Gardener

The storm created by President Obama’s mandate requiring religious institutions that employ women to provide for contraceptive care is old news now that the President has modified the plan. But I couldn’t help thinking of it this morning when I read a summary of the Dordt College board of trustees meeting presented by President Carl Zylstra. He reports that the board received updates on public policy decisions being made regarding the health care mandates of the federal government and their impact on Dordt College and its health plan coverage. I thought, “Aha! The contraceptive care issue.” But then I realized it couldn’t be that issue since the state of Iowa has had a contraceptive care requirement that goes farther than President Obama’s original proposal, and it has been in place since the year 2000. Iowa requires all businesses, even churches and religious organizations, to provide birth control options for their employees. Two Observations: 1. I did not know of Iowa’s plan until t...

The weather down here has been wonderful—with temps in the 70’s and 80’s most of the time, although the last two nights temps have fallen to the mid-thirties. But, if I was a resident of the state of Florida, my temperature would be rapidly heating up right now. The state legislature is considering a bill that would require schools—starting in the 6th grad—to counsel students to choose college majors in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM courses) over courses in things like psychology, anthropology, and the liberal arts. Why? Because majors in STEM fields make more money and have more employment opportunities. Incoming college students would receive special information about degrees with the “highest full-time job placement and highest average annualized earnings.” Florida’s businessman governor , Rick Scott, has made this bill a top priority, having proposed earlier bills that actually penalized many of the liberal arts fields. I have no objection to telling studen...

What does one do all day down in responsibility-free Florida? Well, I just read a marvelous book about the financial collapse of 2008, The Big Short by Michael Lewis, Norton, 2010. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even attempt to read a book about the complex workings of Wall Street, but this book is a character-driven narrative. It has a plot, and even though you know when the climax will occur and what it will be, the journey to it is marvelously engaging. So it reads like a novel—but a novel that is packed with information, not only info about the technical stuff of the Wall Street bond market, but about the greed, mendacity, arrogance and stupidity of a great many of the highly-paid officials of Wall Street investment corporations. Lewis follows the lives and investments of three small time investors (and the companies they form) who, at least four years before the collapse of 2007-2008 saw that the entire world of sub-prime mortgage bonds was a house made of cards. He walks along side them ...