RedBlueChristian

Here’s a summary of the various crimes reported from the “occupy” camps. They’re just like the tea parties, right?

After answering the question of whether Mormons are a cult with a solid “yes and no,” we should turn to the next question that’s on so many minds, since there are two Mormons in the GOP presidential primary right now: Can I vote for one for President of the United States?

It’s true that Mormons are pretty far outside of normal, orthodox Christianity, but their belief system still produces a world view that is in line with that of most evangelical Christians, at least on the most practical matters.

We can expect a Mormon president to be pro-life and pro-family — both in the laws they champion and the judges they appoint. As people who are committed to unpopular and difficult lifestyles, we can expect them to support freedom of religious exercise for all Americans. Beyond that, I think you’ll find their chosen party labels tell you more about their views and aims than does their religion.

There are understandable concerns about a Mormon president creating interest in the LDS religion, but I can’t believe they’ll get such a huge boost from that. People may consider the Mormons out of curiousity, but their decision to stay with them or not will say more about traditional Christians than about the Mormon president.

And how far are we willing to take that concern? If we don’t vote for a Mormon because it may cause people to become Mormons, next we may have people in the Church of Christ refusing to vote for Baptists or Calvinists refusing to vote for Arminians. Ridiculous? Yeah. So is voting against a Mormon over this.

There’s one truth we need to keep in mind in this whole thing: We’re looking for a president, not a pastor.

All of the objections to voting for a Mormon for president should fall away if we keep that truth in view.

One last warning: Even if you don’t vote for a Mormon in the primary, it’s appearing increasingly likely your choice in the general election will be President Obama or a Mormon. If you decide to opt for a candidate of a minor party — the “true Christian” in the race — you will simply be voting for Obama. That’s simply the way our system works.

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Crossposted from Homeward Bound

With Mitt Romney again running for President of the United States, the word “cult” is getting a lot of air time.

Is the Mormon church a cult? You can’t give a simple yes or no answer.

There are (at least) three ways to use the word “cult” — and they’re all correct usage:

The broadest, but least common, refers to any system of worship. It is not derogatory; it simply distinguishes one religious group from another. In history, the “Jewish temple cult” was the way orthodox Israelites worshipped YHWH at Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem.

The narrowest, and most common among Americans at large, refers to groups with wildly unusual teachings that influence their members using unethical tactics (e.g., sleep deprivation) and try to cut them off from their friends and families (at least in the popular imagination). Think Branch Davidians or Heaven’s Gate.

In between these two in scope is a usage that is common among American Evangelicals: a group that is an unorthodox off-shoot of an existing religion. It simply refers to groups that don’t follow all of the rules. By this definition Christianity is a cult of Judaism, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult of Christianity (because they do not hold to the deity of Christ or the doctrine of the Trinity).

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka, LDS Church or Mormons) is also a cult of Christianity by this definition.

The problem is that most Americans, when hearing the word cult, think about David Koresh or Jim Jones. To these Americans, calling the Mormon church a cult is sure sign that you are a weirdo. You’ll rarely, if ever, be given a chance to explain what you mean. You’ll simply be tuned out or castigated.

It is not useful to call the LDS Church a cult in politics or apologetics. It demeans you. Just don’t do it.

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Crossposted from Homeward Bound

I haven’t posted in a very long time and it appears no one else has either.  Well, here’s one that strikes at the very heart of morality, ethics and worldview.  Why did the riots happen in the UK?

This is an absolutely fascinating article in the Telegraph on that very subject:

The truth on the riots:

UK riots: The end of the liberals’ great moral delusion - Telegraph: There is no national debate about the epidemic of riots and looting that spread through our cities like a bush fire. Out there in the real world, where people go about the normal business of life, there is no sign of the heated argument that the media is so determined to air. In fact, I cannot remember a time when there has been such crushing unanimity on a matter of public importance: the answers to the questions of why this happened, what went wrong when it began to happen and what needs to follow in its aftermath are considered so blindingly self-evident as to be beyond rational disagreement.

And this is fascinating: “We have Jean-Jacques Rousseau to thank for the basic principle that men are born good and will only behave badly if they are corrupted by authority and repressive institutions: that we need only liberate them from those false limitations and their natural moral instincts will come to the fore.”

Cross posted at Ron’s Bloviating

These are my thoughts for 9 January 2011, the Sunday in the lectionary cycle known as “The Baptism of the Lord” Sunday. The scriptures for this Sunday are Isaiah 42: 1 – 9, Acts 10: 34 – 43, and Matthew 3: 13 – 17. I hope that what I write in this message holds to the thoughts and meaning of the Scriptures for today.

Six people were killed last Saturday; a congresswoman from Arizona was severely wounded as were some twelve others. But they weren’t the only ones to die by gun violence last week. There was the shooting incident in Omaha with a frustrated high school student; there was an earlier shooting in Arizona as well. And we are justifiably shocked by what occurred last Saturday. And we should be; but we should also be shocked by the simple fact of the matter that it happened in the first place.

But it strikes me that we are going to put labels on the victims, not so we can identify them but so that we don’t have to identify them. It becomes so much easier to label a victim because that way, once everything settles in and we get back to normal, we don’t have to think about it.

Let’s face it; we are not willing to accept the idea that six people were killed last Saturday. We are not willing to accept the idea that two people were killed in Omaha last week. And how many other people were killed by senseless acts of violence last week. As long as we can put some sort of label on the victims and the crimes, it becomes very easy to forget about what happened.

Labels make it easier to do things; after all, if we don’t label the files on our computer, we could spend ½ of our time looking for the one file that we need. But when we put labels on people, it becomes very easy to forget them.

If you follow this blog, you know that my wife has started a feeding ministry on weekends at the church. Primarily for the children of the neighborhood, we are not going to tell others that they cannot eat at the table. We are mindful of certain regulations and rules but we will never turn away a hungry soul.

On Sundays, because of the Sunday School, the breakfast is in the community room instead of the gym. About two weeks ago, one member of the congregation came up to me while I was at the serving table and asked me if this was the “poor” people’s food. My response was, essentially, that it was food for everyone. I could not help but think to myself that this person saw food given without question to someone poor or homeless was somehow different from the food that members of the church might eat. We make no distinction about who may partake of the food that we serve. The food, by the way, is prepared fresh every weekend and the ingredients are high quality; Ann doesn’t take any shortcuts when it comes to cooking.

But we are mindful of who does come to the table we prepare. This is the prayer that I wrote for the kitchen:

Our most gracious Heavenly Father, please bless this food and the workers who have prepared it this day. Help us this day to understand that it will be your Son, Jesus Christ, whom we feed this morning and may we treat Him well. May what we do this morning and in the coming mornings better express Your Love and help others to find Your Grace. AMEN

I am sure that every church in this country did something for individuals and families for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am just wondering how many churches are continuing this throughout the rest of the year. Hunger and poverty do not magically appear in the middle of November nor do they likewise magically disappear at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.

I am withholding judgment on what cause that young man in Arizona to go on that shooting and killing spree. It is interesting to note that witnesses stated that he was trying to reload his weapon while individuals were tackling him and stopping him from shooting. But we have to wonder if the words of hate and violence that have so dominated our culture did not somehow play a role in his decision process.

But, words cannot hurt people, you say. Was it the healing of the sick and the feeding of the poor that caused the religious and political authorities to fear Jesus? Or was it what He was saying?

It has been the words of many who have inspired others to do many horrible and terrible things; it has been the words of many who have inspired others to do many great things. We are seeing an epidemic of what is called cyber-bullying – the spreading of gossip and lies about individuals over the internet. The consequences of these words are now just beginning to be visible. Ask the family of the fourteen-year old in Ohio if words do not hurt people.

And then we say, sometimes to ourselves, sometimes out loud “How can these things happen? We are a Christian nation!” Personally, I wish we would quit saying that we are a Christian nation. We are a nation that loudly proclaims that we are Christians but we haven’t a clue what it means to be a Christian. Go back and read the words from Isaiah for this Sunday and tell me if that is what you do. Go back and tell me if you are like Peter, telling others what Jesus has done and then doing it yourself. How many of us are willing to go out and fight the system that says the poor must suffer while the rich enjoy the good life? How many of us are willing to let the rich keep getting richer while the number of those in poverty get bigger every year?

If we were a Christian nation, we would be a nation that speaks out when one individual has no health insurance. If we were a Christian nation, we would be a nation that made sure that every individual had the same opportunity. Christ did not check the identity papers of those who followed Him; he really didn’t care where they came from. Maybe His disciples were a little leery of letting those who weren’t clearly Israelites get close to Him but He didn’t care. He gave the same opportunity to everyone whether they were a Jew or Gentile, an adult or a child, a man or a woman. Can we, who proclaim that we are a nation that follows Christ, say the same thing?

Yes, there were times when Jesus was angry but where was His anger directed? It was towards those who oppressed the people, not the oppressed people. And when Peter attempted to use the sword to stop the arrest of Jesus in the Garden, Jesus stopped him (and healed the wounded soldier). Violence is not the path that we should be walking. We should be walking and building a path of peace.

If you want to express anger and hatred towards others on this planet, go right ahead. But don’t tell me you are a Christian. If you want to exclude individuals from your church because of the color of their skin or the nature of their lifestyle or the status of their checkbook, go right ahead. But take the Cross off the wall over your altar (if there is one even there) and take the word Christian out of the name of your church.

When Jesus came to John at the Jordan River some two thousand years ago, it was to affirm the purpose of His ministry. John wanted Jesus to baptize him and that is what we often want to do. We want Jesus to affirm what we do, not the other way around. When we are baptized, our old life is washed away and we begin a new life. I don’t think it matters when one is baptized; as long as one knows that they have been baptized and been raised with the understanding of what that means, the baptism holds.

That’s why it is so important for each and every one of us to stop and consider the meaning of our words. We proclaim by our words that we are Christian; we allow everyone to think that we have been baptized and have begun a new life. But do our words reflect the meaning of what we say?

If we have been baptized, if our sins have been washed away, then it is time that we start living the life that comes anew in Christ. It is time that the meanings of our words reflect the baptism that we sought.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are always welcome but please post them there.  Thank you!

Chrysler

Have you noticed the recent Chrysler commercial for their mini-van?  You know the one where three young boys at elementary school are challenged another young boy to a race?  I suppose that when they created this commercial they didn’t think about it but every time I see it now, I see that one young man basically running for his life.  Maybe I am putting too much into it but with the discussion and comments about the amount of bullying in the schools today, I wonder if Chrysler shouldn’t take down that ad.

Alternet

I used to subscribe to the Alternet news along with Truthout and Mother Jones.  I still subscribe to Truthout and Mother Jones but I stopped receiving Alternet.  It had nothing to do with what they were reporting (though it did tend to be a repeat of Truthout.  In light of what many news organizations do today, I appreciate these alternative views.

No, I dropped them over a matter of advertising.  I know that you have to advertise in order to survive, especially if you are non-profit organization.  I would support these organizations if I could but I am not in a position, like so many others, to that right now.  So they are in a position of having to advertise to get some revenue to keep the news coming.  But Alternet accepted Google Ads and it seemed like every time I opened up the Alternet web site, I was looking at a political ad for a Republican or a Tea Party candidate, the very people that Alternet philosophically opposes.

What does that say about the people at Alternet?  I know when the Methoblog first started taking ads, it ran the Google ads for a while.  That is, until it was pointed out that one of the ads was for “ordination by mail”, something totally antithetical to the United Methodist philosophy.

Should any organization runs ads for their opposition?  According to the person who wrote me when I asked, they have to accept all ads, no matter who they are from or they will lose their non-profit status.  Fair enough, but is money that important that it will override the philosophy of the organization?  Given the nature of this world, I will argue that Alternet sold out.  And when they sold out,  I dropped out.

Our Thinking Today

Our thinking today seems at times superficial, at times, ridiculous.  We will gladly sell out our principles for a few coins of silver and think that it doesn’t make any difference in the outcome of life.  The Pharisees and the Scribes laughed at Judas – what are they thinking today about us?

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but please post them there.

Here are my thoughts for the 17^th Sunday after Pentecost, 19 September 2010. The Scriptures for this Sunday are Jeremiah 8: 18 – 9: 1; 1 Timothy 2: 1 – 7; and Luke 16: 1 – 13.

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My apologies for not posting this on Sunday – things are in flux right now.

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As I have written before, when I look at the three basic scriptures in the Lectionary, I try to formulate a title that expresses my thoughts about the scriptures. In other words, I formulate a plan that will guide me in my thoughts and thinking as I write the message, sermon and/or blog for the week.

That’s the basis for the title this week. I see in the scriptures some thoughts about having a plan; unfortunately, as I reviewed the information that would be the basis for my plan, I discovered some flaws that have caused me to think about what I wanted to write. Still, the basis for my ideas is still true and it is worth putting down those ideas.

I recall back in 1968 the talk about Richard Nixon’s secret plan to end the Viet Nam War. As I discovered in research, he really never had such a plan but he also wasn’t going to be very open about how he was going to resolve that little conflict in Asia. It was important for me back then to understand what the President of the United States had planned because certain aspects of my life, namely the draft, dictated that I would be an instrument in the implementation of that plan. And it wasn’t something that I was too crazy about.

First, the idea of the draft was an abhorrent one to me. It also struck me that I had absolutely no say in the matter, whatsoever. I wasn’t twenty-one so I couldn’t vote back then and there was a certain degree of unfairness to the idea that I could be chosen to go over to a land far, far away and be engaged in a conflict that might cost me my life and I would have absolutely no say in the matter. Now, as I have written before, I had and have no problem with military service. I am the son and grandson of military officers and, all things being equal, I would have probably joined the Air Force when I graduated from college. But I wanted that to be my choice, free and clear; not one determined by other factors that I had no say in.

It strikes me that some of the voices we hear today echo that same sentiment; that decisions are being made by authoritarian figures of all types that affect each person’s life and that the person has no say in the matter. Sometimes those authoritarian figures are one’s parents and, as a child, there is a certain understanding that you will do what your parents want you to do. But as the child gets older and begins to see the world through their own eyes, their input and their responsibility (nasty little word, that one, but it had to be included) increases as well.

And perhaps that is part of the problem. People today want the input but not the responsibility. They may not like paying taxes but taxes are part of the responsibility one pays for being a citizen and what grant them the right and privileges of citizenship. The other responsibility of a citizen is to be involved in the political process (that’s sometimes known as voting). If you do not participate in the political process, you really don’t have any means by which to complain. By the same token, those who are elected have a duty to respond and listen to all those to whom they are responsible. And I am one of many these days who sees the majority of politicians beholden only to those who contribute to their campaign and to the lobbyists who “sweeten the pot” in many ways.

The same is true with regards to the church. There are too many people in too many churches who want what the church has to offer but have no desire to commit their time, their talents, their presence, or their service. They are willing to be there for baptisms, weddings, and funerals but they will not help with Sunday School or financial support and if there is a time conflict between church and society, society generally gets the nod.

Many in the church today are alarmed by this shift in priorities. But why should they be? After all, we have softened the message to the point of it being almost watered down. Or we have hardened the message but made sure that it wasn’t applicable to all people, only the ones the congregation don’t want in their church.

The young in society today see a church that preaches one word but lives another; sometimes the wise are young and they have chosen not to come to church. You hear the cries of the elders that there are no youth in their church but why should there be? The elders by their own actions have driven the youth away, either by refusing to listen to the youth or making a mockery of the words said on Sunday morning.

It is no wonder that the words of Jeremiah resonated for today. The church has deserted God and the people have found other gods. And while there are those who would rejoice in the words of Paul to Timothy to pray for the government that would yield a simple life, they want a government that would reflect the times and attitudes before Christ. They would rather pray for the damnation of others than pray that we find a solution to hunger, homelessness, illnesses, and violence.

The solution is not an easy one. If you read the Gospel message for today as translated in The Message, you read Jesus saying,

If you’re honest in small things, you’ll be honest in big things.

If you’re a crook in small things, you’ll be a crook in big things.

If you’re not honest in small jobs, who will put you in charge of the store?

No worker can serve two bosses: He’ll either hate the first and love the second.

Or adore the first and despise the second. You can’t serve both God and the Bank. (Luke 16: 10 -13)

You can’t have it both ways. You cannot put God off until the last minute and think that will work. It will but the problem is that you can’t know when that last minute is. It might come tomorrow and you will not be prepared for it.

If you lead your life with the presumption that there is this last-minute reprieve, you will be mistaken. On the other hand, if you live your life with the full knowledge of Christ and what Christ did and what that means for you, you have the beginnings of a plan.

It is a plan that says that I will follow Christ in my heart, in my mind, and in my life. It is a plan that says that all those I meet in a given day will know that there is a God and that He loves us. They will know because they will see it; you will know because you will feel it in your heart.

It is not an easy plan, to say the least. But it offers far more than any easy plan can.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but please post them there.

We are all by now familiar with the Nigerian bank scam or one of its variants.  You know the routine – you get an e-mail from someone who has a relative that left them a huge sum of money but it is somewhere where they can’t get it.  So they need your help and your money to get it.  We have even received this as a note from the FBI!

But I have noticed lately a number of messages coming from friends and family through Yahoo e-mail accounts.  The first few of these had nothing on the subject line and only a link to a web site but the last one did actually have content in the message.  It was so poorly written that it just added to the suspicious nature of the message.

I don’t think these messages contained a virus or anything like that (no attachments and my security alarms didn’t go off).  The links did work and went to rather questionable sites.  All of this lead me to believe that I wasn’t receiving the message from a friend.

Now, when I get these weird, strange, suspicious messages I communicate with the sender through an alternate channel and let them know what is happening.  (In one case, the “sender” received a message from about 15 friends within minutes of receiving the suspicious note!)  In the case of those who were using a Yahoo account, the problem appears to be at that level and not on the individual computer.  Unfortunately, the only solution seems to be to close or stop using that particular account.

I have no idea what the goal these “hackers” is.  It may be to plant a cookie on the recipient’s computer for later work; it may be a new way to send spam type e-mail; it may be something entirely different.  But it does appear that somehow the “hacker” has gotten into the on-line system and gotten hold of the address book associated with the e-mail account in order to send out these messages.

But these message reinforce the safety protocols that should be in place.  First, and foremost, make sure that you have an up-to-date security program in place on your own computer.  If you have a wireless network in place, make sure that it is secure and “invisible” to the outside world.  You do not have to be a technical wizard to insure that the security of your computer system is up-to-date; you will need a technical expert to fix the problems if the security is not.

And if you get a “strange” e-mail from someone you know, it always helps to check with them via alternative routes.  I think in this day and age, when we rely on electronic communications as a substitute for personal contact, we are more vulnerable.  I like computers and the accompanying technology; it has made things far easier for me.  But I sometimes wonder if we are relying more on the technology than we are on our own creativity.  These “messages from friends” and various scams seem to reinforce that idea.  Too many people “trust” requests that they receive in an e-mail, especially if it comes from someone they know or a company that they do business with. 

And, finally, when someone says that their new device cannot be “hacked” or is immune to a virus, that sounds to me like an open invitation for trouble.  Any device can be, given enough time and effort, can be “hacked”.

I just wanted to highlight a technical problem that I see happening more and more these days.  The next step is up to you. 

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Additional thoughts on the matter of e-mail scams and hacks and what to do:

23 September 2007 — “For What Is The Truth?” – notes about what to do and what not to do with messages from friends

5 May 2008 — Virus Warning – note about the “The Bad Times Virus” (humorous)

7 April 2009 —  “So Where Is He?” – detailed notes about e-mail hoaxes

14 July 2010 —  “Let’s Think About This For A Moment” – references to the earlier works

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but please post them there.

Where does “love your neighbor” end?

We feel sorry for poor people who are just trying to get by. We want to give them a break, and we want to see others do the same. If we’re honestly trying to love our neighbor, we’ll probably help them out — with money, food, or an odd job if we can.

But we don’t help them jack someone’s car.

The comments on the previous post, “Loving Your Illegal Neighbor,” called to mind a very hard-nosed Proverb:

“Men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving. Yet if he is caught, he must pay sevenfold, though it costs him all the wealth of his house” (6:30-31).

Loving your neighbor has its limits. Those limits are the law, and the law is supposed to be “one size fits all:”

“Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly” (Lev 19:15).

In the illegal immigration debates, poverty cannot be an excuse to violate the law. If it’s treated as an excuse to violate immigration law, we shouldn’t be surprised if some think it’s an excuse to violate other laws.

We can change our laws, and I think we should, but we can’t ignore those who broke the law. If a reasonable price isn’t paid, the law loses respect required to make our society function.

What’s a reasonable price? That’s a question for another time.

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Crossposted from Homeward Bound

How does the command to love our neighbor as ourselves relate to illegal immigration?

Should Christians support an open border policy or amnesty or something like that? Aren’t these people just looking to make a better life for themselves and their families? They just want the opportunity to work and feed their kids. Wouldn’t we do the same thing if we were in their place? How can we deny them that chance? We shouldn’t discriminate against them just for being born on the other side of an imaginary line. If we want the poor to help themselves, what more can we ask than these people who simply want to come here and work?

Is that what the golden rule requires? If so, we’re in heap big trouble.

If loving our neighbor requires allowing anyone to come here, we certainly can’t limit that to those born in Mexico or even South America. Why should we discriminate against those who were born in Africa or China. Don’t they deserve the same chance to strive for a better life?

But if we say anyone anywhere who wants can come here, how can we limit that to those who have the means to get here? If we care about the poor, how can we neglect the poorest of the poor who could never afford to travel here? We will have to go get anyone who wants to immigrate here and bring them back.

How could it be otherwise?

Now, if you want to say we should do all of this … well, at least you’re consistent.

But does loving your neighbor really require such open immigration policies? I don’t think so. There are three things we need to consider as we approach this problem.

1) Borders like we have today are a relatively modern invention. Nothing in the Bible directly addresses the issue because it didn’t exist then.

2) While we’re loving our Mexican, etc, neighbors who want to move here, we still have to love our Mexican, etc, neighbors who don’t want to. Is the best thing for the people of Mexico to make it easy for their young, hardworking, talented people to abandon their country and come contribute to ours? Wouldn’t open borders just be putting a band-aid on the real problem — a third-world country existing next to two of the most prosperous nations in history?

3) While we’re loving our neighbors who want to immigrate illegally, we have to love our neighbors who did it legally. If we just throw open the borders, what do we say to someone who waded through the paperwork, waited for permission, fought with the bureaucracy, and otherwise obeyed all the rules? “Yeah, great, but this guy wants to be here, too.”

It’s easy to treat the Golden Rule as a feel-good, bumper-sticker slogan that can be tossed out to trump someone else’s argument, but when thought through, it doesn’t present much of a solution to our immigration woes.

I’m not prescribing any particular solution to the illegal immigration situation — right now, at least. I just want people to stop abusing “love your neighbor as yourself” as justification for their liberal views.

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Related:
Immigration Reform and Christianity 1: Justice

Crossposted from Homeward Bound

In a piece that I posted way back in 2008 (“How Did You Get On The Information Superhighway?), I pointed out that many students are not what we could call computer literate.  Now it might be that I should have said technologically literate instead of computer literate because our society has evolved from a collection of items to a combination of items.

But having a device that allows you to make phone calls and search the web and send messages and take pictures doesn’t mean that you really know what you are doing.  As I said a couple of weeks ago, , “What Does It Take?”, what we have is really a very fancy and, perhaps, expensive toy.  We have all of this wonderful technology but we don’t know how to use it. 

And now, some of the experts are beginning to say the same thing; see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/07/16/techliteracy.

When you consider some of the challenges that we face in today’s society, we desperately need to be ahead of the curve.  Right now, it appears that we are on the upside of the curve and falling back.

I welcome your thoughts.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but please post them there.

I was working on an education piece but I first want to express my thoughts about John Wooden’s death at the age of 99 on Friday (June 4, 2010).

I do not remember when it was that I became interested in John Wooden. It was probably, as I wrote in my review of his last book (John Wooden – A review of “A Game Plan for Life – the power of mentoring” by John Wooden and Don Yaeger), back in 1968 when I bought his book on coaching basketball, Practical Modern Basketball, and I was harboring some thoughts of going into coaching.

But over the years, as I read about him and what he had done, I began not only to respect him but also to admire him. Not just because of his coaching record and all the titles but because of what transpired after the game was over. Before John Wooden became a coach, he was a teacher and it was as a teacher that he honed his skills as a coach.

When you listen to all that is said about Coach Wooden, listen to what his players said. You will not hear much about basketball or winning but you will hear about what he taught them. And it is what he taught them that we should be remembering Coach Wooden on this weekend.

But, you know, it is sad to think that if he were coaching basketball today, he may not have the same success that he is receiving all the accolades for today.

How many coaches today would be able to say to a star player that their hair was too long and it had to be cut if they expected to stay on the team? How many coaches today would last if their vocabulary did not include the words victory and winning and doing it right now? How many coaches would survive if they sacrificed a number one ranking to make a point about the need to stay focused? (I recall reading one time that the 1974 UCLA team, in the midst of the 88-game winning streak, became overly self-confident and head strong, to the point that they felt that they could win no matter what. When the time came and the pressure was on the players, Coach Wooden refused to call a time out and bring them back into focus. As a result, they lost at Notre Dame, lost two conference games and the national semi-final game to North Carolina State. If a coach were to do that today, the odds are that he or she would be fired before the sun rose the next day.

But the players, to a man, know that though they came to UCLA to play basketball, they left with a degree and an education; because John Wooden was a teacher first.

And there are lessons to be learned from this master teacher, lessons that we need to be learning but are apt to ignore. We really need to contrast how it was that John Wooden taught his players with the manner in which we teach today.

We teach for the moment when we should be teaching for tomorrow and, more importantly, the day after tomorrow, for the future.

I have no doubt that Coach Wooden was a fierce competitor. But he recognized that success does not come immediately but rather over time. It took him many, many years to build what has become know as the Pyramid of Success but there are many people today who seem to think that owning a copy of this pyramid will bring them success.

We teach by giving the answers to the questions when we should be teaching our students how to get the answers. (In light of our current fascination with testing, this will be very difficult.)

We simply give out the information as information when we should be utilizing it and expressing it in real-life terms. The most important part of a UCLA basketball game was the practices that preceded the game, not the game itself. Each game was organized and there were drills to be run at a specific time and with a specific speed. The drills started off simply but increased in speed and complexity with practice concluding with what was essentially a full court game. The actual game was nothing compared to the practices that lead up to the game. (How many practice players do you know who were drafted #1 in professional basketball – Swen Nater was recruited to play basketball at UCLA in his junior and senior year. He never started a game but, according to Bill Walton, was the toughest center Walton ever played against.)

We can test our students all we like but if all we do is simply set it up so that they repeat or parrot what they were told, they will have learned nothing. On the other hand, if we work on the basics and we expand the basics and we culminate the process with real-life problems, then what transpires outside the classroom and after graduation will seem quite easy by comparison.

John Wooden also taught us the need to listen, the need to think, and the need to change when it was appropriate (look at what happened when Wilt Chamberlain pointed out that you handled things, not people; upon hearing that, Coach Wooden went to his basketball textbook and changed all the references to “handling your players” to “working with your players”).

He himself admits that it was his own stubbornness that prevented him from implementing the 2-2-1 zone press that so devastated basketball in 1964 and 1965. But he listened to Jerry Norman and Norman’s analysis of the press in light of the players on the 1963-64 team and the result was 30 victories, no defeats, and the first of ten national titles.

We live in a world where success is called for immediately, where learning is instant, and the measure of success is determined right now. It is a world where the individual counts most of all.

Coach Wooden pointed out many times that it is what you learn after you have learned everything that is important. He pointed out that working together can accomplish far more than going it along. He taught us all that success comes later and you look back at it, not to it. He also pointed out that success is far more than the number of victories in life and that life cannot be measured in terms of wins and losses. The lessons of life are there to be learned; in this day and age, I hope that as we celebrate the life of John Wooden, we take the time to reflect on what he taught us. After all, he was a teacher first.

Here is a compilation of pieces I have written with references to John Wooden:

• Sermon/message given on 22 November 1998 - “Who Shall Lead us?” - speaking about the attitude of the players in 1974 (posted 5 June 2010)
• Sermon given on 30 July 2000 - It’s The Little Things - in which I spoke of why Coach Wooden taught his players how to put on their socks and shoes (posted 12 July 2009)
• Sermon given on 15 January 2006 - "Hearing God’s Call"- about a player who wasn’t a good practice player but was a fine basketball player
• Sermon given on 24 August 2008 – "Building On the Rocks" - about the Pyramid of Success
• 10 December 2008 - "Is It The Water?" - “Drink deeply from the good books”
• 10 May 2009 - Two Things To Think About - John Wooden’s definition of success
• 9 October 2009 - John Wooden – A review of “A Game Plan for Life – the power of mentoring” by John Wooden and Don Yaeger

Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The  Left – comments are welcome but please post them on “Thoughts From The Heart On The Left”

It is quite possible that these are the “end times”, though not necessarily those favored by religious fundamentalists.

They see the end of the world from their own moral viewpoint; one that, in my mind, is self-righteous, self-centered, and hypocritical. They complain about the morals of others while clearly living a life that follows the dictum, “do what I say, not what I do.” They want a vengeful God, a hateful God so they can justify their own hatred, their own anger, and most importantly, their own ignorance.

We hear many on the right side of the political and religious spectrum call for troops to patrol our southern borders or to build an immense wall to keep out those from the south who seek employment in this country. They also use the excuse to keep drugs out of this country (unfortunately it is the American people who have created the demand for illegal drugs). Yet we never hear them speak of troops patrolling our northern border (which is far longer and far more open) or building some sort of barrier there.

And there is no call to penalize the businesses that hire illegal workers, wherever they come from, who seem to do the jobs no one else wants to do. And we hear no calls to improve worker conditions in the third world. Could it be that we want cheap products that are produced in third world countries in conditions we wouldn’t work in?

We don’t seek to penalize the businesses who hire the illegal workers because there are many who don’t want the Federal government interfering in the actions of businesses; what we hear is that businesses are capable of regulating themselves. And we certainly don’t want to waste our tax dollars on some sort of program that helps other peoples; we want our tax dollars to be spent on ourselves.

All we have to do is look at what’s going on in the Gulf of Mexico to know that businesses are more interested in the bottom line than they are doing it safely and correctly. There is an on-going environmental disaster taking place right now because we have endured some thirty years of rhetoric that government is too big and businesses can do the job themselves.

But in that same thirty year span, the power of big business has grown exponentially while the power of the individual has been stripped and stolen away and trampled on.

But in all of this, the single most glaring fact is that the people of this country have allowed this to happen. They have allowed companies like Massey Energy and British Petroleum to trample regulations and throw away safety concerns, all in the name of the bottom line and profits.

We have accepted the notion that it is easier to drill for oil or dig for more coal than it is to seek alternative forms of energy. We have allowed these things to happen and we have accepted the rhetoric of cheap energy and the god of profit over the stewardship of this earth and the care of the people who live on it because we didn’t know what was happening.

We didn’t know what was happening because we have lost our ability to question and to think, to create new solutions. We have changed the nature of education from that of teaching people how to think to teaching people how to answer questions. Somehow we have decided that grades themselves are a reasonable indication of whether or not someone actually knows something. But good grades don’t tell us anything about how well an individual can create solutions to a problem, especially (as I have previous stated) when the problems haven’t occurred.

The problem is that we are so concerned that no child be left behind that we have left them all behind. We think that if we can teach our children how to take tests and as long as scores go up on the tests each year, then they are learning. Our concern is more for the bottom line, the number of students who graduate, than it is for how many students actually are capable of thinking and creating solutions for tomorrow’s problems.

Look around and tell me that we are using our collective abilities to their fullest. We can’t (or won’t) develop alternative energy resources. We are more committed to the destruction of the world through violence and oppression than we are seeing people fed and kept healthy and live in a world of justice and equality. We somehow think that by our use of violence we can conquer violence; we somehow think that we can live in a world of justice by taking away the rights of the individuals.

All we have done is create a world of fear and ignorance. There is a subtle paranoia sweeping this country that threatens not only our physical safety but our mental safety as well. We have built a wall but it doesn’t keep people out; it keeps us in, prisoners of our fears and ignorance. We no longer seek new worlds to explore and our dream of visiting other planets and stars is just a dream and no longer a reality.

As the cartoonist Walt Kelly once wrote in his memorable comic strip, Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Look around at the world in we live and tell me what you see. These are the “end times”, the times of our own making. The world in which we live is the world that we made.

But there is good news in all of this. The fact that we see the destruction, the fact that we the violence, that fact that we see the poverty and homelessness and hunger and sickness and illnesses and oppression and injustice means that we can do something about it.

Instead of destruction, let us try construction. Instead of feeding an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, let’s really try to develop alternative energy solutions. They do exist and they will cost but, in the end, the cost will be worth it if it means the world will remain.

And finally, let us really invest in education. Let’s put the money in the classrooms so that teachers can truly once again begin teaching our children and grandchildren the skills to think and be creative.

Yes, there are costs involved in all of this. But consider this, if we do not begin to make the changes, there will come a time when we cannot make changes.

We live in the world of our own making; we can therefore make this a better world. We live in the world that we wanted; isn’t it time that we wanted a better world?

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left; comments are welcome but please post them on “Thoughts From The Heart On The Left” – Thanks!

I am a casual flyer these days, taking only one trip a year to go to the U. S. B. C. Open tournament, wherever it may be. Last year, it was in Las Vegas; this year and next it is Reno with Baton Rouge on the schedule for 2012. But there was a period where I was doing a lot of flying and getting quite familiar with the ins and outs of commercial flying.

But lately, I am thinking about giving up flying all together. Every since 9/11, it seems we are more interested in keeping people off airplanes than we are letting them on. One guy attempts to blow up an airplane with explosives in his shoes so we all have to take off our shoes. One guy tries to do the same thing with a combination of liquids so now the liquids that we take with us must be of a certain size and quantity.

And the device that detects explosive materials (which I assume to be nitrate-containing compounds) will also detect other compounds such as the residue of local anesthetics. That has to really scare someone recovering from surgery.

The implementation of policy and training sees inconsistent at best. I have observed TSA agents lift 40-lbs of bowling equipment without bending their knees and being told that they were never given any instructions on how to lift heavy objects. I have observed other agents as they struggle with clear cut instructions (like the time my boarding pass said “must check in at gate” and the agent was telling me that I had to go back to the ticket counter. As he was struggling with this dilemma, I pointed out that the individual behind me had the same boarding pass and that he should resolve the two issues at the same time in consultation with two supervisors. I was told not to tell him how to do his business and after they took some 20 minutes to figure out that I should go to the gate; they took the same amount of time with the next person who had the same issue.

But as I struggle with these annoyances (does anyone seriously think that someone is going to try and destroy a plane with a shoe bomb or a combination of liquids?) I also struggle with the service issues.

I have found that I can get a cheap ticket even two weeks before my departure but that the moment I go to book the flight, the price changes and I am forced to start over. And I know longer check my baggage since they charge you for your checked bags. I now ship my gear instead of lugging it to the airport; yes, it is a little more expensive but it gets to where I need it and I don’t have to worry about the bags being torn up.

And besides, I have to fly out of New York City in order to get any sort of cheap flight. I remember when the airlines were deregulated back in the early days of the Reagan administration. Just as today, there was this cry about getting government out of the way of business. Well, we have seen what happened with oil exploration and the way airlines are going today makes it very clear that while deregulation may help businesses, it does very, very little for the people.

It appears, at least as far as I can see, that all that has happened following deregulation of the airlines is that it robbed many of the smaller airports of service. And if there is service, it is prohibitively expensive. So I no longer can fly out of the regional airport that is fifteen minutes from my home.

Now, the airlines, especially in the past few years, have always charged you for changing your mind. You booked a cheap fare, you had better keep it.

And they have begun charging you for the simple snacks that they serve. But this past Wednesday (May 26^th), I found out just how far the airlines (or at least one airline) will go to take every dollar from you that they can.

I knew from experience that the flight I had booked might be oversold. So I got to the airport early with the intention of volunteering for a bump as I have done in the past only to find out that I would have to pay a charge to fly standby. And after choosing the last seat on the plane, I find that I can pay for extra leg room or a more premium type of seat. Neither option is viable at this time. When I inquired about volunteering to move to the exit rows, I found that I would have to pay a fee. Those must have been the seats with the extra leg room that I passed up earlier.

I will not name this airline but I can say that while the skies were very friendly, the ground personnel were not. Weather-wise, this was the first time in all of my flying that the plane had to be diverted to an alternate airport because it was low on fuel. May 26^th was not a good day to fly as thunderstorms blanketed the Midwest from Chicago to Denver. I don’t know what it was like in Chicago but when we finally got to Denver, ground personnel handed each of the departing passengers a sheet of paper with a number to call about the status of our reservation and a number to reserve a hotel room. No other information was provided. And of course, because of the severity of the storms and the disruption on the system, both phone lines had lengthy delays.

So I spent Thursday morning in, what is for me, the new Denver International Airport trying with so many others to get some sleep and prepare to get to my destination. Fortunately, the airport (and not the airline) was prepared to hand out sleeping mats, blankets, and a bottle of water.

Everyone must have one trip that borders on the disastrous or ridiculous; this has to be mine. But this trip and how the airline handled the flight reflect what I believe is going on in this country.

The reason for my flight delay was not the airline’s fault; the flight crew did their best to get me to my destination. The weather just prevented them from doing so. And when it is weather that causes flight problems, airlines are not required to offer compensation or assistance. Giving the passengers the numbers of the airline and the hotel booking company was all they are required to do.

These types of situation used to fall in the “acts of God” category and were, thus, exempt from corporate actions. But I am reminded that the single most important act of God was to send His Son so that we may be saved from slavery to sin and death. We make a big deal these days about being a Christian country but our actions sure don’t reflect that.

Our interests seem to be in the bottom line, the profits a company makes. It should be, no matter what the industry, on the people that the industry serves. The most important person flying on a commercial airline is not the most frequent flyer but the flyer that only flies once or twice a year. I am not saying that those who frequently fly shouldn’t be rewarded since they have to endure this stuff far more than the occasional flyer but if you treat the occasional flyer poorly, they may not fly again. Or if they fly again, it won’t be on that airline that treated them so poorly.

Our nation’s focus on the bottom line, to cut costs so as to increase profits, does not do well when there is a crisis. Be it the disaster in the Gulf, the mining disaster in West Virginia, or a stack of late airplane flights over the Denver International airport, the desire to keep the bottom line profitable for the short term will have long term negative effects.

But to keep the eye on the bottom line prevents one from keeping the focus on the people being served. I am not against any company making a profit; hey, that’s what you got into the business for. But when your focus is on the profit, and how much money a few privileged individuals can make, instead of the service you are providing, you have forgotten why you began the business in the first place.

I realize that I probably will have to fly to get to many places in this country. I have thought many times about taking the train but it is not always a good trade off. For essentially the same price that I paid for my airline ticket, I could have taken the train. But the time spent traveling would have been greater on the train and you have to make some decisions as to how fast you want to get to your destination and how much time you have to travel. And next year, I will have the same choices to make. As I plan for that trip, I will consider many factors about how I will get there. But one thing is for certain, the way in which this particular airline handled the problem means that I will probably not utilize their service next year.

I think that we, as a nation, have seen too many instances where profits are more important than people. I think it is time that we change that view.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On  The Left; comments are welcome but please post them at “Thoughts From The Heart On The Left.”  Thank You

These are my thoughts for the past week as well as for this Sunday, May 9, 2010, the 6^th Sunday of Easter and Mother’s Day. The Scriptures for this Sunday are Acts 16: 9 – 15, Revelation 21: 1 – 10, 22 – 22: 5, and John 14: 23 -29.

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The title of this piece comes about because of a little news blurb this past week. It was noted that the musical, “The Fantasticks” was something like fifty years old last week and was the longest running musical on Broadway before it closed a few years ago. It also noted that those who backed this musical when it first started received something on the order of a 2,000% return on their initial investment. But as I was reading this little tidbit of information, I was trying to remember the music that was associated with the show.

And then as I tried to remember the songs, a jolt of neurons hit my brain. The song in question is and was “Try to Remember”!

That’s the thing about our memory. We can remember things if we have the right motive or the proper aid. But we also need to have something in our minds that will bring it back to us. As I did some searching about the musical and the songs, it was noted that the late Jerry Orbach was the singer in the musical. Most people only know him as one of the detectives on the television show “Law & Order” and know little about his early acting and musical career.

Along those same lines, I was chatting with a help-desk tech the other day as we were trying to resolve a particular computer issue. It was necessary for me to reboot the computer and as it was doing so, that insidious little piece of Windows music played. I mentioned that I used to have a clip of “Elvis has left the building” that played when I would shut down my computer.

I asked the techie if she knew who Elvis was and she replied that she did. But when I asked her if she knew what band Paul McCartney was in before “Wings”, she couldn’t tell me. That is the way it goes sometimes. What constitutes part of life for some of us is only ancient history for others and it is quickly forgotten after it is studied, if it is studied at all. I wonder how many mothers and grandmothers there are today who are fearful their children and grandchildren will see pictures of them on the Ed Sullivan Show screaming and shouting when the Beatles or Elvis first played?

But my reminiscing about the music of my youth also reminded me of another song and what transpired forty years ago last week. Forty years ago, on May 4, 1970, four students where shot by Ohio National Guardsman. The incident and I think the protests across the nation concerning what President Nixon had ordered done in Viet Nam prompted Neil Young to write “Ohio”. I remember being a part of a protest at my school (Truman State) but I don’t know if we knew that four students had been shot. I also know that very few people today remember that two students were killed at Jackson State University in Mississippi that same day.

In light of what is transpiring in this country, both socially, politically, and environmentally, perhaps we should be doing a little more remembering. We, collectively, stood by and allowed our his country to begin an ill-conceived war in Iraq; it was a war conceived in lies and more lies and it continues today. The war in Afghanistan is now considered a separate theater of operations by the Army so that it can transfer troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and call each a separate tour. It promises to be a war that shall go on for a very long time.

I remember studying in my history classes about the “Forty Years War” and the “Hundred Years War” and wondering how a war could last for one, two, and even three generations. Now, as I read the reports from Iraq and Afghanistan and I see how we propose to fight terrorism, I no longer have to wonder. I am watching history develop its own story line in my own lifetime and I am watching my generation, who protested the war in Viet Nam and walked the streets in support of civil rights and free speech stand quietly on the sidelines, not in protest but in quiet acquiescence.

We have, in this country, a selective memory. We will send our troops overseas to fight in a war, bring them home for a short period of time, and then send them out again. Oh, yes, we will celebrate their return; as the song goes, “the men will cheer and the boys will shout and the ladies, they will all turn out, when Johnny comes marching home”.

But we have chosen to forget the darker side of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”; the side goes something like this:

Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo

With your drums and guns and guns and drums,

The enemy nearly slew ye

Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer

Johnny I hardly knew ye

Where are your eyes that were so mild, hurroo, hurroo

Where are your eyes that were so mild, hurroo, hurroo

Where are your eyes that were so mild,

When my heart you so beguiled

Why did ye run from me and the child

Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye

Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo

Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo

Where are your legs that used to run,

When you went for to carry a gun

Indeed your dancing days are done

Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye

Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo

Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo

Ye haven’t an arm, yhe haven’t a leg,

Ye’re an armless, boneless, chickenless egg

Ye’ll have to put with a bowl out to beg

Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye

They’re rolling out the guns again, hurroo, hurroo

They’re rolling out the guns again, hurroo, hurroo

They’re rolling out the guns again,

But they never will take our sons again

No they never will take our sons again

Johnny I’m swearing to ye

(From http://www.instantknowledgenews.com/johnny.htm)

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Right now Congress is debating new regulations for financial institutions, and there are conservatives out there who think the very idea is wrong-headed.

I’m going to take the moderate approach. I also think it’s the traditional conservative stance.

The conservative approach to the economy is largely “hands off.” Businessmen know how to run their businesses far better than politicians. When people who know nothing about the private sector start making rules, they can bog businesses — and the economy — down by making innovation and growth more expensive than it would otherwise be. If the government will get out of the way, the free market will take care of itself.

Under one condition, that is.

Traditionally, conservatives recognized that free markets — and democracy — only work when coupled with morality. Humans will always sin, but there have been ages when common decency was a bit more common. And there have been times when greed surpassed good sense.

For example, monopolies are not inherently evil. But the 19th century monopolies became problems when they realized they could do whatever they wanted and then did just that.

In modern America we’ve reached a point, hopefully temporarily, when corporate officers see their good, the good of the company, the good of the shareholders, and the good of the customers as four distinct things. And they see their own good as the primary concern.

While we can’t ignore the government’s role in the collapse of the financial market, we shouldn’t exaggerate it either. A whole lot of people did some awfully stupid and selfish things, assuming that they wouldn’t be the ones left holding the bag. They’ve shown us that they cannot police themselves, so we’re going to have to do it for them.

But that doesn’t mean we should let the left do whatever crosses their beady little minds. Before we accept new regulations, we should consider a few things:

1) Was lack of enforcement of existing rules a factor in the collapse?
Government, but the left more than the right, loves to make new rules when the old ones were never enforced properly. This only adds burdens without creating any actual security.

2) Power corrupts.
There are stupid, greedy, and power hungry people in government, too. And there are good people who are simply overzealous. And there are people who don’t have a clue what they’re doing. New regulation should be added slowly and carefully with as much oversight on the regulators as the regulatees.

3) Less is more.
We have to have rules, but it’s all too easy to overburden the private sector economy. Life is risk, and we’ll never remove all the chance of another stupidity fueled collapse. Trying to do so will only prevent our economy from getting back up to full speed. But wasn’t the “speed” part of the problem? Yes, but everybody’s been burned pretty darn good; I think we can err to the side of liberty. In general, I think it’s always preferable to err a little to the side of liberty.

4) Think out of the box.
Is “regulation” the only way to go? Is there a way to raise the costs of failure in such a way as to discourage insane gambling? Without adding to the cost of business? For instance, what if a corporate bankruptcy required the CEO and directors to forfeit 50% of their personal assets? Might jail time be appropriate for future failures of the magnitude we’ve recently seen? Replace golden parachutes with orange jumpsuits and see what happens.

All talk of regulation isn’t bad. I applaud the GOP for working with the Democrats to make better regulation rather than just sitting in the corner so they “can’t be blamed” for whatever insanity the Dems come up with. If we’re careful, we might just all live through this.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

This is a copy of a letter that we have sent Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY).

Dear Senator Schumer,

Let us start off by saying that you have lost two votes when you seek reelection to the United States Senate.

We have made this decision because of your recent statements to an Israeli political commentator. It is one thing for a Senator to disagree with the President; that happens all the time and each Senator has the right to do so. It is an entirely different thing when the President and the Senator are of the same political party. Unless you are planning to for President in 2012, your comments, made with extremely poor political taste, probably did more harm to the Middle East peace process than any number of guns and bullets could ever do.

In the movie “Thirteen Days”, Kenneth O’Donnell points out to President Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy that no matter what members of the Kennedy Administration may think internally, when it comes to dealing with the missiles in Cuba and the missiles in Turkey, the message given to Premier Khrushchev and the Soviet Union had to be a unified message.

Your words the other day rip apart any unified message that President Obama and Secretary Clinton may have sought to send.

In addition, your blatant support for the current and past Israeli administrations brings into question your own political loyalty. Are you the senior Senator from New York or the senior Senator from Tel Aviv?

We recognize that Israel has the right to a political existence. But we cannot individually and we think that this country can no longer support a country which suppresses other peoples as the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.

We need not be reminded of what was done to Jews in the 1920s and 30s, in fact, throughout all of history. But we wonder how it is that a people so persecuted throughout history could even justify the persecution of another group such as the Palestinians? Are human and civil rights limited in their application?

How can we, as a country which sought to throw off the shackles of tyranny, continue to support a country which does the same thing that we fought against?

It is not a question of supporting terrorists. The Palestinians cannot claim to be victims when their own hands are covered with the blood of innocents. The Israeli government has always portrayed themselves as victims and used that as a justification for their actions against the Palestinians. It is time that the Israelis stop playing the victim; to continue to do is to demean their own history.

In fact, this country, for whatever reason, always seems to support any totalitarian government who uses defeating terrorism as a justification for the suppression of civil and human rights. It is time that our representatives speak out against that policy.

In the coming months we are going to seek someone we can support. This candidate will have as their first interest the people of the state of New York. This candidate can and should give advice to the President with regards to matters of foreign policy, as the Constitution allows Senator to do, but will caution against policies which allow the present Israeli government or any government for that matter to pursue policies that are counter productive to freedom and peace in the Middle East.

We will seek a candidate whose interests lie with the people of the state of New York and not the corporate interests. We will seek a candidate who feels that every person is entitled to equitable and fair health care through a single payer plan and not a plan created by lobbyists for the health care industry.

We will seek a candidate who sees the corporate oligarchy that presently controls and seeks to expand its control of this country as a usurpation of the people’s rights and will work to reverse the recent Supreme Court ruling that says that a corporation has the rights of an individual.

We will seek a candidate who will stand on the floor of the United States Senate for as long as it takes to insist, implore, and convince the Senate that the war and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are illegal and ill-advised and must cease, not in some fuzzy two or three year time period but in thirty days. It is time to bring our troops home.

We will seek a candidate who will encourage the Attorney General to seek criminal indictments against any and all corporate executives whose financial policies robbed the American people of their finances, their safety, clean air, clean water, and healthy food. We have seen too many cases where laws have been written but do little except protect big business and big corporations.

We recognize that this country has an immigration problem but building fences is not the answer. We expect this candidate to seek laws and regulations which punish companies whose hiring processes encourage the employment of illegal workers and whose working conditions are based on the premise that workers, illegal or otherwise, will not complain because to do so is to lose their job.

We no longer believe that you, Senator Schumer, are that candidate. We will not vote for you simply because you are the least objectionable candidate.

And to those who read this blog and might be a Republican, do not think of “applying” unless you are prepared to deny and disavow the thoughts, policies, and practices of the present Republican Party.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but you requested to post them on that site.

A couple of things have happened since I started thinking about writing this piece.

First came the announcement that Dr. Bruce K. Watke was resigning his position as a Professor of Theology at the Reformed Theological Seminary. In a video that was posted on the BioLogos Foundation website, Dr. Watke not only endorsed evolution but said that evangelical Christianity would face a crisis if it did not begin accepting science.

“If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult … some odd group that is not interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God’s Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness.” (From “The Video That Ended a Career” – Inside Higher Ed)

Now, clearly this statement was at odds with the stated philosophy of the seminary and the resignation of Dr. Watke, though done and accepted reluctantly, was a foregone conclusion. No matter what the seminary may have wanted to do, there are too many others who would have wanted Dr. Watke’s head on a platter. But as I and others have noted before, the seminary was entirely correct in their actions. When you go to work for a particular organization, it is with an understanding that what you say and what you do are consistent with their viewpoint. (See “A Mind for Truth? (RJS)” for other comments on this issue)

If you go to work for an organization whose corporate culture or beliefs are counter to yours, you either sell out your soul or you bide your time until you can get another position. (I remember a friend who was opposed to the Viet Nam war but who ended up teaching in a military high school that required that he wear a uniform. I am not entirely sure how he dealt with that.)

But at the same time that Dr. Watke was announcing his resignation and the particular video was being pulled from the BioLogos web site, there was another announcement; one that brings into play the very idea that Dr. Watke warned the evangelical community about.

A new hominid fossil, Australopithecus sediba, was discovered in South Africa (see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/science/09fossil.html for details) and this drives home the point that we have to look at the world around us if we are to know who we are and where we are headed. As Dr. Watke pointed out, if we deny the reality of the physical world, we are denying the truth of God in this world and that ultimately means that we deny truth and we deny God.

If you believe as I do, you can see the Hand of God in the fossil records and the cosmology of the universe. The complexity of such geological history and the wonder of the stars demands an explanation, an explanation that goes beyond an equation where two protons are forced together under intense pressure and extremely high temperatures to form a helium atom and release an extremely large amount of energy. It is more than simply an explanation of the physical processes; it is an explanation of why we are here as well. What I see is a world in which God has challenged us to find Him and understand what He has done and is doing.

It seems to me that those who oppose the teaching of evolution do so out of fear. They fear that open thinking will lead to a loss of control, of being able to dictate what people can think and say. We have been created in God’s image; yet, it strikes me that those who seek to continue to control what is taught have made God in their image.

If we are to understand God and how we fit within the scheme of things, we must explore this world and this universe. We must ask questions, even if we are afraid of the answers. If we do not use our abilities to their fullest, as God would have us do, then we fail ourselves and God.

Yet, it seems to me that as we move into the 21^st century, we are almost seeking to reverse the process begun in the Renaissance. I see people trying to reestablish the church as a dominant religious, moral and political authority while also trying to somehow deny the existence of both a Newtonian and Einsteinian view of the universe. I see people trying to form history and science in terms of their own views instead of letting the facts that are the very essence of history and science outline and shape their views. (See “Almost Spring”)

Education is supposed to be a learning process but we have turned it into a teaching process. Teaching is a one-way process, from the instructor to the student. Learning is an interactive process. If our students learn, they understand. We can teach them the right answer for a question on a test but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they understand what is being asked.

There is a natural desire to view the world from an Aristotelian viewpoint. If you ask any child if the sun moves or the earth moves, they will reply that it is the sun that is moving. There is nothing in their sphere of reference for them to suggest otherwise. The idea that the earth moves around the sun does not necessarily come from some statement in a text book but rather from an examination of the evidence that is offered.

The same can be said for the classical test of two objects falling from the same height. Even when shown the evidence that two objects fall at the same rate, many adults will tell you that the heavier object will fall faster than the lighter object (see “The Apollo 15 Hammer-Feather Drop”).

There is sufficient research information to tell us that our high school and our college graduates maintain this Aristotelian view of life, even when they can answer the questions on the test properly. And that is because we test for trivia, not understanding. If we introduce an idea as an item on a test but we do nothing to make sure that it is truly understood, then students can answer the question on the test but still not know anything about the question.

In the case of evolution, if we hold to a dogmatic interpretation of the world and we ignore the physical evidence, we run a greater risk than simply losing God in our lives. Now, it should not be the providence of the schools to teach ideas about God; I think that falls to the parents and the church. It is the providence of the schools to teach thinking. If in teaching thinking skills, a child comes to question the articles of faith, then the church must be able to offer reasonable and rational explanations, not merely demand compliance and obedience.

If we are to continue this journey into the 21^st century, we have to be able to envision new things, not merely reinvent old ones. But our teaching process is more attuned to an assembly line process than a creative process.

We measure the success of our students, not in what they do later in life, but how they score on a standardized test one week after the material is presented. We are correct in demanding accountability in the schools but society’s fascination with the “sound bite” has corrupted the accountability that we demand. The only true measure of what a student has learned comes later in life and society is not willing to wait that long.

We have transformed what should be a creative and engaging experience into an assembly line where students are placed in molds and quality control is measured in terms of scores on countless standardized exams. Teachers are measured on their ability to deliver high scores, without concern for knowledge or ability to create new information.

In the end, we will have a generation of students (if we do not already) who know a lot of “things” but have little real knowledge. There is a world outside the walls of the classroom. Yet the rhetoric and actions of today tell us that our students (our children) have little knowledge about that world and that they have little interest in seeing what’s out there. In the end, we will have countered everything that has been done since the first Renaissance and possibly reversed a thousand years of development.

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Cross posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but it would be appreciated if you posted on that blog.

I recently highlighted an article that said 47% of Americans don’t pay income taxes. At least one person took this fact and labeled the Tea Party folks hypocrites. Why?

By this person’s “logic,” if 47% of Americans aren’t paying income taxes, at least 47% of the Tea Partiers aren’t. So they’re receiving more benefit from the federal government than they’re paying in taxes — for example, they pay $1 in taxes and get $1.50 in benefits. They’re benefiting from the government’s redistribution of wealth and complaining about it at the same time.

Let’s say that’s accurate. How do we respond?

1) The US government spends much more than it takes in. Technically everyone gets more “benefit” than they pay in taxes. This will continue right up to the point where the federal government implodes (i.e., no one will lend them any more money).

2) Implosion or not, eventually we’re all going to have to help pay that money back. Us, our kids, and their kids.

3) For this to be anything like hypocrisy, you’d need to be applying for some government benefit. Your state getting money for roads or schools isn’t up to you. It’s a passive benefit. These folks probably aren’t actively seeking benefits.

4) Even if they are, our alleged benefiting from this government policy doesn’t make it right.

This argument makes as much sense as a teenager watching his parents spend themselves into the poorhouse. Why should he care as long as he’s getting new shoes, phones, ipods, and whatever else he wants?

How about because he cares about his family’s financial situation? How about because he doesn’t want his parents to ruin themselves? How about because he knows if this continues his family will get their house, cars, and boat taken away?

Enlightened self-interest? Nothing wrong with that.

Agree with them or not, the Tea Partiers are not hypocrites; they’re concerned citizens.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

An article explaining that health care reform would exclude illegal immigrants (yeah, right, for about six minutes) included this troublesome line:

“Proponents of reducing immigration believe that allowing illegal immigrants access to health care is an incentive for them to come, and an unfair tax burden on Americans.”

What’s so troublesome about that?

This author, like so many, says opponents of illegal immigration oppose all immigration.

That’s simply not true. Sure, there are people who want to end all immigration, but that is a small number compared to those who are concerned about our porous border and the dangers and costs associated with it.

It’s all too common in American politics to cast your opponent’s position as the kind of thing all reasonable people should abhor. We can’t allow that to happen here.

Opponents of illegal immigration are not xenophobes. We simply think the law should be enforced.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

Barring some miracle preventing the president’s signature, ObamaCare is law. What’s left to say?

For Democrats, the ends justify the means. We already knew that, of course, but they sunk to new levels in this. The bribes, lies, and backroom deals were amazing to watch. You know it’s bad when we feel it was a victory to get them to actually vote on the bill.

We know the truth about “pro-life” Democrats. They are either two-faced or terribly gullible — believing an executive order will accomplish what they couldn’t make law and trusting an executive that has broken every promise he’s made. Most of all, no matter how pro-life they claim to be, if they vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, they’re supporting the radical left’s agenda.

We now know that the Democrats are more committed to their leftist ideology than to their constituents. They didn’t care that the people didn’t want it. They didn’t care that it’s failed everywhere it’s been tried. Their ideology demanded it, so it happened.

This isn’t over. They’ve promised this is only step one. We know they want to go to a full-fledged single-payer system. In fact, I strongly believe they know this thing they’ve created will fail. I think it’s weaknesses are coordinated to make single-payer look attractive. We have more work to do.

Elections matter. The American people put these guys in power, and this is what we got. Hopefully people will see we cut off our nose to spite our face. Hopefully the November elections will reward the Dems for these shenanigans.

There is hope. Many have argued that this bill, once passed, would be almost impossible to undo. And I certainly think we’ve got to hurry — the longer it lasts the harder it will be to undo. But given the way it was passed and how much we the people said we didn’t want it, we may be able to generate enough political will to remove.

If it lasts long enough to start to damage things, the Dems will call for another leftward lurch, but we can remind the public that they said this wouldn’t work from the beginning and they shouldn’t trust the Dems to fix it.

There is more hope. Yes, life will be harder — higher taxes, lower employment, waits for doctors and procedures, less R&D into medicines and technology — but suffering is good for the soul. Seriously, though, one thing we must remember is that this world, no matter how bad it gets, isn’t all there is. Seventy, eighty years and we’re done. A drop in the bucket measured against eternity.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

While we fight the Democratic nightmare that would be ObamaCare, we shouldn’t let the GOP off for their part in this monstrosity. If they had seriously addressed health care reform 10 years ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess today.

When the Republicans first retook Congress in the 90’s, everyone was sick of health care reform, so it’s hard to blame them for letting it sit for a while. But they let it sit for 10 years.

That’s when they invented Health Savings Accounts, although their version was poorly-executed and little more than a band-aid on our broken system. It was something, but not enough. They let a lot of time pass with no real attempts at changing the status quo.

President George W. Bush made another attempt at getting Congress to make some basic reforms in 2007, but the Democrats were in control by then and were not going let a Republican get any credit for health care reform.

What happened between 2003 and 2007? I mean besides the GOP spending spree.

In November, the Democrats will almost certainly lose at least one house of Congress for what they’ve done on this issue. And they deserve it.

I’m just not sure the Republicans deserve to replace them.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

When I began thinking about this piece several days ago, it was with a single item in mind. But then something happened at a college in South Carolina that spoke to the same topic on a little larger scale. And all of this is occurring against the backdrop of reforming education.

What is academic freedom?

I suppose that one could define academic freedom as the freedom of speech applied to an academic environment. But is such a freedom for all on a campus, student, faculty and administration alike? Or is it limited? And if it is limited, who is to decide the limits?

When I was an undergraduate many, many years ago, my college operated on the unstated principle of “in loco parentis” or “in the place of the parent.” Such a principle or doctrine allowed the college to act in what they felt were the best interests of the student. And it was explained to any student who would question that principle as a parent would explain a “ruling” to a child being disciplined, “because we said it would be that way and you have to accept that decision.” And if you do not agree to our decision, then you must accept the punishment for your misbehavior.

A Single Student

Back in October, I reported in my piece “How Ironic” about a student, Jess Zimmerman, at Butler University. As I noted then, Jess was a student at Butler who began an anonymous blog that was critical of the administration of Butler University in their removal of his step-mother as Chair of the School of Music. In an attempt to intimidate Jess, the school also did not renew his father’s contract as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Science.

Then, the university sought legal action against Jess. Initially, the university sued “John Doe” because they claimed to not know who the blogger was, even after Jess acknowledged that he was in fact “John Doe.” If you are like me, this was clearly an attempt to stifle the free speech of an individual and the courts rejected the University’s claims.

But the University was not content to accept this loss; they then proceeded to initiate university disciplinary action against Jess. And when he sought an injunction against these actions, the university demanded a $100,000 bond. The issue has been resolved though some aspects of the settlement are to be kept secret. If you are interested in the details of this wonderful story of academic intrigue and the violation of civil rights, Jess’ blog is www.akadoe.blogspot.com and I encourage you to see what is happening.

If you believe as I do that education is a liberating force, you would also agree that this episode is about oppression. Now, one might argue that students do not have the right to express their own opinion and that they should just sit quietly in their seats and learn what their elders are teaching them.

However, this argument doesn’t hold water. What’s the purpose of higher education if students aren’t allowed to question things?

Perhaps that is the case but this wasn’t about something in the classroom; this was something that happened in the world outside the classroom that Jess was in. And he had every right, in my opinion, to express his thoughts on the matter. And the actions of Butler University clearly represent the actions of people who do not want their actions to be exposed to the light of scrutiny. I do not know if their decision to not renew Jess’ mother’s contract was right or not but their subsequent actions in attempting to intimidate him speak of an academic dictatorship rather than academic freedom.

The actions of Butler University are not a singular episode in the life of this country but reflective of the past few years where actions by the leadership of this country have been done in secrecy and with deceit. If we do not speak out against these actions when they occur in our lives, then each moment of silence takes away the freedom that this country was built upon.

I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer and I am reminded that the church in Germany in the early 30s was remarkably silent about what Adolph Hitler was trying to do. And when it came time to speak up, there were very few people left to speak.

It is happening again and we must speak out. And we must continue to seek an educational system and process that liberates rather than oppresses.

Due West, South Carolina

I have no idea how this little town in South Carolina got its name but I passed through it back in 1988 when I was headed to Jacksonville, Florida, for the USBC Open tournament. I went there because my mother knew the president of Erskine College from their days in high school.

And the news out of Due West these days is not good (see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/01/erskine and http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/08/erskine). It turns out that Erskine College is part of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. The church describes itself as conservative and evangelical and well to the right of other Presbyterian churches when it comes to political and societal issues.

But there are only 250 or so churches in this group so it is not logical for the church to demand or require that the students and faculty at its only college be members of its churches. It does require that students and faculty be Christian and it does welcome students from all faiths.

But leaders in the church have become concerned that the college has strayed from the faith. And part of the reason that they feel this way is the very nature of education. If education is a liberating force, it is because it teaches critical thinking and it teaches certain subjects that are often diametrically in opposition to teachings of the faith. And, yes, I mean evolution.

But the problem is more than just the teaching of a course or, for that matter, not teaching the course. It is that not teaching the course or not teaching critical thinking skills limits what education can do; it limits the ability of the student to go beyond the boundaries of the classroom and explore the world. And just like the administrators at Butler University were afraid of what one student might possibly do by asking questions, so too are so many churches and faiths today afraid of what happens when the children of the faith begin to question the very tenets of the faith.

When we look at the traditional denominations, we see a significant decrease in membership, a decrease caused by the youth leaving the faith rather than the elders dying. The youth see the church as a dinosaur, failing to adapt to the world around them, failing to answer the questions that society is asking about hope and desire and what the future will provide.

The churches and the faiths that are holding their own or are increasing in membership are those who offer clear cut explanations for all the troubles of the world. But they are explanations that are not easily questioned and the elders of these growing churches do not want questions asked. But the time will come when questions are going to be asked and, unless there are answers for these questions, the youth will leave again, seeking their answers somewhere else.

God created us in His image and He gave us a mind to use; to not use it would be a denial of our creation. There are some who will tell us that the earth is only 6,000 years old because the Bible tells us so. To derive this age of the earth from information in the Bible is false logic and contradicts everything we know from the physical evidence of the rocks and the stars. But, to know who we are requires we ask the question why are there such differences and what are we to do?

When a denomination or a faith creates a college, it does so with specific intentions. If it wants to limit what the faculty can teach, it has that right. But it has to accept the consequences that develop when students begin questioning those limitations; it has to accept the consequences when it can no longer find individuals to teach in what the faith considers “acceptable” ways.

There are individuals like myself who grew up in the South. We were taught certain things about life in the South, what could be done and what was never done. And it was taught with an understanding that the Bible said that was the way it was, end of story.

But as we grew up and we saw the dichotomy in life, of one person oppressing another because of the race or gender or background, we came to understand that the Bible didn’t have it right. And the only way that we learned this was because we had been given the ability to think by and from God and that ability had been honed by education. For any church or faith to deny an individual the right to decide individually what the Bible means and what the message is as much a sin as any of the sins that are listed in the Bible.

In the case of Erskine College, the rules were already in place to allow such freedom. The denomination has decided to change the rules; that is their right. But they have to understand that their decision goes against the very nature of education and the meaning of creation. They will have to live with that for a lot longer than anyone else.

So What Do We Teach?

The whole nature of academic freedom focuses on the idea that an instructor can present information that might be in opposition to current societal thoughts. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to present new ideas. Within the framework of physical science, we can see through the lens of history the opposition that occurred when the Copernican theory of the solar system was introduced.

Now, if you feel that this is justification for the inclusion of “intelligent design” in the biology classroom, think again. The Copernican theory was based on the existing evidence and resolved certain contradictions in the explanations. “Intelligent design” does not offer a new explanation but only tries to assert a theological explanation for the physical evidence.

That doesn’t mean that discussion is automatically limited to what the instructor decides is appropriate. As I pointed out in “The Challenge of Education” instructors too often dismiss their students’ ideas as irrelevant or meaningless to the discussion. And sometimes they are, simply because the students haven’t learned how to present a rational argument. But any time instructors present their ideas with an all-or-nothing approach, as the only option or only choice, we risk alienating the students and those who seek to find answers to critical and crucial questions in their own lives. And that goes against the very notion of what education is meant to be.

And students have the right to present their arguments, as long as what they present is within the context of the information being presented and taught. If either the student or the instructor is seeking a confrontation of beliefs, then take it outside the classroom.

My role as the instructor in the classroom is two-fold, to present the information that you perhaps do not know and to do so in a way that will enable you to use it later in life. Your role as the student in the classroom is to be involved in the process, to make the information part of your life and your thinking. Each of us has to accept the idea that this process will change both of us, in ways that we may not know. If we seek a process in which there is no change, then we have learned little. But the nature of academic freedom means that we will grow and we will change and we will find things that we didn’t know.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but please post them there.

Liberals have finally had to admit that conservatives do more than say “no” to health care reform. There are actual ideas — even bills — on the table. I’m pleased to say some of them are even interacting with those ideas.

Jonathan Chait of The New Republic says, “Democrats propose to shift resources from the rich and the healthy to the poor and the sick. Republicans want to do just the opposite.”

One idea he hates is health savings accounts (HSA) which, in his words, “give individuals who buy insurance a tax deduction for money they set aside for a high-deductible plan. Since tax deductions are worth more to people in higher tax brackets, and since high-deductible plans appeal more to those with lower medical expenses, the plans attract the rich and healthy, leaving the poor and sick behind.”

Health care costs
He’s partly right; in the short-term, going to an HSA-based system would not help the poor or the sick, especially those with chronic illnesses/pre-existing conditions. Could we do something to mitigate that? Of course.

Long-term, though, HSAs — no, let’s call it what it is, cash. Long-term, only going to a cash-based system will reduce overall health care costs.

Insurance-based systems of one stripe or another have been tried in every corner of the world, and they have failed to control costs. The simple fact is insurance-based health care makes costs invisible to the user. Make costs visible and felt and patients will force health care costs down — or at the very least to flatten out — quite naturally.

We’ve seen this in eye care and veterinary medicine. It will work here too.

And reigning in health care costs helps everyone.

How HSAs work
But in his indictment against HSAs, I don’t think Chait really understands how they work. First, it’s not a “tax deduction” but pre-tax money. A minor difference? Yes and no.

The people he’s concerned about largely don’t pay income taxes, but this will still increase the amount of money they take in on April 15. And pre-tax money, unlike a deduction, decreases your adjusted gross income no matter what — you can still take the standard deduction and there wouldn’t be any cutoffs.

The other key feature of HSAs, at least as envisioned by conservatives, is their permanence. Many people have a “flex” account that has to be used or forfeited every year. Money in an HSA would be yours until you die, and then it is inheritable. So you start saving now for health needs in fifteen years. This gives the young and healthy poor the chance to save up for when they get old and sick.

What about the poor?
I think Chait underestimates how many this can help. Employers who can’t afford conventional health insurance could still afford to put a little into your HSA. The same goes for those who don’t make enough to buy their own insurance — at least they can put a little in an HSA.

But maybe there would be people who can’t put enough back to pay for their medical expenses. Don’t we already have a system to deal with that? Most people accept that there is and must be some kind of social safety net. Can we fund HSAs for the poor much like the food stamp debit cards? Could we subsidize care for sudden expenses or chronic diseases?

Of course. That some people might need help under this system doesn’t mean it isn’t the best option for controlling health care costs long-term.

It is the best option. So far, it’s the only option.

If you’ve got a better idea, we’d love to hear it.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

This is a potpourri of items that aren’t necessarily related but needed to be posted.

Don’t Call Me!

No doubt you know about the “do not call” list. This was the result of legislation passed a number of years ago to keep marketers from calling you at any time of the day. A site was created where you can register your phone numbers in a database so that telemarketers cannot call you (https://www.donotcall.gov/).

But there is a proverbial catch to all of this; it does not eliminate all telemarketing calls. Political organizations and charitable organizations can still call you. (This isn’t the first time I have pointed this out – see “Will the Future Be Any Different than The Past?”) Now, it is one thing to receive a phone call from either of these two groups; it is an entirely different matter to receive a “robo-call” from them.

And, I don’t know about you but those are the type of phone calls that I have been receiving; computer-generated calls from a toll-free number without identification. It would seem that some charitable organizations have out-sourced their attempts to seek donations for their causes.

I have to question this approach. It makes sense to turn over the rather mundane aspect of fund-raising to someone who knows what they are doing but how much of what is gained through these methods actually goes to the charity and how much goes to the telemarketer? I find this approach both amazing and stupid. And if the public sentiment that I see on the various web pages where you identify these phone numbers is accurate, the amount of giving goes down because the people have stated that they will not give to these organizations.

It is a blatant plug but that is why I prefer UMCOR (the United Methodist Committee on Relief); all donations to UMCOR go to the project identified with the giving. Overhead costs are absorbed in church apportionments (and I will discuss that in a moment).

The other thing that I find amazing is the number of people who do not understand that these calls are perfectly acceptable. They presume that because they are on the “do not call” list that they will get no telemarketing phone calls. But the law that was passed exempts political organizations, charitable organizations, and bill collectors from this prohibition. For each of those groups, you have to let them know individually that you do not wish to be called.

But shouldn’t those who signed up have known this when they signed up; I don’t believe that it was in the fine print. Could it be that our educational system didn’t do the job that it was supposed to do?

Our Educational System

There is a lot of talk going on about reforming education. That’s nothing new; I have been doing so for most of the time that I have been blogging and writing. Maybe episodes like the above episode with robo-calls from charitable organizations will be the impetus for true reform, for including critical thinking and analysis in the educational process.

But somehow I don’t think so. If I understand what is happening right now, school reform simply means creating charter schools. A charter school appears to be a formerly public school that will now be run by a private organization. Taxpayer dollars are still being used to fund the school but taxpayer input into the management of the school will be lessened.

If a private organization is going to run a school, shouldn’t they be charging tuition and other fees? And, as we have learned (or I hope we have learned) from the healthcare debate, a private organization’s interest and focus is solely on the bottom line. Keeping people healthy does not seem to be of any interest to the healthcare industry so why would those involved in some sort of educational industry be interested in education?

If the complaint is about the amount of money that is spent on schools today, shouldn’t we also be asking how much money actually makes it to the classroom? How much money raised through taxes actually is used by the school for the improvement of teaching and how much is spent on various forms of overhead?

Now, I know that there are many teachers who have no business being in the classroom; that’s nothing new. But one of the hallmarks of a good teacher is continued time in the classroom and any system that focuses on the bottom line will do whatever it can to reduce the number of teachers who have been in the classroom for many years in favor of beginning teachers whose salaries will be markedly lower.

I am not saying that there aren’t teachers who have been in the classroom for many years but are only there because they have tenure and nothing except retirement will get them out. Tenure was never meant to protect the incompetent or lazy; it was meant to give teachers the freedom to be creative and innovative.

But schools are no longer creative and innovative. With the call for accountability becoming louder and louder with each passing day, schools are more attuned to keeping the citizens quiet and happy. Creativity and innovation don’t do that; having students succeed does. But the success of the students is manipulated for the present; if we test the students later or against a larger population, we find that they aren’t succeeding.

Charter schools won’t fix the problem because the problem is in the process, not in the building. We, as parents and taxpayers, are demanding something now that can only be delivered over time. But we have created a culture that expects results now and we are being fooled by our own expectations.

In essence, we want our children to win the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the Fields Medal and the Priestley Medal now, even if each medal requires years of work, thought, and effort. We do not realize that if we prepare our children so that they can work towards achieving that goal, we will have done a great deal towards helping them reach that goal. It won’t mean a whole lot in the long run if we expect to reach the pinnacle now without preparing the path for our children.

Last Thoughts

This is also educational in nature but directed towards the church but not necessarily Sunday School type education. And it is not necessarily limited to those among the readers who are United Methodists by birth or affirmation. But I phrased the question in terms of United Methodism.

1. Who owns your church?

2. What are apportionments? What priority does your church give to its apportionments?

3. Does your church pay its bills first and then its apportionments? Or does it pay its apportionments first and then the other bills? Does the order in which they are paid matter?

Now, let me say that I believe I know the answers to these questions but I am not sure that I like the answers that I might get when I ask people of the United Methodist Churches in this area.

This isn’t about economics or logic; it is about where the heart of the church lies. My own church has adopted the policy (though I think reluctantly) to set asides 10% of each Sunday’s offering for the apportionments. It is a policy that I have advocated for the past ten years, in part because I have seen it work in other churches. And one church that accepted the premise that doing so puts your heart into your finances was able to pay its apportionments in full before the end of the year and they did so without fund-raising or special appeals. But one church, more concerned with the building than the heart, will probably officially die at Annual Conference in June.

I have some other items that I will be posting, most notably on the issue of academic freedom. I also will be preaching at Ridges/Roxbury UMC and the United Methodist Church of  Springdale (both in the Stamford, CT) area this coming Sunday (the sermon is entitled “Coming Home” and should be posted by Sunday morning).  The service at the Ridges/Roxbury church is at 9 and the service at the Springdale church is at 10:30.  You are welcome to attend.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – comments are welcome but please post them there.

In an interview this morning, pollster Scott Rasmussen said that consistently over the years when they poll people asking them whom they trust more, politicians or used car salesmen, the answer is consistently the same regardless of the political party in power. People trust the used car salesmen.

When the Republicans were in power of both the executive and the legislative branches from 2000-2006, the corruption scandals were numerous. Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” if she and the Democrats were in charge, and she promised the most ethical Congress in history. Well, the swamp has not been drained and the culture of corruption continues as now Democrats are emerging as the ones in scandal; and as long as they are in power more moral lapses will no doubt come to light, not because they are Democrats, but because economic and political power seem to have a strong corrupting influence on politicians of all political stripes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Polls consistently show the public doesn’t like the current health care reform proposals — whether they think they’re too conservative, too liberal, or too stupid is beside the point. They don’t like them and don’t want any of them.

Many are asking: So what?

Should every policy be based on polls? Are we not a republic instead of a democracy? We elect people to govern, and they must govern, right?

Yes and no.

Every issue is not the same, and there are times when leaders must lead. As the columnist for The New Republic pointed out, public opinion was against the Iraq surge, but Bush did it anyway. That was totally appropriate.

National security and foreign policy often require the consideration of classified information. Decisions frequently have to be made quickly. The issues are complex and have repercussions that are difficult to predict; specialists spend their entire lives studying them and give their educated opinions to our leaders. Only our leaders have all the information, and they must act.

Domestic policy is different. It can be complicated but less so than foreign policy. Issues are less likely to involve state secrets and time sensitive decisions.

Most importantly, they directly affect us.

Foreign policy is about what our country does somewhere else. Domestic policy is about what our country does to us. Decisions about health care reform will directly affect all of us for the rest of our lives.

To argue that the government knows best and should do what is best for us is to advocate treating us like children. I make my kids go to bed, eat healthy food, and get their booster shots because it’s good for them. But no one makes me do any of those things. I am an adult and have the right and responsibility to make my own decisions which I must then live with.

If Washington decides to treat us like children and force us to do “what’s best for us,” I think they’ll find out who cares about public opinion: the public. People are very upset about how this whole thing appears to be going down, and November is not that far away.

What do you think? Should the government do what’s “best” for us? Do we only have a voice on election day, or should our representatives care what we say every day?

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

I know I am not the only one who has noticed that all the Christians comparing the USA to the Roman Empire during the reign of George W. Bush are strangely silent now that we are under the emperorship of Barack Obama. And yet, how much of President Obama’s foreign policy looks virtually the same as his predecessor.

Policy on Afghanistan– virtually the same

Policy on Iraq– virtually the same

Support for warrantless wiretapping– the same

Support for many of the provisions of the Patriot Act– virtually the same

Support for military tribunals– virtually the same (The civilian trial scheduled for NY will most certainly revert back to a military court.)

Asserting executive privilege in order to keep lots of information secret– the same

So, where are all those Christians, who for eight years were using the New Testament to critique Caesar George as a modern-like dictator? I do not deny that such a comparison was not completely false, but I only insist that such critiques be applied consistently.

I guess consistency is not to be preferred when it is your emperor residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As I have said in previous posts, people trot out the sorry cliche of “speaking truth to power” only when their people are not in power.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

There are two things about the Democrat’s attempts at health care reform that stand out. First, their approach to the problem relies on the federal government doing many things it has not previously done. Second, as the public gets louder in its rejection of their approach, the Democratic party prepares to run roughshod over public opinion and the traditional legislative process.

Both are symptoms of liberalism.

The first presents no surprise; liberalism believes that the solution to most problems and the appropriate holder of power is the centralized government. Conservatives, on the other hand, believe power should be kept as close to the people as possible both because of our federalist constitution and because it’s just wise.

The second should be more of a surprise. Liberals bill themselves as the ultimate populists. They believe in the basic goodness of people (e.g., society makes criminals do bad things vs some people being just bad). They believe they give a voice to the little guy.

And they believe they have to protect the little guy. That is where the trouble appears.

Liberals love the little guy, but they don’t respect him. They see themselves as smarter or wiser than the general public. If the little guy agrees with them, that’s great, but if he doesn’t, they’re going to do what they have to for the little guy’s sake.

In health care reform, that means passing the bill they think is best (centralized control) even though the public hates the idea. The fact that the public hates the idea is proof that they are smarter than the public.

As the ObamaCare struggle goes on, its liberal proponents have tended to one of two responses to public opposition. One group (usually politicians) says, “How can they oppose a bill that doesn’t exist?” They imply, of course, that the public is upset over nothing; they’re just lemmings following the latest email they got.

The other group (usually liberal pundits) say, “People don’t really understand the issues.” The less charitable say, “Americans are stupid, and we should push this down their throats for their own good.” That really doesn’t require interpretation.

So if we had to boil liberalism down to two simple phrases, this is how it would look: “Government is good” and “people are stupid.”

This is about to be played out in Washington. The Democrats appear willing even to lose control of Congress to push through a bill the public hates because they know what’s best. And they hope maybe, just maybe, after ObamaCare is imposed upon us we’ll realize they were right.

If the Dems do go through with this plan, we all need to realize that every yes vote is calling us stupid and respond accordingly.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

“You know this is a trap.”

How many action movies use that line? The girl’s been kidnapped, and the bad guy has made sure the hero knows where she is. Someone tells the hero, “It’s a trap.”

And he says, “Of course it is, but I still have to go.”

This is the same thing. Pres. Obama’s health care summit is clearly a trap for the GOP.

If they go, when the GOP doesn’t back the president’s health care bill, he can claim he tried to be bipartisan and ram in through.

If they don’t go, the networks will show a sea of empty chairs every time health care comes up.

What do you do when you know it’s a trap? You try to figure out how to turn the trap around on your foe.

Republicans, this is what you need to do:

The cameras will be there. Use them to your advantage. Don’t let them paint you as “the party of no.” Be the party of “this-not-that.”

Start every statement with things like:
“Since this has failed everywhere it’s been tried…”
“Since this will be ruinously expensive…”
“Since the American people have clearly said they don’t want this…”

Then introduce your ideas.

Let the doctors among you do a lot of the talking. Maybe even have them use phrases like, “I wouldn’t expect a lawyer to understand this but…” People trust doctors and are suspicious of lawyers. Use that.

And try to keep this from looking like a funeral. But if you’re successful, it might be the wake for the Dem’s crappy health care reform bill.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

Well, it’s almost spring, no matter what some rodent may have seen or not seen. I have never quite understood what Groundhog Day was all about. After all, if you look at a calendar and you agree that spring will begin on the Vernal Equinox, then there are seven weeks between Groundhog Day and spring. If we are arguing about seven days before “the pools open”, we have a problem.

Now, if you look at the Julian calendar instead of the present day Gregorian calendar, it does clear things up. Instead of March 20 or 21^st, the Vernal Equinox occurred on March 16^th and the time frame between February 2^nd and Spring is now six weeks and it really doesn’t matter whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow or not!

Now, there once was a reason for having Groundhog Day but that reason has been lost through the passage of time and the change in the way our calendar works. The same change, by the way, is the reason for April Fool’s Day but that is another story (see "A New Year, A New Plan", “This New Year”, “A Degree of Irony”. What this does show is that we have turned a single day in February with some significance some three hundred years ago into a semi-major societal event. It also shows our willingness and readiness to accept things without questions (“because that’s the way it has always been done”) and without examination.

The reason for this piece was not to discuss meteorological predictions (though that may come into play), animal behavior, or the flaws in our calendar systems (we will wait until December 21, 2012 to do that). Rather it is about our willingness to accept things without question or examination.

You see, with the coming of spring, comes the annual Texas State Board of Education curriculum decision. Each year, this Board meets to consider changes in a given area of the curriculum and what textbooks will be used in the various classrooms in the state. For many people, this meeting would seem to have little or no consequence in their lives.

But as I pointed out once before (“The Differing Voices of Truth”), decisions made about the textbooks used in Texas do have a lasting impact on the textbooks used in whatever state you may live in. That is because California and Texas are the two largest textbook markets in the country and, essentially, what they decide is what the various textbook publishers put into the textbook.

California is the largest textbook market, but besides being bankrupt, it tends to be so specific about what kinds of information its students should learn that few other states follow its lead. Texas, on the other hand, was one of the first states to adopt statewide curriculum guidelines, back in 1998, and the guidelines it came up with were clear, broad and inclusive enough that many other states used them as a model in devising their own. And it has the money to spend on textbooks. Its $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country and is used to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually. This alone should be enough for various educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State (for reference purposes, see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html).

Whether you agree with this idea or not, the decisions regarding the content of textbooks made by the State Board of Education in Texas and its counterpart in California effectively decide content of the textbooks in the other forty-eight states. What the people of New York, Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois, or North Carolina might think is of little matter in this regard.

Last spring, the issue in Texas was the inclusion or support of intelligent design (a decision which was defeated); this year, the issue is about the nature of the history of this country, whether or not our Founding Fathers were Christian or not, and who shall be considered worthy of study. Those favoring changes would like to see a more detailed study of various and sundry conservative icons, including but not limited to Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, and Joseph McCarthy. The discussion for liberal icons such as Edward Kennedy, Caesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King, Jr. is to be somewhat limited or curtailed.

The problem, of course, is not which persons should or should not get included into a history curriculum. Whether a politician is a liberal or conservative is not the point; if they made a significant contribution to the development of this country, they should be studied. But it leads to a point where the amount of material covered exceeds the time available, i.e. the fixed volume problem. All subject areas are subject to this problem and it is clear that when the amount of information deemed worthy of knowing exceeds the amount of time available for learning, there are going to be problems.

And those problems are now starting to appear. A 2008 report entitled “Still at Risk: What Student’s Don’t Know, Even Now” indicates that students do not possess the basic knowledge necessary to succeed in this world or achieve their full potential as democratic citizens (http://www.commoncore.org/pressrelease-01.php). The authors of this report surveyed 1200 17-year-olds and found that:

· Nearly a quarter cannot identify Adolf Hitler, with ten percent thinking Hitler was a munitions manufacturer.

· More than a quarter think Christopher Columbus sailed after 1750.

· Fewer than half can place the Civil War in the correct half-century.

· A third did not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of speech and religion.

· Half have no idea what the Renaissance was.

· Nearly half think that The Scarlet Letter was either about a witch trial or a piece of correspondence.

For most people, these are shocking results, if for no other reason than we know the correct answers. But in light of the way education is treated today, they are not surprising answers. You cannot simply test a student for knowledge after they have completed a unit; you must test them after they have had the opportunity to utilize the information and make it a part of their lives.

As a society and individually, we face many great challenges today. We cannot even begin to think of solutions to these problems unless we change the manner in which our children learn. It makes matters worse when a few individuals try to force their view of history or science upon us and tell us that they know the truth.

There is no doubt in my mind that our Founding Fathers believed in God but I rather question the assumption that their beliefs were in line with many conservative Christians. Now, this is a point that I addressed a couple of years ago in “Don’t Know Much History” and somewhat alluded to in “A Dialogue of Science and Faith”. It strikes me that those individuals would much rather try and tell others, especially the students in our classrooms today, what is important to know, no matter whether it is the truth or not, than it is to give the students the opportunity to think and learn for themselves.

Somewhere over the passage of time and education, I came to understand that education was a liberating force; that it provided the knowledge that would enable an individual to rise from where they were to where they wanted to go (http://wilderdom.com/experiential/SummaryJohnDeweyExperienceEducation.html). But it cannot be a liberating force if students are not given the opportunity to think and learn for themselves.

I was taught that the Constitution was a “living” document. It contained a message about how we were to govern ourselves through the generations; it was not meant to be fixed in time. Yet, many conservatives seem to prefer the term “enduring”; though I cannot tell you what that means. I suppose they would have us believe that we are supposed to use the same definitions about men and people that existed some two hundred years ago; but to do so would limit the nature of what this country stands for.

The very beginning of the Constitution, the Preamble, points that out. It begins “We, the People.” And in that phrase, we see the life of the document. When it was written, the only people for whom it actually applied to were the landed gentry of society, white males who owned properties. Women and minorities did not count. But over time, we have not changed the Preamble but rather who the people of this country are.

The same is true for the Declaration of Independence. Even though we know today that Thomas Jefferson and his compatriots may not have necessarily believed that “all men are created equal”, we have accepted that statement as a fundamental truth and have expanded it to include all men and all women.

And Abraham Lincoln’s statement that the government was “of the people, by the people, for the people” has not changed over the years of this country but we, the people, have constantly strived to make the definition inclusive. The proposals before the Texas State Board of Education try to make that definition exclusive and limited, limited by their definitions and their decisions.

It does not matter whether the writers of the Constitution favored a more state-oriented form of government or a Federal form of government; they all believed that the majority of people in this country were incapable of governing this country because they were uneducated. The design of the government (consider the Electoral College and how Senators were originally selected) had that very fact in mind.

But, if the Constitution was designed with the idea that only the educated can govern and if education is a liberating force, then the more educated the populace, the better the government will be.

When a group, any group, seeks to revise history or interpret facts in order that one’s agenda is the only agenda, it is the beginning of a dictatorship. To accept such a revision or interpretation without questioning is the beginning of the loss of one’s liberties through ignorance. When what education can do is limited, it only serves to maintain the status quo and insure that a selected elite will be in power.

We are on the verge of a Roman-style state, with an imperial government imposing its will on its citizens enslaved by economic fiat. But no matter how terrifying this form of state-sponsored terrorism might be or how horrifying the thought, it is built on fear and ignorance and as such can only last a short time. It may kill the bodies but it will not kill the spirit.

Fear and ignorance cannot survive for long in the light of knowledge and freedom.

And it does appear to me that those who would presume to state the faith of our Founding Fathers in spite of evidence to the contrary are also very much in opposition to what I feel is the true meaning of Christianity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer tells us that if Christian teaching is not our guide in the use of freedom and God is denied, then all obligations and responsibilities that are sacred and binding on man are undermined. We must speak up and we must speak out when teaching leads not towards freedom but away from it. And I am afraid that is the direction that we are taking with the discussion that is taking place in Texas right now.

It is almost spring and with spring time comes new growth. But new growth requires careful thought and planning. If we are only interested in more of what we already have, then we will allow others to do the planting for us. It is clear that what these individuals want to plant will destroy liberty and freedom. If we desire liberty, if we desire freedom, then we have to plant the seeds of creativity. From such seeds, great things will come.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – please post your comments there (thank you)

Many on the left and the right are allegedly very upset over the controversial (and frequently misrepresented) Citizens United v. FEC (pdf) SCOTUS decision.

Some take this as support for Congress to change campaign finance laws. I’d like to suggest we take things one step farther.

Let’s change the judiciary.

As currently understood, the Supreme Court is almost all-powerful. Justices receive lifetime appointments, and the only way to deal with an unpopular SCOTUS ruling is to amend the Constitution — no matter how crazy or asinine the decision.

The framers of the Constitution thought the courts would be the weakest branch of the government. (I think they believed if we didn’t like their decision, we’d just tell them to kiss off.) They were wrong. (Our commitment to law keeps us from collectively flipping them the bird.)

As it stands, the Supreme Court is very nearly an oligarchy. Their appointment is far removed from the democratic process, and it is almost impossible to unseat one of them.

It’s time to change some things.

I propose the Judicial Power Amendment with two provisions:

1) Federal judge and Supreme Court justice appointments will be for a term not to exceed fifteen years.

2) A Supreme Court decision may be vacated by agreement of the President and two-thirds of each house of Congress.

Neither of these provisions seriously limit the power or independence of the courts, but it brings them back down to earth a bit. They, and all of government, need to be reminded that the power to govern in this country is supposed to rest with we the people, not the friends of the powerful.

What do you think? Too much? Not enough? What would you change?

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

This last Sunday was Transfiguration Sunday. It was also Darwin (or Evolution) Sunday. On Transfiguration Sunday we remember Jesus’ glorification before his disciples Peter, James, and John– a preview of his resurrection. On Darwin Sunday churches all over America focus on Darwin’s theory of evolution which has forever changed the scientific and religious landscape.

I have hesitated to write this post because I have good friends who really get into Darwin Sunday. I also have good friends who reject evolutionary theory. I do not believe that the former have rejected the faith nor do I believe that the latter are dumb knuckle-dragging neanderthals (pardon the pun). In writing this post I risk offending both sides, but what I would rather see happen is some great discussion.

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In a Q & A at a law school in Florida, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gives his take on why the Court was right in its recent decision on corporations and free speech. What I find interesting is Thomas gives a little history on how the limiting of speech by corporations started in the first place. He states,

“…the history of Congressional regulation of corporate involvement in politics had a dark side, pointing to the Tillman Act, which banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in 1907.”

“Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Senator Benjamin Tillman. “Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.”

It is thus a mistake, the justice said, to applaud the regulation of corporate speech as “some sort of beatific action.”

Interesting, isn’t it? In the fear over the corrupting influence of lots of money, some folk haven’t even considered the corrupting influence of regulating speech.

I welcome all comments on Justice Thomas’ comments. No ad hominem arguments are allowed. Substance only please.

You can read the full story here.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

One item in Pres. Obama’s State of the Union address hasn’t gotten a lot of air time since:

“… let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years — and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.”

My initial response was, “Are you out of your ever-loving mind?!”

After digesting and contemplating this idea for a while, I’ve replaced “ever-loving” with something stronger.

Do we really need another giveaway in this country? Is there something we haven’t hocked to China yet?

Let’s look at three reasons this is a terrible idea.

1) One of the reasons college costs so much these days is financial aid keeps going up.

Wait, isn’t it the other way around? Yes and no. It’s a cycle, a little dance they do. Colleges know that if they raise prices, aid will just go up. Grants will grow, and if they don’t people can borrow a little more. So financial aid increases, then the colleges can raise prices again.

Promising that you’ll never have to pay off your full loans will only make that worse.

2) Making college “more affordable” will further encourage people to go to college who really aren’t cut out for it.

Government alone isn’t at fault here, but more and more people think of college as simply the next level of education after high school. And anyone who suggests that trade schools are a good alternative is usually viciously attacked.

Everyone isn’t cut out for college. Every job shouldn’t require a college degree.

And supply and demand says sending more people after the same product will increase the price of that product.

3) We give away enough.

We give money and food to the poor. We have housing assistance. We have health care for the poor and many want to expand that to everyone. Now we want to make a college education an entitlement? Where will it end?

It’s time for the “gimme” mentality to stop. People need (on a deep, fundamental level) to make their own way. Helping people in need is one thing. Making sure everyone has anything they could desire is something else entirely — something toxic.

It’s time we say, “Enough!”

And it’s time we tell Mr. Obama that the American people aren’t his piggy bank for whatever project crosses his mind. Our Constitution lists the responsibilities and prerogatives of the federal government; we need to obey it. I know he used to teach it, but I wonder if he ever read it.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

The latest decision by the Supreme Court on allowing corporations to pay for campaign advertising directly out of their treasuries instead of from their political action committees, has generated more heat than light in the debate. I have linked below what I think is a sane response from law professor Jonathan Turley, who indicates that either way this decision was not a no-brainer. Turley indicates that Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion and Justice Steven’s dissent are both excellent and convincing arguments.

Jonathan Turley on the SCOTUS Decision

Moreover, in an editorial in The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse rightly points out that President Obama was not right when he said in his State of the Union address that the SCOTUS overturned a century of law. (Frankly, that Mr. Obama would take a shot at the Court when they could only sit there mute, and knowing that the court would not respond publicly, was a small and immature moment for the President.) The issue in reality was a statute that was obtuse and complex. The other important point to make is that while corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, they are still prohibited from directly contributing to politicians.

As I said in a post last week on this issue, I do not know what the right decision is here constitutionally, but Turley is right that it is quite a difficult decision, and that perhaps the answer here does not lie in going after the money, but in going after how campaigns and elections are run in the first place.

In a free society we are all able to express our views in reference to decisions of law even though few of us truly know it well, but let’s stop all the talk about a corrupt court turning back a century of precedent. The only time anyone brings up precedent, they only do so when it suits their argument. The same people are free to discard it when they don’t like the nature of what has preceded.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve surely heard that the GOP won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat putting the Democrats one vote shy of a filibuster-proof super-majority.

The big question is what will happen with the healthcare reform bill(s). So far the options seem to be:

1) The House can pass the Senate bill as-is.
2) The Senate can employ the “nuclear option” and pass a conference bill with 51 votes.
3) The whole thing could die and go away as it did in the 90’s.
4) The whole thing could start over with a GOP that can demand to be involved.

I fear we’ll get 1 or 2. I deeply hope we get #4.

I really don’t want #3. There are a lot of reasons why healthcare reform went away for more than a decade after the death of HillaryCare, but it was a mistake. It’s not one we want to repeat.

Even if I don’t get everything I want in reform (which is almost certain), Congress could do some real good if they’d drop the bickering, posturing, and ideological wishlists and tackle those issues most Americans can agree on.

We can get more people insured and lower the cost of insurance if we open up interstate insurance markets. We can create a pool for those who have problems getting health insurance that isn’t a “public option.” We can come down on those who look for a loophole to drop insurees after they get sick. We can reduce the cost of providing medical care by instituting some basic tort reforms.

We can improve our health care system without turning it upside down or making it an arm of the federal government. And we need to Congress that’s exactly what we want.

Maybe now they’ll listen.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

Yesterday’s election of a Republican Senator in Massachusetts to the seat held for many years by the late Ted Kennedy has been referred to as “the shot heard round the country,” and as a “kick-mass” election. Was last night’s upset a massacre in Massachusetts? Hardly… but what happened last night should be an obvious warning that both Democrats and Republicans need to heed, though they probably won’t.

Read the rest of this entry »

These are my thoughts for the 2^nd Sunday after the Epiphany, 17 January 2010. The Scriptures for this Sunday are Isaiah 62: 1 – 5, 1 Corinthians 12: 1 – 11, and John 2: 1 – 11. This is also “Human Relations Sunday”.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – please post your comments there

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I didn’t realize that there was a song entitled the “The Good Stuff” or that Kenny Chesney wrote it. But I had heard something with the words “good stuff” in it and I went “looking” for it on the Internet. Then I connected the words that I had heard from a television commercial with his song. This doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the song or country and western music for that matter. But it does have a lot to do with the theme for this Sunday being Human Relations Sunday and the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As it happens, the anniversary of Dr. King’s death in Memphis is Easter Sunday this year, April 4, 2010, and I will be at the Dover United Methodist Church (Location of church) to lead the services. “Nathaniel Bartholomew” will be presenting part of the message; hopefully John Wesley and the woman at the well will join him in the celebration of the Resurrection. More details will come in the next few weeks. If you have not read either “Where were you on April 4, 1968?” or “On this day”, then please do so. It will give you some idea of my thoughts for this particular Sunday.

When you read the history of the Memphis sanitation workers strike, you will find that it wasn’t just a strike for better wages or better working conditions; it was also a strike for dignity and respect.

During a heavy rainstorm in Memphis on February 1, 1968, two black sanitation workers were crushed to death when the compactor mechanism of the trash truck was accidentally triggered. On the same day in a separate incident also related to the inclement weather, 22 black sewer workers had been sent home without pay while their white supervisors were retained for the day with pay. (http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/memphis-v-mlk/ )

On February 12^th, 1375 workers (sanitation workers and other Department of Public Works employees) went out on strike for job safety, better wages and benefits, and union recognition. At the time of the strike, workers were paid $1.70 per hour and were asking for $2.35 per hour; the city’s offer was a 5% hourly increase (or 8-1/2 cents).

It was this strike that brought Dr. King, rather reluctantly, to Memphis. But he understood that racial equality was very much tied to economic equality, so he came to Memphis. When you consider what has happened to the economy over the past few years, you have to wonder if people really care about equality of any kind.

Banking organizations argue that they are too big to fail and come begging for Federal money to save them. And both the present and the past administrations have blindly given them the money that they have requested. But all this has apparently done is to reinforce the notion that the rich can have what they want and the poor must suffer. The one single aspect of the economy over the past ten years or so is that the gap between the rich and the poor, those with and those without has gotten bigger and it looks like it will continue to get bigger.

And yet we continue to say that we are a Christian nation, committed to the ideals that Christ taught us some two thousand years ago. What happened to the money changers in the Temple? It was well known that they and the tax collectors routinely ripped off the common folk, charging exorbitant exchange rates and demanding more fees than were required or reasonable. Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple to show his anger with their behavior. Yet, it seems as if we merely put guards around our financial system and told the bankers to keep on doing what they have been doing.

When Martin Luther King came to Memphis in 1968, it was for equality, economic, social, and racial justice. Looking back over the past forty-two years, I am not entirely sure that we have changed that much.

Anytime there is a discussion of raising the Federal minimum wage, the conservatives hold true to form and say that this will destroy small businesses and they are opposed to the idea. But, from a business standpoint, what good does it do to allow big businesses to pay exorbitant salaries and bonuses to the upper level executives while the workers are struggling? It is time; in fact, it is long overdue that our discussion focuses on a living wage, not a minimum wage.

I wrote about the living wage back in 2006 when I gave the message “What If?” In it I noted that the city council of Chicago had voted to require Wal-Mart and other similar stories to pay their employees a living wage of $10.00 per hour with an additional $3.00 per hour in benefits by the year 2010. Wal-Mart replied that they would pull out of the Chicago market rather than do such a thing. Businessmen always seem to think that paying the employees a little bit more will do more harm than good, yet many companies have no problem giving upper level management ridiculously large bonuses.

I suppose that earning the minimum wage is alright if you can find a place where you can get by on $290 a week or $15,080 a year. Current Federal poverty guidelines state that the poverty line starts at $10,830 for one person, $14,570 for two persons, and $18,310 for a family of three (2009 Federal Poverty Guidelines). But the Federal guidelines don’t consider where you live or how many people are in your family.

Consider the following fiscal data for where I live in the state of New York. (The following data is from http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/states/36/locations)

The living wage shown is the hourly rate that an individual must earn to support their family, if they are the sole provider and are working full-time (2080 hours per year). The state minimum wage is the same for all individuals, regardless of how many dependents they may have. The poverty rate is typically quoted as gross annual income. In this data, it has been converted to an hourly wage for the sake of comparison. Wages that are less than the living wage are shown in red.

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I love C-SPAN! I have for years. I am one of those eggheads that love to watch interviews and listen to political round tables.

And now C-SPAN’s chief executive, Brian Lamb has written a letter to the leaders of Congress asking that the deliberations over health care reform be televised. During the presidential campaign, then Senator Obama promised greater transparency in government as a club to beat the Bush Administration over the head with saying, among other things, that health care deliberations would be televised. Lamb has called upon the Democrats to make good on their promises. He writes,

“President Obama, Senate, and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every American.”

C-SPAN’s request, of course, will not be granted. The last thing that Congress wants before the American people is the detailed revelation of corrupt compromise and special interest catering that is the current health care bill. The one lesson to be learned from Capitol Hill’s health care reform back room dealings is that the Senators who held out the longest got the best deals for their states. My one Democratic Senator who supported health care reform early on, didn’t bring home any bacon for my state.

Candidate Obama promised greater transparency in government. He was not the first candidate to make that promise and he is not the first president to break it. Nancy Pelosi promised that her Democratic Congress would be the most ethical and transparent in history, never mind all the closed door meetings and all those in Congress who are ethically compromised. Why let facts get in the way of campaign promises?

There seem to be two eternal truths in the history of politics in a democracy– first, politicians make all kinds of campaign promises on which they never deliver, and second, in every election there are voters who actually believe them.

The first truth is never a surprise. The second truth continues to reveal how gullible many voters are, either because of blind partisanship, or sheer naivete.

The voter must always remember that the primary purpose of most campaign promises is to get elected– nothing less– and certainly nothing more.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

I am working on a number of projects right now, all of which deal with science, education and science education in some manner, shape or form. First is the “book” project. Entitled “Science and Education in the 21^st Century: A Contrarian View”, it is a look at science, science education and topics that we all need to have some understanding about as the new decade begins and for years beyond. I outlined this book in the piece “A Not So Modest Proposal”.

Second is a more personal piece in that it deals with the relationship between science and religion. I have said it countless times before but it bears repeating, when you say that you are a scientist today, people automatically believe that you do not or are incapable of believing in God. And if you say that you are a Christian today then many will say that you cannot possible accept the physical evidence about this world. Because I am both a scientist and a Christian, I find it hard to accept either argument and think that to do so demeans both and limits any discussion about what the future might bring.

And finally there is this piece about the relationship between education and the economy. In all three projects, the key point is that this country, this society, is exceptionally dumb. Being dumb doesn’t mean that we are stupid or illiterate. It just means we haven’t a clue what’s going on nor do we have any idea of what to expect when tomorrow comes or what to do when the unexpected does come.

Oh yes, we are a literate nation but all that means is that we can read. There are two definitions of literacy. The first is the most commonly understood one, the ability to read. But literacy also means that we are able to understand what we read and we are able to utilize the information that we read. And this is something that, in my own opinion, we are unable and incapable of consistently doing.

This is illustrated in a number of ways. First, there is the ever increasing evidence that we don’t know or understand what we were required to learn when we were in school. One-quarter of American high school students could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed the freedom of speech and religion and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900 (“Clueless in America”). Our reliance on technology assumes that we understand reading, writing and arithmetic. However, we forget it is humans who program that technology.  It doesn’t teach or require us to think.  It has given us a false sense of being an educated and knowledgeable society.

Our inability to understand what we have read also comes across in our understanding (or lack thereof) of religion. While we routinely proclaim this nation as a Christian nation, we do not know what books of the Bible are in which section, we don’t know (or most of us don’t know) what the Gospels are or that Paul was not one of the twelve disciples. We proudly proclaim that it is written in the Bible that “God helps those who help themselves” and seem unaware that this quote is not in the Bible and that it is most often attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

Even though it has been demonstrated that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction nor was there any connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, most people still insist that there were weapons and there was a connection. We are willingly to accept such notions (along with several other more bizarre conspiracy theories that developed during the last Presidential election) simply because we are more willing to trust the source or we are guided by fear. Our lack of literacy also is evident by the inability to see beyond the horizon of tomorrow and imagine what the consequences of our actions will be for future generations (as if we ever could).  We allow others to tell us what the “truth” is and refuse to search for that “truth” ourselves.  We have become a lazy nation.

We also have a surprisingly inability or lack of or desire to see other points of view. To see and listen to other points of view does not necessarily mean that your views will change; what it does mean is that you can think from the other side of the issue and develop a solution that resolves the problems without strife or resentment. It is a process sorely missing in this country today.  We have become an ugly nation in our inability to see the other side of the issue and would rather demonize people who have a contrary view point.

We are faced with any number of problems facing us as we look into the next decade. There is the terrorism problem, which we seemingly want to combat with more terror. Would it be too much to assume that removing hunger and sickness from the world might actually solve the problem? Or is it that we just like sending our youth off to die in foreign lands for reasons that were lies in the first place?

There is the global energy crisis which we first wish to deny even exists and then, which we want to solve with more crude oil, even though the actual supply of oil is decreasing. There is the global climate change problem, which most people want to say is a false problem but that is because they are 1) unwilling to think it through and 2) are willing to let others tell them how to think. The evidence is there but we are unwilling to accept it.

We could respond to the energy crisis and the global climate change problem if we would think seriously about alternative energy resources. But to think outside the box is something this country is not able to do (as if drilling for more oil tomorrow will save the problem today).  We are losing the competitive edge in innovation and creativity to China and other countries.  We have forgotten that this country lead the world in developing the technology that we have today.  We have become a mediocre nation, willing to sit on the accomplishments of the past without looking to what we can do to ensure a future that keeps us ahead of the rest of the world.  There will come a day when the people of this country will suddenly realize that we are not the power we once were.  What do we do then?

Unless we find some way and some way quick to think outside the box, the coming decade is going to be a very rough one. As we watch the glaciers in Greenland and Norway recede, we can keep telling ourselves that global climate change is a conspiracy. As we keep creating electronic gadgets that take pictures and send them around the world but not know where we are sending them or where they are coming from, as we create social networks where we can keep up to date with the various failings of sports and entertainment superstars, we wonder why our children are not learning in school and why they can’t write a coherent sentence or don’t know the history of this country.

As we distort the history of this country, as we distort the meaning of the Bible, the Qur’an and the Torah, we have to wonder why we are engaged in countless and seemingly endless wars in far-off lands. And one day we will wake up and wonder what happened to the youth of this country.

As laws are written to protect us from terrorism, we wonder why we have no personal freedoms left.  We are becoming a totalitarian nation without knowing it as our freedoms are chipped away bit by bit.

It comes down to this. Borrowing a quote from Marilyn Ferguson that I wrote down many years ago, our freedom is not found by choosing a destination but rather a direction but we must choose that direction, not let someone else choose it for us. And should we choose a path that has no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.

Thomas Jefferson, who is so often quoted by those who would seek to limit the intellect and freedom of so many, wrote in a letter dated January 6, 1816, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

The agenda for the coming decade is fairly clear. Our educational system must be substantially and quickly fixed. It is slowly approaching the breaking point after which no repair is possible. If our educational system is not fixed, then it will be impossible to create new solutions to the present problems and it will be impossible to even envision solutions for problems that we don’t even know about.

We need to put more money into human needs and less money in creating a sense of false security. If workers in this country are working and being paid living wages and salaries, not minimum wages that require two or three jobs just to get by, the productivity of this country will rise. The conservatives of this country spout the mantra of less taxes will create jobs but what has happened to the jobs in this country? What has happened to the productivity of this country under this mantra?

Let’s try something different. Let’s make sure that the workers get the money, not the rich and powerful. Let’s put the money into workers’ hands, not just trickle down to the people (which never did seem to work anyway).

And let’s work to make working conditions in other countries safe and productive; let’s make sure that the workers overseas are paid equitable wages as well. Why do people from other countries seek work in this country? Because it is a whole lot better than anything that is in their country.

The immediate response for many is going to be that this is too much. It will cost too much and people will lose. The only people who will lose already have too much and too many people at the bottom of the social scale have already lost.

It is time to stop and think; to look around and realize that we have to change our direction right now. It is a complicated and complex situation that we have created and it will take more than simple solutions to fix. This coming decade can be one of the greatest in the history of the planet but right now it has all the markings of being the worst and the last this planet will have.

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Cross posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left (comments are welcome but should be posted to the “Thoughts” blog

Sen. Harry Reid has inserted into the Senate health care reform bill language making it against Senate rules to even consider over-ruling the medical board his bill will create.

That doesn’t make the board completely all-powerful, but it means you have to get 66 Senators to agree (to a rule change) before you can even bring up the topic of over-ruling the board. Elected officials, representatives of the people, will be unable to control the bureaucrats.

Do you object to this? I have a hard time believing even liberals are ok with such an anti-democratic notion. If you have a problem with this, today is the day to call your senators and tell them.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

An Anglican priest has created controversy in suggesting to his congregation that it is OK for the poor to shoplift in order to get what they need to feed themselves and their families. (Read the story here.) He has been roundly criticized for his comments and rightly so. Of course, he advised that people only steal from big businesses instead of small ones because, as he noted, the cost of the shoplifting would ultimately be passed on to the consumer. How magnanimous of him.

Now before I suggest what should be obvious– that his advice is plain wrong and dangerous– let me say that not only should Christians have great sympathy for those who find themselves in desperate situations, but the church should do everything possible to assist those in need. I am well aware that in the current economic situation, theft has increased. Some of it, to be sure, is the kind of theft perpetrated by thugs who do not need a poor economy as an excuse, but there are those who have resorted to stealing because they have been unable to find honest work in order to provide for their families. I have encountered some of those individuals personally. Especially in this Christmas season when some parents are facing the inability of providing even a modest Christmas for their children, the temptations are surely great.

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Yea, I thought about naming it something more seasonally appropriate but this piece has nothing to do with Christmas but everything to do with the classroom.

It seems as if the Federal Government wants to give local school districts a very large amount of money to improve education but it is tying it to teacher evaluations and teacher performance. Now, I am all for monies being poured into the local schools. Lord knows, they need it (in my state of New York, the governor announced today that school funding and many other agencies would be cut by 10% to stave off the impending financial doom facing the state). But, tying the money to teacher evaluations and teacher performance is not going to do it.

It isn’t that teachers shouldn’t be evaluated but the present evaluation models favor teachers who “soften” the material. In many school systems, you are considered a great teacher if the parents don’t complain and all the students are getting good grades. Knowledge of the subject and teaching students how to think have absolutely nothing to do with how well one is evaluated.

I know that there are teachers out there who are excellent and who get good reviews but they are the exception to the rule. In 1986, the National Science Teachers Association made an effort to identify such teachers but I don’t know if there have been any follow-up studies in this regard.

What I do know is this – with the present “No Child Left Behind” legislation, we spend most of our time testing our students and we test them at the wrong time. If we decide to use teacher performance as the criteria for funding, then those tests are going to increase in number and value for the evaluation process.

When I wrote about the crisis in science and mathematics education in 1990 (see “The Crisis in Science and Mathematics (1990)”) I identified two articles in the Wall Street Journal that pointed out the fallacy of that approach. One of the articles mentioned at that time discussed the abuse that occurred. The abuse in that instance was that one instructor not only taught her students the test, she gave them the test to study and practice on. The pressure was on the teacher to have her students succeed and her solution was to give the students the test before hand.

The present approach will do nothing more than make that more common place. We are already wasting valuable parts of the school year with the tests mandated by the NCLB legislation and more time as the teachers teach their students how to take those tests.

We know where success in the classroom lies; we have seen it in the past. It is the involvement of the student in the learning process. This means more than simply memorizing fact after fact but applying the facts to situations and using situations to obtain the facts. It means teaching students how to think critically in relation to the subject being taught. This is not something done only or solely at the higher grade levels either; there is ample research data to support the statement that students in the early elementary grades (and even kindergarten) can take an active role in learning.

First, let’s differentiate between teaching and learning. Teaching is a directed experience, from the teacher to the student. Learning is two-dimensional and interactive. We do a lot of teaching these days but there isn’t much learning taking place. Our students are able to do well on all the exams they take because they have been taught how to take the exam. But have they learned anything? I doubt it.

There is nothing more curious than a two-year old; yet, many high school seniors have no curiosity. What happened to it? The learning process took it away. And I am reminded of the song by Supertramp, “The Logical Song”.

Please don’t tell me that our students are some of the most technologically literate people on the planet. Oh yes, they know how to “tweet” and set up a Facebook account; but does that help them write literate sentences and think creatively? I can guarantee that it doesn’t.

Do the majority of the American people really understand the issue behind climate change and intelligent design? Not really. And why should they? Schools haven’t dealt with critical thinking issues (and may be afraid to) so we are not equipped to determine the validity or credibility of any claims; which would go a long way in explaining why people buy footpads to clean the toxic chemicals out of their bodies.

The evidence is there to say that our schools aren’t working (see the reference to “Clueless in America” in my piece “The Bottom Line”). Our schools are broken (Bill Gates said that they were obsolete) and desperately need to be fixed. BUT NOT IN THE MANNER THAT IS BEING PROPOSED!

I would like to think that there is a quick and easy way to measure how well students are learning and how well teachers are doing their jobs. Unfortunately, there isn’t. The only way you are going to know if a student has learned the material is to watch them use the material later, not three weeks after it was taught. And the only way that we will ever know if the teachers have done their jobs properly and effectively is a long time after the job is over.

Let’s start by making sure that our teachers know the subject and know how to teach it. Subject mastery without pedagogical mastery is meaningless when it comes to teaching. The record also shows that the excellent teachers are the ones who have been in teaching through all the hard times and the good times. The 1986 NSTA study showed quite conclusively that the excellent teachers had been in the classroom for long periods of time.

But we often times move such teachers into administrative posts and take them away from what they are good at. Second, it is becoming quite clear that many who could be excellent teachers are leaving the field because of the way education is run and the pay that they receive (see the comment to my piece “Have we learned anything?”). A radical thought would also be to revamp the pay scales of many school systems so that it is the teachers who receive the major salaries and not the administrators.

Then, we have to make sure that our classes are equipped, not for today’s situations, but for tomorrow’s situations. We need to make sure that the most recent computers with the most recent software are in our schools today and in all of the classrooms, not just one classroom shared by all the students. But many of these schools don’t even have computers in their classrooms because the wiring is inadequate for the load. We should rightly spend some of the money on new buildings, but let’s build them to be useful in terms of energy and space, not just a copy of a tried and true blueprint from the past.

Let’s make sure that the classroom sizes are reasonable. As a chemist, I can make the argument for no more than 24 in a lab for safety reasons (and nothing scares an administrator more than the threat of a law suit because of safety problems). But we also know that lab-oriented courses don’t exist in many high schools and that administrators routinely increase the number of students in a classroom to compensate for the lack of teaching staff due to cost-.

The best learning occurs on a one-to-one basis. It seems reasonable to assume that if you increase the student to teacher ratio that learning will be reduced. Monies allocated to school systems should and must go to teacher salaries, teacher preparation, and classroom materials.

Our textbooks are often outdated and lab equipment, if it exists, is limited in scope. The one thing that we learned from the 1960s was that classes equipped to do experiments showed real gains and the gains slowed when the funding was cut off.

The problems with American education are not going to be fixed overnight. They are not going to be fixed with new school buildings if what goes on in those buildings is the same old, out-dated policies that went on in the old school buildings. The problems are not going to be fixed if the monies given to school systems get lost in bureaucratic overhead and administrator salaries.

And let’s face it, school systems located in wealthier districts are going to have to start sharing their funds with school systems in poor districts. I know that there are going to be a lot of screams with that particular statement because no one in an effluent district wants to even think about the other districts. And that is the problem; they don’t want to think.

We will not win the war on terrorism with guns and fancy weapons; we will not win the war on poverty and homelessness with platitudes and food banks. We will win the battles when we can think of new solutions that involve everyone. Right now, we are losing the battles, not because the “other side” is greater but because we think that the only way to win is the same old ways that once worked. They may have worked once but they don’t now and until we come up with new solutions, fostered by educational processes that focus on thinking and problem solving rather than rote memorization of countless facts the battles we fight, will never be solved.

In the meantime, I am suggesting that everyone buy their children and grandchildren copies of “Trivial Pursuit”. That will be the best study guide they have for school in the coming years. It might even put curiosity back into learning.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left

My pick for the goofiest Christmas stunt of 2009 comes from the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, who are using the Christmas story from Luke 2 to encourage people to participate in the 2010 census.

They have published a poster (below) that states, “This is how Jesus was born… Joseph and Mary participated in the census… Don’t be afraid.” (More commentary below the picture.)

Some have referred to this ad campaign as blasphemous. I don’t think it is at all. The word “blasphemy” is thrown around too casually today. I simply think the idea is ludicrous. Does the “brain trust” behind this really want to draw the parallels between Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus and the current 2010 census? I say, let’s be bold and draw all the logical implications out of the story!

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In this Christmas season, the blogosphere is once again posting thoughts back and forth on the so-called “war on Christmas.” I posted something on it myself last week. But I have been wondering how serious Christians square the radical and even subversive nature of the gospel with what seems to be our theologically trite observance of the yuletide season.

Here is my question– Why isn’t the celebration of the birth of the Lord of the World not considered to be politically subversive? Is it because Christianity has become domesticated on account of the fact that we Christians have been domesticated? Does that mean, therefore, that all our holy days have been domesticated? If the vast population truly understood what it meant for Jesus to usher in his kingdom that is reordering this world, would those persons want anything to do with Christmas carols and gift giving? If the rulers of this world could truly comprehend what kind of peace Jesus has come to bring, apart from their power and influence, would they welcome this child to Bethlehem?

King Herod understood better than we do, the subversive nature of Jesus’ birth, which is why he sought to kill the newborn king. Those in power will always act in their interest to retain such power. This is not only true in a dictatorship, but also in a democracy where politicians will put off difficult votes until after the midterm elections and leave their campaign promises by the wayside once the people have cast their votes.

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Here are my thoughts for the 2nd Sunday in Advent, 6 December 2009. It is as much a political piece as it is an Advent piece.

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For whatever reason, the thoughts that I had about this piece never quite came together like I thought they would. But the words of John the Baptizer, written in Luke, still echo in my mind and I wonder if it is even possible to fill all the valleys and make the crooked roads straight.

Of course, if you have read my previous pieces, “Pound Gap, VA” and “Who Is the Messenger?”, then you know that I have seen the valley filled and roads made straight. The pictures of the Pine Mountain after it was cut are posted at http://strata.geol.sc.edu/Appalachian/PoundGap/Appalachian_galleryPoundGap1.html.

The things that I have come to understand with my encounter with this construction are that 1) it took a lot of work to fill the valleys and straighten the road and 2) things changed because it was done. The landscape of that area of Letcher County, Kentucky, is not the same as it was (and that may have been why it took so long for me to realize that I had been there once before).

The changes in the roads did make it easier for those passing through to get through the area. I cannot speak to the changes in the ecology of the area or if it did make driving for the area residents any easier. It made it perhaps a little easier for those who drive through the area to ignore the small towns and hollows where the people lived.

But when John the Baptizer was wandering the hills and valleys of the Galilee, he was making it easier for the people to know that the Messiah was coming. He was making it easier for everyone to see the Salvation of God. In a day and age when so many people were forgotten by society, the Baptizer’s voice told them there was a way.

But in today’s society, it seems that we have regressed to the time before the Baptizer’s call. It seems as if we think that one human life has no meaning. We are faced with war and we answer with more war. We are faced with a crisis in healthcare and we answer with politics and platitudes. The number of hungry families, not individuals but families, increases almost everyday, our food banks are stressed, the number of people without jobs is almost at an all-time high and all we have done over the past twenty years is give money to those who have money and hope that they will share it with others. We are not interested in making the rough way smooth, we are not interested in getting the people trapped in the valleys out nor are we interested in the hearing the voice which cries out in the wilderness.

We are a society in which the only individual we will show any interest in is one who is rich and famous and who has committed a grievous error of judgment. We are fighting a war in Afghanistan and we are apparently committed to sending more troops there. But we care very little that we do not have the manpower for this operation and that we are sending troops back for their 3^rd or 4^th deployment; we care little about the rising number of suicides among our troops because of the stress of these continued deployments and redeployments; we care very little for the effect that this has had on the families of the troops. And the evidence is there that we don’t care about the troops when they come home. The number of homeless veterans is on the rise. Our troops have become a throw-away commodity in a throw-away society. We use them until they are no longer useful and then we thrown them away in hopes of finding new replacements.

The answer to the problem is not the draft or invoking the call for national service. We tried both and both have failed (of course, calling for the people to go out and shop in the name of national security seemed a little ludicrous at the time as did giving them $250 to spend when the $2000 mortgage was due).

How can we say that sending more troops is the answer when it didn’t work in Viet Nam and we know what has happened to foreign armies fighting in Afghanistan in the past? How can fighting more war help those who are oppressed by corrupt governments and war lords? And why, why does this country insist on propping up those corrupt and oppressive governments? Why do we train their troops when they will use the training against the people in their country who oppose the government, not the terrorists who fight us?

More troops, more money spent on armaments, more time spent supporting corrupt and oppressive regimes will only lead this country deep into the valleys where it is impossible to escape. And while we are spending more money and time trying to find our way out of that morass, more and more innocent people are lost.

And it isn’t just the civilian population of Afghanistan that suffer. There are 38 conflicts presently in process around the globe.

The United Nations defines "major wars" as military conflicts inflicting 1,000 battlefield deaths per year. In 1965, there were 10 major wars under way. The new millennium began with much of the world consumed in armed conflict or cultivating an uncertain peace. As of mid-2005, there were eight Major Wars under way [down from 15 at the end of 2003], with as many as two dozen "lesser" conflicts ongoing with varying degrees of intensity.

Most of these are civil or "intrastate" wars, fueled as much by racial, ethnic, or religious animosities as by ideological fervor. Most victims are civilians, a feature that distinguishes modern conflicts. During World War I, civilians made up fewer than 5 percent of all casualties. Today, 75 percent or more of those killed or wounded in wars are non-combatants.

Africa, to a greater extent than any other continent, is afflicted by war. Africa has been marred by more than 20 major civil wars since 1960. Rwanda, Somalia, Angola, Sudan, Liberia, and Burundi are among those countries that have recently suffered serious armed conflict.

War has caused untold economic and social damage to the countries of Africa. Food production is impossible in conflict areas, and famine often results. Widespread conflict has condemned many of Africa’s children to lives of misery and, in certain cases, has threatened the existence of traditional African cultures.

Conflict prevention, mediation, humanitarian intervention and demobilization are among the tools needed to underwrite the success of development assistance programs. Nutrition and education programs, for example, cannot succeed in a nation at war. Billions of dollars of development assistance have been virtually wasted in war-ravaged countries such as Liberia, Somalia, and Sudan.

From http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/index.html

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Every Christmas season we endure the “holiday wars.” Should sales clerks say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas?” Should Christmas trees on public property be called “holiday trees?” Should schools have Christmas break or winter break? I could give more examples, but you know where I am going here.

Each year both sides in this “war” get all bent out of shape in attempting to control the language of the season, because in any argument terminology does make all the difference. Frankly, I think both sides are a little silly. Those who want to change the language of the holiday forget the elephant that is in the room. They can call it a holiday tree if they want, but the only reason that it is standing in the rotunda of the capitol is because it is Christmas. A sales clerk can wish me a happy holiday, but the only reason I am standing in line having purchased things for people they really do not need is because it is Christmas. The public schools can refer to it as winter break all they want, but no one is off school because it is cold and snowy outside.

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This Congress keeps producing healthcare reform bills that try to pay for themselves via some reduction in Medicare payments. Those cuts will probably not happen, but conservatives decry them anyway, just in case.

What’s the big deal about cutting Medicare? Let me explain using round numbers and oversimplification.

Let’s set up the situation. Besides having to pay for whatever supplies are used on them (e.g., drugs, bandages), patient fees also have to cover things like the light bill, payroll, and rent as well as a reasonable operating margin (aka profit, which every business must have to survive).

Say a clinic sees 100 patients a day. Each patient’s fees need cover 1% of that overhead on top of whatever went into their actual care. Let’s just say that comes out to an average of $100 per patient per visit.

What if Medicare says they’ll only pay $90? The clinic’s options are try to cut costs, see fewer Medicare patients, see more patients, or cost shift.

The first option is a continual process in any business, and belt tightening happens in the medical field as much as anywhere, but that will only get you so far. Some physicians take option number two — which hurts Medicare patients — but in some specialties too many patients are on Medicare to make that a viable option.

Seeing more patients may allow the facility to pay its bills, but it puts more stress on the staff and the patient — if a doctor normally sees 5 patients an hour, upping it to 8 makes him work harder and means each patient gets less time with the physician. That’s bad.

That leaves us with option #4 — cost shifting. If it takes $100/patient visit to pay the bills, and if a chunk of your patients don’t pay that, you must make that money somewhere else. Let’s say charging your non-Medicare patients $110/visit will cover expenses. It’s not nice, but what can you do?

Now let’s say the large insurance companies say they’ll only pay $100. What happens?

The patient with neither Medicare nor insurance must now pay $130 so the clinic can pay its bills.

This is the state of things today. These proposed further Medicare cuts would take the reimbursement down to $80. Who’s going to make up the difference?

You.

Some of you will pay more at the doctor’s office and/or in insurance. Some of you will wait longer to have a shorter visit with a very busy doctor. And some of you will have to find a new doctor after yours can’t pay his bills and closes his doors.

Taking money from Medicare to pay for health care reform is simply cutting off your nose to spite your face.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

Thank you, Robert Reich, for finally telling the truth about what the Democrats want to accomplish:

“…[Y]ou, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more. … And by the way, … if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die. …

Also I’m going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid – we already have a lot of bargaining leverage – to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents.”

Now wasn’t that easy? I don’t know why Pres. Obama and his pals won’t just be honest with the American people like that.