Last night, I went to my regular (bi-weekly) church small group. We meet regularly for a simple potluck dinner (or supper, as most Midwestern-bred Mennonites call it), followed by a time of prayer and discussion. Since tomorrow is our Consecration Sunday (where we make our financial pledges for the coming year), the topic was stewardship and simplicity. We had a great conversation, and I walked away at 9:00PM convinced once again that my life is far too cluttered!
I’m still struggling to get back to where I was just a couple of years ago, which was giving 10% of my gross income to the church. My pledges for 2004 will put me at about 6.8% of my estimated gross income for this year; more than most secular folks might imagine ever giving to charity, but far less than I feel called to give. This isn’t the place to list all the reasons why I am not willing or able to make a larger commitment, but I can note that I am slowly returning to an earlier level of giving. I also need to give myself a break. I only made my first stewardship pledge to a church a few years ago, when as a new and uncertain Christian, pledging 1% seemed more than sufficient! Progress not perfection…
The Flying Monkey gets the hat tip for this story, in the (Moonie-run) Washington Times, indicating that Bush’s stance on immigration is hurting him among staunch conservatives on the fundraising trail:
Phil Kent, a member of the host committee for a Bush fund-raiser in Atlanta yesterday, said he was told by several would-be donors that they would not attend the $2,000-per-person event because of the president’s announcement last week on immigration reform.
“I was soliciting checks right after the announcement, and I lost two checks from people who had wanted to come, but wouldn’t,” Mr. Kent said. “They specifically said this is just rewarding lawbreakers.
“That was the constant theme,” he added. “And even among some people who wrote the checks, there’s grumbling.”
Goody!
In an unusually cruel and heart-rending fashion, Ohio executed a mentally retarded inmate named Lewis Williams yesterday morning, in front of his sobbing mother. The appalling and upsetting CNN story is here.
In related news, my beloved Feminists for Life has revamped their website. As part of that revamping, they have removed any mention of their historic anti-capital punishment position. While the original FFLA was part of a consistent-life, seamless garment approach to violence and killing, it has begun to focus exclusively on abortion. Though I understand why, I always grieve when the “life” issue is framed so narrowly. I may pull my financial support (I am a monthly donor), and give it instead to an organization that does not prioritize its opposition to the taking of human life, such as the small but fine Consistent Life Network or Common Ground for Life.
Mark Leno, San Francisco assemblyman, proposes an SF-only reinstatement of the California vehicle license fee cut by Gov. Schwarzenegger. The article is in the Chronicle, and Leno makes good sense:
As Leno sees it, the rollback — which was cheered from Encino to Eureka — has left the city with a $100 million hole in its budget for parks, clean streets, libraries and health programs that San Franciscans are so fond of.
“Look, we paid the fee — which is 2 percent of the value of the car — from 1948 to 1998 without a word of debate or contention,” said Leno, D-San Francisco. He pointed out that the rollback was meant to last only as long as the state enjoyed good times.
Actually, I would like to see an optional box on the DMV registration form to allow those of us who would like to pay the full 2% to do so (and, of course, write it off on our income taxes). The extra money collected would stay in the county in which the contributor lived, which would give folks more of an incentive, knowing that the money they gave would stay local. I would be the first to give the full amount, and have already committed my anticipated refund to local charities.
One of the better conservative Christian magazines is World, edited by the formidable Marvin Olasky. Here’s a post from the magazine’s blog on undocumented aliens, and it seems to indicate that at least some Christian conservatives are open to a moderate stance on immigration:
Readers in Des Moines may not be faced with illegal immigrants every day, but the fact is, no matter where you live, your life is somehow improved by the 7 to 10 million foreigners working here illegally: Your strawberries were picked by Mexicans, your Starbucks was built by Nicaraguans, your shirt was starched by Chinese. Those are jobs Americans, by and large, don’t want because they’re too menial or low-paying. Unemployment benefits and welfare programs afford us the luxury of being picky (some would say lazy). So, when President Bush proposes to grant three-year temporary work visas to illegal immigrants already in this country, isn’t he merely recognizing an economic reality that many would rather ignore? No, we don’t want to encourage more illegal immigration, but we can’t realistically expect to deport millions of illegals already here, already contributing to our quality of life.
It seems to me the right response would be to apply Jesus’s words to the woman taken in adultery: “Go, and sin no more.” Bush’s immigration plan would say to illegal aliens, “Go on with the jobs you’re doing. But register with us instead of trying to hide. Pay your taxes instead of working for cash. Get your license instead of driving illegally.”
There’s an interesting debate going on below the post as well.
While Schwarzenegger’s actual budget for California Community Colleges is not bad, his plan to raise fees 40% (from $18 to $26 per unit) strikes me as nothing more than a regressive tax on a particularly vulnerable group. I had several students drop my class last semester, unable to pay last year’s increase in fees from $11 to $18 per unit. For those of us in the comfortable middle-class, these numbers seem so small — for my students, these numbers are the difference between success and despair.
The Times this morning reports that John Burton called Arnold’s budget plan “unworthy”:
Burton emphasized that a higher income tax paid by wealthy Californians would be a logical place to raise new revenue to stave off some of the proposed cuts. An increase in the income tax on top earners is one that has been put in place temporarily by Republican governors in the past.
“We have people making half a million a year after deductions, taxable income,” Burton said. “That’s a fair amount of money. If you have to come up with another two, three, four hundred dollars, you can afford it. Basically what people would be paying for is a just society.”
As Christians of all political stripes are fond of saying, budgets are moral documents.
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