More on Sustainable Foods

I’ve been outdone. Artemis of the blog Feminist Mormon Housewives has written a great little primer on slow food and local foods, with a number of resources I missed. And a fantastic discussion on how to garden and how to eat locally has blossomed in the comments of the post. Its well worth reading.

One of the main participants in that conversation is Chandelle, a local whose knowledge of food is evident in her recipe blog, Authentic Deliciousness. As the primary cook in our family, I can vouch for the quality of her work. Foodies among my readers, especially those interested in sustainable and healthy food, should surf over pronto.

The Cheney Forecast: Warm and Sunny in Iraq

Vice-President Cheney is confident that the administration’s war policy is the correct one, and is boldly predicting success by 2009.

…by the middle of January 2009, it will be clear that ‘we have in fact achieved our objective in terms of having a self-governing Iraq that’s capable for the most part of defending themselves, a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a nation that will be a positive force in influencing the world around it in the future (”Political Bulletin,” U.S. News and World Report).

What a pleasant thought. Maybe we should give this administration a break, since things are going so well. After all, he did so well in his prior prognostication regarding Iraq.

They’re going to welcome us. It’ll be like the American Army going through the streets of Paris. They’re sitting there ready to form a new government. The people will be so happy with their freedoms that we’ll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two (”The Imperial Presidency,” The New York Times).

I appreciate that Cheney has become a bit less…brash…as his term wanes. But I’m not about to hold my breath over this augury either.

Utah Politicians on Health Care

(I posted this last year on OneUtah.org, on which I was active at the time. It was a follow-up to my post “The Value of the Working Poor,” which had I cross-posted there. At the time I chose not to cross-post this one here, but have now reconsidered.)

I received several comments to my previous post on the working poor. Emily Hollingshead shared a recent experience she had at a meeting which was attended by many Utah politicians. One line in particular caught my attention. I hope Emily does not mind if I quote her.

I was shocked to hear some of our legislators talk about the “lazy people” who use medicare, and who “abuse the system” and who “make lifestyle choices” that put them in the hospital in the first place. The most shocking comment came from a gentleman running for the county commission who said the people who use medicare or medicade “use it all the time” because it is available to them and they have unending access to it. (Paraphrasing).

Interesting. I am not familiar with the situations about which this potential county commissioner is speaking. But it seems an odd perspective on health care.

Please correct me if I’m wrong; but isn’t a quality health care system one in which the patrons are able to make frequent and regular use of the system? Where frequent check-ups are the norm, so that potential health issues can be detected and prevented before they become catastrophes or expensive emergencies? “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” I’d been led to believe. Is that only true for those wealthy enough to afford health care?

Are we supposed to turn away those whose lifestyle choices lead to health problems? How charitable.

I shudder to think what that would mean for the increasingly sedentary population, whose diet consists of increasing amounts of sugars, salt, and fats. The LDS community may not drink or smoke, but they are certainly vulnerable to a number of lifestyle choices which can put them in the hospital.

There may be more effective ways to accomodate their health-care needs, but the objections of these Utah politicians are completely off-base.

Wreaths, Wars on Christmas, and the Prince of Peace

By now, many people have heard of the hysteria in Pagosa Springs, Colorado over Lisa Jensen’s Christmas wreath cum peace sign.

Christian scholar and author Diana Butler Bass has provided rather keen insight on the subject.

This isn’t the first time that people have erroneously accused a perfectly innocent symbol of being anti-Christian or part of a “War on Christmas.” In my youth, I remember my elders vigorously objecting to the use of the term “Xmas” to refer to the holiday commemorating the birth of our Savior. According to these people, that term was part of a sinister campaign by Satanic forces to take “Christ” out of Christmas. What they fail to realize is that “Xmas” has been in use use for at least a millennium. In Greek, the lingua franca of the Classical world, the letter “chi” is the first letter of the word “Christ.” It was quite common during the middle-ages to abbreviate as much as possible (just as we do in texting today), because writing was fairly laborious and writing surfaces expensive. Christ was commonly abbreviated simply with the “chi”—translated from the Greek characters to the Roman letter “x.” Do you see where this is going? It is quite a leap to assume that the legitimate abbreviation of our Lord’s title (Christ being a title, not a name) somehow secularizes the celebration.

Yet again, too many people act rather silly, attacking superficial elements like “Xmas,” “Happy Holidays,” and peace signs instead of the more genuine—if more subtle—threats to the spirit of Christmas. Isn’t war—particularly a tragically ill-conceived and poorly-implemented war—a greater affront to the celebration of the Prince of Peace than a sign symbolizing the hope for peace? Rather than fretting over whether or not they are trying to take Christ out of Christmas, shouldn’t we be more worried about whether or not we’ve let the holiday become so materialistic and commercial that our Lord might not even want his name associated with the celebration?

The Bright Hope of Microcredit

Can a man make a difference in the world with just twenty-seven dollars?

Muhammad Yunus did.

In 1974, Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist from Chittagong University, led his students on a field trip to a poor village. They interviewed a woman who made bamboo stools, and learnt that she had to borrow the equivalent of 15p to buy raw bamboo for each stool made. After repaying the middleman, sometimes at rates as high as 10% a week, she was left with a penny profit margin. Had she been able to borrow at more advantageous rates, she would have been able to amass an economic cushion and raise herself above subsistence level.

Realizing that there must be something terribly wrong with the economics he was teaching, Yunus took matters into his own hands, and from his own pocket lent the equivalent of £17 [$27] to 42 basket-weavers. He found that it was possible with this tiny amount not only to help them survive, but also to create the spark of personal initiative and enterprise necessary to pull themselves out of poverty (“The Autobiography of Muhammad Yunus”, Grameen Bank).

From that small beginning grew the power of microcredit.

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to the unemployed, to poor entrepreneurs and to others living in poverty who are not bankable. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimum qualifications to gain access to traditional credit. Microcredit is a part of microfinance, which is the provision of financial services to the very poor; apart from loans, it includes savings, microinsurance and other financial innovations (“microcredit,” Wikipedia).

Following that small success in loaning approximately twenty-seven dollars in loans to a group of impoverished women in Bangladesh, Yunus went on to found Grameen Bank, a bank which has loaned approximately 5.72 billion dollars in loans of an average of $100, of which 5.07 billion has been repaid. The loan recovery rate is over 98%—an astoundingly high rate for a bank. More importantly, millions of families have become economically self-sufficient through the efforts of the bank. Because of their success, numerous microcredit operations have risen up in other struggling areas of the globe.

For his efforts, Muhammad Yunus along with Grameen, has been awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

With the award, Yunus has received a barrage of media attention. Among the most insightful news reports (some of which are older but have been reissued in the wake of the Nobel Peace Price) on Yunus and the microcredit phenomenon are:

• “Banking on People,” The Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS)
• “Working Through the Concept of Micro-Finance,” Morning Edition (NPR)
• “The Economic Fruits of a ‘Microcredit’ Laureate,” Day to Day (NPR)
• “Loan, Bank Work Bring Nobel Prize to Bangladeshi,” All Things Considered (NPR)
• “The birth of micro credit,” CNN.com

I was fascinated by the story of Yunus and Grameen Bank when I first learned of their work through The New Heroes, a PBS miniseries documenting the work and successes of various social entrepreneurs. I was even more thrilled to learn of the Nobel Peace Prize a few days ago. Economic stability is crucial to social stability and true peace, and I’m glad that the Nobel Peace Prize committee recognized this and broadened its criteria in awarding its prize.

The story of Yunus and his pioneering use of microcredit fascinates me for a number of reasons. Some pundits have suggested that the performance of Grameen Bank indicates that we should take a second look at the value of traditional charity. Perhaps. But I believe it shows even more clearly the need to reexamine our belief in conventional economic models.

Grameen is not a charity. Like all banks, they are a business enterprise. However, they do not operate in the typical manner of a business enterprise. In conventional economic wisdom, self-interest is the reigning principle. Individuals and organizations are encouraged to pursue maximum profit; “Greed is good.” Traditional financial institutions therefore do not loan to those with no collateral. Seeking out the highest potential return,They loan to wealthy financial interests (ironically, the international banks focusing on that traditional market experience a much higher default rate than Grameen with its much “riskier” investments). In conventional economic theory, this is perfectly acceptable—even virtuous. As each entity seeks to maximize profit, all parties benefit. Everyone wins.

The reality is less attractive. Certainly the corporate interests reap the rewards of such a system. But we’ve seen little indication that “developing” nations are actually developing. Most find themselves further impoverished, with spiraling national debts and the gap between the rich and the poor increasing at breakneck speeds.

Yunus and other social entrepreneurs offer a better model. They endeavor to return the word “enlightened” to the phrase “enlightened self-interest.” Where traditional businesses seek profit, Yunus sought a means by which to aid his community. In doing so, he was able to establish a profitable business. How much better would our society be if most entrepreneurs followed that example? How much would we accomplish if all our businesses set about first and foremost to provide a service or product of genuine moral or ethical value to society, with profit being merely the a byproduct of their efforts?

Many mainstream economic apologists like to rightfully point out that the U.S. and international financial institutions like the World Bank pour a great deal of money, both loans and other, into developing nations. What they neglect to mention are the conditions typically attached, and where that capital is targeted. Much of the aid is very consciously intended to bind those nations to global markets and “free-trade” principles as established by the reigning corporate interests. The balance of power in such relationships is weighed heavily in favor of the global corporations. Traditional cultures are eviscerated by the ubiquitous commercial culture of globalization. Far from helping the populations of those nations become more independent, they create an institutionalized dependency. The livelihood of the communities becomes dependent on the interests of corporate decisionmakers with no stake in the success of the community, and the people are subject to the caprice of global markets. Labor in all nations find themselves in a race to the bottom as global capital runs around the globe like quicksilver to whomever can offer the most enticing market (bearing only a pretense of Adam Smith’s “natural advantage”) at any given moment.

While this globalization model is failing miserably to lift the masses out of poverty and into self-sufficiency, Grameen is finding remarkable success through helping the poor find a place in local markets. The money they borrow goes to purchasing a cow in order to sell milk in their neighborhood; or to purchase a barn of chickens, so that the family can harvest the eggs to sell at the local market; or to purchase a wireless telephone for the use of which the individual can charge their community a small fee. These people both serve their local community and patronize it. Their money is largely kept within that community. They are more truly independent.

Can we learn from their example? Obviously, purchasing a cow or some chickens is not a practical form of business in most Utah communities. But the principle of local entrepreneurship is still a valid one here in Utah. Creating an attractive economic environment for out-of-state businesses was a major part of Governor Huntsman’s economic policy agenda in his campaign, with such conventional suggestions as tax holidays and public funding of employee training. Why not instead foster local entrepreneurs, partnering with such organizations as Salt Lake City’s Vest Pocket Coalition?

In serving the poor in Bangladesh, Yunus focused on the segment of the population that has been the least empowered and the most economically vulnerable in virtually every culture throughout history. Women have always faced greater restrictions to their property and civic rights. Not only did Yunus’ concentration on women help to empower and protect this historically vulnerable segment of the population, but Yunus found that directing his efforts towards women produced far better results in terms of alleviating poverty in general.

Women are very cautious with the use of the money, but the men were impatient; they wanted to enjoy right away. They will entertain friends, they will go to the movies, they will do whatever they could to enjoy for themselves personally. But women didn’t look at it personally. Women looked at it for the children, for the family and the so on, and for future (Muhammad Yunus, “Banking on People,” The Newshour with Jim Lehrer).

I am a firm believer that government involvement is crucial to helping alleviate poverty. But despite the insistence of the conservative noise machine, neither I nor the vast majority of liberals believe that government action is sufficient. We understand that there must be concerted efforts from the private sector as well; that we must find ways to personally contribute to the effort. Yunus has provided a great model for action. The success of Grameen Bank provides proof that we do not need to accept global epidemics of poverty as unavoidable facts of life, and that corporatization and globalization are neither as effective nor as inexorable as their proponents would have us believe. If we use our human ingenuity and capacity for compassion, we can make a long-term difference in the world. There are better ways out there which can provide for a broad-based prosperity, in which all partners share in the responsibility and the blessings that come from such cooperation. I believe that such a vision is possible not only in foreign nations, but here in the U.S, and in Utah. And because terror and war thrive on social instability and despair, that is the best shot at winning the “war on terror” we will ever get.

Spam, spam, marketing, spam, baked beans, and spam

I have no problem with those with differing views commenting and challenging my opinions.

But I do have a problem with those who would use my blog as an opportunity to promote commercial interests. this is a forum for ideas, not commerce.

All comments which involve marketing of any sort will be considered spam and deleted like all other spam. If you want your comments to remain, please do not include any sort of marketing.

A Pox on both their Houses: II - Israel

It is easy to look at the turmoil in the Middle-East and cast the blame upon the Muslim extremists. On the face of it, they are the instigators and vilians of the story. They kidnap Israeli soldiers, kill others, hurl unprovoked rockets at Israeli cities, and deny Israel’s very right to exist.

Yet on honest consideration, things are not so simple. Israel is not so innocent as most in America, and specifically in Christian Conservative culture (including most Mormons) reflexively believe.

As of Monday, July 24, well over three-hundred Lebanese civilians have been killed. Hundreds more have been injured, many permanently crippled. A few hundred-thousand have been displaced, sent fleeing their homes, leaving virtually all worldly possessions behind. Many will come back to find their homes and lives in shambles.

The Israeli death toll to Hezbollah attacks? Thirty-seven. About half of those are soldiers.

Such imbalances among “collateral damage” are common in Israel’s security measures. According to reports by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, more than 3,500 Palestinians have been killed, and almost 29,000 injured, since September 2000, while over 1,000 Israelis have been killed, and more than 7,200 injured, in the same period. Despite the fact that Israel asserts that they strictly targets terrorists, Jim Rice of Sojourners has crunched the numbers and determined that while the Muslim terrorists indiscriminately attack civilians, Palestinian children were being killed at a rate 15 times that of Israeli children.

Consider this hypothetical situation. A parent has taken their child to a crowded public area, perhaps a mall or a park. While there, the child is accosted by a criminal, who attempts to kidnap the child. We would accept the right of the parent to use force to prevent the kidnapping of their child. We would even accept the judicious use of lethal force (a pistol) to protect their child. But public and authorities would take a rather more dim view were the parent to open fire on the crowd in hopes of stopping the criminal fleeing with the child.

Is that really any different than what Israel is doing? Can this really be considered a judicious or proportional response?

Gideon Levy, journalist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, noted of Israel’s actions in Gaza shortly after the kidnapping by Hamas:

The “summer rains” we are showering on Gaza are not only pointless, but are first and foremost blatantly illegitimate. It is not legitimate to cut off 750,000 people from electricity. It is not legitimate to call on 20,000 people to run from their homes and turn their towns into ghost towns. It is not legitimate to penetrate Syria’s airspace. It is not legitimate to kidnap half a government and a quarter of a parliament.

A state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organization (“A Black Flag,”).

Rabbi Michael Lerner of the Network of Spiritual Progressives asserted:

this week it’s impossible as a Jew and as an American to not notice that a new human rights violation by Israel has taken place which manages to surpass many of its previous violations in cruelty and in the outrage it has generated (“Israel has Crossed a Moral Boundary,”).

That said, let us put aside the question of proportional response. Let us assume for the sake of argument that Israel’s actions are proportional and strategically justifiable.

No one questions Israel’s right to defend itself. But the mere fact that they have that right does not make the act right.

Israel has followed a more-or-less consistent security policy since its creation. For decades now, it has responded to violence in kind, using quick and overwhelming force to retaliate against attack. And all that violence has done nothing to improve their security. Terrorists continue to arise. Outraged Muslims continue to offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs in the hopes that they might inflict some harm on a few Israelis as they go. Yes, the terrorists are the ones deliberately provoking Israel. It is the Muslim extremists who barbarically target innocent civilians. But two wrongs do not make a right.

Why is it that Israel stubbornly clings to old methods of violence when those methods have consistently proven impotent? Albert Einstein insisted that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Is there something inherent in Zionism that contains the seeds of insanity? Every time Israel clamps down on Palestinian civilian populations, they create more discontent among the Muslims for extremists to exploit. Every time they cavalierly obliterate Lebanese cities, with the inevitable “collateral damage” of human life, in the name of rooting out Hezbollah, they fertilize the recruiting grounds for terrorist leaders to harvest. By their very actions, they sow the very hatred for their own nation they must later fight. Violence rarely spawns anything more than violence.

Israel can successfully kill every single combatant, destroy or seize every single weapon, and completely disband Hezbollah, Hamas, and every other terrorist organization in the region. It will accomplish nothing. The discontent and frustration will simmer among the population, ultimately arising in some new armed faction ready to renew the violence with the Israelis.

Why is there this underlying unrest among the Muslim Middle East? Why are they so ready to turn to violence against Israel and the Western World? Those who would dismiss Islam as a barbaric, violent religion or the terrorists and the populations from which they arise as merely cardboard cutout “bad guys” perhaps have yet to examine the facts. For Israelis and their defenders to hyperbolically write the situation off as anti-Judaism or an evil quest for world domination is inaccurate, and unproductive. Things might not be as simple and one-sided as they might want to believe.

I myself have not been to Israel or Palestine, so I cannot speak from personal experience. But who have with whom I’ve spoken have been very dismayed at the manner in which Palestinians are treated in Israel. Those visitors claim that the Palestinians (or, more technically correct, “Muslim Arab-Israelis”) are often treated as second-class citizens, and seem to fall primarily in the lower socio-economic classes of Israel.

Rabbi Lerner notes:

Israel is the military power occupying the West Bank and surrounding Gaza. By all international standards it has no right to do either, but if it does so it has an absolute obligation to treat the civilian population with certain respect and basic human rights. Israel continually fails to do this and has become one (not the worst, but one) of the world’s major human rights (“When Will They Ever Learn?”).

Given the fact that Israel has maintained a chokehold on the borders of Gaza, carefully controlling the transportation of goods into and out of Gaza, their supposed support for Palestinian autonomy seems disingenuous.

The Association of Forty is an Israeli political organization advocating the rights of 40 unrecognized Muslim-Israeli villages in Israel.

Even though these Arab Villages existed tens and hundreds of years ago, The Israeli consecutive governments ignored the existence of these villages and the inhabitants were denied their rights as citizens of the country. Since this time, these villages have not appeared on any map and there is still no plan for their development.

As a result of this unrecognizing, the villages are still lack the basic infrastructure: Today, there are approximately 100,000 people who are dispossessed or denied any basic services such as running water, electricity, proper education and health services and access roads - constituting a gross violation of human rights and opposing the values of a modern and democratic state.

Pax Christi International, a Catholic non-profit peace advocacy organization, explains a number of ways in which the Palestinians, both within and without Israel, are subject to unjust treatment by Israel.

Rabbi Lerner has observed the irony of Israel’s outrage over the kidnapping of a few soldiers by Hamas and Hezbollah.

…virtually every human rights group including the various Israeli human rights organizations has chronicled tens of thousands of acts of “kidnap” of this sort by the IDF against Palestinian civilians, who are then kept in detention for as long as six months without a trial, often facing brutal torture, and then released without ever having been charged with any crime (“Israel Has Crossed a Moral Boundary,”).

We might even go back further and examine the means by which Israel was founded. When Hamas won a sweeping victory in the last Palestinian election, Israel was hardly pleased. It made very clear that cooperation with Hamas would hinge upon a few important issues. One of those were a public and thoroughly acknowledgement of Israel’s “right to exist.” I gave quite a bit of reflection to that right. In modern, mainstream political thought, the right of any given nation to exist is derived from the consent of the governed. In other words, all people who are to be subject to the government are allowed a hand in creating the government and given a voice in the adoption of that government. As best I can determine, the Palestinians within the borders of Israel, who may have comprised a majority of the people in the eventual state of Israel, were given no such participation. How then can it be said that the government is based upon their consent? If it does not, does that not raise serious objections to Israel’s moral right to exist?

Considering the type of government Israel’s Muslim opponents endorse, they cannot lay claim to those objections. But that does not mean that we should not acknowledge those questions ourselves.

We should not fall into the mistake of labeling any such questions as anti-Judaic. There are Jewish organizations which themselves question or even oppose the State of Israel. Neturei Karta is “a group of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem who refused (and still refuse) to recognize the existence or authority of the so-called ‘State of Israel,’ and made (and still make) a point of publicly demonstrating their position, the position of the Torah and authentic unadulterated Judaism (Neteurei Karta: About Us).” Primarily composed of Jewish Palestinians who had lived in harmony with Muslim Palestinians for generations prior to creation of Israel, members claim that the sovereign nation of Israel is contrary to Jewish law, and that the establishment of the nation did great wrong to the Muslim Palestinians living there. One does not have to be anti-Jewish to raise questions about Israel any more than one must be anti-Islamic to challenge the morality of various regimes in Muslim nations.

Of course, all of that is philosophical. Philosophy must often give way to the conditions in reality. Whether or not Israel has a moral right to exist, the fact remains that it does exist. The Israeli population has burgeoned. Several generations have grown up and established roots in the modern state of Israel. There can be no question that Israel has a de facto right to exist. To eliminate the political entity that is Israel and impose upon the current population a new government (likely necessitating the evacuation of many current inhabitants) would be just as gross a crime as it was for Israel to be imposed upon the original denizens. Two wrongs do not make a right. Yet that still does not eliminate the fact that the founding of Israel was problematic at best.

None of the alleged mistreatment and abuse by Israel justifies a single act of violence upon an innocent citizen of Israel, any more than the Hezbollah kidnapping justifies the violence born by the innocent citizens of Lebanon. This is not an effort to establish some moral equivalence. But if there is substance to these accusations, can we not understand the indignation felt by the Palestinians and their Muslim brethren? Should we not at least examine these claims rather than giving such unreserved support for Israel and their actions?

How would we react were the U.N. to declare that Utah should become the sovereign nation of the Native American tribes? What if they imposed upon us a new, specifically Native American government without our consent?

How would we feel were a foreign government to maintain firm control over the commerce of our state, blocking it as they saw fit?

What would we do if, as a result of criminal actions by some militia organization tenuously connected with the LDS Church, some foreign government were to cut off water or power to large portions of Utah, seizing and imprisoning a large number of LDS legislators on the grounds that they could be collaborators?

Would we not be outraged? Is there not the possibility that members of our state would resort to violence?

Regarding we Christians, Christian activist Jim Wallis of the Sojourners is right:

It’s time to challenge the theology of Christian Zionism advanced by many of the American Religious Right who are completely uncritical of Israel’s behavior and totally oblivious to the sufferings (or even the existence) of Arab Christians in the Middle East (“The Body of Christ in Lebanon,” ).

If Israel wants to finally obtain the peace it so dearly desires, it must be willing to give up the old failed scripts by which its acted for so long. It must give up the arrogance and paranoia through which it has interacted in the past. I truly believe that if they in humility and sincerity open a dialogue with their enemies, things will begin to change. They must show that they truly want what is best for all inhabitants of the Middle-East. They must show that they are willing to go down a new path alongside their Muslim brothers and sisters. They must show that they are willing to use their considerable wealth (much of it granted them by the U.S.) to help lift their Muslim neighbors out of the poverty and squalor so many of them live in. As they do, the anger and discontent within the Muslim Middle-East will begin to dissipate. Those Muslims will then no longer be so easily swayed by demagogues and other manipulators who want the bloodshed to continue for their own purposes.

This is admittedly a great deal to ask of Israel. It will take courage for Israel to open up. They will feel vulnerable. It will not be easy. Progress will be slow. There will be some stumbling along the way. Yet it is crucial that they find the courage to take this path. Until they do so, Israel will continue to find its hopes dashed.

Two peoples, locked in an insane perpetual cycle of bloodshed and tragedy. Will either party ever tire of their violent dance?

Until they do, I say a pox on both their houses.

Prom Night

Another gem from Sojourners. Discussing the materialism in which our culture is steeped, Brian Kaylor refers to the laudable stand that one Catholic high school took on prom. That principal truly understands the counsel of the Savior.

I enjoyed Kaylor’s thoughts on Stephen Colbert, who did a bit on the prom night news. I don’t get to see Colbert often, as we don’t have cable. But I love his deadpan satire. Very keen and biting humor. The sad thing is that in his satire, he sounds just like Limbaugh, Hannity, even our own Jimbo. The sad thing is, those people are serious.

Colbert’s Correspondent Dinner routine was brilliant, btw. Piercing wit, dead on the money! I particularly enjoyed the line “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

Hey, that sounds a lot like the response I gave when Brian Jensen claimed in a comment that academia was left-leaning. Pat, did you tell Colbert about my blog?!

Jim Wallis reflects on war

A poignant commentary from Sojourners. This one is by founder Jim Wallis, who reminds us that tragedy and evil are the constant companions of war.

If that weren’t warning enough, we have a report that four marines may have been involved in a brutal massacre back in November, and that they then attempted to cover up their crimes.

War is a rabid bitch, and she will snap at the hand of the victor as eagerly as she savages the conquered. No one involved is immune from infection.

That is why war should be pursued in only the most dire circumstances.

Iraq was not a dire circumstance.

Oil Industry Profits

After a recent blog entry about the ways rising oil prices can affect our pocketbooks and ways that those prices will hopefully get us to (finally!) conserve, I received a rather virulent response from one individual. This commenter did not address the primary point of my blog entry, but rather took issue with my characterization of the oil industry as “raking in the money on the backs of the families who are struggling to make ends meet…” He used unsubstantiated figures to suggest that the oil industry’s profits were minimal in the price of oil. I challenged his figures with counter evidence, substantiating my evidence by citing my source. The commenter refused to address my evidence, instead choosing to resort to ad hominem attacks.

I would like to further address the issue. It is well reported that the oil industry has reported record profits over the past year (see also here, and here.). That is not record gross income, but record profit.

You can make a case, if you would like, that maximizing profits at any given opportunity is a just and acceptable way to operate in our economic system. That is an entirely different argument. But to try to claim that the industry is not “raking in money,” or that it is not at the expense of consumers, is simply disingenuous.

It is interesting to note that the oil industry has long been the recipient in generous federal subsidies. The current administration seems to have exacerbated the trend with the energy policy drafted in secret by a committee headed by Vice-President Cheney (a man with long standing ties to the oil industry), on which energy industry leaders appear to have been widely consulted, but from which conservation and environmental advocates were excluded. This policy and the legislation based upon it provides billions in federal subsidies to an oil industry already obviously awash in money.

Why does a highly profitable industry need government subsidies? How is this consistent with the purportedly small government, market advocating conservative philosophy? Is it moral to deride “handouts” to the poor, but justify billions of dollars in subsidies to the wealthy and profitable? For those whose politics are informed by their religious beliefs, is that what the scriptures counsel us?