31
March
2008
I am sure that others besides me remember the extreme weirdness of a 1300-page USA Patriot Act that had already been drafted and thoroughly honed to gut the United States Constitution well BEFORE the attacks of September 11, 2001.
I remember this period all too well, even as I recall the rising gorge I experienced then in observing how ultra-reactionaries really do play for keeps.
OK, so the ultimate stakes may not be quite as huge. But just the same, my skin started to quiver and my gorge rose perceptibly yet again when the current Treasury secretary, Mr. Henry “Hank” Paulson of Goldman Sachs, rolled out his financial markets reform package over this past weekend.
And how very fascinating it has been to see how the corporate media, including allegedly liberal organs like The New York Times and NPR have been playing this.
They can’t help reporting that Paulson had wanted to put his reforms across earlier. They cannot help pointing out–however deferentially and delicately–that what Paulson really wants is regulatory agency consolidation without regulatory power: that, in actual fact, his scheme would considerably weaken the Securities and Exchange Commission’s existing powers.
Superficially, Paulson’s script is about the need to get a grip on the enormous unregulated capital flows currently controlled by the hedge funds and private equity firms that constitute the leading edge of what, back in the Age of Innocence, we used to call investment banking.
But on the absolutely essential regulatory point–that these high-stakes players no longer be allowed to do huge deals with none of their own money at risk, with only leveraged capital–Mr. Goldman Sachs takes a hands-off approach. Ditto for any regulatory demand that such firms and their accountants be able to report actual assets on actual balance sheets: the routine kind of reporting that you and I are routinely expected to provide as individual taxpayers and/or small business owners.
This conforms to The Hank’s stated belief that U.S. financial markets will lose out to foreign capital markets if we ask for more integrity and more accountability on the part of our financial firms. It hardly matters that this “competitive disadvantage” notion has no basis in reality. What matters is that this notion has been assiduously propagated over several years by the very same U.S. private equity firms whose captains pocket hundreds of millions in compensation each year–and who are still taxed at a mere 15 percent rate as a further reward for practicing unfettered greed with such panache.
And so, in a perverse plot twist that beggars the moral imagination, the precise moment when these big-money players have been caught with their pants down could well become their moment of anti-regulatory triumph.
That is, unless the Democratic leaders of the Democratic Congress speak up and speak out.
So far it’s not looking good. There are two key Democrats to watch: Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer. Both have already said that Paulson’s medicine is terribly weak, but neither has said that Paulson’s medicine is yet more poison.
And why might that be?
Hmmm…let me think.
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
2
January
2008
Published in the San Luis Obispo Tribune News, New Year’s Day 2008.
One hundred years ago—in 1908—Baptist minister and Social Gospel pioneer Walter Rauschenbusch rocked the conscience of the nation with a book called Christianity and the Social Crisis. Rauschenbusch was part of a larger movement within the church that took seriously the “thy will be done on earth” part of the Lord’s Prayer. For them being faithful to the gospel meant trying in serious ways to challenge gross economic inequality, abusive working conditions, the exploitation of women and children, and the militarism and imperialism that were then beginning to dominate U.S. relations with the rest of the world.
For the past thirty years or so, most Americans who think about the social voice of Christianity at all have assumed that the voice belongs to leaders from the Religious Right: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Kennedy, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, etc. Now the tide is shifting again, and a new balance is being struck in which the other strand of American Christianity—the one exemplified by Rauschenbusch but also by Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and many other justice heroes—is again being heard loud and clear. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
19
December
2007
Many of us started our day today hearing the president’s press conference natterings in the background as we tried to munch our breakfast cereal or make our way to work. These past two weeks we also watched Congressional Democrats cave in completely on war spending, renewable energy source requirements for utilities, massive public subsidies to agribusiness, continued favored tax treatment for hedge fund managers, and a range of other vital issues on which they were supposed to lead us in a different direction.
Yes, the news on any given day can make us weep, or make us tremble with outrage, or both.
Yet we Christians live in joy, not despair, and we seek to engage others on the basis of hope, not cynicism. The Advent season helps us understand how and why we can do this. It’s not that we aren’t paying attention to the mendacities and betrayals that characterize these times. It’s that we have ALSO learned to pay attention to something else: to the light that has come into the world, a light that no amount of mendacity and betrayal can extinguish.
Emanuel: God with us, God in us, God through us, God for us. God for this suffering world!
On every single day of the year, PCU seeks to add to the available light, hope, and joy symbolized by Advent. We work tirelessly for the world spoken of in Mary’s song: a world in which the despised poor are lifted up and the hungry are at last filled with good things.
Because we believe passionately in the work we are doing, we aren’t ashamed to to say that we must have your passionate support–your prayers, your time, AND your financial support–in order to keep doing it.
Please consider making a year-end tax-deductible gift to PCU today! You can easily make an online donation here. If you prefer to donate by mail, you can send your check or credit card information (name, address, credit card number, MasterCard or Visa, and expiration date) to
Progressive Christians Uniting
316 W. 2nd Street, Suite 1104
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Thank you, and God bless!
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
12
December
2007
It is always and everywhere a good thing for people like me (smug, self-satisfied religious liberals – yup, that’s me) to be thoroughly doused with fresh cold water. In this case, with living water.
I knew a little bit about Brian McLaren’s remarkable nurturing of emergent Christian thinking and emergent Christian communities before reading his new book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope (just published by Thomas Nelson). But I must say I was not in the least bit prepared for McLaren’s theological range and depth or for his completely compelling social analysis. In a former life McLaren taught college students how to write, and his skill with language shows in the compression and clarity he exhibits in this volume. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
6
November
2007
So thanks to Feinstein and Schumer we’ll be getting a new attorney general who can’t say straight out that waterboarding is torture. What makes us so sure that if voters a year from now choose to put a Democrat in the White House, this new chief executive won’t endorse (in secret, of course) the same kinds of practices–brutal interrogations, detentions, torture, renditions, wiretapping, repression of domestic dissent, etc.–that the current chief promotes? What makes us so sure that the ugly underside of American Empire will operate much differently than it does today? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
25
October
2007
No doubt many of you woke up today hearing Condoleeza Rice calling for much tougher Iran sanctions and mimicking the Vice President in suggesting that imminent “consequences” will follow if Iran does not cease financing terror and (allegedly) supporting anti-U.S. insurgents in Iraq. None of us can any longer dismiss the possibility that the Bush Administration will in fact bomb Iran in the months that remain on their “watch.” But neither should we resign ourselves to this horrendous possibility. We can take steps now that could yet help restrain the warmongers on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Open Conversations. In our congregations and neighborhoods, we can open conversations by saying, simply, “So. It looks like Bush and Cheney actually do intend to bomb Iran before they leave office. Can you believe it?” Lead the conversation in the direction of the terrible strain on our military should this happen, the likelihood of very significant Iranian retaliation against our forces in Iraq, against Israel—possibly even against targets in Europe and North America—and that fact that our forces absolutely do NOT have the capacity to sustain war against Iran beyond the first air strikes. They had no plan for Iraq, as we now know, and they definitely have no plan for Iran beyond bombing that country back to the Stone Age in a first strike. Finally, make the point that the U.S. can never get out of Iraq with any kind of honor unless we start talking to Iran, which has a direct and immediate interest in helping stabilize Iraq following a U.S. troop withdrawal. Thus, by pushing Iran away from any possibility of direct talks, the Bush hardliners also ensure prolongation of the Iraq disaster.
Let Your Representatives in Congress Know You Are Paying Attention. Call or write IMMEDIATELY, telling them you are horrified by the apparent determination of the Bush people to go to the brink of war or beyond. Make all the same points in #1 above: our overstrained military, the near certainty of major Iranian retaliation, and the aggravation and perpetuation of the Iraq madness unless we begin talking to Iran instead of demonizing and threatening them.
Plan What You Will Do If/When the Bombing Begins. Insist that your church peace and justice group or your neighborhood peace group make plans for all the forms your protest and your witness will take if, despite everything, Bush orders bombing. The rest of the world will need to see that while Cheney and the hardcore hawks might be (literally) insane, there remains a vast reservoir of people in America who not only do not support the madmen but who are prepared to make personal sacrifices, if need be, to demonstrate their commitment to peaceful tomorrows.
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
19
October
2007
Progressive Christians Uniting applauds the call for interfaith respect and understanding issued on Oct. 11 by Muslim leaders and scholars from around the world.
The open letter to Christians, signed by 138 noted clerics, theologians, and academics, highlights significant common ground between the two faiths and also underscores the extent of the healing and illumination that are still required if we are to avoid allowing our traditions to continue to support the clash of “ignorant armies,” in Matthew Arnold’s phrasing.
Now Christians everywhere must engage in their own in-depth reflection on the grave damage done not just to the Muslim world but to the integrity of Christian belief itself as a consequence of a continuing demonization of Islam that is actively encouraged by significant segments within the Christian community.
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
2
September
2007
There he was, much too pale and chubby to pass as an old salt but nonetheless perched proudly in the bow of his Newport yacht, the aptly-named Numbers: one Daniel M. Meyers, a founder of First Marblehead, one of the leading players in the $20 billion student loan industry.
And why would I begin a Labor Day rant with this image from the Sunday New York Times business section? Because the piece reports casually, in the context of charting the spectacular profits of companies like Meyers’, that the average debt level carried by newly-minted college graduates has more than doubled over the past decade. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
25
July
2007
So now we know. Congress can huff and puff all it wants. Public support for a continuing U.S. military presence in Iraq can shrink to nothing. But none of it matters. It doesn’t even matter that Al Qaeda is actively regrouping in North Waziristan, where we do not send troops. Reality doesn’t matter. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have already made their plans to keep us in Iraq through 2009.
Can anyone wonder why so many young people–and so many older people as well–begin to doubt whether that word “democracy” means anything at all?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
4
July
2007
On June 21 it was my privilege to take part in a post-screening discussion of the amazing new Michael Winterbotham film, “A Mighty Heart.” The film was shown at Paramount Studios in Hollywood as part of an event organized by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and co-sponored by PCU. By now everyone knows that the film stars Angelina Jolie and that it deals with the kidnapping and murder in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. What no one who hasn’t actually seen the film can know is how movingly Jolie portrays Mariane Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s wife and then widow.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
