Monday, February 16, 2009

My Pastor does good!

I often joke with my pastor that if he wants to have good (read this safe) deacon's meetings he needs to quote Spurgeon often in his sermons. Doing so will make me a very satisfied sermon listener. :)

I gotta say that he did great yesterday without mentioning the Prince of Preachers at all. He read a paragraph from Dr. MLJ on true joy in the morning when he preached in I John and mentioned a You Tubed sermon of Piper.

One of his key points last night was about how not verbally sharing the gospel was a grievous sin. Conviction.

May the Lord continue to bless my pastor with the courage to preach the whole Bible.

DD

New Links

I have added two new links to the blog. Moore to the Point and For His Renown. I just found these two blogs and think they are pretty cool.

DD

Saturday, February 7, 2009

More Worker Shortage News

One state workforce investment board just completed a draft annual report. In it they declared that the media has been spending too much time covering such events as increasing unemployment rates and large layoffs instead of the really important story of the ongoing worker shortage!

Also in the report they said that this particular state faced a massive shortage of college educated professionals. However, after a little bit of investigation it was learned this shortage only existed if you compared all expected job openings with the expected number of grads from just three of the state's largest universities. Left out were all of the state's regional colleges and smaller liberal arts schools. Together these likely produce just as many grads as do the three they included.

They also left out the community colleges as well while almost a fourth of the job openings only required a two-year degree.

DD

Pay Caps?

Should the Obama administration put exec pay caps on firms who took taxpayer money to say afloat?

Yes!

I am pretty conservative in my politics and economics. I think the owners of a company should be able to pay their manages anything they want. Right now however, the taxpayers are in effect the owners. So the exec pay should collapse down to public sector level.

DD

Saturday, January 17, 2009

New Jolts Data


Job Openings continue to slide. Nearly at all time low for the time series.
Wonder how the WIA consultants explain this decline in job openings given their silly labor shortage ideas?
Any comments, Ed?
DD

Big Surprises in State Employment Coming?

Hearing rumors that the BLS may be putting new review procedures in place regarding state employment numbers. This change could cause some states to see large downward revisions in employment for Nov and Dec. Could also cause these same states to see unemployment rate increases.

DD

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

How much did you give to this lady?



A few of you will no doubt recognize Miss Lottie Moon, the faithful servant of the Lord who spent her life as a Southern Baptist missionary to China.

As you also know she is the namesake of the SBC's international missions offering held during the Christmas season.

On Sunday, I found out that our church fell well short of our giving goal to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering. Well short of the goal and well short of last year's giving.

Not sure when the national numbers for the offering will be announced but I hope other local bodies did better than we did. However, given that our state is still doing better than much of the nation in terms of the economy and labor markets I am worried.

DD

Monday, January 5, 2009

Red Light, Green Light (Nov employment)


The map shows how each state has fared in terms of year over year employment growth. States in red are seeing significant employment declines, yellow shows states around zero, while the greens are still growing well - well kinda well.
DD

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Billy Graham & Chruch Membership

Happy New Year!

I saw earlier this week that Billy Graham is moving his church membership from FBC, Dallas to a church in SC, about 90 miles from his home. I think I knew that he was a member in Dallas but had forgotten.

Question. Did he ever live in Dallas? I don't recall him ever doing so. Of course with his ministry he had limited time at home anyway but how could he really be an active member of a church several states away from his home?

On the surface at least this seems to be a pretty casual and nearly meaningless type of church membership.

DD