Flat

What is with the flat tires? Last weekend it was my son and yesterday it was my wife. She came home from dropping off my daughter in a neighboring town and said she had a flat. Sure enough, a hunk of metal was sticking out of the tread. I jacked up the car just enough to keep the rim from cutting the tire and waited until this morning.

I got it fixed quickly this morning so hopefully we are good to go, thanks to our neighborhood car shop. I was a little worried that we had ruined the tire because Kim said the tire pressure warning light came on but she thought she could make it home. It was pretty flat by the time she got here. I don't know why she doesn't heed warning lights. She did that about 25 years ago when a temp light came on because a freeze plug rusted out. That was expensive. Apparently warning lights are made to be ignored, in her mind.

Republicans and Positive Non-intervention

As someone who has a cynical view regarding the motivations of most politicians I usually don't say much about politics. No doubt there are people all across the political spectrum with less than honorable motivations for the positions they hold. However, When it comes to fighting poverty I think there are people on all sides who genuinely want to help. The question then becomes how to help.

This is where we start hearing about big government vs small government. Most Democrats believe that the best way to help the impoverished is to develop or expand government programs to aid people in poverty. The Republicans, on the other hand, are often seen as people who believe that the best way to help poor people is to leave them to fend for themselves and give incentives to people who do well. And though there may be people who believe this, it isn't really the foundation of their approach.

At its foundation, the Republican model of helping the poor is based on the positive non-intervention principles as applied by the minister of finance of Hong Kong, John Cowperthwaite. During his tenure an extremely high percentage of the population moved out of poverty and into the middle class. At one point the average income in Hong Kong surpassed that of England. This was done mainly by Cowperthwaite's fierce insistence on positive non-interventionism. His most famous quote is, "In the long run, the aggregate decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralized decisions of a government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster."

It may seem harsh on poor people but Cowperthwaite believed that the best way to help poor people was to have an economy that provided jobs. But he was also very insistent that the government wasn't going to subsidize business either. Some businessmen wanted the government to build a tunnel across Hong Kong Harbor but he wouldn't do it because he felt that if it was really a good thing business would find a way to pay for it. They did.

So that is why you see some Republicans insisting that we need a smaller government. It is also why some of the same were against the bailout of the auto-industry. (At present, a high percentage of people think that was a good thing but we will see in the long run.) These Republicans aren't pulling the ideas out of left field. There is a history to it that has had remarkable success.

Of course one of the failures of the Republican party has been its reluctance to do enough of the positive part of positive non-intervention. Positive steps must be taken to keep businesses from using harmful practices. The financial sector was allowed to operate in unethical ways when they should have been stopped.

I write this because I get tired of hearing that unless you spend a lot of money on a government program to help poor people you aren't doing what Jesus would want you to do. The fact of the matter is that there are people all across the spectrum who are sincere followers of Jesus who sincerely want to help poor people. It's not really always about a cash grab for the rich. Just because some do doesn't mean you completely abandon the principles. You just take positive steps to fix it.

Blowout

I got a call from my son Michael on Saturday saying that he had a flat tire and needed help changing it??? Really?? An 18 year old needs help changing a tire? What have I done wrong in the raising of my child?

When I got there I found one of the worst blowouts I have ever seen. On one side the sidewall had almost completely separated from the tread while the inner sidewall was about 50% separated. They were fairly new tires too. I had looked at the tires that morning and they weren't low. Not sure what happened but I am glad he stayed on the road and in one piece.

Certain

I remember hearing a saying somewhere that went, "I would rather know a few things for certain than a lot of things that ain't so." I can't even remember the context of it but I have remembered it for 30+ years. But I ran across something that Tim Keller wrote that I like too. "...one of the signs that you may not grasp the unique, radical nature of the gospel is that you are certain that you do."

And that is the most dangerous thing about it. Because you are certain that you do you have a tendency not even bother to check.

$3,000 Speeding Ticket

I have always found it interesting that traffic fines discriminate against poor people and yet I never see anything said about it. My basic understanding is that when you break traffic law you receive a punishment that will hopefully encourage you to not break the law again. It seems that the severity of the punishment should be equal for all violators. But it isn't.

A poor person who gets a speeding ticket is going to experience some real pain. At best the kids are going to have to make that milk stretch a lot farther and they can pretty much forget about meat protein for a few weeks. But that ticket also has the potential to cause them to fall behind on a payment, face higher insurance premiums, ruin their credit rating, get evicted, or even lose their job depending on the circumstances. Those are some pretty serious consequences.

Compare that to a rich person who gets the same ticket. They've lost 15 minutes of their day. And... And... And... Well, I can't think of much else. I guess if they do it enough times they can lose their license.

So here is my solution. Everyone's Adjusted Gross Income should be rounded up to the nearest thousand, divided by a thousand, and be readily available to law enforcement. Make $20,000 a year? Your number is 20. Make $76,000 a year? Your number is 76. A speeding ticket is then issued using that number in a formula.

For example, let's say the find is going to be 3 x your AGI. Make $20,000 a year? You pay $60. Make $50,000 a year? You pay $150. Make $100,000? You pay $300. And if you make $1,000,000 you pay $3,000.

Of course this still is far from perfect but it would be a step in the right direction. Maybe you would have to make some adjustments so that millionaire really feels the same pain. And I can already hear people saying that it won't work because rich people will simply hire lawyers. I have a solution for that too. Make the legal process to fight a ticket with a private lawyer require a lot of hours to accomplish. That way if you really want to hire a lawyer to fight a ticket it is still going to cost you a lot of money.

Guess who got passed the other day by a very nice Mercedes that was traveling at high speed.

If You Dare

An incredibly useful exercise... if you dare, is to put yourself in God's place and think about what it would take to create a being that had the capacity to truly love you. The key here is to think about true love.

Obviously, if we are forced to love it really isn't true love. So how much freedom would this being require? Does it require complete freedom, along with all the consequences that might come with it? Can I create restrictions or will that disqualify it from being true love?

What about influences? Would I have to create an environment for this being that does not influence the being to love or not to love? Is some influence allowed to be able to still call it true love? If so, how much?

Would I be able to manipulate the being I created, pushing it toward truly loving me? It seems unfair if I couldn't express my love for it first. Does that mean that any love returned to me is not really true love?

Fitting in with all of the above are things like sin, pain, loss, and sadness. Would these have to be allowed as options if true love were to exist. If the beings couldn't choose other than to love could they really express true love?

I know this is a difficult topic to process but I think it answers a lot of questions that people have about life. Like, "How can a loving God allow bad things to happen?" But if that is too much to think about I will settle for someone telling me why I have to put in html page break tags in this blog manually to get a space between paragraphs. Or better yet, how to fix it. This world has too many things to think about.

Never Mind

Have you ever started telling a story and suddenly realized it has nothing to do with the current conversation? This probably only happens to me but when it happens there are only a few options. You can keep telling the story while feverishly trying to find a reason why it might be relevant. Or you might try to think of a way to turn the story, no matter how awkward the turn might be, in a direction that adds relevance.

I am going to start choosing a third option. Just stop right in the middle of the story and say, "Never mind." Sure it will be awkward but at least I won't be wasting your time, as well as my own.

Tables Turned

It is weird when you find yourself in the position of having to talk friends down from their predictions of gloom and doom when you also feel that way. The Lions forum that I am part of is pretty much of the opinion that we need to fire everybody, trade away all of our good players, and release the rest. I find myself constantly telling people to relax, that we will get it turned around one of these decades.

Is this how my friend Dan feels when he is telling us not to be so negative?

Another First

On Saturday, December 1, 2012, I went over to my mom's house to rake leaves. The height of the grass kept bothering me. It wasn't really long but it wasn't as short as I thought it should be either. So I hauled out the lawnmower and mowed the grass.

I have lived in Africa so I have mowed a lawn in December before. But this is the first time I have ever done that in Indiana. I got some strange looks from people driving by but, even if I do say so myself, it looked a lot better when I was done.

Between Notes

I read an article that contained a comment from a well known guitar player about Jeff Beck. I don't remember the exact quote but basically he was saying that sometimes Beck would bend strings to create sounds in between notes and had the ability to string several together in a way that sounded good. Not really an A but not really a Bb either. If I try that it just sounds out of tune.

That got me thinking that either my life is out of tune or there are a lot of things in my life that are between notes. Between notes is hard because of the ambiguity. We are used to answers that fall right on the notes and if we find ourselves in between, the preferred solution is to just get back in tune. But is there value in staying in between?

There seems to be a lot of things that fit that category. It isn't really this or that. That family isn't poor enough to qualify for this program but they are not rich enough to make ends meet. So how do we help them? That person isn't qualified enough for that job but they are too qualified to dig ditches. That person isn't crazy enough to be institutionalized but not sane enough too...

It just seems like there is a lot of in between stuff in life. I don't know where I am going with any of this but I guess I feel kind of comfortable between notes and just want to say it is an okay place to be. So maybe I should stop trying so hard to tune up or down. I'll just stay in this weird sounding space and drive everyone else crazy.