abuse of power.

More "proof" of global warming?

I was thinking this morning (really!) about a piece of evidence regarding global climate change; that carbon 14 tests of atmospheric carbon dioxide reveal that the "new" carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is composed primarily of carbon 12. It is further inferred that because the proportion of carbon 14 is lower today than, say, a century ago, that the added carbon dioxide--about 20%-25% of the total--is all from burned fossil fuels. Hence, we're making our own greenhouse to cook ourselves, right?

Well, not exactly. Contrast the above with the fact that only 5% of carbon dioxide emissions today are from human sources, and remember that gases mix in the atmosphere. Unless we could prove that plants favor carbon 12 over carbon 14 in photosynthesis (false), a human source for increased carbon should decrease the prevalance of carbon 14 by less than 5%, not 25%.

In other words, there is a large release of stored carbon not related to human activity, possibly from volcanic activity or ocean release. While certainly a large increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is noteworthy and possibly a concern, it doesn't mean we're creating our own greenhouse. Just the opposite, in fact.

Horrors!

Evidently, a state governmental agency here in Minnesota has come up with a study that "proves" that taxes--state and local--here are slightly regressive, meaning that as one's income increases, the proportion that one pays in state and local taxes goes down as expressed as a percentage.

The saddest thing about this is that conservatives often implicitly accept the logic that regressive taxes are bad by arguing that the tax code is progressive when one includes federal taxation. The data hold, but the argument misses a vital point; there is nothing inherently unjust about a tax that happens to be regressive.

If you doubt this, look at a quick look of regressive taxes; gasoline, cigarettes, liquor, sales, property, and so on. Imagine, for example, what would happen if a repeal of the taxes on cigarettes and alcohol was proposed. Wouldn't it help the poor, who smoke and drink more than the rich, if these onerous taxes were repealed?

Of course not. We know that it's a bad thing to smoke or drink too much, and that supply and demand dictates that as costs rise, demand falls. Hence, dropping taxes on these items would actually hurt those it was designed to help.

So we know from experience that a just tax ought to be unintrusive (no tax collector needlessly going through your records), efficient, and it ought to promote intelligent economic decisions--working, saving, sobriety, etc..

In other words, the most unjust tax of all is one that is very intrusive, very expensive to collect, and promotes foolish economic decisions. It also happens to be the one progressive tax we have; the income tax.

I'm shocked!

Evidently it turns out that when you take children from the loving care of their parents and put them in a day care center, the children are more likely to have behavioral problems. Evidently, the correlation holds across all income levels and quality of care.

Wow, it's like God gave children into the care of parents for a reason or something.

Dewey's Promise

Having praised the NEA for something, I guess I'd better say something on the other side to balance things out. :^) This morning, I was thinking about the old proverb that it's better to spend money on education than on criminal justice--that somehow time in the government schools leads people to avoid a life of crime.

And then, I wondered what data might show this. Well, the past 50-60 years have seen a quadrupling of per student (real dollar) educational funding, and also a monstrous increase in crime.

Oops. While certainly criminals are less likely than the rest of us to have a high school or college diploma, just as certainly Dewey's promise of eradicating crime via compulsory government education has been disproved by the experience of the past half century.

It's as if Romans 3:23 still held or something like that.

From the "You can't make this stuff up" file.

Apparently, the Heimatssicherheitsdienst (Department of Homeland Security, works better in the original German) is going to open its new headquarters in a former insane asylum. Somehow it fits.