Flexible Reality
Friday, December 19, 2003
Note #35640
Frankjacob to UCCHRIST CHATTER:
...We know faith beliefs have poured into political life. I believe that it is superficial to assume that where one stands on an issue is the only factor in the voters mind. I believe that there is a stronger correlation between worship styles and political belief and that candidates who can speak in a "worship style" familiar to a voting group can make inroads despite having a different record or different stances on key issues.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
The Death of Horatio Alger
by Paul Krugman
Dec. 15th, 2003
The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago.
The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled "Waking Up From the American Dream." The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society.
And guess what? Our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality, while denouncing anyone who complains--or even points out what is happening--as a practitioner of "class warfare."
Let's talk first about the facts on income distribution. Thirty years ago we were a relatively middle-class nation. It had not always been thus: Gilded Age America was a highly unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920s. During the 1930s and '40s, however, America experienced what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have dubbed the Great Compression: a drastic narrowing of income gaps, probably as a result of New Deal policies. And the new economic order persisted for more than a generation: Strong unions; taxes on inherited wealth, corporate profits and high incomes; close public scrutiny of corporate management--all helped to keep income gaps relatively small. The economy was hardly egalitarian, but a generation ago the gross inequalities of the 1920s seemed very distant.
Now they're back. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez--confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office--between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.) The distribution of income in the United States has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality.
Never mind, say the apologists, who churn out papers with titles like that of a 2001 Heritage Foundation piece, "Income Mobility and the Fallacy of Class-Warfare Arguments." America, they say, isn't a caste society--people with high incomes this year may have low incomes next year and vice versa, and the route to wealth is open to all. That's where those commies at Business Week come in: As they point out (and as economists and sociologists have been pointing out for some time), America actually is more of a caste society than we like to think. And the caste lines have lately become a lot more rigid.
The myth of income mobility has always exceeded the reality: As a general rule, once they've reached their 30s, people don't move up and down the income ladder very much. Conservatives often cite studies like a 1992 report by Glenn Hubbard, a Treasury official under the elder Bush who later became chief economic adviser to the younger Bush, that purport to show large numbers of Americans moving from low-wage to high-wage jobs during their working lives. But what these studies measure, as the economist Kevin Murphy put it, is mainly "the guy who works in the college bookstore and has a real job by his early 30s." Serious studies that exclude this sort of pseudo-mobility show that inequality in average incomes over long periods isn't much smaller than inequality in annual incomes.
What does a neoconservative dream world look like?
Christian Science Monitor
Dec. 17, 2003
Neocons envision a world in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower, immune to threats. They believe that the US has a responsibility to act as a "benevolent global hegemon." In this capacity, the US would maintain an empire of sorts by helping to create democratic, economically liberal governments in place of "failed states" or oppressive regimes they deem threatening to the US or its interests. In the neocon dream world the entire Middle East would be democratized in the belief that this would eliminate a prime breeding ground for terrorists. This approach, they claim, is not only best for the US; it is best for the world. In their view, the world can only achieve peace through strong US leadership backed with credible force, not weak treaties to be disrespected by tyrants.
Any regime that is outwardly hostile to the US and could pose a threat would be confronted aggressively, not "appeased" or merely contained. The US military would be reconfigured around the world to allow for greater flexibility and quicker deployment to hot spots in the Middle East, as well as Central and Southeast Asia. The US would spend more on defense, particularly for high-tech, precision weaponry that could be used in preemptive strikes. It would work through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations when possible, but must never be constrained from acting in its best interests whenever necessary.
Figurines Found in German Cave Are Among Earliest Artwork
Agence France-Presse
One of the pieces is the oldest known representation of a bird, which resembles a cormorant or a duck.
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: December 18, 2003
The New York Times
The prehistoric figurines were found in the Hohle Fels Cave. Three small figurines carved of ivory from mammoth tusks have been found in a cave in southwestern Germany, providing stronger evidence that human ancestors were already adept at figurative art more than 30,000 years ago, an archaeologist is reporting today.
In Debate on Antiterrorism, the Courts Assert Themselves
NBC News
Published: December 19, 2003
NBC News, via Associated Press
A federal appeals court decision could force the government to try Jose Padilla, suspected in a scheme to set off a "dirty bomb," in civilian courts.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 — The broad presidential powers invoked by the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001, to detain suspected terrorists outside the civilian court system is now being challenged by the federal courts, the very branch of the government the White House hoped to circumvent.
The two separate appellate court rulings on Thursday swept away crucial parts of the administration's legal strategy to handle terrorist suspects outside the criminal justice system and incarcerate them indefinitely without access to lawyers or to the evidence against them.
The rulings are by no means a final judicial verdict on the administration's approach. But the rulings demonstrated powerfully the willingness of the courts to challenge the administration's procedures, which were put in place without Congressional approval in the tumultuous months that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.
The issue of whether the administration has gone too far will not be decided definitively until the cases reach the Supreme Court. The court has agreed to decide whether detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are entitled to access to civilian courts to challenge their open-ended detention.
New York and Microsoft File Suits on E-Mail Spam
By SAUL HANSELL
NY Times
Published: December 19, 2003
The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, filed a civil lawsuit yesterday against three marketing companies, accusing them of sending fraudulent e-mail messages, and said that he would seek penalties so large that they would drive each company out of business.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Court OKs Medical Marijuana in Some Cases
Wed Dec 17, 5:43 AM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - An appeals court ruled Tuesday that a federal law outlawing marijuana does not apply to sick people who are allowed to smoke pot with a doctor's recommendation. The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a blow to the federal government in its fight against medical marijuana. The Justice Department has argued that state medical marijuana laws were trumped by federal drug laws.
The case also underscores the conflict between federal law and California's 1996 medical marijuana law, which allows people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. Eight other states have similar laws. The Justice Department was not immediately available to comment on the ruling from an appeals court some call the nation's most liberal.
In its 2-1 decision, the court said prosecuting medical marijuana users under the federal law is unconstitutional if the marijuana is not sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes. Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the majority that smoking pot on the advice of a doctor is "different in kind from drug trafficking." The court added that "this limited use is clearly distinct from the broader illicit drug market."
Tuesday's case in an outgrowth of a 2001 decision by the Supreme Court, which ruled that medical marijuana clubs could not dole out pot on the grounds of "medical necessity," even if patients have a doctor's recommendation to use the drug. Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state have laws similar to California, which has been the focus of federal drug interdiction efforts. Agents have raided and shut down several medical marijuana growing clubs. The appeals court, the nation's largest, has jurisdiction over all the states except Colorado and Maine.
Monday, December 15, 2003
Ecunet Posting
Note #35618 from JOHN TSCHUDY to UCCHRIST CHATTER:
Yesterday I watched a program on gardening. The fellow had on the program a segment where he answered questions about winter gardening. The segment ended with him being asked the question, "If you could have anything you wanted what would it be?" There was a pause and then a picture came up of a bare patch of ground, and then some spheres were dumped on it. The the host answered "Why Peas on Earth, of course."
Now I know the pun is bad but it got me to thinking. In this time of year when we talk so glibly of Peace of Earth in most churches, how can we in the church in honesty even talk about it when the Body of Christ can not bring itself to even truly give witness to the concept of Peace among its own ranks?
The Swiss Theologian Hans Kung argues that there can not be peace on earth until there is peace between religions. Yet even during the Christmas season, the threats of divisions, splits, angry words and threats fills the conversations between various groups of Christians. While various groups give lip service to seeking peace, they insist that their way of understanding the Christian message, is the only correct way. Unless God is worshiped exactly in the way they approve of, God can not properly be worshiped and those who refuse to worship in their way can't be considered Christians of equal standing as they are.
We argue over what are the proper credentials, education level, sex, (and) sexual orientations (of) those properly approved of by God to lead the church must have. We ignore scriptures inclusivity and statements that declare that God shows no partiality and that to commit one sin makes one guilty of committing all sins, because such phrases and ideas, tear at the heart of our biased theologies designed to set our group up as being superior to all others. Then we wonder why a majority of clergy in all traditions finding themselves in conflicted situations. We wonder why many people are finding the institutional church irrelevant to the meeting the needs of their spiritual lives.
My point simply is: until the institutional church is willing to truly seek and work for Peace in the church, which means putting aside our own selfish desires and truly seeking God's way then perhaps all the church is suited to proclaim in this world, this Christmas Season is "Peas on Earth."
Sunday, December 14, 2003
December 14, 2003, 8:15 a.m.
We Got Him
Saddam Hussein in U.S. custody.
ABC News
EDITOR'S NOTE: As Americans awoke Sunday morning, news came from Baghdad that the Fourth Infantry Division had captured Saddam Hussein in a rural farmhouse near Tikrit. Here's the announcement from Iraqi ambassador L. Paul Bremer.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. Saddam Hussein was captured Saturday 13 December at about 2030 local, in a cellar in the town of al-Dawr which is about 15 kilometres south of Tikrit. Before Dr Pachachi, who is the acting president of the governing council, and Lieutenant General Sanchez [the top US military commander in Iraq] speak, I want to say a few words to the people of Iraq.
This is a great day in Iraq's history. For decades, hundreds of thousands of you suffered at the hands of this cruel man. For decades, Saddam Hussein divided you citizens against each other. For decades, he threatened an attack on your neighbours. Those days are over forever. Now it is time to look to the future, to your future of hope, to a future of reconciliation. Now is the time for all Iraqis to build a prosperous, democratic Iraq, at peace with itself and with its neighbors.
Iraq's future, your future, has never been more full of hope. The tyrant is a prisoner. The economy is moving forward. You have before you the prospect of a sovereign government in a few months. With the arrest of Saddam Hussein, there is a new opportunity for the members of the former regime to end their bitter opposition.
Let them now come forward in a spirit of reconciliation and hope, lay down their arms, and join you, their fellow citizens, in the task of building the new Iraq. Now is the time for all Iraqis — Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis, Shia, Christian, and Turkmen — to build a prosperous, democratic Iraq, at peace with itself and with its neighbors."
