Responsibility versus Entitlement

I submit for your consideration the following from a Moneynews article today:

“One very troubling point is that, whether measured using 30-day or 60-day delinquencies, re-default rates increased each month and showed no signs of leveling off after six months and even eight months,” said Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan.

“This trend of increasing delinquencies underscores the need to understand why these modifications have not been more sustainable.”

I can explain precisely why these modifications have not helped. Many of these mortgages were initially given to people who should not have qualified for the loans. In many cases, they were also used not to allow a working-class worker to move into a small suburban starter home, but to let people who have spent their entire lives expecting the government to provide for them stretch their budget to the limit to build or buy a "McMansion" on abandoned farmland. These are not people who are genuinely struggling to put proper clothing on their children and milk in the fridge. These are people who are "struggling" to keep up with their brand new car payments, their cell phone bills, and still have enough money left over to get their manicures.

I did not watch a lot of the Obama commercial that focused in on "poor families who need help" (from the Democrats, naturally), but I saw enough to remember the woman who said that her kids drank soda because she could not afford milk. I had two immediate thoughts. One was that if her kids drank water like water instead of drinking soda like water, no doubt she could afford a little milk for them. Maybe not a lot, but a little milk and a lot of water is healthier than a lot of soda. The other thing I noticed was her finely manicured nail job, which I asked around about and discovered that $40/month was a very low estimate for upkeep on that kind of beauty product. $40/month will buy a lot of milk... easily two gallons a week. That would give four children a little over a cup of milk each day right there.

My point? These are people who are used to expecting things. They likely got given what they wanted by their parents. They grew up watching commercials that told them what they needed to want. From allowances given for doing nothing to college credit cards gone sky-high, when have they ever learned that they can't have what they "must have"? What kind of standard of living do you have, anyways, if you can't have your hair the color you want it? And if they can't afford it, that's someone else's problem.

So why should they start paying now that they have a more reasonable loan? They've just learned that if they cry enough, banks will do everything possible to accomodate them, to ensure that they aren't (horrors) turned out of their five-bedroom lake-view domiciles. If they continue to cry and don't bother to pay, no doubt in the end they can get what they want for free, especially with a political party in place who doesn't seem to understand that the government does not create wealth... it just takes wealth away from other people.

In the midst of all this nonsense, one family acquired a modest raised ranch on a fixed-rate FHA and have held onto it with all they've got, forgoing cell phones for electricity, forgoing car loans for student loans, forgoing nail jobs and hair jobs for milk and potatoes. They have never missed a payment. It's that kind of attitude, responsibility rather than entitlement, that will bring down foreclosures of modified loans.

Reconfiguration

I am going to take a few days for contemplation, and then I am probably going to change the title of my blog. I am probably not going to change it's current purpose.

The current title is The Determined Homemaker, which very deeply fit my purpose when I wrote it. At the time, I had just quit my full-time job, which I had taken on very reluctantly when my husband was laid off. With hidden tears and stress levels high, I left my one-year-old son and set out to keep food on the table as a software engineer at a local defense contractor. Depending on the way I look at it, this was either a complete failure or a success.

I managed to hold out for three years while my husband fast-tracked full-time to his bachelor's degree, giving him the standing needed to make the needed salary for me to return home. On the other hand, I got very sick with several neural and intestinal problems, and it took me a good year or so to really regain my health again, and on top of that I kept getting poor performance reviews. When I'm working as a programmer, I'm a very good coder. I am not a data-entry whiz (numbers dyslexia). I'm not a manager. I can teach and tutor readily, but I have to be given a class and subject. I can't just go walking about and Know.. or Find Out.. what people need to know. In short, I was, as I often am, a square peg in a world full of round holes. If they'd expected me to build an application, they might've thought I was a genius. They wanted me to psuedo-manage data entry personnel, and I was a complete flop.

I'm still dealing with the self-esteem fallout from that fiasco.

I suppose I've spent the last year trying to prove that I'm a good enough homemaker to justify being a pretty bad Extrovert Psuedo-Manager Career Woman. The time for that is over. I don't know how I'm going to move past it, but I know I need to. Of course I'm going to keep being a full-time homemaker. But I need to stop stressing over my societal/financial worth. I've been trying to pare down my hobbies to nothing that is not highly-potentially financially profitable, so that I end up doing nothing but either homemaking or doing something that will or might land me a check, however small. That can't be my life anymore.

All these books and essays and such about finding your purpose in life seem to assume that you are supposed to pick and focus in on one single thing only that lights up your eyes, that you are drawn to naturally. What if there's more than one thing? Is it truly a waste to do something you enjoy but will never be good at? I've got some questions to answer in the coming days. It may be that my year, rather than being what I've got when I answer them, will simply be about finding the answers.

Meanwhile, I anticipate that I will continue to write religious and political essays in this blog, peppered with things I've discovered or done as a homemaker/homeschooling mom. And in time, we'll see how this blog changes as I do.

Thanks for reading!

A Christian celebrating Christmas

Every year I hear the same debate, an old debate about whether or not Christians should celebrate Christmas. Personally, I know what I do, and I don't mind what others do. I see it as something that each person should be able to approach to their own conscience. The issue is not a limiting issue to me. Those who celebrate Christmas in all it's religious and secular glory, those who stick to the religious only, and those who bypass it altogether as a 'pagan festival' may all be perfectly good Christians, and I don't have a problem with any of those choices. However, I would like to address a certain argument against Christmas (and Easter) and offer my take on it.

Though there are people who have decided calmly in their own mind and conscience to avoid Christmas and Easter, there are others who end up confused by one main argument: the pagan/secular additions. If someone decides to not celebrate Christmas because he does not feel comfortable about honoring Jesus's birthday on a day that likely isn't His birthday, so much the better for him. However, sometimes their zeal in spreading their opinions leave Christians in-between, unwilling to abandon their traditions, but now viewing them with an unnecessary measure of guilt. I do not believe that God intended us to feel terrible about treating each other with charity and love because some elements of Santa Claus's history included a conglomerate of pagan beliefs. For this reason, I would like to give you something to consider as you ask yourself whether it's sinful to put candy canes on your tree or exchange gifts.

Everything that God made is inherently good. Those of you who want to talk of original sin, please hold on for a moment and give me time here. Everything God made is inherently and originally good. Anything that Satan uses has to be twisted to be made evil. Food is not sinful, but gluttony is. Sex is not sinful, but it can be misused to terrible effect.

The key here is 'originally and inherently'. Satan poisoned everything just a little bit, even us. I like the way C.S. Lewis put it in the book Screwtape Letters, in which a demon argued that God claims ownership of all under the claim that He created it, while Satan seeks to claim all under the banner of conquest. We all know that there is a spiritual war between the forces of God and Satan, and we all know the eventual outcome.

Now consider what happens during a war. One side advances, and captures an enemy fort. What do they do? If the fort is rotted, if the food is utterly poisoned, if the place is booby-trapped, they will probably raze it to the ground. However, most of the time this is not the case. The food is just as good, the fort nearly as strong, and they run up their own flag and begin to repair the fortifications.

Jesus has made it clear that we are made of good things, once enemy fortifications, now with God's flag run up and the original usefulness turned once again to good. I would submit that the same is true for Christmas. Sure, there are many people who fall into materialism and spend the holiday buying things they can't afford for people they hate, but God's flag has been run up in Christmas Cantatas. Christmas and Easter are often the only times that the non-devout attend church. That's an opportunity to run up God's flag. There is a lot of love and generosity among good people that peaks around Christmastime. When I hear of over 500 people making a commitment for Christ at the Word of Life Florida Christmas show, I see God's flag fluttering over the fortification that once involved nature goddesses and ancient superstition. I could not call that an evil thing.

So what is my advice, in the end? If the 'pagan elements' trouble you such that you prefer to not partake with a clear conscience and without the burden of guilt, by all means, do as you see best! But if you have heard over and over about the evils of this holiday, but you still love to honor God through your traditions during this time, do so without guilt! You are flying God's flag on an enemy fortification that was originally built by God.

Jesus doesn't mind you giving presents to each other on His birthday, even if you get the date wrong. Candy canes aren't going to send you to hell if they remind you (and you tell your children) of the shepherds who came to see that extraordinary baby. And whether it be turkey, ham, or steak, it's an awfully good meal, isn't it?

Energy Planning

I was on a political forum and the subject turned to electricity. After hearing us shoot down the current efforts of liberals and environmentalists to give us cleaner power by forcing us to accept their methods and proposals, one person asked if we had an energy policy to offer rather than just criticisms. I happen to have one, so I wrote it out for them.

The important thing to realize is that everybody WANTS clean, inexpensive, plentiful power. The only reason why coercion has to be involved to make it work currently is because what the environmentalists keep proposing is simply currently unfeasible. (Hybrid cars, for instance, don't even have the gas economy of a simple stripped-down 15-year-old station wagon.) What we have to do is take the shackles off.

Drill drill drill! Though it would be nice if we were independent of all other countries oil-wise, it isn't really necessary. We have two reasons for drilling NOW. First, we want to get in enough oil to stop buying altogether from countries like Saudi Arabia, freeing us in matters of economic diplomacy to criticize their barbarism the same way we do places like Iraq.

Second, right now I'm seeing in the news that Iran and Russia are scaling back on military operations and buildup because the price of oil is low enough to starve out their economies. We want that. We want them in a position where they have to focus on their economy and not on making themselves big and strong. We can turn coal into oil with technology we've had since WWII and make it profitable at $35/barrel. We have the biggest coal reserves in the WORLD. That injection into the worldwide oil community would really throw prices off.

Note: I haven't said we have to fulfill ALL our oil needs ourselves. It would be nice to do if we can. But it's most important just to get us away from depending on people who "don't like us very much". It would also be nice to work the market against them, forcing them to reduce their military operations without having to fire a single shot!

Of course, there's more to it than just getting more oil out. I favor reducing our oil and coal usage by switching as much of the electrical grid as possible over to nuclear. Nuclear power is safe and effective. It's been proven by now. I think all hospitals over a certain "podunk town" size should have their own mini-nuclear generator as well. If nobody else knows how to do it, they can go ask Electric Boat, who powers submarines so safely that one sub recently crashed full speed head-on... and the mini nuclear reactor didn't even have a single problem.

Lower restrictions on vehicle manufacture. Yes, we need to know that you can survive a crash at 40mph. You don't need 50 different airbags, power windows/locks, A/C, or cruise control to do it, and all of those things weigh down a car. Actually, I would like to see enough restrictions lowered or removed for any handyman to build his own vehicle capable of passing standards and being given a license plate. You'd see plenty of fuel economy and alternate-fueled engines popping up in even greater quantity than they do now. Some of them may become commercially viable.

Save the oil for our vehicles (including airplanes) and use nuclear for our stationary electricity. Keep the prices down. That will in turn keep the prices of goods down (transportation) and the people will have more of their own money to spend.

Why is this important? Because friends and family of mine are ALREADY eying geothermal and/or solar enhancements to their house. They already want this. Why don't many of them have it? Well, right now, since the price of food went up, this household has no money to spare each month and a solar setup costs $12,000 to start.

Sure, the price isn't quite enough to offset the energy savings in money yet, but there are other reasons to want solar. For instance, in an area where winter storms knock out electricity, it's AWFULLY nice to have heat and running water in the home. None of that matters, though, if you can't afford to put the system in, and taking even more money away from the people to government-spend on doing it is not nearly as efficient as removing the artificial economic restraints that keep people from doing it themselves.

Nobody needed to be forced to adopt flat-panel TV's, DVD players, designer jeans, or Lexus's. Nobody needs to be forced to adopt personal alternate-energy systems. Just make them affordable, by lowering the cost of living and/or the cost of the product. Once the market gets out of Teh Elites and into the middle class, you won't need to pay anybody to find a way to produce a cheaper and more effective system, either! A 40" 1080p HDTV cost $3,000 a couple of years ago. This holiday season it's dropped below $1,000.

To summarize: We didn't get into cleaner and more efficient oil-burning by forcing people to limit their wood-burning usage, and we won't get into nuclear/wind/solar by forcing people to limit their oil usage. We'll do it by being prosperous enough to afford the Next Step. In the process, as an extra bonus, we may be able to turn the tables on the unfriendly countries who currently have us, as my husband so neatly puts it, 'by the short and curlies'.

The fight continues...

So I've recently read that the gay activists are considering a "calling in gay" day on which they all decide to take a vacation day instead of going to work. Presumably, this will make some sort of difference someday. I personally suspect it's going to end up teaching them just how great their numbers are and how important their little faction is in this big country.

See, this idea suffers from the same kind of insipidness as the repeated plans to not buy gas on a certain day, only with likely a smaller population group. If all who label themselves 'gay' (including the virgins, which, by the way, is one method they use to make the Christian label of sin work for more than just the act to which it applies, giving an excuse to cry hatred where none exists) leave and manage to take a fair amount of their non-gay supporters with them, they just might be able to, in some local areas, have almost as much of an impact on this country and its economy as Columbus Day.

If they make it yearly and try to roust more and more people to the cause, the biggest possible effect I can see is a Christian or two getting hung on an anti-discrimination clause a few years into the future for simply showing up to work on the 'wrong day'. But let's face it... there are more and more reasons to lawfully persecute Christians in this country than there have ever been, and it's only going to get more bizarre.

As far as I'm concerned, they can go for it! It's a much healthier way to get out their frustrations than keying cars, harassing restaurant customers, sending white powder to Mormon temples, knocking down old ladies, and telling Californian blacks who venture out of their neighborhoods that they'd better just watch their backs.

In other news, a committee in New Jersey claim that civil unions might not be doing their job because sometimes participants aren't treated quite like they're legally married. Wake up, people, and get used to it! Maybe twenty years ago or so, people who were married were treated as if they were married. Nowadays, however, many stores will not even link our savings cards so that my husband's milk purchases count towards our free sixth gallon. The person who opens an account owns it, and it's increasingly difficult for me to conduct any kind of business with a company if the account is in my husband's name (and vice versa), even for ridiculous things like electricity or telephone going to the same house!

When I was working full-time, whenever my husband showed up to bring me the lunch I'd forgotten or the medication I needed, I had to give him my name, department, phone number, and card ID ahead of time or they wouldn't even tell him that I worked there. He could have showed up with the original copy of our marriage certificate to no avail. Was this a security procedure due to the nature of my work? Actually, no. It was only put into place to deal with abusive spouses. He wasn't allowed to pick up my paycheck, either, but it could get mailed straight to the house we both live in!

It takes twice as long to fill in any application or registration for hospitals or doctor's offices nowadays, because the forms do NOT assume in any way that being married means that you live in the same house, have the same telephone number, go by the same last name, or even want your spouse notified in case of an emergency. Add a kid as the product of your marriage and it gets even longer!

This society is proceeding slowly towards that in countries like Holland, where anybody can marry and almost nobody ever bothers to do so. "It doesn't really mean anything anymore," I've heard from residents when trying to find out why. The sad thing is that the people pushing hardest for this change are the gay activists, who want gay marriage to, in the end, be nothing more than a reason to shut up any voice within society that suggests that there's any religion that does not approve of their actions. Too bad for the five or ten gay couples in the U.S. (and the 97% or so heterosexuals, with 70% of them claiming the Christian religion) who were actually hoping to get something more meaningful out of it than a piece of jewelry and a bunch of words.

An understanding of Conservatism

For those of you who don't know, I don't often use this blog to simply copy and paste other people's words, because I have another one for that purpose. On http://gothelittle.livejournal.com/ I collate a few of the most interesting articles I read for the day and simply paste the link and a part of the article to show why I found it interesting. I don't do it daily, but I do pretty close to that. This is the blog where I'm supposed to express my own thoughts. (Contrary to what some of the LJ commenters seem to think, I don't fully agree with all of each article I paste.)

However, this section seems to belong here, on this blog rather than my LJ blog. How did I decide that? Well, they're my blogs, and I just went with my instincts.
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Reagan roots is not anti-Communism and low taxes and the Laffer Curve and all the other things that Reagan was dealing with at the time. Reagan roots are the roots of our founding. And the primary leg on that stool is individual liberty. This is a nation founded on the concept that we are individuals. We are not a collective. We are individuals. And that we do our best when we are working in our own self interest, not selfishness, but our own self interest, improving our lives, our families' lives; improves everybody's lives around ours in our communities, cities, towns, the nation at large. Individual liberty will never go out of style because as our founders correctly noted, it is part of our creation. It's what sets this country apart from every other collection of human beings in the history of the world. We have acknowledged that our creation comes from God, not from government, that our freedom is a natural yearning of our creation. And that is the natural yearning of our spirit, to be free, all humanity, all human beings. And as such, liberty will never go out of style. Freedom will never go out of style. We will never, ever say hopefully "the era of freedom is over." We will never say "the era of liberty is over." And as such, we will make a huge mistake if we fall in line with these dummkopfs, who think they're the smartest in our room, who say "the era of Reagan is over." Because the era of Reagan is basic Conservatism 101 which believes, what? The best in everybody. It does not look across a room of people with contempt. It does not look and see incompetence. It doesn't see black, white, male, female, gay, straight. It sees human beings.

Conservatism sees Americans, sees potential, sees great opportunity, sees an opportunity for people to be the best they can be using whatever ambition and desire they have. Reaganism conservatism does not need to be adapted to issues of the day. There's no such thing as the conservative version of Big Government. - Rush Limbaugh, at the Hillsdale College Churchhill Dinner