Month: January 2012

Racism during the 2012 presidential election will be an issue because there is a group of racially-motivated white people who voted against Obama because he is Black and who opposes his presidency solely because he is Black.  That racism nucleus of mad white Americans has never supported racial equality.  In fact, their political representatives voted against both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.  The loudest voices of right-wing talk radio and cable television such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Fox News commentators, appeal directly to that core with racially tinted messages as the right-wing of the Republican Party continues to do.  You may recall that there were blatant signs of racism at the most heated town hall meetings during the summers of 2008 and 2009 including many Tea Party signs that carried overtly racial messages.

In addition, the radical “voter suppression laws” enacted by Republican Governors in Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maine, Minnesota and Missouri is yet another example of overt racism because it primarily affects African Americans, young voters, working poor, elderly and the disabled.  The Republican Party knows that this segment of the American people helped to elect President Obama and other Democrats in 2008, and the Party is working very hard to stop them from voting in 2012.  Before this year, most states allowed voters to use all kinds of identification, even utility bills, to get a ballot.  Not anymore.  Now a non-expired, state-issued photo ID is necessary.

Many African-Americans believe that President Barack Obama is being disrespected by a racist White America.  The continued involvement of the “birther” movement that raises doubts about Obama’s citizenship, the uproar over President Obama speaking to the nation’s school children about studying and working hard and, of course, the disrespect shown toward the President by a white Congressman from the South, Joe Miller, who yelled “you lie” during the President’s State of the Union address in September 2009 and whose pathetic apology catapulted him in becoming a fund-raising icon.  Recent examples of overt racism include Newt Gingrich’s frequent attacks on President Obama as a “food stamp president” and his claim that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment.  Campaigning in Iowa, Rick Santorum’s statement, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money” is yet another example of a remark characterized by blatant racism by another Republican presidential candidate.  These comments were so “over the top” that it prompted 45 Catholic leaders to issue a letter this past Friday to Gingrich and Santorum, themselves Catholics, urging them “to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.”

John Gehring, the Catholic outreach coordinator at Faith in Public Life, highlights the idea of “intrinsic evil,” adding that “a lot of people look at Catholic teaching and think about abortion as being a preeminent political issue, and that is true, but the bishops are also very clear that racism and torture — where Santorum is very bad on, Santorum has been an apologist for enhanced interrogation — are an intrinsic evil.”  Gehring also stated that Gingrich and Santorum’s “rhetoric around class and racial issues is in many ways out of line with Catholic social teaching.” “That is something Catholic voters will be concerned about,” Gehring says, “particularly given that both Santorum and Gingrich have not been shy about talking about the importance of their faith from a personal perspective and also how it shapes their political views as well.”

Color Lines, which reports on racial justice issues, reported this past Thursday that, “Gingrich argues that the reason so many people are on food stamps is not that the economy has thrown millions into poverty, but rather that lazy black families are getting on the dole and don’t want to work.”  Earlier this month, Gingrich told an audience in New Hampshire, “If the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.’”  Color Lines added, “Gingrich’s attack on the food stamp program is not surprising; it’s the kind of politics that he’s been helping to perfect for over 30 years.”

Although much progress has been made in attempting to eliminate racism, many believe that there was a significant set-back when President Obama was inaugurated as the first African American President.  Twenty-first century racism at its finest has emerged.  The rage during the campaign and over the past 3-1/2 years have been unprecedented especially when you hear emotionally charged members of the white community say that they want to “take their country back” as though it has disappeared because there is an African American President in the White House.  Many of us know that there are racist white Americans who will never accept a black or brown brother or sister in the White House and although we cannot call every disagreement an issue of racism, there is no question that racism still exists.

As we continue to embrace the 2012 Presidential election, there is no doubt in my mind that both subtle and obvious racism behavior will be displayed.  President Obama will not play the race card and his only expectation is to be judged as a president and not as an “African-American president.  However, Republican right-wing white voters have so much hatred for President Obama that they are more interested in trying to remove him from office rather than be concerned about the radical policies that will definitely be implemented under a Republican administration, but that’s just my take.

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Republican presidential candidates and other right-wing pundits, continue to use the Reagan presidency as the conservative model for fiscal discipline; however, according to his legacy, Reagan served as a poor example for future Republican presidential hopefuls.  We all know that Reagan’s massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised during his campaign, but record-setting debt.

Forced to raise taxes eleven times to avert financial disaster, Reagan, affectionately referred to as “the Gipper,” nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It’s no wonder his former Budget Director, David Stockman, lamented: “[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.” It is clear why the Gipper cited the skyrocketing deficits he bequeathed to America as his greatest regret.

George W. Bush buried the myth of Republican fiscal discipline.  Inheriting a 236 Billion Dollar federal budget surplus and CBO forecast for a $5.6 trillion surplus over 10 years, this Republican President quickly set about dismantling the progress made under President Clinton.  Bush’s $1.4 trillion tax cut in 2001, followed by a $550 billion second round in 2003, accounted for the bulk of the deep budget deficits he produced. (It is more than a little ironic that Paul Ryan eleven years ago called the tax cuts “too small” because he believed the estimated surplus Bush eviscerated would be even larger.)

Like Reagan, Bush resorted to a rosy state of affairs to claim he would halve the budget deficit by 2009.  Before the financial system meltdown in 2008, Bush’s deficit had already reached $490 billion. (And even before the passage of the Wall Street bailout, Bush had presided over a $4 trillion increase in the national debt, a staggering 71% jump.) By January 2009, the mind-numbing deficit figure reached $1.2 trillion, forcing President Bush to raise the debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion.

As it turned out, Congressional Republican majorities voted to raise the U.S. debt ceiling seven times while George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office.  “Reagan,” Vice President Dick Cheney famously declared in 2002, “proved deficits don’t matter.” Unless, of course, there is a Democrat in the White House.

It is interesting to note that during the Bush presidency, the current Republican congressional leadership team voted 19 times to increase the debt limit.  Fueled by the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the Medicare prescription drug plan and the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US national debt doubled during the Bush presidency.  Mitch McConnell and John Boehner voted for all of it and the debt which ensued because, as Orrin Hatch later explained:  “It was standard practice not to pay for things.”  That Republican intransigence persists despite the complete debunking of two of their favorite myths.

The first tried and untrue Republican talking point is that “tax cuts pay for themselves.” Sadly, that right-wing myth-making is contradicted by the massive Bush deficits, half of which were the result of the Bush tax cuts.  As a percentage of the American economy, tax revenues peaked in 2000; before the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Despite President Bush’s bogus claim that, “you cut taxes and the tax revenues increase,” Uncle Sam’s cash flow from individual income taxes did not return to its pre-dot com bust level until 2006.

The second Republican fairy tale, as expressed by Republican House Speaker Boehner, is that, “The top one percent of wage earners in the United States…pay forty percent of the income taxes…The people he’s [President Obama] is talking about taxing are the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy.” If true, the Republican’s so-called “Job Creators” failed to meet those expectations under George W. Bush. After all, the last time the top tax rate was 39.6% during the Clinton administration, the United States enjoyed rising incomes, 23 million new jobs and budget surpluses. Under Bush, not so much.

On January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, “Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record.” (The Journal’s interactive table quantifies his staggering failure relative to every post-World War II president.) The dismal 3 million jobs created under President Bush didn’t merely pale in comparison to the 23 million produced during Bill Clinton’s tenure. In September 2009, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee charted Bush’s job creation disaster the worst since Hoover:

As David Leonhardt of the New York Times aptly concluded:

 “Those tax cuts passed in 2001 amid big promises about what they would do for the economy. What followed? The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II. Amazingly, that statement is true even if you forget about the Great Recession and simply look at 2001-7.Ryan Budget Delivers Another Tax Cut Windfall for Wealthy Looking at that dismal performance, Leonhardt rightly asked, “Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?” At a time of record income inequality which saw the incomes of the richest 400 Americans taxpayers double even as their tax rates were halved, that’s a fair question to say the least.”

As Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman and Steve Benen among others noted, the House Republicans “Plan for America’s Job Creators” is simply a repackaging of years of previous proposals and GOP bromides. (As Klein pointed out, the 10 page document “looks like the staffer in charge forgot the assignment was due on Thursday rather than Friday, and so cranked the font up to 24 and began dumping clip art to pad out the plan.”) At the center of it is the same plan from the Ryan House passed budget to cut the top individual and corporate tax rates to 25%.  The price tag for the Republican proposal is a jaw- dropping $4.2 trillion.

Largely overlooked in the media coverage of the Republican debt ceiling hostage drama last summer is that the 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators who supported Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget bill voted to add $6 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next decade. As Speaker John Boehner acknowledged, Republicans now and in the future would have to increase the debt ceiling – repeatedly.

“President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt explained in 2009, adding, “The economic growth under George W. Bush did not generate nearly enough tax revenue to pay for his agenda, which included tax cuts, the Iraq war, and Medicare prescription drug coverage.” That fall, former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett offered just that kind of honesty to the born again deficit virgins of his Republican Party. Noting that the FY2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion was solely due to lower tax revenues and not increased spending, Bartlett concluded:

“I think there are grounds on which to criticize the Obama administration’s anti-recession actions. But spending too much is not one of them. Indeed, based on this analysis, it is pretty obvious that spending – real spending on things like public works – has been grossly inadequate.  The idea that Reagan-style tax cuts would have done anything is just nuts.”

Thanks to the steep recession, as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and others have documented time and again, the overall federal tax burden as a percentage of GDP is now down to levels not seen since Harry Truman was in the White House.  The two-year tax cut compromise didn’t help any, adding $400 billion to the current deficit. But it’s the Bush tax cuts themselves which Republicans want to make permanent and then (as the Ryan budget mandates) lower further, that will account for much of the revenue drain into the future.

We should be careful not to buy into the “distortions, myths and outright lies” spewed out of the mouth of Republican politicians especially those that are more interested in bringing down this President rather than doing their best for our country, but that’s just my take.

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The Christian Bible teaches that salvation, which is forgiveness of sin and receiving of eternal life, is a free gift of God, and it is not obtained by “works” as practiced by Mormon teachings:

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Romans 4:5, says, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”

As previously noted, the Mormon Church has several definitions of salvation and several degrees of glory. However, the Bible has only one definition of salvation and that is receiving by faith, God’s grace, apart from a man’s works.  The true Gospel is recorded in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4:

“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

True Christians believe that the real Jesus Christ is the only way a man can receive forgiveness of sin and eternal life. The Mormon Church rejects God’s truth and substitutes another Jesus who does not exist and cannot save. The Bible teaches that those who put their trust in a false Christ will be eternally lost.

Here is what the Bible tells us:

“For there shall arise false Christ, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”  (Matthew24:24)

“Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”(Acts 4:10-12)

One of the most egregious teachings of the Mormon Church concerns the “marriage” of Jesus Christ.  Although it does not appear to be the Mormon Church’s official doctrine that Jesus Christ was married and practiced polygamy, it was apparently taught by church officials and believed by the Mormon people.  For example, the following quotes by certain Mormon Church officials clearly show that the Mormon god and Jesus Christ are not the God and Jesus Christ that Christians believe in.

Jedediah M. Grant, Second Counselor to Brigham Young the Second Prophet of the Mormon Church:  “Celsus was a heathen philosopher; and what does he say upon the subject of Christ and his Apostles, and their belief? He says, the ‘grand reason why the Gentiles and philosophers of his school persecuted Jesus Christ, was because He had so many wives; there were Elizabeth, and Mary, and a host of others that followed Him.’ After Jesus went from the stage of action, the Apostles followed the example of their master. . . The grand reason of the burst of public sentiment in anathemas upon Christ and his disciples, casing his crucifixion, was evidently based on polygamy,. . .a belief in the doctrine of plurality of wives caused the persecution of Jesus, and his followers. We might almost think they were ‘Mormons’ ” (Journal of Discourses, Vol 1. ppl 345-346)

Mormon Apostle Orson Hyde made these statements:

“It will be borne in mind that once on a time, there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; . . .no less a person than Jesus Christ was married on that occasion. If he was never married, his intimacy with Mary and Martha, and the other Mary also whom Jesus loved, must have been highly unbecoming and improper to say the least of it.”

“I will venture to say that if Jesus Christ were now to pass thought the most pious countries in Christendom with a train of women, such as used to follow him, . . .he would be mobbed, tarred, and feathered, and rode, not on as ass, but on a rail.”

“At this doctrine the long-faced hypocrite and the sanctimonious bigot will probably cry, blasphemy! . . . Object not, therefore, too strongly against the marriage of Christ.” (All the above statements: Journal of Discourses, Vol. 4, pages 259-260)

“When Mary of old came to the sepulcher. . .she saw two angels in white. and they said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She said unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, OR HUSBAND, and I know not where they have laid him.” (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 2, page 210)

Statement by Brigham Young, second prophet of the Mormon Church:

“The Scripture says that He, the Lord, came walking in the Temple, with “HIS TRAIN; I do not know who they were, unless his wives and children;” (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 13. page 309)

The Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt:

“…it will be seen that the GREAT MESSIAH who was the founder of the Christian religion, WAS A POLYGAMIST, . . .the MESSIAH chose. . .by marrying honorable wives himself, show to all future generations that HE approbated the plurality of wives under the Christian dispensation, as well as under the dispensation in which His polygamist ancestors lived. . . .We have now clearly shown that God the Father had a plurality of wives. . .” (The Seer, page 172)

The above quotes from the writings of Mormon officials exemplify their teachings and belief that Jesus was married to Mary, Martha and the other Mary and that God was once a man and now lives in heaven practicing polygamy.

Additionally, according to Mormon teachings, to obtain the celestial glory, which means to obtain godhood, a couple must have a temple marriage referred to as the sealing ceremony or endowments. This marriage is referred to as for all time and eternity and means an eternal marriage. In answering the question about Mormon couples who are not married in the temple, Joseph Fielding Smith gave this answer, “Unless young people who marry outside the temple speedily repent, they cut them-selves off from exaltation in the celestial kingdom of God. If they should prove themselves worthy, notwithstanding that great error, to enter into the celestial kingdom, they go in that kingdom as servants. [Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 4 vols. (Salt Lake: Deseret Books, 1957-66), p. 196.]

As ridiculous as it may seem the above teachings suggest that unless Jesus Christ was married he would not be allowed to go the Celestial Heaven nor could he become a god.  Based on my research as presented in the previous parts to this article, there is absolutely no credible evidence to conclude that Mormons are “Christians” as God defines in His Word and I believe that Willard Mitt Romney is selling a “bill of goods” especially to Christian conservatives in a frail attempt to capture their support, but that’s just my take.

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