HOTAIR tells the story of our fine State’s fudging of budgets:
Hey, $1.9 billion here, $1.9 billion there … pretty soon you’re talking about entirely imaginary numbers. That’s the message that Governor Jerry Brown’s administration sent to the California legislature when they admitted that they had miscalculated their expenditures in the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. The admission came during the new round of budget negotiations, even though the mistake had been known for months:
Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration miscalculated costs for the state Medi-Cal program by $1.9 billion last year, an oversight that contributed to Brown’s projection of a deficit in the upcoming budget, officials acknowledged this week.
The administration discovered accounting mistakes last fall, but it did not notify lawmakers until the administration included adjustments to make up for the errors in Brown’s budget proposal last week. The Democratic governor called for more than $3 billion in cuts because of a projected deficit he pegged at $1.6 billion.
“There’s no other way to describe this other than a straight up error in accounting, which we deeply regret,” said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the Department of Finance.
So why didn’t the Brown administration notify the legislature immediately? According to the governor’s office, errors traditionally get mitigated in the next budget cycle. Well, okay, but that would apply to errors of a small scale, wouldn’t it? A budget hole this size might prompt the legislature to fix the problems early and limit the damage. Instead, California spent more than it should, and now has to make up the money.
That’s actually not the only problem with the budget, as the Associated Press explains in this report. Not only did California spend more than it projected on Medi-Cal, it also took in quite a bit less than it projected in tax revenues. According to the revenue estimates in Brown’s proposed budget will miss by almost six billion dollars over three budget cycles:
The General Fund revenue forecast has been reduced, reflecting lower growth in wages, proprietorship income, consumption, and investment. As a result, before accounting for transfers such as to the Rainy Day Fund, General Fund revenue is lower than the 2016 Budget Act projections by $5.8 billion from 2015‑16 through 2017‑18.
Figure REV‑01 compares the revenue forecasts, by source, in the 2016 Budget Act and the Governor’s Budget. Revenue, including transfers, is expected to be $119 billion in 2016‑17 and $124 billion in 2017‑18. The projected decrease since the 2016 Budget Act is due to a lower forecast for all three major revenue sources. Over the three fiscal years, personal income tax is down $2.1 billion, sales tax is down $1.9 billion, and corporation tax is down $1.7 billion.
So much for that booming economy that the media insists that Donald Trump will inherit from Barack Obama tomorrow. California’s pursuit of progressive social and economic policies have worked their usual miracle of draining growth from what should be dynamic economic environments…..
James E. Taylor, Introducing Apologetics: Cultivating Christian Commitment (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 257-259.
JESUS AND HINDUISM
Hinduism may be the most metaphysically diverse of all religious traditions, since its practitioners have been polytheists, monotheists, pantheists, panentheists, atheists, and agnostics. This metaphysical diversity is grounded in the widespread Hindu conviction that the truth about ultimate reality is inexpressible and unknowable.
The Hindu name for ultimate reality is Brahman. In spite of the general skepticism just mentioned, many Hindu scholars have studied the Vedic texts (especially the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma-sutra) to articulate an understanding of Brahman and Brahman’s relationship to the universe. The philosophical/theological systems formulated are called Vedanta. The three most influential vedantic thinkers are Sankara (788-820), Ramanuja (1017-1137), and Madhya (thirteenth century AD).
Sankara’s view is called Advaita (non-duality) Vedanta. According to this worldview, reality is one, and the one is Brahman. It follows that the only absolute reality is Brahman, and therefore everything that exists is Brahman. Thus, each individual atman (soul) is identical with Atman (the world soul), and Atman is the same thing as Brahman. Though Brahman may seem to be a personal lord with a variety of divine attributes who is worthy of worship, Brahman is really impersonal (and so not appropriately worshiped) and completely without different and distinct qualities (except for being, consciousness, and bliss). This is clearly a version of pantheism, which accounts for polytheism at the popular level: The allegedly many gods are just manifestations of Brahman. Sankara says that the assumption that there are many real things (human beings, animals, plants, inorganic things, different qualities of things, etc.) is due to ignorance and that this ignorance is caused by maya (illusion). According to his view, salvation comes through eliminating maya and the ignorance based on it by becoming enlightened. Enlightenment involves grasping that everything (including oneself, of course) is really (distinctionless and impersonal) Brahman.
Sankara’s interpretation of the Vedas is philosophically problematic, and because of this, it does not provide a plausible challenge to Christian exclusivism. The main problem with his view is that it says, on the one hand, that there is only one thing and thus no distinctions between different kinds of things, and, on the other hand, that there is a distinction between maya and ultimate reality, ignorance and enlightenment, bondage to samsara and liberation from it, and so on. In short, Sankara’s Hindu theology is self-contradictory. Moreover, it does not help to distinguish, as Sankara does, between absolute reality (Brahman) and conventional reality (maya). This too is a distinction between two different things, and if Brahman is all, then there cannot be two different things. An additional problem is that Sankara’s view is inconsistent with the wisdom of collective human sensory experience, which reveals a world of many real things. An appeal to mystical experience does not save his position. There is no good reason to trust such an experience, since insofar as it supports Sankara’s view, it contradicts both reason and sense perception.
Ramanuja is a later Hindu thinker who tried to improve on Sankara’s theology by attempting to be faithful to the theme of unity between Atman and Brahman in the Vedas while avoiding contradiction. His theology is a qualified nondualism. According to his view, the universe is Brahman’s body, which emerges or emanates eternally out of Brahman and through which Brahman expresses itself. As such, the universe is coeternal with and dependent on Brahman, but it is not the same thing as Brahman. Therefore, the universe can consist in many different things, including souls, which are not identical with Brahman. If we take this to mean that the universe is part of Brahman, then Ramanuja’s theology is a version of panentheism. If instead Brahman’s body is not a part of Brahman, then Ramanuja’s view is a version of contingency monotheism. Either way, Ramanuja avoids Sankara’s pantheism. Moreover, whereas Sankara conceives of Brahman as impersonal, Ramanuja believes Brahman is a personal God who has become incarnate in many forms (such as Rama and Krishna)2 and who gives grace to save human beings who love him and are devoted to him (but this salvation does not involve atonement).i
Though Ramanuja’s picture of reality avoids the contradictory antirealism of Sankara’s approach, and though it includes some Christian themes, it faces a problem of evil that is more serious than the one afflicting the Abrahamic faiths. In the first place, if his view is panentheistic, so that the universe is part of God and the universe contains evil, then a part of God is evil. But Ramanuja says that God is perfect. Therefore, the universe does not contain evil, or God is not perfect, or the universe is not a part of God. Since it seems best to affirm the last of these alternatives, it seems best to reject the panentheistic interpretation of Ramanuja’s theology. Second, since Ramanuja affirms the eternality of souls (a consequence of his denial of creation ex nihilo), then those souls that have not yet been liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth have already suffered eternally. But this is an experience equivalent to eternal suffering in hell—at least with respect to length of time. Therefore, all of us still caught in the cycle of death and rebirth have no freedom of choice in this life to avoid eternal suffering. We have already endured it! According to the Christian view, all human beings suffer only a finite amount during the one earthly existence they are granted, and they are given an opportunity to choose freely whether to suffer eternally apart from God. Moreover, there is consequently a much greater amount of pain and suffering for which Ramanuja needs to account than there is in the Christian view.
The third Hindu theologian is Madhya. According to his view, the universe is eternal and completely independent of God. His theology is a member of the cosmological dualism family. Thus, he avoids the problems facing Sankara’s pantheism and the panentheist interpretation of Ramanuja. Moreover, he says God is the designer of the universe but not the creator. Therefore, his theology does not have to explain why God either created or eternally generates a universe that contains evil, pain, and suffering. Like Ramanuja, he also affirms that God is personal, has become incarnate in different forms, and offers salvation by grace.
But Madhva’s account of God and the world has two serious problems. First, from the standpoint of Hinduism, it does not affirm the close relationship between God and the universe that is taught by the Vedas. Second, it can provide no satisfying philosophical explanation of the existence of the universe. Since Madhva’s position is that the universe is both eternal and independent, the universe’s existence is a brute fact. But the Abrahamic faiths and the other versions of Hinduism can all explain the existence of the universe as identical with God (Sankara), a part of or dependent on God (Ramanuja), or created by God out of nothing (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Therefore, these other theologies are superior to Madhva’s theology in this respect.
2. In Hinduism, an incarnation of God is called an avatar.
i. RPT’s note. Ramanuja seems close to some theistic beliefs, but one should be aware that he lived around 1017–1137 AD, and so borrowed from Christianity to try and “fix” the glaring problems in Hinduism.
In this great short review of an article in the LOS ANGELES TIMES speaking about Santa Monica’s own Stephen Miller, we find an admission of the goals of public school education:
Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village), who was the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s board president at the time, remembered Miller showing up at events in coat and tie — “unlike any other student” — to argue against special treatment for immigrants and others.
“He had very conservative views — the exact opposite of what we were trying to accomplish in the school district,” she said.
A good heads up on the article as well as commentary!
Larry Elder was inspired in the above Tweet by me passing along a comment from my YouTube channel by “The Amazing Lucas”
If Don Imus can lose his jobs for “nappy headed hoes”, than this fool should be fired on the spot.
Dennis Prager slams the double-standard at CNN who touted loudly that Breitbart was anti-Semitic and gave a specific example. Prager tears down the strong assertion made in this example of David Horowitz and Bill Kristoll by highlighting Marc Lamont Hill’s “Mediocre Negro” comment.
The latest Project Veritas video reveals DisruptJ20 plot to Chain Trains and Halt the DC Metro. This video exposes the collusion between the various groups under the DisruptJ20 umbrella. The video shows that DJ20 is not simply a movement of fringe groups but instead a nefarious organization.
Obama is letting some people out of their sentences that have ruined any vestige of a legacy, NEW YORK MAGAZINE:
In addition to freeing Chelsea Manning, President Obama granted 208 other commutations and 64 pardons Tuesday — among them General James Cartwright. The decorated general and former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about leaking classified information to journalists about U.S. covert efforts against Iran’s nuclear program.
Cartwright’s pardon will spare him from sentencing next month. His defense team had asked for a year of probation and 600 hours of community service, but prosecutors were pushing for a two-year prison sentence.
Obama has now granted more commutations — a total of 1,385 individuals — than any other president in U.S. history….
The Paris Climate Agreement will cost at least $1 trillion per year, and climate activists say it will save the planet. The truth? It won’t do anything for the planet, but it will make everyone poorer–except politicians and environmentalists. Bjorn Lomborg explains.
Two great posts from GP that should be read in whole. First is the story of some black acolytes meeting with Trump:
Donald J. Trump’s efforts to reach out to African-Americans are not being well-received on the left.
When noted comedian and host of the hit show “Family Feud” Steve Harvey exited from a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump last week calling him “a great man,” to say there was a backlash would be a gross understatement. The word “coon” and “sellout” was immediately thrown out.
On Monday’s “CNN Tonight,” Morehouse College Professor and CNN Commentator Marc Lamont Hill stated that President-Elect Donald Trump’s diversity coalition was “a bunch of mediocre negroes being dragged in front of TV as a photo-op for Donald Trump’s exploitative campaign against black people.”
To which the left responded, “No! No! No! You can’t make us grow up! We want to stay angry, bitter, and unhinged!” (And also, violently disrupt the peaceful transition of power.) And you really would like to believe that the meme-tantrum below the jump represents just a fraction of the unhinged fringe of the left; but then you remember you have elected Democrat members of Congress calling Trump illegitimate; you have a former Democrat governor calling Trump a “fascist,” you have anti-Trump derangement throughout the mainstream media and the celebrity left. You have a broadly believed insane conspiracy theory that the FBI and the Russian Government conspired to elect Trump. And the very, very few people on the left saying, “Come on, knock it off, you guys,” are being attacked and vilified.
