Seeking God in Our Suffering

Wise Prophets in every age observe that God rarely finds people useful to His purposes who have not been broken by life.

Our suffering, so insidious and pervasive, so unwanted and despised, holds the franchise to unlocking closed hearts and opening barred minds. When the illusion of being in control of our lives shatters, then spiritual empty-handedness begins. That condition spurs us on to spiritual usefulness. Faith begins when spiritual self-sufficiency deflates and proves empty. Usually that takes one kind of smashing or another.

The lovely paradox here is that this is precisely where joy and hope enter. The road to joy always seems to go through sadness and suffering. It’s hard to get there any other way. A strong acquaintance with death makes Easter’s victory brighter. True resurrection joy whispers in the hearts of those stung deeply by lost loved ones. Jesus’ embrace means everything to those of us who are truly burdened, legitimately helpless, and weary.

Ironically, spiritual growth involves our personal regression to that childlike dependency Jesus talks about: to become “poor in spirit.” Then we are in Paul’s words, “hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

Healing and renewal come to Jesus’ people sooner or later:

“Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” – Psalm 30:5

From Waiting for Morning: Seeking God in Our Suffering by Pastor James R. Kok.

Venture Capitalism and your Federal Government

What is venture capital and what is a venture capitalist? And, what does this have to do with the federal government?


Venture capital is the money that a start-up business raises to develop its product offering and bring it to market. A firm seeking venture capital is usually considered too risky to attract equity capital from the public. More likely, the risk would be too high to meet the strict SEC requirements for an offering to the public.

A venture capitalist is generally a wealthy person or a person who can syndicate capital from other wealthy persons to invest in risky start-up businesses. Why do wealthy people want to invest in risky businesses? Because the rewards can be great. Many of the venture capital deals fail but the ones that prosper can yield returns upwards of 100% or more in a few years.

Now let’s face it. Some of these deals could be viable for offerings to the general public but the wealthy venture capitalist want the early large gains for themselves. Yes, they are greedy. But greed is not a four letter word. Greed is what had made the United States a financial success. But, I digress.

The venture capitalist cashes out when the business is ready to go public. The initial public offering (IPO) is how the venture capitalist gets their money back – and usually with a handsome gain. And, the venture capitalist has an incentive in hyping the business to get the biggest possible IPO price. Once the company goes public, its stock is available to the public as an investment and to mutual funds. These investments and mutual funds can form the foundation of retirement plans in the form of IRA’s and 401K’s.

So, what does this have to do with the government? Well, your government under the authority of president Obama has become a venture capitalist. Only thing is, the government is not a wealthy person or syndicate. The government does this with your money. Yes, your government is guaranteeing loans to risky start-up businesses with your money. When Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama chalked it off to “these things happen in the world of investment.”

Silly me, I didn’t think our government was suppose to engage in the world of risky investments. Well, actually it is not. It is doing so with your money. And, silly me again – don’t I remember the liberals in Congress (Nancy Pelosi you know who I am talking about) becoming adamant about not letting us publicans invest our Social Security funds in the “risky” stock market. The stock market is much safer than firms only able to attract venture capital funding. And, by the way – it is most likely that Nancy Pelosi and her wealthy husband have funds invested in the stock market if not also venture capital.

But we all know what is really going on here; this President is lining the pockets of his friends in high places. These are the venture capitalist who put money into Solyndra and the other high-risk startups and then used borrowing to leverage their investment. Through the use of generous donations to the Obama campaign, they got their high-risk investment guaranteed. This is really all about Obama getting elected and trying to get re-elected. If only we could get rid of these crooks without having to go through the frustrating election process.

Old Elmcroft Documents

I am scanning all of the old Elmcroft documents. This includes the original bill of sale and mortgage from when my parents bought the property in 1942 and various documents since then. The original mortgage was paid off in 1948. My parents were divorced on April 11, 1961. I also have the original decree of divorce. The house was deeded over to my mom and I have that quit claim deed. I then found a new mortgage dated December 27, 1961 for $4,500. This would correspond to the time period my brother was going off to college and I spent a year at Tilton School in New Hampshire, a private prepatory school. That was the year that I had a terrible accident on my bicycle and I was in the hospital for a few weeks. My mom arranged for me to stay a little longer in the hospital while she drove George down to Ferrum Junior College in Virginia. I can only deduce that the mortgage proceeds was to help pay for that schooling - something I never knew. I wonder if George knew that. This morgage was paid off in December 1970. Here is page one of the mortgage.

Why S&P Downgraded The United States

Let's remove 8 zeros from the Federal budget and pretend it's a household budget:

Annual family income: $ 21,700
Money the family spent: 38,200
New debt on the credit card: 16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: 142,710
Total "deep" budget cuts: 385

When will this family get their budget balanced?
Correct - NEVER!

Those Damn Loopholes

A loophole is an ambiguity in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the intent, implied or explicitly stated, of the system.

How many of you lemmings are marching in lockstep with the Executive Branch and extolling the loophole that allows corporations to buy corporate jets and avoid some tax?
There is no loophole here. Just more class warfare from the left.

Here is the real story. Before the Republicans took control of the House when the Democrats had control of both the Executive and Legislative Branches, they decided on a stimulus bill. Part of the bill would allow businesses to deduct either 100% or 50% of the entire cost of a capital asset all in one year.

Normally, machinery, equipment and fixtures purchased by business must be depreciated over a number of year, generally 3 to 39 years depending on the type of asset. An airplane is a 7-year asset. That means that only one seventh of the cost can be deducted from business income in a year. (This is actually a simplification.) The business has to come up with 100% of the cash to buy the airplane but can only deduct one seventh each year.

So, your Democrat buddies decided to allow businesses to deduct 100% all in one year so as to stimulate businesses to buy such things and cause the other businesses that make the things to have to hire more people.

Then those bad, mean big corporations went out and bought more airplanes. The businesses making airplanes had to hire more people. Gee – the stimulus worked!

There was no circumventing a law here. No loophole. They were doing exactly what the lawmakers wanted – buying more stuff to cause more hiring of workers to make the stuff.

Now for the flip flop. The Democrats no longer think this is a good idea. Since they are now running for re-election they want their constituents to think they are against big business. So, let’s remove the incentive and then those airplane manufacturing businesses will have to lay off the extra workers. But wait – they say they need to concentrate on creating jobs. Oh yea, that’s just a campaign slogan. They don’t really mean it. And besides, government doesn’t create jobs, only free enterprise creates jobs.

Traveling at 20 Times the Speed of Sound

In the 1930's my parents lived in Sumatra, Dutch East Indies - now Indonesia. It took them 3-4 weeks to get home for vacation. It could take six weeks to get mail from the States. And, it would take about a week to schedule a phone call back home for my grandmother's birthday or Christmas.
This morning the Space Shuttle Atlantis did its deorbit burn over Sumatra and it was on the ground in Florida in about an hour. And, my parents thought that waiting a week for a phone call back home was an amazing technolgical advancement. You young'ns will never understand how good you have it.

Obama: Means Test Medicare

Obama said today that he would be in favor of means testing Medicare - that is, people with higher incomes would pay a higher premium for their basic medicare coverage. That's a great idea Mr. Obama. Only thing is - WE ALREADY DO THAT!

You know - we need someone leading the Executive Branch that has a clue.

The basic Medicare Part B costs $96.40 per month for married taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes up to $170,000. As income increases, the premium increases up to a maximum of $353.60 for married taxpayers earning over $428,000. Now, a good topic might be to increase the premium for those higher income taxpayers. Food for thought - those on Medicare Advantage are covered by an insurance company much like an HMO. This HMO Advantage plan gets paid on average $900 per month for each enrollee by the government. That's right, I pay $96.40 a month for my Medicare Advantage plan and my insurance company gets $900 a month to take cae of all my medical needs. No wonder that invite me to an annual update meeting at a fancy hotel with fancy finger food.