Checking In

I have been a little scarce on the old blog lately.  I've got reasons, the biggest of which is dealing with the passing of a good friend.  I would write something about that, but I have to get through the real-life job of honoring him on Saturday.  The other thing that keeps me from ranting and raving on here is that I'm feeling a little like a broken record, there's just so much about current events that is wrong and crooked that my prophet-o-meter is on freaking overload.  I wish I had Elisha's ability to summon some she-bears to devour certain people, except I think I would make a better choice than some random smarty-pants kids.
I just can't keep up with the outrage, so I'm going to try to talk about an idea that has popped up in a couple of different outrages and lean in to something constructive.  Here's the argument that I have heard in the rationale for both the repeal of environmental regulations (including the structural decimation of the EPA) as well as in the recent legislation regarding internet privacy regulations (the one where the government allows Verizon to sell your internet data to the highest bidder).  I'm not going to go into the negative aspects of either of these moves, because I think you probably know where I stand on that.  I'm going to address what I consider to be the only almost-rational defense of these maneuvers.  In a debate, if you can discredit or disprove the opponent's weakest argument, you might win points, if you can discredit their strongest argument, well you win.
Here's the strongest argument: excessive regulations (either environmental, corporate or otherwise) hold back growth and innovation by making undue demands of those who would drive new ventures or come up with new ideas.  Doctor Frankenstein felt this way about the silly superstitions and fears of the local villagers that were standing in the way of his great scientific achievement.  I probably don't need to remind you that the monster was actually the least monstrous character in Frankenstein. The logic behind de-regulation is that it allows good things to happen.  The shadow argument that often gets touted is that regulations are usually only marginally successful at preventing malfeasance anyway. So in total, the argument goes, regulations are basically just things that hold back the good, growing, innovative type things and really don't prevent the bad, destructive, immoral type things.
This is sometimes true, but it is far from universal.  If you want to see the proof of concept that the EPA has done some good, look at a picture of Cleveland, Pittsburgh or Detroit from the early 1970s. Since I lived in Pittsburgh, here's the burg in 1970:

And here is now:

Now, there are certain differences in camera quality and maybe weather and time of day, but you get the idea. Clean air and water have transformed Pittsburgh from the punchline of jokes about ash and smog into a city that consistently ranks in the top five places to live in the country.  I may be a bit biased but it is a really nice town that no longer misses the steel mills and dirty industry that used to be its only way of life.
Do environmental regulations cut down on the demand for coal?  Absolutely.  Do they make it harder for companies to extract natural gas and other resources? Yes. Do they limit the kinds of cars that can be produced and sold? Yep.  Are any of those things really a net minus if you factor in the external costs of whatever expansion might come from peeling back some rules? Not enough to make it worth breathing toxic fumes on top of Mount Washington.
Now let's consider the interweb thing, because this is some high level villainy.  Verizon and Comcast thought it was just so not fair that they, as internet service providers, were not allowed to get in on the same sweet ad-traffic lucre as Google and Yahoo all because of the fact that internet access is rapidly becoming sort of like roads and phone lines, you know, infrastructure.  The interweb has become, for better and worse, a seriously important part of our lives.  It is honestly no longer a luxury.  The comptroller of Maryland, the place that collects our state taxes, just sent us a nice letter the other day that requested that we no longer burden them by sending crude paper checks to pay our quarterly state taxes, and if we would be so kind, please pay online.  I'm totally fine with that (at least as fine as I can be with paying taxes) because I'm all up in this internet thing.  But some people get hives if you tell them to email something.  We are rapidly approaching a point where internet access is going to be like electricity, pretty darn necessary to all but those people who keep getting their own shows on the Discovery Channel.
The argument here goes that we are just strangling out poor little Verizon and Comcast by not letting them sell advertisers our information.  If we would just take off their infrastructure owning handcuffs, they would totally be able to make things cheaper for everyone and help the poor and save the spotted owls and bring back unicorns and every good thing would happen to everyone everywhere.
Yeah cause that's how letting corporations like Enron, Goldman Sachs, Johns-Manville and that lot do whatever they want usually plays out.  I just hope having our privacy violated doesn't turn out to cause some kind of cancer.

You Knew I Was a Snake

When someone shows you who they really are,

Believe them the first time.

-Maya Angelou

There's a story that has been told in different forms, but the one that sticks in my head is actually from the Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers, a movie where two mass murderers become international celebrities and are strangely worshiped by a culture gone mad.  In the 1990's Natural Born Killers qualified as hyperbole, satire, and maybe a little bit of a prophetic warning.  In my opinion the prophetic quality of that picture has grown rather more real of late. There is a scene where Mickey and Mallory Knox, on the run from the law, accept the hospitality of an old Native American man out in the desert.  They are in the grip of psychosis and psychoactive drugs and the old man seems to know that they are not right in many ways, but he offers hospitality anyway.

He tells them this story (edited for clarity and language): there was an old woman who found a snake in a woodpile, nearly frozen to death.  She took the snake into her hut and warmed it up by the fire.  She took care of it until it was back and functioning, when of course it bit her on the cheek.  She was shocked and asked the snake, "why did you bite me? I took care of you, I saved you." To which the snake replied, "Woman, you knew I was a snake."

Of course Mickey proceeds to lose it and kills the old man.  The story and the scene are one and the same. I was reminded of that this morning when I read the account of one of our congress people describing how he had been massaged and placated by Trump in order to get some traction on the Healthcare agenda.  I have heard this before, Trump is rather skillful and charming in these one on one meetings, when he is in salesperson/conman mode.  I would have hoped that someone with a background in politics (read not unfamiliar with obsequious and snake-like manipulation) would be able to see through that, but apparently our desire to be duped by things we wish were true is fairly strong.

For me, the issue of character, even more than policy, is pretty important in a chief executive.  I actually disagreed with a good number of Barack Obama's policy moves, but I came to respect his character and his maturity.  Looking back, as much as I disagreed with G.W. Bush, I didn't really feel like he was a man of low character.  I may have engaged in allowing myself to see him as a clown or a bit of dim bulb, but when I look at how he handled the aftermath of 9-11 and generally how he has conducted himself in the years since his presidency ended, I have a hard time doubting that he is a generally good human being.

I could not bring myself to vote for Bill Clinton in either of the elections he won.  I was not particularly well versed in politics during those years, but I could tell he was a sleaze, and that was pretty much enough.  As it turns out, when I look at his track record of neo-liberalist crap, his policies weren't exactly the progressive gold standard either (Hillary would not have been much better). Bill Clinton was not a demonstrably better Executive than either Bush and certainly not better than Obama, but he was lucky and slick and he had the ability to commandeer a room with his personal charisma.

Oddly enough, I know a few people who voted for Trump primarily because of their disdain for the Clinton machine.  Of the Presidents that I can remember, those two are actually the closest in style and substance.  They both ran as sorts of outsiders, Clinton harnessed the spirit of the early 90's playing the sax on Arsenio Hall and generally being not quite so stodgy as Bush the elder. He captured the Baby Boomer's imagination, he was the embodiment of the 1960's cultural revolution taking over from the WWII generation, and brought some of their most glaring faults (self absorption, hedonism and vanity) with him. For Clinton it was "all about the economy stupid," and he was lucky that the economy was good. Trump has capitalized on a darker sort of populism, rooted in anger, frustration, prejudice, and the feelings of marginalization experienced by "forgotten men and women."

He continues simultaneously to pander to that populist base, while jetting off to Mar-a-Lago every weekend and golfing with all the establishment power brokers and the elite corporate types.  He has no problem with the apparent contradiction in this sort of thing, because he is used to selling and hustling, he has done it his entire life, it is who he is.  One of the reasons why you see such different versions of Trump everywhere is not because he is schizophrenic, it is because he is the ultimate utilitarian and an inveterate salesman.  He can lie convincingly because in that moment he actually believes what he is saying: "Obama wiretapped Trump Tower."  He can turn about and flip flop when it becomes necessary, without ever apologizing or back pedaling.  He can play the serious man, he can play the lecherous power monger, he can play the concerned citizen, he can play the bombastic outsider, he can play all sorts of roles and do it well enough that many people are taken in by the act.

That is who he is, that is who he has been, and that is who he will be.  I'm not saying that any of this, troubling though it may be, disqualifies him from being President, but it is a word of warning to those who are putting their faith and trust in him: he will bite you eventually.

Truth and Treasure

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

-Matthew 6: 21

Government does not do many things particularly well.  It is one aspect of conservative dogma that I find rather hard to get around, even as I find myself heartbroken by the way that unhindered free markets essentially chew up the poor and disadvantaged and escalate the divide between rich and poor.  It doesn't take much experience with bureaucracy to make you want to run screaming from the room whenever someone suggests that we "trust the government."

I get it, expecting the federal government to solve our problems for us is probably the worst kind of stupid.  However, I also know that we are a democracy, and as such our government reflects our values.  For better or worse, we get a leadership that somehow reflects our values as a nation.  I don't know about you, but that gives me a little nausea. 

My day job is this peculiar thing called being a Pastor, that means that I have occasion to deal with budgets of organizations.  As much as I dislike numbers and math and stuff, budgets are not my favorite thing, but I have learned to recognize that budgets do something that has nothing to do with the bottom line: they reflect values.  They do not reflect the values you wish you had, they reflect the values you actually have, just like Jesus said they would.  Churches are tricky this way, because they like to talk about mission, but most of the time the bulk of their cash flow goes to keeping the lights on. I'm not saying that is a bad thing either, without a building, electricity, heat, and probably maybe a person to get up and talk about stuff every once and a while, most churches wouldn't really have much of a life.  But it is important to frame the expenses of running the show with a purpose; why do we bother?

In the case of Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church, we are on the last leg of a mortgage that has shelled out over a million dollars over the past thirty years to build a rather nice, comfortable building.  Our mortgage is our biggest expense, but our building is also probably our biggest tool for mission.  We host a gaggle of 12 step programs that reach people in the community that would probably not consider entering a Presbyterian Church otherwise.  As of now, that has not led to a swell in our membership roles, but it is, most certainly, part of our mission.

We could very easily lose sight of that and get depressed about the fact that we just can't dish out cash to every good cause that comes along the pike.  We might, and occasionally people do, question whether or not we are really making the most of our dollars and cents.  Some churches have decided to ditch the big, expensive buildings and follow another model of ministry.  I'm not judging the merits or faithfulness of those decisions, this stuff is not a one size fits all sort of proposition.

I'm also involved a little with budgets for other sorts of groups, groups without as much infrastructure to support, where making vision and dollar signs get into line is a bit less complicated, even if it is not altogether without drama. I do know though that in all cases dollars line up with sense if you have the proper vision to see it.

Which is why the proposed Trump budget is giving me a gut hurt today.  I know, it's not the law of the land, and I know, it's going to go through a tedious process in congress and be changed and wrangled and even then it might not pass.  Understood, capitulated, accepted.  What bothers me is what it says about the state of our nation.  In the broadest sense, this budget proposal increases two things: military spending and homeland security, which are both related, but it takes a wrecking ball to a lot of other areas of the government. 

First, about that increase in military spending: we already spend as much on our military as the next six or seven nations combined.  Our armed forces are already the best in the world, not the "depleted" sorry lot I heard the tyrannical tangerine talk about on the campaign trail. Just in case you're unclear, I'm guessing that most of the increase in spending is not going to go to make sure that the actual soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are going to get paid more (which I would support).  Most of it would go into the coffers of the corporations of the military industrial complex, which quite frankly is doing pretty well without more help.

But I digress, what is more alarming is what gets the ax in the Trump budget.  Biggest loser: the EPA, you know the agency that is responsible for helping to keep all those noble corporations from despoiling the earth in their quest for profit.  Maybe I have read the Lorax one too many times, but I do not think we are better off leaving clean air, water, and soil in the hands of oil companies.  Also on the chopping block: the department of agriculture, housing and urban development, and many other "superfluous, inefficient" programs that actually make a difference in the lives of poor and working class people.  Of course the National Endowment for the Arts is also under the gun, because who needs art when you already have a gold toilet and 15 foot self portrait.  But the NEA has been a favorite scapegoat for right wing budget hawks for years, of course it's tiny little slice of the pie has got to go.

The big picture says a lot about our values.  And those values do not make me proud of us right now.

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Garden

There are moments when Libertarians and Neo-liberal small government scolds make sense.  The health care debate is not one of those times.  Paul Ryan went on the Sunday politi-vision shows and framed the GOP effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with the American Health Care Act this way: "People are going to do what they want to do with their lives, because we believe in individual freedom in this country."
Great, wonderful idea, in the best of all possible worlds, where everyone in the country actually acts like responsible grown ups and procures health care coverage without a mandate. Despite the fact that, even with a mandate and penalties, something on the order of 10 million people have chosen not to do so, and many of the people who did gain coverage under the ACA were either added through Medicaid or highly subsidized plans with a cost sharing structure enforced across the board.  Not to mention the fact that many people who actually did purchase plans through the exchanges did so grudgingly.  How do they think this is going to work out? Are they so naive as to think that everyone is going to voluntarily spend money on health insurance because it is the responsible thing to do?
How does it work out if you get hit by an uninsured driver? And no, that is not a false equivalence, large numbers of uninsured people, who could be injured or get sick at any moment are a hazard to the rest of us. And in a very important way, it's even worse than the car insurance situation because while we can revoke the privilege of driving from someone who refuses to carry car insurance, the ethical premise of refusing an uninsured person access to medical care is a bit more serious.
Look, I would like it if we lived in a world where the government didn't need to tell us what we needed to do all the time.  Bureaucracy is annoying, nobody likes the DMV, but I am glad that people need licenses and insurance to drive cars and trucks.
I have spent more than my fair share of time around hospitals and sick people, and I hear about what things cost people.  People, even insured people, get bills that threaten to break them financially.  People rarely think about that when they're healthy and contemplating shelling out thousands of dollars a year for insurance. They should, but they do not.
Despite the fact that we have come a long way from telling stories about gardens, serpents and forbidden fruit, sin continues to be a major problem for humanity.  As long as that is the case, laws and regulations will be necessary; there are some things that people should not be allowed to choose.
If there is more to come to this plan, if they have a goal of making healthcare actually affordable without the need for insurance, I say more power to them.  I somehow doubt that is the case.  There is too much money and too much power involved in the massive complex of insurance companies, hospitals and health care providers to allow actual healthcare reform to take place without imposing some sort of socialized system in place that forcibly shoves out the profiteering that runs the show now.  I don't see that happening on the GOP's watch.
I cannot allow myself the luxury of thinking that Ryan and company are stupid, I think they have to know that the consequences of what they are doing are going to be dire, a growing number of their own gang actually seem to be getting nervous about that reality.
I don't think they ought to trust their President to help them out very much if this goes sideways. For all his bluster, the Donald is not particularly keen on actually doing much other than tweeting about unfair people are being towards him.  He will go along with their plan, maybe, but he's not going to own it or invest in it the way Obama did in the ACA.  The AHCA is probably not going to be called Trumpcare if it gets passed through. Here is what I see in Donald J.Trump: he will support what sells, and he will hedge his liability the same way he did in real estate deals, if this thing collapses he will skate away unscathed, because that's what he does. He won't put his brand on it until it succeeds, on the off chance that it does, he will take credit, but never the blame, it's just who he is.
I guess this seems like kind of a cautionary message to Ryan and the GOP, not that they will be reading my stupid little blog. They need to see the serpent for what it is or else we're all going to pay the price. Life and death are on the line here, human sin never goes away, you are free to hang yourself anytime, and there is no shortage of rope up on Capitol Hill.

Ashes to Ashes

It's Ash Wednesday.
For a long time Protestants sort of slumped into Lent without marking this day much at all.  The rituals of Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras, and the imposition of ashes on the forehead on the first Wednesday of Lent seemed a bit too Roman Catholic.  Maybe they still do to some, maybe they actually are, but maybe after 500 years, and all the fussing and fighting, we need to admit that perhaps the papists weren't wrong about everything.
First thing in the morning on Ash Wednesday, I take last year's dried palms that I have stashed in a cabinet in my office, and I stuff them into a porcelain pot and take them out to the back patio of the church and I torch them (see above).  I sift and prepare a little pot of ashes ready to smudge a cross on the foreheads of the small band of folks who will come to our Ash Wednesday service.  And it is a small band, because for a lot of people, this just isn't a part of what they do.
Today, my pastor type friends are posting explanations, poems and art, reflections about the ashes, and I enjoy that because to me it seems we are recovering something from the past.  Reformers and iconoclasts are prone to the error of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We had good theological and biblical reasons for this.  Jesus said, "Beware of practicing your piety before others," and, "When you fast put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret." (Matthew 6) Jesus understandably had a bone to pick with the religious hypocrites, as the reformers did with the corruption and "popish nonsense" of the church in Rome.
The problem is that people need rituals and disciplines to put their faith into actual practice. Protestant churches have suffered for their decision to swim up that particular stream instead of going with the flow.  Our rituals, un-hitched from the deep traditions of history, become nothing but peculiarities and personal preference.
In a culture that denies death so strenuously and idolizes vigor and youth so egregiously, remembering that you are dust and to dust you shall return, is a prophetic and counter-cultural practice. Ash Wednesday reminds me of the importance of living, not just the inevitability of dying.  Many have observed that our mortality is an integral piece of what we call beauty.  Flowers and sunsets are fleeting things, gone in minutes or days, but they are some of our best paradigms of beauty.  Because we have a finite number of days to walk upon the earth, we are under the imperative to live and love with the time we are given.  I don't know about you, but if I knew I had endless tomorrows to walk in the woods or play with my kids, I probably would just roll over and go back to sleep.  If I could be sure that I would have thousands of years to make my voice heard, I would probably have little inclination to write these blogs, sing songs or preach sermons.
My hope and faith tell me that I will have eternity in union with God, but the ashes tell me that my time to live upon the mortal coil is precious and not to be wasted.
Dust is what is left when life has given up it's heat and light.
Remember that you are dust, and burn bright.