Church leader’s wife dead after buried alive during church demolition - China Aid

Church leader’s wife dead after buried alive during church demolition - China Aid

Many predicted China would begin cracking down on churches; It is the nature of Communist leaders to crush any movement that poses a 'threat' to their authority. This new president Xi Jinping is proving tyrannical like many Western observers assumed. The church crackdown, the 'corruption' crusade and aggressive posturing in the South China Sea are cause for alarm.  Pray for Christians in China

Education as a Commodity

Remember when a 54 inch Plasma TV cost $10,000? Very few could pay for a new set so they waited. The price fell every year on plasma TVs of all sizes since they were introduced. The manufacturing process got cheap, other plasma screen makers jumped into the market and consumers benefited from the increasingly low priced sets. I noticed a 50 inch at Target for $299.99 over last Christmas.

Value (price) falls in relation to scarcity, the more televisions than get produced the cheaper they become. Education works the same way except only one part of the equation is true. The total number of schools is higher than ever so why hasn’t the price come down? In fact, the price of the top tier schools is higher than ever. Because culturally Americans imagine a link between schooling and advancement going back to at least post WWII thinking; second, the student loan program continues to be a boom for institutions and a bust for kids.

For large chunks of the middle class a college degree equals years of student loan payments and no discernible difference between their own career and their non-degree friends. Kids about to enter classrooms beyond high school should consider the question--is college worth it?

Some college degrees are more in line with the nature of the work being sought and therefore a great option. Students who study medicine, engineering and technology (STEM professionals) find lucrative careers and job opportunities all over the world. Those of us in the Liberal Arts (beer pong experts) find diminished opportunities and depressed wages as we shuffle from interview to internship. Most of us don’t have the mathematical brain for engineering or the patience for new medical terms. Those careers wouldn’t have suited us anyway so giving us a mulligan on ‘chosen career path’ isn’t practical. We’d probably just take the ‘do over’ money and buy a campus apartment with a hot-tub---the extra stress and all.

Kids today struggle to find even low paying gigs in a market where wages have been flat since 2008. College degree costs’ continue to rise though, as do food, housing, electric, insurance, child care and everything necessary for living. The hard workers will juggle multiple jobs and eke out a living while working more hours than intended. Welcome to the middle class.

The ones on top, the rich, can afford the living increases and still live well off compounding interest. The ones on the bottom, the poor, don’t pay many of the increased living expenses like housing, medical bills and food. Those items get subsidized through various federal and state programs originally used sparingly, now abused consistently.

So now that Medieval Literature degree you spent six and half years on is crushing you in loan payments. Your interest is needed. Interest on student debt, credit card debt, mortgage debt, sovereign debt and local debt is vital. Sell something or get another job if you want to stay in the middle. You are in danger of sliding down the ladder and joining the ranks of the poor, better known as ‘completely dependent’.

All of us make choices in life whether financial or social. We are responsible for those choices no matter how ignorant we were of consequences at the time. Some of us had destructive advice on debt and relationships that set us back a few years. Many were just selfish and immature ignoring good advice from people trying to save them from a bull-headed nature. Blaming others for your mistakes, financial or relational, is a recipe for sliding toward the bottom.

The American middle class family requires diversification in income and low levels of debt in order to survive. The quickest way out of the debt-poverty cycle is to find additional ways to make money. Sell those mint condition KISS Army dolls you brag about to relatives and co-workers. Start a car-washing and detailing business that dumps into a college fund for the kids. Even if the kids turn out to have your smarts at least they won’t be in debt when they graduate.  

Second, get the debt levels as close to zero as possible and DON’T take on more. This is boilerplate budgeting and financial planning stuff that our grandparents understood better than we did. Somewhere along the way we got greedy, dreamed of a better life NOW and charged it all to the future. Suddenly debt was cool, credit cards were king and an easy money ethos fed Wall Street. We rode the ‘rising tide’ until our ship ran aground. We’ve spent much of our adult life repairing the hull and trying to get back to sea.

‘Getting back’ requires making tough decisions about college and how to pay for it. The explosion in the total number of schools means options for financing that aren’t necessarily debt. Scholarship programs exist if you know where to look. Until the price of school falls to a level that matches middle class living, save the tuition money. You could always by an extra TV.  

Noxious Cheat

The Volkswagen ‘diesel gate’ affair is well trodden territory of corporate malfeasance and fraud. You might wonder why I am mentioning something that is admittedly old news. Simple, it never got the “how dare they!?” type coverage that say a traditional ‘polluter’ like a coal company would’ve endured. Imagine the regulations the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could propose if Access Industries was found to have lied about their emission record.  VW’s cheating perfectly exemplifies the green movement and ‘guilt free’ marketing so effective in scamming American consumers.

When I say ‘green movement’ I am really talking about anyone who believes that switching deodorant brands or light bulb types is akin to adding a few odd years to the life of ‘mother-earth’ (fragile creature that she is). In other words consumers, for whom environmental concerns factor into decisions to buy, sell and grow.  Businesses market goods by emphasizing ‘biodegradable’ ‘recycle-able’ and ‘non-phosphate’ as selling points.

Pushing ‘environment saving’ spray cleaner isn’t any more dishonest than selling bacteria reducing soap; both products serve other purposes so we ignore the larger claims. As long as my Windex with zero phosphates cleans the smudges off the glass I’m not concerned about the chemical makeup of the ‘earth friendly’ spray. Besides I feel good about my purchase knowing that I supported a company that really ‘gets it’. A closer look at the claims made by the companies often reveals some ugliness. This is how VW became synonymous with cheating.

Briefly, here is what happened. The company engineers created a cheat code that set the car in idle when the emissions were being tested. I don’t know how the test works or how the car knows that it is being tested; some engineer knew though and he/she designed the car to basically--go to sleep. Imagine designing a machine that makes a person’s heart rate read between 80-95 beats per minute (resting rate) after running a marathon. Kind of like that.

 The maddening thing about VW is how they turned their emissions records (which were made up) into a selling point despite being the biggest offender. It’s almost as if Major League Baseball, in the early 2000s, created an ‘honest citizen’ award given annually to the high school star who demonstrated clean living and modesty and they called it the Barry Bonds Award. They created advertisements with Bonds talking about 'decency' and 'respect for the game' while some B roll of his highlights ran at length. Volkswagen didn’t just get caught cheating on the test, they got caught writing ‘how-to-cheat’ flow charts and holding ‘how-to-cheat’ seminars. 

  

The argument supporting VW’s software hack is that emissions in the U.S. set by the Environmental Protection Agency are much tougher than the EU equivalent test. Understandably they found it easier to create a program for beating the test instead of fixing the problems associated with diesel emission compliance. Did they have to use their clean diesel program as a point of emphasis? Did they have to show expensive and clever ads like the one above?

The folks at Volkswagen gave the greenies everything they wanted, an affordable vehicle with earth friendly bona fides and a built in humblebrag. “No it isn’t an expensive car but the industry is committed to sustainability, I just wanna…you know, do my part.” Volkswagen had a huge success story in total earnings and as a company dedicated to air quality and ‘sustainability’. As long as no one looked too closely the engine of deception ran like a...a fine German engineered motor.

 Too many times in recent history green development has been exposed as a thin scab covering a festering sore. From the Solyndra company that promised a revolution in solar energy, to certified organic labels on food and zero emission cars, the claims didn’t deliver. In many instances they were outright scams. The green movement is rife with ‘guilt-free’ products and better living through sustainability, just don’t look too close. Do yourself a favor and buy the cleaner that works, don’t worry about the phosphates.

Ice breakers: dangerous game of chance

 

Ice breakers: those obligatory dinner party questions that are an easy way to make large groups seem more personal. Questions like “What is the most interesting job you have worked?” or “What would you do with a million dollars?”  We think our lives are ordinary, relative to others in the room. These games are designed to get us interacting and talking with each other. Occasionally they go awry and tell us something we never wanted to know.

The Icebreaker I used was ‘deserted island’ where everyone says which book they would bring if they had to spend 10 years alone on an island. The class was a group of Mongolian students learning English at a Chinese International school--long story don’t ask. I was teaching English for the whole school and that day just happened to be my day with the Mongolian kids. One by one they walked to the front of the room, repeated the phrase “my name is ____, I am _____ years old, I would read ____”. It was a modified Ice breaker so that they could use as many English words as possible.

 Not sure what type of answers I expected, probably lots of Harry Potter reading materiel.  I nearly choked after the first student expressed admiration for Hitler by choosing to bring a copy of Mein Kampf on her extended stay. Ditto for the second and third and after a dozen or so kids the verdict was in on Mein Kampf. Nearly everyone wanted a copy. They didn’t know the German title for Hitler’s book but they managed in their halting English to mutter “gitler buk”. I imagined men with hidden cameras were going to jump out of the closets and force a relieved laugh out of me so I could join in the absurdity. The kids talked about Hitler like he was Abe Lincoln or Winston Churchill, famous for being great. Adolf Hitler was a great German leader the way that BMW is a great German car.

It was an illuminating this is the ‘real world’ type moments. I realized people have different expectations of leadership and the qualities that constitute greatness. In much of the non-democratic world strength equals greatness while weakness equals failure. Winston Churchill was a great leader because he saved Britain and fought back against an unrelenting assault from Luftwaffe bombing campaigns designed to decimate her Majesty’s industrial advantage. Churchill’s moral courage against an evil ideology is what makes him great. 

George Washington is also a model of resolute character in the face of a decimated army and swift moving British troops. Having lost men to starvation and desertion, the continental army managed to fight on with almost no support from Congress. As the first president of the newly formed United States he could have become emperor but stepped aside giving power back to the citizens.

Hitler though?

Take away morality and we are left with superficial qualities describing famous men (strength, power, decisiveness, popularity). Churchill and Washington were moral men and their leadership qualities are buttressed by the justness of their causes. Admiring Hitler or Mussolini or Genghis Khan inverts the graph by making strength and power the goal instead of the effect. This Machiavellian framework is more present in the liberal democratic world than even I thought back in my English teaching days.

How about this for an Icebreaker: “How far in the Presidential election cycle could a billionaire con-man known for reality TV antics get?

The success of Donald Trump is proof that there is a human tendency to see leaders as powerful agents ‘winning’ battles and crushing opponents. I don’t think Trump is Hitler or Mussolini but he does have ‘strong-man’ qualities suggesting lack of a moral center and an indifference to the rule of law. He may lose the primary to Ted Cruz and be just a bad memory. But Trump has shown a quality that many of us didn’t realize existed among Americans--a willingness to follow a strongman.

Use Icebreakers at your own risk. You might get more than you bargained for.

TPP: Good for America?

Trade bills are massively complex legal and domestic brambles, fiendishly organized by bureaucratic wonks and industry insiders. Pity the poor sods who have to read and sign off on the whole mess. Trade is generally good however for countries, good for industries and good for economies. Competition from abroad forces innovation at home. When countries play by the rules (don’t laugh!) consumers benefit and economies grow. The stated objective with international agreements is to convince countries to agree to lower barriers to trade. This isn’t completely wishful thinking. The current World Trade Organization (WTO) started out after World War II as a sensible framework agreement among partner nations to lower tariffs. Overall trade has increased since and barriers are lower than ever around the world.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the new one that includes much of East Asia, Mexico, Canada and a few countries in South America.

I really just need to know 2 things about the deal:

--What happens is we just ignore the deal?

--How do we ensure the playing field is level?

What is the alternative to the deal? Will ‘US Inc.’ miss out on a contract that leads to increased demand for American produced goods or will this new agreement collapse like a sand castle at high tide? In other words is this something America needs or something the world needs and can’t get done without the largest economy on board? 

We won’t know the details until this summer when congress gets the monstrously large contract and pretends to read it. This is really the crux of opposition to the bill. The sheer size and impact of a trade bill (all of them) almost guarantees a lack of oversight and policing among trading partners. Americans dislike international organizations because they take responsibility away from sovereign countries and surrender it to something (not someone) unaccountable and opaque. They are reluctant to sign up for anything that might curtail U.S jobs and national security. Americans also innovate better than anyone though and by and large reject protectionism. Imagine a company like Uber being forced out of Chicago or Los Angeles because the taxi unions proved too tough a challenge?

Another problem is that nations tend to favor their domestic industries even when ‘favoring’ them is explicitly outlawed in the bill. What mechanism exists for airing grievances between two conflicting parties, one accusing the other of cheating? It can take years to sort out through legal or diplomatic means. China was found in breach, by the World Trade Organization, of limiting their rare earth materials for export in 2014. The United States and others brought the dispute to court in 2012. During the two years when both countries were tied up in litigation, American tech companies that use huge amounts of rare earths had to get it wherever they could find it. When trade is stopped by legal wrangling business suffers.

A quicker way around the legal maze is to use an equally unfair method to benefit your domestic industry. Say, give your American chicken farmers export subsidies, or place quotas on Chinese steel, or slap a bogus safety exemption on wine from France.  This is a terrible option and almost always leads to counter measure upon counter measure until both countries are in a trade war.  Transparent rules and easily understood agreements are the goal in negotiations. Sovereign democratic nations will always have trouble in satisfying the home town industries through tax breaks and other financial incentives while making counter deals with trading partners.

Free traders will support this deal because the word ‘trade’ is in the title. Union types will oppose the deal because the word ‘trade’ is in the title. No one knows at this point what kind of deal it is but one thing is for sure, it will be massively complex.