Salt

I am So Happy about the Public Debt

I am so happy.

We've set a record.

The government debt is $8 TRILLION dollars.

Yay!

And you know what?

Somehow, the Republicans are going to figure out a way where nobody has to pay for it.

Because we won't need to pay taxes.

The money is just going to appear.

It's amazing.

Some Quotes

We celebrate the life of William Reed Huntington today.  He once said, "the theologians and naturalists are allies.  Truth is truth, however and whencesoever obtained, and we can never hav occasion to be either afraid of it or unthankful for it."  I admit, he is the sort of priest I would like to emulate.

From the Wall Street Journal:  "recent research suggests that regularly seeing good friends in the local park will bring a greater boost to mental health than having a shiny German automobile parked outside your retirement home."  Although I still think my vestry should lease me a mini-cooper.

I grew up in a family that was militantly pro-union, so I've been following the AFL-CIO convention quite closely.  He believed that, in education, you get what you pay for, and if no-one respects teachers, then teaches will have to do for themselves.   I still struggle to understand how people can be so stingy with funding educational system. 

My own feeling is that the recent breakway of the two big unions  is a good thing for the movement.  I think that some intense conflict will force the bigger unions to focus on recruitment and evangelism rather than pinning their hopes on a corporate-oriented Democratic party.  Unions have to stick to the basics, and engage in the kind of productive conflict that made them powerful in the first place.  It seems to me that the unions have been bought off by the democrats.  They might start organizing unorganized computer libertarian types.  The first goal - universal health care.

An organizer friend said to me recently that what they should do is create a nationwide newspaper, unconnected to the elites, instead of spending money on loser Democrats.

Sometimes such reorganization is crucial to revitalization.  And God bless Andy Stern who is, in my view, one of the most impressive union leaders we've had for a generation. 

The Supreme Court

I admit, I'm not too worried about Roe vs. Wade.  In fact, I wouldn't mind if it were overturned, for a few reasons.

The religious right would be unprepared for the electoral consequences.  Most young women consider abortion available and sexual activity their perogative.  To have it be restricted would become a issue that would inspire women to vote. 

The science has been moving forward quite rapidly.  Most women can find ways to find abortificients that are over the counter.  Poor women would, of course, be forced to have their children, which would have a cascading financial effect in those states that would prohibit abortion rights.   However, I submit that the religious right would be on the defensive if it had to fight a series of legislative battles.  They don't understand that Republican women currently will vote with the religious right BECAUSE abortion is the law of the land.  If this gets lost, we'll see a lot of moderate Republican women reject such single-issue politics and vote Democratic in those places Democrats make choice an issue.   

I also don't care much about church and state.  All we need is a few wicca to demand the same rights as Christians do.  I have no problem with ten-commandments being placed in public spaces.  Atheists and pagans should merely demand that they have the same space as well.  If you're easily offended by Christianity, then that's your problem.  And if I'm offended by you, well, I'll deal.  Bring the bible into school.  The church can't control a bunch of rambunctious teens reading scripture together in order to deconstruct it.  Please note that the most secular countries are the ones which require religious studies.  It's my opinion that as evangelicals get more obnoxious, there will be greater resistance.  I do care about the politicizing of churches.  But this is a bit different.

But I am really worried about  the Constitution in Exile.  Cass Sunstein writes:  "In the last few years, right-wing activists have become far more ambitious. There is a great deal of talk about restoration of the "Constitution in Exile"--the Constitution as it existed in 1932, before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Under this Constitution, the powers of the national government were sharply limited. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, not to mention the Civil Rights Act of 1964, would have been impermissible. Under the Constitution in Exile, rights to have recourse against discrimination, and to protection of privacy, were minimal. A far more significant right was freedom of contract, which threw minimum-wage legislation into constitutional doubt."  Legal Affairs has another article on this issue.

Anglican Resistance Website

My friend and classmate Bill Carroll, assistant Professor at Sewanee, has started a new site called Anglican Resistance.  I've advocated several times on this blog that people read Richard Horsely's work as a grounding for the perspective that Bill also advocates.  Cheer him on!

Marijuana Lobbying Underway

Its incredible the amount of money we spend locking up people who wouldn't be dangerous to society if their desires weren't illegal.  It's illegality that makes drug use dangerous, not always the use itself.  Hard to understand for some, but easy to prove.  Apparently 500 economists and other smart people are suggesting that congress look at the facts.  It's mildly utopian, but these persons share the same religion as congress, the religion of the free market, which like most religions, is one we praise with our lips, although our hearts are elsewhere.  Maybe they'll be convincing.  Hard to get my parish on board.  Apparently one of my predecessors had the munchies just a little too often. 

One economist remarked: 

"If we banned Ben & Jerry's ice cream, there'd be drive-by shootings over Ben & Jerry's." We'd have a militarized sugar industry.

Another economist said, "We're split down the middle on everything, but you don't see us split down the middle on drug prohibition. It's a case where it's clear that the costs of prohibition exceed the benefits."

St. Anthony of Padua and Medical Marijuana

Today is the feast day of Anthony of Padua.  He was a
Portuguese Franciscan who was called “the Hammer of
Heretics.” He was also known for his excessive and compelling dancing style.

When no-one listened to him, he went out and preached the gospel to fishes.  One commentator wrote:  "This was not, as the liberals and naturalists are trying tosay, for the instruction of the fishes, but rather for the glory of God." 

Also - given the recent supreme court ruling on medical marijuana, note that tomorrow congress will be voting to allow doctors to prescribe drugs - with Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment.  Most Americans do support the alleviation of pain, although there are a few who associate any kind of medicalization akin to supporting communism, homosexuality or Californians. 

The leader of the opposition, Rep. Mark Souder, "dismisses the effort as a political, not scientific, effort to to gradually legalize marijuana," arguing that "if scientific data supports marijuana as a pain medication, it should be studied and vetted through the regular FDA process."  Which I would agree with if the administration wouldn't play politics and let the FDA study medical marijuana trials.  In this climate the FDA won't even touch such a study with a 10 food pole because, well, marijuana is illegal.  A neat little catch-22 we've got here. 

There is a difference between legalization; decriminalization and medicalization.  I think that some drugs should only be administered by doctors, and doctors should be prosecuted for prescribing drugs incorrectly.  But Marijuana - and other drugs - are drugs.  Doctors - not politicians, government, or drug lords - should be administering them. 

It's the easiest way to put the drug lords out of business.  And what's wrong with the risk?  What we have now hasn't been working.  Why not give the market a try?

Alan Greenspan's Deception

Today Krugman bitch-slaps the Democrats for being deferential to Greenspan:  By repeatedly shilling for whatever the Bush administration wants, he has betrayed the trust placed in Fed chairmen, and deserves to be treated as just another partisan hack.  Attaboy, Krugman. 

Brad Delong takes the Economist to task.  A talking point:  If you give people control over their savings, some who have few other resources will do badly with it. They will then either eat cat food and shiver in the cold in their old age, or their private accounts will be topped off to keep them from penury. But if we choose the second option, then we are creating grave moral hazard: people can speculate with their private accounts, playing the game of heads-I-win- tails-the-government- pays. To head off this moral hazard meltdown, a plan should--and the Bush plan appears to--very tightly constrain where the investments can go.

BusinessWeek asks:  Tax Hikes for whom?  Eventually, yes, the middle class will get screwed.  Of course, Bush has started talking about taxes on the wealthy....  Seems like he's learning something about economics.

Conservatives against Fascism

Two conservatives note the growth of fascism. 

Thank God for state's rights, then. 

One conservative writes: 

Apparently, Rush Limbaugh and National Review think there is a liberal media because the prison torture scandal could not be suppressed and a cameraman filmed the execution of a wounded Iraqi prisoner by a US Marine. Do the Village Voice and The Nation comprise the "liberal media"? The Village Voice is known for Nat Hentoff and his columns on civil liberties. Every good conservative believes that civil liberties are liberal because they interfere with the police and let criminals go free. The Nation favors spending on the poor and disfavors gun rights, but I don't see the "liberal hate" in The Nation's feeble pages that Rush Limbaugh was denouncing on C-Span.

 

In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.

 

The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."

 

This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.

From the American Conservative a more tempered but wary approach:

the very fact that the f-word can be seriously raised in an American context is evidence enough that we have moved into a new period. The invasion of Iraq has put the possibility of the end to American democracy on the table and has empowered groups on the Right that would acquiesce to and in some cases welcome the suppression of core American freedoms. That would be the titanic irony of course, the mother of them all—that a war initiated under the pretense of spreading democracy would lead to its destruction in one of its very birthplaces. But as historians know, history is full of ironies.

Lew Rockwell, a libertarian writes: 

No, today, the clear and present danger to freedom comes from the right side of the ideological spectrum, those people who are pleased to preserve most of free enterprise but favor top-down management of society, culture, family, and school, and seek to use a messianic and belligerent nationalism to impose their vision of politics on the world.

Via Plastic

Here's one that connects Christianity with Fascism.  And one by my favorite Political Theorist, Sheldon Wolin. 

I don't think that we're about to become a fascist country - although fear is the dominant political argument.  There are too many alternate organizations [we are, after all, a polyarchy].  But the seeds are there, as some desire the destruction of all liberal organizations - like liberal churches.  Conservatives take note.  Those who love liberty, the US, democracy and free-enterprise its time to move away from those who've taken over the Republican party.  Its time for conservatives to restor an old conservatism to the voice of America.  It's time, perhaps, for conservatives to become liberals.

What Bush considers uniquely American

Should I cry?  Should I laugh?  Ladies and gentlemen, another take on American family values.  Now I'm all for work, of course, but this is... ridiculous from a man who never had to work a day in his life.

BUSH: HOLDING THREE JOBS 'UNIQUELY AMERICAN'
Tues Feb 8 2005 9:27:01 ET

Last Friday when promoting social security reform with 'regular' citizens in Omaha, Nebraska, President Bush walked into an awkward unscripted moment in which he stated that carrying three jobs at a time is 'uniquely American.'

While talking with audience participants, the president met Mary Mornin, a woman in her late fifties who told the president she was a divorced mother of three, including a 'mentally challenged' son.

The President comforted Mornin on the security of social security stating that 'the promises made will be kept by the government.'

But without prompting Mornin began to elaborate on her life circumstances.

Begin transcript:

MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)

via drudge

News Diary

Well, it looks as though Rice is making a public attempt to possibly consider approving maybe without stepping on any Israeli toes by mentioning that peace is a good thing, for who could possibly be against it and finally we now have a Palestinian who is [gasp!] serious about peace, but who knows, after all he is a Palestinian which means his peacefullness is just a temporary play, a clever PR game before trying the push Israel and its nuclear bombs into the sea.    Let's be clear - there is no leadership here, and there will be noone who holds Sharon accountable. 

But Thank God for this:            Sharon and Abbas declare end to four years of hostilities.  Abu Mazen, of course, is the one to thank.  The NYRB has some interesting things to say about him: 

Uncomfortable with how negotiations had proceeded up until the Camp David summit, Abu Mazen was adamantly opposed to the outbreak of violence that followed it. Violence long struck him as pointless and unsound, tantamount to using the weakest Palestinian weapon to assail Israel's strongest flank. Abu Mazen looked at violence in purely cost-benefit terms, and while the costs were high, benefits were few: Israelis closed ranks, the United States took sides, the international community turned its back, and the Palestinian Authority fell apart. Instead, he believes the goal ought to be to engage with various Israeli political groups, talk in a language that Washington understands, and rally the world to the Palestinians' cause. To that end, Palestinians must stabilize the situation, restore law and order, rein in all armed militias, build transparent, legitimate centralized institutions, and, above all, cease armed attacks against Israel. In his vision, means and ends mesh: if Palestinians make a fair case, they can get a fair hearing. Out of Palestinian restraint will come both stronger international support and greater receptivity by the Israeli public to logical demands.

Still, there is the fence which continues to be built.  Although I guess I'm impressed it did go to court.

Yes, I'm cynical, because the Palestinian street wants to see some real change - that settlements will stop.  Of course, so do many Jews.  Still, Kudos to Bush for offering $350 mil in aid to the Palestinians. 

As far as the budget goes, I'm all for more frugality.  Merging the 18 Community development programs into one might be sensible.  But cutting education programs  $528 million - well, that's not that much money, and it probably does a lot of good.   And the one good federal program with the Police,  community oriented policing, has been hard hit.  And don't get me started on clean air.  It seems that air is one of those things that... is a... public good?  I mean, we haven't yet figured out a way to privatize that, right?   Still parts of it are misleading. 

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says:  "It omits such things as the   cost of future funding for the war in    

Iraq

and the cost of the   President’s Social Security proposal.  The budget also includes a major new   tax cut that the Congressional Research Service has said eventually would cost   $300 billion to $500 billion over ten years, but the budget uses a timing   gimmick so that this tax cut would save money in the first five years and the   large long-term costs of the tax cut are thereby hidden from view.  The years   in which the tax cut would swell the deficit would be outside the   Administration’s “budget window.”

But take a look at the amount we spend on defense.  It makes me very sympathetic to those who hate taxes.  After all, we don't get a lot of bang for our buck.  Actually, we get a lot of bang for our buck - but that's all we get.  If we spent even forty billion merely on job creation programs, we could  instantaneously create a million jobs - which would, in turn, create even more jobs.

Where do I find love?  All i find is Sex?

A prayer:

Almighty Lord,
When the Bishop sends his canon pastor to the church,
may he be welcomed openly by my secretary and offered coffee,
the delicious sort, with cream and sugar, or with milk if we have no cream.
May we extablish protocol for the bishop's arrival,
and may he not be too upset by my disorganization.
And finally,
let my sins be shriven today,
so that I may eat wonderfully and fully before I give up
meat from mammals and dairy stuff, except eggs, however,
for Lent.
I beseech you, Lord Keep me on the straight path,
your will, however, be done even if that means
forgetting things and remembering others.
AMEN