The World and Everything in It - December 20, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The state of Maine pays for public and private education, so long as it’s not religious. Whose values belong in education?

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also today the Monday Moneybeat: interest rates are going up. Economist David Bahnsen will join us and explain what he expects the Federal Reserve to do and not to do.

Plus the WORLD History Book. Today, the 75th anniversary of a Christmas movie classic.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, December 20th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Manchin is “no” on Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar spending plan » Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, a critical swing vote in the Senate, says he has reached a decision on the president’s multi-trillion-dollar spending plan.

He told Fox News Sunday host Brett Baier that he will only support legislation he can explain to his constituents…

MANCHIN: I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there.
BAIER: You’re done. This is a no?
MANCHIN: This is a no … on this legislation.

The White House spent months trying to sell Manchin on the plan. But in the end, the West Virginia senator said it’s just too big and spends too much.

On the surface, the president’s social spending package, which he calls the “Build Back Better” plan, would cost nearly $2 trillion. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says it may very well cost trillions more than that and add trillions to the nation’s debt.

Manchin said he’s concerned about adding to the debt and he worries the bill could further fuel rising prices in America.

MANCHIN: Inflation is real. It’s not going away anytime soon. We don’t know when the end will come.

In an evenly divided Senate, without Manchin’s vote, the bill cannot pass.

President Biden’s vaccine mandate back on track after appeals court ruling » President Biden’s nationwide COVID-19 vaccine mandate for mid and large sized employers is once again set to take effect in January after a federal appeals court panel on Friday allowed the mandate to move ahead.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overrules a decision by a federal judge in a separate court that had halted the mandate.

The new rules would force companies with 100 or more employees to require all indoor workers to be vaccinated. The Biden administration says fines for noncompliance will begin on Jan. 10th.

But many Republican-led states continue to push back. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday…

DESANTIS: We passed substantive protections in a special session for Floridians so that they are able to have generous ability to opt out of these kinds of mandates.

Opponents of the federal mandate vowed to appeal the 6th Circuit ruling.

Former Sen. Johnny Isakson dies » Former Sen. Johnny Isakson has died.

The Republican lawmaker served two decades in Congress. He represented Georgia for six years in the House, followed by nearly 15 years in the Senate.

In the upper chamber, he was the architect of a popular tax credit for first-time home buyers. He also worked to expand programs offering more private health care choices for veterans.

Although he suffered from Parkinson’s disease, the cause of death was not immediately apparent. Johnny Isakson was 76.

Governor: No one still missing in Kentucky after tornadoes » Residents in Kentucky and parts of several other states are still picking up the pieces after tornadoes ripped through homes and businesses just over a week ago.

But over the weekend, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he finally had some good news to report.

BESHEAR: Right now, missing persons based on this tornado event are at zero.

The governor said he hoped that meant search teams would not find any more fatalities.

He called the December 10th storm the most destructive tornado event in the state’s history, killing 78 people in Kentucky alone.

In Tennessee, officials have confirmed that a fifth person in that state died from storms.

In total, at least 92 people have been confirmed dead across multiple states. 

Hong Kong votes for legislature with only loyalists approved » Voters in Hong Kong cast their ballots Sunday. But this was nothing like the free elections the people there are used to.

This was the first vote since Beijing changed laws to reduce the number of lawmakers voters can directly elect. The Chinese communist government is also now vetting candidates to ensure only those loyal to Beijing can run.

After pro-democracy protests in 2019, China passed a sweeping so-called national security law. It gave the government authority to crack down on liberties in Hong Kong and silence pro-democracy activists.

Turnout in Sunday’s vote was very low. Just over 26 percent of voters cast a ballot.

Spider-Man crushes box office expectations » At the weekend box office, it was the third-biggest opening ever…

TRAILER: When you botched that spell where you wanted everyone to forget that Peter Parker’s Spider-Man, we started getting some visitors.

Spider-Man: No Way Home defied pandemic concerns and crushed expectations. Amid a rising COVID caseload, industry insiders expected it to earn no more than $150 million in its opening weekend. Instead, it hauled in $253 million in ticket sales domestically. Globally, the total was well over half a billion dollars.

In box office history, only Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War enjoyed bigger opening weekends.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: a Christian school’s fight against government discrimination.

Plus, celebrating Christmas in wartime.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday, December 20th and we’re so glad you’ve joined us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. We’re in the home stretch of our December Giving Drive. Including today, we have 11 days remaining and we still very much need your help to get across the finish line. So I’d like to encourage you to please visit WNG.org/donate.

EICHER: It does take significant resources to produce this program, make sure it’s here for you every weekday of the year, and fund the journalistic team that keeps all of us operating at a high level—not only this program but deeply reported special projects like Kim Henderson’s “Truth Be Told,” Les Sillars’ “The Freedom Show.” The effort that goes into projects of those kinds is simply enormous.

REICHARD: Not to mention the news team that delivers The Sift each day, as well as the hugely important weekly newsletters on life issues, education, family, religious liberty, WORLD Magazine, WORLD Watch, WORLD Opinions—all this work does need your support. 

My family has made a gift, so I can truly say, I hope you’ll join me and support this year’s December Giving Drive.

EICHER: Well, the Eichers have, too. It’s so simple and secure to give online at WNG.org/donate. Again, 11 days, more than 300,000 still to go to reach our goal. And what a shot in the arm it would be to blow that goal away and show the hunger there is for hard-working, truth-telling journalism, rigorous reporting, trusted opinion—so needed in days like these.

REICHARD: Well, it really is and let’s deliver now, shall we?

It’s time for Legal Docket.

The Supreme Court heard oral argument this month in a case from Maine that might further expand school choice.

Maine is a rural state. It has many sparsely populated areas, and sparse population means sparse tax base. So some school districts can’t even afford to operate a high school. The state nevertheless promises free education to all, and thus for 150 years it ran a “tuitioning program,” as Maine called it. Rural students could choose to attend public school or private school and receive the funds to pay for it.

EICHER: But about 40 years ago, the state made a change: it excluded faith-based schools from the menu.

Schools can be affiliated with a religion, but to qualify for the tuition program, they must offer only secular education the law says that is “roughly equivalent” to what public schools offer.

That’s a problem for families in Maine who want their children to attend a religious school. They say their state discriminates against religious exercise rights and treats them unequally—and that unequal treatment violates the Constitution.

Here’s lawyer for the families, Michael Bindas:

BINDAS: It is conditioning the availability of an otherwise available public benefit on the surrender of a constitutional right. As this court held in Thomas, the government cannot compel a citizen to choose between exercise of a right protected by the First Amendment and participation in an otherwise available public program.

REICHARD: The right is one’s religious practice; the public program is the tuition assistance.

Maybe this sounds familiar to you. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that a state doesn’t have to subsidize private education. But the moment it does, it doesn’t get to draw a circle around religious schools and exclude them. In legal parlance, cut them out because of their religious status.

On the other side in defense of the exclusion of religious schools, lawyer Christopher Taub. He argues this is about public policy.

TAUB: The reason that schools that promote a particular faith are not eligible to participate is simple. Maine has determined that, as a matter of public policy, public education should be religiously neutral. This is entirely consistent with this Court's holdings that public schools must not inculcate religion and should instead promote tolerance of divergent religious views.

Justice Samuel Alito wondered just what that “promoting tolerance of divergent religious views” really means.

ALITO: Suppose a school inculcates a purely materialistic view of life. Would that be okay?

TAUB: So, I mean, this is something that we -- that we've thought about, and I think there --

Taub answered that’s for the legislature to decide, and besides, that’s not the issue here.

ALITO: Would you say the same thing about a school that teaches critical race theory?

TAUB: So I think that that is something that the legislature would have to look at….

What Taub called “outlandish hypotheticals” aside, he argued the state isn’t hostile to faith. The proof is that neither would Maine pay tuition for a nonreligious, private school that taught, say, white supremacy. Or one that taught that all religions are bad.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned the assumption of oversight in that answer. Remember, “sectarian” means “religious” in this context.

BARRETT: You said that if a private secular school taught that all religions were bad, religions were bigoted, that they would not be eligible for participation in Maine's program. Why? That's not sectarian, is it?

TAUB: Well, the -- the goal of the program is religious neutrality. And so, you know, we've -- we've never heard of a school that's sort of antireligious, a school that teaches that all religion is bad. But -- but it's clear that such a school would not be religiously neutral. And so, because the whole purpose of the program is to --

BARRETT: But the statute says non-sectarian. It doesn't say religiously neutral, right?

TAUB: Well, that's true.

A pretty stark difference: Maine will fund non-religious schools, but its law is silent about those schools being religiously neutral.

Bindas for the families underscored the folly he sees in the opinion from the lower court that favored Maine:

BINDAS: The First Circuit recognized that Maine cannot discriminate against students or schools because they are religious, but it held the state is perfectly free to discriminate against students or schools because they do religious things, such as teach or receive instruction in religion.

Religious discrimination is religious discrimination, Bindas went on to say. As for those “religious things” that Maine objects to? Maine’s brief listed several: teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman; that two genders are biological reality; that scripture prohibits homosexual behavior; these private Christian schools even require their teachers be “born again.”

Taub argues to exclude that “use” of public funds aligns with Maine’s public policy not to proselytize children. And many Americans probably agree with him.

But the distinction between “use” and “status” is fuzzy. People of faith don’t separate them. For example, I pray because I’m Christian. My “use” is prayer, my “status” is Christian, in the eyes of the law. Everyday life is infused with faith.

The brief filed by the Cato Institute pointed out that many people object to what public schools teach about sex and gender. Is that not also establishing a belief system? One of secularism?

Justice Elena Kagan didn’t think so. Only one side here is discriminatory.

KAGAN: Or other people in our community won't understand why we're funding this program. I mean, these schools are overtly discriminatory. They're proudly discriminatory. Other people won't understand why in the world their taxpayer dollars are going to discriminatory schools. For any of a number of reasons, a state can say we don't want to play in this game.

She asked, why not let different areas of the country come up with different solutions? (Note she does not support this method when it comes to abortion laws.)

Bindas answered that this program should turn exclusively on the private choice of parents. Not government officials who decide what is or isn’t “religious.”

About those parents. Lawyer Taub for Maine pointed out they probably lack standing to sue, because the schools they want for their kids likely won’t accept public money. And that’s because the state will condition the funds on the state’s beliefs about sexual orientation. So even if the parents win here, they’ll get no satisfaction.

Round and round we go.

I’ll let Justice Barrett have the last word, because I think she nails the essence of this whole debate.

BARRETT: So all schools, in making choices about curriculum and the formation of children, have to come from some belief system. And in public schools, the public school -- the school boards, the districts are making that choice, those choice of classes to be taught and the kind of values that they want to inculcate in the students.

I couldn’t help but notice how media outlets on the left reported on this case. Here at WORLD, we strive to report about the sensational facts with understated prose.

But here’s how Slate framed the case, listen to this: “A conservative supermajority may soon force states to fund Christian schools that indoctrinate students with hate.”

Last case today, I’ll do this fast: Two men on death row say that their lawyers were so bad at trial that they should be able to show evidence of it now, even though the point wasn’t raised sooner [by zombies].

The 6th Amendment says criminal defendants have a right to assistance of counsel at trial. And in the practice of law, time is of the essence.

This case has lots of wrinkles that I’ll not go into.

But you can hear what the justices were grappling with in this clip from Chief Justice Roberts:

ROBERTS: The plain language of a statute seems to require one result - the result your friend argues for. And the plainly logical meaning of a subsequent precedent would seem to require the result that you argue for? Like, what -- do you have a case that says how we're supposed to reconcile those two things?

How to reconcile things? A skill each of us could use.

That’s this week’s Legal Docket.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now for our weekly conversation and commentary on business, markets, and the economy. Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen joins us. David, good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Well, good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: All right, so the Federal Reserve surprises no one, announcing last week a projection years out several interest rate increases, rate increases a quarter of a point at a time. So looking into 2023, the Fed seems to be telegraphing six of these, meaning a percentage point and a half. And beyond that, even higher, maybe as high as 3 percent. Which seems like a lot after years of artificially low rates, basically zero rates.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, so I want to point out that if that were to happen in two full years from now, and we're already basically two years from when COVID began, then what we're talking about is that four years after COVID began, the Fed funds rate will still be one whole percent lower than it was when COVID started. And I would point out as well, that 1.5 percent as the Fed funds rate is a negative real rate. Okay, so we are hardly talking about some sort of burdensome Volcker-like, hawkish Fed policy to reverse interest rates. We're talking, in fact, about the exact opposite. But what I think is most significant is that the Fed projecting out past two years, the Fed futures market doesn't believe any of it.

So the Fed is saying they're gonna get back to a two, two and a half, 3% Fed funds rate in the years past, and the futures market is pricing in that it stays at one and a half. And for 13 years now, the futures market has been right and the Fed has been wrong. And I want to be clear what I'm saying: the Fed has been wrong at predicting what the Fed is going to do. Okay. I mean, it's a rather staggering statement, if you think about it.

But market actors are using real prices, with real money, real skin in the game, to say what they believe is going to be the economic truth. And I don't happen to think that the Fed people projecting a certain rate in the future that doesn't happen are lying. I think that they mean well, I think they intend to do that. But the Fed does see themselves as an enabler of government spending, of the business cycle, of risk assets. And I just do not think they have the stomach to go do what needs to be done to normalize monetary policy.

EICHER: So what else about the Fed announcement, David? We heard about an end to quantitative easing, cutting back the bond purchases, tapering the bond purchases, but I’d like for you to talk beyond that, not just stopping new purchases, but clearing out the bonds the central bank has built up over this time.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, when we talk about the Fed's announcement on tapering, we're referring to them winding down their buying of bonds, which has been their policy instrument to add liquidity to the financial system. And so we they basically told us about six months ago they're ready to be done doing that. I and some other analysts I work with have come to the conclusion that the Fed wants to get their balance sheet - and needs to, by the way - get their balance sheet back to $6 trillion in the years ahead. It's up to 9 trillion right now and (to) get to the six they want to be that means they have to reduce their balance sheet by $3 trillion. In other words, they have to sell often to the market $3 billion dollars of bonds that they have bought with money that doesn't exist. This is a form of tightening monetary policy. It is my very, very strong conviction that the Fed will not do that while also raising rates. So I believe that the sequence of events will be them getting the Fed funds rate up to one and a half percent over the next two years. With six different 25 basis point - a quarter point - increases. And then once they leave it there, they've gotten off the zero bound interest rate. But then they will not try to double dip as they did in 2018. The credit markets can't withstand that. And that's what they learned in 2018. And so I think that they will then start trying to reduce the balance sheet at the time that they've gotten the interest rate already higher. But here's the thing, what can happen in the next two years? Well, what can't happen? I mean, geopolitical things, business cycle issues, credit markets, there's so many macro economic possibilities that can interrupt this plan, but that is in my mind what the Fed's intention is right now. And I think that they're walking a very tight rope.

EICHER: All right! David Bahnsen, financial analyst and adviser. He writes at dividendcafe.com—sign up there for his daily email newsletter. David, another year of excellent service to us. Grateful for that. And we won’t talk again until the calendar says it’s 2022. So thank you and Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

BAHNSEN: Well, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you as well Nick, and of course to all of our listeners.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, December 20th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up, the WORLD History Book. This week a Christmas classic flops at the box office, a typo in a Sears catalog leads to an unexpected Christmas tradition, and a surprise guest lights the White House Christmas tree.

EICHER: Katie Gaultney is away this week. Associate correspondent Harrison Watters is filling in.

HARRISON WATTERS, CORRESPONDENT: Four days after Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, Germany declares war on the United States. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill secretly sails to America to coordinate battle plans—and arrives on December 22nd, 1941.

GLENN MILLER: JINGLE BELLS (1941)

Despite the security concerns of being a nation at war, with blackout curtains and rationing already in the works, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt keeps a promise he made a year earlier in 1940. To make the traditional tree-lighting event “more homey,” the president moves the tree to right up against the fence on the South Lawn, and invites 20,000 guests onto the White House grounds.

FDR: How can we put the world aside as men and women put the world aside in peaceful years to rejoice in the birth of Christ?”

Moments later, President Roosevelt welcomes Winston Churchill to the microphone.

CHURCHILL: Fellow workers, fellow soldiers in the cause, this is a strange Christmas Eve…

But Churchill appeals to his American friends to courageously observe Christmas—for the sake of their children.

CHURCHILL: Let the children have their night of fun and laughter let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and formidable year that lie before us. And so in God's mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.

We turn now from a successful Christmas speech to a terrible Christmas flop.

In 1943, a writer named Phillip van Doren Stern mails a 21-page story to his friends and family with his annual Christmas card. The story is called The Greatest Gift, and a copy of it lands on a producer’s desk at RKO films. After commissioning three failed scripts, RKO breaks even when it sells the story to an upstart studio called Liberty Films.

The director and lead actor are fresh from serving in WWII when they make the film during the summer of 1946. With expectations running high, the director sets the film’s premiere for the Friday before Christmas—so it can qualify for the 1947 Oscars.

And so, on December 20th 75 years ago today, Frank Capra’s movie It’s A Wonderful Life hits the big screen—and fails miserably.

MOVIE CLIP: Help! Help! Help!

Critics at The New York Times call George Bailey a “figment of simple Pollyanna platitudes.” Meanwhile, many movie-goers pass on the film about a suicidal man who gets to see what the world would be like without him in favor of more optimistic stories.

MOVIE CLIP: Why did you want to save me? That’s what I was sent down for. I’m your guardian angel.

The film cost around $3 million dollars to make, but on opening weekend, it makes a third of that amount, leaving Liberty Films over five hundred thousand dollars in debt by the end of the year.

MOVIE CLIP: There’s only one way you can help me. You don’t happen to have $8000 on you? (LAUGHS) No. We don’t use money in heaven.

At the Oscars in March, It’s A Wonderful Life manages to bring back an award, but not for best picture, best actor, or best director. Judges grant the film a Technical Achievement award for creating a new kind of movie set snow that doesn’t involve painting corn flakes.

MOVIE CLIP: I said “I wish I’d never been born!” Oh, you mustn’t say things like that…

It was a disappointment for Frank Capra, who sold Liberty Films to Paramount Pictures that same year. The movie about a man who never got out of Bedford Falls was quietly put on a shelf and forgotten about.

MOVIE CLIP: You’ve got your wish. You’ve never been born.

It’s actually because the movie was put on a shelf that it became a classic. It’s a Wonderful Life became part of a library of films that changed hands several times over the next three decades. As soon as it fell into the public domain, TV stations across the country started playing It’s a Wonderful Life every year.

MOVIE CLIP: ZuZu’s petals! There they are! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas…

In 1984, Phillip van Doren Stern, the man who wrote the original story, died at age 83. Stern lived to see his story become one of the most-watched Christmas movies ever made.

MOVIE CLIP: AUDE LANG SYNE

And finally, we end today with a typo that turned Air Force pilots into Santa’s helpers. In December 1955, Colonel Harry Shoup receives a call on his secret Pentagon hotline. When he answers, a child asks if he is Santa Claus.

Colonel Shoup’s children explain what happened next in this 2014 NPR interview.

FARRELL: So he'd talk to him, ho-ho-hoed and asked if he had been a good boy and may I talk to your mother? And the mother got on and said, you haven't seen the paper yet? There's a phone number to call Santa. It's in the Sears ad. And they had children calling one after another. So he put a couple airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus.

What began as a bit of fun turned into a full-scale media production, with phonograph recordings of NORAD personnel giving updates on the identification of a flying object coming from the vicinity of the North Pole

NEWS BULLETIN: From what we’ve been able to piece together, there is a sled shaped object. Red in color. Being pulled by nine reindeer.

From radio to web, NORAD continues to track Santa’s flight around the world and field questions from children. In 2017, NORAD received over 120,000 calls with inquiries about Santa’s flight, although the phone number has changed since Colonel Shoup received the first call.

That’s this week’s World History Book. I’m Harrison Watters.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: safer drivers. We’ll tell you about a new requirement for cars designed to stop drunk driving.

And, cooking with WORLD! We’ll bring you into our kitchens - and in front of our grills, too - for the first installment of our series on holiday food traditions.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: Wait for the Lord! Be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Go now in grace and peace.

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