“Saving Capitalism” by Robert Reich

I almost skipped this book after reading Reich’s resume (Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton) and reading the front flap of the book.  I thought this would be a left wing diatribe about taxing the rich to redistribute wealth to the Occupy Wall Street millennials.  I was wrong.  This book is a very lucid thesis of why the economy (and thus politics) has been corrupted by big business and Wall Street.  Reich discusses the CEO pay gap, Wall Street bonuses and the declining power of the middle class..  According to Reich the rules began changing about 30 years ago to concentrate wealth and power at the top.  Reich doesn’t exonerate the Republicans but says the Democrats also are at fault.  He faults Bill Clinton’s NAFTA treaty (Reich says he was against it but did not make those objections public), Clinton’s establishment of the World Trade Organization and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act that led to the risky investments that created banks too big to fail. Obama “enacted a broad based health care law that enriched insurance and pharmaceutical companies” and oversaw the stock market recovery that saw corporate profits soar to the highest portion of the national economy since 1929 and CEO pay rise at a skyrocketing rate.

Reich explains how this concentration of wealth has corrupted the political process through the buying of votes with huge campaign contributions and the golden parachute of politicians becoming lobbyists when they retire. Citizens United should be overturned.  At the first Democratic debate Hillary Clinton all but said she is in the pocket of Wall Street.  Reich writes “Dozens of major GOP donors, Wall Street Republicans, and corporate lobbyists have told the Washington journal Politico that if the Republican Party did not put forward a candidate supportive of big business and Wall Street…they would support Hillary Clinton.”

Reich’s solution to this mess is to change the rules so that the bottom 90% of Americans can get a chance to be a countervailing force to corporate and Wall Street greed.  He writes “Instead of directly taxing the current income or wealth of a few and transferring it to the many, a more sensible approach is to more widely share future wealth.”

Anyone interested in how the political system and the economy got so screwed up should read this book.  Reich does a lot better job than I at explaining this….I gotta go.

Just Mercy

I’ve written about capital punishment in my blog…I am astonished and dismayed that the United States still allows it as a states rights issue. In “Just Mercy”, a book about one man’s fight for justice vis-a-vis capital punishment, the author writes in his epilogue “…the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment is, Do we deserve to kill?”

When Rosa Parks asked the author what he does he replied “Well, I have a law project called the Equal Justice Institute, and we’re trying to help people on death row. We’re trying to stop the death penalty, actually. We’re trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who’ve been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice. We’re trying to help the poor and do something about indigent defense and the fact that people don’t get the legal help they need. We’re trying to help people who are mentally ill. We’re trying to stop them from putting children in adult prisons….”

Rosa replied ‘Ooooh, honey, all that’s going to make you tired, tired, tired…That’s why you’ve got to be brave, brave, brave.”

Read this book, the library has it. And get involved.

Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us by Preston Sprinkle

A couple of years ago I met Preston Sprinkle at the Audiofeeed festival and have read his previous book, “Fight:  A Christian Case for Non-Violence”.  When I got a chance to pick up his new book, “Charis” I did just because I thought his non-violence book was pretty good.

“Charis” is a book about the gift of God’s grace.  As the author himself says, do we really need another book on grace? The quick answer, after reading this book, is yes.  Sprinkle opens the book by saying that God gave the gift of grace to a cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer.  Bam! he had me right there. (Previously in this blog I wrote about a song by a band called Roomful of Walters called “Jeffrey Dahmer Went to Heaven.)  In this book Sprinkle does a study of grace in the Old Testament, writing in an earthy style that is very compelling.

This year I have taken an interest in the fight against human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of girls.  Sprinkle writes about God’s grace being extended to prostitutes that I would  like to quote here as I think it is extremely relevant to a victim of human trafficking:

The Bible certainly doesn’t approve of sexual immorality or prostitution, but in line with the dictum that God loves the sinner and hates the sin, God finds great pleasure in extending grace to sexually immoral people.

There’s just something about prostitution that makes it a powerful backdrop for grace.  Many streams of sin, pain, loneliness, and guilt collide when a woman rents out her body for sex with a man she’ll never see again.  Or maybe she will.  Prostitution is the epitome of depravity and the pinnacle of pain.

There is hope and healing and grace…no matter how dire the past.  That is the message of this book.

In another chapter Sprinkle talks about God being tattooed.  Like the author I would like to get tattooed but my wife won’t let me.  Sprinkle’s source for this assertion is Isaiah 49:16:  Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

I gotta go…read the book.

 

 

All Clintoned Out

I don’t think Hilary will be running for president in 2016…and this guy states my reasoning much better that I….http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/all-clintoned-out/?singlepage=true

 

I gotta go….

He coulda been Prez

This is pretty good. Read the whole thing.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2014/06/16/david-gregory-grills-mitt-romney-if-hes-just-become-president

Who said there are no real journalists left?  They just aren’t on any of the old networks…I gotta go…

Mitt was right…

….this is pretty interesting.  Specially after President Obama’s West Point speech.  Apparently he doesn’t realize he has been in charge since Jan, 2009.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/05/28/i-condemned-mitt-romney-as-a-cold-war-relic-and-now-i-regret-it/

 

 

well…this is interesting

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/03/02/even_the_hapless_jimmy_carter_wasnt_this_bad_121779.html

I gotta go….

Immigration Reform

I’ve been thinking about immigration reform for a while.  The OT verses by the Prophets speak about caring for the alien or the stranger in our midst: Jer 7:6, Jer 22:3, Ezek 22:7,29,Mal 3:5.  So I was wondering if the US is acting in the same way as Israel was.  I read a book that spoke to this:

http://www.amazon.com/Christians-Border-Immigration-Church-Bible-ebook/dp/B00GP1N8ZM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1391977232&sr=1-1&keywords=christians+at+the+border

and I am currently reading:

http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Side-Religion-Forgets-Politics-ebook/dp/B00AKHM7FY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1391977308&sr=1-1&keywords=jim+wallis+on+god%27s+side

These verses and readings have convinced me that the correct thing to do as a Christian is to advocate for amnesty for illegal aliens and to make it easier for them to find work to become productive citizens.  Not to grant them instant citizenship though.  The author of the second book mentioned a group created to advocate for this that is made up of a diverse group of Christian leaders; the head of Assembly of God is one of them.  After reading about this group I ran across an ad they placed on the internet.  Here is their link:  http://evangelicalimmigrationtable.com/

Here are their principles (as written on their website).  I’m still waiting to hear back from them regarding several of the points below; how do they intend to secure the borders and what does it mean to respect the rule of law? But I think I agree, in principle, with what they are advocating.

As evangelical Christian leaders, we call for a bipartisan solution on immigration that:

• Respects the God-given dignity of every person
• Protects the unity of the immediate family
• Respects the rule of law
• Guarantees secure national borders
• Ensures fairness to taxpayers
• Establishes a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents

I’m going to start writing my elected representatives to let them know I favor grace for these human beings.

The key verses for the author of On God’s Side are found in Matthew 25, particularly verse 35.  Christian principles aside, the poem on the Statue of Liberty says:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” 

So a question for me is what should I do to care for the poor, the alien, the other?  I don’t know…but I am searching.

On another subject…as a believer in the sanctity of life I have always felt that it is wrong for the US to execute prisoners. The US is one of the few developed countries that still do this. I know there are many Christians who believe the Bible supports capital punishment, citing Gen 9:6. I ran across another verse that makes me believe I am right in advocating a consistent pro-life ethic:  the second half of James 2:13…mercy triumphs over justice.

Anyways, I would encourage you to read Jim Wallis’s book, On God’s Side.  There is a lot to chew on in it.  Your thoughts are certainly welcome.  I gotta go…

Culture Making by Andy Crouch

Just read a very interesting book, http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Making-Recovering-Creative-Calling-ebook/dp/B001IDYIMY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387031600&sr=1-1&keywords=culture+making  but I am too lazy today to write a review so here is an interview with the author.  I highly recommend the book:

http://www.worldmag.com/2011/03/excellent_not_elite

 

I just read a book…

…”The End of Your Life Book Club” by Will Schwalbe. The author’s mother is diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and he and his mom read books together to discuss during the chemical treatments to prolong her life. This is a family that has always read and the mother has led a full life. Early in the book the author writes “Reading isn’t the opposite of doing, it’s the opposite of dying.”

The mother is also the founding director of the Women’s Refugee Commision http://womensrefugeecommission.org/ and has traveled the world to improve the plight of women, spending extensive time in refugee camps. From the website: The Women’s Refugee Commission is the only organization solely dedicated to
improving the lives and protecting the rights of displaced women, children and
young people.

This book has made me realize that I am wasting too much time online. There are too many books to be read and causes to fight for. So, to clear the decks, so to speak, here is my position on current topics. I don’t need to spend time on redundant arguments.
1.The Affordable Care Act is very bad legislation. It will do little to improve the medical care of those that can’t afford it. The best way to care for the poor is to provide jobs that will raise one from the depths of poverty. This administration has shown no interest in this. The real unemployment rate is 13.6% (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm) and the requirement to be actively looking for work has been stripped from the food stamp program. There is no incentive to get off welfare.
2.When the Great Society was created it was to provide equal opportunity. Now the Welfare State is required to provide equal outcomes. Therefore the ACA requires males to buy insurance for maternity care. It leads an elitist at Georgetown to demand the same birth control that an abused illiterate paramour of a crack dealer should have. A tee totaling church lady must buy substance abuse coverage. No wonder Nancy Pelosi told us they had to vote for it to find out what is in it, they didn’t want anybody to know.
3.Amnesty, yes. Citizenship, no. Deut 10:19
4.I don’t care if the State says gay heathens can marry. 1 Cor 5:12
5.I am consistently pro-life. The United States is one of the few countries that still executes prisoners. End the death penalty.
6.Drone bombing is immoral.

I’m sure there are other issues but these are the important ones

I came up with a whole list of books to read by reading “The End of Your Life Book Club”. Many of them are about the human condition…I will probably find other causes to support just as I will continue to support Project AK-47, a ministry that rescues child soldiers …http://www.projectak47.com/#a-kid-or-a-killer-index

Near the end of the book the author writes “We’re all in the end-of-our-life book club, whether we acknowledge it or not, each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one.”

I gotta go…