Categories
Political

Running Christ for President

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Whenever the Democrats run for President in this country, they’re facing two opponents with each election: the Republican challenger, and Jesus Christ.

It’s not that there aren’t Christian Democrats, or Jewish Republicans for that matter. But every four years, we have to play this little song and dance to skirt around issues that might get people to dig in their religious heels; because of this we keep coming back to the same issues again and again and again. This year though, I don’t think the same old song and dance is going to work. We have a President who has decided to attach Jesus Christ–a Political Christ–as his running mate, whether Christ would approve or not. And pretending we can’t see this act for what it is, a deliberate breakdown between Church and State, isn’t going to make it go away.

We have to confront the Political Christ in this year’s election, and I don’t mean by going to see a propaganda movie created by a famous actor undergoing a religious rebirth. We have to stop shying away from issues just because we’re afraid that we’re going to offend someone’s religious sensibilities, and lose a vote.

Gay rights and gay marriage, creationism versus evolution, racial equality, book banning and burnings, school prayer, religious artifacts in public spaces, faith-based initiatives, abortion, equal rights for women, birth control, AIDs treatments, the environment, freedom of speech, the Pledge of Allegience, our currency, war, and even the Constitution–none of these, no matter how seemingly secular, is ever completely free of the shadow cast by the Political Christ.

We keep looking in fear at the children of Mohammed, but it’s the children of Christ that scare me more.

Pem provided a link to an truly excellent article in MSNBC that talks about this issue. In particular the following quote has to stand out:

The connection between politics and religion for me lies in the motto of Cornelia Connelly, the Philadelphia wife and mother who founded the order of nuns by whom I was lucky enough to be educated. Actions, not words. Touch the sick, the poor, the children, the powerless, as Christ did, and never mind quoting Leviticus.

Unfortunately, though, this isn’t facing the problem, it’s just pretending that if we ignore the religious right long enough, they’ll go away. But they aren’t going away.

This little uncomfortable writing of mine was inspired by a new Missouri House Bill, HB911, which is attempting to insert the teaching of creationism in our schools, through the concept known as Intelligent Design. The response to this bill from the educational community was compelling, intelligent, seemingly impossible to deny, and it does look as if the bill is not progressing at this point. The thing, though, is that it will appear again. And again. And again. And eventually, if we’re not paying close enough attention, it will succeed at some time because our politics are influenced by the Political Christ, no matter how much we want to deny this.

(Read more about pending legislation of this nature in other states. Be sure to check out the story about the mother suing to have a book on horses removed from the school library because it has two pages in it about the evolution of horses. Thanks to Rev Matt for pointing the Missouri Bill out.)

I have all my life believed that we should not talk about religion in regards to our politics. I have said so more than once in these pages–that we should focus on tax or war or any number of other seemingly government-related issues.

But behind all of these issues, yes even taxes, is the shadow of the Political Christ. And I have no doubts, none whatsoever, that the same is true in a lot of other countries with predominate Christian communities.

In her article, Quindlen describes the Political Christ as being about religiosity, not about faith, and I agree. She also calls it a wedge issue, and I also agree. Where I don’t agree with her is that we should ignore it and carry on. We have done so, and the concept has not gone away. If anything, this year the impact of religion on government is going to be stronger than at any other time in our past.

Now is the time to confront Political Christ. And in her own way, by writing this particular article, I think Quindlen agrees with me.

Second Update 

Pharyngula has a rundown on creation science fairs, part of the new move to introduce Christian theology into the classroom as part of the science education. One site is a hugely funny spoof site, but when you compare it with the real thing, frankly, it sends chills down your back.

Thanks to Joseph Duemer for the link.)

Categories
Political

Joel at APress and offshoring

I’m not a regular reader of Joel on Software, but he’s started a new “Ask Joel” forum that’s been generating some interesting conversations.

One is on Offshoring and features the usual offshoring is evil discussion, and a bit too much sucking up to Joel, but it also has some additions from people who work within the offshore companies, as well as other discussions about programming being a commodity, and globalization.

I particularly like the idea of bringing together developers from countries that have lost jobs with developers in countries who have gained jobs due to globalization – would be an interesting chat, wouldn’t it?

The second thread that interested me personally was Joel talking about his new book with Apress . Book branding is one topic in the thread, and both Tim O’Reilly and Gary Cornell from Apress add comments. What caught my attention, though, was a statement Joel made:

Whenever I’ve had any kind of issue no matter how tiny Gary always laid down the law: the author is always right 😉

The …author is always right. I’ll have to remember that.

I imagine that the forums will degenerate quickly, as these things do, but I found the discussion today of interest.

UpdateGina Trapani wrote at misbehaving.net about being told to ‘lighten up’ in the comment thread she was in at Joel’s new forum. She has valid points, but I don’t think she’ll get a hearing. From all indications, this new forum is going to be another boy’s only club.

No comments, though, attached to Gina’s post. So guess there’s no forum for the girls to talk, either.

Categories
Political

Will you still need me will you still feed me

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine.
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

I really must stop reading the news before going to bed because I spent a disquieting night last night reading Greenspan’s pronouncements on the changes that need to be made for Social Security to survive. It’s not that I was suprirsed by what he said; it’s that dour projections about the future of our retirement is not something I would recommend as an accompaniment to that nice glass of warm milk before bed.

The facts are, in this country, we are living longer and having fewer children — both good things and the way a society should progress. However, both events put strain on a retirement system that is based primarily on money paid in by a shrinking labor pool, spread thin by an increasingly large retired population.

Some solutions come to mind: One is that we decrease our longevity, and that was jokingly mentioned yesterday. Or at least, I think that was a joking reference. Another is to start having more babies, and the technology exists to quickly meet this solution. However, in the long-term this is not an effective alternative as increased population butts head first into inflexible limits on resources, not to mention a labor market that is moving inexorably offshore.

Another viewpoint is to allow a redirection of money from Social Security to private investments, but I think that way lies danger. Not only will this drain the Social Security fund more quickly, it puts that money pulled from it into the hands of people that, frankly, usually don’t know what they’re doing. Then when they get too old to work, what will we do for them? They don’t have Social Security, and they have no funds of their own. Will we leave old people to die, starving and homeless, on the streets of our cities? We come close enough to that already, except that we try to hide this with below standard nursing homes.

If these solutions — decrease the old folk, increase the young folk, let everyone play in the stock market– aren’t palatable, then the only solution is to make some drastic changes to how Social Security is managed. Changes such as raise the retirement age.

If we put aside our emotional responses to this–difficult, because many of us have grown up with the ‘promise’ of retirement by 65–we can appreciate the truth in this statement.

The backlash against Greenspan isn’t surprising. He’s basically kicking at our most sacred institution, and he does so in the same breath used to defend tax cuts. I don’t fault Greenspan on his views on Social Security; however, I do believe that he’s relying on old economic truisms that are no longer so true; I question the general acceptance of his infallibilty based on his stubbord refusal to adjust to new information in his continued defense of trickle-down economics.

He’s like so many old time economists who believe that if we just pump money back into the economy, American businesses will do well; when American business do well, they’ll expand and hire more people, and that will lead to competititon for workers, and the workers will do better. It sounds good on paper, and it has worked in the past, but not this time.

This time we have a bunch of economists who are scratching their head because they don’t see an increase in hiring, at least not enough to offset the losses. They point, happily, to improvements in the economy, but are only now starting to acknowledge, far too late, that these are coming without the traditional improvement in the quality of life of the average American.

Greenspan defends tax cuts, and also defends, and this one takes my breath away, Americans dependence on credit and credit cards, this in the face of record numbers of bankruptcies. However, I can see why he does this: it is the Greenspan Touch.

Because of past reactions to his pronouncements, stock markets have risen and economies have boomed. So if he says that tax cuts will help, and then goads the American people into spending these cuts on real goods, rather than using the money to pay down debt, he hopes that by sheer will power and the Greenspan name, he can start that long-delayed trickle-down effect and finally kickstart a real uplift to the economy.

But it’s not going to work this time, or at least, not in the accepted manner. The numbers don’t lie, and they refused to be coddled. I acknowledge that Greenspan is a wiz at economics, but perhaps the economists need to put their spreadsheets down and just look out the window.

You’ll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.
I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride,
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

Jobs are not increasing, and people are becoming progressively worried about their own continued employment, even in, especially in, long-held jobs. Globalization is having an impact, and it’s not just that blue collar jobs are going to China and white-collar jobs going to India — jobs are going to any number of countries. As this happens, without careful planning and consideration, as well as effective re-training programs in this country, more people are forced into lower-level service jobs, such as those at Wal-Mart and members of the middle class fall like dead autumn leaves into new economic classifications.

As the level of living in other countries increases due to higher-level jobs moving offshore, the level of living in this country decreases and brings a closer alignment between the workers around the world. In some ways, this is a good thing — we do need a closer alignment between the countries of the world. An unfortunate consequence, though, is that a permanent worker class is created that has little hope for a future beyond meeting the immediate needs of a family. And as the shuffling of jobs continues, round and round about the planet, the standard of living for this worker class will continue to erode.

(I read recently that White House economists are working on the spin necessary to make all these changes more attactive on statistical sheets. For instance, they are at work reclassifying low-level service jobs such as those at McDonald’s as manufacturing’ work because the people ‘manufacture’ hamburgers by putting the components of the sandwiches together.)

As the middle class shrinks, fewer taxes are paid, and the budget deficit, already bloated like a ten-day old rotted sperm whale washed up on shore, continues to increase. To counter, programs such as the ‘guest worker’ program are instituted to bring workers here to this country. These workers are willing to work for wages that push down the wages of those who are citizens, helping to make it more palatable to keep some jobs here that could be offshored. This helps to slow the steady stream of jobs offshore, and thus keep the taxes paid by these workers in this country, but without negative impact on the profitablity of the companies, which would be adverse to trickle-down economics.

No, the health of companies, especially larger companies will increase and stock value will grow. We’re seeing the trends of this right now. But a middle class that had discretionary funds to invest in the stock market is beginning to vanish, leaving the stock in the hands of a small percentage of very wealthy people, who will continue to increase their wealth.

Now, the taxes these people pay could offset the loss of taxes from the middle class — and it is true, most tax in the United States is paid by the upper 15% of income earners. However, as tax cuts increase, those in the upper reaches pay less tax and since they can only spend so much, re-invest less money back into purchasing of real goods; industries that are primarily supported by a middle class will begin to modify to provide mass-produced cheap goods for a larger group of lower-income people, or smaller numbers of luxury goods for a higher-income people.

(Some say that Michael Eisner’s management is responsible for Disney having problems with profitability in the last five years, and from what I read, he hasn’t helped. But I think a stronger factor is that Disney is, to all intents and purposes, a middle-income class company.)

By holding the line on continuing to cut taxes and then cutting most social programs, we remov the funds that could re-train the, let’s say displaced computer programmer, as a high school teacher or registered nurse — both professions that have a continued demand for people. Providing this type of training will increase the competition for these jobs and generate an increase in the style of living for both groups. This is counter to the worker class scenario, and cuts into profits of hospitals and health care programs, and increases the needs for more taxes to pay for schools. Rather than re-train our workers, we’ll use part of the guest worker program to fill these needs — already happening — and keep the economic incentives down to move displaced workers into these professions.

The worker class scenario of a the new trickle-down economics demands a downward shift in workers, not a lateral one.

In addition, cutting social programs also means that those who are poor are more likely to remain poor because they won’t have access to facilities that might help them climb out of their poverty. Poverty also leads to adherance to more dogmatic religious beliefs in addition to an increased birthrate — both incidental but useful components in the infrastructure of the new economics. Additionally, cutting social programs also means less money to medical programs including wellness programs for children and older people, and we can, of course, kiss any kind of universal health care program good-bye.

Holding the bottom line and delivering cheap will become the focus of this current run of trickle-down economics that Greenspan seems to lovingly embrace; having adverse impact on not only the people but also on the environment (but not the economy, which should continue to thrive). We’re already seeing a return to coal fired utility plants something that most of us swore we would never support.

However, after re-reading all of this, I may have to reconsider my disagreement with Greenspan’s approach, especially in regards to the upcoming crises in Social Security. By his reliance on trickle-down economics we will be seeing people who have less access to quality health care; this will probably be combined with a decreased life span due to worries about economic fluctuations, not to mention the stress of seeing one’s career being shunted ever downwards. And less social spending will result in a less educated and informed populace, which has been shown to have an adverse effect on lifespan but a positive effect on corporate profitability and other economic factors. In addition, increased spending for homeland security should keep people in that proper frame of fearful mind, which will probably steal a day or two away from their lives. This isn’t to mention the known fact that people with less money don’t eat as healthily (the healthier the eating the increased the costs), and without incentive, most don’t live right, either; not to mention increased competition for fewer resources and a degradation of the environment, both of which will kill folks deader n’ than a rattlesnake in a pissy mood.

So maybe Greenspan does have the right idea after all, but it’s hidden with talk of economics and taxes and spending and older workers because we can’t stomach the truth: it’s time to think about putting into place social conditions to kill off all the old farts who aren’t rich but still insist on thriving, and without any demonstrated usefulness to corporate society. These damn old people who stubbornly refuse to shuffle off this moral coil in a timely manner, the selfish pricks.

Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera Chuck & Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

“When I’m Sixty-Four”, Beatles

Signed: Future selfish prick.

Categories
People Political

The evil that is Ashcroft

I have no comments to make after reading this article.

Mike’s Link Blog copied an article about Ashcroft, John Ashcroft’s Patriot Games by Judith Bacharach, in its entirey, from Vanity Fair. Before the magazine moves to have him remove it, you have to read it.

Remember, that this is a story about the Attorney General of the United States – the highest legal office in the land.

We have fallen so far.

Within weeks of Ashcroft’s arrival, the revolution began, although initially only his subordinates realized it, as it came in the form of a scolding memo. According to a former Justice Department lawyer, the phrases “We are proud of the Justice Department” and “There is no higher calling than public service,” both of which had been pro forma in certain letters sent out to citizens and congressmen above the attorney general’s signature, were to be excised. A call to Ashcroft’s office provided an explanation of sorts: “Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; therefore we could not have a letter going out that would have the word ‘pride’ or ‘proud.’” Moreover, “there is a higher calling than public service, which is service to God.”

The oddest details seemed to carry grave theological implications, even in the Netherlands, where Ashcroft attended an international anti-corruption conference in May 2001. There, a trio of Siamese cats scampering about the residence of Cynthia Schneider, the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, produced alarm in the Justice advance team, according to a highly placed source. “Are there any calico cats at the residence?” they inquired of embassy staff. Ashcroft, who would be dining with Schneider, considered such creatures “instruments of the Devil,” his people explained. (Ashcroft has denied any antipathy toward calico cats.)

Equally startling was the new composition of top staff. “To go from a Justice Department that was diverse, led by a woman,” recalls one ex employee, “to that first wave of primarily white guys, that was a major change.” Even after that first wave subsided (there was a flood of departures, including, after two years, Viet Dinh, the chief architect of the Patriot Act), the results were similar. Qualified female attorneys, complaining that Ashcroft “can’t look a woman in the eye,” found promotions to the highest levels almost nonexistent. Black men would be replaced by white men. In honor of Women’s History Month, Janet Ashcroft, once an outspoken opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, was asked by her husband to make a speech to women staffers. “Which is kind of a novel thing,” one listener says dryly. “And he introduces her by saying she’s the woman who taught him how to put dishes away. Yes, that’s what he said to the women lawyers. He said she taught him you should rotate your china, put your new plates on the bottom of the stack, so you don’t wear them out.”

I am speechless.

(Thanks to Teresa Hayden, who has copied another excerpt if the entire article has to get pulled.)

Update

From the Globe and Mail:

I am aware that many Americans are happy to trade their civil liberties for security, and as a visitor after 9/11, I’d rather an immigration officer erred on the side of precaution. But you do wonder where and when all this will end and what effect it will have on the ideals that once made America.

If the dissection of John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice in this month’s Vanity Fair is anything to go by, it seems that America will soon be at war with itself � because the application of the law is being invested with a moral zeal whose goal is, in the words of the U.S. Attorney-General, “not simply to investigate crimes but to prevent them before they occur.”

Second update *snicker

Calico cats admit fear of Ashcroft

The poll also revealed that other breeds, including Persians, short hairs, and even Siamese get their hackles raised when Mr. Ashcroft’s name is mentioned. “Strangely enough, only those funky hairless cats that look like skinned weasels seem immune to the Attorney General,” mused Miss Kelly. “I guess when you look like that, you don’t have much left to worry abou

Categories
People Political

Ralph Nader: Unsafe at any speed

I’ve never been a huge fan of Ralph Nader. Of course, some of this is explained by my long ago engagement with a man who was an ardent member of the Seattle Corvair club. Nader didn’t kill the Corvair – American’s never could handle the unusual styling– but he didn’t help.

I am aware of Nader’s involvement with OSHA, as well as the EPA. I am aware of his battles for the consumers, the little guys like you and me. I know he’s written books about women in the marketplace, and how we’re not paid equally, or treated fairly. Every one of these things should guarantee that I support Ralph Nader, but I just don’t care for him. Never have. Never will.

Of course now with Nader throwing in as an independent Presidential candidate, my lack of enthusiasm for him might be more understandable. After all, some say he threw the race to Bush in 2000 by siphoning off votes from Gore. I don’t know if this is true, but I don’t think his race hurt Bush.

Now, I’m already hearing that some disappointed Dean supporters have switched their support to Nader since Dean semi-dropped out. Why? It’s all in the process. The thing with many of the Dean supporters is that the process is more important than the results. Some really are indifferent if we have four more years of Bush, as long as the process, in this case a fight against a–what does Nader call it? Duopoly– succeeds.

That’s why I just don’t care for Nader. To him, the process was always more important than the result. The general fight was always more important than the specific battles; more important than even the results of those battles.

Nader sees everything in black and white. Corporate bad. Non-Corporate good. Everything he does, is based on this simple premise. The fight for the environment isn’t ‘for’ the environment, as much as it is against those corporate interests that would exploit the environment. A fight for public forests, isn’t necessarily to help the forests, as much as it is to fight the logging companies.

The same extends to issues of civil liberties. According to Nader, the fight for rights for blacks, women, and now gays, isn’t a fight for these groups as much as it is a class fight. In some ways, you might agree with him. In fact, isn’t reframing this into a genderless, sexless, colorless, raceless issue more effective in the long run?

At first glace, it seems the appropriate thing to do, but this breaks down in reality. When you see these struggles as a struggle of ‘class’, you tend to discount the individual differences and cultural clashes that arise with each fight.

The fight for rights for blacks isn’t just a struggle to ensure that blacks are not exploited by corporate or other class interests; it’s also a struggle for acceptance by the poor white folks that live in the trailer flying a confederate flag amidst the hills of Iron County, Missouri. How does one frame this as a ‘class’ dispute, especially one connected in some way with evil corporate intent?

The fight for women’s rights isn’t just a struggle to ensure that we’re treated equally in the marketplace; it’s also a struggle to make sure we’re not raped by college football players because a coach doesn’t see any harm with women treated as objects, as long as his boys aren’t ‘distracted’ from winning.

And now, with gay rights. How does one reframe full rights for gays into a class struggle that ignores issues of personal perceptions and biases? Just saying so isn’t going to make it so.

Nader has said that there is no difference between the Democratic party and the Republican party – both are equally beholden to corporate interests. Bottom line, that’s all Nader sees.

In 2000, before the election, Todd Gitlin took a closer look at the issue of this claim by Nader, and Nader’s politics. He wrote:

At bottom, Nader’s all-or-nothing gambit is not politics, it is moral fundamentalism – as if by venting one’s anger, one were free to remake the world by willing it so, despite all those recalcitrant people who happen to live here.

The arrogance of this “worsism” – the worse, the better – is chillingly expressed by a Nader voter in Portland, Ore., interviewed in Friday’s New York Times: “If Bush gets in, I feel that it might bring things to a head much more quickly. Pollution’s going to increase in the short term, but I think that will bring a lot more people into the environmental movement a lot more quickly. Sometimes you’ve got to hit bottom before you come back up.” Notice how the means – “a lot more people into the environmental movement” -has become the end. Notice the spurious assumption that the masses will rise up if things come “to a head.” It didn’t happen after Reagan’s depredations on the environment. It won’t happen now.

Well, we’ve had four years of Bush. I wonder what that Oregon voter now feels about the issue?

Ralph Nader is a man with a mission, always has been, to better the human condition. However, he does so by discounting the messier elements and focusing only on the bloodless aspects of our struggles. From the article, Nader Confronts Minority Critics:

But behind the political skirmishing there are some very real differences in approach towards race between Nader and his critics on the Left. Where they see a Green Party and presidential campaign made up largely of middle-class whites, he sees “constituency group” critics hooked on “symbolism” instead of progress.

Where some of his critics see a candidate who, in the words of writer Vanessa Daniel, “appears to be tiptoeing around an elephant when he fails to mention … race and racism,” Nader sees a more “systemic” class struggle against corporations, of which racial discrimination is an important but lesser component.

And when potential supporters all but plead for a warmer, more human personal touch, Nader stubbornly remains who he is: a solitary and frequently awkward man who brags that his campaign is “about ideas, not emotion.”

Do I disagree with this? How can I? I can understand what Nader is saying. We do focus too much on symbols and not the underlying causes. We’re distracted by specifics, when we should be working on universal cures.

At the same time, though, we only have to look at history to realize that change isn’t global. Like the pictures in the papers, change is the little dots that seen from a distance, form a solid picture. Change is local. Change happens one event at a time, based on the passionate acts of a people pushing through change regardless of cost to themselves.

Change is both emotion and ideas. Change is messy.

The odd thing is, I think Nader is closer to Bush in outlook than not. Both believe that everything boils down to corporate interests. It’s just that Bush thinks meeting corporate interests would be good for the people, and Nader thinks that not meeting coporate interests would be good for the people.

Take away corporations, and both would fall over.