The National Catholic Reporter says a very brave diocesan priest in California has told his college congregation that their bishops are wrong to support a state initiative to reverse the California Supreme Court's ruling that gay couples have a constitutional right to marry. The bulk of NCR's article follows.
In his Sunday homily Oct. 6, Fr. Geoffrey Farrow, a diocesan priest, criticized church leadership for supporting Proposition 8, a state ballot measure that would make it unconstitutional for same-sex couples to marry.
“In directing the faithful to vote ‘Yes’ on Proposition 8, the California bishops are not only entering the political arena, they are ignoring the advances and insights of neurology, psychology, and the very statements by the church itself that homosexuality is [an] innate [orientation],” Farrow told the congregation at the St. Paul Newman Center at the University of California in Fresno.
In May, the California Supreme Court ruled that a state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman is unconstitutional and that same-sex couples have the right to designate their unions as marriages.
The California bishops called the ruling a “radical change in public policy” that “discounts the biological and organic reality of marriage.” They climbed aboard a movement to reverse the ruling by getting Proposition 8 onto the state ballot in November. And they encouraged “Catholics to provide both the financial support and the volunteer efforts needed for the passage of” Proposition 8.
In a statement to Catholics issued in August, the bishops had written that the court ruling is a “radical change in public policy” insofar as it “discounts the biological and organic reality of marriage” what they consider “the ideal relationship between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation and the continuation of the human race.”
The ruling also “diminishes the word marriage to mean only a ‘partnership’ a purely adult contractual arrangement for individuals over the age of 18,” according to the bishops.
Farrow told worshippers the bishops’ support for Proposition 8 “has placed me in a moral predicament.” He added, “At what point do you cease to be an agent for healing and growth and become an accomplice of injustice?”
He continued: “The statement made by the bishop reaffirms the feelings of exclusion and alienation that are suffered by individuals and their loved ones who have left the church over this very issue. . . .
“How exactly is society helped by singling out a minority and excluding them from the union of love and life, which is marriage? How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives? . . .
“This ‘theology,’ which is parroted by clerics in polished tones from pulpits, produces the very prejudice and hatred in our society which they claim to abhor. . . .
“I do not presume to tell you how to vote, but I do ask that you pray to the Creator of us all. Think and consider the effects of your vote on others, especially minorities in our society who are sitting next to you in church, and at work. … Personally, I am morally compelled to vote ‘No’ on Proposition 8.”
Farrow also told local media, he is a gay man. “It’s a secondary issue. But, yes, I am,” he said.
Farrow told NCR Oct. 8 that he had taken a personal retreat this week. He said he had written to his bishop, John Steinbock, saying that he planned to return to the Newman Center and his job as pastor there Oct. 13.
A spokesman for the Fresno diocese said Farrow’s whereabouts were unknown and he had no comment about the priest’s status.
A Sept. 18 Field Poll found that 38 percent of likely voters support the initiative, with 55 percent opposed. A CBS poll, conducted Oct. 4-5 among 670 likely voters, showed Proposition 8 winning statewide by a five-point margin, 42-to-47 percent.
Supporters of the initiative have raised $28.6 million, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports, while opponents have pulled in $21.4 million, including a $1.275 million contribution from the Connecticut-based Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal order. Raising funds is crucial in California where television advertising sets the tone, tenor, and messaging for each side.
In Los Angeles, Fr. Kevin Steen, a former Benedictine monk, is working to defeat Proposition 8.
“The bishops are trying to impose their theology on everybody else,” said Steen, who works with California Faith for Equality, a statewide interfaith network of congregations and people of faith. “Marriage is a civil matter best left to [secular] authorities.”
A member of the Catholic organization for gay, lesbian and transgender person, Dignity, Steen says he and others have written to Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney, requesting to speak with him. “We send letters and get form letters back. It’s very sad and hurtful he won’t speak with us and listen to our stories.”
A spokesperson for the cardinal said Steen is not in official standing with the Los Angeles archdiocese.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Vatican Refusal to Open Pius XII Archives Continues to Harm Relations with Jews
On October 6th the first rabbi ever invited to speak at the Catholic Church's international Synod of Bishops told Reuters that if he had understood that this week the Vatican also planned to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pope Pius XII's death, he would have considered not coming.
National Catholic Reporter columnist John Allen Jr. says that Israel's Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Shear-Yashuv Cohen, was taking direct aim at Pius XII when he supplemented his prepared text on the Jewish approach to scripture by saying: “We cannot forget the sad and painful fact of how many, including great religious leaders, didn’t raise a voice in the effort to save our brethren, but chose to keep silent and help secretly. We cannot forgive and forget, and we hope you understand our pain, our sorrow.”
Allen noted: "Cohen's remarks come at a delicate moment, as Benedict XVI weighs whether to move forward in declaring his controversial predecessor a saint. In May 2007, the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints voted to endorse Pius XII's 'heroic virtue,' the first formal step in the process, and a document confirming that verdict is now awaiting a papal signature. Only when that occurs can officials move forward with investigation of a miracle, which is required for beatification. Another miracle would be required for eventual canonization."
In a new posting, however, Allen reports that in a homily at St. Peter's Basilica, "Pope Benedict XVI today issued a ringing defense of his controversial predecessor, Pope Pius XII, the wartime pope whose alleged silence during the Holocaust has long been a sticking point in Jewish/Catholic relations."
The new posting lists various arguments that Benedict raised to defend the way his predecessor acted during World War II. Unfortunately, the Jews have heard all of these arguments before and do not find them convincing.
Allen reports that, anticipating Benedict's intent to move forward with the process to declare Pius XII a saint, "the Anti-Defamation League earlier this week used the occasion of the anniversary of Pius XII’s death to re-issue its call for the Vatican to completely open its World War II-era archives. Up to this point, the Vatican has only published selected materials from that period, citing the normal time lag in opening historical records and the difficulties of cataloguing delicate materials in multiple languages."
Allen quoted Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national director: “Until the Vatican's secret archives are declassified, Pius’ record vis-à-vis Jews will continue to be shrouded and a source of controversy and contention. We strongly urge the Vatican to make full and complete access to the archives of this period its highest priority and call on all interested parties to assist.”
As I have observed here before, opening the archives might not be enough to convince either side to buy the other's interpretation of Pius XII. But until the archives are made public in full, it is impossible to quiet Jewish fears that the Vatican has something to hide.
National Catholic Reporter columnist John Allen Jr. says that Israel's Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Shear-Yashuv Cohen, was taking direct aim at Pius XII when he supplemented his prepared text on the Jewish approach to scripture by saying: “We cannot forget the sad and painful fact of how many, including great religious leaders, didn’t raise a voice in the effort to save our brethren, but chose to keep silent and help secretly. We cannot forgive and forget, and we hope you understand our pain, our sorrow.”
Allen noted: "Cohen's remarks come at a delicate moment, as Benedict XVI weighs whether to move forward in declaring his controversial predecessor a saint. In May 2007, the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints voted to endorse Pius XII's 'heroic virtue,' the first formal step in the process, and a document confirming that verdict is now awaiting a papal signature. Only when that occurs can officials move forward with investigation of a miracle, which is required for beatification. Another miracle would be required for eventual canonization."
In a new posting, however, Allen reports that in a homily at St. Peter's Basilica, "Pope Benedict XVI today issued a ringing defense of his controversial predecessor, Pope Pius XII, the wartime pope whose alleged silence during the Holocaust has long been a sticking point in Jewish/Catholic relations."
The new posting lists various arguments that Benedict raised to defend the way his predecessor acted during World War II. Unfortunately, the Jews have heard all of these arguments before and do not find them convincing.
Allen reports that, anticipating Benedict's intent to move forward with the process to declare Pius XII a saint, "the Anti-Defamation League earlier this week used the occasion of the anniversary of Pius XII’s death to re-issue its call for the Vatican to completely open its World War II-era archives. Up to this point, the Vatican has only published selected materials from that period, citing the normal time lag in opening historical records and the difficulties of cataloguing delicate materials in multiple languages."
Allen quoted Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national director: “Until the Vatican's secret archives are declassified, Pius’ record vis-à-vis Jews will continue to be shrouded and a source of controversy and contention. We strongly urge the Vatican to make full and complete access to the archives of this period its highest priority and call on all interested parties to assist.”
As I have observed here before, opening the archives might not be enough to convince either side to buy the other's interpretation of Pius XII. But until the archives are made public in full, it is impossible to quiet Jewish fears that the Vatican has something to hide.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Blaming the Credit Crisis on Poor Minority Homeowners Is Another Conservative Lie
In an excellent commentary posted yesterday Newsweek columnist Daniel Gross debunked the claim by the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer and other conservative patrons of financial deregulation, that the current fiscal crisis was caused by bad loans made to the poor. Since this mistaken idea underlies John McCain’s claim in the debate last night that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the culprits that got the crisis going, it’s important to pay a lot of attention to Gross’s analysis. The bulk of it follows.
Let me get this straight. Investment banks and insurance companies run by centimillionaires blow up, and it's the fault of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and poor minorities?
These arguments are generally made by people who read the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and ignore the rest of the paper—economic know-nothings whose opinions are informed mostly by ideology and, occasionally, by prejudice. Let's be honest. Fannie and Freddie, which didn't make subprime loans but did buy subprime loans made by others, were part of the problem. Poor congressional oversight was part of the problem. Banks that sought to meet CRA requirements by indiscriminately doling out loans to minorities may have been part of the problem. But none of these issues is the cause of the problem. Not by a long shot. From the beginning, subprime has been a symptom, not a cause. And the notion that the Community Reinvestment Act is somehow responsible for poor lending decisions is absurd.
Here's why.
The Community Reinvestment Act applies to depository banks. But many of the institutions that spurred the massive growth of the subprime market weren't regulated banks. They were outfits such as Argent and American Home Mortgage, which were generally not regulated by the Federal Reserve or other entities that monitored compliance with CRA. These institutions worked hand in glove with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, entities to which the CRA likewise didn't apply. There's much more. As Barry Ritholtz notes in this fine rant, the CRA didn't force mortgage companies to offer loans for no-money down, or to throw underwriting standards out the window, or to encourage mortgage brokers to aggressively seek out new markets. Nor did the CRA force the credit-rating agencies to slap high-grade ratings on subprime debt.
Second, many of the biggest flameouts in real estate have had nothing to do with subprime lending. WCI Communities, builder of highly amenitized condos in Florida (no subprime purchasers welcome there), filed for bankruptcy in August. Very few of the tens of thousands of now-surplus condominiums in Miami were conceived to be marketed to subprime borrowers, or minorities—unless you count rich Venezuelans and Colombians as minorities. The multi-year plague that has been documented in brilliant detail at IrvineHousingBlog is playing out in one of the least subprime housing markets in the nation.
Third, lending money to poor people and minorities isn't inherently risky. There's plenty of evidence that in fact it's not that risky at all. That's what we've learned from several decades of microlending programs, at home and abroad, with their very high repayment rates. And as The New York Times recently reported, Nehemiah Homes, a long-running initiative to build homes and sell them to the working poor in subprime areas of New York's outer boroughs, has a repayment rate that lenders in Greenwich, Conn., would envy. In 27 years, there have been fewer than 10 defaults on the project's 3,900 homes. That's a rate of 0.25 percent.
On the other hand, lending money recklessly to obscenely rich white guys, such as Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, or Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, can be really risky. In fact, it's even more risky, since they have a lot more borrowing capacity. And, here, again, it's difficult to imagine how Jimmy Carter could be responsible for the supremely poor decision-making seen in the financial system. I await the Krauthammer column in which he points out the specific provision of the Community Reinvestment Act that forced Bear Stearns to run with an absurd leverage ratio of 33:1, that instructed Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers to blow up hundreds of millions of their clients money, and that required its septuagenarian CEO to play bridge while his company ran into trouble. Perhaps Neil Cavuto knows which CRA clause required Lehman Brothers to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars in short-term debt in the capital markets and then buy tens of billions of dollars of commercial real estate at the top of the market. I can't find it. Did AIG plunge into the credit-default swaps business with abandon because ACORN members picketed its offices? Please. How about the hundreds of billions of dollars of leveraged loans—loans banks committed to private equity firms that wanted to conduct leveraged buyouts of retailers, restaurant companies, and industrial firms? Many of those are going bad now, too. Is that Bill Clinton's fault?
Look. There was a culture of stupid, reckless lending, of which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the subprime lenders were an integral part. But the dumb lending virus originated in Greenwich, Ct., midtown Manhattan, and Southern California, not Eastchester, Brownsville, and Washington. Investment banks created a demand for subprime loans because they saw it as a new asset class that they could dominate. They made subprime loans for the same reason they made other loans: They could get paid for making the loans, for turning them into securities, and for trading them—frequently using borrowed capital.
At Monday's hearing, Republican Rep. John Mica of Florida gamely tried to pin Lehman's demise on Fannie and Freddie. After comparing Lehman's small political contributions to Fannie and Freddie's much larger ones, Mica asked Fuld what role Fannie and Freddie's failure played in Lehman's demise. Fuld's response: "de minimis."
Lending money to poor people doesn't make you poor. Lending money poorly to rich people does.
Let me get this straight. Investment banks and insurance companies run by centimillionaires blow up, and it's the fault of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and poor minorities?
These arguments are generally made by people who read the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and ignore the rest of the paper—economic know-nothings whose opinions are informed mostly by ideology and, occasionally, by prejudice. Let's be honest. Fannie and Freddie, which didn't make subprime loans but did buy subprime loans made by others, were part of the problem. Poor congressional oversight was part of the problem. Banks that sought to meet CRA requirements by indiscriminately doling out loans to minorities may have been part of the problem. But none of these issues is the cause of the problem. Not by a long shot. From the beginning, subprime has been a symptom, not a cause. And the notion that the Community Reinvestment Act is somehow responsible for poor lending decisions is absurd.
Here's why.
The Community Reinvestment Act applies to depository banks. But many of the institutions that spurred the massive growth of the subprime market weren't regulated banks. They were outfits such as Argent and American Home Mortgage, which were generally not regulated by the Federal Reserve or other entities that monitored compliance with CRA. These institutions worked hand in glove with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, entities to which the CRA likewise didn't apply. There's much more. As Barry Ritholtz notes in this fine rant, the CRA didn't force mortgage companies to offer loans for no-money down, or to throw underwriting standards out the window, or to encourage mortgage brokers to aggressively seek out new markets. Nor did the CRA force the credit-rating agencies to slap high-grade ratings on subprime debt.
Second, many of the biggest flameouts in real estate have had nothing to do with subprime lending. WCI Communities, builder of highly amenitized condos in Florida (no subprime purchasers welcome there), filed for bankruptcy in August. Very few of the tens of thousands of now-surplus condominiums in Miami were conceived to be marketed to subprime borrowers, or minorities—unless you count rich Venezuelans and Colombians as minorities. The multi-year plague that has been documented in brilliant detail at IrvineHousingBlog is playing out in one of the least subprime housing markets in the nation.
Third, lending money to poor people and minorities isn't inherently risky. There's plenty of evidence that in fact it's not that risky at all. That's what we've learned from several decades of microlending programs, at home and abroad, with their very high repayment rates. And as The New York Times recently reported, Nehemiah Homes, a long-running initiative to build homes and sell them to the working poor in subprime areas of New York's outer boroughs, has a repayment rate that lenders in Greenwich, Conn., would envy. In 27 years, there have been fewer than 10 defaults on the project's 3,900 homes. That's a rate of 0.25 percent.
On the other hand, lending money recklessly to obscenely rich white guys, such as Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, or Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, can be really risky. In fact, it's even more risky, since they have a lot more borrowing capacity. And, here, again, it's difficult to imagine how Jimmy Carter could be responsible for the supremely poor decision-making seen in the financial system. I await the Krauthammer column in which he points out the specific provision of the Community Reinvestment Act that forced Bear Stearns to run with an absurd leverage ratio of 33:1, that instructed Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers to blow up hundreds of millions of their clients money, and that required its septuagenarian CEO to play bridge while his company ran into trouble. Perhaps Neil Cavuto knows which CRA clause required Lehman Brothers to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars in short-term debt in the capital markets and then buy tens of billions of dollars of commercial real estate at the top of the market. I can't find it. Did AIG plunge into the credit-default swaps business with abandon because ACORN members picketed its offices? Please. How about the hundreds of billions of dollars of leveraged loans—loans banks committed to private equity firms that wanted to conduct leveraged buyouts of retailers, restaurant companies, and industrial firms? Many of those are going bad now, too. Is that Bill Clinton's fault?
Look. There was a culture of stupid, reckless lending, of which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the subprime lenders were an integral part. But the dumb lending virus originated in Greenwich, Ct., midtown Manhattan, and Southern California, not Eastchester, Brownsville, and Washington. Investment banks created a demand for subprime loans because they saw it as a new asset class that they could dominate. They made subprime loans for the same reason they made other loans: They could get paid for making the loans, for turning them into securities, and for trading them—frequently using borrowed capital.
At Monday's hearing, Republican Rep. John Mica of Florida gamely tried to pin Lehman's demise on Fannie and Freddie. After comparing Lehman's small political contributions to Fannie and Freddie's much larger ones, Mica asked Fuld what role Fannie and Freddie's failure played in Lehman's demise. Fuld's response: "de minimis."
Lending money to poor people doesn't make you poor. Lending money poorly to rich people does.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Retired Houston Minister: "If I Vote for Obama, I Will Be Over My Prejudice for Sure"
A retired Houston minister and his wife, who both grew up in Port Arthur in the heyday of Jim Crow segregation--of schools, public restrooms and even water fountains--told Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg they've had to pray hard over supporting their party's first black nominee for president. But they say that prayer has healed them of their prejudice--with a little help from Joe Biden's convention speech. The complete column follows.
Charles Bowers isn't proud of his prejudice.
But the self-described Yellow Dog Democrat readily admits that his deeply rooted notions of race once made it hard for him to support his party's first black nominee for president.
"Frankly," the 76-year-old retired pastor from Tomball wrote me in an e-mail a couple months ago, "I was raised during the days of segregation and am not ready for a black family in the White House."
Then came the interesting part: "But I am praying for a way out of my prejudice and think I just may be over it. If I vote for Obama, I will be over my prejudice for sure."
Unlike many white voters struggling with the same issue behind closed doors, in hushed tones in beauty parlors, or in cafes among like-minded company, Bowers and his wife of 56 years, Katherine, invited me into their home to talk openly about how their views have evolved.
In the Bowers' living room, lovingly lined with shelves of Katherine's collectibles of cats and porcelain furniture, Charles relaxed in a T-shirt and shorts on a leather couch, sipping a Diet Pepsi as he prepared for Barack Obama's convention speech in Mile High Stadium.
For hours, the couple talked about the three children they'd raised, their love of gardening and God (they attend the Church of Christ), and their work ministering in various congregations, prisons and hospitals. Charles worked in sales for Nestlé before attending a seminary in Lubbock in the 1960s to become a pastor.
And they told me about growing up in Port Arthur during segregation, where everything from water fountains to public restrooms to schools was divided along color lines. Charles remembers using the N-word like any other word, before he knew it was bad. They weren't ready for desegregation, but they came to accept it.
Charles can still recall the first time a black man reached out his hand for him to shake. He was 17 and not sure what to do.
Katherine tries to explain: If you're taught you can't drink after someone, or go to school with them, how do you know it's OK to touch their hand? To this day, she remembers the first black person who waited on her in a department store.
"I mean, how wild is that? To know how the world is today, to know that was 56 years ago, and I still remember," she said.
But really, her husband said a short time later, he believes most of America is over "the black problem."
"I don't. Hello!" Katherine protests.
"Well, the young people in general. It may not be over for people our age. But we're about dead," he said, laughing.
"I agree,"said his 74-year-old wife. "But people our age are still prejudiced."
"And they need to get that out of their lives," he said. "Because it's a different world."
Charles believes he shed many of his negative notions of blacks at the Sunset International Bible Institute, where he came to regard some of the blacks studying with him as "brothers in Christ."
But he and his wife still struggle with some stereotypes, which they attribute to black "culture," not color. And Charles admits that at first, the idea of a black man, and his black family, in the White House threatened him.
"Not anymore, it doesn't. But it did for a while," Charles said. "That's something that's hard for my generation to put inside their heads."
Some of their doubts were stoked by a barrage of e-mail, which they say come from Republican friends and acquaintances.
Some include racist jokes, one suggesting the need to paint the White House black if the Obamas get in, another mockingly dispelling a rumor that the Rose Garden will be replaced by a watermelon patch.
Others distort Obama's family ties to Islam, suggesting he's a closet Muslim, even though he grew up in a secular household before joining a Christian church and being baptized two decades ago.
But Charles and Katherine both say they've come around to supporting Obama, mostly by listening to him. As Democrats, they naturally agree with him on more issues than with Republican John McCain. They believe in Obama's message of change. Katherine likes his Kennedy-esque call for Americans to give back to their country.
But Charles said Joe Biden's convention speech gave him the nudge he needed. Biden, that is, and the Man Upstairs.
I asked them what advice they'd have for others struggling with whether to vote for Obama because of his race.
"The best thing is to pray about it," Charles said.
His wife is convinced that some, even some church-goers she knows, are incapable, or unwilling to move beyond the prejudice they've always known. But she believes there's hope for those like her, who want to heal.
"They need to realize we're living in a changed world," she said. "And color should not be an issue in this world anymore.
"I think that's the best advice you could give anybody. ...We shouldn't be attacking color anymore. We ought to be beyond that. We really should."
Charles Bowers isn't proud of his prejudice.
But the self-described Yellow Dog Democrat readily admits that his deeply rooted notions of race once made it hard for him to support his party's first black nominee for president.
"Frankly," the 76-year-old retired pastor from Tomball wrote me in an e-mail a couple months ago, "I was raised during the days of segregation and am not ready for a black family in the White House."
Then came the interesting part: "But I am praying for a way out of my prejudice and think I just may be over it. If I vote for Obama, I will be over my prejudice for sure."
Unlike many white voters struggling with the same issue behind closed doors, in hushed tones in beauty parlors, or in cafes among like-minded company, Bowers and his wife of 56 years, Katherine, invited me into their home to talk openly about how their views have evolved.
In the Bowers' living room, lovingly lined with shelves of Katherine's collectibles of cats and porcelain furniture, Charles relaxed in a T-shirt and shorts on a leather couch, sipping a Diet Pepsi as he prepared for Barack Obama's convention speech in Mile High Stadium.
For hours, the couple talked about the three children they'd raised, their love of gardening and God (they attend the Church of Christ), and their work ministering in various congregations, prisons and hospitals. Charles worked in sales for Nestlé before attending a seminary in Lubbock in the 1960s to become a pastor.
And they told me about growing up in Port Arthur during segregation, where everything from water fountains to public restrooms to schools was divided along color lines. Charles remembers using the N-word like any other word, before he knew it was bad. They weren't ready for desegregation, but they came to accept it.
Charles can still recall the first time a black man reached out his hand for him to shake. He was 17 and not sure what to do.
Katherine tries to explain: If you're taught you can't drink after someone, or go to school with them, how do you know it's OK to touch their hand? To this day, she remembers the first black person who waited on her in a department store.
"I mean, how wild is that? To know how the world is today, to know that was 56 years ago, and I still remember," she said.
But really, her husband said a short time later, he believes most of America is over "the black problem."
"I don't. Hello!" Katherine protests.
"Well, the young people in general. It may not be over for people our age. But we're about dead," he said, laughing.
"I agree,"said his 74-year-old wife. "But people our age are still prejudiced."
"And they need to get that out of their lives," he said. "Because it's a different world."
Charles believes he shed many of his negative notions of blacks at the Sunset International Bible Institute, where he came to regard some of the blacks studying with him as "brothers in Christ."
But he and his wife still struggle with some stereotypes, which they attribute to black "culture," not color. And Charles admits that at first, the idea of a black man, and his black family, in the White House threatened him.
"Not anymore, it doesn't. But it did for a while," Charles said. "That's something that's hard for my generation to put inside their heads."
Some of their doubts were stoked by a barrage of e-mail, which they say come from Republican friends and acquaintances.
Some include racist jokes, one suggesting the need to paint the White House black if the Obamas get in, another mockingly dispelling a rumor that the Rose Garden will be replaced by a watermelon patch.
Others distort Obama's family ties to Islam, suggesting he's a closet Muslim, even though he grew up in a secular household before joining a Christian church and being baptized two decades ago.
But Charles and Katherine both say they've come around to supporting Obama, mostly by listening to him. As Democrats, they naturally agree with him on more issues than with Republican John McCain. They believe in Obama's message of change. Katherine likes his Kennedy-esque call for Americans to give back to their country.
But Charles said Joe Biden's convention speech gave him the nudge he needed. Biden, that is, and the Man Upstairs.
I asked them what advice they'd have for others struggling with whether to vote for Obama because of his race.
"The best thing is to pray about it," Charles said.
His wife is convinced that some, even some church-goers she knows, are incapable, or unwilling to move beyond the prejudice they've always known. But she believes there's hope for those like her, who want to heal.
"They need to realize we're living in a changed world," she said. "And color should not be an issue in this world anymore.
"I think that's the best advice you could give anybody. ...We shouldn't be attacking color anymore. We ought to be beyond that. We really should."
Houston Mayor Lends City Support to Planting a Million Trees in Next Five Years
Last June Houston Mayor Bill White facilitated the destruction of 126 live oak trees to make room for more traffic on a major Houston thoroughfare. He was opposed at the time by Trees for Houston, the volunteer group that had planted the trees 20 years ago.
In what could be construed as public penance for his sin against the environment, the mayor announced yesterday that the city is now joining with Trees for Houston in what the Houston Chronicle called "a multimillion dollar public-private partnership to plant more than a million trees in the city in the next five years."
Other participants in the plan include the Texas Department of Transportation, Harris County and the Houston Forest Service, as well as corporate sponsors, management districts and other civic groups.
As a matter of timing, the plan comes in response to Hurricane Ike, blamed for the loss of "tens of thousands of trees," the Chronicle said. The city estimates that 3,500 trees were lost in city parks and golf courses alone.
Although the report did not say that the plan would contribute to the planned replacement of the Kirby trees, 38 esplanades on another major street are slated to get 4,500 new trees. Let's say this latest move by Mayor White will not hurt his standing with those who were dismayed with chopping down the Kirby trees.
In what could be construed as public penance for his sin against the environment, the mayor announced yesterday that the city is now joining with Trees for Houston in what the Houston Chronicle called "a multimillion dollar public-private partnership to plant more than a million trees in the city in the next five years."
Other participants in the plan include the Texas Department of Transportation, Harris County and the Houston Forest Service, as well as corporate sponsors, management districts and other civic groups.
As a matter of timing, the plan comes in response to Hurricane Ike, blamed for the loss of "tens of thousands of trees," the Chronicle said. The city estimates that 3,500 trees were lost in city parks and golf courses alone.
Although the report did not say that the plan would contribute to the planned replacement of the Kirby trees, 38 esplanades on another major street are slated to get 4,500 new trees. Let's say this latest move by Mayor White will not hurt his standing with those who were dismayed with chopping down the Kirby trees.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Turning Lemons into Lemonade: Ike Survivors Keep Finding New Ways
The Houston Chronicle today had several uplifting, inspiring stories of Hurricane Ike survivors who have steadfastly refused to let destruction, loss and death have the last word.
Perhaps the best is entitled A loner in life is looked after in death. It picks up the story of rescue worker Bob Emery, 54, of Big Pine Key, FL, who died last Saturday night in Houston while trying to rescue three dogs huddling against the cement median of the East Freeway. At the end of a 13-hour day clearing brush along the coast, Emery dashed onto the freeway but was hit and killed by a motorcycle.
The city kennel rescued the dogs, who were reunited Wednesday with their owners, a senior-citizen couple who had rescued two of the dogs as puppies abandoned in a Houston park and adopted the third as a young stray.
The Chronicle said Emery lived alone in Florida and was apparently estranged from his family. The wife of one of Emery's co-workers spent time in the Florida Keys this week trying to find the family, so far to no avail. But she said she has been deeply impressed at the outpouring of emotion for Emery in Houston and surrounding areas.
Animal lovers have united in fundraising to ensure that Emery is not buried as a pauper and to create a memorial to his generous acts. No Paws Left Behind, a Houston nonprofit, is collecting funds on his behalf.
Another article is entitled Flower Man's home damaged, but volunteers flock to his aid. It tells the story of 70-something folk sculptor Cleveland Turner, whose home and garden have been hailed as one the nation's best examples of African-American yard art. His art has been featured in scholarly publications, popular articles, a documentary and on the internet. Turner stayed in his home during Ike, but the winds mangled his displays of blooming plants and found items, tore a hole in his roof and ceiling sheet rock and downed a large tree, which toppled 20 feet of a chain-link fence that featured more of his art. Another art-covered fence behind the house was also damaged.
The article includes the encouraging report that tomorrow volunteers organized by the Orange Society for Visionary Art will descend on his home to do structural repairs and clean debris. The volunteers are trying to say "thank you" to Turner for his art, which he says was inspired by a vision he experienced during treatment for alcoholism, toward the end of the 17 years he spent homeless on the streets of Houston.
A third article worth noting is Nursing Moody Gardens back to health. It covers repair to the center's Aquarium Pyramid and the more heavily damaged Rain Forest Pyramid. One upside is that despite loss of 80% of several thousand freshwater fish in the latter, the staff managed to save 70 of the last remaining Lake Victoria cichlids on the planet. The article also talks about the five animal-care staff people and 15 maintenance workers who volunteered to remain during the storm. They included animal husbandry manager Greg Whittaker, who survived his his decision in the calm after Ike's first eye-wall passed to wade from their shelter back to the pyramids at 2 a.m. on 9/13, to check on the welfare of the animals. Meanwhile, the second eye-wall passage began, and he nearly didn't make it back alive.
A fourth article says A Navy veteran's mementos turn up after a surprising journey through Hurricane Ike. It tells the amazing story of the storm washing the display case of Eddie Janek's Navy memorabilia from World War II and the Korean War from his home on the bay side of Galveston Island to Pelican Island, nearly five miles away. The medals washed ashore near Texas A&M's maritime campus. Two A&M officials beamed as they returned the intact display case to its owner.
Finally, there's Emergency naturalization ceremony set for Saturday, which says that 1,240 immigrants whose swearing in ceremony had been postponed by Ike until after Monday's deadline to vote actually will be sworn in tomorrow in an emergency ceremony at Rice Stadium.
Thanks go primarily to U.S. Rep. Gene Greene, D-Houston, who pushed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for the emergency ceremony, and Lynn Hughes, administrative judge for the U.S. District Court in Houston, who offered to hold an emergency ceremony and arranged for Rice to host it.
Hughes remarked: "There's a lot of harsh talk about immigrants these days, and here are people doing everything right, com;plying with all of the rules, and we let a modest disruption in the paperwork flow put them off. We need to do this because it is the right thing for us to do."
Perhaps the best is entitled A loner in life is looked after in death. It picks up the story of rescue worker Bob Emery, 54, of Big Pine Key, FL, who died last Saturday night in Houston while trying to rescue three dogs huddling against the cement median of the East Freeway. At the end of a 13-hour day clearing brush along the coast, Emery dashed onto the freeway but was hit and killed by a motorcycle.
The city kennel rescued the dogs, who were reunited Wednesday with their owners, a senior-citizen couple who had rescued two of the dogs as puppies abandoned in a Houston park and adopted the third as a young stray.
The Chronicle said Emery lived alone in Florida and was apparently estranged from his family. The wife of one of Emery's co-workers spent time in the Florida Keys this week trying to find the family, so far to no avail. But she said she has been deeply impressed at the outpouring of emotion for Emery in Houston and surrounding areas.
Animal lovers have united in fundraising to ensure that Emery is not buried as a pauper and to create a memorial to his generous acts. No Paws Left Behind, a Houston nonprofit, is collecting funds on his behalf.
Another article is entitled Flower Man's home damaged, but volunteers flock to his aid. It tells the story of 70-something folk sculptor Cleveland Turner, whose home and garden have been hailed as one the nation's best examples of African-American yard art. His art has been featured in scholarly publications, popular articles, a documentary and on the internet. Turner stayed in his home during Ike, but the winds mangled his displays of blooming plants and found items, tore a hole in his roof and ceiling sheet rock and downed a large tree, which toppled 20 feet of a chain-link fence that featured more of his art. Another art-covered fence behind the house was also damaged.
The article includes the encouraging report that tomorrow volunteers organized by the Orange Society for Visionary Art will descend on his home to do structural repairs and clean debris. The volunteers are trying to say "thank you" to Turner for his art, which he says was inspired by a vision he experienced during treatment for alcoholism, toward the end of the 17 years he spent homeless on the streets of Houston.
A third article worth noting is Nursing Moody Gardens back to health. It covers repair to the center's Aquarium Pyramid and the more heavily damaged Rain Forest Pyramid. One upside is that despite loss of 80% of several thousand freshwater fish in the latter, the staff managed to save 70 of the last remaining Lake Victoria cichlids on the planet. The article also talks about the five animal-care staff people and 15 maintenance workers who volunteered to remain during the storm. They included animal husbandry manager Greg Whittaker, who survived his his decision in the calm after Ike's first eye-wall passed to wade from their shelter back to the pyramids at 2 a.m. on 9/13, to check on the welfare of the animals. Meanwhile, the second eye-wall passage began, and he nearly didn't make it back alive.
A fourth article says A Navy veteran's mementos turn up after a surprising journey through Hurricane Ike. It tells the amazing story of the storm washing the display case of Eddie Janek's Navy memorabilia from World War II and the Korean War from his home on the bay side of Galveston Island to Pelican Island, nearly five miles away. The medals washed ashore near Texas A&M's maritime campus. Two A&M officials beamed as they returned the intact display case to its owner.
Finally, there's Emergency naturalization ceremony set for Saturday, which says that 1,240 immigrants whose swearing in ceremony had been postponed by Ike until after Monday's deadline to vote actually will be sworn in tomorrow in an emergency ceremony at Rice Stadium.
Thanks go primarily to U.S. Rep. Gene Greene, D-Houston, who pushed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for the emergency ceremony, and Lynn Hughes, administrative judge for the U.S. District Court in Houston, who offered to hold an emergency ceremony and arranged for Rice to host it.
Hughes remarked: "There's a lot of harsh talk about immigrants these days, and here are people doing everything right, com;plying with all of the rules, and we let a modest disruption in the paperwork flow put them off. We need to do this because it is the right thing for us to do."
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Hedge Fund Nation: How We're All About to Become Wall Street Investors
About 90 minutes ago Newsweek's Daniel Gross posted a delightful commentary on the Wall Street bailout. I can't resist running it in its entirety.
The Wall Street bailout is alive again. In an effort to make the $700 billion bailout palatable, the architects of the law have larded it up with all sorts of goodies, such as increasing the levels of deposit insurance, sparing some taxpayers the ravages of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and extending tax breaks for alternative energy. Henry Paulson's three-page sprig has sprouted into a 451-page Christmas tree. (The current version of the bill, in all its lengthy glory, can be seen here).
What's most interesting about the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is just how much it reads like a prospectus for a hedge fund. In the past, hedge funds—secretive pools of capital – were open only to qualified (read: rich) investors. But with the stroke of a pen, President Bush will soon make all American citizens investors in the world's biggest fund--and a democratic one, at that. Taxpayers won't just be the investors. We'll own the management company too. Best of all? For at least a few months, we'll have the former CEO of Goldman, Sachs run our investment for a very small fee. Call it the "Universal Hedge Fund."
Hedge funds use leverage: that is, they borrow money to amplify their returns. The Universal Hedge Fund will use massive leverage, borrowing up to $750 billion, which it will use to buy up distressed assets. The Universal Fund might best be described as a multi-multi-strategy fund. Its stated goals are to maximize returns to its investors, while promoting general market stability and bolstering the crippled housing market.
The Fund's bylaws give the manager (the Treasury Secretary) significant discretion. He can by troubled mortgage-related instruments from finance companies (Section 3(9)(a), page 5). But he can also invest in "any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability" (Section 3(9)B, page 6). The manager then has the authority to manage the assets as he sees fit (Section 106(B) page 22), collecting revenue streams, holding bonds to maturity or flipping them for a quick profit. (Section 106(c), page 22). Like many of today's sharpest hedge funds, the Universal Fund will also have the ability to drive a harder bargain by demanding equity stakes, or new debt securities, from the institutions it is helping (Section 113(d), page 35). It can also do what many of the big hedge funds, and so-called "funds of funds: do: bring in outside managers to run the investment. (101(C )(3), page 8).
There are some important differences between the Universal Fund and its private sector peers. Hedge funds thrive on secrecy. The Universal Fund will operate with maximum transparency, disclosing all new sales and purchases on the web within two days. (Sec 114(A), page 39) Rather than send in all our money upfront, we hedge fund investors will give the manager $250 billion to start with (Sec 115(A)(1), p. 40). And the proceeds won't be distributed via dividends or end-of-year partnership distributions. Rather, revenues and profits "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt." (106(d), page 22).
The Bush administration's desire to turn all Americans into participants in the capital markets through the privatization of Social Security never got off the ground. But in the last months of its second term, it has managed to pull off something of a coup. Soon enough, we'll all collectively own various securities issued by lots of big companies. Too bad the Ownership Society is happening only because we became a Bad Debt Society.
The Wall Street bailout is alive again. In an effort to make the $700 billion bailout palatable, the architects of the law have larded it up with all sorts of goodies, such as increasing the levels of deposit insurance, sparing some taxpayers the ravages of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and extending tax breaks for alternative energy. Henry Paulson's three-page sprig has sprouted into a 451-page Christmas tree. (The current version of the bill, in all its lengthy glory, can be seen here).
What's most interesting about the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is just how much it reads like a prospectus for a hedge fund. In the past, hedge funds—secretive pools of capital – were open only to qualified (read: rich) investors. But with the stroke of a pen, President Bush will soon make all American citizens investors in the world's biggest fund--and a democratic one, at that. Taxpayers won't just be the investors. We'll own the management company too. Best of all? For at least a few months, we'll have the former CEO of Goldman, Sachs run our investment for a very small fee. Call it the "Universal Hedge Fund."
Hedge funds use leverage: that is, they borrow money to amplify their returns. The Universal Hedge Fund will use massive leverage, borrowing up to $750 billion, which it will use to buy up distressed assets. The Universal Fund might best be described as a multi-multi-strategy fund. Its stated goals are to maximize returns to its investors, while promoting general market stability and bolstering the crippled housing market.
The Fund's bylaws give the manager (the Treasury Secretary) significant discretion. He can by troubled mortgage-related instruments from finance companies (Section 3(9)(a), page 5). But he can also invest in "any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability" (Section 3(9)B, page 6). The manager then has the authority to manage the assets as he sees fit (Section 106(B) page 22), collecting revenue streams, holding bonds to maturity or flipping them for a quick profit. (Section 106(c), page 22). Like many of today's sharpest hedge funds, the Universal Fund will also have the ability to drive a harder bargain by demanding equity stakes, or new debt securities, from the institutions it is helping (Section 113(d), page 35). It can also do what many of the big hedge funds, and so-called "funds of funds: do: bring in outside managers to run the investment. (101(C )(3), page 8).
There are some important differences between the Universal Fund and its private sector peers. Hedge funds thrive on secrecy. The Universal Fund will operate with maximum transparency, disclosing all new sales and purchases on the web within two days. (Sec 114(A), page 39) Rather than send in all our money upfront, we hedge fund investors will give the manager $250 billion to start with (Sec 115(A)(1), p. 40). And the proceeds won't be distributed via dividends or end-of-year partnership distributions. Rather, revenues and profits "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt." (106(d), page 22).
The Bush administration's desire to turn all Americans into participants in the capital markets through the privatization of Social Security never got off the ground. But in the last months of its second term, it has managed to pull off something of a coup. Soon enough, we'll all collectively own various securities issued by lots of big companies. Too bad the Ownership Society is happening only because we became a Bad Debt Society.
Four Developments Worth Pondering, and Helping Along
The items below address four recent developments that warrant more attention. The first three address dysfunctions in U.S. politics—including another attempt to breach the wall of separation between church and state. The fourth notes progress on religious disagreements between Israelis and Palestinians.
Columnist Fears Congress May Not Be Able to Rescue the Rescue
In a column 9/30, widely respected New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman said that the House of Representatives’ failure to pass the economic rescue package marked the fourth time in his 55 years that he’s been truly afraid for his country. But he finds the current crisis the most frightening:
“…this moment is the scariest of all for me because the previous three were all driven by real or potential attacks on the U.S. system by outsiders. This time, we are doing it to ourselves. This time, it’s our own failure to regulate our own financial system and to legislate the proper remedy that is doing us in…
“I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system—one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it…
“I always said to myself: Our government is so broken that it can only work in response to a huge crisis. But now we’ve had a huge crisis, and the system still doesn’t seem to work. Our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have gotten so out of practice working together that even in the face of this system-threatening meltdown they could not agree on a rescue package, as if they lived on Mars and were just visiting us for the week, with no stake in the outcome.
“The story cannot end here. If it does, assume the fetal position.”
Amen.
Special Prosecutor Will Investigate Criminal Violations in Gonzales’ Firing of U.S. Attorneys
AP reporter Mark Sherman reported 9/29 that, following recommendations made by internal Justice Department investigators in a 358-page report, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey named a special prosecutor to investigate whether former A.G. Alberto Gonzales and other Bush administration officials broke the law in firing nine U.S. attorneys.
Potential targets of the investigation include other ‘formers:’ White House advisor Karl Rove, White House counsel Harriet Miers, Justice Department official Monica Goodling, Gonzales’ deputy Paul McNulty and Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility Director Marshall Jarrett said in their report that despite administration denials, political considerations played a part in the firing of at least four of the U.S. Attorneys, and that lack of cooperation by key Justice Department and White House officials had left “serious allegations involving potential criminal conduct” unresolved.
Perhaps those who abused the federal laws they were in charge of enforcing will yet be called to account.
Pastors Who Endorse Specific Candidates Should Insist on Paying Taxes
In an editorial today, the Houston Chronicle applauds Americans United for Separation of Church and State for filing complaints against five pastors who specifically endorsed John McCain for president—and a sixth who said, “According to my Bible and in my opinion, there is no way in the world a Christian can vote for Barack Hussein Obama.”
Conservative Christian lawyers calling themselves the Alliance Defense Fund claimed they had recruited hundreds of churches to openly break the IRS rule that prohibits nonprofit organizations from using tax-deductible contributions to engage in partisan politics. On 9/29 the group released a list of 33 offending pastors they pledged to defend.
The Chronicle observed that if the pastors “feel so strongly that they have a right to inject politics into their tax-exempt organizations, the ethical stance would be to insist on paying taxes.”
Indeed.
Departing Israeli PM Says Peace Requires Giving Up East Jerusalem and Almost All of the West Bank
In a farewell interview published 9/29, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there would be no peace with the Palestinians until Israel agrees to give up East Jerusalem and most of the West Bank.
Olmert saw no hope of Israel perpetually controlling the 200,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem. Although he saw Israel retaining a portion of the West Bank, he said the Palestinians would have to be given the same amount of Israeli area in exchange.
His remarks were ground-breaking, since as mayor of Jerusalem and a hard-line lawmaker, he opposed conceding any of the city and, to extend Israel’s control, encouraged efforts to build Jewish neighborhoods in the largely Arab eastern sector. He was seen as finally coming around to the views of more liberal Jewish politicians—views he has denounced for years.
It remains to be seen whether Olmert’s successor(s) will follow his advice. But it is certainly an advance that a conservative prime minister has faced facts that have been evident to others for decades.
Columnist Fears Congress May Not Be Able to Rescue the Rescue
In a column 9/30, widely respected New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman said that the House of Representatives’ failure to pass the economic rescue package marked the fourth time in his 55 years that he’s been truly afraid for his country. But he finds the current crisis the most frightening:
“…this moment is the scariest of all for me because the previous three were all driven by real or potential attacks on the U.S. system by outsiders. This time, we are doing it to ourselves. This time, it’s our own failure to regulate our own financial system and to legislate the proper remedy that is doing us in…
“I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system—one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it…
“I always said to myself: Our government is so broken that it can only work in response to a huge crisis. But now we’ve had a huge crisis, and the system still doesn’t seem to work. Our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have gotten so out of practice working together that even in the face of this system-threatening meltdown they could not agree on a rescue package, as if they lived on Mars and were just visiting us for the week, with no stake in the outcome.
“The story cannot end here. If it does, assume the fetal position.”
Amen.
Special Prosecutor Will Investigate Criminal Violations in Gonzales’ Firing of U.S. Attorneys
AP reporter Mark Sherman reported 9/29 that, following recommendations made by internal Justice Department investigators in a 358-page report, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey named a special prosecutor to investigate whether former A.G. Alberto Gonzales and other Bush administration officials broke the law in firing nine U.S. attorneys.
Potential targets of the investigation include other ‘formers:’ White House advisor Karl Rove, White House counsel Harriet Miers, Justice Department official Monica Goodling, Gonzales’ deputy Paul McNulty and Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility Director Marshall Jarrett said in their report that despite administration denials, political considerations played a part in the firing of at least four of the U.S. Attorneys, and that lack of cooperation by key Justice Department and White House officials had left “serious allegations involving potential criminal conduct” unresolved.
Perhaps those who abused the federal laws they were in charge of enforcing will yet be called to account.
Pastors Who Endorse Specific Candidates Should Insist on Paying Taxes
In an editorial today, the Houston Chronicle applauds Americans United for Separation of Church and State for filing complaints against five pastors who specifically endorsed John McCain for president—and a sixth who said, “According to my Bible and in my opinion, there is no way in the world a Christian can vote for Barack Hussein Obama.”
Conservative Christian lawyers calling themselves the Alliance Defense Fund claimed they had recruited hundreds of churches to openly break the IRS rule that prohibits nonprofit organizations from using tax-deductible contributions to engage in partisan politics. On 9/29 the group released a list of 33 offending pastors they pledged to defend.
The Chronicle observed that if the pastors “feel so strongly that they have a right to inject politics into their tax-exempt organizations, the ethical stance would be to insist on paying taxes.”
Indeed.
Departing Israeli PM Says Peace Requires Giving Up East Jerusalem and Almost All of the West Bank
In a farewell interview published 9/29, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there would be no peace with the Palestinians until Israel agrees to give up East Jerusalem and most of the West Bank.
Olmert saw no hope of Israel perpetually controlling the 200,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem. Although he saw Israel retaining a portion of the West Bank, he said the Palestinians would have to be given the same amount of Israeli area in exchange.
His remarks were ground-breaking, since as mayor of Jerusalem and a hard-line lawmaker, he opposed conceding any of the city and, to extend Israel’s control, encouraged efforts to build Jewish neighborhoods in the largely Arab eastern sector. He was seen as finally coming around to the views of more liberal Jewish politicians—views he has denounced for years.
It remains to be seen whether Olmert’s successor(s) will follow his advice. But it is certainly an advance that a conservative prime minister has faced facts that have been evident to others for decades.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
The Church Stands: Galveston's Historic AME Church Will Survive Its 2nd Hurricane
In today's Houston Chronicle Co-pastor Salatheia Bryant-Honors wrote the following eye-witness account of the damage Hurricane Ike did to Galveston's historic Reedy Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church--the first AME church in Texas, started in 1848 as a worship place for slaves--and of the church's determination to recover from Ike, just as it recovered from the Great Storm of 1900.I haven't heard much yet about damage to other churches in Galveston or around Galveston Bay. The website of St. Mary's Basilica Cathedral in Galveston says that it had about eight feet of water, but the extent of the damage has not been reported.
Wouldn't it be nice if the Houston-area houses of worship that had little or no damage from Ike would organize an interfaith fund-raising and volunteer effort to help all the churches that had serious damage with recovery and repairs?
GALVESTON - I had to see her for myself.
I wanted to see her Saturday morning when Hurricane Ike's wind and rain finally stopped pounding our Houston home. But I couldn't. I tried to get there Monday, only to be turned around at a checkpoint in Texas City. Despite my plea that I was a minister and wanted - no, needed - to check on the church, I was told, "No one is being allowed on the island.''
Reedy Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a Texas historic landmark. It's also cited on the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance.
But much more intimately, Reedy Chapel is my family's second home. It is where my husband, Reginald Honors, and I together pastor a small flock of faithful believers - some whose affiliation with Reedy extends back four generations - who have dedicated themselves to keeping their church going.
Reedy Chapel was the first African Methodist Episcopal Church in Texas. This distinction earns it the title of the mother church of African Methodism in Texas. But its history is larger than that.
Trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, purchased the lot on Broadway at 20th in 1848 as a worship site for black slaves. Until a building was constructed, the slaves held services outdoors. Once ownership of the property was transferred to freed blacks after the Civil War, they organized as an African Methodist Episcopal Church. The original building was ravaged in the 1885 Galveston fire. Rebuilding was hampered by four storms that hit the island in 1886. The rebuilt structure was completed in 1887. Then came the Great Storm of 1900, which severely damaged the church again.
Hurricane Ike manhandled the Texas coast six months after we celebrated our 160th church anniversary.
After days of wondering, hoping and praying, I got a chance to see her Wednesday, the day we normally would have held Bible study.
The venerable edifice stood surrounded by debris in the eerie emptiness of the city. Two waterlogged Bibles that came to rest face-down on the front steps served as welcome mats for Ike's wicked visit to this sacred structure. The metal gate on the front door held, but the heavy wooden doors had been breached.
I wasn't ready for what awaited me inside the sanctuary. In my worst-case scenario I had been overly optimistic. Now a sad, sick feeling engulfed me.
Inside, the fire alarm was dying a slow death. It still managed a faint beep. The freshly stripped and polished wooden floor that our church trustees worked so hard to finish before our August men's and women's day program was covered with some gray substance. I could smell the backup of sewage.
Rows of pews had been knocked over like dominoes. Some were broken. My rubber boots, the ones I bought to cover Hurricane Rita as a reporter, sank into the mud-slick carpet that held the surge water like a sponge. We had just purchased and installed that carpet about five weeks ago. A distinct and dark line marked the water's highest point in the sanctuary — about 3 to 4 feet from the floor.
The hymnals donated over the years by two sisters — both retired teachers — were not spared. Neither were the pew Bibles. A Communion cup found a resting place on a sliver of a ledge near the choir loft. A candy dish that usually sits on a small table by the pulpit was on the floor about 12 feet away. Oddly, it was right side up, with all the strawberry Creme Savers candies still inside.
At every turn there was a new revelation.
Upstairs one of the stained-glass windows was blown out; two others were barely hanging on. A door in the ladies' restroom was so swollen from the deluge that it could not be opened. Outside, one side of the decorative eaves in the front of the church dangled from the roof. A similar piece was ripped off in the rear.
But priceless pieces survived Ike: a handmade baptismal font, the circular chandeliers, an 1872 pipe organ and the archives room that chronicles the life of the church and its people.
Hurricane Ike hurled its best blow, but Reedy Chapel stood. I am truly grateful for her survival.
As the storm churned in the Gulf, my husband and I were concerned about the well-being of church members. We spent Thursday and Friday calling each member to determine where he or she planned to ride out the storm. We are thankful for their safety.
Our members are scattered now in Austin, San Antonio, Waco, Missouri City and Baton Rouge, La. Even Kentucky. The first couple we welcomed in the new-members' class after we were appointed pastors had come to Galveston after Hurricane Katrina. They fled Galveston for Beaumont as Ike approached. They since have landed back in New Orleans.
Hurricane Ike has left us with questions: When will members be able to return to the church they love and have sacrificed for? Where will we meet in the interim? Is there serious structural damage my untrained eye didn't spot?
We look forward to the day when our wonderful senior choir again sings Great Is Thy Faithfulness from the choir loft. I long to see Sister Florence Henderson — who never misses a Sunday — in her usual seat, midway down the aisle on the left side, and the stewardesses — Anne Chatman, Esther Harrell, Ruby Douglass and Sandra Mitchell — dressed in white.
This past March, Reedy was packed with members of A.M.E. churches from across Texas for our anniversary service. Presiding Bishop Gregory G.M. Ingram preached a sermon titled "Let's Celebrate." Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas was there for the celebration. She sat on a front row. It was a happy day.
As I took my parting look at the sanctuary Wednesday, my eyes focused on the message posted on our bulletin: "Men and women moving forward with divine authority." It changed my outlook.
Yes, indeed, Reedy will move forward. Reedy stands on something greater than a physical foundation.
This grand structure has endured its share of hardships and always found her way back. It has survived hurricanes and fire to remain a constant shelter from the storms of life for those in need of a spiritual haven.
I agree with longtime member Janice Stanton that Reedy will come back stronger and better than ever. History is on Reedy's side. It is a history laced with struggle and rebirth.
We also have the Christian heritage that reminds us that our faith is about resurrection. Our faith is about the worst thing happening but not overcoming us. We also have the African-American narrative that tells us that God will see us through.
The words on our outdoor sign remind me of that intertwining legacy: "Upon this Rock I will build my church." Indeed, our hope is built on nothing less.
In March, when we held our anniversary service, we entered the sanctuary singing, "We've come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord."
Reedy still has miles to go on her journey.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Racism Expert Says If McCain-Palin Win, 'White Privilege' Is the Only Reason
In a perceptive, persuasive piece entitled This Is Your Nation on White Privilege, anti-racism writer and activist Tim Wise says 'white privilege' lets conservative Republicans get away with all kinds of things--and to excuse for themselves experiences and misfortunes they use to belittle liberals, minorities and the poor. The piece follows in its entirety. I agree with each sentence, enthusiastically.
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.
White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”
White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.
White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…
White privilege is, in short, the problem.
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.
White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”
White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.
White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…
White privilege is, in short, the problem.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Houston Survived Ike, But Can We Do This Every Few Years, for Decades to Come?
On September 12th Houston Chronicle photographer Johnny Hanson captured what will undoubtedly remain one of the most poignant pictures of Hurricane Ike, as it began to overwhelm the Gulf Coast memorial to those who died in the Great Storm of 1900. The photo conveys the horror felt by everyone at the time that the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history was about to repeat itself.
Ike was indeed very unkind to Galveston--and nastier still to the Bolivar Peninsula, where whole subdivisions were literally wiped off the map. But a lot more structures survived than first feared, especially on the prosperous West End of Galveston, which has no seawall but evidently did have sound construction practices in the newer homes. And so far the loss of life is a lot less than in the 1900 hurricane. That could change, because determining how many people were just swept out to sea will take months. But we at least have reason to hope that the loss of life will be less than experienced with Hurricane Katrina. Despite a night of terror, especially in the hours between 3:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. when the strongest and most violent winds howled through over and over again, those of us who hunkered down in Houston fared better than anyone who lives closer to the coast or Galveston Bay. Trees snapped and toppled everywhere, taking about 99% of the electrical system with them. But my impression is that fewer trees penetrated roofs and houses than in Hurricane Rita. The overwhelming challenge is restoring electricity to over 2 million people, not just to their homes and businesses, but to water and sewer pumping stations, gas stations, grocery stories and traffic signals at hundreds of intersections.
My home near downtown Houston was among the first to lose power, about 7:00 p.m. Friday night. The power stayed off just over 48 hours, spoiling everything in the refrigerator. We were able to salvage some of the freezer contents by taking them in a cooler to a friend's house with power ten miles away. At this point 58% of the customers of Centerpoint (the primary electrical provider for most of Harris County) are still without power, despite something like 12,000 utility workers who have arrived from other states to help repair the damage. Those without power are, of course, frustrated, angry and depressed. But at least they see progress being made and offers of help from the fortunate whose power has been restored. They know that in weeks if not days, their power will return.
In the middle of all this, Richard Parker, a lecturer in journalism at UT Austin and a former Knight Ridder national correspondent who wrote about Katrina and Rita, raised some important long-term questions in an insightful op ed piece in the September 16th Houston Chronicle.
Parker writes that, as the fourth-largest city in the U.S. descends nightly into almost total darkness, "it is the ensuing pitch black that envelops more than 2 million people and 600 square miles that reveals something not just about Houston, but about Texas, and even America. We aren't so much addicted to oil as hooked on the tumultuous relationship where money, oil and the obsessive cycle of the boom and the bust all collide. It's a rollicking love affair and yet it seems doomed; it's just too hard, too costly, too painful.
"The visible evidence is dramatic enough: the Galveston oceanfront smashed into matchsticks, the stilted homes of the Bolivar Peninsula ripped from their pilings. There's that boat wedged under the house in Bayou Vista. And in downtown Houston, Interstate 10 is gracelessly lined by crumpled gas stations, shorn billboards, smashed roof lines and shattered skyscraper windows.
"But the storm's truest self lies in the enormous economic and financial cost... Yes, in Texas everything is big, and something this big can ultimately be untenable. The cost of the storm is between $6 billion and $16 billion, according to federal estimates; private industry estimates say $8 billion to $18 billion. The irony is that just as Houston is the undisputed petroleum capital of the globe, rising sea temperatures are making Gulf hurricanes more intense, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
"And the cost will only rise in the years to come. Houston didn't used to be so big but like the rest of the coastal United States it has swollen to expose ever larger numbers of people to ever-larger storms. The coastal population has soared by 57 percent since 1960 and jumped more than 200 percent in some places. As a result, some financial risk managers expect the claims from Gulf hurricanes to rise 40 percent in the coming years.
"And yet, the lure of the boom is strong. Before curfew, Interstate 10 is as jammed with convoys of cars flying into town at 80 and 90 miles per hour, pickup beds stuffed with bottled water and generators. Until Ike, after all, Houston had defied economic gravity even as the rest of the country slid into economic hardship. Buoyed by the price of oil, the skyline soared, property values roared and houses flipped. Even as the global oil supply began to run dry, Houston has been easy money for oil traders and day laborers alike.
"There is a strong sense of denial in all this. The radio crackles with weathermen chatting about school closings and good weather for the work week, followed by pleadings for citizens to take ice and water to the first responders. Only to be followed by reminders for the city to boil its water. Except that there is no electricity with which to boil the water or pump the gas to work. And there is no electricity at work. One radio caller from Louisiana gently reminds: Recovering will not take days or weeks but, fully, years.
"The caller grasps something that keeps eluding everyone else in the dark. Houston isn't just some bucolic collection of farms and fishing towns. It's a city. But can it survive in this form if it must be evacuated or closed for a month every two years? Can we continue to survive our dependence not just on foreign oil but domestic petroleum supplies that are constantly interrupted, whether for 30 days three years ago, or 10 days this time?
"Oh, sure, the houses will be rebuilt, the city cleaned up and the power will flicker back on. After all, Houston is the great, if imperfect, ideal of Texas; and by extension, it is the great and tawdry love affair of America.
"And the wind and the water have laid it bare for exactly what it is."
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Conservative Gobbledygook Perverts English and Destroys Reasoned Discourse
In an insightful analysis published September 7th, Miami Herald editorial columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. called Republican claims that they will "throw out big-government liberals" to bring "change in Washington" pure gobbledygook.
Zeroing in on Mitt Romney's September 3rd speech to the Republican convention, Pitts lamented that "a representative of the ideology that has controlled most of Washington most of the past 12 years can say with a straight face that his ideology needs to seize control of Washington to fix what is broken there."
Critiquing Romney's cant, Pitts said "I have to ask: what liberal Washington is he talking about? The federal government has three branches. The legislative, i.e. Congress, was under conservative control from 1995 to 2007. The judicial, i.e. the Supreme Court, consists of nine justices, seven of whom were nominated by conservative presidents. The executive, i.e., the president, is George W. Bush. Enough said."
It is bad enough, Pitts noted, that conservative politicians succeeded so well over the years as they "trained their followers to respond with Pavlovian faithfulness to certain terms. Say 'conservative' and they wag their tails. Say 'liberal' and they bear their fangs."
And it's worse still that pulling off such cynical manipulation "requires a limitless supply of gall and the inherent belief that people are dumber than a bag of hammers."
But what is most damning about the conservative rhetoric is its intellectual dishonesty, which does violence to the English language and corrupts political discourse to the point of absolute paralysis. That means "to argue that which you know is untrue and to substitute ideology for intellect..." It evacuates words of all objective content and instead opts to make words "mean what you need them to in a given moment."
I agree with every word of Pitts' analysis. I have argued here in multiple posts that cavalier, inaccurate, dishonest use of words has brought the creative advance of reality to a screeching halt in many areas of public life: religion, politics, science, the global economy, global warming, international affairs--to name but a few. Until we call the perpetrators on their intellectual hypocrisy and convince enough people to see it for what it is, the downward spiral will continue.
Perhaps it's a start that if I Google "Pitts Romney-speak," I get about 12,400 results. The initial ones reflect other newspapers that ran Pitts' column and other websites that have paid attention to it.
Please take it to heart. It is no exaggeration to say that our ability to have a future is at stake.
Zeroing in on Mitt Romney's September 3rd speech to the Republican convention, Pitts lamented that "a representative of the ideology that has controlled most of Washington most of the past 12 years can say with a straight face that his ideology needs to seize control of Washington to fix what is broken there."
Critiquing Romney's cant, Pitts said "I have to ask: what liberal Washington is he talking about? The federal government has three branches. The legislative, i.e. Congress, was under conservative control from 1995 to 2007. The judicial, i.e. the Supreme Court, consists of nine justices, seven of whom were nominated by conservative presidents. The executive, i.e., the president, is George W. Bush. Enough said."
It is bad enough, Pitts noted, that conservative politicians succeeded so well over the years as they "trained their followers to respond with Pavlovian faithfulness to certain terms. Say 'conservative' and they wag their tails. Say 'liberal' and they bear their fangs."
And it's worse still that pulling off such cynical manipulation "requires a limitless supply of gall and the inherent belief that people are dumber than a bag of hammers."
But what is most damning about the conservative rhetoric is its intellectual dishonesty, which does violence to the English language and corrupts political discourse to the point of absolute paralysis. That means "to argue that which you know is untrue and to substitute ideology for intellect..." It evacuates words of all objective content and instead opts to make words "mean what you need them to in a given moment."
I agree with every word of Pitts' analysis. I have argued here in multiple posts that cavalier, inaccurate, dishonest use of words has brought the creative advance of reality to a screeching halt in many areas of public life: religion, politics, science, the global economy, global warming, international affairs--to name but a few. Until we call the perpetrators on their intellectual hypocrisy and convince enough people to see it for what it is, the downward spiral will continue.
Perhaps it's a start that if I Google "Pitts Romney-speak," I get about 12,400 results. The initial ones reflect other newspapers that ran Pitts' column and other websites that have paid attention to it.
Please take it to heart. It is no exaggeration to say that our ability to have a future is at stake.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Southern Scrap Treats New Orleans Like Crap During Hurricane Gustav
Live TV coverage during Hurricane Gustav did not begin to capture the enormity of the threat posed by unsecured vessels bumping around in New Orleans' precarious Industrial Canal.The Times-Picayune says reports that "three" vessels were banging up against flood walls were astoundingly understated: in fact, says the U.S. Coast Guard, there were 70 vessels loose, and they all belonged to one company, Southern Scrap.
It turns out that Southern Scrap actually had 130 vessels in the canal when Gustav hit--so that less than half of them actually stayed moored.
The Coast Guard, which has no formal approval process for such situations, reviewed Southern Scrap's Heavy Weather Protection Plan before hurricane season and found it satisfactory. The Coast Guard also inspected Southern Scrap's Industrial Canal recycling yard early in this hurricane season and verified that they had the proper mooring equipment outlined in their plan.
But in a written order to Southern Scrap yesterday, Capt. Lincoln Stroh, the Coast Guard's New Orleans sector commander, expressed doubt that the company had followed its plan, since several grounded barges were found with frayed ropes and severed steel cables, but no chains. Stroh said the Coast Guard is launching a formal investigation.
Stroh also ordered Southern Scrap to remove all of its vessels from the canal prior to any new gale-force winds and to keep them out of the canal for the entirety of hurricane season, June 1- November 30.
Forty of the derelicts were still loose in the canal as of late yesterday. Southern Scrap planned to sink about six of them, but said it did not have enough time to remove the grounded barges before the possible landfall of Hurricane Ike. The president of Southern Scrap's parent company, Southern Recycling said they would try to keep them from floating again by punching holes in them or filling them with water.
The Times-Picayune reports that Southern Scrap plans to move its ship-recylcing operation up-river to St. Charles Parish next year. Given that parish's greater vulnerability to storm surges, its residents might want to re-think the cost-benefit calculation of that move.
They might also want to listen to Joe Sproules, president of Tri-Dyne Industries, which had two warehouses on the Industrial Canal disabled during Gustav when some of Southern Scrap's projectile barges slammed into them. Sproules is mad enough about his own losses, and has lawyers pursuing compensation.
But Sproules is even more concerned about Southern Scrap's callous disregard for the welfare of New Orleans' residents. He says that barges that missed his warehouses were headed for the federal floodwall, and that only good fortune made them stop short. Had they slammed into the wall, they could have breached the Industrial Canal again and re-flooded the 9th ward.
If the Coast Guard investigation confirms the negligence the agency suspects, Southern Scrap should no longer be allowed to operate anywhere. It's assets and operations should be seized, then sold to a company that values adjacent residents as something more than fodder for its bottom line.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Like Philosopher Whitehead, Cancer Researchers Seek Simplicity--and Mistrust It
Three new cancer studies reported today in the journals Science and Nature offer contemporary examples to validate the wisdom of Alfred North Whitehead's oft-repeated advice that we should seek simplicity--and mistrust it.
The studies portray a surprising and fascinating mixture of good news and bad.
On the downside, the studies find that the 30-year quest to trace specific cancers to a malfunctioning gene or two is much too simple and can never be achieved: after examining 20,000 genes in tumors from 24 pancreatic cancer patients and 22 brain tumor patients, researchers were amazed at the unique complexity of each individual cancer.
No two tumors were exactly the same. Individual tumors were found to require a different domino effect of genetic changes, and genes blamed for the same kind of tumor were different from one patient to the next. For example, Johns Hopkins researchers reported in Science that a typical pancreatic cancer contained 63 genetic alterations and a typical brain cancer had 60.
Not only did the genetic maps include mutated genes. There were also missing genes, extra genes, overactive genes and underactive genes.
If these were the only results, the findings would suggest that the relative simplicity of looking for a bad gene or two had hit a wall of unsortable, unpredictable complexity. Fortunately, there was also good news, and it may well outweigh the bad.
The upside of the research was that by providing a description of how cancer develops that is more accurate, it identified a more elegant simplicity that is actually very promising.
The researchers found that despite the wide variety genetic alterations and the apparent randomness in the way they cascade to turn normal cells cancerous, "clusters of seemingly disparate genes all work along the same pathways. So instead of today's hunt for drugs that target a single gene, the idea is to target entire pathways that most patients share."
Kenneth Kinzler, the Johns Hopkins doctor who lead the pancreas research, said if scientists can identify which genes cluster in which pathways, "a simpler picture emerges." The hope is that if pathway blockers can be found, they may help patients with many different kinds of cancer.
These developments are perfectly in line with Whitehead's model of creative advance, in which old simplicities are shattered repeatedly by new complexities. But once the new complexity is experienced more generally and described more accurately, a simplicity that is truer to reality does emerge.
This phenomenon is one exemplification of Whitehead's ultimate metaphysical principle: "The many become one, and are increased by one."
The studies portray a surprising and fascinating mixture of good news and bad.
On the downside, the studies find that the 30-year quest to trace specific cancers to a malfunctioning gene or two is much too simple and can never be achieved: after examining 20,000 genes in tumors from 24 pancreatic cancer patients and 22 brain tumor patients, researchers were amazed at the unique complexity of each individual cancer.
No two tumors were exactly the same. Individual tumors were found to require a different domino effect of genetic changes, and genes blamed for the same kind of tumor were different from one patient to the next. For example, Johns Hopkins researchers reported in Science that a typical pancreatic cancer contained 63 genetic alterations and a typical brain cancer had 60.
Not only did the genetic maps include mutated genes. There were also missing genes, extra genes, overactive genes and underactive genes.
If these were the only results, the findings would suggest that the relative simplicity of looking for a bad gene or two had hit a wall of unsortable, unpredictable complexity. Fortunately, there was also good news, and it may well outweigh the bad.
The upside of the research was that by providing a description of how cancer develops that is more accurate, it identified a more elegant simplicity that is actually very promising.
The researchers found that despite the wide variety genetic alterations and the apparent randomness in the way they cascade to turn normal cells cancerous, "clusters of seemingly disparate genes all work along the same pathways. So instead of today's hunt for drugs that target a single gene, the idea is to target entire pathways that most patients share."
Kenneth Kinzler, the Johns Hopkins doctor who lead the pancreas research, said if scientists can identify which genes cluster in which pathways, "a simpler picture emerges." The hope is that if pathway blockers can be found, they may help patients with many different kinds of cancer.
These developments are perfectly in line with Whitehead's model of creative advance, in which old simplicities are shattered repeatedly by new complexities. But once the new complexity is experienced more generally and described more accurately, a simplicity that is truer to reality does emerge.
This phenomenon is one exemplification of Whitehead's ultimate metaphysical principle: "The many become one, and are increased by one."
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Bristol Stomp: Palin Pregnancy Showcases Public Flaws of ‘Reagan Parenting’
I did not see Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech live last night. But from excerpts on NPR this morning and the AP transcript posted on MSNBC, she seems to have a way with words.
Well, some words, anyway. She’s still reticent to address the mess she and husband Todd have made of their family life—or why their mess is a telling indictment of the conservative values she’d impose on the rest of us.
Occasionally her words are clever. Being mayor of Wasilla, her Alaska hometown is, she says, sort of like being “a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” Yet she’s more than a little vague about what those responsibilities were or how they equip her to step in as president, should the need arise. In fact it was a $68,000 per year job, supervising 53 municipal employees, for a population of 5,469 in 2000, with an annual budget that rose from $4 to $6 million in her six years as major.
Sometimes her words are yawningly predictable: Obama will just tax-and-spend, because that’s what Democrats always do. But Palin can summon a few specifics.
She touts ethics reforms she got enacted into Alaska’s laws. But she has yet to account for her role in firing a state official who declined to fire a state trooper after her sister divorced him. (Court filings alleging the trooper abused the sister and threatened Palin’s husband may have justified Sarah’s concern; but did her tactics forecast more abuse of federal executive power by Republicans who have made it a way of life for eight years?)
As other emblems of achievement, she points to selling the governor’s private jet, driving herself to work, vetoing wasteful spending, suspending the state’s fuel tax, and promoting construction of a $40 billion natural gas pipeline.
She also claims that her supervision of the Alaska National Guard gives her both foreign-policy and military-command experience, yet when CNN pressed McCain spokesmen for an example of accomplishments in those roles, they were unable to provide specifics for either.
Unfortunately, the silence from Palin is deafening when it comes to addressing how the conservative values she prizes have wreaked havoc in the life of her own family.
The values I have in mind can be summed up in two words: “Reagan parenting.”
Reagan parenting is characterized by two specific negatives: (1) both parents working and absent from home for significant periods of time, so that they really don’t know what support and guidance their children are getting, largely from others; (2) and reducing sex education to abstinence education—which, in addition to its obvious impact on the Palin family, has caused the teen birth rate, reduced by nearly 1/3 since the early 1990s, to now be on the rise for the first time in 15 years.
Why don’t Palin and McCain want the media to discuss the pregnancy of her daughter, Bristol? Of course it’s embarrassing that Bristol and the baby’s father are unmarried and barely legal. But the Palins try to put lipstick on that pig by focusing attention on conservative values the teens have discovered after forgetting the one prohibiting sex before marriage: now they plan to get married, have the baby and care for it with all the teenage skill and dedication they can muster.
Yet the real reason Palin and McCain don’t want the media and the public focusing on Bristol’s predicament is that it portrays Reagan parenting for what it is: yet another conservative theory that has been a failure in practice.
It is important for us to discuss the Palin family’s private experience with Bristol publicly, because it shows very persuasively how thoroughly Reagan parenting has failed and how urgently we need to replace it with something that works.
The Republicans seem to have little interest in enabling parents to spend more time with their children or in encouraging educators to teach teens how to handle sex and reproductive options responsibly. The electorate needs to reward candidates who understand how pressing those needs are and who show courage enough to address them.
Well, some words, anyway. She’s still reticent to address the mess she and husband Todd have made of their family life—or why their mess is a telling indictment of the conservative values she’d impose on the rest of us.
Occasionally her words are clever. Being mayor of Wasilla, her Alaska hometown is, she says, sort of like being “a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” Yet she’s more than a little vague about what those responsibilities were or how they equip her to step in as president, should the need arise. In fact it was a $68,000 per year job, supervising 53 municipal employees, for a population of 5,469 in 2000, with an annual budget that rose from $4 to $6 million in her six years as major.
Sometimes her words are yawningly predictable: Obama will just tax-and-spend, because that’s what Democrats always do. But Palin can summon a few specifics.
She touts ethics reforms she got enacted into Alaska’s laws. But she has yet to account for her role in firing a state official who declined to fire a state trooper after her sister divorced him. (Court filings alleging the trooper abused the sister and threatened Palin’s husband may have justified Sarah’s concern; but did her tactics forecast more abuse of federal executive power by Republicans who have made it a way of life for eight years?)
As other emblems of achievement, she points to selling the governor’s private jet, driving herself to work, vetoing wasteful spending, suspending the state’s fuel tax, and promoting construction of a $40 billion natural gas pipeline.
She also claims that her supervision of the Alaska National Guard gives her both foreign-policy and military-command experience, yet when CNN pressed McCain spokesmen for an example of accomplishments in those roles, they were unable to provide specifics for either.
Unfortunately, the silence from Palin is deafening when it comes to addressing how the conservative values she prizes have wreaked havoc in the life of her own family.
The values I have in mind can be summed up in two words: “Reagan parenting.”
Reagan parenting is characterized by two specific negatives: (1) both parents working and absent from home for significant periods of time, so that they really don’t know what support and guidance their children are getting, largely from others; (2) and reducing sex education to abstinence education—which, in addition to its obvious impact on the Palin family, has caused the teen birth rate, reduced by nearly 1/3 since the early 1990s, to now be on the rise for the first time in 15 years.
Why don’t Palin and McCain want the media to discuss the pregnancy of her daughter, Bristol? Of course it’s embarrassing that Bristol and the baby’s father are unmarried and barely legal. But the Palins try to put lipstick on that pig by focusing attention on conservative values the teens have discovered after forgetting the one prohibiting sex before marriage: now they plan to get married, have the baby and care for it with all the teenage skill and dedication they can muster.
Yet the real reason Palin and McCain don’t want the media and the public focusing on Bristol’s predicament is that it portrays Reagan parenting for what it is: yet another conservative theory that has been a failure in practice.
It is important for us to discuss the Palin family’s private experience with Bristol publicly, because it shows very persuasively how thoroughly Reagan parenting has failed and how urgently we need to replace it with something that works.
The Republicans seem to have little interest in enabling parents to spend more time with their children or in encouraging educators to teach teens how to handle sex and reproductive options responsibly. The electorate needs to reward candidates who understand how pressing those needs are and who show courage enough to address them.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Indecent Exposure: Conservatives Unzip Judicial Activism and a New Right to Kill
Once upon a time, the biggest elephant in the Supreme Court’s hearing room was ridden by Justice Clarence Thomas, solo.
(Foggy? Or good at banishing painful images? Google “Clarence Thomas AND pubic hair,” or click on “Allegations of sexual harassment” in his Wikipedia entry.)
But with their Second Amendment decision June 26, 2008, three other “conservative” justices joined Thomas astride a new pachyderm, bigger and much more pernicious.
Made a majority fivesome by Anthony Kennedy, who relishes his mantel as 2008’s swing-vote, the conservatives exposed themselves in full-frontal glory as naked judicial activists. Unzipping with carefree abandon, they crumpled the fig leaves each used to get confirmed—the promise that they would only interpret and enforce the clear intent of the Constitution’s Framers.
Instead, they joined Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion, which indeed identified the clear intent of the Framers, but then trashed it, giving preference to a conservative ideology which the Framers’ never enshrined.
My detailed review of the majority and minority opinions confirms Justice Stevens’ assessment: “…not a word in the constitutional text even arguably supports the Court's overwrought and novel description of the Second Amendment,” which in Scalia’s words “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.”
One footnote by Justice Stevens captures perfectly why Scalia’s approach is so fundamentally flawed:
“The Court's atomistic, word-by-word approach to construing the Amendment calls to mind the parable of the six blind men and the elephant, famously set in verse by John Godfrey Saxe. [The Poems of John Godfrey Saxe 135-136 (1873).] In the parable, each blind man approaches a single elephant; touching a different part of the elephant's body in isolation, each concludes that he has learned its true nature. One touches the animal's leg, and concludes that the elephant is like a tree; another touches the trunk and decides that the elephant is like a snake; and so on. Each of them, of course, has fundamentally failed to grasp the nature of the creature.”
It is this mistaken method which leads Scalia first to identify correctly what the Framers codified in the Second Amendment—and then to ignore his own findings in favor of conservative ideology.
Ironically, there was some unanimity among the eight justices, and it emerged at two critical points of their analyses. Each of them agreed that there were multiple models of a right to bear arms available to the Framers, from a considerable variety of sources: English Common Law; laws enacted by the British Parliament; laws passed by colonial, state and municipal legislators; and proposals offered by the delegates who drafted and approved the Bill of Rights. And each justice agreed that the Framers did not codify all of these models, but in fact only one of them.
Compounding the irony, the dueling justices were sometimes even in agreement on what the one codified model was. For example, there is one key paragraph in which Scalia got it right:
“It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment's prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens' militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right—unlike some other English rights—was codified in a written Constitution.”
Precisely. Contrary to Scalia’s more expansive arguments elsewhere in his opinion, what the Framers chose to codify was not some cosmic right to bear arms to defend self and property, but a right to keep and bear arms in order to be militia-ready, to be available if called to active militia duty. Obviously this involved knowing how to shoot a gun and keeping a firearm or several firearms that could be retrieved expeditiously from some personal space.
Scalia also got it right when he quoted an opinion of the Georgia State Supreme Court in 1846: "The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State.”
What the Second Amendment codified was not just any right to bear arms, but the right to keep and bear them for “rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia.” Clearly individuals in possession of such weapons would have used them for other purposes as the need arose. But as Justice Breyer observed in his dissent, those other uses were subsidiary to the right to be militia-ready, not the other way around.
Scalia also was accurate when he quoted an analysis of the Second Amendment from law professor Thomas Cooley’s 1880 work, General Principles of Constitutional Law: “The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms; and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose. But this enables government to have a well-regulated militia; for to bear arms implies something more than the mere keeping; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary discipline in arms, observing in doing so the laws of public order."
This correctly summarizes the right which the Framers chose to codify. It also calls to our attention other possible models which the Framers decided to exclude. As the two dissenting opinions point out, the model Scalia decided to venerate was among the latter.
Several quotations from Stevens’ opinion (which was joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer) support my view that Scalia discovered the Framers’ intent accurately, but then arbitrarily substituted his own ideology:
“The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States… Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.”
“…the words ‘the people’ in the Second Amendment refer back to the object announced in the Amendment's preamble. They remind us that it is the collective action of individuals having a duty to serve in the militia that the text directly protects and, perhaps more importantly, that the ultimate purpose of the Amendment was to protect the States' share of the divided sovereignty created by the Constitution.”
“…a number of state militia laws in effect at the time of the Second Amendment's drafting used the term "keep" to describe the requirement that militia members store their arms at their homes, ready to be used for service when necessary.”
“The opinion the Court announces today fails to identify any new evidence supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate civilian uses of weapons. Unable to point to any such evidence, the Court stakes its holding on a strained and unpersuasive reading of the Amendment's text; significantly different provisions in the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and in various 19th-century State Constitutions...”
“The Court may well be correct that the English Bill of Rights protected the right of some English subjects to use some arms for personal self-defense free from restrictions by the Crown (but not Parliament). But that right—adopted in a different historical and political context and framed in markedly different language—tells us little about the meaning of the Second Amendment.”
“…the Second Amendment's omission of any statement of purpose related to the right to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense, is especially striking in light of the fact that the Declarations of Rights of Pennsylvania and Vermont did expressly protect such civilian uses at the time.”
“Indeed, a review of the drafting history of the Amendment demonstrates that its Framers rejected proposals that would have broadened its coverage to include such uses.”
“…after the delegates at the Massachusetts Ratification Convention had compiled a list of proposed amendments and alterations, a motion was made to add to the list the following language: "[T]hat the said Constitution never be construed to authorize Congress to ... prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms." This motion, however, failed to achieve the necessary support, and the proposal was excluded from the list of amendments the State sent to Congress.”
“Madison's decision to model the Second Amendment on the distinctly military Virginia proposal is therefore revealing, since it is clear that he considered and rejected formulations that would have unambiguously protected civilian uses of firearms. When Madison prepared his first draft, and when that draft was debated and modified, it is reasonable to assume that all participants in the drafting process were fully aware of the other formulations that would have protected civilian use and possession of weapons and that their choice to craft the Amendment as they did represented a rejection of those alternative formulations.”
“…state militias could not effectively check the prospect of a federal standing army so long as Congress retained the power to disarm them, and so a guarantee against such disarmament was needed… The evidence plainly refutes the claim that the Amendment was motivated by the Framers' fears that Congress might act to regulate any civilian uses of weapons.”
The only weakness in Stevens’ opinion is that sometimes he wanders into misplaced concreteness. Every so often throughout his analysis he characterizes what the Second Amendment aims to protect as “military uses of firearms.” This obscures the Constitution’s distinction between a national military and state militias, as well as the Second Amendment’s concern to prevent Congress from disarming the militias and to prevent it specifically by keeping the militia members armed, trained and militia-ready. This plays into Scalia’s hand, allowing him to charge—accurately—that Stevens’ is mis-characterizing the Second Amendment’s intent.
What the dissenters needed to do was to address what being militia-ready means for firearms possession and use in an age when the militias envisioned by the Constitution no longer exist and the closest thing to a successor entity is the National Guard, which is in fact more military in structure than the militias were and much more under the control of the federal government. This, unfortunately, the dissenters did not accomplish.
The problem is at least approached tangentially in Justice Breyer’s dissent (joined by Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg). Breyer proposes to evaluate the District of Columbia’s handgun statute under a “rational basis standard,” which requires the Court to uphold legislation so long as it bears a rational relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. In the process, Breyer added some important observations that also refute Scalia:
“…colonial history itself offers important examples of the kinds of gun regulation that citizens would then have thought compatible with the "right to keep and bear arms," whether embodied in Federal or State Constitutions, or the background common law. And those examples include substantial regulation of firearms in urban areas, including regulations that imposed obstacles to the use of firearms for the protection of the home. Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, the three largest cities in America during that period, all restricted the firing of guns within city limits to at least some degree.”
“The District's statute burdens the Amendment's first and primary objective hardly at all. As previously noted, there is general agreement among the Members of the Court that the principal (if not the only) purpose of the Second Amendment is found in the Amendment's text: the preservation of a ‘well regulated Militia.’”
“Moreover, even if the District were to call up its militia, respondent would not be among the citizens whose service would be requested. The District does not consider him, at 66 years of age, to be a member of its militia.”
“The law concerns one class of weapons, handguns, leaving residents free to possess shotguns and rifles, along with ammunition.”
“Nor, for that matter, am I aware of any evidence that handguns in particular were central to the Framers' conception of the Second Amendment. The lists of militia-related weapons in the late 18th-century state statutes appear primarily to refer to other sorts of weapons, muskets in particular… Respondent points out in his brief that the Federal Government and two States at the time of the founding had enacted statutes that listed handguns as ‘acceptable’ militia weapons… But these statutes apparently found them ‘acceptable’ only for certain special militiamen (generally, certain soldiers on horseback), while requiring muskets or rifles for the general infantry.”
“Nor is it at all clear to me how the majority decides which loaded ‘arms’ a homeowner may keep. The majority says that that Amendment protects those weapons ‘typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes...’ According to the majority's reasoning, if Congress and the States lift restrictions on the possession and use of machineguns, and people buy machineguns to protect their homes, the Court will have to reverse course and find that the Second Amendment does, in fact, protect the individual self-defense-related right to possess a machinegun.”
“At the same time the majority ignores a more important question: Given the purposes for which the Framers enacted the Second Amendment, how should it be applied to modern-day circumstances that they could not have anticipated?”
So where does this leave us?
It leaves us with a Constitution that now protects a broad new right to kill, in defense of hearth and home. Part 2, Chapter 2 of my doctoral dissertation shows that Christians have debated the morality of killing in defense of private property from their earliest days. The dominant position originally was that private property could not be acquired legitimately and that therefore it was immoral to kill a human being to retain it. That position began to slip in the Middle Ages and during more recent centuries. But this right to kill was not enshrined in the U.S. Constitution until the Court’s decision of 2008.
As the dissenters warn, it also leaves us with a right to kill that is very ill defined. Although the majority opinion listed gun-control laws it found legitimate and compatible with its decision, the dissenters are right to expect more slippage in Scalia’s direction as new specific cases are heard. And by not pinning down more precisely how far the right to kill extends, which weapons the Second Amendment exempts from regulation, or which laws legislatures may safely enact, the Court has set itself up to preside over multiple litigations of this issue endlessly.
Above all, it leaves the nation with a pressing need to restore integrity and judicial restraint to the Supreme Court. No liberal judicial activism in the past comes anywhere close to the arbitrariness of the conservative judicial activism in this case. Whatever their excesses, the liberal justices could never be accused of identifying the plain meaning of a constitutional amendment and then ruthlessly replacing it with their own ideology. Unless the next president of the United States puts an end to the appointment of conservative judicial activists to the Supreme Court, we can count on the court to put more conservative ideology into the mouths of the Framers.
(Foggy? Or good at banishing painful images? Google “Clarence Thomas AND pubic hair,” or click on “Allegations of sexual harassment” in his Wikipedia entry.)
But with their Second Amendment decision June 26, 2008, three other “conservative” justices joined Thomas astride a new pachyderm, bigger and much more pernicious.
Made a majority fivesome by Anthony Kennedy, who relishes his mantel as 2008’s swing-vote, the conservatives exposed themselves in full-frontal glory as naked judicial activists. Unzipping with carefree abandon, they crumpled the fig leaves each used to get confirmed—the promise that they would only interpret and enforce the clear intent of the Constitution’s Framers.
Instead, they joined Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion, which indeed identified the clear intent of the Framers, but then trashed it, giving preference to a conservative ideology which the Framers’ never enshrined.
My detailed review of the majority and minority opinions confirms Justice Stevens’ assessment: “…not a word in the constitutional text even arguably supports the Court's overwrought and novel description of the Second Amendment,” which in Scalia’s words “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.”
One footnote by Justice Stevens captures perfectly why Scalia’s approach is so fundamentally flawed:
“The Court's atomistic, word-by-word approach to construing the Amendment calls to mind the parable of the six blind men and the elephant, famously set in verse by John Godfrey Saxe. [The Poems of John Godfrey Saxe 135-136 (1873).] In the parable, each blind man approaches a single elephant; touching a different part of the elephant's body in isolation, each concludes that he has learned its true nature. One touches the animal's leg, and concludes that the elephant is like a tree; another touches the trunk and decides that the elephant is like a snake; and so on. Each of them, of course, has fundamentally failed to grasp the nature of the creature.”
It is this mistaken method which leads Scalia first to identify correctly what the Framers codified in the Second Amendment—and then to ignore his own findings in favor of conservative ideology.
Ironically, there was some unanimity among the eight justices, and it emerged at two critical points of their analyses. Each of them agreed that there were multiple models of a right to bear arms available to the Framers, from a considerable variety of sources: English Common Law; laws enacted by the British Parliament; laws passed by colonial, state and municipal legislators; and proposals offered by the delegates who drafted and approved the Bill of Rights. And each justice agreed that the Framers did not codify all of these models, but in fact only one of them.
Compounding the irony, the dueling justices were sometimes even in agreement on what the one codified model was. For example, there is one key paragraph in which Scalia got it right:
“It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment's prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens' militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right—unlike some other English rights—was codified in a written Constitution.”
Precisely. Contrary to Scalia’s more expansive arguments elsewhere in his opinion, what the Framers chose to codify was not some cosmic right to bear arms to defend self and property, but a right to keep and bear arms in order to be militia-ready, to be available if called to active militia duty. Obviously this involved knowing how to shoot a gun and keeping a firearm or several firearms that could be retrieved expeditiously from some personal space.
Scalia also got it right when he quoted an opinion of the Georgia State Supreme Court in 1846: "The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State.”
What the Second Amendment codified was not just any right to bear arms, but the right to keep and bear them for “rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia.” Clearly individuals in possession of such weapons would have used them for other purposes as the need arose. But as Justice Breyer observed in his dissent, those other uses were subsidiary to the right to be militia-ready, not the other way around.
Scalia also was accurate when he quoted an analysis of the Second Amendment from law professor Thomas Cooley’s 1880 work, General Principles of Constitutional Law: “The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms; and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose. But this enables government to have a well-regulated militia; for to bear arms implies something more than the mere keeping; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary discipline in arms, observing in doing so the laws of public order."
This correctly summarizes the right which the Framers chose to codify. It also calls to our attention other possible models which the Framers decided to exclude. As the two dissenting opinions point out, the model Scalia decided to venerate was among the latter.
Several quotations from Stevens’ opinion (which was joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer) support my view that Scalia discovered the Framers’ intent accurately, but then arbitrarily substituted his own ideology:
“The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States… Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.”
“…the words ‘the people’ in the Second Amendment refer back to the object announced in the Amendment's preamble. They remind us that it is the collective action of individuals having a duty to serve in the militia that the text directly protects and, perhaps more importantly, that the ultimate purpose of the Amendment was to protect the States' share of the divided sovereignty created by the Constitution.”
“…a number of state militia laws in effect at the time of the Second Amendment's drafting used the term "keep" to describe the requirement that militia members store their arms at their homes, ready to be used for service when necessary.”
“The opinion the Court announces today fails to identify any new evidence supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate civilian uses of weapons. Unable to point to any such evidence, the Court stakes its holding on a strained and unpersuasive reading of the Amendment's text; significantly different provisions in the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and in various 19th-century State Constitutions...”
“The Court may well be correct that the English Bill of Rights protected the right of some English subjects to use some arms for personal self-defense free from restrictions by the Crown (but not Parliament). But that right—adopted in a different historical and political context and framed in markedly different language—tells us little about the meaning of the Second Amendment.”
“…the Second Amendment's omission of any statement of purpose related to the right to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense, is especially striking in light of the fact that the Declarations of Rights of Pennsylvania and Vermont did expressly protect such civilian uses at the time.”
“Indeed, a review of the drafting history of the Amendment demonstrates that its Framers rejected proposals that would have broadened its coverage to include such uses.”
“…after the delegates at the Massachusetts Ratification Convention had compiled a list of proposed amendments and alterations, a motion was made to add to the list the following language: "[T]hat the said Constitution never be construed to authorize Congress to ... prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms." This motion, however, failed to achieve the necessary support, and the proposal was excluded from the list of amendments the State sent to Congress.”
“Madison's decision to model the Second Amendment on the distinctly military Virginia proposal is therefore revealing, since it is clear that he considered and rejected formulations that would have unambiguously protected civilian uses of firearms. When Madison prepared his first draft, and when that draft was debated and modified, it is reasonable to assume that all participants in the drafting process were fully aware of the other formulations that would have protected civilian use and possession of weapons and that their choice to craft the Amendment as they did represented a rejection of those alternative formulations.”
“…state militias could not effectively check the prospect of a federal standing army so long as Congress retained the power to disarm them, and so a guarantee against such disarmament was needed… The evidence plainly refutes the claim that the Amendment was motivated by the Framers' fears that Congress might act to regulate any civilian uses of weapons.”
The only weakness in Stevens’ opinion is that sometimes he wanders into misplaced concreteness. Every so often throughout his analysis he characterizes what the Second Amendment aims to protect as “military uses of firearms.” This obscures the Constitution’s distinction between a national military and state militias, as well as the Second Amendment’s concern to prevent Congress from disarming the militias and to prevent it specifically by keeping the militia members armed, trained and militia-ready. This plays into Scalia’s hand, allowing him to charge—accurately—that Stevens’ is mis-characterizing the Second Amendment’s intent.
What the dissenters needed to do was to address what being militia-ready means for firearms possession and use in an age when the militias envisioned by the Constitution no longer exist and the closest thing to a successor entity is the National Guard, which is in fact more military in structure than the militias were and much more under the control of the federal government. This, unfortunately, the dissenters did not accomplish.
The problem is at least approached tangentially in Justice Breyer’s dissent (joined by Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg). Breyer proposes to evaluate the District of Columbia’s handgun statute under a “rational basis standard,” which requires the Court to uphold legislation so long as it bears a rational relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. In the process, Breyer added some important observations that also refute Scalia:
“…colonial history itself offers important examples of the kinds of gun regulation that citizens would then have thought compatible with the "right to keep and bear arms," whether embodied in Federal or State Constitutions, or the background common law. And those examples include substantial regulation of firearms in urban areas, including regulations that imposed obstacles to the use of firearms for the protection of the home. Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, the three largest cities in America during that period, all restricted the firing of guns within city limits to at least some degree.”
“The District's statute burdens the Amendment's first and primary objective hardly at all. As previously noted, there is general agreement among the Members of the Court that the principal (if not the only) purpose of the Second Amendment is found in the Amendment's text: the preservation of a ‘well regulated Militia.’”
“Moreover, even if the District were to call up its militia, respondent would not be among the citizens whose service would be requested. The District does not consider him, at 66 years of age, to be a member of its militia.”
“The law concerns one class of weapons, handguns, leaving residents free to possess shotguns and rifles, along with ammunition.”
“Nor, for that matter, am I aware of any evidence that handguns in particular were central to the Framers' conception of the Second Amendment. The lists of militia-related weapons in the late 18th-century state statutes appear primarily to refer to other sorts of weapons, muskets in particular… Respondent points out in his brief that the Federal Government and two States at the time of the founding had enacted statutes that listed handguns as ‘acceptable’ militia weapons… But these statutes apparently found them ‘acceptable’ only for certain special militiamen (generally, certain soldiers on horseback), while requiring muskets or rifles for the general infantry.”
“Nor is it at all clear to me how the majority decides which loaded ‘arms’ a homeowner may keep. The majority says that that Amendment protects those weapons ‘typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes...’ According to the majority's reasoning, if Congress and the States lift restrictions on the possession and use of machineguns, and people buy machineguns to protect their homes, the Court will have to reverse course and find that the Second Amendment does, in fact, protect the individual self-defense-related right to possess a machinegun.”
“At the same time the majority ignores a more important question: Given the purposes for which the Framers enacted the Second Amendment, how should it be applied to modern-day circumstances that they could not have anticipated?”
So where does this leave us?
It leaves us with a Constitution that now protects a broad new right to kill, in defense of hearth and home. Part 2, Chapter 2 of my doctoral dissertation shows that Christians have debated the morality of killing in defense of private property from their earliest days. The dominant position originally was that private property could not be acquired legitimately and that therefore it was immoral to kill a human being to retain it. That position began to slip in the Middle Ages and during more recent centuries. But this right to kill was not enshrined in the U.S. Constitution until the Court’s decision of 2008.
As the dissenters warn, it also leaves us with a right to kill that is very ill defined. Although the majority opinion listed gun-control laws it found legitimate and compatible with its decision, the dissenters are right to expect more slippage in Scalia’s direction as new specific cases are heard. And by not pinning down more precisely how far the right to kill extends, which weapons the Second Amendment exempts from regulation, or which laws legislatures may safely enact, the Court has set itself up to preside over multiple litigations of this issue endlessly.
Above all, it leaves the nation with a pressing need to restore integrity and judicial restraint to the Supreme Court. No liberal judicial activism in the past comes anywhere close to the arbitrariness of the conservative judicial activism in this case. Whatever their excesses, the liberal justices could never be accused of identifying the plain meaning of a constitutional amendment and then ruthlessly replacing it with their own ideology. Unless the next president of the United States puts an end to the appointment of conservative judicial activists to the Supreme Court, we can count on the court to put more conservative ideology into the mouths of the Framers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
