This morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly Employment Situation Summary. The unemployment rate remained at 4.9%. I was reading MoneyBeat blog at the Wall Street Journal. The following quote (posted at 8:45 AM) caught my attention. U-6 includes everybody, and that rate is at 9.7%. That is a high number for a purported […]

Cruz–interesting attack against Trump. Does he know the principles that made American great first. He should be asked that. #GOPDebate — Mark Caleb Smith (@markcalebsmith) March 4, 2016 Cruz–we have beaten Donald Trump again and again. Weak sauce when Trump has him 10-4 in state victories. #GOPDebate — Mark Caleb Smith (@markcalebsmith) March 4, 2016 […]

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a DC group, had this to say about Ted Cruz’s campaign proposals: “Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has, by our count, put forward seven sets of policy proposals on his campaign website covering areas such as immigration, military spending, and tax reform. By our very rough […]

I have been reading quite a few articles lately in which the individuals (politicians, bureaucrats and just ordinary citizens) are asked about various issues related to the presidential campaigns.  One answer I have heard quite a bit is simply that “the government” should do something.  Sometimes the issues are even cast in terms of a […]

* I am relying heavily on Created in God’s Image by Anthony A. Hoekema. I have read several papers and examined several books on the subject and find Hoekema’s work to be the most helpful. Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Hebrews 1:3a He is the radiance of the glory […]

There was a time, way back in the eighteenth century, and as recently as the nineteenth century in the United States, that a person who owned land possessed legal title (in so-called “fee simple,” the normal way people own land unless they lease it) to it from the “center of the earth to the zenith […]

It is simply too easy with a name like “Trump” when writing titles or headlines.  I am sure the late night talk show hosts are having a field day.  So, forgive my failure to resist the easy pun in titling this post.  The reality is, there is nothing very funny in the topic which I […]

Donald Trump (R-NY) is working his way toward the Republican presidential nomination. His opponents may still derail him, of course, but his sustained performance–he has been the front-runner since August–suggests there is a sizable portion of the Republican electorate that sees Trump as not only tolerable, but preferable. Exit polls reveal several possible explanations. Voters […]

So warns Mr. Obama in this year’s Economic Report of the President.  And the fear is that this accelerating automation will replace low-skilled jobs. It’s intuitive that automation will take low-wage jobs.But the White House, in its annual economic report of the president, has broken down just how much that is so. There’s an 83% chance that […]

I think I quoted this passage from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, last year, but have enlarged the context.  Is this a description of the centralized command and control bureaucratic government that we [sic] have been creating over the past 100 years or so?  And is Tocqueville on to something?  Feel free to comment. […]