Bush Tax Cuts: Redistribution of More Wealth to Top Won't Stimulate Economy

For those of you who think the fate of the Republic rests on granting more tax breaks to billionaires, review Nicholas Kristof's argument that the Bush tax cuts have made us a banana republic. The Bush tax cuts may have helped us climb out of the recession at the beginning of the decade, but the only trickle-down we've gotten since is the rich elites tinkling on us while hoarding the vast majority of the nation's income gains.

Instead of handing such huge tax breaks to the rich and hoping they'll buy lots of job-creating goods and services (they don't, says the CBO), we should pour our resources into the lower- and middle-income ranks by hiring teachers and ditch-diggers, extending unemployment benefits, and offering job-training programs. Keeping money in regular folks' pockets helps level the income gap, which in turn, says Kristof, would reduce the chances of another financial crisis, protect families from divorce, and maybe even pull us back from political polarization and toward a stronger sense of common national identity and purpose. (Remember, all that head-stomping Tea Party anger rises in some degree from economic anxiety of once-comfy white folks seeing their middle class eroding.)

We can't get Republicans to agree to in-the-trenches solutions to restore the middle class. But we can get the Republicans and Democrats to fall all over each other to hand out money to the folks who already have lots of money. That's the most dangerous redistribution of wealth taking place in our country.

Brownbaggers Protest for Health Reform Wed. at SHS Sioux Falls Office

My cousin Aaron celebrated some teabaggers standing outside Rep. Herseth Sandlin's Sioux Falls office shouting some silly slogans in the rain a couple weekends ago.

Teabaggers, meet Brownbaggers. I get word from organizer Michael Feikema that supporters of health insurnace reform will be holding a vigil outside SHS's office at 326 East 8th Street in Sioux Falls tomorrow (Wednesday) at noon. The action is part of a nationwide "Healthcare not Warfare" campaign, motivated in part by this thought from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death [MLK, 1967.04.04].

Where the teabaggers think expanding access to health care is the greatest threat to our liberty, the Brownbaggers see more cause for alarm in our fiscal focus on death and violence.

Yeah, but we all know economic and social justice are just code words for some awful anti-American plot, right?

Glenn Beck to Madison Christians: Might as Well Be Atheists

While the local Glenn Beck fan club, including District 8 House candidate Patricia Stricherz, presume to lecture me about their piety, their Dear Leader is proving he doesn't know his theology. His equation of Christian social justice with Nazism and Communism leaves Madison churchgoers with very few places to worship. Here's a quick survey of where our local churches and their denominations stand on social justice (I welcome additions, corrections, and more links!):

• Trinity Lutheran: the words social justice appear on their website. Run away! Run away!
• St. John Lutheran: social justice doesn't appear verbatim on the website, but they're ELCA, and my wife assures me they're all about social justice. "God's Work, Our Hands"—socialist code words if ever I heard 'em! (Same goes, I'll bet, for St. Peter Lutheran!)
  
• Our Savior's Lutheran: even the Missouri Synod can't get away from social justice.
• Good Shepherd Free Lutheran: Well, they're Free Lutherans, so they're free to believe whatever they want, I guess.
  
• St. Thomas Catholic: the Diocese talks about social justice. I also hear some local Catholics are Democrats. And don't even get me started on that Pope fellow. He's socialist... and German!
• Living Hope Wesleyan: the home site seems less concerned about social justice, but the denomination says social justice "is dear to the hearts of Wesleyans as well." Eeeek!
• West Center Baptist: Their Covenant and Constitution declares "Whenever men are in bondage to ignorance, poverty, or fear of prejudice, we shall strive for justice, freedom, dignity, and peace."
• Grace Episcopal: social justice gets its own page on the national website. (Perhaps Father Tim can offer some enlightenment!)
• Madison Methodist: they donate to all sorts of social causes.
• "River of Life" Assembly of God: The AG is all about social justice.

In Glenn Beck's world, if you go to church in Madison, you're pretty much a Nazi Commie. If my Christian neighbors took Glenn Beck seriously, there'd be a lot more people home reading my blog on Sunday morning. (Wait, maybe you should take Beck's advice.... ;-) )

Fortunately, Christians of all stripes recognize Beck's commentary offends true Christianity:

“What he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith, and Christians should no longer watch his show,” Mr. [Jim] Wallis, who heads the antipoverty group Sojourners, wrote on his “God’s Politics” blog. “His show should now be in the same category as Howard Stern.”

Rev. James Martin, an editor at the liberal Jesuit magazine America... wrote on the Huffington Post: “It is not enough simply to help the poor, one must address the structures that keep them that way. Standing up for the rights of the poor is not being a Nazi, it’s being Christian. And Communist, as Mr. Beck suggests? It’s hard not to think of the retort of the great apostle of social justice, Dom Helder Camara, archbishop of Recife, ‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist’ ” [Laurie Goodstein, "Christians Urged to Boycott Glenn Beck," New York Times: The Caucus Blog, 2010.03.11].

Even experts in Beck's own professed religion, Mormonism, say Beck is wrong:

Kent P. Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University, said in an interview: “My own experience as a believing Latter-day Saint over the course of 60 years is that I have seen social justice in practice in every L.D.S. congregation I’ve been in. People endeavor with all of our frailties and shortcomings to love one another and to lift up other people. So if that’s Beck’s definition of social justice, he and I are definitely not on the same team.”

Philip Barlow, the Arrington Professor of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, said: “One way to read the Book of Mormon is that it’s a vast tract on social justice. It’s ubiquitous in the Book of Mormon to have the prophetic figures, much like in the Hebrew Bible, calling out those who are insensitive to injustices. “A lot of Latter-day Saints would think that Beck was asking them to leave their own church” [Goodstein, 2010]

Christian neighbors, if you've been listening to Glenn Beck, you might want to reread that commandment about false idols. Beck profoundly misunderstands and misrepresents the basics of Christianity. He uses piety as a marketing tool. But would you expect any less from a man who converts to Mormonism just so he can have sex?

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Bonus reading: Matt Yglesias hits the same theme at Think Progress. Hey, doesn't his name mean church?

Save Money, Save Lives: Skip Black Friday for Advent Conspiracy

What would Jesus do on Black Friday? I doubt he'd be clipping coupons.



It's consumer frenzy time again. Gorge yourself at the table Thursday, gorge your shopping cart at the mall Friday. I feel ill already.

KELO runs the usual "buy buy buy!" propaganda under the guise of sage advice for shoppers. "Especially with the economy absolutely, you have to get out there and get the most for your little bit of money and hopefully it will stretch further," shopper Joyce Plastrow tells KELO's Courtney Zieller. Coupon clipper Amanda Roth gets her second plug in a month for her blog efforts to help consumers buy-more-save-more.

So why not do something a little more Christmas-y: buy nothing. Give your money to someone other than Wal-Mart. Give your money to build water wells in Africa. Give to the Advent Conspiracy, which says $10 buys clean water for one child for life.

According to Living Water International, every 15 seconds, another child dies because of lack of clean drinking water. Run that countdown while you wait for an open cash register at Best Buy.

This Friday, do something that will matter more and last longer than any of the plastic junk you're thinking about buying from China. Do Reverend Billy proud. Stay home Friday. Donate online. Do the Lord's work, not the economy's.

Death Penalty Expensive: Why Spend More on Scum?

I've mentioned before the fiscal reasons for getting rid of the death penalty. A new study from the Death Penalty Information Center adds support to the argument that capital punishment is money ill spent. The numbers are pretty simple: a death penalty trial costs a million dollars more than a non-death penalty trial. One in three death penalty trials results in an actual death sentence, and maybe one in ten of those sentences actually results in an execution. So out of thirty death penalty trails, $30 million of extra expense, you might get one actual execution. The other 29 put the defendant in jail for a long time or maybe acquit, the same results we would have gotten from much cheaper trials that don't consider capital punishment.

Now don't forget the other practical and moral reasons for dropping the death penalty, like the lack of deterrent effect, or mistakes that execute innocent citizens. Even former Texas Governor Mark White, a man who pulled the switch 20 times, is seeing those reasons outweigh the "hang 'em high!" mentality that rules his state.

But with South Dakota facing a $200 million budget shortfall, the fiscal argument alone may motivate our state legislators to revisit our death penalty. Do we really want to let heinous criminals drain even more resources from our state coffers when we need to save every penny we can? Do we really want to spend an extra million dollars to try putting Ethan Johns in the electric chair? Why not simply convict him, throw him in a cell with potatoes for lunch and a new pair of glasses, and use the million we would save to pay our troopers more, or pave roads, or do some other good?

Fiscally and morally, the death penalty costs more than it's worth.

Bob Newland Becomes Political Prisoner: Sentence Overlimits First Amendment Rights

Permit me a moment of agreement with Dakota War College: Judge John Delaney's sentence on marijuana advocate Bob Newland appears to include an unjust infringement on Newland's political rights.

To review: Newland pled guilty to felony pot possession. Yesterday, Judge Delaney issued the following sentence:

1. 45 days in prison
2. one year on probation
3. no booze or other intoxicants for that year
4. random searches
5. weekly drug tests
6. no public role in efforts to legalize marijuana for one year

Now I'm going to ignore the argument about whether pot should be illegal in the first place. Newland broke the law, he's now a felon, he's got punishment coming. Let's keep it simple and talk in general about what sort of punishment a felon should get. Prison time, fines, probation, searches, check-ins—those are all reasonable infringements on the liberty of a person who violates the law. (It is worth noting that Judge Delaney cut Newland some slack, suspending the $2000 fine in recognition of Newland's mostly empty pockets.)

But a restriction on political activity? And a restriction specific to the law broken? That seems to go too far. Certainly putting a man in prison entails restricting a man's ability to engage in political advocacy—he can't exactly go downtown to a rally or march on Washington—but it does not take away his voice. If a man is convicted under a law he considers unjust, should we really take away his right to argue publicly for the repeal of that law?

I can see a potential conflict of legal interest here. Suppose Newland chose to appeal his sentence. (Don't expect it: he seems resigned to his fate.) Suppose he wanted to argue that the law under which he was convicted is unconstitutional. Would not that contention, made on the public record in court, constitute advocacy for legalizing marijuana? Would not his very appeal thus constitute a violation of his probation? Something sounds unfair there.

Felons are still citizens. They still have a stake in society. If they want to be advocates for social reform and justice, we should let them speak. That doesn't mean the county or state is obliged to foot the bill for that communication or permit convicted murderers furloughs for every political protest and parade that comes along. But even in a prison cell, one can still think and communicate one's thoughts to others. Whether those thoughts are worth reading or listening to is up to the public. Wesley Cook (a.k.a. Mumia Abu-Jamal) committed crimes heinous enough to land himself on death row, yet he is permitted to publish books and commentaries from prison. Newland's trangressions earned him just 45 days in the pokey; why would a judge restrict his First Amendment rights (speech, assembly, press, and petition) for 320 days beyond the time he will be a guest of Pennington County?

The best legal punishment serves either to restore or to rehabilitate. In Newland's crime, there is no party to restore, no direct harm that must be paid back. And there is no rehabilitation in denying a man his voice, especially not on an issue that has given him purpose and direction for decades. For a man so dedicated to a cause, a blanket denial of his ability to work publicly for that cause is nothing but punitive, and I'm not sure that serves the interest of anyone in South Dakota.

Now Bob, don't go getting a big head. I'm not saying you are Martin Luther King, Jr. But in 1962, Dr. King was sentenced to 45 days in jail for protesting segregation laws in Albany, Georgia. To make Dr. King sit in jail for breaking a law is understandable. But to order King to take no public role in advocacy against segregation laws would have gone beyond strict law enforcement to outright political repression.

Or consider that case over in Minnesota where Judge John Rodenberg ordered the parents of Daniel Hauser to submit the boy for chemotherapy, against their religious wishes. The judge rightly could have sentenced the mother to jail time for subsequently fleeing the state to avoid the court order. But could he have also ordered that she take no public role in advocating the religious principles that motivated her actions? I should hope not. I disagree with her beliefs, and her beliefs put her son's life in danger, but even if she breaks the law, she retains a fundamental right to express those beliefs.

Bob Newland disagrees with a law. Newland broke that law. He will serve time for breaking that law. But for a year, he will also be a political prisoner, banned on penalty of further incarceration from challenging the state on its (as he sees it) unjust law.

I don't like what Bob's been smoking. But I like even less the political penalty we the people are imposing on him.

On the Sotomayor Docket: Nunchuks!

NPR's Morning Edition spends seven minutes and two stories discussing scrutiny being aimed at Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's decision affirming the state of New York's authority to ban nunchuks. They even tag the story with Carl Douglas's "Kung Fu Fighting."

I told you so!



And why not: remix with the masters!



The right-wing has Chuck Norris; who will be the Left's Bruce Lee? :-D

Obama Supreme Court Pick Coming for Your Nunchuks

Everybody will be kung-fu fighting over this one: Judge Sonia Sotomayor wants to take away your nunchuks. As a justice on the Second Circuit federal court of appeals, President Obama's choice to fill Justice Souter's seat ruled with the majority this year in Maloney v. Cuomo that the Second Amendment doesn't stop states from banning nunchuks. Expect the NRA to go postal over this one... and to make themselves sound as silly as the rest of the sputtering conservative movement.

Of course, Judge Sotomayor is o.k. with baseball bats. In 1995, the robed South Bronx native saved baseball by ending the last Major League Baseball strike.

Seriously, for those of you interested in learning more about Judge Sotomayor's track record, SCOTUSBlog offers a great summary of the judge's appellate opinions in civil cases.

Waterboarding Is Torture: Shut Up and Watch

Hat tip to SD Humanist:

Chicago radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller said waterboarding wasn't torture. He agreed to have a U.S. Marine waterboard him live on air to prove it. Six seconds in, he changed his mind.



Waterboarding is torture.

Jesus Is Not Jack Bauer

Another hat tip to DakotaWomen*, who brought to our attention Wednesday this disturbing survey. Among other things, the Pew Forum found that the folks most likely to say torture of suspected terrorists is "sometimes" or "often" justified were white evangelical Protestants. "Unaffiliated" respondents and infrequent chruchgoers expressed the greatest resistance to justifying such torture.

I offered the ladies this comment:

What would Jesus do? Weep. These numbers suggest that too many Christians have conflated Jesus with Jack Bauer or some such archetype. Jesus was not a manly man. He was not a warrior or a champion. He did not build the kingdom by smiting the Romans. And he sure as heck didn't say, "Torture thine enemies."

But what do I know? I'm just one of those soft secular humanists who believes some fundamental dignity is everyone's right [CAH, comment to Kelsey, "Torture Sucks. Why Is That So Hard to Grasp?" DakotaWomen, 2009.05.06].

Indeed, what's a godless commie like me know? Let's ask Jonathan L. Walton, a much more Jesusly dude than I and an assistant professor of religious studies at U. California-Riverside:

Muscular Christianity in America has minimized the vice of torture and extolled the virtue of the Heroic One who endures for a greater cause. The crucified body of Jesus is held up as a paragon of strength, virtue and virility....

Is it a wonder why, then, on Sunday morning it is often hard to tell the difference between Jesus and Jack Bauer on Fox’s megahit “24?” Like a long list of American messianic masculine archetypes (John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Mel Gibson), Jesus is situated in this tradition of bulletproof heroes who mock the machinations of torture.

What is more, like Jack Bauer, anyone who is willing to endure torture for others is that much more justified in dishing it out. And, unfortunately, since muscular evangelicals so identify with the mutilated body of Jesus who “suffered for the sins of the world,” it is only right that they, too, would condone the suffering of others in order to purge our world of “evil” [Jonathan L. Walton, "Evangelical Church of Torture and Jack Bauer," Religion Dispatches, 2009.05.06].

It's not Sunday, but I've got comps this weekend, so I'll say it now. Read the Bible. Read Ben Hur. You'll see. Jesus is not Jack Bauer.

(Matthew Glass, where are you when we need you?)

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*And a belated hat tip to Tim Gebhart, who blogged on this torture survey at A Progressive on the Prairie last weekend. Indeed, I need to pay more attention to my fellows!

"Am I Buggin' You? I Don't Mean to Bug Ya."

Brother Bono gives the sermon this morning:

So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice [Bono, "It's 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?" New York Times, 2009.04.19].

He also says something about the non-religious (I know one or two of them) and the capacity to fight for justice: "Not all soul music comes from the church."

O.K., Edge, play the blues.