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Oct

31

The Bush/Nazi Connection

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The Guardian had an article that came out over a year ago that reported on evidence from the US National Archives shows that Prescott Bush, Dubya’s grandfather, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Bush family wealth is, in part, due to their success in backing the Nazis rise to power with all that that entailed. The tragedy is that it took so long for this information to become public and be corroborated.

Does this make Dubya a bad person? no. But inasmuch as his family’s wealth and name recognition was key for him being nominated for president, rather than him having anything like an illustrious career, it suggests that the man should never have been nominated for president in the first place. He wasn’t qualified for the oval office and his family wealth was not gained in a deserving manner. And now, we’re starting to realize the bitter fruits of putting him into such a position of influence…. What a pity the Guardian article didn’t come out sooner and gain a wider circulation!

Here is a selection, it describes that the wrongdoing by Prescott’s company was that it continued to do business with the financial backers of the Nazi party after the US declared war with Germany. Because of this it was

recommended that the assets [of the company] be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler’s rise to power.

The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.
…
What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in “the banking and intelligence communities” and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.
…
More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.

dlw

Oct

31

Luke 18:4-5

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I wrote Stephen Carter another email with the above as a title. I guess the reference would be that I planned to continue to plea until I received justice and so I wrote to him…

I was hoping you would give me your informed opinion on my idea to depoliticize abortion and help me to make it better known as an alternative to the existing proposals. I think it is key as I do not want this issue being decisive in determining who are next Sup Court Justice will be.

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Oct

30

Benefits and Costs of a Basic Income Guarantee!

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There is a paper written by a Christian Institutional Economist, Charley Clark, I know that calculates the cost of a Basic Income Guarantee program. I thought I’d share some of the stats.

The hypothetical plan is for 1999, using Census information.

It assumes a fixed population. Those under 18 would get 3,500 a year. Those over 18 and less than 65 would get 8667 a year. Those over 65 would get 7990. When these payment values are determined, the cost of the transfers totals to just shy of 2 trillion dollars.

But, holding all other non-affected expenditures and alternative forms of tax revenue constant, one can pay for this with a flat-tax of .358. This means that everyone, regardless of income, pays only 36 cents of every dollar that they earn in income taxes.

The model predicts, in thousands of 1999 dollars, that the bottom quintile of household income would rise from 7.1 to 16.7, the 2nd quintile would rise from 17.6 to 24.8, the third quintile would rise from 30.2 to 34.4, the 4th quintile would drop from 48.6 to 47.5, and the top quintile would drop from 99.7 to 79.6.

My concerns with the model is that it does put the majority of fed’l revenue due to the flat-tax and it doesn’t consider the extent the behavioral effect of the elimination of all of the tax-exemptions would have on the behavior of the wealthy. But, to tell you the truth, I don’t think that sort of thing can be simulated easily, you need to phase in changes so as to empirically observe how behavior tends to change.

I myself would prefer to shift tax-burden from income to more taxes on oil/gas, taxes on campaign contributions, and advertisements, pollution taxes. I also am very open to Land Value taxes that tend to encourage land value improvement.

All of this is apart from the debate over from what level of expenditures should we have in our gov’t, but I think a good case can be made so that the marginal income taxes were lowered, perhaps to within the range of 20-25%. I think one can also pass a constitutional amendment so that we would have severe restrictions on exemptions and the marginal tax-rates for higher incomes could not be raised. I think that would reduce waste from people gaming the system and keep incentives for people to work high. It would also constrain class warfare.

One consequence of this would be that Churches would lose the ability of their members to use their giving as a tax-exemption. But with the higher incomes for naturally-lower income people, church giving is likely to go up and churches wouldn’t need to cater so much to those members with higher incomes. And with the higher incomes, there should be less crime, better homogeneity in schooling quality, more people could afford health-care.

As such, while there may still be some problems, I think it would be a change that is worth discussing more.

dlw
I also posted this at Theologyweb, where I’ve gotten some good and some idiotic feedback. It’s truly amazing how some people see red when they see anything that resembles “socialism” in their minds.
dlw

Oct

30

Hope???

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I just found out that a member of my church is going to run for gov’r of MN. She doesn’t have a party, but has a vision for how things could be done a lot better. I’m hoping that I can share with her my Christian Pragmatic Progressive Party platform and that we can work together to form a MN (Christian) Pragmatic Progressive Party or something.

We’ll see…

I think that third parties need to take controversial stances on issues being ignored by the main two parties that are not completely unfeasible in some compromised version of coming into being. They also are the only hope we have for reframing the cultural wars issues, inasmuch as the constituencies in the main parties are too hardened and have too much to lose to try something different. I also think that having the word Christian in the party name would make a difference, inasmuch as if it helps the party to draw votes from both Pubs or Dems, it will make it so the party wouldn’t just help to spoil the election.

dlw

Oct

29

New Progressive Coalition

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I found out via ads at TPM about the above organization.

mission is to wire progressive politics by cross-connecting progressive political entrepreneurs, organizations and investors to fuel a political machine that harnesses the left’s potential.

The 2004 elections underlined that the right-wing’s profound influence over the national agenda and direction of our country did not happen overnight. The so-called “vast right-wing conspiracy” is a powerful $300 million network of conservative policy think tanks, grassroots organizations, advocacy groups and media entities that took decades to build.

For too long, progressives have failed to develop our own infrastructure and make these investments in our future. Despite the $2.2 billion spent in 2004, and a great wellspring of progressive energy and talent, progressive efforts were undermined by an inability to look beyond single-issue campaigns, the efficient architecture constructed by the conservative movement and the fact that when the polls close, so do our pocketbooks.

The problem isn’t that we lack the will, resources or imagination to succeed. It’s that we’re not wiring our political capital—connecting our best minds and strategic investors willing to take risk—to truly ignite the full potential of our movement.

Seems interesting, I consider myself a moral entrepreneur and might want to look into it. I agree completely that infrastructure is pretty key to political effectiveness. I am thinking that perhaps one result that will come about in the coming year is that the religious right will be split into Christian Democrat centrists and Economic Conservatives, using God-speak to espouse libertarian-type policies. My bet is that the former will be stronger than the latter.

dlw

Oct

28

Demand the Truth!

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I joined others with Sojourners to sign a petition to demand the truth about why we went to war with Iraq.

I think we’ve just begun with Libby. I hope and pray that Bush will receive an extra portion of wisdom in the days ahead and that he won’t just cleave to power at all cost.

I also hope and pray that we’ll find a way to defuse the cultural wars issues in the coming days so that the religious right rank and file will tell their leaders that they don’t want them charging wind-mills.

I think that the way is to encourage the religious right to emulate their european brethren and move towards a Christian Democrat-style agenda. Matt Iglesias thinks there is this trend and sees evidence for it in a recent speech by Rick Santorum. Here is the Finnish Christian Democrat Party’s basic principles. It’s kind of humorous that they use man a lot, but all there main leaders are females, some of them rather attractive looking. Apparently, in Australia the Christian Democratic Party is fostering a debate over whether Christians should have anything to do with politics or have their own party. All of this would be a step in the right direction if it also included developing better habits of political deliberation among religious right voters.

The truth of the matter is that the way things have been can’t persist in the US. There is going to need to be a change in strategies and goals and that’s bound to change the dynamics of US politics. Lets hope that the Christian Pragmatic Progressive Party may help inspire some changes in other parties. I prefer a focus on trying to deepen people’s habits of deliberation and to participate in the reforming of the rules of the game to an endorsement of any particular sets of issues, though I think family-friendly legislation is always going to be an important issue. I anticipate more dialogue on how we can foster a shift towards a more Christian Democratic party stance among the religious right in the future at this blog.

dlw

Oct

27

We’re Willing to Censor, Some!

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Last night, I finished my post on “Good Night, and Good Luck!” relatively late and as often is the case had a hard time stopping thinking about it as I tried to fall asleep. And what came to me was that if I had been Ed Murrow, in that scene where “See it Now” lay in the balance, I would have replied to Paley that “Okay, We’re Willing to Censor, Some!” And then I would continue to suggest what Paley could do. He could aggressively market in the public sphere just what “See it Now” had done wrt Joe McCarthy. He could call for public support to help provide the public good of “See it Now” journalism. And, in return, we’ll give up some of the autonomy of the show, in terms of what projects it will pursue.

I say this because I think the greater good would have been served if “See it Now” had remained on the air in prime-time, keeping up the memory of Joe McCarthy and the need for investigative journalism, rather than making Americans more materialistic, as the Quiz Show did. I think this fits with the compromise needed for the principles for democracy. Autonomy of the press is an ideal, but it’s not the end-all-be-all of ideals. It would have been worth compromising the autonomy of the press to keep “See it Now” on the air so that it could continue to witness as a show to the importance of telling the truth and loving our enemies or those with whom we disagree strongly.

And the truth of the matter is that one cannot accurately report the facts of the news, what is happening and what could be happening, without some normative editorial twist. Even suggesting that something should be debated is bound to step on someone’s toes. And so the issue is the autonomy of the press, not their bias, inasmuch as it is nigh impossible to adequately define what would be unbiased journalism, which doesn’t mean there aren’t ethical standards and a need for the US MSM to get religion better as is discussed regularly at GetReligion .

dlw

Oct

26

Watching Movies with My Grandpa

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This is…Minnesota.

I saw “Good Night, and Good Luck.” with my grandfather tonight. As I mentioned before, it is set in 1953 and about how Ed Murrow and a group of newsmen ended Joseph McCarthy’s Anti-Communism witch-hunts. I love Ed Murrow’s line,

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof. We will not walk in fear one of another. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. “

I got into the film a little late, in part because my grandpa broke his leg last spring and now can only walk with a walker. He’s also blind and so I had to narrate what was going on on the screen for him. My grandfather was living in Canada in 1953. He’s from Alberta originally, the son of a Swedish migrant who turned away from becoming a wealthy farmer to become a pastor and a church-planter after he becamed saved shortly after migrating to Canada. My grandfather followed in his father’s footsteps and was the one who first encouraged me to go to seminary. His career was mainly with rural parishes in MN, WI and Canada, where you got paid as a pastor about the same amount as the poorest person in your congregation. Him and my uncles always had to cut firewood to help make ends meet and my grandma actually made more money than he did as an elementary school teacher, which made for an interesting marriage. My mom went to High School in the boonies of Ontario across the border from int’l falls. That and the extent we vacationed in Canada and how I went to visit my grandparents nearly every day after school when I was in jr high combined to make me a very much Canadian-influence Minnesotan who ends a good deal of his statements with an aye. And so it’s no wonder I’m such a Pinko, aye?

But I liked the film a lot. I love more historical films that engage the mind. I agree with Jürgen Fauth that,

Dramatically, “Good Night, And Good Luck” falls somewhat short, simply because it aspires to the same objective ethics as its hero. The movie is too high-minded to feed the audience cheap reversals and triumphant climaxes. Morrow’s televised civics lectures, invariably delivered with a lit cigarette dangling from his fingers, are the very definition of sober and rational; the courage on display is almost intoxicating. Clooney, it is clear, doesn’t think of his target audience as consumers: this is a film for engaged citizens.

But it really does engage you as a film. Unfortunately, it may not sell terribly well. There were hardly anyone in the theater for the screening my grandfather and I caught. And it was mainly older people like him.

Afterwards, My grandfather and I didn’t talk about the film. My grandfather, God bless his soul, gets too much of his “news” from Limbaugh. On the way to the theater, we discussed some of the current events and he thought that the whole thing with Rove, Libby and DeLay was just politics. Though, when pressed he could admit that it might not be just politics as Clinton had proven that politicians could lie and presumably one can lie about more than receiving sexual favors while in the WH. And so the discussion ended with a well let’s wait and see what happens. Then, on the way back, we got talking about gas prices and he was pretty sanguine about oil and mentioned how he had heard that there was some new car that drives on water. It all kind of made me feel sad about the way the entertainment-oriented talk-radio spreads so many mistruths about what’s going on with people like him who’ve come to distrust the Mainstream Media(MSM).

But, on the positive side, he did like the film, or said so when I dropped him off, and I did get to share with him more about myself. On the way over, I got to tell him some about what I’d been writing recently about John Perkins and then on the way back, as we enjoyed a meal at Hardees, I shared some about what I’d been studying about the politics of Jesus. And when I dropped him off with my grandmother, I told her that, while the movie didn’t quote any Bible verses, it did speak of the importance of telling the truth and loving our enemies, or those we disagree very much with.

And I think that, while I agree with Harold Evans that the movie is “an indictment of what network television in America has become… deserting the civic values of its greatest broadcaster,” the real issue is one of values. And the real question is about how will we bring about cultural renewal in the US. Murrow reminds us that, “if we dig deep into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular.”

But the danger is not just that we will be scared back into an age of “Unreason”, no the existence of a human tendency for a manicheistic herd mentality made cowering in the wake of a raging bull like McCarthy quite reasonable, just as CBS-exec William Paley’s concern for the bottom-line and financial stability made it quite reasonable to replace “See it Now” with the infamous cash-cow “$64,000 Challenge” and there really isn’t any practical need for most folks to know even who Ed Murrow and Joseph McCarthy are, they can remain rationally ignorant and enjoy popcorn flicks like Doom. And the danger is not religion, per se, as we find when we dig deep into our history that the problem has not been our religiosity, but rather our hypocripsy and how frequently “absolute morality” has been wielded to reify the status quo and to justify the use of force.

I think George Clooney captures in his interview with PBS the quasi-religious tension inherent in the film; for him, it really is a personal film. He also feels like he is laying his career on the line by critiquing the way things are. Clooney grew up in the local news radio business, back when stations didn’t make much money but they did have more autonomy than as of late. For him, Murrow’s stand against McCarthy along with Cronkite talking about how Vietnam doesn’t work are high points of journalism when American policy was changed. But when you think about it, they’re both negative actions where “wrong behavior” was stopped short. They don’t really point to what ought to be done, what more than our own entertainment and ego gratification we should strive for in our lives. Clooney wants to make movies of lasting value, not just block-busters that sell well, due to the hefty Hollywood advertising budgets behind it. He’s “terrified of waking up at 65 years old, which is getting closer, and to wake up and say I didn’t do the things that I was supposed to do,” which raises the obvious question of what sorts of things are you s’posed to do? The answer for Clooney being:to be a good citizen and help bring focus to stuff people should care about and try to stay informed about what on earth those two things are supposed to be about and making indie movies that get in the face of our popular culture like Good Night, and Good Luck or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

And I guess I hear that and it saddens me that we fall so easily on a weak-wristed form of public civic religion that unfortunately didn’t sink very deep-roots in the past and has been unravelling in the past thirty-some years. But I guess have also endorsed a version of it that I learned when I was in grad-school when I was a prof in Mexico at a private secular university. I called it moral realism, the idea that there are relatively absolute absolutes that do conflict in the here-n-now ethical dilemmas we face and that ultimately underly our cultural values. There is realism in these moral values in that they precede and therein transcend us, with their precise origin and nature being a matter of legitimate dispute and not being something that it is essential for us to come to complete on, for us to be able to dialogue/reason together about what ought to be done.

I also think that it’s a tragedy that Paley didn’t go the other direction and make Murrow and his crew out into heroes and petition that their show be given the public support that it needed to continue in its prominent time-slot position. We need folks that are willing to stir things up some to promote change or provide the political cover needed for others to promote changes. This ain’t the best of all possible worlds and we fallen humans do tend to act in our self-interest in much of our actions in life, often in a rear-guard defensiveness, and so we must be open to the need for changes and accepting that they will inevitably be controversial and maybe even “not-so-great” for the bottom-line, at least in the short-term.

so Good Night, and God Bless!
dlw

Oct

26

John Perkins on the Christian Community Development Association

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The second part of John Perkins’ talk last Saturday was about Christian Community Development.

Before giving the talk, he emphasized that what was presented was something that was learned gradually over time through a shared deliberation on people’s experiences. And so while the presentation may come across as this is the way to do Christian Community Development, the truth is ist just a stage that is open to further development. He also shared in the Q n A session that part of why Perkins emphasises the need to authenticate and preach the Gospel is because he saw in himself his potential for evil. He saw after his night in jail when he was almost murdered that if he had had atomic energy, he would have blown up all the white folks that he could find. He is thankful for all the heroes that helped him absolve some of his hatred and pain and return to health.

Christian Community Development Association

Background The origin of the concept of the CCDA was the American Medical Association(AMA). The idea was that the practitioners would write articles that all would read and study and then they would hold conferences that would show others how do procedures to help them keep up-to-date with the latest technology. John elaborates on this by describing how there exists a Hamburger association where they share how to market hamburgers together and then they go out and compete.

The CCDA started with 30 associations and now has over a thousand associations. Its one of most multiracial organizations in America. Among other things, it deals with how reach young people, put together philosophy of ministry, or what are the nonnegotiable principles of how do ministry. This usually is modelled after the fruits of Spirit. John emphasized that, like the fruits of the spirit, it consists of many principles, all of which are needed to produce fruit. You cannot get rid of the parts you don’t like. You must take it altogether and that part is what challenges people the most.

The biblical principles for Christian Community Development have eight components.
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Oct

26

Walmart Corp. is Not my Neighbor!

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But its employees without adequate healthcare are my neighbors. You can read a good summary of the recent article in the NYTIMES about an important memo that has emerged at TPMCafe. The Memo shows that Walmart wants to contain its benefits costs and plans to get rid of “cross-subsidization” (yes, the memo actually uses the word) — of spouses, of the old, of the sick. It also emerges that about 46% of the children of Walmart employees are either without healthcare or on tax-payer funded public healthcare.

I’m not an expert on health-care, but I’ve had opportunities to listen to healthcare experts like Frank Sloan, who is part of the center for Health-Policy Management at Duke University. Sloan is a practical health economist, whose devotion to improving health-care practice stems in part from his Christianity, as also may be his methodological humility in outlining for others the tentative nature of assumptions needed for much cost-benefit analysis. He also, like this year’s Nobel Prize recipient Schmoller, is quite open to learning from other disciplines when they can contribute to a better understanding of the problems faced in doing research. He was the editor of a book, Valuing Health Care : Costs, Benefits, and Effectiveness of Pharmaceuticals and Other Medical Technologies. My general impression I got from him during a seminar he gave in Mexico at my university was that there are ways to measure what the cost of various health services should be and to check the influence of HMOs and Doctors on what the price of their services are, making the public provision of healthcare less expensive.

We don’t need a Canadian Health Care system, but we can cross-subsidize much of the healthcare costs for our population. As implied above, it would definitely be a way to love our neighbors.

dlw

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