It’s not always the religion but it’s always the religious

There are several things that have me thinking again about the religious and religion. I’m thinking that I had a ‘My Name is Earl” experience yesterday because karma certainly waved a lot of flags at me.

First, the billboard that you see above is one of several being posted around New Orleans by an atheist organization. They’re easy to spot and quite visually arresting. I’m certain this thread will evoke the meme of “atheist proselytizing” which is just about the most ridiculous impossibility I’ve ever heard. But, bring it on.

Second, the deliberate torching of a mosque site in Tennessee and the seemingly complete oblivion of some people that frequent this blog to the issue of religious freedom. I’m getting tired of being accused–unjustly– of calling people bigots in blog threads just because I don’t think you ask people to defer their constitutional rights based on some one’s feelings. (Also, when you repeat bigoted memes, people here will call you out on it without necessarily calling you a bigot.) Thanks for the links that compare us to Obots!! Makes me really glad I put in all that time here to give us all a place to civilly discuss issues.

Then there is this tidbit. I found out that a christian group is insisting on using the Confluence as their new website name despite BostonBoomer and I asking them to reconsider. (Here’s the tweet I intercepted through some kind of karma: “Excited about the launch of the Newfrontiers USA blog, the Confluence. Details to follow soon.” Here’s the info on the person tweeting: Name Seth Hoffman, Location Portsmouth, NH, Web http://www.sethho…)

Karma wasn’t done with me yet, however, as it’s Southern Decadence here. For those of you who don’t know about our unique Labor Day celebration, you can find out more here. Let’s just say it’s one of the biggest celebrations of gayness in the country and one of my favorite things to do each year. The usual group of cross dragging, bull horn bearing bullies are here shouting horrible things to every one on Bourbon Street and the police are basically saying it’s a free speech thing. They’re just making sure the bull horns don’t go louder than the noise ordinances allow. You can go to the WDSU site and watch them ooze and shout hatred if you’d like.

“I’m coming out of the closet New Orleans,” said Bible Believer member Ruban Israel. “I’m in love with Jesus Christ, and his blood is not HIV positive. They have the freedom to be anything they want to. All we ask is for the same freedom to stand here and tell them they are an abomination before God.”

Some people said they find their message offensive and think action by the city is long overdue.

Then Karma took me to another channel where the discussion was all about Stephen Hawking and his new book. Hawking has basically said that a Creator is a redundancy. The universe is perfectly capable of self-creation; a very Buddhist notion, I might add.

God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

The final thing Karma threw at me was a nearly year old issue of the Shambala Sun I found while cleaning. As an atheist with a Buddhist practice, I subscribe to the magazine. It was the copy with an interview with Huston Smith. He’s the author of the widely acclaimed work ‘The World’s Religions: Our Greatest Traditions’ published in 1958. Smith is a devout Christian. He is, however, responsible for helping the west understand the ‘other religions’ of the world. He devoted ten years each to not only learning about but practicing Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. His huge volume has been split into smaller books and I urge any of you with issues with Islam to read his book. So here’s what he says about Islam in the SS interview and please, remember this man is a Christian who practiced this religion for 10 years.

“The world overflows with glorious expressions of spirituality,” Schuon told Smith when they met, [dkat note: Frithjof Schuon is a Swiss author who studies and writes about the world’s religious]”but if you want to be in my fraternity, my tariqa, I urge you to become a Muslim.” The World’s Religions presented Islam in an inviting way, but Smith had admitted that its holy book seemed impentrable, writing, “No one has ever curled up on a rainy weekend to read the Koran.” But once he joined Schuon’s tariqa, he came to hear whate he now calls the Qur’an with new ears, understanding the sublime poetry that adherents say is its gift. Smith became a sufi, attracted to prayng with the body through dance.

Smith emphasizes that his embrace of Islam was not limited to Sufism. “Ecstasy is only one mood, and Sufism is only one mode of Islam, and neither exhausted its appeal for me”, he recalls. To the extent possible he followed the five pillars of Islam, answering the call to prayer five times daily for twenty years. It pains him to day, he says, to see the Islam he discovered through spirituality obscured by ideology. For him, the daily greeting of the Islamic world, As-saamu alakum, says it all: “Peace be upon you.”

Which leads me back to my run in with Karma yesterday. There are many things in religion that I find quite troubling. Most of the ‘holy books’ of religions were written in a time of barbarism and they certainly reflect that. I remember first reading about the great religions in my fifth grade social studies class and thinking that Buddhism was the only one that seemed to make sense to me. I guess it’s not a surprise that my inner spiritual growth route took that flavor.

I hate organized religion and the religious but I’m a highly self reflective and spiritual person and I always have been. I see them all as a struggle of primitive man trying to explain things that he does not understand on the surface. Underneath the surface is the organized religion part which has turned believers into irksome missionaries and bomb wielding terrorists and religious institutions into witch burners, inquisitors, and usurper of native traditions.

I’ve had terrible experiences with Christians. My first was being held down on bleachers by two senior boys in high school, splayed cross-like and told that I need to develop Christian humility and really understand Christ. The next appalling event was the stalking of my children and the treatment of me when I ran for statewide office by the local Catholic Churches and big barn Evangelical and Baptist churches.

While Seth Hoffman, true believer (per his twitter profile: husband, father, Jesus follower, coffee addict, music lover, pug owner) , thinks it’s not a bad idea for people to do a google and possibly come up with the wrong site, I shudder at the thought of having hysterical Christians over here harassing us for not finding homosexuality an abomination, for thinking our pro choice stance means we support baby killing, and frankly, trying to tell those of us that are not believers or embrace other religions that we’re going to hell. You can google the organization. They are charismatic and they are missionaries. (Believe me, I miss my French Quarter balcony some times where I used to emphatically water the flowers at the kinds of people that show up for Mardi Gras and Southern Decadence ready to damn us all to hell and have us embrace their beliefs.)

But, is this the religion or a subsect of the religious that simply embrace religion like they would crack, a bottle of Vodka, or anything they can abuse to make their lives less miserable and their selves less inward looking?

There are crackpots in every religion. It truly makes me want to avoid any one I know that’s actively involved with an organized religion. But just as most Presbyterians and Episcopalians are probably not out there shouting ‘whore’ at any woman walking Bourbon street right now and bombing family planning clinics, there are also Muslims that are not contemplating turning the US into an Islamic Republic through terrorism. There are parts of every holy book that are beautiful and inspiring. There are also parts that are horrifying and are used in horrifying ways. The deal is that we embrace a secular society that tolerates religious expression. All of them. I’m appalled that we haven’t internalized that yet. I’m not defending any of them. I’m defending each person’s right to practice them. I’d rather have an Episcopalian church as a neighbor or a Sufi Mosque than whatever it is Ruban Israel subscribes to but it’s not my right to tell him where he can do his thing. It is my right, however, to say that his beliefs offend me to no end. His adaptation of religion isn’t the only religion that offends me. If I could chose my neighbors, I’d take Steven Hawking.

Steven Hoffman and New Frontiers USA appear to have moved into the neighborhood. (Evidently, they aren’t tolerant of our ‘sensitivities’ and appeal. Do I have to announce my snark font here?) We’re just going to have to see what kind of neighbors they turn out to be.

Spirituality should free us. Not enslave us or cause us to enslave others. Perhaps that’s the karmic lesson I learned on the journey yesterday that started with that Butterfly McQueen ad that you see above.

Clueless in the District

Obama’s and his economic team of two Wall Street insiders are still looking for growth in all the wrong places. I don’t know why they just don’t switch parties and become Republicans and make it official. Join me on a magical misery tour laced with koolaid overdose!!!

From The Hill: Obama Stands by ‘Recovery Summer’

For some reason, repeating it enough times some times make people believe it. Problem is that there has to be a grain of truth in the meme and unless you’re part of the bonus class, you’re not seeing a grain of anything.

President Obama on Friday said he has no regrets about describing the last three months as the “Recovery Summer.”

“I don’t regret the notion that we are moving forward because of the steps that we have taken,” Obama said in response to a question after he offered comments on the latest unemployment figures.

The administration described the summer of 2010 as “recovery summer” because a large amount of the 2009 stimulus package was being spent over the summer. But job growth slowed dramatically over the summer amid concerns the economy was moving into a double-dip recession, and Republicans have made fun of the moniker.

The president’s remarks came after the Labor Department released jobs data showing unemployment rising from 9.5 to 9.6 percent. The private sector created 67,000 jobs, but overall the economy lost 54,000 jobs.

And the solution to all this grief? Republican-style trickle up economics.

From WaPo: ‘White House considers pre-midterm package of business tax breaks to spur hiring’ (h/t to BostonBoomer)

With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks – potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars – to spur hiring and combat Republican charges that Democratic tax policies hurt small businesses, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.

Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday and a permanent extension of the now-expired research-and-development tax credit, which rewards companies that conduct research into new technologies within the United States.

Administration officials have struggled to develop new economic policies and an effective message to blunt expected Republican gains in Congress and defuse complaints from Democrats that President Obama is fumbling the issue most important to voters. Following Obama’s vacation and focus on foreign policy in recent weeks, White House advisers have arranged a series of economic events for the president next week, including two trips to swing states and a news conference.

I’ve got issues with this strategy from all kinds of angles. First, why is it that the answer to every problem is trips, news conferences and more speeches? Surely, they can see from the polls by now that people don’t buy these PR trips and it just makes Obama look like he’s avoiding the Oval Office and actual work.

Second, why is it always about combating “Republican charges” instead of putting forward a cogent Democratic plan? They’ve had the majority for nearly two years and the Dems in congress still can’t seem to get a real democratic set of laws passed. Is it because they really don’t want to accomplish things because they’re all blue dawgs (aka pseudo democrats) who are bought by the corporate American hands that fund them?

Third, how many times do economists have to tell this administration that giving tax breaks to businesses aren’t the answer? Tax breaks on what income and revenues? The businesses that have the income right now don’t need the tax breaks. For the most part, they’re already the recipients of bailout largess. Most small businesses are not seeing the kinds of demand that this will help at all. It’s a demand problem. They need customers. No one is going to hire or expand if they don’t think they’re going to get ongoing business. This is already evident in the automobile industry where the demand was front loaded into the cash for clunkers program last year, and now, there is no one coming into the show floor. No one wants to commit to buying something when the people around you are losing their jobs. Look around you. The people losing their jobs are your kids teachers and your neighborhood firefighters and police. Does this make you want to go out and by a new refrigerator?

Things are so upside down that Matthew Yglesias is calling these stupid tax programs “New Jobs Program”.

How stupid do they think we all are?

Better question, who really thinks this plan is going to work and how stupid are they?

Morning Again in America (for Bankers and CEOs)

The current bout of unemployment is so stubborn that there’s now talk of tax cuts coming from the Obama administration even though Obama has made it clear that the debt and the deficit are high on his radar. Too bad they won’t help the people without jobs and the businesses without customers.

There’s also pressure on the Federal Reserve to do something, anything. If you know any thing about money creation, you know that bank lending is the critical channel for transmitting monetary policy into the real sector where the GDP growth resides. No bank lending, impotent monetary policy. It’s very simple.

The recession of the 1980s (Reagan’s first term) was somewhat created by high interest rates. Bringing interest rates down reinvigorated the economy. Well, that and Reagan’s war time spending in a period of relative peace which is basically highly stimulative fiscal policy. Reagan was a huge deficit spender and a lot of it went to rebuilding the Navy in American ship yards. So, that started the “morning in America” phenomenon.

This time things are different; especially  if you’re just a little  guy or the small business owner on Main street. It’s morning again in America for a the privileged but not for you.

The Institute for Policy Studies has just released its 17th annual executive survey on executive pay. The subheading is pretty telling and basically is summed up “how CEOs laid off thousands while raking in millions”. This recovery and the stimulus package and corporate bailouts have done very well by the nation’s already abfab rich.

Corporate executives, in reality, are not suffering at all. Their pay, to be sure, dipped on average in 2009 from 2008 levels, just as their pay in 2008, the first Great Recession year, dipped somewhat from 2007. But executive pay overall remains far above inflationadjusted levels of years past. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.

American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s. Back in those years, precious few top executives made over 30 times what their workers made. In 2009, we calculate in the 17th annual Executive Excess, CEOs of major U.S. corporations averaged 263 times the average compensation of American workers. CEOs are clearly not hurting.

But they are, as we detail in these pages, causing others to needlessly hurt — by cutting jobs to feather their own already comfortable executive nests. In 2009, the CEOs who slashed their payrolls the deepest took home 42 percent more compensation than the year’s chief executive pay average for S&P 500 companies. Most careful analysts of the high-finance meltdown that ushered in the Great Recession have concluded that excessive executive compensation played a prime causal role. Outrageously high rewards gave executives an incentive to behave outrageously, to take the sorts of reckless risks that would eventually endanger our entire economy.

I thought I’d add something here just for Riverdaughter since we know there’s massive layoffs in her industry from CNN.

“I think that really shows a really perverse incentive system in this country,” said Sarah Anderson, lead author of the Institute for Policy Studies’ 17th Annual Executive Compensation Survey. “You are handsomely rewarded for slashing jobs in the middle of the worst economic crisis in 80 years,” she said.

It did for Fred Hassan of Schering-Plough, the man the report dubbed last year’s “Golden Parachuter.” Hassan was the highest paid layoff leader, earning $50 million in 2009 while his firm merged with Merck and cut 16,000 workers.

According to Anderson, “they’re prioritizing CEO pay at the welfare of their workers”.

So how do they get away with it? Anderson said you have to look at the make-up of many companies’ executive boards. She said they’re often made up of CEOs and high level executives from other companies “who really don’t want to question this ridiculous pay system we have in this country that continues to pay people these absurd amounts of money when they’re really not performing well for their company or the overall economy.”

Another disconcerting finding of the report: 72 percent of layoff-leading firms announced mass layoffs while delivering positive earnings reports. Anderson explained layoffs are really driven by efforts “to boost short-term profits even higher and also just to continue to have such high CEO pay levels.” She said these mass cuts are often bad for business over the long-term because they impact worker morale, which can lead to lower productivity. She said they also result in additional costs related to hiring and training new workers down the road

Here’s a link to Market Place from NPR where you can listen to an interview with one of the authors.

Yeah, let’s give them more tax breaks to stimulate the economy. Great idea Obama economic team! No wonder Christie Romer bailed.

Who do you believe?

From my Tweetstream:

Answer A: CNN and Barack Obama

cnnbrk

Obama: New levee system in NOLA to be finished in 2011

or Answer B:  Mac Clelland from Mojo (on the ground here) and the Army Corps of engineers

MacMcClelland

Obama promises levees will be done next year. Army Corps engineer working on them told me the other day: no way.

I’m going with answer B frankly.

Rising Tide 5: There’s still oil in the Gulf and devastation in the Lower 9

Good Morning from The Howling Wolf in New Orleans on this fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I’m live blogging from Rising Tide 5: A Conference on the Future of New Orleans. I’m sitting among the blogging community of New Orleans (and people who love New Orleans) who are readying themselves with coffees and good stuff for several panels today to discuss what’s going on and how we can make things better. The first panel is on public safety. The politics panel comes after lunch. We’re also going to have a panel to discuss the HBO series Treme. I’m sitting in front of an avid Treme Blogger (watchingtreme from Seattle) but have to admit I haven’t been able to face watching the series since I continue to live the entire ordeal IRL. Another panel will talk about environmental issues.

The key note speaker will be Mojo’s Mac McClelland. She’s been avidly blogging about BP recently and I’m assuming we’re going to hear her stories of being chased off the story by local officials. She also covered the direct aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I’m just going to be posting to this thread all day. I’ll let you know which panel is up and taking questions if you want me to ask any one anything. Since you know the topics, just lemme know if something’s on your mind.

update: you can listen to Mac McClelland’s speech here. (f bomb s bomb warnings) worth listening to her stories on BP.

Well, I’ve settled back into my spot here after having talked to a buncha  people.  Harry Shearer is here and you can undoubtedly read his take on HuffPo later.  Mac is great. There’s also some one here from Bloomberg so there’s some media around the place with an actual audience.

I’m looking forward to the Political panel although so far it’s all been very informative. Activism isn’t dead here.   I voted before I came.  Keep your fingers crossed for Charlie Melancon and for Juan LaFonta.  If I’m still standing, I’m heading to victory celebrations post conference.

Again, the consensus here is that Bobby Jindal is the worst thing to happen to New Orleans and Louisiana which is great to hear!!!  I’m glad some folks know how he is devastating higher education here as well as all public health facilities.  I just hope some of these folks can have some impact in their communities so we can get rid of him shortly.  Unfortunately, he wants to run for president so his plans to re-establish plantations may go national.

So, I’ll be here for a bit.  After the political panel there will be a discussion of the levee system.  The last panel is over the HBO series Treme.

Laissez les activism roulez!!!

(Note: this post compiled from two posts that I did for TC: live blogging and questions from TC people here: http://wp.me/paJiI-b5r and here http://wp.me/paJiI-b5E)