The obvious answer is "don't," but that's not particularly helpful.
I don't mean to discourage my Christian brethren, who are called by their religion to preach the Good News to everyone, from attempting to fulfill their great commission as Christians. But let's be honest. Someone who has declared for the atheist* squad, in our hyperreligious American society, in which our political leaders must end every speech with a reference to God, is probably (a) pretty aware of the basic Christian proposition, and (b) not going to be convinced by any reference you're likely to advance. The tools you need to be effective are just not in your toolbag.
* - In this entry, when I use the term "atheist," I am referring to people who reject the concept of spiritual religion. Technically speaking, Buddhism is an atheist religion, but I am not including Buddhists in the term. I might just as well have referred to "secular humanists" or "freethinkers."
(I assume, of course, that you are genuinely interested in actually convincing your target to believe. If your goal is merely to expose, it really doesn't matter what tactics you use. You can stop reading now.)
Most of the atheists I know--which is a secretly large number--know Christianity better than many Christians. They've read the Bible, and maybe even studied it. Many of them are former Christians who saw too many contradictions in the religion.
The fundamental problem is that atheists simply don't accept what Christians must take as their first article of faith: that God exists and is knowable through the Bible. Whether or not you accept the Bible as the infallible word of God, Christianity requires at least some belief that at least some of what the Bible says is true. There is very little that all Christians agree upon, but that bit is universal.
That is something that atheists simply cannot accept as a first principle. Atheists believe in what can be observed and deduced and proven. If faith is an essential step in a belief, atheists will not accept it.
Some people suggest that atheists should at least make Pascal's wager--choosing to believe on the chance that the Bible is right, on the basis that making the wrong "bet" will mean the loss of everything. The atheist turns that wager around and suggests that if the Bible is wrong, and there is nothing after death, and this life is all we have, then making the wrong "bet" means the loss of everything anyway. It's not a winning argument.
So, how can Christians witness effectively to atheists?
It doesn't start with the Bible. It doesn't take words at all--in fact, words are hurtful to the process, not helpful.
Well, it sort of starts with the Bible. In John 13, the story of the Last Supper is told. Just after Jesus tells Judas Iscariot to go and betray him, Jesus acknowledges that his time on earth is drawing to a close. At verse 34, he says, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."
Then, at verse 35, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
Very few of the atheists I have known wish to tread on others' sincerely held religious beliefs. But virtually all of the atheists I have known despise hypocrisy. They look at Christians who speak the language of hate, of scorn, of separation and division and condemnation, and they repay it in kind. They see Christians who post all sorts of prayers, or statements about prayers, on social media sites, which are the modern-day streetcorners, and they see Christians who cannot follow even the most basic tenets of their religion. They see Christians who preach prosperity theology and drive expensive cars and live in expensive houses and send their children to expensive private schools, and they shake their heads.
Christianity is supposed to be a religion founded on love, and there is precious little Christian love evident to the average atheist.
So if you want to witness to an atheist, it begins and ends with acting like a follower of Christ, focusing your conduct on love, so that everyone will know of your Christianity, just as Jesus said in John 13:35--not because you said it (because you didn't say it), or because you talked about Jesus to someone (because you didn't), or because you prayed on Facebook (since that's the modern-day streetcorner (Matt. 6:5)), but because you lived the philosophy that Jesus espoused.
You may never manage to convert an atheist, and that's fine. Very few atheists are interested in, or even open to, a religion that requires faith in the unseen (Heb. 11:1) and discourages reasoned inquiry (Prov. 3:5). But virtually all of them are interested in the existence of better Christians--and by "better Christians" I mean "people who are better at following Christ's example" and not "people who are good at scaring people into submission" or "people who like to criticize others' faults." Come to think of it, pretty much everyone would be better off with more of those around.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
Star Search? I think not.
Let's be honest: I have never been particularly impressed with celebrity. Only once in my life can I remember ever having been starstruck. As a kid, probably 13 or so, I was at an event where Bill Clinton gave a short speech. He was the governor of Arkansas at the time. Afterward, I went up to shake his hand, and my dad had to remind me to introduce myself. I'm not sure how much of that is attributable to celebrity and how much was just being shy. I was embarrassed by the experience.
Every once in a while, I come into contact with a genuinely famous person. I have a hard time not feeling disgust at the way ordinary people fall over themselves to get at celebrities. Not surprisingly, given what I do for a living, these encounters occur at airports. I could tell you about the time I saw Ted Danson browsing in the DFW airport bookstore, or the time I was behind Jerry Rice in the Southwest check-in line at LAX, or the time I was behind Joyce DeWitt ("Janet" from TV's Three's Company) in the security line at LIT. I could even tell you about that time I ran into Kenneth Starr while arguing at the Court of Appeals. (He was terrible, by the way.)
But those things seem kind of boring to me.
In all four of those instances, at least one person approached the celebrity for an autograph.
There's a term for people who glom on to celebrities when they're "in the wild"--starf***ers.* It would never occur to me to introduce myself to someone on the basis that they happen to be famous. It would make me throw up to seek an autograph. There is literally no one in the world whose autograph I would want to keep. I understand the impulse. I just don't experience it.**
* - Several sources indicate that this term often has a sexual connotation, though not necessarily. I am using it in the platonic sense.
** - I really don't have the luxury of being starstruck. From time to time, my job involves dealing with people who are powerful, and often well known. If I let that affect me, I would be less effective as an advocate for my client's interests. I find that it helps to remember that they're just ordinary humans. Sometimes I just imagine them sitting on the toilet.
(I have this recurring fantasy that I am flying, sitting in first class, and my seatmate is a famous person. We engage in the usual small talk throughout the flight--just a normal conversation, nothing about the thing that makes the person famous. At the end, the person casually mentions who he is, and I smile and say, "Yeah, I know, I just figured you were tired of being recognized. Nice talking to you.")
What makes me bring this up is an experience Wil Wheaton recounted on his website today. Now, I follow Wil Wheaton because I find that he's an intelligent guy with interesting things to say. I wasn't particularly fond of his character in Star Trek when it was in first run.*** But as celebrities go, he's among the most accessible, down-to-earth people I've encountered on the internet.
*** - But remind me sometime to tell you about the time that my name was next to Jonathan Frakes's name on the Hertz board at LAX.
Apparently some Wil Wheaton fans weren't all that happy with their Wil Wheaton Experience at a convention in Calgary last year. A lot of people wanted pictures with him, so there was a long line and each person only got about 5 seconds, and in these fans' photo (which was supposed to be the highlight of their vacation) he didn't look happy. Then, the next day, he was charging $30 for an autograph, which they thought was inappropriate.
I just find all of that bizarre. First of all, why would you want your picture made with somebody you don't know personally and who doesn't know you? And if Wil Wheaton can get $30 for an autograph, I think that says more about the people who will pay it than about Wil. Bully for him. (I often sign my name dozens of times a day, and to be fair, I get a lot more than $30 for it a lot of times, but they aren't paying for my name, just my analysis.)
To his credit, Wil was apologetic. Apparently he was sick that day, and the convention was poorly organized, and he was emotional because he had just been reunited with the Star Trek cast for the first time in a long time. He took the time to listen to the fan's complaint, to respond, and to make the conversation public on his website. In his place, I doubt I would have been so accommodating.
But, really...celebrities are just people. Being famous doesn't make them special. It certainly doesn't make them better than ordinary folks, and believe me, some of them are a lot worse. They have all the same bodily functions as the rest of us, the same insecurities; they make the same kinds of mistakes. Many of them aren't particularly rich. And, most of all, they don't owe your their time and attention, and you don't owe them yours. Don't be a starf***er.
Every once in a while, I come into contact with a genuinely famous person. I have a hard time not feeling disgust at the way ordinary people fall over themselves to get at celebrities. Not surprisingly, given what I do for a living, these encounters occur at airports. I could tell you about the time I saw Ted Danson browsing in the DFW airport bookstore, or the time I was behind Jerry Rice in the Southwest check-in line at LAX, or the time I was behind Joyce DeWitt ("Janet" from TV's Three's Company) in the security line at LIT. I could even tell you about that time I ran into Kenneth Starr while arguing at the Court of Appeals. (He was terrible, by the way.)
But those things seem kind of boring to me.
In all four of those instances, at least one person approached the celebrity for an autograph.
There's a term for people who glom on to celebrities when they're "in the wild"--starf***ers.* It would never occur to me to introduce myself to someone on the basis that they happen to be famous. It would make me throw up to seek an autograph. There is literally no one in the world whose autograph I would want to keep. I understand the impulse. I just don't experience it.**
* - Several sources indicate that this term often has a sexual connotation, though not necessarily. I am using it in the platonic sense.
** - I really don't have the luxury of being starstruck. From time to time, my job involves dealing with people who are powerful, and often well known. If I let that affect me, I would be less effective as an advocate for my client's interests. I find that it helps to remember that they're just ordinary humans. Sometimes I just imagine them sitting on the toilet.
(I have this recurring fantasy that I am flying, sitting in first class, and my seatmate is a famous person. We engage in the usual small talk throughout the flight--just a normal conversation, nothing about the thing that makes the person famous. At the end, the person casually mentions who he is, and I smile and say, "Yeah, I know, I just figured you were tired of being recognized. Nice talking to you.")
What makes me bring this up is an experience Wil Wheaton recounted on his website today. Now, I follow Wil Wheaton because I find that he's an intelligent guy with interesting things to say. I wasn't particularly fond of his character in Star Trek when it was in first run.*** But as celebrities go, he's among the most accessible, down-to-earth people I've encountered on the internet.
*** - But remind me sometime to tell you about the time that my name was next to Jonathan Frakes's name on the Hertz board at LAX.
Apparently some Wil Wheaton fans weren't all that happy with their Wil Wheaton Experience at a convention in Calgary last year. A lot of people wanted pictures with him, so there was a long line and each person only got about 5 seconds, and in these fans' photo (which was supposed to be the highlight of their vacation) he didn't look happy. Then, the next day, he was charging $30 for an autograph, which they thought was inappropriate.
I just find all of that bizarre. First of all, why would you want your picture made with somebody you don't know personally and who doesn't know you? And if Wil Wheaton can get $30 for an autograph, I think that says more about the people who will pay it than about Wil. Bully for him. (I often sign my name dozens of times a day, and to be fair, I get a lot more than $30 for it a lot of times, but they aren't paying for my name, just my analysis.)
To his credit, Wil was apologetic. Apparently he was sick that day, and the convention was poorly organized, and he was emotional because he had just been reunited with the Star Trek cast for the first time in a long time. He took the time to listen to the fan's complaint, to respond, and to make the conversation public on his website. In his place, I doubt I would have been so accommodating.
But, really...celebrities are just people. Being famous doesn't make them special. It certainly doesn't make them better than ordinary folks, and believe me, some of them are a lot worse. They have all the same bodily functions as the rest of us, the same insecurities; they make the same kinds of mistakes. Many of them aren't particularly rich. And, most of all, they don't owe your their time and attention, and you don't owe them yours. Don't be a starf***er.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Too cute by half?
We do a fair bit of our grocery shopping at Kroger. We like the selection, the prices are reasonable, and it's a union shop, so I don't have to feel guilty about how they treat the people who work there. One of the nice perquisites of shopping there is that they offer a discount on gasoline as a loyalty reward.
When you buy gift cards at Kroger, they give you double credit for the gasoline rewards. (A couple of times a year, they give you quadruple credit.) So, a $25 gift card to The Olive Garden, to pick a place at random, nets you 50 fuel points. Cashing in 100 fuel points gets you 10 cents off per gallon.
One day I was in Kroger and noticed that they offer Southwest Airlines gift cards. I fly a lot, and since moving, or semi-moving, back to Little Rock, I find myself on Southwest fairly often. This morning, I was sitting in Phoenix, booking my flight back to Little Rock for tomorrow, and I had a flash of inspiration: Go buy gift cards at Kroger (they call it "Fry's" in Arizona), and use them to get home...plus get fuel points.
My fare was $541. (My client reimburses me for the flight.) So I bought five $100 gift cards (the largest denomination) and proceeded to buy my ticket online. I was congratulating myself on how clever I was, and thinking about the 1,000 fuel points I'd just scored, when I hit a problem.
Apparently Southwest will only allow you to use up to four methods of payment on one reservation. This is a problem because I needed to use five gift cards and pay the rest with my credit card. Sure enough, when I entered the fourth gift card, Southwest said, "Sorry, you'll have to remove a gift card to pay the balance with a credit card."
Undeterred, I called the reservations line. No dice there, either. "We use the same system you use for payments." (By the way, they answered in 4 seconds, and the agent was as helpful as he could be under the circumstances.)
Now, I'm not one to take no for an answer, so I devised a plan to make it work. Southwest doesn't charge any change or cancellation fees if you need to cancel a ticket. They will store your funds for up to a year for later use. So I looked around for a flight that was just over $300 (Phoenix to Fort Lauderdale worked nicely), and booked it using three gift cards and a credit card. I then immediately canceled it, and Southwest helpfully told me that it was retaining my funds for later use. I then went back to my original trip.
Success! I used the $300 credit, the two remaining gift cards, and my credit card to complete the reservation.
I guess sometimes things just work out. But I was sweating it all the way, and it may be a while before I try that again.
When you buy gift cards at Kroger, they give you double credit for the gasoline rewards. (A couple of times a year, they give you quadruple credit.) So, a $25 gift card to The Olive Garden, to pick a place at random, nets you 50 fuel points. Cashing in 100 fuel points gets you 10 cents off per gallon.
One day I was in Kroger and noticed that they offer Southwest Airlines gift cards. I fly a lot, and since moving, or semi-moving, back to Little Rock, I find myself on Southwest fairly often. This morning, I was sitting in Phoenix, booking my flight back to Little Rock for tomorrow, and I had a flash of inspiration: Go buy gift cards at Kroger (they call it "Fry's" in Arizona), and use them to get home...plus get fuel points.
My fare was $541. (My client reimburses me for the flight.) So I bought five $100 gift cards (the largest denomination) and proceeded to buy my ticket online. I was congratulating myself on how clever I was, and thinking about the 1,000 fuel points I'd just scored, when I hit a problem.
Apparently Southwest will only allow you to use up to four methods of payment on one reservation. This is a problem because I needed to use five gift cards and pay the rest with my credit card. Sure enough, when I entered the fourth gift card, Southwest said, "Sorry, you'll have to remove a gift card to pay the balance with a credit card."
Undeterred, I called the reservations line. No dice there, either. "We use the same system you use for payments." (By the way, they answered in 4 seconds, and the agent was as helpful as he could be under the circumstances.)
Now, I'm not one to take no for an answer, so I devised a plan to make it work. Southwest doesn't charge any change or cancellation fees if you need to cancel a ticket. They will store your funds for up to a year for later use. So I looked around for a flight that was just over $300 (Phoenix to Fort Lauderdale worked nicely), and booked it using three gift cards and a credit card. I then immediately canceled it, and Southwest helpfully told me that it was retaining my funds for later use. I then went back to my original trip.
Success! I used the $300 credit, the two remaining gift cards, and my credit card to complete the reservation.
I guess sometimes things just work out. But I was sweating it all the way, and it may be a while before I try that again.
Friday, April 26, 2013
The first what?
Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison famously wrote in 1998 that Bill Clinton was, "white skin notwithstanding...our first black President." Morrison was writing about the way Clinton was treated during his impeachment, not about his particularly being interested in black issues or helpful to blacks as president. That did not stop others from taking it that way, and it's probably not an entirely unfair characterization even if Morrison didn't view it that way.
About a year ago, Newsweek's cover depicted Barack Obama with a rainbow-colored halo and with the headline "The First Gay President." That was surprising to me, because we already had a gay president. His name was James Buchanan, and he was about as openly gay as you can be without actually being out. Jim Loewen had a great piece in Salon about this issue when the story came out.
Really, Obama can't be fairly described as "the first black president" on anything other than half of his actual race. Aside from some posturing with respect to the Trayvon Martin murder, he hasn't really been there for blacks on a substantive basis.
Don't get me wrong. Obama is a great symbol. I was happy to vote for him twice, although, if I'm being honest, it mattered less to me that he was black than that he's a Democrat. That mattered somewhat less than his vision for the future, and what mattered most of all was who his opponents were and what they stood for. The fact that he is black was a really nice bonus. But I would not have voted for Alan Keyes or J.C. Watts or Condoleezza Rice.
No, what Obama is, is the first black white president. Based on the issues that matter to him, based on his conduct in office, it's pretty clear who gets the sugar and who doesn't when Obama is dishing it out.
Consider for a moment, the following:
So, if we are assigning people to races based on where their priorities lie, that makes Barack Obama the first black white president. Which makes him not particularly special, in view of all of the other white presidents we've had.
For the record, that doesn't legitimize any of the more than 90% of criticism against him, which boils down to disliking him, or in most of the cases hating him, because he is black.
About a year ago, Newsweek's cover depicted Barack Obama with a rainbow-colored halo and with the headline "The First Gay President." That was surprising to me, because we already had a gay president. His name was James Buchanan, and he was about as openly gay as you can be without actually being out. Jim Loewen had a great piece in Salon about this issue when the story came out.
Really, Obama can't be fairly described as "the first black president" on anything other than half of his actual race. Aside from some posturing with respect to the Trayvon Martin murder, he hasn't really been there for blacks on a substantive basis.
Don't get me wrong. Obama is a great symbol. I was happy to vote for him twice, although, if I'm being honest, it mattered less to me that he was black than that he's a Democrat. That mattered somewhat less than his vision for the future, and what mattered most of all was who his opponents were and what they stood for. The fact that he is black was a really nice bonus. But I would not have voted for Alan Keyes or J.C. Watts or Condoleezza Rice.
No, what Obama is, is the first black white president. Based on the issues that matter to him, based on his conduct in office, it's pretty clear who gets the sugar and who doesn't when Obama is dishing it out.
Consider for a moment, the following:
- Little to no investigation or reform of Wall Street's destructive practices;
- Maintenance of an anti-terrorism program that gives little consideration to civil rights;
- No focus on jobs;
- Pushing for cuts to Social Security and Medicare;
- A universal health care program that is impossibly complex and was written by the health insurance industry, when simply expanding Medicare to cover all Americans would have cost a fraction of what the private-only program will cost; and
- Unending pursuit of a "grand bargain" with the Republicans on deficit reduction while the economy is sputtering.
So, if we are assigning people to races based on where their priorities lie, that makes Barack Obama the first black white president. Which makes him not particularly special, in view of all of the other white presidents we've had.
For the record, that doesn't legitimize any of the more than 90% of criticism against him, which boils down to disliking him, or in most of the cases hating him, because he is black.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Dealing with terrorist attacks
I've been thinking a bit about the terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon. There is a formula for dealing with terrorist attacks, and we need to be reminded from time to time about what it is, since our tendency these days is to engage in the Great American Freakout.
This is advice for ordinary people to follow.
Mourn the dead by allowing yourself to feel sorrow--briefly: days, not weeks--for the loss of life and for the lives that were directly changed.
If it is your job to do so, patch up the wounded.
If it is your job to do so, work to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Otherwise, move on. Refuse to be terrorized. Live in courage, not fear.
When there is a terrorist attack, don't fetishize it. If it didn't happen to you, it didn't happen to you. Your world didn't end. Don't behave as though it did.
These things may be hard to do. I didn't say it was easy. But it does work.
This is advice for ordinary people to follow.
Mourn the dead by allowing yourself to feel sorrow--briefly: days, not weeks--for the loss of life and for the lives that were directly changed.
If it is your job to do so, patch up the wounded.
If it is your job to do so, work to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Otherwise, move on. Refuse to be terrorized. Live in courage, not fear.
When there is a terrorist attack, don't fetishize it. If it didn't happen to you, it didn't happen to you. Your world didn't end. Don't behave as though it did.
These things may be hard to do. I didn't say it was easy. But it does work.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Bitter disappointment
I was an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama when he ran in 2008, and I am dead-on certain that electing Mitt Romney in 2012 would have produced an economic disaster for the nation in short order.
While I have not supported Obama on every point--I think he's done a poor job of getting us out of Afghanistan; his use of drone strikes against Americans is legally and morally questionable; his failure to close Guantanamo is inexplicable; and his negotiating style could be fairly characterized as spineless--I have remained hopeful that he was trying hard to negotiate difficult political waters and accomplish an agenda with a lot of genuinely crazy people in positions of power and arrayed against him personally.
But today I stand bitterly disappointed.
Social Security is one of the most successful government programs in history. Not just American history. History period. Even though most people don't understand what it is, they recognize its importance for our national economy as well as for millions of individuals who would be destitute in their old age without it.
Social Security is an insurance policy. The thing that Social Security insures against is living. Ordinarily, we think of living as a good thing. I know I do. But there is a cost of living--you need food, shelter, and clothing for a basic life, and some other things for a happy life, and all of those things cost money. We pay for these things through work. It is not just possible but also likely that you will outlive your ability to do useful work to support yourself.
Before Social Security, we paid for life after work in a combination of ways. One was through savings. Another was by relying on children and grandchildren to support you in old age. You might rely on charity. Or, in some places, there were such things as "poor houses," where elderly people were supported, usually by local governments.
If you got sick and only expensive medical care would save you, you usually died.
It doesn't take much to recognize that living beyond your ability to work can be a tough thing, especially if you have no children, or your children cannot afford to care for you, and you have little or no savings.
Social Security was devised to insure against that problem. By paying a small portion of your lifetime wages into a pool, you are guaranteed to have a minimum foundational income for life--an income that will never run out. Everyone pays in, and everyone draws out according to complicated formulas that take into account what you paid in, how old you are, and other factors.
Social Security is not a "retirement plan," and if all you have to cover your expenses in old age is Social Security, you're going to be living in poverty. But it is a minimum foundation, below which we will not allow elderly people to fall.
For nearly 80 years, the Democrats have been protecting Social Security and the Republicans have been complaining about it. Having managed to destroy the effectiveness of most labor unions, to disassemble the retirement pension system in favor of the 401(k) plan, and to starve the general fisc of the revenues necessary to pay for government, the Republicans have often looked to Social Security as a giant pot of money that could easily be siphoned off for investment on Wall Street, where it could be applied to the One True Purpose of today's GOP: Getting more money into the hands of the people who have the most already.
Social Security does not contribute to the deficit or the national debt; it is funded entirely through its own taxation, which would be adequate to fund full benefits for the foreseeable future also long as we have reasonable economic growth.
But Social Security does contribute to the general fund. Right now, Social Security takes in more money than it spends, and it will do so for at least another 20 years, when all of the Baby Boomers will be drawing benefits. That surplus is invested in government bonds. What that means is that the government borrows the excess from Social Security instead of borrowing it from other investors. Those bonds will eventually have to be paid off--but that would be true regardless of whom we borrowed the money from.
Now, back to my disappointment. Barack Obama has proposed a budget that is based in part on a change to the way in which Social Security benefits are calculated. As it stands now, SS benefits are adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index, which measures the whole market for goods, but which does not take into account the way in which price changes affect behavior. As a result, CPI tends to overestimate price inflation for the general public. Because seniors--especially those who rely mostly on SS income--spend a disproportionate amount of their income on food, shelter, and health care, which are involuntary purchases, and don't usually buy things like cars, large appliances, and electronics, which aren't, the current method of calculation more effectively measures the impact of inflation of that income. (In fact, if anything, for seniors CPI tends to underestimate inflation because prices tend to increase more rapidly for basic items than for luxuries, especially in hard economic times.)
Obama is proposing to switch to a method called "chained CPI," which does take into account how price changes affect behavior. The practical impact of such a change will be to reduce benefits by slowing cost-of-living adjustments to SS benefits by as much as 0.6% per year. That doesn't seem like much, but over the next 30 years, if benefits are cut by 0.6% per year, SS beneficiaries will lose 20% of the ground they would have gained if no change were made.
For the poorest SS beneficiaries, that's a brutal cut. And it's one that the Republicans have advocated for a long time, partially to make more borrowed money available to the government, but mostly because it undermines the effectiveness of the Social Security system and with it the confidence that the American people have in the program.
Which forces me to ask the question: If a Democrat is willing to do that, what's the point of electing Democrats?
While I have not supported Obama on every point--I think he's done a poor job of getting us out of Afghanistan; his use of drone strikes against Americans is legally and morally questionable; his failure to close Guantanamo is inexplicable; and his negotiating style could be fairly characterized as spineless--I have remained hopeful that he was trying hard to negotiate difficult political waters and accomplish an agenda with a lot of genuinely crazy people in positions of power and arrayed against him personally.
But today I stand bitterly disappointed.
Social Security is one of the most successful government programs in history. Not just American history. History period. Even though most people don't understand what it is, they recognize its importance for our national economy as well as for millions of individuals who would be destitute in their old age without it.
Social Security is an insurance policy. The thing that Social Security insures against is living. Ordinarily, we think of living as a good thing. I know I do. But there is a cost of living--you need food, shelter, and clothing for a basic life, and some other things for a happy life, and all of those things cost money. We pay for these things through work. It is not just possible but also likely that you will outlive your ability to do useful work to support yourself.
Before Social Security, we paid for life after work in a combination of ways. One was through savings. Another was by relying on children and grandchildren to support you in old age. You might rely on charity. Or, in some places, there were such things as "poor houses," where elderly people were supported, usually by local governments.
If you got sick and only expensive medical care would save you, you usually died.
It doesn't take much to recognize that living beyond your ability to work can be a tough thing, especially if you have no children, or your children cannot afford to care for you, and you have little or no savings.
Social Security was devised to insure against that problem. By paying a small portion of your lifetime wages into a pool, you are guaranteed to have a minimum foundational income for life--an income that will never run out. Everyone pays in, and everyone draws out according to complicated formulas that take into account what you paid in, how old you are, and other factors.
Social Security is not a "retirement plan," and if all you have to cover your expenses in old age is Social Security, you're going to be living in poverty. But it is a minimum foundation, below which we will not allow elderly people to fall.
For nearly 80 years, the Democrats have been protecting Social Security and the Republicans have been complaining about it. Having managed to destroy the effectiveness of most labor unions, to disassemble the retirement pension system in favor of the 401(k) plan, and to starve the general fisc of the revenues necessary to pay for government, the Republicans have often looked to Social Security as a giant pot of money that could easily be siphoned off for investment on Wall Street, where it could be applied to the One True Purpose of today's GOP: Getting more money into the hands of the people who have the most already.
Social Security does not contribute to the deficit or the national debt; it is funded entirely through its own taxation, which would be adequate to fund full benefits for the foreseeable future also long as we have reasonable economic growth.
But Social Security does contribute to the general fund. Right now, Social Security takes in more money than it spends, and it will do so for at least another 20 years, when all of the Baby Boomers will be drawing benefits. That surplus is invested in government bonds. What that means is that the government borrows the excess from Social Security instead of borrowing it from other investors. Those bonds will eventually have to be paid off--but that would be true regardless of whom we borrowed the money from.
Now, back to my disappointment. Barack Obama has proposed a budget that is based in part on a change to the way in which Social Security benefits are calculated. As it stands now, SS benefits are adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index, which measures the whole market for goods, but which does not take into account the way in which price changes affect behavior. As a result, CPI tends to overestimate price inflation for the general public. Because seniors--especially those who rely mostly on SS income--spend a disproportionate amount of their income on food, shelter, and health care, which are involuntary purchases, and don't usually buy things like cars, large appliances, and electronics, which aren't, the current method of calculation more effectively measures the impact of inflation of that income. (In fact, if anything, for seniors CPI tends to underestimate inflation because prices tend to increase more rapidly for basic items than for luxuries, especially in hard economic times.)
Obama is proposing to switch to a method called "chained CPI," which does take into account how price changes affect behavior. The practical impact of such a change will be to reduce benefits by slowing cost-of-living adjustments to SS benefits by as much as 0.6% per year. That doesn't seem like much, but over the next 30 years, if benefits are cut by 0.6% per year, SS beneficiaries will lose 20% of the ground they would have gained if no change were made.
For the poorest SS beneficiaries, that's a brutal cut. And it's one that the Republicans have advocated for a long time, partially to make more borrowed money available to the government, but mostly because it undermines the effectiveness of the Social Security system and with it the confidence that the American people have in the program.
Which forces me to ask the question: If a Democrat is willing to do that, what's the point of electing Democrats?
Thursday, April 4, 2013
The trouble with bullies
The trouble with bullies is that the only effective approach to them requires a lot of courage and personal risk.
This is not an essay about the schoolyard, which is what I think of when I hear the term "bully." Bullying, especially the schoolyard variety, has gotten a lot of negative media coverage lately. But today's topic is about bullying of another sort.
I will have more to say about the Arkansas General Assembly over the next few weeks, but I want to introduce the theme I'm developing by reference to what has been going on in that legislative body lately. The North Carolina General Assembly decided recently to get in on the fun, also.
A bully uses his apparent power to impose his will on the comparatively and apparently powerless.
The levers of government, from the lowliest homeowners' association board to the highest court in the land, are the very essence of power. The State--the Government--has the apparent power to control its citizens' lives. Long ago, we determined that a just government derives its power from the consent of the governed; that proper governments are instituted for the purpose of mediating our social relations to maximize, or at least optimize, our personal freedom; and that the best form of government to institute is a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Lately, with the Republican takeover of the Arkansas General Assembly--and of the same body in North Carolina--we have seen a sea change in those bodies' focus. The Republicans who govern us are bent on imposing their particular, and perhaps peculiar, religious views upon us, and on conforming the law to their own prejudices. There have been numerous bills relating to abortion, all of them focused on making legal abortions more difficult to obtain, most of them on spurious grounds, and all of them seeking, in name, to solve some other "problem," consequences be damned.
Perhaps the most egregious of these is the movement to de-fund Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider. There is no getting around that. But abortions constitute only 3% of what that organization does and 0% of what the government funds that flow to it cover.
Planned Parenthood is primarily focused on delivering health care to women, regardless of ability to pay. The Arkansas legislature, like others before it, is so hell-bent on stopping abortion by any means necessary (other than education about birth control; we can't have that), all in the name of protecting the unborn, that it is willing to consign thousands of already-born Arkansas women to unnecessary, life-altering or -threatening medical conditions, handicaps, even premature death, all from causes that are wholly unrelated to abortion. For what purpose? Because they don't like that Planned Parenthood also occasionally provides a legal procedure to some of those women, all of whom want it and all of whom have run the gamut of a number of unnecessary "precautions" to make certain they are really sure they want to terminate their pregnancies.
I haven't seen it yet, but the "mandated rape" provision--the mandated trans-vaginal ultrasound, which requires as a precondition for an abortion that the provider forcibly insert a wand through the woman's vagina and cervix and into her uterus for the purpose of detecting the presence of the fetus--is sure to make an appearance soon if it has not already. I call it mandated rape because one definition of rape is the insertion of an object into a woman's vagina without her consent.
The legislators' motivation to pass these bills is open and obvious: They believe that God is telling them to pass these laws. That makes them theocrats.
Abortion is hardly their only focus. A new bill would mandate that each public school require a one-minute silent period during the school day for "reflection, prayer, or other silent activity." The reality is that students who wish to pray have ample opportunities throughout the school day to do so. The purpose of this bill is to give students an excuse to be seen praying and--knowing as we all do the propensities of children as well as the religious sensibilities of the Arkansas public--to bully those who choose to engage in "another silent activity."
In North Carolina, a move is afoot to declare the ability of the state government and creatures of the state government (cities, towns, and counties) to declare an officially sanctioned religion. Citing the Tenth Amendment, the sponsors of this bill claim that the Constitution's bar on Establishment applies only to Congress, not to the States. Apparently they forgot about the Fourteenth Amendment, which caused the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights to be applied to the States.
These people are bullies. They are using, or rather abusing, their power to impose their views and mores on others. They are using the government as an instrument of restricting freedoms rather than guarding them. It is a perversion of power of the highest order. It is no less than a treason against our way of life.
We Americans are diverse in almost every way you can think of. We are a plural society in matters of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, history, immigration status, and many others. What unites us are our common beliefs in equality before the law, in personal freedom, in deliberative action, in majority rule tempered by respect for minority rights, and in the due process of law as the highest expression of the fundamental fairness of a democratic state. Those things are stronger than any racial or ethnic difference, or religious dispute, or national origin, or any other point that divides us.
What those who control the Arkansas legislature have forgotten is that the government belongs to all of us, and that they are sent to do their jobs for all their constituents, not for the purpose of tormenting disfavored minorities or imposing their narrow view of what God wants upon those who do not share their...enlightenment. We have problems that affect all of us--problems that are screaming for attention. Joblessness, poorly performing schools, crumbling infrastructure, lack of educational opportunities, lack of access to quality healthcare--all of these things are being systematically ignored in favor of the pet issues of people who spend all of their time thinking about how horribly immoral everyone else is acting.
When a bully takes your lunch money, he's not worried about whether you have to go hungry or not. He's only thinking about how he'll spend that money he didn't earn.
It's clear that the GOP-led Arkansas General Assembly doesn't care how many of their constituents go hungry, or need medical care, or can't get clean drinking water, or drop out of school, or can't read or use a computer, as long as those legislators can get down on their knees and pray to their God about how wonderfully they have served Him by making more abortions illegal.
They are bullies. Fighting them will take courage and personal risk. Let's start now.
This is not an essay about the schoolyard, which is what I think of when I hear the term "bully." Bullying, especially the schoolyard variety, has gotten a lot of negative media coverage lately. But today's topic is about bullying of another sort.
I will have more to say about the Arkansas General Assembly over the next few weeks, but I want to introduce the theme I'm developing by reference to what has been going on in that legislative body lately. The North Carolina General Assembly decided recently to get in on the fun, also.
A bully uses his apparent power to impose his will on the comparatively and apparently powerless.
The levers of government, from the lowliest homeowners' association board to the highest court in the land, are the very essence of power. The State--the Government--has the apparent power to control its citizens' lives. Long ago, we determined that a just government derives its power from the consent of the governed; that proper governments are instituted for the purpose of mediating our social relations to maximize, or at least optimize, our personal freedom; and that the best form of government to institute is a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Lately, with the Republican takeover of the Arkansas General Assembly--and of the same body in North Carolina--we have seen a sea change in those bodies' focus. The Republicans who govern us are bent on imposing their particular, and perhaps peculiar, religious views upon us, and on conforming the law to their own prejudices. There have been numerous bills relating to abortion, all of them focused on making legal abortions more difficult to obtain, most of them on spurious grounds, and all of them seeking, in name, to solve some other "problem," consequences be damned.
Perhaps the most egregious of these is the movement to de-fund Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider. There is no getting around that. But abortions constitute only 3% of what that organization does and 0% of what the government funds that flow to it cover.
Planned Parenthood is primarily focused on delivering health care to women, regardless of ability to pay. The Arkansas legislature, like others before it, is so hell-bent on stopping abortion by any means necessary (other than education about birth control; we can't have that), all in the name of protecting the unborn, that it is willing to consign thousands of already-born Arkansas women to unnecessary, life-altering or -threatening medical conditions, handicaps, even premature death, all from causes that are wholly unrelated to abortion. For what purpose? Because they don't like that Planned Parenthood also occasionally provides a legal procedure to some of those women, all of whom want it and all of whom have run the gamut of a number of unnecessary "precautions" to make certain they are really sure they want to terminate their pregnancies.
I haven't seen it yet, but the "mandated rape" provision--the mandated trans-vaginal ultrasound, which requires as a precondition for an abortion that the provider forcibly insert a wand through the woman's vagina and cervix and into her uterus for the purpose of detecting the presence of the fetus--is sure to make an appearance soon if it has not already. I call it mandated rape because one definition of rape is the insertion of an object into a woman's vagina without her consent.
The legislators' motivation to pass these bills is open and obvious: They believe that God is telling them to pass these laws. That makes them theocrats.
Abortion is hardly their only focus. A new bill would mandate that each public school require a one-minute silent period during the school day for "reflection, prayer, or other silent activity." The reality is that students who wish to pray have ample opportunities throughout the school day to do so. The purpose of this bill is to give students an excuse to be seen praying and--knowing as we all do the propensities of children as well as the religious sensibilities of the Arkansas public--to bully those who choose to engage in "another silent activity."
In North Carolina, a move is afoot to declare the ability of the state government and creatures of the state government (cities, towns, and counties) to declare an officially sanctioned religion. Citing the Tenth Amendment, the sponsors of this bill claim that the Constitution's bar on Establishment applies only to Congress, not to the States. Apparently they forgot about the Fourteenth Amendment, which caused the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights to be applied to the States.
These people are bullies. They are using, or rather abusing, their power to impose their views and mores on others. They are using the government as an instrument of restricting freedoms rather than guarding them. It is a perversion of power of the highest order. It is no less than a treason against our way of life.
We Americans are diverse in almost every way you can think of. We are a plural society in matters of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, history, immigration status, and many others. What unites us are our common beliefs in equality before the law, in personal freedom, in deliberative action, in majority rule tempered by respect for minority rights, and in the due process of law as the highest expression of the fundamental fairness of a democratic state. Those things are stronger than any racial or ethnic difference, or religious dispute, or national origin, or any other point that divides us.
What those who control the Arkansas legislature have forgotten is that the government belongs to all of us, and that they are sent to do their jobs for all their constituents, not for the purpose of tormenting disfavored minorities or imposing their narrow view of what God wants upon those who do not share their...enlightenment. We have problems that affect all of us--problems that are screaming for attention. Joblessness, poorly performing schools, crumbling infrastructure, lack of educational opportunities, lack of access to quality healthcare--all of these things are being systematically ignored in favor of the pet issues of people who spend all of their time thinking about how horribly immoral everyone else is acting.
When a bully takes your lunch money, he's not worried about whether you have to go hungry or not. He's only thinking about how he'll spend that money he didn't earn.
It's clear that the GOP-led Arkansas General Assembly doesn't care how many of their constituents go hungry, or need medical care, or can't get clean drinking water, or drop out of school, or can't read or use a computer, as long as those legislators can get down on their knees and pray to their God about how wonderfully they have served Him by making more abortions illegal.
They are bullies. Fighting them will take courage and personal risk. Let's start now.
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