The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/891772
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, October 25, 2017 D-7 OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg The church as a whole taught the Immanent Return of Christ for almost 1900 years. But with the advance of leisure time and Christian sectarianism, a number of men have carved their names into church history by forecasting the Second Coming of Christ. In our own modern era, the first wide acceptance that the Lord Je- sus could return at a fixed date was fueled by William Miller. Miller taught that he had calcu- lated the return of the Lord based upon biblical dates and numbers, and he began to teach that the event would occur between 1843 or late 1844. Many frenzied follow- ers took to heart his final calculat- ed date, October 22, 1844, and sold houses and put their life's affairs in order knowing the Lord would return. He didn't. Miller eventually concluded that Jesus did return, but this was an in- vestigative judgement. This event was the beginning of the Adven- tists movement and the date set- ting of the Catching Away of the Church and the Great Tribulation. A few years later, the teachings of John Nelson Darby [1890s] and Cyrus Ingerson Schofield [1908] caught hold within the Church in what came to be called Dispensa- tionalism. However, it was the Jehovah's Witness who led the way in pre- dicting the end of the world: 1914, 1915, 1918, 1925, 1938, 1941, 1942, and 1975. Obvi- ously, something un- foreseen skewed their calculations, so the organization now just stands pat with "Jesus appearance is immi- nent." Evangelist William Branham made a prediction in 1963 that it was revealed to him that Jesus would return in 1977. Evangelist and author Hal Lind- say in his book The Late Great Planet Earth [1970] wrote Christ would return before December 31, 1988. In late 1987, author and prophet- ic teacher Edgar C Whisenant pub- lished a booklet Eighty Eight Rea- sons Why the Rapture Will Be in 88; then it was amended to 1989, then 1993. The last date was 1994 Braham, Lindsay, Whisenant have been joined by Harold Camp- ing's prediction of the end of the world on September 1994, then March 31, 1995, then finally Sat- urday, May 21, 2011. Regardless of these unfulfilled predictions, there are still prophet- ic ministers who continue to claim that they know when the Lord will return. Dispensationalism has been cast aside, but the drum continues to beat because there are gullible Chris- tians and money to be made. These men were wrong then and con- tinue to be confused because they errored in two ways. The first is that God is sover- eign and cannot be manipulated into actions [Gnostics do believe this]. The second is that they are ignorant of the scriptures. Jesus makes it unmistakably plain in Acts 1:6 -7 that His return is not for His followers to know: "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And He said unto them, 'It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power.'" All types of arguments are used by contemporary authors, teach- ers, and T V costermongers to in- flame the fears of the faithful. Scriptures from the epistles of Paul, Peter and John's Revelation are highlighted to prove that Jesus will come when X YZ [place your fa- vorite event here] occurs. Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden and Jill Heuring Who pays what in taxes? Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond The end is not yet Small town virtues are still powerful Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson Iran nuclear deal needs improvement Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner To hear President Trump's po- litical opponents describe it, the decision to decertify the Iran Deal is a major miscalculation – a needlessly provocative action that could even bring all-out war. As is often the case, their as- sessment is 180 degrees off the truth. With good reason did Mr. Trump say, in effect, "enough is enough." The deal that the Obama ad- ministration helped forge with Iran in 2015 is, in fact, helping to destabilize an already-dangerous region. If anything, it's increas- ing the chances that war could break out. As Mr. Trump noted in his ad- dress, Iran "remains the world's leading state sponsor of terror- ism, and provides assistance to al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist net- works. It develops, deploys and proliferates missiles that threat- en American troops and our al- lies. It harasses American ships and threatens freedom of navi- gation in the Arabi- an Gulf and in the Red Sea. It impris- ons Americans on false charges. And it launches cyber- attacks against our critical infrastruc- ture, financial sys- tem and military." It would be one thing if Iran's behav- ior had moderated in the wake of the Iran deal. But can we point to some concrete actions that show the regime is ratcheting down its support of terrorism, or act- ing less belligerently toward the United States and its allies in this war-torn region? We can't. Not that this is surprising, con- sidering Iran's history. Too many Americans have either forgotten or aren't old enough to remember when agents of the regime cap- tured the U.S. embassy in Teh- ran in 1979 and seized more than 60 Americans hos- tages – a crisis that stretched out for 444 days. For more than a year, America sat there with egg on its face. The hostages were finally released just as President Rea- gan took the oath of office. The hostage- takers displayed no fear of Presi- dent Carter, but they wisely opted not to provoke the Gipper. Iran has continued to exert a destabilizing influence ever since. The 2018 Index of U.S. Mil- itary Strength describes it as "an anti-Western revolutionary state that seeks to tilt the regional bal- ance of power in its favor by driv- ing out the Western presence, un- dermining and overthrowing op- Politicians exploit public igno- rance. Few areas of public igno- rance provide as many opportuni- ties for political demagoguery as taxation. Today some politicians ar- gue that the rich must pay their fair share and label the proposed chang- es in tax law as tax cuts for the rich. Let's look at who pays what, with an eye toward attempting to answer this question: Are the rich paying their fair share? According to the latest IRS data, the payment of income taxes is as follows. The top 1 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted annual gross income of $480,930 or higher, pay about 39 percent of federal income taxes. That means about 892,000 Americans are stuck with paying 39 percent of all feder- al taxes. The top 10 percent of in- come earners, those having an ad- justed gross income over $138,031, pay about 70.6 percent of federal in- come taxes (https://tinyurl.com/ yddvee2o). About 1.7 million Amer- icans, less than 1 percent of our pop- ulation, pay 70.6 percent of federal income taxes. Is that fair, or do you think they should pay more? By the way, earning $500,000 a year doesn't make one rich. It's not even yacht money. But the fairness question goes further. The bottom 50 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted gross income of $ 39,275 or less, pay 2.83 percent of federal income taxes. Thirty-seven million tax filers have no tax obligation at all. The Tax Policy Center estimates that 45.5 percent of households will not pay federal income tax this year (http://tinyurl.com/h8ks4ge). There's a severe political problem of so many Americans not having any skin in the game. These Amer- icans become natural constituen- cies for big-spending politicians. A f- ter all, if you don't pay federal taxes, what do you care about big spend- ing? Also, if you don't pay federal tax- es, why should you be happy about a tax cut? What's in it for you? In fact, you might see tax cuts as threaten- ing your handout programs. Our nation has a 38.91 percent tax on corporate earnings, the fourth- highest in the world. The House of Representatives has proposed that it be cut to 20 percent; some mem- bers of Congress call for a 15 percent rate. The nation's political hustlers object, saying corporations should pay their fair share of taxes. The fact of the matter – which even left- ist economists understand, though they might not publicly admit it – is corporations do not pay taxes. An important subject area in econom- ics is called tax incidence. It holds that the entity upon whom a tax is levied does not necessarily bear its full burden. Some of it can be shift- ed to another party. If a tax is levied on a corporation, it will have one of four responses or some combination thereof. It will raise the price of its product, lower dividends, cut sala- ries or lay off workers. In each case, a flesh-and-blood person bears the tax burden. The important point is that corporations are legal fictions and as such do not pay taxes. Cor- porations are merely tax collectors for the government. Politicians love to trick people by suggesting that they will impose tax- es not on them but on some other en- tity instead. We can personalize the trick by talking about property tax- es. Imagine that you are a homeown- er and a politician tells you he is not going to tax you. Instead, he's going to tax your property and land. You would easily see the political chica- nery. Land and property cannot and do not pay taxes. Again, only peo- ple pay taxes. The same principle ap- plies to corporations. There's another side to taxes that goes completely unappreciated. Ac- cording to a 2013 study by the Vir- ginia-based Mercatus Center, Amer- icans spend up to $ 378 billion annu- ally in tax-related accounting costs, and in 2011, Americans spent more than 6 billion hours complying with the tax code. Those hours are equiv- alent to the annual hours of a work- force of 3.4 million, or the number of people employed by four of the largest U.S. companies – Wal-Mart, IBM, McDonald's and Target – com- bined (http://tinyurl.com/y9dvbz- ja). Along with tax cuts, tax simplifi- cation should be on the agenda. Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason Uni- versity. Potty talk Continued on page 8 My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. I had been busy reviewing Medi- care programs for A, B, F and D. I am surprised at the efficiency of the various offices which I had spo- ken to. I am delighted to use their call back system which saves a lot of time. So instead of waiting to speak to a person after I had been put on hold, there is an option to leave one's phone number for a call back. There is usually a waiting time of between 5 -15 minutes but most of the time, call back has been rath- er quick. So when I get a phone call and start the conversation, I make sure I write the date and time of my call and then at the end of the call I get the name of the person I spoke to. So I keep a log of my calls. I en- ter on a log book a fair amount of data about the nature of my con- versations. I usually prepare ahead of time questions I needed to clar- ify. Surprisingly as well, Medicare records the conversation and al- Medicare Continued on page 8 Once again, our little house- hold is about to step into the un- known. We're counting the cost of a march to lands of shadow— lands of potty training. Flannery recently moved up into size 4 diapers, and has ex- pressed interest in using the pot- ty. Mostly, she expresses her in- terest by throwing torn-up tee- pee into the bowl or pulling the flush lever while we're trying to dispense justice from the Porce- lain Throne. But we can tell. It's almost time to teach her the prop- er operation of the septic dispos- al device. I, for one, have no clue where to start. What do girls even do in the bathroom? Nobody knows. Or at least, no one will tell me. But I don't want to just let Jill handle it and miss out on quality time with my kid. So maybe I'll be in charge of supplementary potty lessons for Flannery, like "Peeing Stand- ing Up (Girls Can Do It Too!)" and "Proper Use and Installation of Toilet Paper Rolls: Orientation and Disbursement Basics." I can write the textbooks myself and pretend she knows how to read. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if Jill has much idea of what she's go- ing to do either. Sure she's the old- est of seven, but her sisters were trained when she was young and her brothers weren't trained un- til she was out of the house. But hey! There's a first time for every- thing! I'm sure she'll do great. I mean... It's not like we have an alternative, soooooo good luck, honey! There are, I hear, several meth- ods that have seen widespread use. These include offering treats for successful goes (the Pavlov meth- od), just slapping big-kid undies on them and letting them tough it out (the Red-Blooded American meth- od), and walking them to the bath- room about 10 times a day for a week (I've seen this called "Booty Camp" online and since this column is all about toilet humor anyway, let's go with that). I suppose the real trick is to figure out how your kid thinks and put together a strategy that fits them. Easier said than done. Of course, all of our potty plot- ting is still in the early stages. Flannery isn't quite two yet, so we have plenty of time. But when the moment of opportunity ar- rives, we want to be ready. Have a great week! STUFF OF THE WEEK Eat: Pears! They sell these things by the bag these days. Watch: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, what else? Flannery's Wisdom: c cx w3e‰aa Q12A zaefewqSW My day job takes me across the river and past the farms and coal mines of southern Illinois to McLeansboro several times a month. I've accumulated a lot of trivial knowledge about that county seat of 3,ooo. I can tell you what time the Farris Family Restaurant opens for breakfast, and what a pizza costs at Auten's. I know which gas station is open all night. Men drive their pickups too fast on the roads branching out into Hamilton County, which are lit- tered with road kill that you might not see if your windshield splat- ters as many bugs as mine. But a lot of deer have managed to sur- vive, and I see some bounding along the roads and across the fields nearly every time I drive there. I've had close calls with raccoons, opossums and a skunk just within the past week. Yester- day I saw a fox. A few weeks ago, I saw a bald eagle in an adjacent county. Customers tell me there's a herd of albino deer at large, and even one piebald deer. It's hard to say whether they're just having fun with a gullible outsider. The roll-your-own shop opens early and closes late, but it isn't what you're thinking. It's for people who roll their own tobacco cig- arettes. They sell ma- chines for that pur- pose, and a variety of tobacco in large transparent plas- tic bags. The farmers and coal miners apparently aren't very squeamish about inhaling vast quantities of the stuff. The plain, unadorned court- house is surrounded by several storefronts, occupied by jewel- ers, nonprofits, an Italian restau- rant and a Tae Kwon Do studio. It's the only county courthouse I know of that has a Dairy Queen across the street. I'm not usually this obser- vant and curious about an isolat- ed little town, but McLeansboro is something of a pilgrimage for me. Because this is the House of Sloan. Teenager Jerry Sloan awoke at 4:30 a.m. during basketball season to do chores on his family's hard- scrabble farm and walk or hitchhike (because they had no car) to town for 7 a.m. practices before school. The University of Illinois re- cruited him, but he got terribly homesick and quit school after just a few weeks. Young Jerry had never been out of Hamilton Coun- ty before he left alone for the Ur- bana campus. He went home and worked in the oil industry, which was booming in the early 1960s. It was Jerry's widowed mother who confronted her youngest of 10 children about wasting his talent. The University of Illinois's