March 2009

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The Deeper Concern

March 24, 2009 in Public Service | 2 comments

Waking up to a critical Krugman column in the New York Times my stomach confronts déjà vu.  In the campaign health care—now restoring the financial system.  Non-experts struggle to grasp the deal:  taxpayers provide most of the money for private investors to buy toxic assets; if their investment fails, taxpayers cover the loss; if they gain, taxpayers get half the profit.  It is a better deal than tax policies born in the 1980s to transfer vast national wealth to the rich.  Still my heart belongs to the holder of the doctorate and this year’s Nobel Prize in economics.

Aside from the words “toxic assets” (and simple math) there is a deeper concern.  Sunrise November 5, 2008, revealed a certainty that the people again have a President.  It is the foundation on which the Obama Administration builds.  Like our country’s economy it is at risk.

More than 8 months of more than full-time volunteer work in the election put myself where my words were.  It is an investment I continue to treasure.

I really need to understand.  An explanation of which Barack Obama is so capable is tardy.  In its absence, I conclude the bandits who earned riches taking us to crisis continue to rake in the cash.  We see them as the only way out.  The hostages agree to pay.

Our country’s financial system is in ruins.  It imperils the best idea of government known.  Not only does no one stand charged with the crime, many demand additional payment for the accomplishment.  That taxpayer paid bonuses are a small percentage of the larger financial risk doesn’t matter.  Foundational American values are being debased.

Speak to us Mr. President.

Anger

March 16, 2009 in Public Service | No comments

Part of the Old Norse meaning of the word anger involves grief.  In that context I confess anger at the American portrait rising from the financial ashes.  Not free standing, this anger is deeply rooted in context.

From Regan through Bush II with a brief respite in the 1990s, our national policies have been steered with cunning and calculation to serve the rich.  The transference of national wealth from poor and middle-income citizens to the well off is a crime against the founding ideals of America.  Still we do not see the architects.  Still they stand behind a curtain woven from the threads of lies and deceit.

Clarity that the new era is founded on strategies to re-create opportunity for lower and middle-income groups is a virtue.  These groups powered historic American success from post World War II through the early 1970s.  The familiar values universally accessible-hard work and personal responsibility-require resurrection.

The miles from here to the new era are counted in bonus dollars carried on opulent pillows to executives of the financial system.  Individuals who profited as they exploited America capture the common currency of celebration in the religion to which they were born again in 1980:  money.

To suggest that American’s tax dollars cannot earn a return defined in honesty, common sense and justice denies the common good.  Teddy Roosevelt marshaled effective tools to defeat the robber barons in the last century.  In this one Barack Obama must find the storehouse holding those battle tested weapons.

We must outrun the fire of our anger.  It can only burn grief ever deeper in our souls.

Jon Stewart

March 13, 2009 in Media | No comments

In the darkness of modern America my best theraputic step toward sanity is watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  Frankly, he has saved my ass.

Every practitioner in American media, and everyone who cares about it, needs to watch Jon Stewart’s interview with Jim Cramer of CNBC.  From the trillions of lost dollars and the resulting anguish for millions around the globe, an authentic, indignant voice climbs to the top of the rubble.  And that voice delivers truth.

In the process CNBC is indicted and convicted not of failed journalism but of complicity in the criminal activities of this nation’s financial system.  As Cramer employs the standard PR strategy of “mea culpa,” Stewart employs videotape replaying Cramer’s crimes.

CNBC’s experience on the Daily Show is just reward for performance.  But it is a stand in for all of American media.  As it trumpets its own brilliance and courage in standing for us all the media enlarges the question of where were they as this crisis festered.

Watching Stewart dissect his guest is uncomfortable.  He is merciless.  Watching Cramer’s leaves you wondering why he would agree to participate.

The answer is found in the New York Times.  This confrontation on The Daily Show so significant it is covered in a front-page story on the electronic version of the New York Times.  The reason for Cramer’s appearance calls us to a deeper reality:

“…while Mr. Stewart clearly won the debate, Mr. Cramer and CNBC stood to profit from the encounter. In today’s television news market, the cable network and its stars are like the financiers they cover - media short-sellers trading shamelessly on publicity, good or bad, so long as it drives up ratings. There isn’t enough regulation on Wall Street, and there’s hardly any accountability on cable news: it’s a 24-hour star system where opinions - and showmanship - matter more than facts.”

This is the epitaph of “broadcast journalism.”  If we seek a re-write there is one source capable of moving pen on paper:  the audience.  Us.

Winter of Discontent

March 9, 2009 in Public Service | No comments

I’m not sure what it is about snow falling in Portland that brings thoughts of the classic Steinbeck novel.  Its current form stills joy from giant flakes.  Too many blogs and too much cable contribute.  An underlying cause must drive their negative strategies.  Ennui is a force so powerfully present.  Do we humans possess some innate hunger?

Our country-the world-teeters at the abyss.  A President is willing to call for required answers from collective wisdom.  Yet the “loyal opposition” would trade country not for a horse but a talking point.  Minutes following Warren Buffet’s appearance on CNBC Republicans Rush not to examine the advice but to claim it as political support.

Out of the Portland snow Lee Atwater appears.  His ghost present still.  Shaping the Bush 41 campaign in ‘88, Atwater constructed the Willie Horton ads.  The message:  Michael Dukakis is soft on rapists-black rapists.  Atwater’s godson Karl Rove, of course, shaped Bush 43.

Before cancer brought Atwater death in March of 1991 it brought conversion.  “The eighties were about acquiring wealth, and power, and prestige.  But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty.  It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that this country, caught up in its ruthless ambition and moral decay can learn on my dime.  I don’t know who will lead us through the ’90s, but they must be made to speak to the spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”  No godchildren were bred in this Atwater era.

America more attuned to the pre-conversion Atwater, chased wealth, and power, and prestige through and beyond the ’90s.  Today bankrupt bankers award bonuses.  Not one House Republican votes for the stimulus bill.   The ’80s pursuit lingers.

My yearning for the converted Atwater evolves.  The need to address the spiritual vacuum, the tumor of the soul once the charge of leaders belongs now to all.   The remedy advanced in the ending decade of the 20th century so right for the one opening the 21st.

Fear

March 4, 2009 in Family & Life | No comments

There is so much lost by so many:  jobs, homes, health insurance.  Our shared risk extends beyond the individual to reach the world’s financial system and all it supports.  Reality creates for all an inalienable right for fear.  It hangs in the air like burned chicken feathers.  Yet, in my experience, fear does not define this time.

There is depression.  My friends in the public sector-mostly focused on the poor experience the despair that leaves them weary.  No one is untouched by the depth of the danger.  But fear does not govern those I know.

Over dinner last Friday a friend spoke of opportunity.  The American economy is the greatest in the history of the world.  It will not fail.  Opportunity surrounds.

My son and daughter-in-law reconfigure childcare.  My mother-in-law tries to balance the cost of health insurance against her commitment to family.  My sister-in-law teaches her children the requirements of shrinking income.  My stepdaughter tightens her belt and looks for a less expensive place to live.  All these common acts unfold in the midst of the daily challenge of life for all.

Perhaps the explanation from the author Molly Ferguson is why.  “Fear is a question:  What are you afraid of and why?  Just as the seed of health is an illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.”

I read a simple story about a man who lost a high paying job.  Free-lancing brings home a third of what he earned before.  There is no health insurance and he prays his health holds.  I am blessed, he says.  His conclusion is common among those bruised by hard times.

I do not travel this time with Pollyannas.  Dread and realism walk their streets.  Fear is in the air, but it does not own.  Perhaps Mark Twain understood: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear.”

Laron

March 3, 2009 in The Human Spirit | No comments

For me, the path to faith is an inside-out journey.  Touching the part within us shaped in God’s image, faith’s seed grows with authenticity.  My eyes first opened in the company of the Sunday sermons of the Rev. H. Laron Hall.   Each one brings liturgy to life through everyday experiences by everyday people.  Those experiences breathe life into growing conviction.  Many of Laron’s sermons are included in the collection titled No Darkness At All.

“…to me Christianity is a thing of immense grace and beauty.  I think ministers should communicate love and build bridges which allow people to reach God,” Laron said.  Each Sunday at First Church in Portland we heard not the intellectual explication of liturgy.  Its essence simply filled us as Laron told a story of someone finding the part within touched by God.

Through secret ballot First Church chose to be a reconciling congregation.  Our shared belief:  “As a sign of faithfulness to God’s covenant, as communicated by Christ, with all humankind we believe God is challenging the Christian community to accept lesbians and gay men as sisters, brothers, and co-workers in the house of faith.  Sexuality is a good gift of God and we believe persons may be fully human only when that gift is acknowledged and affirmed by themselves, the church and society.”

The community of First Church healed personal wounds deepened by the life and death of my brother.  The post titled Max Leon might explain.

Having spent more time in doubt than certainty, confessing faith as part of a Sunday service was one of my steepest climbs.  Laron guided self-conscious steps with grace.

I truly believed I would grow old in the company of his loving wisdom.  What we believe, of course, not always is.  Laron died of complications of AIDS May 3, 1994.  I openly wept at his funeral.  A long search leaves his role in my life unfilled.

For nearly everyone at First Church Laron’s end journey was both of, and not of, this world.  In small discussion groups his diagnosis was revealed.  Each remaining Sunday, with emotions sharpened by finite time, Laron would tell another story.  They often incorporated his own experience.  “You have been the means by which God tells me I’m not alone.  My soul has been stirred by your eager willingness to share this part, even this part, of my journey.  It is the best of times.  I sail on a sea of grace.”

Occasionally private condemnation surfaced.  A consuming, powerful congregational love surrounded each with no mercy for its holder.

The Reverend H. Laron Hall was a master teacher in my life.  He deeply marked my awareness, my understanding by revealing that part of him touched by God.

Framed

March 2, 2009 in Media | No comments

In the mid 1990s, Peter Senge, the genius architect of learning organizations, gave us a clear truth.  Working with complexity is the defining reality of our era.  Crisis after crisis since has proven Senge prescient.  Our abilities are not tested by challenges rising in tones of black and white.  They are dressed in vibrant, multi-colors.  We’re holding a collection of Rubik’s Cubes.

Watching the Sunday news shows the mouth puckers with stale dissatisfaction.  Lips smack to the familiar aftertaste of the antiquated frame these shows use to consider issues that define us.  One or two Democrats sit across from one or two Republicans.  All complexity cloaked in the garb of party talking points and “philosophy.”  Another cage fight framed by the imperatives of a struggle for political power.  The serious work needed to find answers hides in the fog.

By the way, why do Republicans get so much airtime?  Why do they get to lie?  U.S. Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) says on This Week, “No Republican wants the Administration to fail.”  His point caught in the echo of de-facto Republican Party leader Rush Limbaugh again preying for the failure of President Obama.  The Sunday shows seem hell bent to rescue the GOP from two defining words:  region, minor.

The acid eating the Sunday shows is manufactured in their conceptual frame.  The collapsing economy, a radical new national budget, ending a nightmare war are not proper topics for bumper sticker debate.  Raze and rebuild the frame.  Bill Moyers Journal proves an alternative each Friday night on PBS.  Discovering group wisdom within complex challenges offers an escape from history’s very bad verdict.