Capitalism Run Amok

Several seemingly unrelated news stories during this holiday week have pointed to the rise of capitalism run amok in our society. The influence of big money and the desire for making money without legal, ethical, or moral restraint are having consequences on our society that will reverberate for generations.

First, there are stories about the state of college athletics, especially about college football during bowl season and the opening of the transfer portal. Many players are abandoning their teammates and sitting out their bowl games, either to drop out of school and enter the transfer portal, or to drop out of school to prepare for entering the NFL draft. Tampering and big payoffs through the name, image, and likeness money (NIL) are the worst-kept secrets in big time college football. Players are working toward their third, and sometimes even fourth, college football team in search of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And all that funded by big money corporate donors, trying to attach their brands to popular college football players. 

Second, there is the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) by students to write papers for them. One particular app in the news is called ChatGPS, which can take a writing assignment and use AI to generate a paper, complete with references. ChatGPS is making money by selling students the tools they need to cheat. And that leads to other software tools sold to schools and individual teachers to detect the cheating, sometimes by the same companies that develop the cheating tools. And the arms race escalates, with these software development companies laughing all the way to the bank.

All this is capitalism run amok. 

What Does Moderate Mean

 

Much has been said and written about the “mainstream moderate” or “independent” voter, but beyond the labels there’s not much substance or fleshing out these moderates’ specific views on specific issues. The labels are popular especially when criticizing Democrats, who somehow must be careful so as not to offend these “moderates” with extreme positions. 

But to try to figure out what exactly the labels mean, here is a list of specific policy areas. I appreciate the feedback from everyone on what the “moderate” position is for each.

1. Voting rights. Specifically, should Congress fully reauthorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and expressly reinstate the pre-clearance requirements struck down in Shelby County v Holder and expand pre-clearance to the entire nation?

2. Abortion. Should Congress codify nationally the framework established by Roe v Wade?

3. Gay marriage. Should the bill currently in the Senate codifying the right to gay marriage pass as is?

4. Policing/criminal justice reform. Should Congress resurrect the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act from the last Congress?

5. Environmental protection/energy. Should the Congress override the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v EPA, reasserting its power to delegate rulemaking authority to Federal agencies? Should the Congress increase support for smart grid, EV, and alternative energy infrastructure? 

6. Immigration reform. Should the Congress resurrect the framework of the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the Senate by a vote of 68-32, but was not taken up in the House when Speaker John Boehner invoked the Hastert rule?

7. Firearms. Should the Congress pass universal background checks for every firearm sale/transfer, enact limits on magazine capacity for semiautomatic weapons, beef up enforcement of gun trafficking laws, and enact a nationwide red flag law?

8. Taxes. Should the Congress reform the personal and corporate income tax laws, and in what ways, specifically?

9. Education. Should the government support private schools through vouchers and expansion of charter schools, especially for-profit and online schools? Should the government support universal pre-K? Should community college be free?

A Sober Debate

 Michael Gerson, Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, calls for a "sober debate" on abortion in a column posted this week on the Post website. He then goes on and sets up a false equivalence between some extremists on the left who he claims want abortion on demand throughout pregnancy, and the mainstream Republican position that is calling for imposing restrictions on travel and mail-order medications akin to the fugitive slave laws to punish women.

But I agree that we need a sober debate on many of our policies. And I agree that we need to view these policies through the lens of our Judeo-Christian heritage, specifically as that heritage is rooted in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

• We can talk about "quickening" as the demarcation where pregnancy seems to matter when it comes to legal distinctions.
• We can talk about the vision of a just and righteous society, where doom is proclaimed on those who enact laws that punish the poor, the fatherless, and the widow (Isaiah 10). Where justice is almost always accompanied by the phrase "for the poor" in scripture.
• We can talk about the Kingdom of God described as a time when we turn our weapons into useful implements for agriculture, and instead of standing our ground we talk about putting away our swords (Matthew 26).
• We can talk about the division of the nations between sheep and goats in Matthew 25.
• We can talk about the Imago Dei imprinted in every human being, and how we ignore Christ when we ignore the least of these.
• We can talk about Matthew 6 and the insistence on public prayer and other public displays of piety among so many today.
• We can talk about the command to "suffer the little children" and how the right wing seems to completely misread that.
• We can discuss the command to treat the foreigner among us as a citizen.

So let's have the debate. Let's discuss all this openly, in the spirit of fellowship and mutual respect.

Robb Elementary School

The shooting on May 25, 2022 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX has again shocked the nation. It has also brought out the usual divisions on firearms safety. I personally come down on the side of groups like Moms Demand Action or Giffords.org, promoting universal background checks, stringent red flag laws, magazine size restrictions, and aggressive enforcement against gun trafficking.

There is also springing up a debate over physical security and law enforcement response, given what appear to be glaring failures in Uvalde despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on physical security measures and having a trained and equipped SWAT unit in the local police department.

After the shooting at Columbine HS in Colorado in 1999, physical security of school facilities became a focus of design and construction of new school facilities. Measures to "harden" schools include:

• Single-point controlled access, to include electronic locks and video or physical surveillance and card access control for entry to the building
• Armed school resource officers, whose duties include the typical "security guard" routines to check for unlocked doors
• Perimeter security, including perimeter video surveillance and controlled access to the parking lots and grounds during school hours
• Hardening interior doors, especially doors to classrooms

Columbine also brought forward scrutiny of law enforcement tactics in response to an active shooter on campus. Many police departments formed active shooter response teams, and coordinated with schools to conduct active shooter drills.

All that seems to have been for naught at Robb Elementary this week. The shooter killed his grandmother at her house (shades of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Connecticut), and then wrecked his car near the school and opened fire at a funeral home across the street from the school (per 9-1-1 calls). Response to those 9-1-1 calls appears to have been slow. The shooter then apparently entered the school through an unlocked door, despite the school having spent lots of money to implement some of the hardening measures described above.

Several minutes later, police responded to the school. But they failed to carry out any kind of tactical response, despite their own SWAT unit. Instead, law enforcement entered the school about 40 minutes later, upon arrival of backup from Federal officers, including Border Patrol officers.

The questions about the law enforcement response and hardening measures at the school must be answered. But we cannot allow that to distract from addressing the ocean of firearms that floods our nation.

And a note about our two high schools in Haywood County, NC. Tuscola and Pisgah High Schools are designed around the "Florida plan," which means the schools have several separate buildings separated by covered walkways. There is no single point of entry to the school building, because each campus has six or seven separate school buildings. That is a physical security nightmare.

Washington Post comments

 I have long said that the basic philosophical difference between Democrats and Republicans is the question, who gets to be an American. Who gets to enjoy the rights and privileges that are clearly laid out in our sacred founding documents.

For Democrats, the answer is that every person born in America is an American, regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, education, wealth/income. Every person is entitled to the inalienable rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, and the rights and privileges set forward in the Constitution and laws enacted thereto. Democrats seek to widen the circle, to help every person realize the dream of that more perfect Union.

For Republicans, the answer is different. Republicans start with the premise that only white Christians are "true Americans." And then when we see this news this morning, we understand that it's really only white male Christians. The rest are obligated to somehow force their way into the inner circle, where it's up to the white male Christians whether they get to enjoy some of the rights that are "endowed by the Creator."

There is nothing more personal and private than health care decisions. And here the white Christian males decide it's time to put women in their rightful place, letting them know in no uncertain terms that they are still not first-class citizens.

 - 5/3/2022 on https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/02/roe-v-wade-supreme-court-draft-politico/

Folks, this abortion ban stuff is the mainstream of the Republican Party, not some radical fringe. Attacking the LGBTQ community, people of color, and immigrants is the mainstream of the Republican Party, not some radical fringe. Saying that protesters should have their skulls cracked in is the mainstream of the Republican Party, not some radical fringe. Slashing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is the mainstream of the Republican Party, not some radical fringe. Denying citizens the right to vote is the mainstream of the Republican Party, not some radical fringe. Dumping pollution in our water and air is the mainstream of the Republican Party, not some radical fringe. Supporting Putin is the mainstream of the Republican Party, not some radical fringe.

 - 5/3/2022 on https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/02/roe-v-wade-supreme-court-draft-politico/

Our Misplaced Priorities

 Just browsing the headlines today in the Washington Post:

Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show

Race hovered over Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton goes after puberty blockers

Ted Cruz held up ‘The End of Policing’ in a hearing. Sales soared.

It’s Pride Week in Austin schools. The Texas AG says that’s illegal.

Then we find stuff that's buried on page A6 somewhere, or not even making much news.

The number one killer of adults ages 18-45 is fentanyl poisoning. COVID-19 is indeed a public health crisis that in my opinion we're not done with yet. But fentanyl is killing people, companies are making money by illegally distributing this killer, and we seem to be impotent against that threat. 

Public education continues to be under attack from the segregationists, this time in the guise of all manner of culture war issues like puberty blockers and critical race theory and Pride Week. Meanwhile, our kids keep falling behind in math and science and reading and writing while the politicians argue over masks and whether little Johnny should wear a dress. And those kids will not be able to compete in the 21st-century global economy, leading the world in the 21st-century global energy transition.

And speaking of the 21st-century global energy transition, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has opened the eyes of the West to the perils of dependence on crude oil imported from bad actors like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and others. The price of gasoline won't matter when most vehicles on the road have electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. The price of propane won't matter when you heat your home and your water with a very efficient electric heat pump. The price of fuel won't matter when your forklifts and your golf carts have batteries instead of fuel tanks. 

But instead of tackling hard issues head on, in good faith, we spend our political energy fighting over bullshit.

Ukraine

 It's time for the United States and NATO to step up against Putin's aggression. It appears that the Russian army is bogged down in its attempt to control Kiev. The real front is along Ukraine's coast, from Mariupol to Odesa. 

I suggest sailing the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group from the Eastern Mediterranean through the Bosporus into the Black Sea, in a show of freedom of navigation. This would, in my opinion, provide a huge distraction to Russia's Black Sea fleet, in particular dissuading the Russians from conducting amphibious assault operations along the coast of Ukraine.

3/24/22 My friend Bill Everett posts this on his blog: The war in Ukraine is not only a struggle over autocracy versus democracy (and not simply over the value of national sovereignty). It is a struggle over the degree to which Christian churches will align themselves with nationalisms and imperial versions of “Christendom.”

Running List of Quotes

 Just a running list of quotes, this being a handy place to keep them.

"Beware of any Christian movement that demands that government be an instrument of God's wrath but never a source of God's mercy, generosity, or compassion." - Rev. Benjamin Cremer

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: “there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” - Frank Wilhoit

America's billionaires could give everybody in the country a $3,000 stimulus check and still be richer than they were before the pandemic. - Robert Reich

"Billionaire" isn't a qualification. It's the description of a person who is hoarding more resources than they could use in 100 lifetimes while other people are starving. It's the name for a human dragon sleeping on its pile of rubies and gold. 

Benjy Sarlin on Twitter: "These seats always get talked about like they're an objective Best Lawyer Award for whoever got the highest on the Lawyer test. There are 1000s of people who could do this job fine at any moment. WH's consider lots of factors starting with ideology, it's not like an MVP vote."

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” -  Lyndon B. Johnson

“I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.” - Mother Jones

the homeschooled college dropout Annapolis reject divorced-after-8-months driving-with-revoked-license gun-totin lawsuit millionaire cross-dressing insider trading  and my very own ex Congresscritter Madison Cawthorn

“Science isn’t Burger King; you can’t just ‘have it your way. Take notes, Madame Speaker. I’m about to define what a woman is for you. “X chromosomes, no tallywhacker. It’s so simple.”

"Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid." - Robert Rohr

“Using a different colored pencil to shade the solution of each inequality in a system will make identifying the solution of the system of inequalities easier.” - Precalculus with Limits

@NobleSpencer on Twitter: "Fascinated by how the behavior of the people who took 3 pieces of pizza at the pizza party because they thought it would run out and the people who took 1 piece for the exact same reason is such a perfect encapsulation of American beliefs about community."

"When the establishment turned their guns on me, when the Uni-party coalesced to defeat an America First member very few people had my back. On a mission now to expose those who say and promise one thing yet legislate and work towards another, self-profiteering, globalist goal. The time for genteel politics as usual has come to an end. It’s time for the rise of the new right, it’s time for Dark MAGA to truly take command. We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We are coming." - Madison Cawthorn on Instagram, 5/19/2022

"...if our liberty demands the occasional massacre, then conservatives ought to make that case." - Jamelle Bouie

"Take notes, Madam Speaker. I'm about to define what a woman is for you: XX chromosomes, no tallywhacker." - Madison Cawthorn

"It is by no means enough that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor." - John Paul Jones

Cause everybody's got a pistol
Everybody got a .45
The philosophy seems to be
At least as near as I can see
When the other folks give up theirs, I'll give up mine.  - Gil Scott-Heron

“It’s a horrible, horrible situation, and we’re not going to fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals. And my daddy fought in the second world war, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said, ‘Buddy,’ he said, ‘if somebody wants to take you out, and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.’” - Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN)

"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion." - Edmund Burke, speech to the electors of Bristol, November 3, 1774

"A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane." - Tennessee Supreme Court, 1840

“Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences.” ― John Wesley

"The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness, but social holiness.” - John Wesley

“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” ― John Wesley

“Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man that can comprehend the Triune God.” ― John Wesley

Hawkeye: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
Father Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?
Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
Father Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.
Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

It is not possible to preach lawlessness and restrict it. - Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial, October 13, 1958

“Here is this guy who comes out with his manifesto, holding the Confederate flag and had just hijacked everything that people thought of. We don’t have hateful people in South Carolina. There’s always the small minority who are always going to be there, but people saw it as service, sacrifice and heritage. But once he did that, there was no way to overcome it.” -- Nikki Haley, four years after the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

“In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream…. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” - Donald Trump

“Today I am taking sides. I am taking the side of Peace. Peace, which I will not abandon even when its voice is drowned out by hurt and hatred, bitterness of loss, cries of right and wrong. I am taking the side of Peace whose name has barely been spoken in this winnerless war. I will hold Peace in my arms, and share my body’s breath, lest Peace be added to the body count. I will call for de-escalation even when I want nothing more than to get even. I will do it in the service of Peace. I will make a clearing in the overgrown thicket of cause and effect so Peace can breathe for a minute and reach for the sky. I will do what I must to save the life of Peace. I will breathe through tears. I will swallow pride. I will bite my tongue. I will offer love without testing for deservingness. So don’t ask me to wave a flag today unless it is the flag of Peace. Don’t ask me to sing an anthem unless it is a song of Peace. Don’t ask me to take sides unless it is the side of Peace." Rabbi Irwin Keller, Oct. 17, 2023