Smart teacher

A young lady named Sally, relates an experience she had in a seminary class taught by her teacher, Dr. Smith. She says Dr. Smith was known for his elaborate object lessons.

One particular day, Sally walked into the seminary and knew they were in for a fun day. On the wall was a big target and on a nearby table were many darts. Dr. Smith told the students to draw a picture of someone they disliked or someone who had made them angry in the past. Then he would allow them to throw darts at the person's picture.

Sally's friend drew a picture of a girl who had stolen her boyfriend. Another friend drew a picture of his little brother. Sally drew a picture of a former friend, putting a great deal of detail into her drawing, even drawing pimples on the face. Sally was pleased at the overall effect she had achieved.

The class lined up and began throwing darts. Some of the students threw their darts with such force that their targets were ripping apart. Sally looked forward to her turn, but was filled with disappointment when Dr. Smith, because of time limits, asked the students to return to their seats.

As Sally sat down, thinking about how angry she was because she didn't have a chance to throw any darts at her target, Dr. Smith began removing the target from the wall. Underneath the target was a picture of Jesus.

A complete hush fell over the room as each student viewed the mangled picture of Jesus; holes and jagged marks covered His face and His eyes were pierced.

Dr. Smith said only these words, "I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!" (Matthew 25:40)

No other words were necessary...the tear-filled eyes of each student focused only on the picture of Christ.




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Freedom VS Prison

In prison, you get three square meals a day. At home, you cook three square meals a day and try to get your kids to eat it.

In prison, you get an hour each day in the yard to exercise and mingle. At home you get to clean the yard up so you can mow it so your kids can spread more toys all over it so that you can go out and clean it again because little Jr. can't sleep without his latest lego creation.

In prison, you get to watch TV, cable even. At home, you get to listen to your children fight over the remote control and get treated to hours and hours of mindless cartoons thanks to cable. {Or in our case, just do without.....as we can't afford the extra bill each month! Of course, there's NEVER anything on that's good anyway.....so we don't feel like we are missing much.}

In prison, you can read whatever you want and attend college for free. At home, you get to read weekly readers starring Dick, Jane, and Spot and worry about how to send Jr. to college and still be able to eat for the next twenty years.

In prison, all your medical care is free. At home, you have to pawn your mother's silver and fill out trillions of papers for insurance and hope the doctor will see you before you die.

In prison, if you have visitors, all you do is go to a room, sit, talk and then say good-bye when you are ready or your time is up. At home, you get to clean for days in advance and then cook and clean up after your guests and hope that they will one day leave.

In prison, you can spend your free time writing letters or just hang out in your own space all day. At home, you get to clean your space and everyone else's space, too, and what the heck is free time again?

In prison, you get your own personal toilet. At home, you have to physically hold the bathroom door shut in order to keep from having someone standing over you demanding to know how long till you're done so you can do something for them.

In prison, the prison laundry takes care of all your dirty clothes. At home, you get to take care of them yourself, plus everybody else's, and get yelled at because somebody's favorite shirt isn't clean.

In prison, they take you everywhere you need to go. At home, you take everybody else where they need to go.

In prison, the guards transport all your personal effects for you and make sure nothing is missing. At home, you have to lug around everybody else's stuff in your purse and then wonder who went in it and took your last dollar.

In prison, the cells have heat in the winter and cool in the summer; because it is cruel and unusual punishment otherwise. At home, we freeze in the winter and get heat prostration in the summer because who can afford those high utility bills!

In prison, there are no screaming or whining children or spouses asking you to do something else for them, or screaming at you because you didn't.

At home....stop me when I get to the downside of jail, will ya?
~~~~~~~~~~~
Funny comparison of home and jail. The sad thing is, it ain't all that false!!!!!!!


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Presidential Wisdom

James Madison

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

{CAN WE SAY "PATRIOT ACT"????????????}

Andrew Jackson

One man with courage makes a majority.


Grover Cleveland

Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters. {I've been saying this for years...our leaders in the nation's capital seem to have forgotten that THEY ARE THE EMPLOYEES; WE, THE PEOPLE, ARE THE EMPLOYERS.}

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Wal-Mart No Longer Worthy of Family Trust?

by By Randy Sharp
from Agape Press

Late last fall, I got a voice-mail from a fellow stating he represented Wal-Mart as an agent of the giant Edelman Public Relations firm. I returned his call several times, to no avail. I finally gave up. I presume he wanted to talk about ways Wal-Mart might be trying to stop the bleeding of consumer dissatisfaction with the company.

Advertising Age, a huge marketing industry trade publication, confirmed my suspicions when they recently wrote the retail giant was desperate to clean up their reputation, tarnished by repeated desertions of its historically moral values leanings. It hired Edelman to try and smooth the rough seas created by unions and groups like WakeUpWalMart.com, who rankle over health care, poor wages {having cashiered at 2 different Wal-Marts in my day and discovering, shockingly, the majority of employees are on Food Stamps....}, and the company's "Not Made in America" love for Chinese products.

To the typical Wal-Mart consumer, these issues are non-intrusive to our shopping habits. A decent product at a decent price is what draws our attention. And the clean stores, well-stocked shelves, and friendly associates are a far cry from the distracting noise being directed at the Bentonville corporate office.

But now, Wal-Mart is raising the ire of the shopper segment of the retail industry. No longer is Sam Walton's legacy of homespun marketing the driving force. The changing of the guard has replaced common-sense values and decency with corporate greed. Wal-Mart no longer considers the common working family its foundation for success. All eyes are now fixed on money and power. {After Sam died, the "heirs" decided that putting all seasonal items on sale for 1/2 price after the holiday or season was no longer acceptable. Nope, they would start it at 10% off, then go to 15% off, eventually working their miserly way to 50% off. They no longer cared that it was the blue collar families that brought them their wealth....and built their empire~~now they can't be bothered to pass the savings on!}

Those who built the empire were working-class folks, such as the stocker who worked his way up to district manager because he understood the business from the inside. Walton was no stranger to work. Until his death, he made daily trips to his stores to meet the people who traded with him. It wasn't uncommon to see him stocking a shelf or gathering shopping carts from the parking lot.

The business is now run by "educated elite" gurus {who are completely CLUELESS} of business who live in big houses and host dinner parties. These socialites now make decisions without taking time to "greet the folks" and learn what makes the working family want to come to their stores. They trust public relations companies to tell them what to do.

And it's backfiring on them.

Wal-Mart used to stay away from violent and profanity-laced music. It felt it had a moral obligation to avoid profiting from the promotion of anti-social behavior. Go in Wal-Mart today and you can purchase "25 to Life," the blood-bath cop-killer video game.

Wal-Mart used to reject magazines that contained scantily-clad photos of women. Now they stock the Sports Illustrated "Swimsuit" edition in the check-out lane. The current magazine cover featuring eight topless females confronts your sons and husbands, begging them to lust.

Wal-Mart aggressively supports the promotion of homosexuality. Last December, corporate headquarters issued a staff memo inviting home office associates to a seminar entitled "Why Market to Gay America?" Earlier last year, Wal-Mart established a "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender" (GLBT) group within the corporation. {I received an email from them about this last fall and was completely shocked. What has happened to their "family" values? Wish now I had kept that email.....instead of deleting it. They KNEW they had made a tactical error and very quietly squelched the fact they had become involved in the support of this lifestyle~~at least in our area of the country.}

The latest escapade proves Wal-Mart no longer respects the sanctity of life, as evidenced by their corporate decision to begin offering "Plan B," {the morning after pill} an abortion pill, in its Wal-Mart and SAM'S CLUB stores. {I will have to boycott Wal-mart for this....which just hurts my little family and my "minimum" wage paycheck as I buy EVERYTHING from Wal-Mart. But I, for one, am NOT willing to COMPROMISE MY BELIEFS. So, sadly, Wal-Mart, goodbye......}

They say they will not force pharmacists to dispense the pill if they feel uncomfortable doing so. My guess is that this mindset will last about a week. That's how long it will take some promiscuous feminist to file a lawsuit.

Wal-Mart continues to abandon the principles of common decency and morality that made them a household name.

I think I've had enough. {As have I.}

Let's review:

Wal-Mart stocks music that sexually denigrates women, promotes violence, and blasphemes the name of God. Wal-Mart sells "entertainment" that rewards players for killing police and innocent bystanders. Wal-Mart advances an unhealthy and dangerous lifestyle, whose members fight for homosexual marriage. Wal-Mart profits from a product whose sole purpose is to stop the beating heart of an unborn child.

Wal-Mart, if you're listening: Before making a trip to your store next time, I'll take a moment and ask myself, "Is there an alternative place to shop?"

And to the retailer's corporate executives, let me offer a bit of advice.

Get out of your plush office and away from the "professional advisors." Try spending a little time in your stores and talk to your customers to see what they think about your direction.

Sam Walton did.

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A Job Should Keep You Out of Poverty, Not Keep You In It

By Rev. Dr. Paul H. Sherry
from Center for American Progress

Wages are a bedrock moral issue. The minimum wage is where society draws the line: This low and no lower.

Our bottom line is this: A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.

The minimum wage has become a poverty wage instead of an anti-poverty wage. A low minimum wage gives a green light to employers to pay poverty wages to a growing share of the workforce – not just workers at the minimum, but also above it. Workers have not been getting their fair share of the benefits of rising worker productivity.

Wages have been so eroded that today about one out of four workers makes the $9-and-change-equivalent of the hourly minimum wage of 1968. Poverty rates are higher now than in the 1970s thanks in part to the falling minimum wage. Around the country, minimum wage earners and other low-paid workers have turned increasingly to food banks and homeless shelters {you only qualify if you have children under the age of 18 OR are elderly!!}, which cannot keep up with the rising demand.

"The eighth and most meritous degree of charity is to anticipate charity by preventing poverty," the Jewish philosopher Maimonides observed. It is immoral that the minimum wage keeps people in poverty instead of out of poverty.

Successful businesses, large and small, show that good wages are good for business as well as workers. "Paying your employees well is not only the right thing to do but it makes for good business," Costco CEO James Sinegal told Business Week. Joel Marks, national director of the American Small Business Alliance, affirms, "Fair wages are good for business."

Prophets have been calling through the millennia for economic justice. The scriptures devote passage after passage to concern for the impoverished and exploited, and challenge us – indeed, command us – to stand for justice. In the words of Amos 5:24, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an overflowing stream." (NRSV)

The Golden Rule – the Ethic of Reciprocity – is the most universal moral value: Do to others what you would have them do to you.

Violating the Golden Rule, Congress has taken eight pay raises since 1997, while giving none to minimum wage workers. Violating the Golden Rule, CEO pay has increased astronomically, while a growing number of workers can't make ends meet. {Just to survive~~rent, insurance & utility bills, gasoline for commuting to work, FOOD~~requires a minimum of $1000 and $1200 is better. You actually could afford fresh fruit and vegetables then or leaner cuts of meat to eat......plus you might be able to save for those inevitable rainy day expenses: car repairs, new tires, going to the doctor.}

As we observe in our new report, "A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Businesses and Our Future," raising the minimum wage is an economic imperative for the enduring strength of our workforce, businesses, communities and economy. Raising the minimum wage is a moral imperative for the very soul of our nation.

The Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign is a nonpartisan interfaith and community initiative to raise the minimum wage nationally and in selected states. Sponsored by more that 50 faith-based and community organizations, our ongoing educational and action campaign informs people about the severity of conditions facing low-wage working people and families and advocates for constructive change.

Currently, in addition to ongoing work at the federal level, the Campaign has Let Justice Roll organizers at work in Ohio and Michigan and expects to have organizers shortly in Arizona and Arkansas. Campaign members are also working in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Colorado and elsewhere.

We are very encouraged by the response we are getting to the Campaign in the interfaith community and beyond. People see clearly the injustice of the fact that minimum wage employees working full time earn only poverty wages of $5.15 an hour – just $10,700 a year – a loss of more than 40 percent in purchasing power since 1968.

Over the recent Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, we sponsored Living Wage Days in order to remind people of Dr. King's vision of justice for working people and to build additional support for the Campaign. Dr. King wrote, "There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American (worker) whether he is a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer." Based on this vision, worship services and rallies were held in at least 26 states, including more than 60 events in Ohio and another 20 in Arkansas.

For further information about the Campaign at the state and federal level, and to download or order "A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future" and other resources, please visit our website, Let Justice roll. We are eager to involve additional people and organizations in the Campaign and invite you to sign up at our website or contact me at mailto:PSher973@aol.com.

Rev. Dr. Paul H. Sherry is the Campaign Coordinator of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, Coordinator of the Anti-Poverty Program of the National Council of Churches and co-author, with Holly Sklar, of "A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future."


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'Fringe economy'

Preys on the Poor
by Yolanda Young

You see them along urban thoroughfares and on the corners in poor neighborhoods: check-cashing centers, pawnshops, "payday loan" establishments and rent-to-own furniture stores. This industry comprises what University of Houston professor Howard Karger refers to in his new book as the "fringe economy."

This new phenomenon, according to Shortchanged: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy, experienced "almost exponential growth during the mid-1990s." In 2001, the "fringe economy" accumulated $78 billion in gross revenue. These fringe businesses make their money off the poor by charging them exorbitant interest rates or bloated or hidden fees because their customers lack good credit, bank accounts or other options.

Today, 53% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and 56 million don't have bank accounts. The robust fringe economy has also come at a time when household debt is increasing rapidly, when many banks are increasing minimum payments, late penalties and interest rates on credit card debt {let's not forget how they have "shortened" the month from 30 days to 25 days! or payment is considered late}, and when bankruptcies, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute, skyrocketed more than 400% from 1975 to 2003.

Where once pawn shops were perceived as havens of the thief, gambler or crackhead, and rent-to-own stores were used primarily by college students, today they are frequented by the working poor. Karger notes that the average payday loan customer is a woman ages 24 to 44 with a high school diploma and earning less than $40,000 a year. With such a tight budget, one unexpected event becomes a crisis.

While more consumer discipline is in order, many poor are beyond this point. Stagnant wages {Yet Congress has voted on a pay raise for themselves 7 times in the last decade!!! Yet,they can't be bothered to raise minimum wage for the average worker.} and increased costs of housing, transportation{GASOLINE!!!!!!!} and food are huge contributors to indebtedness.

{These are NOT luxuries. Food, shelter and transportation for work ARE NECESSITIES!!!}

The poor need more protection.

Among the possible steps:

• More government regulation is required in policing shady schemes, inflated interest rates and fees on loans and services, and unfair mortgage lending.
• Mainstream financial institutions should be encouraged to make credit cards more difficult to get and work with customers on ways to pay off their debt.
• Consumer-interest organizations need to help educate the financially illiterate.
{MINIMUM WAGE NEEDS TO BE RAISED TO COUNTER BALANCE THE AFFECTS OF INFLATION.}

Karger likens the hold the fringe industry has on the poor to the grip landowners had on black sharecroppers after slavery. {Never ending cycle of poverty.....they could never get ahead to pay off their debts and be free! It was a form of indentured servitude, without the time limits! Even indentured servants eventually worked off their debts and were free.}

When it comes to exploitive practices, the poor are always the first victims.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For giggles, let's break down my minimum wage job and my expenses....... (I'm a single parent, so no second pay check comes in.)

40 hour week = $206
4 weeks = $824

Rent =$400
Insurance = $80
Electricity =$90 (average: living in the deep south
means I spend more in the summer than the winter and we
still swelter as I won't run the AC very much!)
Gas = $50 (house: gas stove and gas floor heater and we
still tend to freeze as I won't run the gas very much!)
Gasoline to my job 33 miles away=$160 (No, there were
no jobs hiring in my little southern town. It wasn't
any better when I lived up in the Northwestern part of the U.S.)

This adds up to a whopping $780

Ummmmm, sure don't leave much for FOOD. And I have a still growing son who is always hungry.

Neither of us has health insurance. So, anything serious happens, I'm back in debt....or dead.

A blown out tire, an oil change or plate tags is just another expense that is difficult to find the extra cash for. If the car requires repairs....well, I haven't found a mechanic that lets you pay monthly installments.

My little family is not unusual.

Sadly, it has become the NORM.

At this point, 40 acres and a mule looks like heaven.....

~~~~~~~More~~~~~~~

from Agape Press by Allie Martin

...Ted Gandy, president of the outreach called Here's Life Inner City, predicts that more individuals and families will soon be living on the streets of America.

Here's Life Inner City, the urban ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, reaches out to the homeless in large metropolitan areas. Through its work, people without shelter and people living below the poverty line receive physical and spiritual assistance.

Gandy says the need is on the rise due to higher gas prices and harsh weather in some places -- factors that will force many families to make hard choices. {Can't afford gasoline for the commute to work and gas or electric to heat our homes.}

"The one thing about the poor is they're living in such marginal conditions that any change can throw them into a tailspin," the ministry leader notes.

"What we're hearing is that a lot of the poor are having to make decisions as the cold weather comes in, between heat or food.

My expectation is that when they're having to make those types of decisions, there's going to be a certain percentage where the higher cost of everything is going to throw them into a homeless situation."

Unable to pay their bills, these families will face eviction and end up on the street, Gandy explains. Here's Life Inner City is delivering homeless care kits, each including blankets, toiletries, warm gloves, and other essentials to people in 17 major cities.

{I've already determined that if this were to happen to my family, we are headed to the capital of this nation ~~to make a point. Congress and the White House will be forced to see what their policies have created. Run-away gasoline prices, housing, & food costs along with the issue of not raising minimum wage in over a decade. As well as the poor, meager laws [too little, too late] enacted and then the extremely poor record of enforcement of those meager child support laws for families. Along the way, we will gather other families in the same situation.

Although, homelessness is not what it was in the 30's. Not that it was any picnic! But the "hoover" communities, for the most part, banded together to protect and look out for each other as best they could.

Anyone who has been out on the "streets" in recent years, will know it is no longer that way. In fact, it is perilous living out on the streets today. There is a lack of respect for fellow human beings in this day and age~~life is cheap and yours means nothing if you have something worth taking!

Of course, I do maintain my faith that God will provide for us somehow each day. My toes are hanging so far over the cliff's edge, yet I haven't panicked~~if you knew me, you'd know this was a MAJOR life lesson learned, as it is a FIRST!!! By nature, I'm a planner and a saver; but recent years have been difficult and plans have not come to fruition and savings have disappeared.

I know that living in the end times, this is a "normal" situation: Revelation 6: "...a quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and wine!" Whose meaning is quite clear. We will work a full day to be able to buy one quart of wheat or buy three quarts of the cheaper barley. There is no money left over for housing, clothes, or cars! Seems like it is this bad now, but I believe it may literally become this bad.

But the rich will still be able to purchase whatever they desire: wine and oil in the olden days; fancy electric cars today, homes all over the world, abundant food, etc.

They will need to enjoy it while they have it. Because, they too will eventually lose it all...once they receive salvation....or lose their souls...."666" mark of the beast......}


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