Mark Maynard | 2005 | June

social security–the real connections

By Mark | June 18, 2005

I just got an email from a fellow named Lee Arnold who’s put together an ambitious little on-line animation explaining what’s really going on with the president’s tax cuts and proposed changes to social security. Considering the complicated nature of the issue, it seems to do a damned good job. As I’m not an expert is this field, I don’t know for certain that all the information presented is absolutely, 100% correct, but, based on what little I know, it seems to be pretty accurate… If you notice anything that doesn’t seem right, though, let me know and I’ll run it by Lee and get an explanation.

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feasting on the flesh of the dead in the land of family values

By Mark | June 18, 2005

Jeb Bush got a lot of political mileage out of Terri Schiavo when she was alive, so it’s not surprising that he’d try to milk things a little while longer now, in the wake of her death. This morning, the day after autopsy reports were released showing that he and other Republican politicians were dead wrong when they’d suggested that her case was anything but completely hopeless, Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced that he’d just asked prosecutors to look into Terri Schiavo’s husband, Michael, and his role in the collapse fifteen years previously that had thrust her into a persistent vegetative state, and turned her into a super-hero of the Dominionists.

Bush, who clearly hopes to follow his brother’s lead and ride into the presidency on a wave of seething fundamentalist fervor, suggested in his press conference that Michael Schiavo had perhaps purposely delayed calling paramedics that could have prevented her from developing brain damage. (Jeb’s evidence of wrongdoing is merely the existence of one statement made by Michael in the 15-year period since Terri’s collapse which points to a discrepancy as to when 911 was called. In one interview, Michael apparently said that he found his wife not breathing at 4:30. He has in the past said, however, and 911 logs confirm, that he called for help at 5:40. So, it would seem, at least to me, as though he slipped on one occasion and said 4:30 instead of 5:30. That’s not what Jeb thinks though. Jeb thinks that it’s reason to suspect foul play. Jeb thinks that Michael sat there with a wife who wasn’t breathing for over an hour, just waiting for her to die. (It’s pretty incredible that a person could live for 70 minutes without breathing, isn’t it?) Clearly Jeb doesn’t really believe this, and clearly it doesn’t matter to him that he’s putting this woman’s husband through even more hell. The only thing that matters is political expedience, building up the evangelical political capital necessary to make a run for President.

In going after Mr. Schiavo in this manner, Bush is hoping to win back some of the support that was lost during the court fight over Terri’s right to die. (As you’ll recall, religious extremists were begging Jeb at the time, with tears in their eyes, to send in the Florida National Guard to reinstate her feeding tube, in spite of the overwhelming medical evidence, and the court order upholding her right to die. For all his rhetoric, he did nothing… except blame the liberal activist judges involved (most of whom were in actuality conservative).) So, now he’s decided to gain back some ground and prove he’s still vehemently pro-life to the point of lunacy by going after the innocent husband of this of this poor woman. The bottom line is that it’s a ridiculous play to further ingratiate himself to the extremist “culture of life” lunatics of the world, and my hope is that it backfires on him. (On the subject of perverse plans that backfire spectatularly, see this story about a fellow who, after killing his wife a few days ago, choked to death while eating her face.) If God is listening, I demand a highly ironic ending to this story. (link via Kathleen’s site)

(note: That analogy between Bush and the crazy fellow that ate his wife’s face made a lot more sense to me at 1:00 AM last night as I sat here staring glassy-eyed into the monitor.)

Posted in Politics | 4 Comments

if we can’t save the world, maybe we can at least save katie

By Mark | June 16, 2005

I’m going upstairs to read an article from the May issue of Harper’s entitled, “Soldiers of Christ II: Feeling the hate with the National Religious Broadcasters“. Here’s a clip:

What the disparate sects of this movement, known as Dominionism, share is an obsession with political power. A decades-long refusal to engage in politics at all following the Scopes trial has been replaced by a call for Christian “dominion” over the nation and, eventually, over the earth itself. Dominionists preach that Jesus has called them to build the kingdom of God in the here and now, whereas previously it was thought that we would have to wait for it. America becomes, in this militant biblicism, an agent of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America’s Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan. Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system, Creationism and “Christian values” form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. Aside from its proselytizing mandate, the federal government will be reduced to the protection of property rights and “homeland” security.[1] Some Dominionists (not all of whom accept the label, at least not publicly) would further require all citizens to pay “tithes” to church organizations empowered by the government to run our social-welfare agencies, and a number of influential figures advocate the death penalty for a host of “moral crimes,” including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft. The only legitimate voices in this state will be Christian. All others will be silenced…

I can’t help but recall the words of my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. James Luther Adams, who told us that when we were his age, and he was then close to eighty, we would all be fighting the “Christian fascists.”

He gave us that warning twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other prominent evangelists began speaking of a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all major American institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government, so as to transform the United States into a global Christian empire. At the time, it was hard to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously. But fascism, Adams warned, would not return wearing swastikas and brown shirts. Its ideological inheritors would cloak themselves in the language of the Bible; they would come carrying crosses and chanting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Adams had watched American intellectuals and industrialists flirt with fascism in the 1930s. Mussolini’s “Corporatism,” which created an unchecked industrial and business aristocracy, had appealed to many at the time as an effective counterweight to the New Deal. In 1934, Fortune magazine lavished praise on the Italian dictator for his defanging of labor unions and his empowerment of industrialists at the expense of workers. Then as now, Adams said, too many liberals failed to understand the power and allure of evil, and when the radical Christians came, these people would undoubtedly play by the old, polite rules of democracy long after those in power had begun to dismantle the democratic state. Adams had watched German academics fall silent or conform. He knew how desperately people want to believe the comfortable lies told by totalitarian movements, how easily those lies lull moderates into passivity.

Adams told us to watch closely the Christian right’s persecution of homosexuals and lesbians. Hitler, he reminded us, promised to restore moral values not long after he took power in 1933, then imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations and publications. Then came raids on the places where homosexuals gathered, culminating on May 6, 1933, with the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. Twelve thousand volumes from the institute’s library were tossed into a public bonfire. Homosexuals and lesbians, Adams said, would be the first “deviants” singled out by the Christian right. We would be the next.

Fuck.

(Note: For those of you up for a fight against religious fanatics, but perhaps a bit too intimidated by the likes of the blood-thirsty Dominionists, you might want to check out the anti-Scientology Free Katie movement. (link by way of Metafilter))

Posted in Church and State | 20 Comments

hijacking the media

By Mark | June 16, 2005

Afraid of losing its government funding, which accounts for about 15% of its operating budget, PBS is making a move away from the political center and toward the right. To put it in perspective, here’s a clip from a column by Molly Ivins entitled, “Bush political operative says he’ll erase bias at PBS… by inserting bias“:

I have listened patiently to years of right-wing bull about liberal bias in the media, but let us be perfectly clear about what is happening at PBS. Big Bird is not in favor of affirmative action. Bert and Ernie are not gay. Miss Piggy is not a feminist. “The Three Tenors,” “Antiques Roadshow,” “Masterpiece Theater,” “Wall Street Week” and nature programs do not have a political agenda. “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” is biased in favor of boring, old, white guys who appear on painfully well-balanced panels. “Washington Week in Review” is a showcase for “Inside the Beltway,” conventional wisdom, power-parroting, political-geekhead, Establishment journalism — there is nothing liberal about it.

But there is a plot to politicize public broadcasting. It is plain as a pikestaff, and it is coming from the Right. It is obvious, undeniable and happening right now. The Bush administration is introducing a political agenda to public broadcasting. They are using the lame pretext that PBS is somehow liberal to justify it into a propaganda organ for the government. That is precisely what the board of CPB was set up to prevent 40 years ago; it is there to be a firewall between public broadcasting and political pressure. Ken Tomlinson (the Bush-appointed chairman of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) is a disgrace to the purpose of that board, he has a political agenda and is engaging in a raw display of ideological bullying. The right-wingers in the House of Representatives are backing his power play with a threat to cut off funding for PBS entirely.

She’s absolutely right. This isn’t about moving PBS to the center, this is about moving PBS to the partisan right where it can reinforce and legitimize the messages being delivered by the likes of FOX News. Make no mistake about it… (note: It’s probably worth noting that most Americans, when polled, claim to see no bias in PBS programming.)

Posted in Media | 11 Comments

john conyers applies the pressure

By Mark | June 16, 2005

The Congressional Republicans didn’t make it easy for John Conyers (D-Michigan) to hold his hearings on the Downing Street Memo today, but they took place just the same. Here’s a clip with a bit of the background from the statement posted on Conyers’ site prior to the event:

For those commenters who were concerned (or hoping) that there would be a media blackout of the forum, that will not be the case. I have every major network, other than Fox, bringing cameras to the hearing. Nightline is taping the event, which I think represents a welcome development from a well respected investigative program. In addition, C-Span 3 and Radio Pacifica are carrying it live…

There has been some confusion about where the event will be held. As some of you may be aware, the Republican majority on the Judiciary Committee will not allow me to use Committee space, as I have in the past, for this. As a result, I had to consider some other locations, all with pros and cons. In the end, I decided it was best to hold the hearing in the one official room that was available, a very small room in the basement of the Capitol (HC-9). I want the location to be one that is nonpartisan and one where any Republican member interested in attending can do so…

So, they stuck him in the basement, in a room that could only fit about 20 people (from what I’ve heard), but it took place anyway. And, what’s more, when he was done with the hearing, Conyers stayed true to his word and hand-delivered a petition signed by 105 Congressmen and women, and well over half a million Americans, to the White House, demanding an explanation of the Downing Street Memo… Now, I guess we just have to wait and see what kind of treatment it gets in the corporate press, which, until now, has been reluctant to give the story even the briefest of mentions. (note: It might not be a bad idea to forward these links to your local paper.)

If the Downing Street Memo does make it into tomorrow morning’s papers, it will be primarily due to the efforts of John Conyers. Regardless of how well it’s covered, however, he should be commended for his efforts. He’s kept on the administration when few have had the courage, and, in my opinion, one day there should be a statue erected in his honor… If I might be so bold as to make a suggestion – I’d put it right outside the White House fence, in the exact location where he was stopped .