During the debate on tax reform, some listeners expressed their concern that the charitable deduction would be eliminated. Even after the bill was passed, one listener lamented that charitable deductions were dropped. None of that is true, but I kept wondering why people would believe this.

Apparently some of the spokespeople for philanthropy expressed their concern that the tax bill would reduce the incentive for giving because it nearly doubled the standard deduction. That would mean few filers (at least in the middle class) would be itemizing their deductions. So they argued that these taxpayers would be less inclined to donate to various charities.

While that may be true, it isn’t true that the charitable deduction was dropped from the tax code. And you have to wonder whether increasing the standard deduction will hurt charities that much. The assumption is that one of the reasons people give is for the tax deduction.

First, I would hope that most Christians give to churches and Christian organizations because they believe in the ministry that is taking place. A tax deduction is nice, but probably not the major reason for a gift.

Some counter that an increased number of donations are given in December so that means Christians are giving for tax reasons. That may be true, but it may also be true that deadlines encourage giving. Many ministries receive significant donations in June before a ministry finishes its fiscal year (often ending on June 30). There is no tax advantage then, but the deadline still stimulates significant donations.

Second, if the tax reform bill increases individual family income, Americans will have more money they can donate to charities. Think of the number of American companies that have already given $1000 bonuses to their employees or plan to do so soon.

I believe charities will do well in 2018 even if they have to work a little harder to encourage already generous Americans to continue giving.

When it was announced that all of the 2017 senior class in a Washington, DC high school graduated with college acceptance letters, various news outlets called it a miracle. Teachers, students, administrators, and parents were celebrating. It turns out the miracle was cheating.

Both NPR and the Washington Post ran stories about Frank Ballou High School boosting the graduation rate from 57 percent to 100 percent in one school year. It was too good to be true. The story collapsed two months ago when an investigation by WAMU and NPR found that dozens of these students had high rates of unexcused absences. Records showed that 141 graduating seniors had at least 30 days of unexcused absences and 86 had at least 60 days of unexcused absences.

This is fraud at numerous levels. First it is taxpayer fraud. Ballou High School received some $12.7 million for fiscal year 2017. Teachers cooked the books and perpetrated this fraud on the taxpayers and community.

Second, it is a fraud to allow students who often missed class and didn’t do their work to walk across a stage and receive a diploma. Some of them could scarcely read or write. Only nine percent of the students passed DC’s standardized test for English last year. None of them passed the standardized math test.

Third, it is a fraud for colleges that accepted them based upon fraudulent academic records. Students will either have to take lots of remedial courses or else flunk out within a semester or two. And it is a fraud for any student who was rejected by those colleges in order to make room for these students who should not have graduated with a diploma.

It may be tempting to think this is a singular exception. But I wonder if there are other examples of schools that haven’t been caught yet.

A new study by three political scientists concluded that concerns about the impact of fake news are overblown. You may have heard that fake news elected Donald Trump. Supposedly Trump voters were duped into believing false information and cast their vote on inaccurate facts. The recent study by professors at Princeton, Dartmouth, and the University of Exeter debunks that theory.

The researchers collected tracking data from more than two thousand Americans and analyzed their news consumption. They sorted fake news sites from hard news sites and concluded that roughly one in four American adults visited a fake news site around the time of the election. But before you jump to any conclusions, consider that these sites only accounted for about two percent of all the news they consumed.

It is true that Trump supporters were more likely to visit fake news sites. That makes sense since candidate Donald Trump challenged much of the mainstream media and might even have been a reason these voters decided to look at other sites.

But the study also found that “fake news consumption seems to be a complement to, rather than a substitute for, hard news.” They concluded that because visits to fake news sites were the highest among people who consumed the most hard news. In other words, they were reading widely and checking lots of sources. That is something I encourage my radio audience to do all the time.

I might mention that this study even highlights the challenge of trying to define fake news. Some hard news sites do indeed ignore relevant facts and amplify others to fit the bias of the reporter or editor. President Trump may call some of these stories in the mainstream media “fake news.” They may not actually be fake news but they are certainly inaccurate news if they ignore some facts and promote others.

With all this talk about fake news, you might think this is a recent phenomenon. Jarrett Stepman provides a history of fake news in the US and the attempts government and other entities have used to try to stop it.

He reminds us that the Founding Fathers were well aware of the power of the press. Many of them (such as Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine) were newspapermen and pamphleteers. That is why they were all high on King George III’s enemies list.

Three years after the Constitution was ratified, Congress added the Bill of Rights that included the First Amendment that provided protections for the press. They understood the power of the press. Benjamin Franklin explained that the press acted as the “court” of public opinion and wielded great power. But Thomas Jefferson also argued that the most effectual way for a people to be governed by “reason and truth” is to give freedom to the press.

Early attempts to suppress fake news or unpopular opinions did not go well. The Federalist Party passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts under President John Adams to clamp down on false writing. It became so unpopular that the party was crushed in future elections and ceased to exist as a party.

There is a lesson for the “Big Four Tech Masters” in Silicon Valley, which I wrote about last month. For some time, they have argued they are merely a platform and have no responsibility to evaluate what is posted on their sites. Now, some of them (Facebook and Google) want to develop a way to fact-check stories and limit the amount of fake news on the Internet.

The founders gave us a free press unhindered by a government oversight that could censor or modify news and information. Instead, they encouraged all of us to read widely and check out the facts. That is still the best approach for today.

As last year was ending and this year was beginning, we have seen tumult in Tehran. While Iranians have been protesting in the streets, there is another important story that is being missed.

Mark Howard, writing in the Gospel Coalition, says the story can be summarized in two sentences. “Persecution threatened to wipe out Iran’s tiny church. Instead, the church in Iran has become the fastest growing in the world, and it is influencing the region for Christ.”

It is an incredible story. When the Iranian revolution broke out in the late 1970s, Christians faced persecution from the militant Muslim leaders. Bibles were banned and missionaries were kicked out of the country.

Many feared that might be the end of the tiny Iranian church. Michael Brown compares it to the fears Christians had when China closed its doors behind the Bamboo Curtain and began persecuting Christians. But instead of that being the end of Christianity in China, just the opposite happened. Millions of Chinese people became Christians.

Something similar has happened in Iran. More Iranians have become Christians in the last 20 years than in the previous 13 centuries. Operation World named Iran as having the fastest growing evangelical church in the world. Also, I might mention that they believe that the second-fastest growing church is in Afghanistan.

Why is the church in Iran growing so fast? First, the violence done in the name of Islam has caused widespread disillusionment with Islam itself and the Iranian regime. Second, bold Iranian Christians are proclaiming the gospel to their fellow citizens and giving hope in the midst of difficult circumstances.

Although the press will cover the protests in the streets, I think the more important story is what is happening in the hearts of the Iranian people who are converting to Christ in record numbers.

The media elite and political elite in this country are disconnected in many ways from the average American citizen. One illustration of this occurred as the final vote was taken in December on the tax reform bill.

Many of these elites were scoffing at the fact that the tax cut to middle class Americans might only be $1000 per year. Moreover, they mocked that it amounted to only $18-19 per week. They don’t understand how an additional $1000 per year can make a profound difference in many families.

Before we get to the impact $1000 could make, let’s turn the issue around. Imagine a bill before Congress that would reduce the income to families by a $1000 a year. Would those same people say, it is only a $1000 reduction? Of course they would not.

Would $1000 a year make a difference to many Americans? In a previous commentary, I talked about the survey done by the Federal Reserve. They found that 47 percent of respondents said they could not pay for a $400 emergency without borrowing money or selling one of their possessions. Would an additional $1000 make a difference to those people? I think we know the answer.

By the way, the percentage goes from 47 percent to 59 percent when asked if they have resources to cover a $1000 emergency. Nearly six in ten Americans do not have $1000 laying around for an emergency expenditure. Having an additional $1000 would make a difference to them.

These statistics illustrate the striking difference between many of the elites in this country and average Americans. The elite class in this country could probably spend $1000 at a restaurant or a weekend trip and not even feel the financial effect. The tax cut for average Americans might make a profound difference that the elites simply don’t seem to understand.

One of the ways politicians get some attention in our current media climate is to make outlandish claims or use controversial phrases. So when various Democratic leaders referred to the recent tax reform bill as a grand “heist” it was not too surprising. But I am beginning to see that the use of the term was more than rhetorical flourish. It may indeed be a campaign theme of the 2018 elections.

Take a look at the twitter accounts of any of the Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate. You will see words like “heist” and “looting.” The members of Congress that voted for the bill are guilty of “robbing” and “ransacking” the middle class. This is difficult to take seriously since the latest estimates are that 80 percent of American taxpayers will see a reduction in their taxes.

It is tempting to disregard all these comments as merely an attempt to win the policy debate. But I wonder if these words and phrases actually point to very different views about taxes, property, and government funding. Most of us believe we have private property rights and that we give up some of our income in taxes to fund necessary government programs. It isn’t a heist or robbery to let more Americans keep more of their hard-earned income.

However, if you believe government must be funded at larger and larger levels, then a tax cut or spending cut becomes robbery of the federal treasury. No doubt you have heard some lament that people in government think that it is “their money.” It seems like they are saying “what’s yours is ours.”

We taxpayers don’t see it that way. We believe it is our money that we send to the government to be used effectively and efficiently by government employees guided by laws adopted by our elected representatives. Unfortunately, we may be headed into a campaign season where a tax cut to Americans is a grand heist of the federal treasury.

David French says in a recent column that one of the most under-appreciated and under-reported stories of last year was “that a post-Christian America is a more vicious America” that has rendered “America more polarized, not less.” His thesis is simple. “Remove from the public square biblical admonitions such as ‘love your enemies’ and the hatred has more room to grow.” When the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace) are gone, the culture becomes far more coarse.

He does acknowledge that a few other commentators have written about this topic. Peter Beinart writing in The Atlantic says that the political elite “dreamed that the culture war over religious morality that began in the 1960s and 70s would fade. It has. And the more secular, more ferociously national and racial culture war that has followed is worse.”

The media elite and political elite naively believe that the decline in religious values is good for society. Less Christianity does not mean a better America. Human sinfulness and tribalism reign in the human heart. Remove rules and norms, and social conflict increases.

David French also reminds us that the American Christian culture isn’t that Christian. The prevailing view is what some have called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. That’s a belief “that while God exists, He’s not particularly involved in human affairs and mainly wants people to be nice and happy.” This moral framework might work at some level for individual lives but it is utterly inadequate as a common moral code.

Essentially, we are replacing the biblical worldview with a personal ethic that has few, if any, rules. Letting sinful people prone to tribalism make all their own decisions without regard to the biblical moral code is a prescription for the polarization we see in political discourse and the conflict we see in the streets.

Many presidential candidates campaign on the promise to roll back regulations that stifle innovation and stymie business growth. Once those candidates get into office, very little regulatory reform takes place.

That is why what has happened in the Trump administration last year is so significant. The Wall Street Journal editors estimated that his presidency had been “reining in and rolling back the regulatory state at a pace faster than even Ronald Reagan.”

They also remind us that regulator rollback is harder than it sounds because of the inertial tendency of bureaucracies to expand their sphere of influence. Look at the last two presidents. Under Barack Obama, the Federal Register had six of the seven highest annual page counts. George Bush also expanded the federal government through various rules and regulations.

President Trump went in a different direction. Ten days after his inauguration, he issued an executive order that required federal agencies to eliminate two regulations for every new one implemented. By mid-year, we heard that the ratio was no longer two-to-one but closer to seven-to-one.

By the end of 2017, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs estimated that the ratio was 22 to 1. Also, more than 1,500 planned regulatory actions were withdrawn or delayed. This includes orders ranging from transgender bathrooms to how colleges adjudicate charges of sexual assault.

It is also worth mentioning what Congress has done. As I have talked about in previous commentaries, congressional leadership has used the Congressional Review Act to nullify rules issued by previous administrations that were never published with an opportunity for public comment. So far, they have removed 14 Obama-era rules along with one Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule.

We still have so many rules and regulations, it is nearly impossible to know and obey every one in the Federal Register. Many rules place onerous requirements for reporting on businesses. We should applaud any attempt to reduce the regulatory burden on all of us.