EDELMAN’S SO RICH, SO POOR, IN REVIEW

Posted on June 26, 2013 by mdbwell

I was happy to see that Peter Edelman decided to grapple with the problem of poverty based upon his work with Sen. Robert Kennedy in the mid-to-late 1960s.  I have tremendously admired the valiant oeuvre of his spouse, Marian Wright Edelman, who, during the same period sought to increase the voting rolls in Mississippi and accompanied the senator in that state to observe the level of indigence people faced there.  She, upon the urging of Kennedy, discussed with Martin Luther King, Jr., the need to press Washington into redressing those impoverished conditions through effective legislative measures.  She went on to become the strongest advocate for the rights of children in the history of this country under the auspices of her Children’s Defense Fund.  But I digress.

Edelman’s book, So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America, is written in recognition of the fact that people are not paid a living wage and yesteryears’ welfare and social programs aimed at mitigating the plight of the poor are today token and virtually insubstantial.  He does a yeoman’s job in supporting the warp and woof of the War on Poverty (particularly in chapter two), and he makes the claim that this programmatic and administrative concentration on reducing poverty helped to escort some working- and lower-class folks inside the border of the middle class.  This harking back to the halcyon days of the Johnson Administration, minus the escalation of the war in Vietnam, is a wonderful trip down Memory Lane for those who lived in and/or researched (and an excellent educational journey for many born after) that period when social movements intermittently converged in an effort to forge a more perfect union and world.

Chapter one is a marvelous examination of current poverty with hardscrabble facts and little fanfare.  In chapter three, Edelman attempts to identify how we have stymied and stalemated ourselves in constructively addressing poverty through an inadequate comprehension of the depths of poverty and its ramifying effects throughout society and culture.  The decline in wages generally and for those without a high school diploma, the curtailment of unions culminating in the Reagan presidency, the influx of new wage earners by immigrants and women, and the pushing down of income through multinationals’ use of cheaper labor suggest why we are unable to augment our efforts to alleviate poverty.  Edelman does ask the hard questions about minimum wage and income inequality, but he himself falls short of tendering substantive approaches to improving the circumstances of either.  He critically appraises the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which give employers a pass, yet provide some dividends for families.  He asserts the failure of Medicaid to attend to the needs of poor adults, a program catering to the elderly and the physically/mentally challenged.  Albeit a polemical tour de force, this fourth chapter on “Jobs: The Economy and Public Policy Goes South” resorts to the desperate cry for workers to get outraged and demand change without any promising answer to the “64-gazillion-dollar question,” as he avers.

Edelman is noted for his resignation from the administration of Pres. Bill Clinton because of the latter’s surrender to the welfare reform mantra conservatives and moderates chorused in 1996.  In the fifth chapter, Edelman delineates how ineffectual poverty programs are and have been in ameliorating the conditions of the really, or deeply, poor.  He argues for income supplements that take away the burden from employers, on whose shoulders a major part of the problem of poverty can be laid, but nevertheless help in increasing early income and allowing people to transcend their ingress-and-egress movements related to deep poverty.  With Aid to Families of dependent Children (AFDC) in the cemetery and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) no longer entitling the poor to benefits, the progressive advocacy for the poor is virtually nonexistent.  Praises, perhaps, are due to the persistence of the food-stamp program under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  However, even this program is assailed, despite the fact that no substantive antipoverty endeavor should have at its core the attainment of a food subsidy scarcely adequate enough to feed a family!

In the sixth chapter, Edelman attempts to tackle the issues of race and racism.  I believe he gives a satisfactory nuanced view of the poor—making sure he does not fall into the quandary of characterizing inner-city indigence as a “culture of poverty.”  Edelman takes a bow towards Dr. William H. Cosby and Juan Williams when he gently castigates blacks and other people of color for not incorporating in their manual of antipoverty rhetoric and actions a chapter on personal responsibility.  Such a salvo misrepresents the multiple and cumulative effects of long-term poverty—including the myth that blacks simply genetically want to be or ineluctably will be poor—while building credibility with an array of ignorant and elitist stakeholders regardless of pigmentation.

Edelman bounces back in the seventh chapter, where he pays respect to his partner and once again regales the life and work of Sen. Kennedy, by lifting up the importance of education and children’s programs as elemental to any war against poverty’s intransigence.  Investment in our youth is key, and it must be done in a holistic manner fraught with nearly unlimited available resources.  We fret about competition from other countries, yet we fail to strengthen our own by undergirding all of our children with the developmental skills and capital they need to meet those future challenges.  What brand of patriotism is it when we equip only certain people to succeed and abandon the rest because of our multilayered xenophobia?

By the concluding chapter, nothing is new that Edelman ventures.  In this sense, like the toothless recommendations made in The Rich and the Rest of Us, the ideas are risk-averse and the possibility of real radical change is tacitly dismissed.  We seek to put bandages on the wounds that capitalists invariably perpetrate, because we are not prepared to dismantle its failures and construct a democratic society whose members fully acknowledge, appreciate, respect, and embrace their fellow human beings.  The noble quest for the beloved community remains truncated and crippled because we cannot transcend the narrow confines of our individual selves to understand and practice a more other-centered modus operandi.

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LOVE IS THE ANSWER

Posted on April 23, 2013 by mdbwell

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston echoed the words of Jesus, Jane Addams, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, in asserting that “we must build a civilization of love, or there will be no civilization at all.”  Many criticized O’Malley for his focus on loving while we mourn the death of four people during and after the Boston Marathon on April 15.  However, I think his words were apropos considering the increase of violence in our society and around the world.  He emphasized the importance of living in community, not in isolation, in order to build meaningful and purposeful existence.  He warned against prejudice towards all Muslims and immigrants.

At one point in his brief statement, O’Malley used abortions as a way of pointing to the devaluation of human life.  I would not have gone in that direction.  Furthermore, he coupled that with the assertion that even entertainment has “coarsened” us—making us all largely insensitive to the pain and suffering of others.  I understand his concerns, but as a proponent of pro-choice and a frequenter of the big screen and a civil libertarian, I believe his comments were not accurate about their negative effects and were a good example of political rhetoric and were not germane to his phrase concerning our “culture of violence.”

Dr. King once said: “We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools.”  We are not all willing to love, especially during times of such tragedies.  We are more apt to think about revenge.  Certainly, during the moments following the explosions, ordinary citizens risked their lives in order to help others.  They should be applauded along with the emergency responders who valiantly did their jobs.  But the notion of avenging what happens to us returns to similar voids of responsibility germinated in ancient times.  It was a little brown Hindu man from India who, on one occasion, stated: “I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians.”  He opined that “love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.”  Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House in Chicago, emphasized that “social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself.”  Hence, the ends never justify the means; rather, the means and the ends must cohere.

When will we make it to the point where we examine how we relate to other countries?  Instead, we major in declarative arrogance when we choose after a tragedy to pound our chests and affirm the greatness of our lifestyle and no terrorist action will change how we live.  If it is too sensitive a time to talk about how we act internationally when smoke is still rising from Boylston Street, then should we not look inward in between such devastating occurrences with constructive criticism and endeavor to improve foreign and diplomatic affairs?  We may still be the greatest military power on Earth, but might does not make right.  Besides, our economy is clearly not the best in the world, and it needs a drastic overhaul if the masses of our citizens are going to participate fully here at home and not lag behind other nations whose educational and creative prowess surpasses our own.

As we mourn the terrible loss of Martin Richard, Lu Lingzi, Krystle Campbell, and Sean Collier and commiserate with the more than 170 injured, let us also meditate on the power of love: not only on the love of family, relatives, and friends, but also on that force which seeks after the welfare of others unconditionally, including those who by their actions are our enemies, as Jesus instructed two millennia ago.  Amen.

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DEALING WITH POVERTY

Posted on March 13, 2013 by mdbwell

Cornel West has been roundly criticized for his captious remarks about the Obama presidency, despite the fact that he has also been a strong supporter of both his initial candidacy and his reelection.  Some have commented that he seems jealous that he did not get special recognition from the president this year during the inaugural festivities and has not been invited to the White House as a major consultant or advisor.  Perhaps, West has gone a little overboard at times, but I think he is not far amiss in his concern over some aspects of the current, extended administration.

Two matters West has addressed are worthy of note.  First, being the consummate politician, Obama extended the tax breaks for the wealthiest U.S. citizens, bailed out the banks in large part responsible for the domestic economic crisis, and mouthed clichéd irrelevancies about protecting the middle class—all at the unconscionable neglect of the poverty stricken.  Second, Obama has continued the failed military policies of the past—having made promises he did not keep and using drones on a regular basis in the ill-conceived war against terrorism.  Many were afraid that West’s remarks would impede Obama’s bid for a second term.  Now that Obama heading towards lame duck-ness and the annals of presidential lore, can we substantively analyze what West has been saying?

A White House Conference on the Eradication of Poverty in America is one of the central suggestions made by West and his compatriot, Tavis Smiley, in their book, The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.  It is an easy read, and the data utilized throughout the text is not in the least overwhelming or superfluous.  In this small book, the devastating effects of poverty, both historically and contemporaneously, are delineated via the analysis of others and anecdotes of real-life experiences of the indigent or near poor.  A bit repetitious at times, the authors make a compelling case for the need of such a Conference finally to put the 1967 concerns of Robert F. Kennedy, Marian Wright (Edelman), and Martin Luther King, Jr., front and center.

King, of course, through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was putting together a Poor People’s Campaign to do precisely that in a dramatic way on the mall of the nation’s capital.  Before he could implement this endeavor, he was diverted to Memphis, Tennessee, to support striking sanitation workers—a fatal involvement for him.  The book lies heavily upon the legacy of the civil rights era and offers to resume King’s quest to end the United States’ escalating foray into Vietnam (today’s Afghanistan) in order to focus on crippling poverty at home.  They reference the idea of a Marshall Plan for the Disadvantaged, a concept based upon the European Recovery Program for which the former Secretary of State General George Marshall won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 and upon Asa Philip Randolph’s Freedom Budget to mitigate the plight of the economically depressed.

The Rich and the Rest of Us is not a bona fide how-to book.  There are twelve proposed steps to alleviate poverty, but they are not profoundly new or strikingly inspiring considering the many famous figures quoted intermittently throughout the text.  It can be used as a basic tool to gather people together at least to talk about the taboo subject of poverty and to spin off local efforts to help the needy.  I am afraid, however, that it does not seem to have the makings of a springboard impelling folks to rekindling the revolutionary spirit of old to challenge the capitalist system and restructure the institutions, processes, and policies that more than metaphorically makes paupers of the majority.

Does such a book, one that seems authentically to grow out of moral concern, make cowards of us all, to paraphrase William Shakespeare’s Hamlet?  That is to say, are we so afraid of the type of society that might come after the revolution that we refuse to make the attempt to forge a new one?  Or is poverty such a blight upon the great American experiment, to use Alexis de Tocqueville’s phrase, that we will shun safety, expediency, or popularity to attack and defeat it?

I close with a quote that King often used and did so on March 31, 1968, at the National Cathedral in D.C. a few days before he was assassinated.  It is from the 19th-century preacher, William Morley Punshon.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?”
Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?”
Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?”
But Conscience asks the question, “Is it right?”

King goes on to say that “there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

Perhaps, the eradication of poverty is, to restate Victor Hugo, an idea whose time has come!

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SPEED LIMIT: MINIMIZING THE MAXIMUM

Posted on March 13, 2013 by mdbwell

As a card-caring member of the American Civil Liberties Union (when I am up-to-date with my annual fee), I greatly enjoy freedom of expression and the ability to do what I please as long as I am not injuring another.  For instance, when laws were enacted requiring the wearing of seat belts in automobiles, I was rather indignant over what I consider to be another foray invading my privacy rights.  I felt that I should be able to drive my vehicle however I wanted, say for disobeying traffic laws—especially those designed for drivers’ protection.  I did not see seat belts as necessary for my safety.

The first Sunday in December, while running late for church, I elected to exceed the speed limit in order to make up time.  Bad decision!  The fog was thick, so I was very focused on what lay ahead, so-much-so that I did not see the county sheriff’s vehicle.  Actually, I am not sure whether or not some satellite or radar had tapped into my speed and sent an automatic flagged report to the sheriff’s office.  Regardless of how the vehicle’s top lights appeared in my rearview mirror, I received a reduced ticket for traveling thirty miles above the speed limit of fifty-five m.p.h.  I didn’t expect to be ticketed and was very chagrinned when the sheriff handed it to me; however, I realize that he would have been justified in taking my license right then and there.

Three weeks later, now oblivious to the $262.50 I had paid to the county, I was startled and frightened to find a letter from the Department of Transportation (DOT) intending to suspend my driver’s license for three months and to fine me another $200!  That same day I sat down and wrote for mercy and the rescission of the suspension.  Oh, it was a marvelous letter!  Within three days, I received a reply stating that my appeal was approved and the withdrawal of my license had been rescinded.  Before I could finish exhaling a grateful and bounteous sigh of relief, I read further only to discover I was nevertheless consigned to pay for and enroll in Driving Improvement class!  Apparently, my appeal did not rise to the level of a full waver and forgiveness.

From receipt of the menacing DOT missive to the instructional class a few months later, I followed the speed limit religiously.  I hated my self-induced retardation and barely had nervous breakdowns while driving in 25 mph zones.  But what discomfited me the most is the number of times I observed drivers speeding by me ostensibly without a care in the world.  Some were even rude to me, both in word and in deed.  I could scarcely contain my anger, yet managed to stick to my radically new lifestyle behind the wheel.  When I complained to my instructor that I was ticking time bomb, he quietly informed me that those speeders are what I used to be and that they were breaking the law.  In addition, he enlightened me with the fact that even though it seemed like everyone else was speeding, speeders actually are greatly in the minority.

Here’s the crux of the matter.  While driving two miles below the speed limit in the slow lane on the interstate, most everyone behind me moved around me.  In the process of driving within the legal range, I was endlessly honked at, derided with lewd gestures, and nearly run off the road.  Hardly anyone respected the legally fastest one could go. As a matter of fact, speed limits are viewed by many, possibly most, as the slowest rate; they are ignored, I contend, across the board.  I know of a man who used to get ticketed for going merely three miles above the posted speed limit and sometimes while going under it.  He, mainly Martin Luther King, Jr., oft criticized us humans for “maximizing the minimum and minimizing the maximum.”  As someone else asserted, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”

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SPEND LESS!

Posted on November 23, 2012 by mdbwell

One of my dearest mentors lamented the increase in advertising over the course of the twentieth century.  From the sale of tobacco to ideological announcements of political action committees, the resignation we have towards the ubiquity of commercials became something he routinely criticized, but could scarcely ignore or escape.

As we proceed with another holiday season, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, just coming off a hotly contested presidential election, we can expect to experience an omnipresent marketing blitzkrieg.  At first glance, it might appear that Black Friday and the day after Christmas are consumers’ bonanzas.  Suggested retail prices are slashed, and the consumer is led to believe that the discounts are, well, heaven-sent.  However, upon closer and careful examination, what is not found in the fine print is that the retail prices to begin with were set for the profiteering of owners and manufacturers and did not have the interests or needs of consumers in mind whatsoever. 

The persuasive, pervasive juggernaut of advertising presses consumers to misperceive wants as needs, discounts as steals, and gifting as morally obligatory.  Psychological depression and attempted suicides increase during this period of time because we are greedy, wanton, fiscally irresponsible, and desirous of adulation.  So we spend countless hours and money we do not have to feel good about ourselves and to appear as if we are thoughtful and generous folks.  But the truth of the matter is that we are bamboozled: duped into believing that this season of good cheer and jolliness demands an especial sacrifice, and the plethora of advertisements confirms its mandatory nature.

If you remember, on the heels of the devastating tragedy of September 11, 2001, then-President George W. Bush, in an attempt to transcend the moment and to return to the arrogant normalcy of American exceptionalism, strongly encouraged U.S. citizens to “go shopping.”  The statement was historically one of the most condescendingly ignorant things that a government leader could say, and it could only alienate not merely would-be terrorists, but allies as well.  As our national memory cords lengthen, we should always recall our standoffish, unilateral behavior amid a disastrous crisis that did not affect us singularly, but, rather, tattooed its perniciousness around the world and reshaped global relations evermore.

As the recovery from recession becomes more widespread and the fiscal cliff is averted, companies will begin to regain their footholds.  This rebound will, of course, result in a renewed vigor to court the consumer into believing they need to spend more in order to increase profits and continue to hoodwink the masses of people into believing that their anticipated tax-relief dollars will cover their indebtedness.

In the economic arena, as in the politics, we tend to act against our best interests and the national welfare.  We live beyond our means and we purchase beyond our power, because we are coopted into thinking doing so makes us feel good and worthy—until we realize it is a fleeting feeling and we have been had again.  We fail to recognize that we can fend off financial crisis by being more circumspect in our spending and by perceiving commercials for what they are: not-so-subtle subterfuges to trick potential buyers into filling the coffers of the owners of production and their shareholders.

The masses of people in the United States do not have appreciable wealth.  One way to improve that status is to spend less, save, and soundly invest.  Needless to say, the poor are in a bind for they cannot get anything unless they spend, they cannot save because they have to survive, and they cannot invest because disposable income is scarce or nonexistent.  The real test of our mettle as human beings is whether we have the inclination and the will to eliminate poverty and reshape our capitalist economy so that it no longer majors in minority wealth and majority pauperism.  What a new form of advertising that would bring!

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GUN VIOLENCE

Posted on July 26, 2012 by mdbwell

As a nonviolent activist and pacifist, I am opposed to the resolution of conflict, both interpersonal and international included, by bullets.  As Martin Luther King, Jr., has stated, we have allowed our technology to outdistance our theology.  The increased access to weapons of deadly force in this country has got to be curtailed, or we will continue to see situations like Aurora, Colorado, repeated.  Citizens are given the license to build genuine arsenals of destruction in their residences without any red flags raised.

I will never forget the nightmares I had after the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy.  Even though I understood the propaganda that there was a lone gunman in Lee Harvey Oswald and that Jack Ruby, who murdered Oswald while he was being transported under custody, was a failed pimp and businessman of sorts, I nevertheless was a nervous wreck for several months and dreaded the number of possibilities of crackpot killers on the rampage—which seemed to be fulfilled with the deaths of Dr. King and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy four years later in 1968.

I am a civil libertarian at heart—having intermittently belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union over my adult lifetime.  Hence, I am a supporter of the Second Amendment of the Constitution: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  I have read Stephen Holbrook’s seminal work on this amendment, and I value his use of some of the founders to support his perspective defending the individual right to gun ownership.  I simply feel that he and many others have misinterpreted the intent.

One of the major concerns back then was the fear of tyranny as well as the fear of anarchy.  Having a gun would help to fight against predilections towards tyranny and against anarchical disrespect for and seizure of (private) property.  Some folks at the constitutional convention believed that such defense against tyrannous and anarchical carpetbaggers, if you will, was a no-brainer and did not require an amendment.  For example, the state where I grew up, Connecticut, was opposed to the second amendment proposal as it was to any inclination towards a bill of rights, for they were all self-evidentiary.

The members of the Black Panther Party wanted to see a better America: their food and education programs were innovative and oftentimes successful.  But they also believed their rights were being violated and that the use of guns in self-defense was not only justifiable, but also necessary.  They considered racial discrimination and oppression criminal and fundamentally denied them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Racism was a form of tyranny in their eyes, and the Second Amendment authorized them to take upon themselves the establishment of justice through a well-regulated militia.  The U.S. government under Pres. Richard M. Nixon, with the willing cooperation of J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, cracked down on this organization in offensive ways—even though its members were intelligent and had a strong case that expertly utilized the tenets of the U.S. Constitution.

The above notwithstanding, I think the resort to gun violence is abominable between and among human beings and appeals to our lower nature.  I am aware that a nonviolent world is a pipe dream as long as blood courses through our veins; however, it is an ideal to be sought that can never be reached, but which can certainly be approached.  It’s like a Niebuhrian “impossible possibility.”  And speaking of Reinhold Niebuhr, I am acutely cognizant of his perspective of how challenging it is to be a moral person in an immoral society, especially within and among groups of people.  The magnitude of evil in the world significantly disables us from cohering means and ends; that is to say, some of our goals of peace have to be attained through means of violence.  Jesus once told his disciples in the face of violence against him to put them away, “for those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword” (Mattthew 26:52).  That violence begets violence is a hackneyed phrase, but is a good caveat in the midst of a rather teleologically minded populace.

Some have claimed that now is not the time to discuss gun laws or regulations, in the wake of such a tragedy.  I disagree.  I believe it is always time to talk about gun possession that goes contrary to the constitutional amendment and that make easier the destruction of human life.  The ownership of automatic assault weaponry augments the possibilities of accidents, contract killings, and crackpot rampages.  It is because of these possibilities that calls for more gun control are perfectly understandable.  America is a violent nation in multifarious ways.  The regulation of an aspect of brute force is truly welcome.

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KUDOS TO GAY RIGHTS DEFENDERS

Posted on March 6, 2012 by mdbwell

Finally, somebody got it right!  We are living in a time where many seem to want to return to the ostensibly halcyon days when states chose whether or not they wanted to abide by anti-discrimination laws.  Segregation, though upheld by Plessy v. Ferguson, was not coincident with the trajectory of this country in terms of civil rights.  It was a backlash against Reconstruction and the abolition of slavery.  States rights advocates argued for interposition, nullification, poll taxes, redlining, sundown laws, white and colored signs, and so forth—anything to keep African Americans from acquiring equal opportunities and egalitarian treatment.

Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey, got it right when he lambasted Gov. Chris Christie and other Republicans for wanting to put gay marriage to a people’s vote.  Booker recognized the scurrilous nature of such a public denouement by Christie, who hoped that support for gay marriage would be crushed by those who want to ban it in their state.  Arguing that the liberties he has enjoyed as an American citizen would not be his, including the post he holds, were civil rights for blacks held simply to a popular vote, Booker exhibited what many characterize in the abstract, “speaking truth to power.”  Whereas he did not tailor his remarks against Christie per se, he certainly did not mince his words when it was pointed out that Christie and he diverged in opinion on this point.

As much as Howard Stern can be criticized for some of his antics, he is another person who has gotten it right with regards to liberties for homosexuals.  He is one of the leading proponents of gay marriage, and no discrediting of him can diminish the probity of his stance for equality and protection under the law.  All of the protests against gay rights will not succeed, for it is an inalienable life for people to pursue the fullest expression of who they are as long as they do not injure or dominate anybody else.

There is a growing wellspring of supporters for Ellen DeGeneres in reaction to One Million Moms’ pressure upon J. C. Penney to can her from spokesperson status.  It is a testament to how far we have come since the twentieth century in terms of allowing a group’s homophobia to determine others’ actions.  Penney has refused to remove DeGeneres as its spokesperson, and the regressive attempts of One Million Moms have catalyzed into massive support for DeGeneres on Twitter and Facebook.

In the early 1960s, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., wanted to defuse the popularity of Martin Luther King, Jr., by using his association with activist Bayard Rustin, who happened to be gay.  For a little while, King publicly dissociated himself from Rustin, but not for long.  Rustin became the leading organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph and King, where the latter rendered his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech.  Powell’s attempt of maintaining ascendancy as the Booker T. Washington of Harlem, would eventually fail—as did his attack on America’s Prince of Peace.

Ultimately, our culture will get used to navigating the terrain of self-expression a little bit better.  Right now, we must endure the homophobia of many by not allowing them to curtail such expression and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This backlash that reared its ugly head in the 1980s along with the HIV/AIDS pandemic will, too, pass only with the persistent outcry of people like Booker, Stern, and supporters of DeGeneres.  Kudos to them!

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HOLDER’S DEFENSE OF MURDER

Posted on March 6, 2012 by mdbwell

Now, it is clear to me why Pres. Barack Obama and his administration have not made good on the promise to address due process at Guantanamo and to bring war crimes to bear upon the Bush Administration.  He wanted the liberty to engage in similar acts himself.  Such explains the killing of Osama bin Laden and, more recently, Anwar al-Awlaki.  The frustrating things about the latter murder are the fact that al-Awlaki is an American and that Obama, through the mouth of Attorney General Eric Holder, is not allowing the paperwork leading up to the murder to be released to the public.

The excuses being made by Holder sounds a lot like the justification of water-boarding and other extreme torture methods during the former president’s reign.  To hold people in perpetuity without appearing in court, to torture them, and to find individuals who are deemed to be threats and murder them are antithetical to the guiding principles and values of a democratic republic—which are to be in force regardless of our maritime or peacetime circumstances.  Certainly, Holder would not want his president to be the target of a hit because it is in the security interests of a nation or group to remove him.  Another entity’s intention, it must be understood, is just as good as our own; the United States is not to be placed on some moral pedestal where all our scapegoats can be murdered while none of our citizens could be—save for when we choose to kill our own.

This is the kind of executive power we should make illegitimate.  When citizens are not allowed to know that someone is being targeted and then dismissed when inquiries are made concerning the reasons, they are taken away from representation and not allowed to make their own analysis of what happened because the facts are not at their disposal.  This is oligarchic in nature and smacks of cronyism, jingoism, and dominionism wrapped together.

Holder does not like the use of the term “assassination” to describe the murder of al-Awlaki.  Since assassination would be against U.S. principles and legal recourse, he does not want, of course, to call it what it is!  It is the old trick of questioning what a term really means.  The goal is to engage in subterfuge by getting paralyzed in semantics and definitions, thus diverting attention from the issue at hand.  It is shameful that the leading attorney in the country engages in this puerile tomfoolery in order to justify unauthorized killing!  It is chicanery at its worst.

There will come a time when the person we characterize as the most powerful in the world is persistently followed and targeted by foreign entities.  When a successful attempt is made on that person’s life, what appeals can we make to avenge it since we have breached international justice countless times over the years?  What sympathy should we command when we have rationalized killing leaders around the globe?

We would do well to read Stephen L. Carter’s book, The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama.  Carter convincingly demonstrates that the foreign policy of Obama has jibed well with that of George W.  Obama no longer seems as an antagonist of Bush, but oddly as the latter’s protagonist.  It is hugely ironic and disturbingly prosaic that the hopeful, change-oriented, talk-with-our-enemies, cerebral candidate has morphed into a status-quo, lukewarm, centrist, Step ’n’ Fetchit-like demagogic president who is taking for granted that he will be returned to the White House because of the fortuitous ineptitude of the Republican contenders.  Lucky for him, he has a hatchet person in the form of Eric Holder.  Apparently, they both have taken lessons from their respective predecessor!

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Equalizing Life’s Chances

Posted on February 21, 2012 by mdbwell

It is very convenient for politicians of whatever stripe to speak about the deteriorating middle class and what we need to do about it.  For some reason, it has become respectable to lament the dwindling of that segment of the population, for members thereof are regarded as victims of the recession.  However, making them the center of attention and empathy is scarcely new: it has always been satisfactory ostensibly to succor them while simultaneously lambasting members of the lower and lowest classes.  The latter groups are treated monolithically and saddled with shame for longing to have better opportunities in pursuit of the inveterately out-of-reach American dream.  Even our dear president has grown accustomed to glossing over the plight of the poor in order to fall into line with the tradition of legitimizing the travails of the middle class at the former’s expense.

Apparently, it is less murky to defend and support a recently laid-off person who had a decent job than it is to buttress a person who has been out of work for a long period of time and has since become so frustrated that looking for a job is no longer viable.  The person of low socioeconomic level or no longer pursuing employment is automatically persona non-grata.  This prejudice—though uncritical and unjustifiable—is seemingly universally inoffensive, irrefutable, and acceptable.

Most media outlets portray the so-called good life, and many fall prey to the glamour of the rich and famous.  Some respond by wanting to acquire material things that are fundamentally outside their pay range.  Predatory lenders take advantage of this desire and burden the fantasy chasers with debts they cannot repay.  As a result, there are innumerable foreclosures and out-of-control attempts at robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul.  Perhaps, there are some lenders that sought to assist renters in pursuing their dreams and were outrageously optimistic over the possibilities of return on their investments.

Helping out the poor is a noble profession.  It is common problem-solving technics to address the worst case scenario, for doing so would sufficiently redound to the favor of those further up the success ladder.  Rather than ignore the suffering of the least of these, our neighbors, we should be about the business as a nation of firming up our probity, or moral fiber, by addressing and redressing indigent conditions.  Instead, we are neglecting transforming the structures, processes, and policies that make for persistent poverty and strangely arguing over whether or not wealthy persons should continue getting tax breaks and humongous, insolvent corporations should get stimulus dollars!

What kind of world do you wish to live in?—that’s the perennial, diurnal question!  Do you want to sustain and enlarge the achievement gaps prevalent in our country, or do you wish to effectuate radical, constructive change in such a way to equalize opportunities and life chances for this nation’s inhabitants?  That is the major question facing all residing in the United States during the twenty-first century.  Will we finally get the picture, before it’s too late?

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VULTURE & MORAL CAPITALISM

Posted on January 23, 2012 by mdbwell

Recently, Republican presidential (non-)contender, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, in a desperate attempt to salvage his hopeless bid for his Party’s nomination, characterized the leading primary candidate, former Governor Mitt Romney, as a “vulture capitalist.”  Of course, this name-slinging has been the bar for the contest, but the use of this slang to describe the frontrunner has sparked some media attention.  Romney, a venture capitalist, one who seeks to revive struggling companies, has come under fire recently for his business acumen.  Venture capitalism is often lauded, but sometimes companies soliciting help to save them from financial ruin, have been nevertheless destroyed by firms that have masqueraded as their rescuers and have answered their calls for salvation.

What is immensely ironic to this writer about the alarm generated by Perry’s and others’ remarks is the fact that capitalists have historically benefitted and profited from the sinking of companies.  These circumstances are nothing new.  Such is the very nature of unregulated competition and moneyed greed.  Because the system is flawed, those who become rich from involvement in it should not be maligned or considered evil.  It is what it is.  However, a system that allows that to happen without moderating income and ensuring no one will go without who does not engage in the venture is seriously flawed and must be revamped or demolished.

Charitable responses to those who suffer from capitalism’s uncaring and divisive juggernaut, on the one hand, and the ravages of greed—cloaked ostensibly in the celebration of hard work and merit—on the other hand, are paternalistic at best and grossly negligent at worst.  Anybody who is still captious in their remarks about the poor in the midst of the economic crisis that saw bailouts and tax breaks for the perennially wealthy ought to be ashamed.  Anyone who is not in favor of building safeguards against penury in the name of maintaining free enterprise ought to have one’s head examined.  An unfettered market economy will inevitably result in class distinctions and the steady widening of the gap between the rich and the poor.

We pay so much homage to “founding principles” and the ability to be free from oversight that we fail to lift up the concomitant history of goodness, compassion, empathy, and so forth.  The bedrock of capitalism is not liberty, but dependency; not fraternity, but rapacity; not compassion, but avarice; and not solidarity, but control.  These harsh realities have called some people to talk about the concept of “moral capitalism.”  This idea points to the fact that because humans are selfish, ambitious, and indifferent to others’ pain, policies must be established to curtail self-aggrandizement.  Protecting consumers, laborers, the unemployed, single parents, children, etc., would be at the vital center of those who inject morality into micro and macro economics.

The primary issue with this type of capitalism is that it is not inclined towards dismantling the system.  Rather, it makes no fundamental changes to the acquisition of wealth and the underpayment of labor.  It does not disrupt ill-gotten gain and the dehumanization of the working class.  An analogy would be allowing a disease to spread by ignoring its source and appeasing the suffering patients with morphine and other pain-killers—when a medicinal cure for the disease is readily available.  Most people would not see the value in letting folks die a painful death, for they would recognize how unconscionable it would be.

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