Central Falls, Rhode Island provides an example of what happens when a government unit runs out of money, totally, completely and finally. “The major problem is the city, with an annual operating budget of about $16 million, is facing about $32 million in promised after-retirement health-insurance costs in addition to the $48 million in pension obligations.” For a city with 19,000 inhabitants, being in the hole $80 million is serious business, especially when it gets deeper by $4.8 million each year.
They’ve tried everything: a proposed merger with Pawtucket, which itself has budgetary problems, failed. The city’s schools have already received $604 million since 1991 from Rhode Island, only to wind up with the schools are among the worst in the state. Mayor Charles D. Moreau and his councilmen have dug such a hole that there’s no way out. The New York Times says that to hear Moreau tell it, he’s the victim.
Mr. Moreau, a Democrat serving his fourth term, has not set foot in City Hall since July 19, the day that a state-appointed receiver took control. The state police knocked on his door that morning, he said, demanded his city-owned car and cellphone and keys to City Hall and handed him a letter announcing that his salary of $71,736 was being cut to $26,000. His role was now advisory, he was informed.
“I was told they’d call if they needed me,” Mr. Moreau said recently in a rare interview. “They haven’t called since.”
Maybe the call, when it comes, will be in connection with a corruption investigation. “Mr. Moreau is the subject of a state and federal corruption inquiry involving his hiring of a friend to board up dozens of abandoned buildings in town for about $2 million. The friend, a contractor, also installed a new furnace in the mayor’s house in 2009, according to The Providence Journal, possibly charging less than it was worth.” The contractor charged $6 for installing the furnace, less than meal at many fast-food outlets.
But Mayor Moreau hardly sees what the fuss is about. He’s suing the state for violating his civil rights and he’s preparing to run for a 5th term.
Mr. Moreau, 47, is suing the state, asserting that the law allowing the takeover of financially troubled cities violates his constitutional right to due process, among other things. He appealed to the Rhode Island Supreme Court after losing the first round and is awaiting a ruling. Meanwhile, the blunt-talking mayor is working at his brother’s real estate office, down the street from City Hall, and stewing about the situation he finds himself in. He has rebuffed calls to step down and, in fact, said he was already planning his 2013 re-election campaign.
“My bumper stickers are ready to be printed,” he said. “I’d win re-election with 90 percent of the vote if the election was today.”
The residents may well vote him in by 90%, but not if they have to pay the bill. They are resisting a 10% property tax increase proposed by the receiver. But boy, they’ve got bills. Central Falls pension and retirement liabilities are 80% unfunded, the worst in a state where a similar crisis is epidemic.
Now, the total unfunded liability for both state and local systems stands at $11.3 billion, an increase of $2 billion from just one year ago.
The new numbers underscore the need for pension reform not only at the state level, but across cities and towns, said General Treasurer Gina Raimondo, who has warned that the looming pension debt is one of the single greatest threats to the recovery of the state economy.
In other words, the city has to write checks without funds. Given the resistance to tax increases, one option is for Rhode Island to do a “Walker” — get the public pensions to take a cut. “Governors and mayors around the nation — from California to New York — are trying to curb pensions for unionized workers but the benefits often are protected by law.
“While we expect the city to seek expenditure relief through negotiated concessions with current employees and retirees, it is unclear how successful these negotiations will be or if any negotiated settlement will be sufficient to close the projected (pension) shortfall,” Moody’s said.
Good luck to them. Meanwhile Central Falls tied increasing its motor vehicle excise tax but “unexpected expenses, including overtime and the receiver’s compensation” severely reduced the amount of money collected. Now, to make things worse, Moody’s has downgraded the city’s credit rating, forcing it to pay for for its debt.
Central Falls is only one of many governments that is heading into bankruptcy. Others have already gone over the cliff. Pritchard, Alabama has the dubious honor of already being the first town to completely default on its pension obligations. The New York Times reported in 2010 that its former employees are being found dead in houses without electricity or water.
Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. “When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house,” said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. “He was a proud enough man that he wouldn’t accept help.” …
And it stands as a warning to cities like Philadelphia and states like Illinois, whose pension funds are under great strain: if nothing changes, the money eventually does run out, and when that happens, misery and turmoil follow. …
“Prichard is the future,” said Michael Aguirre, the former San Diego city attorney, who has called for San Diego to declare bankruptcy and restructure its own outsize pension obligations. “We’re all on the same conveyor belt. Prichard is just a little further down the road.”
Many cities and states are struggling to keep their pension plans adequately funded, with varying success. New York City plans to put $8.3 billion into its pension fund next year, twice what it paid five years ago. Maryland is considering a proposal to raise the retirement age to 62 for all public workers with fewer than five years of service.
Illinois keeps borrowing money to invest in its pension funds, gambling that the funds’ investments will earn enough to pay back the debt with interest. New Jersey simply decided not to pay the $3.1 billion that was due its pension plan this year.
Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota have all taken the unusual step of reducing the benefits they pay their current retirees by cutting cost-of-living increases; retirees in all three states are suing.
No state or city wants to wind up like Prichard.
When something can’t continue indefinitely, it won’t. Public officials can keep winning terms, but only to govern over a wasteland. Still it is enough for some. “And even in Atlantis of the legend the night the seas rushed in, the drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.” If you have to drown, do so in style. The last epitaph will be: “they died with their campaign stickers on”.
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Saw a TV interview with an elected official of a small town in California. He came into office and realized they ahd to do something. Their pension costs had gone up so much – from something like $10M/yr in 2000 to around $80M/yr today – that they finally had to just start firing people. The people they fired were saying how devastated they were, how they did not know where they could go to find work, or what they were going to do. One thing they did know was that they should not have been laid off and that the money required should come “from somewhere” and “There must be a way for us to be more efficient, to cut somewhere else.”
“Let’s do a study to figure out how to become more efficient by consolidating and combining different governemt agency functions.” If I hear that one more time I may just have to grab my Enfield and go climb a clock tower.
In Punta Gorda, Florida one officials came up with an idea. The city had built its economy almost entirely on building houses for people to move there. A large percentage of the population were construction workers. The real estate bubble bursting had hit them very hard. The official wanted to use the city’s emergency fund to just build some stuff. That would give its citizens something to do, some income to keep them from losing their houses. So if you have too many empty buildings the thing to do is just build some more.
It is amazing how often the self-licking ice cream cone gets reinvented. Maybe Punta Gorda can build some clock towers.
It is a great feeling to be able to spend other people money.
What we have done, on a larger scale, is to spend our children s and grand children s money—because they will have to pay off our debts for SS and medicare etc after we are long gone.
Hell–it is other peoples money and there are no consequences for the politicians or bankers who ignore the laws of compound interest or risk
Lets us all drink like there is no tomorrow.
This attitude, like so many other pathologies, seem to emerge in the 60s.
The 60s claimed that– Money Cannot Buy You Love won– not the reality of- Love Cannot Buy You Money.
meanwhile, Merkel has agreed to another bailout/guarantee of Greek debt etc.
the first time i read about the machination of various Nazi members trying to succeed Hitler i was mystified,with the Soviets on the Oder and the Allies on the rhine, leader of what? but to occupy the big chair for whatever time was enough. same ol’ same ol’ i suppose.
None of these yobs have heard of the cure for gangrene have they.
What do you do when government can’t save itself? When there are no taxes left to impose, no subsidies left to get? No more mergers left unmerged? Why you run for a 5th term. You campaign. You protest. You demand an end to the crisis.
What this indicates (to me at least) is that people are, like trained monkeys, going to hit the same buttons which once produced a banana over and over again, long after the button has been disconnected or the bananas have run out.
I’m not sure that, after a lifetime to punching those same buttons and watching bananas deposited on their plate, that politicians are capable of anything else. They’ve been selected for that behavior by the system. That is the total limit of their intelligence. What if, like Brecht’s Atlantean slavers, there is nothing else to their repertoire?
Why are the “informed citizenry” of Central Falls allowed to vote? When the EU and USA collapse in insolvency , democracy will be discredited for generations. Unless these fools stop voting themselves the treasury and learn self-restraint and some stoicism, that judgement will be correct.
It’s a Wonderful Leftist Life.
Cities, states…and whole countries run by socialists are in permanent ward of the state status.
Since many, if not most, wards of the state are deemed incompetent by definition, we should just simply rename Democrats the Party of Incompetents.
Like helpless children and adults with the need for around the clock caregiving, wards of the state are to be tended to, but nobody in their right mind would allow them to run a hair dryer, much less a larger and more significant enterprise.
So, let’s set aside some group home cities(call them communes and put up a lot of beads and black light cartoon posters) and take care of them. It is a lot cheaper and certainly does less damage than if we let them roam free and run large cities themselves.
Hippietown, Hopeytown, Changeytown, Woodstock Falls, let them name the places….just as long as nobody, ever again…suggests that the fiscal policies that emerge from a six hour bongathon is the basis for running the most important economy in the world.
Tangential topic that has bugged me every time I see the Pritchard AL story come up:
About that retired fire marshal: Has anyone been able to find out any information about him other than that brief mention in the NYT article?
Like … the guy’s name? Age? (other than “too young to collect Social Security”) State of health? Years on the govt payroll?
I just find it curious, that’s all. Articles about Pritchard list several other retirees who have have not gotten pension checks, whose response to that situation was to go & get jobs. (duh)
Which begs the question … why didn’t this guy?
It’s as if the tidbit about “retired fire marshal found dead in his home” is so dramatic that other details are (a) left uninvestigated or (b) being deliberately kept out of news reports.
And so I ask myself, “Cui bono?” Who benefits from such a highly dramatic but persistently vague reference? Whose agenda is advanced by sending up the “found dead in his house!!!!” flare while myriad other details which might (or might not, it’s just that we don’t know) completely change our view of the story, go completely unmentioned?
I hate to sound cynical, but this *is* the NYT we are talking about.
When the founding fathers setup this country you had to be a landowner to vote. Since the bulk of the local operating funds come from property taxes this group had a vested interest in making sure things were run properly. Once those with no “skin in the game” were given the vote, dipping into the treasury became commonplace. Continuing to lower the bar to voting will only increase the demands on the treasury.
What this indicates (to me at least) is that people are, like trained monkeys, going to hit the same buttons which once produced a banana over and over again, long after the button has been disconnected or the bananas have run out.
I’m not sure that, after a lifetime to punching those same buttons and watching bananas deposited on their plate, that politicians are capable of anything else. They’ve been selected for that behavior by the system. That is the total limit of their intelligence. What if, like Brecht’s Atlantean slavers, there is nothing else to their repertoire?
A couple of posts ago, W, you used the analogy of welfare states and bureaucratice centrally planned systems as doomed mega-dinosaurs, being unable to summon the strength to move their limbs even to defend themselves against attacks by smaller, more fleet creatures.
Here, I think, is the irony (though not very funny) of the overlarded, overregulating state: It self-inflicts its own sclerosis via its overreach, and poisons everyone within or dependent upon it with that sclerosis … while simultaneously forcing those who are constantly trying to avoid being crushed by it to become supremely adaptable. IOW it creates the conditions for its own demise, and it trains those who will succeed (perhaps even kill) it.
I’m on my third career and I just turned 40 last year. And, yes, I mean career and not job. The most critical thing I’ve learned is that I have to keep on learning, and learning things well outside my skill set, if I want to survive in the job market. I don’t claim any great knack or insight from which I can write a book on this and sell a bazillion copies. I’m just one of the little guys who is trying to make it from day to day, and who recognizes that fleetness and adaptability are my friends.
And that denial is a killer.
We all know the drill with rehab: the first step is admitting you have a problem ….
Welllll, the political class (in Codevilla’s formulation) has a problem. They are addicted to other people’s money, and the things that money buys. As addiction expert Patrick Carnes writes, the only thing an addict is capable of having a relationship with is his addiction. No.Thing.Else.Matters. “My precious.” That is why the political class has never adapted, has never learned another skill set outside those jobs related to spending OPM, and is utterly unable to comprehend that the needle holds no more junk.
There’s just gotta be a stash somewhere. Always has been before.
When the founding fathers setup this country you had to be a landowner to vote.
Of course them was in the salad days before the federal income tax & automatic payroll deductions. “My Friend FICA.”
Our country started with the beef, “No taxation without representation.” We may well see great tumult in the days to come over the beef, “No representation without taxation.” The one is as unjust, and as unAmerican, as the other.
Just saw an AARP attack ad about threatened cuts to Social Security. At the end of it an oldster says “We won’t get the benefits we paid for so they can fund missile technology.”
Well, aside from the fact that entitlements dwarf every other segement of the Federal Budget and have for quite some time, somebody ought to explain to the old gent that the DoD was cut by 40% plus 20 years ago and we no longer fund much of anything in “missile technology.” Development of new ICBMs, even the ones under development then, ended in the GHW Bush Administration. Pretty much the only thing we have developed since then is missile defense technology.
Everyone is always sure that Out There Somewhere is some big unneeded program that can be cut or a new source of revenue found so they can continue to get the boxcars full of fresh new bills from DC on schedule. They have no idea what it is, but it must be Out There Somewhere. Maybe we can cancel the Montana class of BB’s or put a tax on telephones to help pay for the Spanish American War.
And the big surprise that came out today is that the AARP has decided not to oppose cuts in future SS benfits, hoping to stave off attacks on the funding for those getting it now. As one analyst said “This is very big news!” Even as Harry Reed says we have nothing to worry about until sometime after 2030, the reality is starting to sink in. AARP, of course, officially denies any such change in position and no doubt will continue to feature 20 year olds in its commercials saying how SS is so important to them.
But I get the impression that groups like AARP are to a great extent a captive of the politicans they support. They will support people like Reed and Pelosi because they have too much invested in them. However if they are changing they have detected a wind shift, perhaps even gust front from an approaching storm.
Central Falls, Rhode Island, reminds me of an encounter between some Yukon Indian friends of mine and Patches the pony. Patches was everybody’s pet and wandered around the Indian village enjoying life in the Great White North. One day Patches was due some new shoes so my friends brought him inside and proceeded to work on his hooves. Somewhere in the proceedings Patches got hurt or vexed and he kicked one of the guys in a tender spot. Having a hammer in his hand, the guy promptly felled Patches with a deadly blow right between the eyes. Patches just lay there and they couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive so they debated what to do. Finally they decided to finish the job, seeing as they were part way through already. They gave Patches a fine new set of shoes as he laid out cold on the floor.
When they were finished they took a break and contemplated the prone Patches. Just when they thought he was done for, old Patches gave a twitch, then another, then a lunge and finally staggered woozily to his feet. In the fullness of time he left in as dignified a manner as he could muster. After his headache was gone, Patches became his old amiable self once more.
It seems to me that Central Falls and other places like it resemble poor old Patches. They sorely need new shoes but the City gets mad and tries to kick their taxpayers who are only doing what they can for the City. Then reality whacks City Hall right between the eyes and it becomes a question if they’re dead or alive. What happens next is a matter for disinterested speculation. If they get up and stagger on under their own steam – huzzah! If they remain laid out cold on the ground then their creditors will make whatever kind of meal they can from the municipal corpse.
After supper the citizens get to buy a new pony – one they can afford.
wc -
Was that a “pony in the pile” story, or what?
There are two possible responses by those facing the loss of Free Stuff. OK three, if you include work.
1. The infantile, as in “You’ll be sorry” when the yoots threaten to burn their own houses down.
2. The criminal, as in “We know where you live” when the Mob, as compared to the mere mob, threaten to burn the taxpayers houses down.
13. bogie wheel
It’s a true story – it’s just The Yukon.
When you think about the work involved in replacing muni services with citizen volunteers, it sure seems easier to just get better –MUCH better –people in muni govt.
Gotta outlaw the public unions tho. o boy.
The real problem of course does not involve some mangy little backwater like Pritchard, AL or Central Falls, RI but what happens when Birmingham goes under or Chicago or LA. The state will come down with them (if California and Illinois don’t fall all on their own) then it will be politically expedient for the Federal government to bail them out. California and Illinois are too big to fail.
However it is not clear that Texas or Indiana or a slew of other states are going to be too eager to foot the bill. The main difference between the USA and the EU is that by and large the richest states are the most profligate and not the smallest and poorest.
I honestly believe there is a crisis brewing in this country unlike any since Civil War. Like that crisis it is going to split whole communities and pit brother against brother and I cannot see it being resolved politically. There is no compromise or common sense on the Progressive side of the divide. The veneer of authority is just that and will crumble quickly in the face passion whether from the Left or the Right. Greece and Madison and Libya are not that far away from each others predicament.
(from the wiki)
The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells. It is told from the point of view of a man named Edward Prendick who is shipwrecked, rescued by a passing boat, and then left at the ship’s destination by the crew along with the ship’s cargo of exotic animals. The island is home to a scientist named Doctor Moreau, who is conducting bizarre and cruel experiments on the animals he has imported, attempting to create sentient beings out of animals. The novel deals with numerous philosophical themes, including the need to take responsibility for the things we create, the question of what makes a man a man, the cruelty of nature and of man, and the dangers of trying to control nature.
wc -
my bad for being clear as mud.
I didn’t doubt the story’s veracity. I just found it funny that, for once, there was a story about a metaphorical pile in which there was actually a literal pony.
Here’s another NYT story about unemployment benefits drying up. A 62-year old man on his last check walking around handing out resumes.
“Paid for entirely with federal money and does not affect state budgets”. Gee, I guess that means the money didn’t come from the taxpayer. Or it isn’t borrowed. Or maybe it doesn’t have to be paid back. It’s free. And only “ideological opposition and other legislative priorities” stand between the poor man and his check.
Certainly people on their last check are too desperate to care where the next one comes from, provided it comes. But that doesn’t change the fact that money isn’t free. It was never free. The NYT quotes a Congressman who says:
If the slavery or the union was the key issue of the 1860s, the existence (or nonexistence) of free money is probably the single most contentious issue of our times. The dispute runs through the European crisis. Greece believes in free money. And why not? They’ve seen enough of it to know free money exists. But the Germans have worked long enough to think that money must be earned.
The problem is that the believers in free money and the adherents of earned money can’t convince each other of their respective points of view. For the free moneyists, prosperity consists of pumping enough free money into the system to allow people to earn money again. For the earned moneyists, every free dollar given out is one more dollar that somebody has to pay back.
This thread talks of money running out. For people who live in the Islamic world, they face a possible future where the food runs out. One bitter irony of the fervent wishes by Islamists for America’s demise is that the worst possible event that could happen to people living in Islamic countries would be America’s demise.
The United States is presently in excellent shape as an agricultural giant. The United States is not merely one of the great breadbaskets of the world, but it is more importantly a repository of scientific expertise in agriculture that the modern world cannot live without.
The importance of the Green Revolution should not be underestimated. If Islamists had had their way, the Green Revolution would never have happened, Norman Borlaug would never have been born, and hundreds of millions of people throughout the world would have died of starvation.
Although aggressive use of plant genetics have increased yields and combated plant parasites, parasites evolve. Whether it is agriculture or medicine, scientific breakthroughs merely buy time for humanity; they don’t end disease.
If the West in general and the United States in particular were crippled, they would not have the money to pay for agricultural science. This would have a ripple effect because the Third World simply does not have the ability to combat agricultural parasites on its own. Diseases would come back. Diseases do evolve, after all! If one merely goes back to the agricultural yields of 1950, that would reduce yields by over 50%.
So, if al-Qaeda ever got its way and vanquished the West, it would effectively destroy the very scientific prowess in agriculture that allows as many people to live on this planet as is presently the case. This would mean death for the majority of the world’s population.
If the world’s population is vulnerable, people from Islamic countries are even more vulnerable. Egypt must import food. Yet, China, India, and even Vietnam can better afford imported foodstuffs than Egypt. Egypt’s main exports are cotton, petroleum, and jihad. Imagine a world not only without the agricultural exports of the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand, but also with 60% lower yields everywhere else – that is what our enemies desire. In such a scenario, Egyptians would starve en masse, and the mortality for Muslims on this planet would be at least 75%.
Al-Qaeda regards it as its sacred duty to slay the goose that lays golden eggs.
This thread talks of money running out. For people who live in the Islamic world, they face a possible future where the food runs out. One bitter irony of the fervent wishes by Islamists for America’s demise is that the worst possible event that could happen to people living in Islamic countries would be America’s demise.
The United States is presently in excellent shape as an agricultural giant. The United States is not merely one of the great breadbaskets of the world, but it is more importantly a repository of scientific expertise in agriculture that the modern world cannot live without.
The importance of the Green Revolution should not be underestimated. If Islamists had had their way, the Green Revolution would never have happened, Norman Borlaug would never have been born, and hundreds of millions of people throughout the world would have died of starvation.
Although aggressive use of plant genetics have increased yields and combated plant parasites, parasites evolve. Whether it is agriculture or medicine, scientific breakthroughs merely buy time for humanity; they don’t end disease.
If the West in general and the United States in particular were crippled, they would not have the money to pay for agricultural science. This would have a ripple effect because the Third World simply does not have the ability to combat agricultural parasites on its own. Diseases would come back. Diseases do evolve, after all! If one merely goes back to the agricultural yields of 1950, that would reduce yields by over 50%.
So, if al-Qaeda ever got its way and vanquished the West, it would effectively destroy the very scientific prowess in agriculture that allows as many people to live on this planet as is presently the case. This would mean death for the majority of the world’s population.
If the world’s population is vulnerable, people from Islamic countries are even more vulnerable. Egypt must import food. Yet, China, India, and even Vietnam can better afford imported foodstuffs than Egypt. Egypt’s main exports are cotton, petroleum, and jihad. Imagine a world not only without the agricultural exports of the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand, but also with 60% lower yields everywhere else – that is what our enemies desire. In such a scenario, Egyptians would starve en masse, and the mortality for Muslims on this planet would be at least 75%.
Al-Qaeda regards it as its sacred duty to slay the goose that lays golden eggs.
Here’s the thing. You can always come up with a heartbreaking story of someone who really, really needs that “free money” and would be oh-so-deserving of the $ if anyone would. Just a couple months ago, my sister sent around an e-mail requesting family members to write the legislators of State X, where my niece resides, because funding for Program Abbadabba was about to be cut off in this year’s budget and my niece’s post-grad training depends entirely on continued funding for Program Abbadabba.
There will always be a thousand hands extended for that single budgetary dollar.
And if you allow emotion, rather than principle and law, to drive your decision, as the left habitually does, then you have no grounds to say “no” to the next person who comes along with a heartbreaking tale.
What is government for? What are the respective roles of the federal and state governments in a federalist system? What are the enumerated powers of the federal government acc to the US Constitution?
By God, these are not only *not* irrelevant questions, they are the foundational ones. And they are the very questions that American citizens have not been properly educated to grapple with, thanks to crappy public schools, and have been distracted from even thinking about, thanks to a Weinerized & sensationalist media.
The worse things get, the more simultaneously impotent and tyrannical American government becomes (you wouldn’t think those two things were bedfellows but, shazam, our dear leaders have managed to bring them both to pass in our day and age), the more those foundational questions are going to assert themselves.
Thanks, Alexis!
w paraphrases the great ”house divided” speech of 1858. Then bw comes alomng and starts cwork on the Cooper Union speech ofg 1860 –the one which gained Lincoln the nomination, and set in motion the cure spoken of in the 1858 speech.
The wiki is excellent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Union_speech
(snip)
***
Lincoln’s speech has three major parts, each building towards his conclusion. The first part concerns the founders and the legal positions they supported on the question of slavery in the territories. The second part is addressed to the voters of the southern states, clarifying the issues between Republicans and Democrats, arguing that the Republican position on slavery is the ‘conservative’ policy. The final section is addressed to Republicans.
In the first section, in response to a statement by Stephen Douglas, Lincoln asks rhetorically “What is the frame of government under which we live?” [note, bogie's question] and answers that it “must be: ‘The Constitution of the United States.’” From there he begins his reasoning on why the federal government can regulate slavery in the federal territories (those that were not states), especially resting on the character of the founders, and how they thought of slavery:
The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one – a clear majority of the whole – certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories…
In the second part, in which he creates a prosopopoeia by creating a mock debate between Republicans and the South,[4] Lincoln denies that Republicans are a “sectional” party, only representing interests in the Northern part of the country, and help incite slave rebellions. He rebukes the Southern accusation that Republicans helped John Brown by saying “John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise.” He addressed the single-mindedness of the Southerners, saying:
Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.
He also tried to show that the Southern demand to secede from the Union if a Republican were to be elected president was like robbing a man with a gun: “the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle” from that of a robber.
The third section, addressed to fellow Republicans, encourages level-headed thinking and cool actions, doing “nothing through passion and ill temper.”
We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them.
Lincoln states that the only thing that will convince the Southerners is to “cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right” and to support all their runaway slave laws and the expansion of slavery. He ends by saying that Republicans, if they cannot end slavery where it exists, must fight through their votes to prevent its expansion. He ends with a call to duty:
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
***
(close wiki snip)
***
…a thought, the phrase ‘house divided’ is from the book of Matthew, which also contains a question put to Jesus re the Ten Commandments, which Jesus –can i paraphrase? –more or less says that the first half says to love the Lord with all your heart (which can be seen as a stern rebuke to the ”whatever” attitude on the importance of the difference between right and wrong) and the second half is to treat your neighbor as you would be treated –the golden rule appears. Here’s the thing: who is your neighbor? Is it every person on the planet? Is it the people physically proximate? Is it the like-minded people regardless of location? It just seems significant that he used the word ‘neighbor’ and not the total word ‘mankind’.
***
last thought, re ”free money” –only part of what we think of as ‘free money’ is actually charity to the indigent. Govt workers, in returning fifty cents worth of services, compared to private industry workers, per dollar spent toward those services, are creating hidden ‘free money’ via sopping up excess productivity. Which brings up another question: Clearly excess productivity exists, ergo what would the missing fifty cents be buying relief from? So the question is excess of what?
IOW, what is it that has the excess that needs buying up?
I was born in 1964. I do not consider myself a boomer. It has seemed my entire life that the party has ended just when I showed up. As the old saying goes, boomers got sex, drugs, and rock and roll, we got AIDS, crack and Michael Bolton. This is more of the same. The boomers had to be the most narcissistic generation in history. The irony is that this time the party is blowing up in their faces as they retire. I have little schadenfreude because it will make my own retirement come much later.
Wretchard #20:
One of my favorite quotes was provided by the mayor of Tampa, FL, who said of the proposed high speed rail system, “I hope that the Federal Government will pay the entire cost of building the system so that the taxpayers won’t have to.”
This is another version of the European street theater lament, “Make the banks pay for it all. They have the money, not us.”
Bogie wheel #23:
Twice now in the past few months I have been approached in the parking lot of a local store by someone with a tale of woe. They drove down here and have no money at all, flat busted broke. There is always a family involved, and children, only they are not where you can see them. This is obviously a scam. But it makes me wonder. What where they doing before they came up with this routine? The only answer I can come up with was running some other kind of scam, one that did not require them to pound the pavement. They probably were one of those people who collect those mysterious charges that show up when you sell, buy, or refinance a house, or worked for a “non-profit” or a called people up at night to offer them a really good deal on debt consolidation or tickets for the state troopers talent show. But you can be damn sure it was not an honest job that involved the net production of something useful.
Darwinian selection processes exist in all organic life forms. The Socialists are seeing it happen from the view of the Dodo bird.
who is your neighbor? Is it every person on the planet? Is it the people physically proximate? Is it the like-minded people regardless of location? It just seems significant that he used the word ‘neighbor’ and not the total word ‘mankind’.
buddy – There are better Biblical scholars on BC than I, so I will leave the close textual analysis to them, but my take on this, via memory and off the top of my head, is that in a number of places in the New Testament you will see a distinction (either explicit or implicit) between the requirements of God and those of government. Also keep in mind that once the Jewish leadership (note, we’re talking specific bodies like the Sanhedrin, and not even all of them, since Nicodemus was one) had decided they had a Jesus problem, they repeatedly tried to trap Jesus into publicly incriminating himself as being anti-Roman-rule, an offense for which they could scream AHA! and then turn him over to the Romans for punishment, the Romans not exactly being noted for their leniency towards rebels. The “render unto Caesar” passage in Matthew 22 is probably the most famous episode of this cat-and-mouse game, but it’s useful to keep that context in mind whenever the question of “what did Jesus think of government?” comes up.
But there’s an even more basic distinction that gets made all the time in the Bible, and that is the distinction between inner motivation and outward behavior. The two commandments you cite embody this very distinction: “love” and “do”. The invisible attitude of the heart, and visible behavior. Love God, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. These are not independent commands but causally related ones, i.e. if you adhere to the first (loving God) then as a consequence you will fulfill the other.
A heart filled with love, therefore, always manifests itself in deeds. But deeds in and of themselves are NOT a guaranteed indicator of what is going on in the heart. On several occasions we see Jesus nail a person or persons for being hypocritical in the sense of showing proper outward behavior but utterly lacking in love and humility.
And isn’t that an interesting take on “hypocrisy”? Because it seems just the opposite of how we commonly use the word today. In its basic sense the word just means pretense and describes a mismatch between the inner attitude and the outward behavior. Nowadays we seem to employ “hypocrisy” exclusively with regard to BAD outward behavior. But Jesus used it to describe GOOD outward behavior that was not matched or motivated by inner goodness (love and humility).
Which brings me back to the “neighbor” and “government” questions.
Is forced charity really charity? Does a government requirement to aid or support the needy, via taxes, make a taxpayer a “charitable” person? No. It just makes that person law-abiding. (assuming they pay their taxes) But there is no, I repeat, no attitudinal or spiritual “brownie point” that is earned solely from the act of paying one’s taxes. The outward behavior does not tell you the condition of the heart. The law-abiding taxpayer could just as easily be Ebeneezer Scrooge on Dec. 24th as he could be Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas morning.
So this is the warped and curious thing about the left. (one of many, I guess) They don’t give a rip what’s in your heart. As a matter of fact, they will run roughshod over your inner convictions and beliefs if those beliefs stand in the way of their goal, which is compelling you (via the power of the state) to behave in a required manner. The only “brownie points” available from the left are, strictly speaking, the result of outward behavior … and yet they talk in terms of “righteousness” and “moral superiority” as labels that can be applied because So-and-So has behaved in “proper” fashion.
IOW … the left are our modern-day Pharisees.
Their hearts are as cold as the grave. They are motivated by power, not by love. And yet they claim the mantle of goodness.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” Matthew 23: 27, 28
What really infuriated Jesus in this episode (and if you read the whole passage, He was definitely in full fury mode) was the effect the Pharisees had on the ordinary Jews, those who wanted to be good and looked to the Pharisees for leadership and example. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees (outward propriety, inner spiritual deadness) was both misleading and burdensome to the ordinary folk (whose lives were hard enough).
Misleading because (a) it led the ordinary people to mistakenly think that the Pharisees were the paragon of righteousness, when in fact they were damned, and (b) what was worse, the insanely detailed emphasis on outward behavior led people away from attentiveness to the condition of their heart, and thus away from attentiveness to what God considers the primary commandment (love).
Burdensome because an entangling jungle of behavioral requirements can never, of course, be fulfilled — which results in guilt, and estrangement from God and others.
Hence Jesus’ fury. The very men who were supposed to be leading ordinary people TO God, were acting as a deadly undertow, sucking souls AWAY FROM God.
Recall that there was once a time in Western civilization when the then-liberals placed themselves in Jesus’ sandals and reminded church-going Christians of the same things Jesus did — “just because you ACT right doesn’t mean you ARE right.” Warnings to avoid complacency via mistaking the false positives of proper behavior as equivalent to spiritual health, were not so different from what one would find in Matthew 23.
And then two turnings occurred. These came in breathtaking speed in cultural terms, i.e. over the course of just two generations.
First, the liberal-left stopped critiquing Christians as hypocrites in the Matthew 23 vein, and took up the banner of anti-establishment behavior. IOW they went from singing the “good behavior is not necessarily really good” tune, to shouting the “bad behavior is really good” street anthem.
And then (note: once they had overthrown traditional cultural institutions and had themselves taken power) they turned on a dime yet again. Old dictat: Bad behavor is really good. New dictat: Everyone be good! Play nice! Recycle! Put down that cigarette! And don’t offend the Muslims or insult minorities!
The 40 gazillion behavioral dictats of the left, today, have exactly the same effect on ordinary people as the myriad accreted requirements of being a “good Jew” in Jesus’ time — they substitute the earthly for the eternal, and they separate man from God.
Who is my neighbor? The Bible’s answer is: Love God, and He will direct your path. He will show you who your neighbor is, i.e. whom you are being called to help. The measure to which you comply will be to that same measure of love that is in your heart.
The left’s answer is: Love the state, and it will direct your path. The state will show you who your neighbor is (powerful pol’s favored constituencies, anyone?). And the state will force you to comply. Go ahead and hate them for it. Go ahead and hate everyone. The state doesn’t give a rat’s @ss. Just pay up.
It all will come from Obama’s stash, no problem.
Ive tried a thought experiment on Greece but it applies to any of the PIIGS. If the govt runs out of money and falls out of the EU, what happens? There is no money except whatever gets printed locally and that relies on a social contract to honor it. Trade stops. The service economy stops. Energy stops. Farmers do ok, maybe (at least they eat). How can a modern economy (which Greece barely is) function without some kind of money? Gold?
WRT to the subject at hand, I know people who have retired from two Gov’t pensions and clear nearly $100K in pensions. I also know people who are totally dependent on SS for $25K or less. I have no sympathy for the govt pensioner, with the sole exception of the retired soldier or sailor or marine. That was a big bet they made.
Oh, Russell #26… Boo friggin’ hoo, yer breakin’ my heart.
What’s a “Michael Bolton” anyway
bw/28, wish i could get back to ya on that –i can’t even finish tho –late to be in a picture w/ new grandotter –will be back in a few hours –looks like great stuff!
Western Canadian @12
Your “horse’s tale” is particularly apropos in the context of an essay about Rhode Island, the demesne of another, different Patches, the one-time Congressman and miscreant Kennedy.
Russell #26,
If we are going to strart generational nitpicking. I am an early “boomer”, born in 1946. Just because things began to go sour in the `1960s, we are not necessarily to blame, we were not yet in control. Think for a moment who were the leaders back then. JFK, LBJ, Nixon, etc. In both parties the leaders at all levels were members of the beatified “greatest Generation. Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, Alan Ginsburg? All members of the WWII generation. the same holds true for the juridicial and media leaders as well. A small noisy fraction of our cohort were gioven excessive media attention for rioting in the streets, following pre-Boomers like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bill Ayers, and others. More of us went to Viet Nam (along with some WW II retreads), and most of us stivedd reasonably hard in schools and factories without incident. I will agree to accept responsibility for the years when we came to political influence, basically beginning dudring the early 1980s to late 1990s. May I invite your generation to accept responsibility for the present?
Actually, I think there has always, in every generation, been a responsible remnant who have carried civilization, while the mass of Whiners and Weiners, have continually declined.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville
Allow me to say something that I know won’t be popular with some of the older posters on this board, but: It is *perfectly* appropriate for past municipal retirees to lose most, if not all, of their pension benefits. THEY were the beneficiaries of a corrupt, crony promoting system; THEY were the beneficiaries of ever increasing benefits, THEY were the beneficiaries of those who said this could always go on, don’t worry about the future; so let THEM bear the pain of the decisions made on their behalf.
Central Falls could be back in fine shape overnight with one paperwork change: abolish the pensions, abolish the retiree healthcare benefits. Let the chips fall where they may. Tell everyone from now on that you will earn what you get paid today; all these promises for the future are just rainbows and unicorn dust. Don’t believe them.
The generation now going into retirement made a real bad bet. They bet that the young will always have to take care of them, no matter what.
The young don’t have to. And the day that is universally acknowledged gets closer and closer.
wws
I used to do some benefit work. I know how to fund a defined benefit pension. One of the things that happens is that, each year, the trustee must show sufficient money on hand to fund as a single-premium purchase, an annuity–or some version thereof–in the required amount of the required structure.
Health insurance is trickier, but it’s better to be putting money away as you go; you’ve got some, if not all that’s necessary, but more than zero.
I wonder if any of the union leaders ever asked for an accounting of the pension fund.
Hahahaha.
If you promise an increased pension, you get credit and the labor trouble is over. If you don’t fund it, the cost of the thing is zero. Win for the employer,win for the union negotiator. Who will be retired or dead when the can they kicked down the road stops moving.
So, I wonder if any union leader asked for an accounting and I wonder if any employee asked the union leader to ask.
My guess is the state/county/muni and the union leadership both knew what was going on and were complicit, not to mention complicit in keeping it quiet.
@29 bogie wheel
You have provided a succinct and insightful piece, which I hope that many will save as it touches on another critical issue in exercise of Christian faith: that believers are expected to do, and thus the love is made clear to all. Without that “do”, the commandment is unfulfilled, which has serious implications while considering other statements by Jesus of who his actual followers are and how they may be distinguished (ie, following his commandment).
Your point on the use of “neighbor” is also appropriate. For an example of “who is my neighbor” he did not use some guy in Gaul, but told instead about people meeting another in need face to face. If we spend the time aware of our surroundings, God will bring more than enough neighbors to us to test our love.
A note on governments: as far as I can tell, God’s attitude toward earthly government is simply “obey them so long and in such way as they do not command disobedience to me”. Why? Because in every case, the people get the government they have from God, for His purpose. In some cases this has been to beat the people senseless for rebelling against Him in other ways.
I’m not sure why God blessed America so much after rebelling against the British–maybe to toss “us” another illustrative test. Regardless, what we have now is a state that promises everything, including moral sanctification, if you will only worship it’s laws and mores and submit as instructed with pocketbook and polling lever. It nakedly desires to dethrone God. And we wonder that they can’t keep the illusion going any longer in large or small form? This is a Beast to be run away from as rapidly as possible: it’s end will not be pretty!
–JC
#29
A very good post – well conceived and clearly stated.
Of all those who have worked so hard to discredit religion in general and Christianity in particular the “righteous” have done the most damage. The Pharisees were the “righteous” of their day. They could quote chapter and verse and justify any act with scripture. You point out the truth – the core of actual religion starts with the love of God and all else proceeds from there – just as Jesus said. Scripture is a guide and important as a corrective to excess emotion. To paraphrase: “What would love do without knowledge? Go astray. What would knowledge do without love? Puff up.” But love ranks supreme. Augustine said “Love and do what you like”. And Paul points out the traits of those who truly love. Love is the starting point and the final goal. Those who think this too easy have never really tried it. Those who think it simplistic have never truly experienced it.
We live in a culture that is close to entirely lacking in love. It is rapidly becoming a nightmare for many – too many. We have certainly seen such in the past. But this time the phenomenon appears to be world wide. And in the past there was always some place or group that one could look to for refuge and stability. If the west falls that place will no longer exist.