Techno-Slavery?

An interesting take on programming from Douglas Rushkoff

Never Let the Facts Stand in the Way of a Good Argument

In the face of historic deficits and looming and intractable problems in healthcare and pensions, the Harper government has once again done what it does best, pander to the basest instincts of an angry, and in this case ill-informed electorate. It has announced that it is increasing the budget for corrections by 27% or more than $3 billion at a time when not only are other pressures looming, but when violent crime is less and less of a problem.

Make no mistake: this sells. There is always a quick advantage on beating up on society's most despised. Yet everything that we know about criminal justice says this will only make things worse. If prisons and harsh, punitive justice made a society safe, the United States, Russia and China would be the safest places on earth.

But it sure does mobilize the base and draw in votes.

Looking back through recent Canadian history, I cannot think of a Prime Minister more cynical and calculating than this one.

Et Tu Ross?

If I had any doubts about the depth of the troubles facing the Catholic Church, they were erased this morning by Ross Douthat's NYT column.

Not that it was particularly excoriating. Like most of his work, whether you agree with it or not (and I often don't) it was thoughtful and balanced.

But it was unflinching in its placing the responsibility for this issue at the feet of the Pope. His conclusion?

I am beginning to wonder if the Church can survive in its present form as anything but an empty shell. I believe that what must come out of this is the type of revolutionary rebirth for which Vatican II was but a precursor. God turns evil to good, but the result may be something we can scarcely envision.
. .  the crisis of authority endures. There has been some accountability for the abusers, but not nearly enough for the bishops who enabled them. And now the shadow of past sins threatens to engulf this papacy.

Popes do not resign. But a pope can clean house. And a pope can show contrition, on his own behalf and on behalf of an entire generation of bishops, for what was done and left undone in one of Catholicism’s darkest eras.

This is Holy Week, when the first pope, Peter, broke faith with Christ and wept for shame. There is no better time for repentance.

This Never Works

My first exposure to institutions that persist in denial as the ship goes down was the two years of revelations that culminated in Richard Nixon's resignation in the summer of 1974. I was perplexed then, and remain perplexed as to why when institutions and/or individuals are faced with this kind of cataclysm, they do not get out in front of it, own all of their mistakes and at least prevent further damage.

When they do, they almost invariably survive. And even prosper. Openness and reconciliation are wonderful restoratives.

Yet here we are watching the Catholic Church following this same well-worn path to almost certain catastrophe. Few if any believe the denials any longer. Today, National Catholic Reporter concluded a statement on this issue as follows

The focus now is on Benedict. What did he know? When did he know it? How did he act once he knew?

The questions arise not only about his conduct in Munich, but also, based also as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A March 25 Times story, citing information from bishops in the United States, reported that the Vatican had failed to take action against a priest accused of molesting as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school from 1950 to 1974. Correspondence reportedly obtained by the paper showed requests for the defrocking of the priest, Fr. Lawrence Murphy, going directly from U.S. bishops to Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican secretary of state. No action was taken against Murphy.

Like it or not, this new focus on the pope and his actions as an archbishop and Vatican official fits the distressing logic of this scandal. For those who have followed this tragedy over the years, the whole episode seems familiar: accusation, revelation, denial and obfuscation, with no bishop held accountable for actions taken on their watch. Yes, there is a depressing madness to this story. Time after time, this is a story of institutional failure of the deepest kind, a failure to defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a failure to put compassion ahead of institutional decisions aimed at short-term benefits and avoiding public scandal.

The strategies employed so far -- taking the legal path, obscuring the truth, and doing everything possible to protect perpetrators as well as the church's reputation and treasury -- have failed miserably.

We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history. How this crisis is handled by Benedict, what he says and does, how he responds and what remedies he seeks, will likely determine the future health of our church for decades, if not centuries, to come.

It is time, past time really, for direct answers to difficult questions. It is time to tell the truth.

To engage on this issue -- to insist on the truth -- is to love the Church, not to despise it. Yes there are those who hate the Church, but for those of us who love it, now is the time to step up.

Another Easy Essay

Why Not Be A Beggar?
Peter Maurin


1. People who are in need
     and are not afraid to beg
     give to people not in need
     the occasion to do good
     for goodness' sake.

2. Modern society
     calls the beggar
     bum and panhandler
     and gives him the bum's rush.

3. The Greeks used to say
     that people in need
     are the ambassadors of the gods.

4. We read in the Gospel:
     "As long as you did it
     to one of the least
     of My brothers
     you did it to Me."

5. While modern society
     calls the beggars
     bums and panhandlers,
     they are in fact
     the Ambassadors of God.

6. To be God's Ambassador
     is something 
     to be proud of.

Planning

What Kind of Church are We?

On the anniversary of Oscar Romero's death, this reflection on what we, the Church, are called to be

Earlier this month in his regular NCR column, John Allen described Archbishop Charles Chaput as a “twenty-first century” bishop, not so much for his ideas and viewpoints but for the way he “compete[s] in [the] secular marketplace of ideas.”

Today in NCR’s story on the sainthood cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero, whose anniversary of martyrdom we celebrate today, Fr. Dean Brackley SJ notes that the hesitancy with which the church seems to be moving toward “Saint Oscar” is in part due to the fact that, by canonizing Romero, the church would hold him up not only as a model Christian but as a model archbishop. As Brackley says, “not everyone in the Catholic hierarchy is comfortable with presenting him as a bishop to be imitated.”

What kind of bishops does the church need in the twenty-first century? Bishops known for their (sometimes loud) participation in the “marketplace of ideas,” or pastors known for their continual conversion and for their humble walk with the oppressed even unto death? Indeed, what kind of church shall we be in the twenty-first century? A church that competes for political leverage or a treasonous church of solidarity, a church of the poor?

Today’s anniversary is a good opportunity to reflect on these questions, not only for bishops, but for all of God’s people.

Amen

South Park and Our Insane Concepts of Addiction and Treatment

I could not say it better than this.

Yes, But Will He Sign the Test Ban Treaty?

So not only is Microsoft more wealthy than many nations. From Slashdot, comes news that they are vying to become a nuclear power. Can we really be sure that this is for peaceful purposes? Or does the evil Mr. Bill have designs on non-nuclear Google and Apple.

The search for WMDs is on. Can the Marines be far behind?

Easy Essays

From time to time I am going to post some of Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin's Easy Essays -- small bits of free verse that he used as teaching tools. Here is today's

Feeding the Poor – At a Sacrifice

In the first centuries
of Christianity
the hungry were fed
at a personal sacrifice,
the naked were clothed
at a personal sacrifice,
the homeless were sheltered
at a personal sacrifice.
And because the poor
were fed, clothed and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,
the pagans used to say
about the Christians
“See how they love each other.”
In our own day
the poor are no longer
fed, clothed, and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,but at the expense
of the taxpayers.
And because the poor
are no longer
fed, clothed and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,
the pagans say about the
Christians
“See how they pass the buck.”

The Harper Government and Petty Harassment of Palestinians

This is the kind of bullshit that keeps the conflict alive!


Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian leader and activist, and one of the real, credible hopes for peace in the region was to speak in Toronto tomorrow night. I received this notice a few minutes ago:

CJPME regrets to announce that its Canadian tour this weekend with Palestinian leader Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is cancelled. The Canadian government delayed the issuance of Barghouti's visa to the point where Barghouti missed two key flights, resulting in a cancellation of his tour in Canada. All individuals who purchased on-line tickets for the Barghouti events will be automatically reimbursed. You will receive a separate email from TicketWeb to confirm the reimbursement to your credit care. Please address any other questions and concerns to CJPME's main email at info@cjpme.org  The delays with Dr. Barghouti's visa were brought to the attention of Foreign Affairs and Citizenship and Immigration as early as Wednesday March 17th, with Minister Cannon being directly advised of the situation. On Thursday, March 18th, the Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration advised the Bloc Quebecois critic that officials were aware of the urgency of the matter, but were still doing checks. When the visa was finally issued after business hours on Friday, Dr. Barghouti had already, by default, missed half his tour, with no guarantee that space on flights would allow him to make the final two days of his visit. In the past, Dr. Barghouti has received a visa to Canada within 24 hours after applying. CJPME and Dr. Barghouti are committed to doing the tour later this Spring, once the obstacles put in place by the Harper government are cleared. Please watch CJPME's email announcements to know when the tour is rescheduled.  Sorry for this unfortunate news. Nevertheless, this simply forces us to redouble our efforts to bring Dr. Barghouti's important message to Canada.

This met no security needs and was done with the full knowledge of the Minister and undoubtedly the Prime Minister. This is one more example of the petty and vindictive treatment that is a day to day reality for Palestinians. Shame on this government.

Do We Really Want Leadership?

Via Senator Elaine McCoy's Hullabaloos blog, this note on leadership

The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is running another of its speakers series called “What is the next Big Question?”.  The series first caught my eye when I received an email asking “Can we build a brain?”  Much to my disappointment, not yet!  This year, however, the series is being launched by asking “What makes a great leader?” As CIFAR says in its preamble,   

“The truth is ... that the most effective leaders draw on a “we-based” collective identity – followers see their leader as “one of us.” It is group identity, not a single person, that makes or breaks the leader. In fact, to really understand what makes an effective leader, we also have to understand what makes a dedicated follower…

…better understanding of leadership is key to dealing with every major political, environmental and economic crisis in the world today.”

When I first read these words, I immediately took them to mean a leader who builds consensus.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized they could also mean a leader who conjures up enemies ... thereby creating an "us against them" culture ... to maintain cohesion in his or her group.  So now I'm truly intrigued.  Which is the better model, I wonder?  Dr. Alex Haslam will no doubt provide further insights. 

Does this mean that white supremacist groups and various nationalist/fascist political parties are exemplars of leadership? There is strong group identity and fanatically motivated followers, after all. Perhaps we need to learn to think and take responsibility rather than play follow the leader.

Gary Wills on Torture and Faith

Gary Wills has a brief meditation on torture and faith in the NYRB, posted today:

I say the rosary every day according to the church season, choosing one of the four sets of gospel “mysteries” (joyful, luminous, sorrowful, glorious) to reflect on the life of Jesus. Since it is now Lent, I am saying the sorrowful mysteries, those that deal with the Passion and Death of Jesus. This year, two of the five mysteries have special meaning for me—the second and the third.

The second mystery is the scourging of Jesus. This was a prescribed part of Roman execution by crucifixion. The convict was stripped naked and beaten with rods. This was done to break his spirit, so there would be no undignified scuffle when the man was led to the execution site and affixed to the cross. It was to demean him ahead of time, to degrade his manhood, so he would be cowed and submissive when taken to his death.

The third mystery is the crowning of Jesus. This was not a prescribed part of the process. The Roman soldiers improvised a special humiliation for their prisoner, wrapping him with a mock-regal purple robe, giving him a fake scepter, and putting an “imperial” wreath of acanthus leaves on this head, to scoff at the idea of a “King of the Jews.” It was like the medieval installation of a buffoon as “Lord of Misrule.” Again, the aim was to take away any last scrap of dignity that might be left to Jesus.

Sound familiar? Our recent torture techniques seem directly linked to the treatment Jesus received. Our prisoners were stripped, subjected to head bangings and face slappings. This was not torture, according to torturologist John Yoo. It may have been painful but it did not inflict permanent damage—except to human dignity. And making prisoners wear women’s underwear on their faces, or smearing them with what they were told was menstrual blood, was breaking down their deepest ideas of worth in their own culture and their own pride. It was a derisive “crowning.”

I do not know what went through the minds of secular or non-Christian torturers. But Christian torturers might have reason to have tortured consciences themselves when or if they remember what Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew (25.31ff). Asked who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he says those who comforted him in prison. Asked who will be excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven, he says those who would not comfort him in prison. His listeners ask, “When were you in prison, that we came to you or did not?” He answers: “Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest (elackistoi), you did to me.” Christians should face this sobering fact: in their treatment of the lowliest of men, they were torturing Jesus, renewing what the Roman soldiers did to him.

Fun With Toxic Assets

Welfare Queens Indeed

In 1980, Ronald Reagan rode into office in large part on the strength of the image of a cadillac driving, lavishly dressed and spendthrift welfare recipients. Yet collecting an extra cheque or two or living large in the ghetto are small potatoes indeed compared to the crowd that took down the economy a year and a half ago. 

Yesterday's report on the Lehman bankruptcy is resonating around the internet today. The Economist's take on this is as perhaps as good as any:

The report’s juiciest finding relates to Lehman’s use of an accounting device called Repo 105, which allowed the bank to bring down its quarter-end leverage temporarily. Repurchase (“repo”) agreements, whereby borrowers swap collateral for cash and agree to buy the collateral back later at a small premium, are a very common form of short-term financing. They normally have no effect on a firm’s overall leverage: the borrowed cash and the obligation to repurchase the collateral balance each other out.

But Repo 105 took advantage of an accounting rule called SFAS 140, which enabled Lehman to reclassify such borrowing as a sale. Lehman would give collateral to its counterparty and receive cash in return. Because the deal was being recorded as a sale, the collateral disappeared from Lehman’s balance-sheet and the bank used the cash it generated to pay down debt. To outsiders, it looked as though Lehman had reduced its leverage. In fact, the obligation to buy back the collateral remained. Once the quarter-end had come and gone, Lehman borrowed money to repay the cash and buy back the collateral, and its leverage spiked back up again.

Mr Valukas marshals plenty of evidence to back up his claim that “Lehman painted a misleading picture of its financial condition”. The effect of Repo 105 was material: the firm temporarily removed around $50 billion-worth of assets at the end of the first and second quarters of 2008, a time when market jitters about its leverage were pervasive (see table below). Mr Valukas can see no legitimate business reason to undertake the transaction, which was more expensive than a normal repo financing and had to be done through its London-based arm because Lehman was unable to get an American lawyer to agree that Repo 105 involved a true sale of assets.

And further . . .

As well as his findings on Repo 105, Mr Valukas describes how Lehman’s liquidity pool, which was designed to allow the bank to survive in stressed financial conditions for 12 months, contained cash and securities that had been assigned as collateral to its clearing banks, which grew increasingly nervous about doing business with Lehman. On September 10th 2008, just five days before it filed for bankruptcy, Ian Lowitt, the bank’s chief financial officer at the time, told investors that its liquidity pool remained strong at $42 billion. Yet an internal document from September 9th showed that it had a “low ability to monetise” almost 40% of the assets involved. The liquidity pool was not that liquid, after all.

I cannot fathom why ambitious prosecutors are not lining up for a shot at this.

Being Biblical?

I just finished listening to a piece on NPR (sorry, no link) on Israeli interference with expatriate Palestinians trying to return to the West Bank to help build a viable Palestinian economy. It is the usual story of double-dealing and bureaucratic foot dragging. As in all other areas, dealing with the Israeli state is a nightmare for Palestinians.

So it is especially interesting that as I was listening to this, the daily biblical reading from Sojourners arrived in my mailbox. Here it is in full:

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

- Leviticus 19:33-34

To break one part of the law is to break it all.

There Will Not Be a Two State Solution

From Andrew Sullivan -- this map that shows why a two state solution will never be possible, and was never meant to be possible. The best that can now be hoped for is that what happened in South Africa might happen here -- that an apartheid system characterized by tribal bantustans might someday become a binational state such as that envisioned by many early zionists.

Playing for Change

There is hope.

A Whole Lot More Than They Can Handle

Debra Dean Murphey, whose writing I discovered on The Ekklesia Project, has a reminder on her blog this week of how our casual assurances might inflict real pain. As she puts it

Some people, lots of people, millions of people have more than they can handle. 

They are overwhelmed, undone by sudden catastrophe; buried under crushing burdens related to debt, disease, death; drowning in a sea of unstoppable pain or white-hot grief. Some, miraculously, find a way out of the staggering misery (more on that in a minute). Others don’t.

Some people, it is clear, have more than they can handle.

Yet it’s important to note that Christian theology does not hold that it is God who sends the more-than-we-can-handle difficulties our way. God is not the invisible personal trainer, sadistically adding more weight to the bench to see how much we can press before we collapse–our own “no pain, no gain” life coach.

And neither does God visit suffering upon us as punishment. Jesus addresses this in Sunday’s appointed gospel lesson (Luke 13:1-9). Two ripped-from-the-headlines events are used to make his point. The first is the massacre of a group of Galileans in Jerusalem. On Pilate’s orders, these Jews had been murdered for offering sacrifices in the temple, and their own blood had been mingled with the priestly oblation.

Jesus insists that such a tragedy is not punishment from God: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you . . . “

His second example–again from the front page of the newspaper–was a construction accident in which eighteen people had been killed when a tower fell. Jesus repeats the question: “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you . . . “

God does not visit evil on us, for any reason. We visit it on ourselves. And real people suffer terribly and often cannot cope. To tell them this is God's will -- a sort of divine tutorial -- demeans both them and God.

Here is the Problem

A picture that tells a devastating story

This is the U.S., but it is almost surely indicative of most advanced economies. People ran up debt because they saw no other way of advancing their living standards. They don't need sermons from the rich and their acolytes. They need justice.

Things Likely to End Badly

Some More Sanity on Deficits

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz is also weighing in this morning on the hyperventilating over deficits:

Most economists also agree that it is a mistake to look at only one side of a balance sheet (whether for the public or private sector). One has to look not only at what a country or firm owes, but also at its assets. This should help answer those financial sector hawks who are raising alarms about government spending. After all, even deficit hawks acknowledge that we should be focusing not on today’s deficit, but on the long-term national debt. Spending, especially on investments in education, technology, and infrastructure, can actually lead to lower long-term deficits. Banks’ short-sightedness helped create the crisis; we cannot let government short-sightedness – prodded by the financial sector – prolong it.

Faster growth and returns on public investment yield higher tax revenues, and a 5 to 6% return is more than enough to offset temporary increases in the national debt. A social cost-benefit analysis (taking into account impacts other than on the budget) makes such expenditures, even when debt-financed, even more attractive.

Finally, most economists agree that, apart from these considerations, the appropriate size of a deficit depends in part on the state of the economy. A weaker economy calls for a larger deficit, and the appropriate size of the deficit in the face of a recession depends on the precise circumstances.

There is much of politics and little of economics in current hysteria about deficits. This is not 1995. We are not at the end of two decades of structural deficits. Our economic house is in order. We need to take a valium and calm down.

Roll Up the Rim, Eh!

The  touching spot by Tim Horton's during the olympics, critiqued in today's Globe, seems to overlook a fact that is obvious to anyone who spends time at Timmie's.

The ad depicts a new arrival in Canada welcomed with that quintessential Canadian experience, a Tim Horton's coffee. Yet if you visit any Timmie's it will be immediately apparent that while there are usually quite a few immigrants present, they are almost always serving and not enjoying the coffee. The customers are overwhelmingly middle-aged, white, lower middle-class Canadians.

These are the low-wage, insecure jobs that we ask immigrants to do, regardless of their qualifications. Perhaps the woman arriving in Canada depicted in the commercial should have been handed an apron. This would more closely reflect reality.

You're Gonna Owe Somebody

So why do banks care so much about government deficits?

Writing in The Nation, Jamie Galbraith puts it succinctly:

To put things crudely, there are two ways to get the increase in total spending that we call "economic growth." One way is for government to spend. The other is for banks to lend. Leaving aside short-term adjustments like increased net exports or financial innovation, that's basically all there is. Governments and banks are the two entities with the power to create something from nothing. If total spending power is to grow, one or the other of these two great financial motors--public deficits or private loans--has to be in action.

For ordinary people, public budget deficits, despite their bad reputation, are much better than private loans. Deficits put money in private pockets. Private households get more cash. They own that cash free and clear, and they can spend it as they like. If they wish, they can also convert it into interest-earning government bonds or they can repay their debts. This is called an increase in "net financial wealth." Ordinary people benefit, but there is nothing in it for banks.

And this, in the simplest terms, explains the deficit phobia of Wall Street, the corporate media and the right-wing economists. Bankers don't like budget deficits because they compete with bank loans as a source of growth. When a bank makes a loan, cash balances in private hands also go up. But now the cash is not owned free and clear. There is a contractual obligation to pay interest and to repay principal. If the enterprise defaults, there may be an asset left over--a house or factory or company--that will then become the property of the bank. It's easy to see why bankers love private credit but hate public deficits.

Like Dorothy  and her friends, we are supposed to respond with awe to the smoke and mirrors and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Toto knew better and so should we.

Karl Schroeder on Writing

SF writer Karl Schroeder has some interesting ideas on writing at the TPL site. For all of us who struggle:

Writing is not one activity. It is many. Knowing this can be key to your growth as a literary artist. There are a lot of myths about the writing process. One of the worst is the myth of talent--which is a catch-all word that seems designed to stop any further questioning. Talent, you see, is self-contained, impenetrable: opaque. "Well, he's talented." With that statement, we dismiss the possibility of looking inside the box, of finding out what it is that a writer does that makes him or her look talented.
Talent, like the words skill and experience, is useless when you want to learn how someone does something. Each of these terms takes something complex, multi-faceted and ultimately visible--if you know where to look--and makes it mysterious and opaque. So if I used any of these words in conversation or on this blog while I'm writer in residence here, please feel free to call me on it.
Underlying the apparent seamlessness of talent and skill are many different activities, all coordinated. Writing is not one activity but many, and each of us is not just 'a writer' but many different kinds of writer.
We are all a mixture of many different kinds of writer; but some of us start out being more one or two of these:
has a whole universe in his head, but can’t get that first scene written.

The draft horse has nine different versions of chapter 1, but no chapter 2.

The academic has lots of file folders crammed with notes, but hasn’t started the story yet.

The editor never finishes because the story “just isn’t quite right yet.”

The biographer has two hundred pages of dialog and character development, but nothing has actually happened yet.

The plotter has a lot of action going on, but there are no people in this story.

The essayist uses the story to make a point, and woe to any character or drama that gets in the way.

Recognize any of these traits? Chances are you have some of them. In my next post, I'll talk about how it is enthusiasm, and not some mythical trait like 'talent' that blends these personae in us; and I'll discuss how to dampen down the traits that you are over-emphasizing, and turn up the volume on the ones you tend to neglect. A good writer knows when to switch between these roles, and is willing to do it. We'll explore how that works, and how it can improve your writing.

Schroeder is the writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library.

Why Local and Informal is Often Better

From Cory Doctorow, a story about why small, local and informal often succeeds when big and expensive fails:

Volunteers in Afghanistan -- both locals and foreigners from the MIT Bits and Atoms lab -- have been building out a wireless network made largely from locally scrounged junk. They call it "FabFi" and it's kicking ass, especially when compared with the World Bank-funded alternative, which has spent seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars and only managed its first international link last summer.

Locals and volunteers are doing what big foreign aid cannot. This is what Ivan Illich talked about for more than four decades.

Tired Tropes from Tired People

Now that our PM has let us have our democracy back for a bit, if we promise to play nice, it is budget time. For the occasion, our national paper has trotted out the usual suspects to give the usual advice. Preston Manning tells us we need new institutions for a new century, a message we have been hearing from him for decades. He was fearless leader's mentor,maybe a phone call would be more appropriate.

Jeffrey Simpson suggests we need to raise taxes and cut spending. Herbert Hoover would be proud. With persistent unemployment and a manufacturing sector that will be reeling for years and deflation a real threat, let's torpedo the recovery. There is no threat from government borrowing -- interest on government debt is declining as investors like me look for a safe haven and except for a deranged housing market, there is plenty of slack in the economy. But hey, why think when a tried and true bromide will do.

Finally, Tory retread Reginald Stackhouse thinks we should get a kinder, gentler Steven Harper. No, Reginald, what we need is a new government. Of course this would require an opposition with cojones instead of polsters.

It seems increasingly clear that what is needed here is a generational changing of the guard. The boomers haven't had an original thought in a long time. And yet there seems to be a reluctance, to put it kindly, to bring along young dynamic leadership in any of the parties (or in the press, for that matter). Presumably, there is a crop of bright and ambitious thirty- and forty-somethings somewhere.

It's time.

A Timmies Tax?

Via Mark Bittman's blog, an idea for taxing junk food.

If you want to see where your health care dollars are going, stand and watch a drive through line at Tim Horton's. These are people who cannot walk for their double/double and donut. One of the saddest sights is a belly tucked under a tilt wheel at the drive-thru.

Of course, this is just one aspect of a huge problem in our eating habits and food chain. But if the numbers bear it out, surely it is worth considering.

Yoder on Non-Violence and the Problem of Just War

Jesus Radicals has a review of a posthumous work by John Howard Yoder on non-violence. Their review is worth quoting at length:

John Howard Yoder’s newest posthumously published book, Nonviolence: A Brief History, is comprised of lectures that he gave in Warsaw Poland in 1983. At that time the Solidarity Movement had became a powerful nonviolent force trying to affect change in Communist Poland. Pope John Paul the II was to visit Poland just a month after Yoder delivered his lectures. So the time for Yoder to urge nonviolent resistance was ripe, though Yoder did not reference contemporary events in Poland during the lectures. First Yoder urged his hearers to consider the lessons that heave been learned by nonviolent movements in the twentieth century. He then refutes objections that just war theorists might raise to the effectiveness and legitimacy of a nonviolent movement, moving from there to ground nonviolence resistance in the Judeo-Christian heritage. Finally he addresses the Roman Catholic Church in the final three lectures, agreeing with liberation theologian Adolfo Pérez Esquivel that “It is love, not violence or hatred, that will have the last word in history.”

. . . Yoder narrates the “cosmological conversions” that Tolstoy, Gandhi and King underwent that pushed them to see reality anew. Speaking of Tolstoy’s insight that influenced Gandhi and King Yoder states:

The key to the good news is that we are freed from prolonging the chain of evil cause engendering evil effects by action and reaction in kind. By refusing to extend the chain of vengeance, we break into the world with good news. This one key opened the door to a restructuring of the entire universe of Christian life and thought. There developed from it a critique of economic exploitation, of military and imperial domination, and of westernization.

Yoder invites the reader to have their own “cosmological conversion” has he explains the New Testament’s cosmology (thus overcoming some weaknesses in Tolstoy’s viewpoint). The “powers and principalities,” which help create order but also dominate and oppress people in forms such as the state, have been disarmed and defeated in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. They were put on public display and shown for what they truly are: emperors with no clothes. Jesus now wages a cosmological war against these defeated powers, and invites us to be part of the march toward history’s christological. Christians are a sign of Jesus victory and the eschatological kingdom. As such we take part in an alternate politics that sees that the “grain of the universe” is not with the powerful, but the oppressed and downtrodden, not with violence but with suffering as Christ suffered. As such, Jesus’ church will inevitably run headlong into the empire’s of this world as they resist Jesus, and the church will have to witness publicly, and sometimes at great cost.

This cosmological conversion to which we are invited is to a new way of living in and viewing the world, not merely to feelings and beliefs. It is to see that Jesus is more determinative of history than anybody in the White House, the Kremlin or some country’s Parliament. He goes on to show how in the past few decades the Holy Spirit has moved within the Catholic Church to help many people to this conversion, most importantly people in the Catholic Worker movement, but there have also been stirrings in the bishops themselves. Jesus is lord and has altered the course of humanity’s sinful, violent rebellion. The question for us is whether we care to take the medicine that will make us well enough to see again, to see not merely shadows, but the reality that casts them.

The Church has become far too comfortable with violence and with war. We glorify past wars and rationalize present ones. We trot out the logical pretzel of just war theory when we know very well it bears no relation to the gospel. The Church is not just another political actor. It is the presence of Christ in the world.

Budget Blues: Its the Deflation, Stupid!

With budget day upon us, and the Tories crowing about an economy on the mend, it is worth pondering the state of our neighbor to the south, where our economic fate is determined.

For months, we have heard about the inflationary cataclysm to come. With fundamentalist zeal, the financial sector in particular, already in receipt of their multi-billion bag of slag, have been telling of the horrors to come if government largess is not reined in. Economist Tim Duy, by way of Mark Thoma's blog this morning, has some somewhat different news:

My attention this morning was drawn to the inflation numbers in the January Personal Income and Spending release, specifically the recent downward trend in core PCE inflation:

Coupled with a sizable output gap that yields very high human cost in the form of high rates of labor underutilization - and forecasts that such underutilization will persist for years - would lead one to believe that policymakers still have work left ahead of them. Policymakers, however, do not appear to agree, and instead focus on the fact that output is growing again, even if the 5.9% pace in the final quarter of last year was inflated by inventory correction. Indeed, with the recovery taking hold, there is no imperative for more action. Fiscal policy looks hamstrung by deficit concerns, while monetary policy is poised to turn contractionary as asset purchase programs are wound down.

For the time being, it would appear that fiscal tightening will not be followed by similar monetary policy. At least the BofC understands that there is no inflationary risk. Output is well below capacity and will remain so for years to come. Rates on government debt continue at historically low levels, falling sharply over the past week.

This is not about economics. It is about old time religion.