Separation of Church and State

A lot of polls are bandied about to show either support for separation of church and state - 59% according to the Interfaith Alliance/Zogby International - or support for prayer in schools - usually around the same percentage according to sources that are faith-based polls. How accurate these polls are depends a great deal on what is being asked.

For example, the poll supporting prayer in schools doesn't take into account other government entities. If prayer is okay in schools, then it should be legal for all governmental departments, i.e., transportation, county registries, city councils, police departments, etc. Even if this premise is found acceptable, it doesn't take into account the actual implementation of the prayers. What are the guidelines? Are the prayers to be led by the department heads, the teachers, the students, the employees - just who gets to say the prayer?

And, are all prayers included? Who gets to decide if the prayer is Christian or Jewish? Who determines if the prayer is specific to a particular faith - a prayer to the Virgin Mary by a Catholic or a prayer that speaks to the exclusion of other faiths or a prayer that affirms one denomination as the one true faith, beliefs held by many Protestant churches.

What do you do with people who do not believe in the mixture of church and state? Would an IRS employee be excused if his or her Southern Baptist department head led a prayer to Christ? This point also leads to a determination of bias - say this employee who does not participate in his boss' prayer can he expect this lack of participation to affect the evaluation of his job performance by his boss? Or, say a Jewish student is excused from a Christian prayer by his teacher, is it likely that the student might suspect that this exclusion will color the way his teacher views him and could affect the way the teacher grades him?

Many people who do not believe in the separation of church and state often point to the fact that at least 75% - and possibly more depending on the poll - believe in God. Of course, there is the large number of people who believe in God but also believe in the separation of church and state. But, let's assume a sizable majority - 60% - of the American people believe in God, but not the separation of church and state. Do they all have the same beliefs about God? There are over 2,000 different religious denominations in this country - the vast majority of which are Christian. If we are one nation under God, then why don't we all go to the same church.

Even within denominations there are subsets that greatly disagree with each other - Orthodox or Reformed Jews, Baptists and Southern Baptists, conservative Catholics and progressive Catholics, etc. So, when it comes to breaking the wall separating church and state, whose concept of God do we allow in our schools, and our governments?  Do we allow all - which would include Wiccans, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists? If not, then who gets to choose which religions may take part in our government?

I suspect that when people talk about there being no separation between church and state, they mean that there is no separation between their church and the state. Somehow they do not see that allowing only their beliefs in, means that all other citizens, regardless of their belief or lack thereof, do not have this same access. And if that isn't establishing a governmental religion, then what is?

So, the polls that support prayer in school don't answer the hard questions.  Why stop with schools - all governments federal, state, local should have prayers. Either all religions are included in this access or somebody will have to have the authority to choose whose prayers are included and whose are excluded. Would this authority be determined by majority - then Catholics would win. Or would it be put to a vote? Would the vote be national or statewide or local (then would it be city or county)? Answers to these questions would probably indicate whether one's support for separation or being against separation is a matter of one's faith - but whose faith wins?

Those Damned Poor People

Recent articles and letters to the editor to my hometown newspaper has convinced me that Muslims and gays can move over - the new demon is here.  The poor.  The newspaper did an article on people who have been unemployed for a long time, most through no fault of their own.  Businesses either laid them off, or closed altogether, leaving them to depend on the rest of us to help them through this crisis.

But, according to the letters to the editor, these poor people were disgustingly addicted to cigarettes - I mean how dare they smoke when they are receiving welfare and unemployment?  They were also overweight - everyone knows the poor need to be gaunt, ashen from lack of nourishment and skeletal from deprivation.  There was one letter writer who could not believe that the poor people profiled in the article had clean and neat homes.  Surely, he opined, the newspaper reporter helped clean the place up to shine a better light on these slovenly poor.

But, the worst, was that these poor people had cell phones.  A blatant luxury.  Cell phones are only for the rich and well to do.  Even though the phones were provided by social services for cases of emergency, ability to respond to employment opportunities and the need to stay in contact with friends and family, the letter writers were convinced that such extravagances in this day and age are not to be abided.  It's not like even elementary school children have cell phones these days, the very idea that the poor think they have a right to communicate is abhorrent.

One fellow suggested that the poor fill the ranks of the juror pools, since allowing his employees time off to serve on juries put a crimp in his business.  And everyone knows that serving on a jury is a sign of moral weakness, depravity and general lack of the ability to buy an HDTV. So, why not let these moral degenerates who have the nerve to be poor serve as fodder for the criminal justice system.

One thing all of the letter writers had in common was their profession of being true conservatives.  True conservatives understand that Christ never meant what He said about serving the poor, the sick, the prisoners, and the downtrodden.  Rather, He meant that the lives of those less fortunate should be made miserable.  For until they are wretched beyond belief, how can any decent soul enjoy his well deserved good life.

Conservatives know that Christ was all about the comfort of those who are well off, not some community outreach to those who don't work as hard as the rich.  For the rich work 100 times the rest of us.  They toil 86 hours a day, 435 days a week, 7,215 weeks a year - except for the times when they are out golfing because that's where the deals are done.  I can't wait to meet my Maker and say that I joined the proud ranks of the Tea Partiers, the true conservatives, the righteously religious by scorning the poor, shunning those less fortunate and yielding all things to those who are rich.  After all that was what the Sermon on the Mount was all about.  To quote Mel Brooks, "It's good to be the king."

Those Rich Public Workers

In my town, we have a blatantly ultra-right weekly called the Rhino Times - they even admit their bias so they do have more integrity than Fox News. They annually publish the salaries of public officials, including school teachers, administrators, and government workers of all kinds.  Then they get callers who are recorded and published in succeeding issues who are outraged that someone like the person who runs the county government makes $170,000 a year.  Their outrage is focused on the fact that these people make their large salaries from taxpayers' dollars.  Usually the complaint is, "I work very hard and only make $30,000, so why are these people so highly paid."

All of this griping, typical of conservatives, takes its leave from reality and soars into the right wing dogmata-sphere where up is down and right is wrong.  Number one, the taxpayers control how much money public employees make.  They elect the people who set the salaries for the public employees.  The public employees don't set the salaries - the elected officials do.  So, their salaries are subject to the public's votes.

Number two, the reason these people make more money than the complaining taxpayer is that they have the education, experience and expertise that the ordinary citizen doesn't have.  A quality dry wall hanger is certainly worth respect, but not worth $200,000 to run a government that employs 2,000 people.  If he or she were qualified to manage such a large enterprise, then they wouldn't be hanging dry wall.

Number three, the salaries the public employees draw is small when compared to private workers who have similar education, experience and expertise.  CEOs of even small companies make well in excess of $200,000.  And guess who pays their salaries - well, it's not unicorns.  The average taxpayer is also paying for the goods and services that allow CEOs to take home millions.  Yet, the average taxpayer has no say whatsoever in the level of compensation these CEOs receive.  Company boards, often staffed by people handpicked by the CEOs, set the levels of their compensation.  The average Joe doesn't get to vote on that.

So, who is ripping off the general public?  Is it the Superintendent of Schools who makes $184,000 - who can be fired by the duly elected city or county commission which is staffed by people directly elected by we the people? Or is it the head of GE, whose friends make up his board - and who return the favor by appointing him to their company's board so he can vote them extremely large salaries and perks - where multi-million dollar salaries are the norm no matter what the company's performance is?

Once again, the enemy is obvious as far as our economy is concerned - it's the school teachers who only want a good salary and good benefits.  It is definitely not the CEO who gets an obscene salary and benefits that would embarrass a Pharaoh.  No, the CEO is just embodying the beauty of capitalism as espoused by P. T. Barnum, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."  With one corollary, "And it's even easier if they watch Fox News where they believe that enabling the rich to get richer is in the average person's best interest, because the rich, unlike school teachers, give so much back."

Sarah Palin's Rolling Thunder Debut

I saw where Palin's "Please Keep Looking At Me" tour is going to start at the Rolling Thunder DC event. Nice of you guys to take a back seat to the Mama Grizzly.

Of course, if Obama had even dared to make a statement in support of vets, conservatives would have torn him a new one for using Nam vets for political purposes. But the former governor - actually given the length of her term it should be former gov - can exploit vets as she continues her "will she, won't she" presidential campaign or non-campaign, which should focus all of the press' attention on the issues the vets are all about. Or her.

Where is the outrage? Even if Romney or Gingrich had pulled a stunt like this the press would have been all over them for their callous attempt to use vets to further their political ambitions. But Palin is going to join the event - at the behest of Alaskan vets I must acknowledge - because her presence will certainly cause everyone to wonder why we haven't pressed our now allies in Hanoi about the MIAs. Or whether she will actually run - both being serious issues of concern to all vets.

Of course, her expert marksmanship - she only needed 5 shots to bring down a caribou who never even flinched as each bullet whistled by its head (either a very courageous ruminant or a hoofed mammal with a profound substance abuse problem) - and her ability to bash a fish's brains out could endear her to former special forces members. Because they all know what it's like to have their fathers lock and load their weapons for them while they plunk away at their targets with a 20% accuracy. And what marine cannot relate to her pain when the lamestream media actually reprints what she says verbatim because marines are all about victimhood.

My brother-in-law, who is not in the best of health thanks to his service in Nam, stretched himself very thin physically attending a portion of this rally on behalf of his "brothers." To see Palin try to grab the glory that is due him and all of the other men and women who put everything they had on the line in service to this country makes me furious. I never liked Palin before. But now I find her beyond despicable.

Seriously Random Thoughts

After reading a column condemning gays and gay marriage because the Bible clearly states God's opposition to them and their lifestyles, I remembered when I was young in the 1960s and the Bible believers of that era pointed out that the Holy Book clearly indicated that White men were superior to Black men and to all women. The Bible was very clear on this they would tell me. They never explained how the Bible, which had no White men in it (well, there were some Mediterraneans, but most were Semitic and nobody was Anglo-European Caucasian), could so readily come to this conclusion.

Of course their gay-hating successors also have not explained how Jesus, who never said anything about homosexuality, was quite clear about God's frowning on the accumulation of wealth, especially at the expense of the poor, the elderly and the physically infirm. Yet, these same Bible-believing conservatives act as if Christ had opposed the capital gains tax in the Sermon on the Mount, and had castigated anyone who dared help the poor if they didn't verify the indigent's absolute physical inability to get a job first.

Actually, these conservatives don't really look to Jesus for support of their positions. They are more Ten Commandments Christians - eye for an eye, etc. Although only 3 of the Commandments - which supposedly are the basis of our Constitution and laws - actually relate to actual laws (and these 3: don't kill, don't steal and don't lie were common to almost all early civilizations even ones that pre-dated the Israelites).

For me, the culmination of all of these distortions of the Scripture and the selective usage of a small number of verses to justify their hypocrisy and bigotry were what turned me off to organized religion. I have studied many different religious beliefs and it appears to me that the heart of all of them includes the following:

Be good to your fellow man

Help the unfortunate

Don't do things that will hurt your mental, physical and spiritual growth

The things that make the religions different are how they implement these core values, who gets to decide the rules for the implementation of these values and the ultimate decision of who actually receives the compassion, assistance and support that are implicit in these values.

That is why I can never believe that we are one nation under God. We have too many differing versions of just who God is. I know the Southern Baptist God is not at all like the Amish God. The liberal Catholic God is vastly different from the conservative Catholic God. And the fact that there are several thousand different religious denominations in this country fully demonstrates that there is no one God we all consider ourselves under.

This also struck me as I read about Sarah Palin's latest scheme to ride around the country and learn about what built this nation and get fired up about it. She wants to see firsthand our "diverse cultures" in this "one nation under God," as if this oxymoronic statement neatly encapsulates all of the "real Americans" into her vision for this country. Like Newt's protestations against the transformation of this country into "a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American," you have to wonder if conservatives are really this stupid or, like the AT&T commercial, they want you to understand that it is easier if you just don't think about what they are saying. Simply accept the rightness of their position or you will be labeled a bleeding heart, community organizing, socialistic, elitist, liberal who wants to destroy this country by not turning it over to the ultra rich and the corporate juggernauts. For these are truly God's chosen people - and preferred money changers.

Why Aren't The Tea Parties Upset About Republicans Gutting the CFPB

I am curious as to why the Tea Party members aren't upset about Republicans' efforts to undermine the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The Bureau is a watchdog to ensure that banks and investment firms don't repeat the mistakes/unethical/criminal conduct they made in the recent financial meltdown. 

The regulations will ensure that banks have sufficient assets to weather bad loans, less incentive to make these toxic loans and bundle them into even worse investments for others. The regulations will also prevent Goldman Sachs and others from lying to their customers about the viability of their investments while betting against the investments they advised them to make and thereby making a fortune off their customers' losses.

Republicans in the House passed legislation that would enable any regulations to be easily repealed, and to replace a director of the bureau with a 5-member commission to ensure that each regulation is diluted by committee action. They say that they passed this stuff to ensure that they have a watchdog watching the watchdog, but it is clear what they want to do is let the banks continue their predatory practices that brought the global financial market to its knees.

They are being aided by almost $19 million in contributions from the banks and the US Chamber of Commerce (which has the distinction of having very few actual corporate members because of its incredibly far right wing politics).

Given the Tea Partiers hatred for financial chicanery, why aren't they demanding that the Repubs support the CFPB and provide average Americans with protection from the greed of these institutions? Some blame the poor, because clearly the poor have such great leverage that they were able to force banks to make these upside down loans. Who knew that banks would quail before the mighty poor and make loans they knew were bound to fail. It's not like they have the power to deny a loan to someone not qualified. 

You'd think that for the 6 years when Repubs had control of the House, the Senate and the Presidency, that they would have put in place regulations to allow banks to fight back against the domination of our financial sector by the poor. I guess they were too distracted by eliminating our Constitutional rights to fight terrorism. Or perhaps they were distracted by the huge campaign contributions the financial institutions made to allow them to not only make these toxic loans, but also to package them for sale to others who then sold them to others, etc. until the bubble burst and we taxpayers had to bail out their sorry asses.

Wasn't that why the Tea Parties were formed to fight against the things that caused this huge bailout? Maybe they are being distracted by gay marriage, since one Tea Party linked this issue to our economic woes. So, now it's the gays who are the problem - and probably public school teachers. But never the banks. So that's why they don't need to be regulated. I can only guess because the silence from the Tea Parties on this issue is deafening.

Do Not Piss Off An Ant

Yesterday, as I was preparing to move some Earthboxes (fantastic little portable garden beds) next to our house, I paused to rip out some weeds growing up through our driveway. After one huge clump, I noticed a horde of ants erupting from the now cleared crack and I was pointing this out to my wife, when I felt a series of sharp stings. Pulling up my pant leg, I saw a number of the little critters on my legs, and my shoes were also covered with ants.

Running to the back of my house, I disrobed as quickly as possible and raced to the shower. As I scrubbed away the dozens and dozens of ants on my legs, arms and even my naughty bits, I could feel each and every vengeful bite these little scutters exacted on my flesh. Even after I washed them off me and got out to towel off, one last ant clung to my arm and instead of fleeing for his life, he bit down giving his all for revenge against the monstrous being who wrecked his nest.

My wife poured vinegar over the sidewalk crack and we watched in amazement as the ants fled, but with a purpose. Many carried items that were obviously going to be useful in their new nest, while others formed lines to create an orderly evacuation from what was their version of Japan's recent earthquake and tsunami disasters.

Today, when I took my shower and noted the little red marks all over me, I was struck with admiration for these creatures. They suffered a humongous - almost Biblical - catastrophe, yet they reacted with purpose and determination. Some gave their lives to protect the nest and attack the source of their tragedy - moi - while the rest proceeded to leave carrying with them the essentials for their new home. Perhaps some were frozen in horror like many of us in times of dire circumstances, but most of these tiny creatures did what needed to be done.

Indeed, we have more in common with the creatures we have dominion over - and that dominion is as shaky as a host of ant bites - then we have differences. So, as I scratch the remnants of the tiny scars of their righteous vengeance, I say, "Well done brave critters and I am sorry I rained destruction on you. I will be more careful from here on."