Euthanasia for Clunkers

You won’t believe what an auto dealer has to do to get a government rebate for a “clunker” these days.

The government-sponsored “Cash for Clunkers” has received a lot of attention recently – most notably in its sudden lack of funding and the worry of auto dealers, who fear that they may not be properly reimbursed for the huge discounts that they are offering. So, how does the program work?

First, you must check if your car is on the clunker “list”. The government provides a website where the user inputs their car data and a determination is made based primarily on the fuel rating (miles-per-gallon) of the car. I entered in the information for my shiny, almost-new 2005 mini-van and found that it missed the mark by only 1 MPG! It’s five years old and it’s only 1 MPG from being a clunker! And can you believe that a 2004 Mazda RX-8 is on the list for the trade-in! If you find that your car is eligible for the program, you will be able to receive a $3500-$4500 rebate on the purchase of a new car (used cars are not eligible). And what is the purpose of the overall program? The government is trying to 1) stimulate the economy by encouraging the purchase of a new car, and 2) “help the environment” by getting a high-emission car off the road. By my thinking, the benefit of this program is dubious on both counts.

First, the rebate will encourage many people to purchase a new car – and some of these people will not be able to afford it in the near-term. Just as the government-sponsored, low-interest housing loans tantalized people with bigger houses beyond their means, many will be attracted to the idea of having a new car in their garage, regardless of the payment book that follows. So for the lure of a few-thousand dollar discount, they will get themselves into a $500-$600 monthly payment that they can’t afford. And a year from now, they may default on the loan. Let’s face it – the discount only amounts to about ten percent of a new car purchase, so it will turn a $600 monthly payment into a $540 monthly payment. And the government is still encouraging banks to loan money to higher-risk clients. Like the housing cycle, the race to have more than we can afford begins again - only we call it the CARS program this time around.

Second, the amount of emissions that will be reduced by the program is miniscule. The program was seeded with $1 billion of funding. At an average rebate of $4,000, that amounts to the trade-in of about 250,000 cars. At last estimate, there were 250 million registered automobiles in the United States (according to the 2006 Department of Transportation studies). So this program will effectively trade out 0.1% of the “higher-emission” vehicles on the road for “lower-emission” vehicles. The billion dollars means that every taxpayer in the U.S. contributed an average of $10 to the program. Was it worth it? (Note: After this was written, Congress was on its way to approving another $2 billion for the program - so say good-bye to another $20 per taxpayer in your household.) It angers me that my hard-earned salary becomes tax dollars, which then get “re-distributed” to someone else so that they can buy a new car.

But the most insane thing about the program is the exercise that must be performed to “kill” one of these clunkers. In order to get their money from the government, and in an effort to assure that a high-emissions vehicle never sees the road again, a dealer must ruin the engine of the trade-in vehicle. The dealer must pour sodium silicate into the engine oil, start the car, and wait a few minutes until the oil turns to glass, seizing the engine, and ruining it for all time (video here). The technical description goes like this:

“Sodium silicate. Pour 2 quarts in a car's engine. Hold it at 2000 rpm. And in about 5 minutes, it's lethal injection to a motor vehicle.”

Put simply, the car gets euthanized. In exchange for taking a so-called “environmentally dangerous car” off of the road, this has the side-effect of harming the engine salvage and auto repair businesses. And it may also keep a nice, cheap, used vehicle out of the hands of someone who cannot afford to purchase a new car. Will the day come when the government makes it impossible to purchase a used vehicle for my sixteen-year-old? Will I be forced to pay an exorbitant price for a new vehicle only? In ten more years, will these same new cars suddenly be considered to be environment-threatening clunkers, and the process start over again?

Lastly, I can’t help but note the possible analogy between the “Cash for Clunkers” program and healthcare for our elderly under any new government program. President Obama has hinted that he favors the cessation of funding of extraordinary measures to save an elderly person. The proposed healthcare bill itself contains such a clause, right now (read pp. 425-429 here – thanks to Jim Perkins for finding this). This smacks of euthanasia for our senior citizens. Will we see a “Cash for Clunkers” program for our gray-haired folk in the near future? Or am I being “un-American” by mentioning that?
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From the government website, citing reasons why Americans should participate in the program – “Reduce greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning gasoline and diesel contributes to global climate change. You can do your part to reduce climate change by reducing your carbon footprint.” It’s clear that the government has bought into the lie that gasoline-powered vehicles contribute significantly to climate change. And did you notice that they called it “climate change” instead of “global warming”?

Should We Be Motivated By The Threat of Hell?

I grew up in the South, during a time when “hellfire and damnation” preaching was acceptable, and even popular. I distinctly recall the cadence and raised voices of preachers who would bring a message about the consequences for those who fall on the wrong side of the final judgment. And I remember the “altar calls” that were made, pleading with people to come forward, repent and be baptized – “now, before it’s too late”.

Men and women would come up the aisles, sobbing and repentant. In their brokenness, they would give their life to Christ, and pledge to change their ways. Without a doubt, much of their motivation to make such a promise was to avoid the consequences of hell and eternal damnation.

People don’t preach like this anymore. We preach about grace and the positive side of salvation. Motivation is typically given as the promise of a better and perfect life in heaven. This is not a bad thing by itself, but it is certainly a different incentive than one which strives to avoid the threat of hell.

We live in a society where telling someone that they run the risk of going to hell is frowned upon. Rather than risk being labeled as judgmental, we are trained to avoid such absolutes. After all, the argument goes, God’s grace is bigger than we can imagine. And it’s not our place to make such a judgment.

That may be true, but the Bible also makes it clear that certain behavior or actions will plainly have the consequence of hell. Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9, “He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power.” And in 2 Peter 3:7, Peter talks of wicked men’s fate, by saying “By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” These men were not afraid to raise the issue of hellfire and damnation.

I love to read the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan preacher who lived in America prior to the Revolutionary War. In 1741, in Enfield, CT, Edwards spoke these words in a sermon – “Let everyone that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom: ‘Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.’”

We can be motivated to live the Christian life in two ways. We can have the motivation where we long for heaven and strive to think on positive things like grace, peace, and truth. But we can also be motivated by the fear of condemnation to an everlasting hell. For me, pondering an eternity without hope, without peace, and without God is extremely moving.

Is it wrong to be motivated by the threat of hell? I don’t think so. A healthy viewpoint is to see both heaven and hell’s consequences. The sentence of hell will also motivate us to share our faith with others, perhaps even more than the promise of heaven. For example, if you pass a stranger on the street, you will likely warn them of an open manhole just in front of them – but you might not be as inclined to share with a stranger that there are free theater tickets being given away up the street. We tend to speak more boldly when danger is present.

Personally, I would welcome a few more “hellfire and damnation” sermons. I recall the passion that they aroused in me, even as a young child. Nothing was going to keep me from the glory and beauty of heaven…and away from the eternal separation from God that is hell itself.

Radical Environmentalism – Is The Globe Warming, Or Isn’t It? (Part 7)

I’ve asked the question many times in this series of articles – does our society want to find the real truth about global warming, or are they more interested in pursuing the global warming agenda for some other reason?

We may be getting closer to that answer. Recently, Dr. Alan Carlin, a 35-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency, wrote a 98-page report calling into question whether or not the science being used to prop up the Climate Change Act is valid. Specifically, his report points out that, 1) global temperature trends have been on the downward side over the last eleven years, 2) scientists are not convinced that storms will actually worsen if global warming were true, and 3) that the theory behind Greenland’s melting ice pack has now been called into question.

All of these are good points, and they should be studied and better understood before we spend billions of dollars on carbon dioxide mitigation programs and potentially throw thousands or even millions of industrial jobs to the wind.

Wouldn’t it be sad and ironic if fifty years from now, after crippling our economy and giving up our global leadership in manufacturing to China, that we were to gain hard proof that manmade CO2 emissions have absolutely no effect on global temperature – that, in fact, something we can’t control, such as sunspots, causes the global temperature to rise and fall over a 400-year period? Now, wouldn’t that just make a few people upset?

What I have been pointing out is that we need to be concerned over what the truth is in regards to global warming. However, this is not what the current executive administration in our country cares about. Because, shortly after the release of his report, Dr. Carlin was asked by his EPA bosses to cease all activities related to climate change. Instead, he was reassigned to a project to update a grants database. There are also some very revealing memos to him from his boss that indicate pressure from on high to suppress his report.

So why would anyone want to stifle this report if it had some chance of avoiding future embarrassment – that is, avoiding job losses, economic disaster, and the discovery that manmade global warming is a falsehood? I can think of two very powerful reasons – 1) money, and 2) the loss of God in our culture (yes, really).

Money is the most obvious answer – most human decisions can be tracked to its pursuit. By creating the Climate Change Act, the government intends to generate revenue by literally selling us the air that we breathe. Instituting a cap-and-trade policy on CO2 emissions created by power plants and other major producers will result in the regulation of a large component of our breathing air. This regulation will result in an indirect tax on everything which requires energy to be produced – cars, gasoline, food, clothing, manufactured goods, etc. Corporations will have to raise prices to pay for the tax on their emissions. The government will collect that tax and proceed to use it far less efficiently than if they had let us keep the money. Economic disaster will result (while China will continue to ignore the environmentalist agenda, keep up its manufacturing investment, continue polluting, and eventually take over the global economy).

But even more importantly, I believe that the environmental movement and its worship of the earth and things created is simply a substitute…..for God. In a culture that largely ignores or denies God, the human spirit searches for something to put its efforts into – something that seems greater and more lasting than everyday material possessions. Hence, we see groups like PETA and Greenpeace appealing to the masses with a message of animal rights and earth worship. Almost invariably, these groups are led by individuals who deny the existence of God, having replaced Him with things that he created. Paul predicted this in Romans 1:25 – “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen.”

Aren’t we really, fundamentally, and ultimately interested in the truth?

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More information on Dr. Carlin and his report at The Heritage Foundation, FoxNews, and here is a link to his 98-page report, if you are interested. Please let me know if you find anything I’ve missed.
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Healthcare at the Department of Motor Vehicles?

Two weeks ago, my eleven-year-old son nearly died. Truly. One evening, he suddenly had an extreme allergic reaction and was well on his way into anaphylactic shock when we rushed him to the nearby hospital. As my wife drove him to the emergency room, his windpipe was closing, his entire body was covered in hives, and panic was beginning to show in his eyes. If this had happened one or two hundred years ago, I think we would have lost him. The very thought makes my heart ache.

Fortunately, we have a hospital only five miles away. And when he arrived at the emergency room desk, they took one look at him and immediately escorted him to a room where he received treatment. Three minutes didn’t elapse between his entry into the lobby and action to make him better. He left the hospital a couple of hours later almost back to normal. When he arrived at the hospital, there was no fuss over insurance or how much money we had with us – they just did the right thing and treated him correctly and instantly, no questions asked.

So I ask – what is so wrong with our healthcare system that we feel the need to involve the federal government into its operation?

Only three weeks ago, my family entered another lobby where we had a need to get help from the workers there, but we had an entirely different experience. Upon entering, we were told to take a little paper number from a dispenser and wait for the next available employee – even though we were the only people in the place. We sat in a chair – staring at the three workers behind counters in the room – and waited patiently until one of them advanced the number on the board and called us over. Things immediately began to go wrong, as this person informed us of some differing rules about our need – different than what we had read on their website, and different than the instructions I had been given by one of their employees at an earlier visit. The upshot was that our cost was going to be an extra (and unanticipated) $350.

As we moved to the second employee for processing, our frustration was visible. She had to know what the problem was, because she was sitting only ten feet away from the first worker. But she went about her scripted business, a little slowly, until she got to the part where the $350 issue lay. And she informed us that our original understanding was correct – in complete contrast to what the first person had said. I asked some pointed questions – the two employees shared a look – but no explanation of their disagreement was made. After signing some more paperwork, we were told to go back and wait for the third and final employee to call us forward.

So we went back to our chairs, clutching our little paper number, and watched the third employee rustle some papers behind the counter, walk around a bit, and then go sit behind a computer screen for a while. By this time, there were two or three of us in the lobby, looking at our little paper slips, and waiting for this gentleman to call us forward. When he finally did, I leaned over to all three of my children and said, “Take a lesson from this. It’s what happens when the government is put in charge of something.” Because - you may have already guessed – we were at the State Department of Motor Vehicles.

I tell these two stories for a very specific reason. When the government gets involved in something, it invariably introduces waste and inefficiency. The employees behind the counter at the DMV have very little incentive to please us or make our experience pleasant. There are no competing offices in the state to get your driver’s license – they are a monopoly. In contrast, the hospital is a for-profit enterprise. I have choices about where to take my son when he has a reaction, as there are two other hospitals within ten miles of my house, as well as numerous urgent care clinics. For some reason, when the profit motive is taken away, people tend to get lazy.

Our society seems to forget this fact sometimes. Congress is now involving itself in the regulation of executive bonuses at financial institutions and publicly traded companies, because some of these awards seem “unfair”. The government-sponsored “cash for clunkers” program ran out of money after only one week, because the feds grossly underestimated the popularity of a plan that uses taxpayer money to get people into new cars that many likely cannot afford (it’s like the housing bubble all over again – I wonder how many of these auto loans will go into default a year from now). And the car dealers in this same program are worried that they will not get the promised reimbursement from the government because the federal websites keep crashing. And you should see some of the ridiculous things that auto dealers must do to “kill” the clunkers that they receive (and essentially torpedo the used car and salvage markets at the same time).

Bottom line, I don’t want the day to arrive when I am clutching a little paper number in my hand while sitting in the lobby of a government-sponsored health care clinic, awaiting a decision and a doctor to treat my son, while he slowly chokes to death in my arms. Do you think that can’t happen? Just try asking for something quick or out-of-the-ordinary at your local government-operated Department of Motor Vehicles.

Faith Lessons – And Teenage Driving

My oldest daughter, Molly, recently turned 15-1/2. As some of you know, that means she is old enough to get her driving learner’s permit in our state. She’s doing very well (as long as it’s not in my stick-shift Altima, where she’s not nearly as comfortable with a clutch).

Here’s something I never thought I would say about her - I detect a bit of a race driver in her. Twice now, she has pulled into the garage too fast…with me saying “Brake, brake!”… and all she can do is give an evil laugh, stop short, and then look over at me with a gleam in her eye. This is not her finest moment…

This weekend, I let her drive me around on a couple of errands. As she was driving down the highway at fifty miles per hour one morning, it occurred to me that we…no I…was very much at risk. She has never had to stop very fast because somebody ahead of her slammed on her brakes. If you think about it, the accelerator and the brake are really close together on our mini-van (2-5/8”, actually – I just went out and measured it). And to top it all off, it occurred to me that the net closing speed of the two-ton Suburban on our left was in excess of a hundred miles per hour. If she swerved, or if the Suburban did, there would be NOTHING I could do about it from the passenger seat. My safety – and I hate to say, my life - was completely in her hands at that moment.

For about a half-second, I was suddenly scared.

And then I thought, “We’re in God’s hands anyway. And we both know that we’re going to heaven if we die. So I don’t really care if she’s in a situation a little beyond her ability. I’ve got to let it go.” Really. I thought those very words to myself. It still seems a little crazy to me.

And so it struck me what a great comparison teenage driving is to trusting in God. Not that God is working beyond his ability. No, it’s more about how you can’t simply keep preparing yourself for His will without ever getting to the task. Like Molly’s driving, at some point, you have to assume she is ready for the next big step and so you go let her engage in the real thing.

Sometimes, it’s very hard for me to simply let go and trust that God will take control of a situation. My father raised me to believe that if you want something done right, you should do it yourself. So I’ve been doing things myself all my life (just ask some of my neighbors, who still think I’m crazy because of the way I landscaped my entire yard with very little in the way of power equipment). It’s one thing to pray that God will intercede. But for me, it’s another thing to understand when He has done so, and to trust that the prayer has been answered – and that there is nothing left for me to do. It’s even harder to detect when he has answered my prayer with a “No”. I like to see visible results, but that is not always God’s way.

I think I need to learn to be more comfortable that God has a plan for me…AND that He is executing it. My tiny mind still finds it hard to believe that the God who created the universe would spend any time caring for me. But He does, because He tells me that He loves me more than any love that I can imagine. Ephesians 3:18 – “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…” If God can love me more than I love my own wife and kids, then I have to trust that He is working His plan for me more faithfully than I can possibly do it myself. So, I will try to be still and know that He is God.

But if you see Molly and me driving through your neighborhood, you might want to move out of the way.

Songs I Can’t Sing Anymore – Part 5

I grew up listening to rock and roll from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. I have always maintained that there is no era of music that I prefer to listen to more, and I listened to a lot of it in college and during the years before my wife and I had children. I amassed over two-hundred albums on vinyl over the years, before compact discs took over. I have spent a great deal of time over the last couple of years transferring this music to my iPod. As I’ve recently begun listening to this music again, I have been struck by the lyrics of many of the songs – seen anew from a refreshed Christian perspective. I believe that I listened only to the music back in my younger days, but today I actually pay attention to the lyrics. This is the first in a series of articles discussing the possible hidden (or overt) meaning in many songs I used to sing out loud -- without actually listening to what the words were saying.

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This one might be tougher to accept than some of the articles I’ve written about other rock-and-roll groups. So, before any of you Beatles fans give up reading, let me just say that there is still a great deal of their music to which I love to listen. But, in the next few paragraphs, let me point out a very poignant cultural analogy….one that might not seem so obvious until you read it.

The Beatles started out as a seemingly innocent pop group. Their music was different enough and good enough to become a worldwide phenomenon. I remember sitting at a friend’s house around 1970, watching the famous Apple record label spin around on his turntable. I didn’t really understand at the time how enormously popular these four had become, nor what an influence they would have on millions of lives (of course, I was only six at the time!).

The band moved through many phases. From the clean-cut innocence of their first popularity around 1964, they became darker and more politically involved. The media touts this as their “growing social awareness”. By 1969, they looked like the photograph at the left. They had begun experimenting with various drugs such as marijuana and LSD. And they began to profess beliefs in line with Eastern religions, culminating in a prolonged visit to India to learn from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and experiment with his brand of transcendental meditation. Many of their songs on The White Album were written during this period (and you can tell).

The Beatles produced an incredible volume of music over a very short ten-year period. Their schedule was intense, their lives were made public, and expectations were always high for their millions of followers. But along the way, a not-so-subtle change was happening to the group and to their music.

From 1964 to 1970, it’s important to observe the cultural shift in their style, and most importantly, in their lyrics. The best way to put it was summed up by Kevin Swanson, the executive director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado, who recently said, “During their career, The Beatles took us from ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ to ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’” Kevin’s made the point that The Beatles have some responsibility for the societal shift that has occurred in our culture –one where sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll rule the airwaves and the media. The drift from innocence to pornography that is demonstrated in these two song titles – written just six years apart – is analogous to what happened to society during that same period. And it happened very quickly.

Is their music just harmless entertainment? One could make the case that it has made a lot of people happy over the years. Or does it embody something else – something that is exactly parallel to the cultural decline we have seen around us over the last forty years? The Beatles certainly aren’t the only thing to blame for the decline in morality around us. But it is precisely through such seemingly innocent entertainment that Satan gains a foothold. He brought about the fall of Man through a simple apple all those years ago. It just occurred to me that he might still be accomplishing some of his work through that same symbol.

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Back to the first entry in the "Songs I Can't Sing Anymore" series...

Good Marketing Can Sell Anything

One of the newest coffee crazes that has hit the States in the last few years is “kopi luwak”, a very special blend of coffee made from very….um….select beans. A product of Indonesia, it is made from coffee beans which have been consumed by a weasel-like animal, called a luwak, and harvested from…well…the stuff that comes out of the back end of a luwak. This has prompted the phrase “good to the last dropping”. I did not make that up (but I wish I could say that I did!). I can’t bring myself to post a picture of the stuff they harvest, but if you must see it…here you go. You might want to read to the end of the article before you click on that link.

According to the Indonesia Tourism Promotion Board, "the secret of this delicious blend lies in the bean selection, which is performed by a luwak, a species of civet cat endemic to Java. The luwak will eat only the choicest, most perfectly matured beans which it then excretes, partially digested, a few hours later. Plantation workers then retrieve the beans from the ground, ready for immediate roasting." So, we are led to believe that the luwak has a special nose for only the best beans, meaning that this animal is the one that chooses which beans go into the special blend – rather than a human being.

That, my friends, is marketing.

But the hype gets even better. A cup of kopi luwak is described by one coffee aficionado in this way - “The aroma is rich and strong, and the coffee is incredibly full bodied, almost syrupy. It's thick with a hint of chocolate, and lingers on the tongue with a long, clean aftertaste. It's definitely one of the most interesting and unusual cups I've ever had.” Another expert claims, “it has a top note of rich, dark chocolate, with secondary notes that are musty and earthy… the scent as the smell of moist earth after a rainfall, with hints of vanilla, that teases the palate for hours after the cup is empty”.

You know, I don’t really approve of anything that teases my palate for hours. It sounds more like a popcorn husk that gets stuck in between your molar and your gums – and no one enjoys that.

Finally, before you run out to find some of this rare blend, you should know that it sells for as much as $600 per pound. A single cup served to you at a coffee shop which features the product will cost you at least $25. Hopefully, half-and-half and Splenda will be offered free of charge – you might need it.

Fashionable and trendy products like this are not new. It’s just one of many unusual and incredibly expensive experiences that our society longs for. I read stories like this, and all I can think of is how people are lulled into paying enormous sums for things that are nearly worthless. Maybe the coffee is really that good, but it seems to me that this is just one more example of a needy society that can easily be tricked into exchanging value for worthlessness. Is this an analogy to bigger things going on around us?