IRS Scrutinizes World's Largest Internet Evangelist - Bill Keller Says Supreme Court if Necessary

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by Rev. Michael Bresciani

The story written by Laurie Goodstein broke in The New York Times Politics Blog June 23, 2008 and has garnered blog responses from around the nation. Keller who operates a live daily broadcast from St. Petersburg Florida and delivers a detailed daily devotional to over two million opt in subscribers is under a non-profit status as a Christian religious organization. By law he is prohibited from either endorsing or opposing candidates. This limitation includes anyone running for public office from the local selectman to presidential candidates.

In the early stages of the Republican primary race Keller created a media stir with the phrase "A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan." It is that statement that seemed to get the attention of the IRS which now says Keller is involved in partisan politics and using his ministry as a vehicle for that purpose. "No" says Keller who states that his warnings about Romney were for religious reasons only. Keller repeatedly stated that the Mormon religion is in no way representative of "biblical Christianity."

Not everyone is convinced that Keller is out of whack. One blogger on The Caucus blogs of The New York Times June 24, 2008 "Funny; Obama can stand in the pulpit of a church on Sunday morning ….no investigation…he speaks to the national convention of his church…the IRS says that is OK…yet an internet evangelist calls out Romney for being part of a cult and lying to people about being a Christian and he is investigated???"

The IRS will have a hard time deciding if Keller has violated his 501-C standing because the lines are blurred. In his own ministry Keller is bound to inform his adherents of possible dangers from people professing to be Christians when they are not. It is a biblical mandate. That is probably why Professor T. Wayne Bailey of Stetson University was quoted in the Tampa Bay Times for saying ""I think, in the past, when it became a controversial issue, the authorities have gone far afield to presume in the direction of the right of free expression. So unless someone commits a hard and fast violation, I think … administrations have simply relied on caution rather than punishment."

Bill Keller has recently stated in the national media that Sen. Obama is not a Christian. In his daily devotional for June 26, 2008 Keller informed his 2.4 million subscribers that "The story broke across the nation Tuesday that Liveprayer has been under investigation by the IRS for possibly violating our tax exemption for holding Mitt Romney accountable for his lies and deceit about what the Mormon cult really believes. This has not silenced me or deterred me from doing the same regarding Senator Barack Hussein Obama's claims that he is a Christian, when his own words and actions clearly show he is not. So many in the Liveprayer family emailed me their love and prayers and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. We cooperated fully and on time with the IRS and our attorneys are confident we did nothing wrong and will be fully exonerated."

For more information about LivePrayer go to http://www.liveprayer.com Rev Bresciani is an author and contributor to dozens of online Christian, politics and online magazines. For great articles, movie reviews and more visit http://www.americanprophet.org

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Do You Know About Business Culture in Shanghai?

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by Layla Manon

Shanghai is the birthplace of everything considered modern in China; and was the cultural and economic center of East Asia for the first half of the twentieth century. It was the intellectual battleground between socialist writers who concentrated on critical realism.

Because of Shanghai's history as an immigrant city with strong foreign influence, it has developed a unique culture that combines West with East. This mix has given Shanghainese certain tendencies and characteristics, often called haipai, or Shanghai style.

Because they are more familiar with Westerners than Chinese in other parts of China, Shanghainese tend to treat Westerners more equally, thus allowing Western businesspeople to cooperate more easily with the Shanghainese. Shanghainese also tend to adopt Western ways of business and conform to international standards.

For instance, most people agree that the rule of law is stronger in Shanghai than in most other parts of China, as, historically, most residents were immigrants and could not rely on traditional social structures for support; everyone had to follow common rules to make a living. Thus, contracts tend to be honored more often in Shanghai than in other parts of China.

Because of Shanghai's comparatively mobile population, Shanghainese are inclined to maintain good relationships with social contacts over the short term and keep the level of socialization relatively shallow. Unlike Beijingers, who tend to forge friendships with business partners and sometimes take risks for their friends, Shanghainese seldom mix emotions with business. Shanghainese tend to accept renqing (interpersonal harmony)reluctantly, return renqing quickly, and exchange favors of equal value.

Shanghainese also tend to focus on economic interests, value individualism, and emphasize practicality by ignoring politics and showing concern for individual interests. In Shanghai, as long as money can be made, strangers can quickly form bonds.

Shanghai and the surrounding environs all have special economic zones (SEZs) which offer different tax incentives etc. The best way to get this information is to contact your consulate in Shanghai or the Chinese consulate in your home country. The new financial and industrial/manufacturing center of Pudong is also one of the best bets for tax writeoffs and other incentives.

Find Shanghai society culture and more useful information about business culture on Shanghai resources.

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Can Democrats run the country

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by athard

The Democrats are a perfect example of political hypocrisy in the United States. They have spoken at length about the need to unite America but haven't been able to be united themselves. The Hillary versus Barack Obama battle is an example of this. Hillary Clinton went out of her way to find dirt on Obama and when she couldn't, she just adopted the Republican tactics of creating dirt on Obama and scaring people with it.

In the endeavor to win the nomination, Hillary kept on hurting Obama and some of the wounds may not heal in time for the big battle with McCain. She and her camp spent time and resources to slander Obama. While John McCain secured the nomination and went on to campaign for the white house, these two battled it out and just made each other weaker.

The blame doesn't lie with Hillary alone. Everyone knows how power hungry and ruthless the Clintons can be. But what about the Democrats? They never once ventured to stop Hillary and ask her to play fair. They knew that the party was being hurt and that a spot in the White House is at risk, yet they stepped aside while Hillary tried to undemocratically secure the nomination.

Two months before Obama secured the nomination, the super delegates could have cast their votes and ended this. Instead, they chose to sit back.

What makes these "leaders" qualified to run the country if they can't even step in and do the right thing for their party? Why wait? The time to do the right it is ALWAYS right now.

So my question is, when it comes to doing the right thing for the country, will they step up or will they step aside?

http://www.whois-barack-obama.com

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Pittsburgh Newspapers

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by J.R. Scott

There are two main Pittsburgh Newspapers. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Each of these papers has it's good and bad. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette leans to the left, the Tribune Review toward the right with a bit of a Libertarian slant. If these leanings were not true than why do these papers endorse candidates. Granted at times these endorsements cross party lines but that is an exception rather than the rule. It should be the responsibility of any media outlet to report on politics and not endorse candidates or take a partisan stance on the news. This however is not practical given human limitations and ego. I personally do not believe we will ever see true neutrality in reporting. The Pittsburgh newspapers I am discussing are just an example of the media in general in the United States, while the bias is a problem things could be worse. At least we know they are not government controlled.


These Pittsburgh newspapers the Post Gazette and Tribune review suffer from the same problems that most media outlets do. Unfortunately some people get there news from an even worse source. I prefer to refer to them as the windbags . These windbags are not journalists. For the most part I don't believe they claim to be. Some people however use them as their source of news. This is not so much a problem in Pittsburgh Newspapers and other print media as the opinion and editorial section is clearly labeled. Be warned, sometimes these windbags do get print space in other parts of the paper though. Who are these windbags? It is not hard to spot them. These windbags generally do not try to hide their political opinions. They tend not to ever sway in their support of certain politicians even when faced with evidence of misdoings by said politicians. Most of these windbags are closed minded people not willing to truly see the other side of the argument. Windbags of one side will often battle opposing windbags in hopes of increasing ratings. Just a couple of examples are Keith Olbermann and Bill O'reilly. It is important to realize these windbags are not journalists. They are commentators. The so-called news they report has been totally spun before dissemination. The windbags are indeed fun to watch at times but are no more enlightening than The Jerry Springer Show. We do have windbags in Pittsburgh News papers, I'll let you decide who they are.

There are some solutions to the problem of media bias in Pittsburgh Newspapers as well as any media outlet.

First you could not read the paper, not watch the news and be an uninformed citizen. This is not really a good solution and is not being a responsible citizen.

The other solution is to read both (sometimes there are more than two) sides of the story. In my opinion this is the perfect solution to an unavoidable problem. To become truly informed get out of your comfort zone. If you only get the news from a source who's political leanings agree with yours, you will never really be informed. There are three sides to every story. Get the rights take on it, the lefts take on it, and you should find the truth somewhere in the middle.

I do not believe there is middle ground in any media that exists today. The thought of no bias in reporting is a bit of a pipe dream. It is the responsibility of journalists however to not let this bias actually jeopardize the dissemination of fact. To be properly informed especially on matters that may be political one should probably read both Pittsburgh newspapers, and come to a judgment decision or opinion based on the case presented by either side.

I realize that my take on the Pittsburgh newspapers may not be the same as everyone else's. I guess that make me a commentator. The views that have been expressed are my opinions. I'm sure some may even call me a windbag. I just feel that it is the responsibility of every citizen to become informed especially in such an important election year. So the next time you pick up a newspaper in Pittsburgh why not pick up a copy of the Post Gazette as well as a copy of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

http://city-of-pittsburgh.net

Just about all media swings left or right ,Pittsburgh newspapers are a great example of how one offsets the other. The city of Pittsburgh

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We Need Cheap Gas Not Cheap Talk

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by melpol

The foundation of the universe is energy. Nothing is possible without its existence. In the beginning there was only pure energy--some call it God. We on earth basically depend on the Sun and oil as our chief source of energy. Without the Sun we would die. It was once possible to survive without using oil, but it has now become the life force of civilization. Owners of the oil supplies are the most powerful people in the world,and that is why wars are now being fought over the rights to the oil fields in the Middle-East. The winners will get the big prize---enough cheap energy to keep their populations living in prosperity. The losers will suffer poverty,chaos and beg for mercy.

Every product you use is dependent on oil. The foods you eat comes from a farm that needs oil for its harvesters. The crops are nourished by oil based fertilizers and insecticides. It takes lots of oil to manufacture food packaging machinery and paper containers. Refrigerated trucks are needed to get food to the markets. Some have to travel over a thousand miles and use many tanks of diesel fuel in order to feed us. Oil is as important as our blood because we have lost the ability to live without it.

The oil pumps of the world are going full blast. They have what the world needs and they are feeding it to them as fast as possible. Billions are being invested in oil drilling but as much as they drill they can`t keep up with the demand. One of the reasons for this is the worlds population is growing to quickly. The other reason is that the amount of oil in the ground has reached its limit and increased production has become almost impossible. If that is true and the demand keeps increasing we will soon be fighting for every drop of oil.

The United States is the largest consumer of oil in the world and in order to guard our way of life we must protect our oil supplies. If you use your imagination, think what would happen if we had to pay unaffordable prices for gas. There would be chaos and famine. All responsible Americans should do all that is possible to prevent that tragedy from happening.The best way to do that would be to pick a leader that would make sure we had affordable gas and plenty of it. We are now lucky to have the opportunity to pick a man with military experience and a fighters disposition. He will never let Americans beg for oil. I am speaking about John McCain. But if you are a dreamer like John Lennon and want to imagine a world full of peaceful and content people---vote for the other guy. But be ready to ride a bicycle looking for a job.
melpol

http://www.associatedcontent.com/melpol

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The World's Biggest Pollution Factory

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by Peter Navarro

The coal that has powered China's economic growth . . . is also choking its people.

-- Elizabeth C. Economy


At the root of many of China's air-quality problems is its heavy dependence on relatively high-sulfur, low-quality coal for everything from electricity generation and industrial production to cooking and space heating in the home. China relies on coal for almost 75% of its energy needs. In fact, each year, China consumes more coal than Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States combined.

The scale and scope of China's coal power plant construction program is almost beyond one's imagination. Consider that every single week, China adds one new large coal power plant to its energy base. Every single year, China builds enough new coal plants to light up the entire British Isles. In any given year, the amount of coal-fired capacity that China is building amounts to more than double that of the entire electricity-generating capacity of the state of California-more than 100 gigawatts. That China's coal appetites are voracious is aptly captured in this passage from the Wall Street Journal:

"On a recent hazy morning in eastern China, the Wuhu Shaoda power company revved up its production of electricity, burning a ton and a half of coal per minute to satisfy more than half the demand of Wuhu, an industrial city of two million people. "

It's not just the quantity of coal used by China that matters. The large amount of coal in China's "energy mix" is quite different from virtually all the other major economies of the world, which depend much more on oil. China's heavy coal dependence, coupled with a woeful lack of pollution-control technologies, make China's air-quality problem a very different one from that of developed countries, such as the United States and Germany, in at least three ways:

First, unlike in the United States, Germany, or Japan where sophisticated pollution-control technologies are deployed, much of what Chinese power plants and factories spew in the air is not just sulfur dioxide but also a high percentage of fine particulate matter. This is a critical observation because particulate matter is the most damaging form of airborne pollutants.

Second, small cities in China are no better off than large cities in terms of ambient air quality. This is because small cities are as likely as large cities to depend on coal in both their residential and commercial sectors. That means that China's pollution woes are spread over the entire country in cities small and large rather than concentrated in a few large industrial hubs.

Third, unlike the developed world where the automobile is the single largest source of air pollution, China's current problem is primarily a "stationary source" one. These stationary sources range from large coal-fired power plants in huge factory towns to small coal-fired stoves and heaters in peasant homes.

The nightmare here is that even if China is able to get better pollution controls on its power plants, and even if it is able to convert some of its population to natural gas cooking, China's air basins are still likely to be overwhelmed in the next several decades by an explosion in the number of new vehicles on Chinese roads. Just consider this astonishing statistic reported by Elizabeth C. Economy: China is now adding 15,000 new cars a day to its roads, and it expects to have more cars than the United States -- as many as 130 million -- as early as 2040. In addition, Elizabeth C. Economy also reports the following:

First, China is expected to construct fully half of all the buildings in the world over the next 25 years. Beyond sheer quantity, the nightmare here is that these buildings will be electricity sinkholes because Chinese buildings are notoriously energy inefficient. This will only further exacerbate China's coal dependence and collaterally gargantuan pollution emissions.

Second, China plans to move almost a half a billion peasants off the farm into factories and cities over the next several decades. As a rule, urbanites introduced to the magic of refrigerators, TVs, and toasters use more than three times the amount of energy as their rural counterparts.

On top of all this, Chinese manufacturers are extremely energy inefficient. To produce an equivalent amount of goods, they use six times more resources than the United States, seven times more resources than Japan, and, most embarrassingly, three times more resources than India, to which China is most frequently compared. If ever there were a blueprint for a global pollution factory, China would be the model.


The above is an excerpt from the book The Coming China Wars
by Peter Navarro
Published by FT Press; May 2008;$15.99US/$17.99CAN; 978-0-13-235982-5
Copyright © 2008 Peter Navarro

Author Bio
Peter Navarro a business professor at the University of California-Irvine, is the author of the best- selling investment book If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks and the path-breaking management book, The Well-Timed Strategy. Professor Navarro is a widely sought after and gifted public speaker and a regular CNBC contributor. Prior to joining CNBC, he appeared frequently on Bloomberg TV, CNN, and NPR, as well as on all three major network news shows. He has testified before Congress and the U.S.-China Commission and his work has appeared in publications ranging from Business Week, the L.A. Times, and New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review. His book, The Coming China Wars, is available from FT Press.

www.peternavarro.com; www.comingchinawars.com

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The World's Biggest Pollution Factory

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by Peter Navarro

The coal that has powered China's economic growth . . . is also choking its people.

-- Elizabeth C. Economy


At the root of many of China's air-quality problems is its heavy dependence on relatively high-sulfur, low-quality coal for everything from electricity generation and industrial production to cooking and space heating in the home. China relies on coal for almost 75% of its energy needs. In fact, each year, China consumes more coal than Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States combined.

The scale and scope of China's coal power plant construction program is almost beyond one's imagination. Consider that every single week, China adds one new large coal power plant to its energy base. Every single year, China builds enough new coal plants to light up the entire British Isles. In any given year, the amount of coal-fired capacity that China is building amounts to more than double that of the entire electricity-generating capacity of the state of California-more than 100 gigawatts. That China's coal appetites are voracious is aptly captured in this passage from the Wall Street Journal:

"On a recent hazy morning in eastern China, the Wuhu Shaoda power company revved up its production of electricity, burning a ton and a half of coal per minute to satisfy more than half the demand of Wuhu, an industrial city of two million people. "

It's not just the quantity of coal used by China that matters. The large amount of coal in China's "energy mix" is quite different from virtually all the other major economies of the world, which depend much more on oil. China's heavy coal dependence, coupled with a woeful lack of pollution-control technologies, make China's air-quality problem a very different one from that of developed countries, such as the United States and Germany, in at least three ways:

First, unlike in the United States, Germany, or Japan where sophisticated pollution-control technologies are deployed, much of what Chinese power plants and factories spew in the air is not just sulfur dioxide but also a high percentage of fine particulate matter. This is a critical observation because particulate matter is the most damaging form of airborne pollutants.

Second, small cities in China are no better off than large cities in terms of ambient air quality. This is because small cities are as likely as large cities to depend on coal in both their residential and commercial sectors. That means that China's pollution woes are spread over the entire country in cities small and large rather than concentrated in a few large industrial hubs.

Third, unlike the developed world where the automobile is the single largest source of air pollution, China's current problem is primarily a "stationary source" one. These stationary sources range from large coal-fired power plants in huge factory towns to small coal-fired stoves and heaters in peasant homes.

The nightmare here is that even if China is able to get better pollution controls on its power plants, and even if it is able to convert some of its population to natural gas cooking, China's air basins are still likely to be overwhelmed in the next several decades by an explosion in the number of new vehicles on Chinese roads. Just consider this astonishing statistic reported by Elizabeth C. Economy: China is now adding 15,000 new cars a day to its roads, and it expects to have more cars than the United States -- as many as 130 million -- as early as 2040. In addition, Elizabeth C. Economy also reports the following:

First, China is expected to construct fully half of all the buildings in the world over the next 25 years. Beyond sheer quantity, the nightmare here is that these buildings will be electricity sinkholes because Chinese buildings are notoriously energy inefficient. This will only further exacerbate China's coal dependence and collaterally gargantuan pollution emissions.

Second, China plans to move almost a half a billion peasants off the farm into factories and cities over the next several decades. As a rule, urbanites introduced to the magic of refrigerators, TVs, and toasters use more than three times the amount of energy as their rural counterparts.

On top of all this, Chinese manufacturers are extremely energy inefficient. To produce an equivalent amount of goods, they use six times more resources than the United States, seven times more resources than Japan, and, most embarrassingly, three times more resources than India, to which China is most frequently compared. If ever there were a blueprint for a global pollution factory, China would be the model.


The above is an excerpt from the book The Coming China Wars
by Peter Navarro
Published by FT Press; May 2008;$15.99US/$17.99CAN; 978-0-13-235982-5
Copyright © 2008 Peter Navarro

Author Bio
Peter Navarro a business professor at the University of California-Irvine, is the author of the best- selling investment book If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks and the path-breaking management book, The Well-Timed Strategy. Professor Navarro is a widely sought after and gifted public speaker and a regular CNBC contributor. Prior to joining CNBC, he appeared frequently on Bloomberg TV, CNN, and NPR, as well as on all three major network news shows. He has testified before Congress and the U.S.-China Commission and his work has appeared in publications ranging from Business Week, the L.A. Times, and New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review. His book, The Coming China Wars, is available from FT Press.

www.peternavarro.com; www.comingchinawars.com

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