Fourth Sermon to Chino Valley school board ( 6/17/2010)

Good evening. I’m going to try some biblical and hard thinking on the budget, since there is little of either, and the budget calls for both.

I went to the rally the 7^th. I couldn’t get into it. Shouting slogans against budget cuts is useless. Every politician is a champion of education, blowing a trumpet in front of himself. If they don’t deliver, they’re in too big a fix to do so – shout in the street all we want.

So where’s the $30 million the district wants to see? Doesn’t the fear of man keep us from stating the obvious, to our own ruin?

First, it is wasted on pointless wars, and on the care and feeding of banksters and others that give us the best government money can buy. That $30 million dollars you need: it’s keeping 25 soldiers in Afghanistan for a year to beat people into submission because they push back, just as we would against an invader like ourselves. This is no fight for freedom – our Founding Fathers all rightly said that such wars are how we lose our freedom, as we take it from others. Look around, and see how right they were. All this, so the President can look tough to be seen by men. For this worthy end people should kill and die, and our schools and much else should go in the toilet.

On the state level, consider just one point. Why do we insist that oil companies get to take California petroleum nearly for free, when almost every other jurisdiction takes a cut for that loss? They should prance away with it while our kids do without, and we sit there silent at this, like graven images? What is written in the Proverbs? “He that robs the poor, and he who gives to the rich, both alike shall come to poverty.” Look around. That isn’t true?

Finally, what about us? Hear Isaiah’s description of our budget process:

“You numbered the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses you broke down to fortify the wall. You also made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to its maker, nor did you have respect for him who fashioned it long ago.”

If you did, would you do injustice and cruelty to the weak, hiring fancy lawyers to wrong them with crooked reasonings, as though the district’s welfare depends on such devices?

Have you not seen that the proverb is true, “One is generous, and his wealth increases; another withholds more than he should and it leads to poverty?” How has it worked out these 3 years we’ve known each other - solving the district’s problems by robbing the weak?