Archives

Friday, February 25, 2011

It's Friday, so you watch our live webcam at frankcam.com!

400-408 – Dr. Peter Jones, director of the truthXchange (truthxchange.com), reaches college and university students who've embraced the new – which is actually ancient – pagan spirituality of gnosticism.  We aren't becoming increasingly secular and naturalistic, but more pagan and gnostic in Western culture.  We are embracing "one-ism" over "two-ism," or homocosmology over heterocosmology (i.e., same over different).  If we glean from the early church on how to deal with the "oneism" of their day, we will have more success in dealing with ours.  He lays it all out in his latest One or Two:  Seeing a World of Difference (2010).

413-423 – Dr. Peter Jones

428-437 – Dr. Peter Jones

443-452 – Dr. Peter Jones

458-508 – Scott Lamb, co-author with Tim Ellsworth of a new Pujols biography entitled Pujols: More Than The Game, which I've endorsed (pujolsbio.com).  Scott is a Baptist pastor in Louisville, and Director of Research for Al Mohler at Southern Baptist Seminary. 

• USA Today (2/24/2011) Baseball star's contract a matter of heavenly debate.  Albert Pujols is in the midst of negotiating probably the biggest contract in the history of baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals, and people – especially Christians – are accusing him of being greedy – primarily because he's an active and outspoken Christian!!  He and his wife Dee Dee are wonderfully generous, not only with the Pujols Foundation (pujolsfamilyfoundation.org), which spent $800,000 last year in the Dominican Republic, but in many other endeavors.

512-523 – Scott Lamb, Calls – Aren't Christians entitled to their free-market value?  Aren't people, even Christians, right to negotiate contracts that make them a lot of money for being among the best in the world at something?  Isn't the real key, not how much you make, and not even how much you keep, but what you give away and how you spend it?  Don't we all know lots of greedy poor people and generous rich people?  What would Albert have to do to persuade you that he's handling this "properly"?  Do you apply that same standard to your own life?

528-539 – Scott Lamb, Calls

539 – Robert Micone & Bill O'Connor, "The Money Guys" from Applied Financial Planning, at 866-SEEK-COUNSEL (SeekCounsel.com).   • Our free "KKLA Growing Your Wealth Summit" is coming up Saturday, March 5th, at the Crowne Plaza Anaheim on Harbor Blvd, from 900am to 1230pm.  It's free, but seating is limited, so pre-register at kkla.com.

544-554 – Scott Lamb, Calls

558-608 – (1:51) Found Ring. (Michael Secuar, the homeless man who found the ring and David Coleman, Center Stage Owner (homeless shelter) talk about the story @ 2/25/2011.)

• MSNBC (2/25/2011) Homeless man seeks accidental donor of diamond ring. 

612-623 – Calls:  What's your lost and found story? Have you ever found anything really cool that you got to keep?

628-639 – Calls:  God sometimes places these tests into our lives not for Him to determine where we are, because He knows where we are, its for us to determine where we are.  Is our immediate, initial response to do the right thing?  Or do we have to "think about it"?  If you have to deliberate about it, you're not in the right place yet.

644-654 – Calls:

• MSNBC (2/25/2011) Homeless man finds daughter through Twitter.  Calls: What is your reconciliation story? How did God move in your life to reconcile you with a lost loved one?

[READ] •• Charles Krauthammer (NRO, 2/25/2011) The Rubicon of Wisconsin – Recklessly principled Republicans are tackling our fiscal crisis.  It's taxpayers against the unions.

• Michael Barone (NRO, 2/24/2011) Follow the Money – Who benefits from public-employee unions?

// "Follow the money," Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public-employee unions — who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public-employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic party. //

• Kent Osband (NRO, 2/24/2011) Fatted Leviathan. — Kent Osband, an investment professional, is the author of Iceberg Risk.

My Summary – Public sector employees account for one-sixth of the American work force.  20% of them work for the federal government, the remaining 80% for state and local governments.

// Full-time federal employees with three years of service or more can take off 43 weekdays a year with full pay: 10 holidays, 20 days vacation, and 13 sick days. Employees with 15 years of service get an additional six days of vacation a year. A program called "time off as an incentive" grants extra paid leave "to recognize excellent employee performance." And those with two to three decades of service qualify for retirement at ages 50 to 60 with full or nearly full benefits.

Some state and local programs reward not working even more. Since 1999, California has allowed state employees to retire at age 50 with as little as five years of service. Each year, pensioners receive a certain percentage of their final salaries for each year they worked. Most employees hired in their twenties can retire by age 55 or earlier with 50 percent or more of their highest salary locked in for life, with full inflation adjustment. The state also pays 100 percent of health-care costs for retirees with at least 20 years of service.

Such pledges are anachronistic. They date from an era in which 25 years of hard manual labor broke workers' health, medical technology was limited, benefits were low, average lifespans were under 65, and the worker-to-retiree ratio was extremely high. They are totally unsuited to the 21st century, in which people can work productively for 40 years or more, expensive medical technology is beating back infirmity, benefits are extensive, and the worker-to-retiree ratio is dropping below two to one. //

• Robert Costrell (WSJ, 2/25/2011) Oh, To Be a Teacher in Wisconsin – How can fringe benefits cost nearly as much as a worker's salary? Answer: collective bargaining. Mr. Costrell is professor of education reform and economics at the University of Arkansas.