Post-Election Analysis: The Train Left Cleavertown Some Time Ago.

Folks on Fox News were flabbergasted.  Karl Rove tenaciously held on to his view of reality.  Bill O’Reilly could only sputter something about the election meaning that America had changed and that most voters were evidently people who “want stuff.”

Bill O’Reilly admitted the country had changed, but really couldn’t understand how.

I admit that I was a bit surprised myself.  I figured they’d find a way to disenfranchise enough voters and rig enough precinct counts to make the final totals excruciatingly close.  Plus I didn’t think the Obama campaign could turn on the same enthusiastic energy as they did in 2008.

So how in the world did Barack Obama wind up scoring a bigger election victory margin than Nixon, Carter and G.W. Bush?

One telling answer comes wrapped in my memory of riding a Portland, Oregon commuter train sometime around the peak afternoon rush.   About two years ago, I was in Portland for a Campus Ministry regional gathering.  One afternoon was set aside for free time, so after lunch a few of us decided to take the train, which ran near our retreat center, to go explore downtown Portland.  The 30 minute ride from the suburbs to downtown was fairly uneventful and I had no problem finding a seat among two or three other folks in the train car .  The ride back was a different story.   It was about 4 o’clock and the streets were crowding with people and traffic.  I climbed aboard the train and immediately discovered it was standing room only.   The next several stops had people getting on and off in roughly equal numbers, so it took a while to find a seat.  The revelation in that ride was the in the ever- changing population of that rail-car shuttling these Portlanders from downtown to home or other places.   The first thing I noticed was that I remained one of the older people in that car. There were a couple of very elderly people who got on and off, but by and large it was a crowd of people that I’d guess was between 20-40.    It was an ethnically mixed crowd, with many people who were obviously ethnically mixed themselves.  Black, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, Caucasian–and most riders were a blended mix of at least two or three of these.

The prevailing American Anglo-Saxon worldview would tend to lump all these folks together in a group named “rabble.”  But that wasn’t the case at all.  I saw people who seemed to belong to diverse socio-economic groups, and together they created this exuberant kind of energy that rollicked and hummed along in that train car for the duration of my journey.   The best part of my experience was watching all these different people relate to one another as fellow people. Some were loud.  A couple were obnoxious.  But just about everyone treated everyone else with mutual respect.  My most memorable passenger was a dapper-looking black guy sitting atop his Rascal scooter in the middle of the car; obviously disabled, dressed sharply in a tailored business suit with matching fedora hat, a gleaming leather briefcase at his feet.  He was gloriously  lost in the music pouring through his headphones, yet he consciously kept a taut leash on the little spider monkey sitting in the basket of his scooter.  I hadn’t ever seen anything as jaw-droppingly unique as this guy and his monkey on their afternoon commute, and I doubt I’ll see such a thing again.   He was as archetypal a figure as you could ever find to show that the old rules and the old ways of seeing life in America no longer apply.

Hadn’t seen a commuter like this little guy before.

I got off the train with the awareness that I’d been in the company of all the different people who bring their energy and life into the day-to-day workings of this prominent American city.  And that is when it hit me.  The paradigm that says it’s a group of mostly well-to-do white men who have the de-facto power to run this country, whether it be in government or in business, that paradigm is nearing an end.  The paradigm that says presidential politics is played and won by well-to-do white guys from an established cadre of well-to-do white guys, that paradigm is on its last legs.

So I look back on the 2012 election through the prism of that train ride in Portland and I find myself wondering what was so surprising about that election after all.   Perhaps folks like Bill O’Reilly and Karl Rove might ride the subway once in a while.  It can do a fellow good.

A Clashing of Powers, A Parable About Two Sons and A Vineyard

Here’s this coming Sunday’s lectionary gospel text along with thoughts it inspired.   Maybe, just maybe, there’s a community of faith out there somewhere that would appreciate hearing a message based on my preliminary  impressions.  My inner cynic tells me it’s doubtful such a place exists; another small voice tells me to hang in there and have faith.  We’ll see.

Matthew 21:23–32 (NRSV)

(Mk 11:27–33; Lk 20:1–8)

²³ When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” ²⁴ Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. ²⁵ Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ ²⁶ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” ²⁷ So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

²⁸ “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ ²⁹ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. ³⁰ The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. ³¹ Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. ³² For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

The question remains, “What exactly is the vineyard?” Bundled into that question is another, “What exactly WAS the vineyard?” Jesus tells a story about about a father, two sons, and a vineyard that needs attention. To folks in the audience, the vineyard would resonate on several levels. One, it’s a dominant symbol of the agricultural economy. Lots and lots of folks make a living in the vineyard. Two, it’s a symbol and metaphor used by their prophets, especially around the time of the conquest of Israel and Judah, the Babylonian exile and the return from exile. Isaiah’s “Song of the Vineyard” lays it out plainly:

For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel,

and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting;

he expected justice, but saw bloodshed;

righteousness, but heard a cry!          Is 51: v. 8

The parable of the two sons, the dad and the vineyard is told in the context of the Jerusalem Temple, one of the great marvels of the ancient world. If God Almighty had a mailbox on earth, it was there.

The story is told in the midst of an audience that had been steeped in the religious/social/political/economic cultural traditions that basically held that God had chosen this particular group of people to be first among all the ethnic peoples of the world, had given them this geography as sacred geography, and had called them to be a light for the nations. Ummm, do we find similarly held assumptions in our time and place?

Isn’t our geography seen as the land that has been given by God to God’s chosen people, who are of a particular ethnicity and religion? (The Patriot’s Bible, anyone?)

When Jesus uses the vineyard touchstone to make his point, he is certainly calling on the prophetic understandings of justice and injustice that are wrapped in the vineyard metaphor.  And he was speaking to a nation and within a nation about how the prevailing powers and authorities had become opposed to the new power and authority–and righteousness–he came to reveal.  For 2000 years, Jesus has continued the revelation, shocking and pissing off those whose power and status quo are threatened, to the extent that they find ways to crucify him again and again.   But the power of the resurrection keeps overcoming those powers, again and again.  His word to the chief priests and elders packs the same wallop today as it did back then, as does the word of the prophet Isaiah to a nation and people that lost its way.

Don’t believe me?

What happens if you read the Isaiah passage outside the Georgia state execution chamber immediately after Troy Davis is killed by the state? What happens if you read this passage at the Wall St. sit-in? What happens if you read this passage alongside a poster-sized photo of the children executed by U.S. soldiers during a house raid in Iraq?

Who are the chief priests and elders of our culture? Likewise, who would be the tax collectors and the prostitutes, and what exactly is it that makes them first in the kingdom of God?

And finally, what exactly is the Kingdom of Heaven and how might we find the wiring that connects all these questions to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount?

We can do a nice little 8-minute piece on the vineyard and the kingdom focusing on the church and its need to replenish a food pantry or provide coats for a coat drive. We can preach a nice, tidy little piece on the importance of repentance (metanoia) and how piety can often get in the way of growing in authentic faith.

But will it mean a heckuva lot when Monday comes and life keeps going down the same destructive path?

Maybe, just maybe, the tax collectors and prostitutes in our time are those folks who wouldn’t call themselves at all religious, maybe not even very spiritual. But they’re standing outside the execution chamber and they’re sitting in on Wall St., and they’re burning the midnight oil developing just alternatives to the injustices that bear down on and crush more and more people everyday. Perhaps it’s the gay teen who tragically committed suicide because he just couldn’t take the destructive bullying anymore.

Maybe these are first, like the first son in the parable, or a bit like those surprised sheep we find in the apocalyptic parable in Matthew 25.

What’s the vineyard? What’s the kingdom? Who’s first? Who deserves Jesus’ bitch-slap, like the one he laid on those chief priests and elders?

Tea Party Politician Likens Public School System to Nazis

“I am done raising my kids but if I was a young parent today I would take my kids out of the public school system today. At what point will we stop talking about the comparisons to what is occurring today and what actually happened by the regime of the Nazi’s in the past?”  –Kim Simac, Wisconsin Tea Party organizer and candidate in Wisconsin’s recall election of state Sen. Jim Holperin.

The quote comes from a post Simac posted on the Tea Party’s online Patriot Action Network last October.  It was scrubbed from the site in advance of the election, but TPM found a cached version.

Quote of the Day

“Many people would argue that Palin did great ecological damage to Alaska and would like to do more by drilling all over it. So, getting her to host a show about the natural beauty of Alaska is a bit like getting Jeffrey Dahmer to host a cooking show for the Food Network. Yes, there’s a big name attached, but is that the name you really want associated with your brand?”

Young Turk Cenk Uygur on Sarah Palin’s new (and probably disastrous) show on the Discovery Channel.

Maybe the Rapture Will Save Them

“The bullying, threats, and acts of violence following the passage of health care reform have been shocking, but they’re only the most recent manifestations of an increasing sense of desperation.

It’s an extension of a now-familiar theme: some version of ‘take our country back.’ The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn’t existed for some time, and its ability to deny that fact grows more dim every day. President Obama and what he represents has jolted extremists into the present and forced them to confront the future. And it scares them.

Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.”

From Charles M. Blow, NYT

Better Than Being on Nixon’s Enemies List

Click here, since I can’t get the video to load properly.

Not the Bipartisanship We’re Looking For

“Texas Crazy” is Different and Way Better Than “Texas Stupid”

This subject popped up on the radar screen recently, after Keith Olbermann spent one of his Comments talking about a U. T. survey which reveals, among other things, that a lot of Texans firmly grasp all the “intelligent design” evidence that says dinosaurs were the personal pets of Adam and Eve.

What Olbermann has tapped into is nothing short of  “Texas Stupid.”   It has been part and parcel of  Texas culture at least since the time when Texans decided to blow off Old Sam Houston’s advice and to throw in with the Confederacy.   And we all remember how well that little adventure went…..

“Texas Stupid” reared up its rather sloped head in the immediate aftermath of the ’08 election, when gun sales in the Lone Star State went through the roof, because folks literally bought into the notion that “Obama’s gonna take your guns.”

Two things:

1) The massive rush to buy firearms spiked the price of firearms up…again.  This means that Bubba, along with a certain Texas-expatriate shootist, will each have more difficulty in buying that coveted Desert Eagle .50 caliber in titanium finish.

2) I’d rather be sent as an evangelist to proselytize the Taliban than be the one who attempts to pry firearms out of the hands of your average Texan.

“Texas Stupid” also covers several statewide organizations and movements such as the KKK, the John Birch Society, and the New Secessionists.  I’m tempted to throw the Tea Party folks in there as well, except that I know a few people who would consider themselves tangential teabaggers, and they are anything but “Texas Stupid.”  Actor Chuck Norris, however, fills the bill nicely.  Gubenatorial candidate Debra Medina is certainly not T.S.; but her notion that you can just wipe out all property taxes and pay for stuff like roads and schools and W.I.C. cards by sales-taxing anything that makes you pull out your wallet, why that puts her in the camp named “Texas Crazy.”   And that is exactly why her appeal is growing, even among certain progressive, yellow-dog tumbleweeds.  That “We Texans” slogan, combined with the fashionable apparel in her campaign’s virtual gift shop, cannot help but endear Texans of all political stripes to her cause.  “Texas Crazy” is at the root of the most delightful aspects of Texas culture.  But its shadow side is also at the root of Texas’ darker historical moments.  Triumph and tragedy, Lone Star-style, often come from this quirky, sometimes bizarre, and usually amusing condition.

Examples of Texas Crazy run the spectrum between twisted satire and twisted behavior.

Charles Whitman was Texas Crazy.  So is Kinky Friedman’s “The Ballad of Charles Whitman,” which is tucked into the Kinkster’s unique remembrance of Charlie’s U.T. sniper spree in 1966:

There is a complex interrelationship and interdependence between these two conditions, T.S. and T.C.

Janis Joplin, a T.C. luminary,  fled her hometown of Port Arthur after high school,  not so much to get the refinery smell out of her hair, but to get away from her Texas Stupid tormentors, which included this guy.  Yet ol’ shell-head went on to become one of the great Texas football coaches in both college and pro arenas.   His gig with America’s Team landed him in the Texas Crazy camp, especially the time he called a Dallas radio sports-talk show to rag on the Mighty San Fran 49’ers the week leading up to the NFC championship game.  “Jeez, Jimmy, why’d you go rile up Steve Young and that nasty West Coast bunch by saying you’ll whip their butts with no problem?  What are you?  Crazy!?”  Crazy like a fox, since the ‘Boys smoked San Fran and went on to win their second straight Super Bowl.    Speaking of San Fran, that’s where Janis went to break through some big barriers in the field of blues rock, making her singular mark as only a T.C. white girl could.  Looking back now, one can see how Texas Crazy fueled her ascent, while the shadowy memory of Texas Stupid was always close by, waiting to envelop her.

If there is a Poster Boy for Texas Crazy, it would have to be this guy:

Ross’ theme song in the ’92 presidential election was Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.”  And, well, he was.  In a good way, mostly.  He had quite a few of us stirred up and ready to vote for him until the vice presidential debate came along and revealed that his VP-picking skills left a lot to be desired.  Then came the stunning meltdown on 60 Minutes where he began talking spies, threats on his family, a GOP plot to ruin his daughter’s wedding, and after that, well….Hello, President Clinton!  Still, Perot leveraged enough of the vote to swing the election for Ol’ Bubba, which is a significant accomplishment, especially for someone so richly imbued with Texas Crazy.

If real, meaningful, socio-political change is ever going to grab hold in the Lone Star State, folks there are going to have to seize on this great historical legacy of Texas Crazy, a force so formidable it could unite otherwise disparate citizenry into a movement strong enough to repel this current rising tsunami of Texas Stupid.  The good news is it already seems to be happening, given the (albeit) narrow defeat of Board of Education Chairman Don McElroy, the most recent poster boy for Texas Stupid.  We’ve already covered some of his board’s handiwork;  now that he’s out, all he can do is look back admiringly on his accomplishments, which mainly come down to having history textbooks add a little spitshine to the thunder mug we all remember as Joe McCarthy.

But it’s going to take more effort, a heckuva lot more effort over the next few years, and probably the next few decades.  The T.S. crowd is as entrenched as they’ve ever been, and only a broad-based alliance of committed (or recently committed) Texans can turn the tide.  Imagine the Junction Boys working hand in hand with the Texas Tornados.  Or Jim Hightower forming an alliance with Debra Medina.  I know it’s crazy to imagine such things, but it’s Texas Crazy.  And that is what the state needs most at the moment.

Study Reveals TABOR’s Crippling Effects on Colorado

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has issued a warning to states considering the adoption of provisions similar to the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, passed in 1992 as a constitutional amendment.  TABOR proponents touted it’s strict demands for government fiscal accountability through its restrictive taxing and spending formula based on population change and the annual rate of inflation.  While this sounded good in theory, the results have been nothing short of draconian  in the ways they have dropped the state to Mississippi-like levels of support for public education and social services.  Some highlights of the of the CBPP’s report:

Under TABOR, Colorado declined from 35th to 49th in the nation in K-12 spending as a percentage of personal income.

Colorado’s average per-pupil funding fell by more than $400 relative to the national average.

Colorado’s average teacher salary compared to average pay in other occupations declined from 30th to 50th in the nation.

Under TABOR, Colorado declined from 23rd to 48th in the nation in the percentage of pregnant women receiving adequate access to prenatal care, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Colorado plummeted from 24th to 50th in the nation in the share of children receiving their full vaccinations. Only by investing additional funds in immunization programs was Colorado able to improve its ranking to 43rd in 2004.

At one point, from April 2001 to October 2002, funding got so low that the state suspended its requirement that school children be fully vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough) because Colorado, unlike other states, could not afford to buy the vaccine.

Under TABOR, the share of low-income children lacking health insurance has doubled in Colorado, even as it has fallen in the nation as a whole. Colorado now ranks last among the 50 states on this measure.

TABOR has also affected healthcare for adults. Colorado has fallen from 20th to 48th for the percentage of low-income non-elderly adults covered under health insurance.

In 2002, Colorado ranked 49th in the nation in the percentage of both low-income non-elderly adults and low-income children covered by Medicaid.

Of course there are always die-hard TABOR advocates, such as renowned photo-journalist place-kicker Douglas Bruce of Colorado Springs, who tend to poo-poo such findings.  Here is one that may grab even Mr. Bruce’s questionable attention span:

Spending for corrections… has grown substantially faster than the inflation-plus-population formula of TABOR, in part due to strict criminal codes and sentencing laws. Because spending for corrections has grown rapidly, other areas of the budget have been squeezed even more in order to keep overall spending under the strict TABOR limit.

It’s that prison spending spike that should cause concern in him and in others feeling otherwise insulated from these outcomes.  The Colorado corrections system has already adopted an early-release program in response to the state’s inability to keep up with prison expenses.  Eventually, if nothing is done to head off the impending economic train wreck at the state capitol, Coloradans like Mr. Bruce might find themselves in the unexpected company of folks like these. As long as TABOR is allowed to strangle the state’s  ability to govern, especially in this time of tremendous economic upheaval, we can expect such company to grow along with the needless suffering of Colorado’s less-fortunate citizens.

h/t: Scholars & Rogues

Debra Medina’s Tax Overhaul Proposal Gets Serious Scrutiny

Kate Alexander at the Austin American Statesman,  wrote this well-balanced analysis of Ms. Medina’s proposed elimination of the property tax system and expansion of the state sales tax:

Debra Medina, the feisty Republican running for governor, promises Texans that she will liberate them from their property taxes.

“I talk about that for freedom reasons first,” Medina said at the Jan. 29 gubernatorial debate.

“We’ve surrendered private property ownership to the ever-growing state — we lease our property in the form of ever increasing rents known as property taxes,” she wrote on her campaign Web site. “We’ve forgotten that ownership is an essential element of freedom.”

A call to eliminate property taxes might resonate with many taxpayers, beleaguered by the demands for more money from schools, cities, counties, emergency districts and more when their wallets are thin.

But critics say the freedom Medina promises would come at a huge cost to local taxpayers because they would lose a critical element of control over the governments closest to them.

As envisioned by Medina, the property taxes now paid by Texans — $39 billion as of last year — would be replaced with a sales tax applied to more services and to real estate transfers.

Texas would be the only state not to have local property taxes, if Medina’s plan were to be adopted, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington.

The state would collect the sales tax dollars and redistribute them to local governments based on “sharing formulas,” according to the campaign’s Web site. Campaign officials did not provide someone to explain Medina’s plan.

The practical effect would be to make local governments beholden to state government for every tax dollar and thus concentrate decision-making power in the Texas Capitol, said Kail Padgitt, a staff economist for the Tax Foundation.

“Cities and schools and other governmental entities would be at the mercy of us in Austin, and they would have no local control, which is one of the banner themes in Republican politics,” said state Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.