Justice, Equality, and Poverty According To Jesus

I was having a discussion with friends the other night about a book we had read, and a quote from the Bible came up that troubled me greatly - I wanted to share my thoughts on this.

The quote was one that is used often, where Jesus is depicted as saying "The poor will be with you always", usually used in the context of defending the notion of inequality with regard to distribution of resources. As if to say, "Hey, Jesus said it himself - the poor will always be with us - so it is OK to maintain policies that allow inequity between rich and poor."

There are many quotes from Scripture that are taken out of context (in my opinion) and used to justify the actions that we want to continue to take. In my opinion, this is one that is most offensive.

The story appears in 3 of the Gospels. They are as follows: (NIV)

Mathew: Ch26: v11

⁶While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, ⁷a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.

⁸When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. "Why this waste?" they asked. ⁹"This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor."

¹⁰Aware of this, Jesus said to them, "Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ¹¹The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. ¹²When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. ¹³I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."

John: Ch12, v5

¹Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. ²Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. ³Then Mary took about a pint^[a] of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

⁴But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, ⁵"Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages.^[b]" ⁶He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

⁷"Leave her alone," Jesus replied. " It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. ⁸You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me."

Mark: Ch14: v7

³While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

⁴Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of perfume? ⁵It could have been sold for more than a year's wages^[a] and the money given to the poor." And they rebuked her harshly.

⁶"Leave her alone," said Jesus. "Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ⁷The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. ⁸She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. ⁹I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."

The Greek interlinear that I have for the verse in Mark translates exactly as follows for the verse in question. “For always the poor you have with yourselves and when you wish you are able for them to do good, but me not always do you have”

The essence of the story is that a woman does something nice for Jesus, and she is criticized by the disciples for using funds unwisely. Jesus’ rebuke is consistently aimed at the criticism of this woman, and within that criticism is the implication that this woman’s kindness should not be reduced because there are other kindnesses not yet given. Jesus even says of the poor in one of the versions that “you can help them any time you want”. Note that he is not suggesting in any way that the poor should not be helped.

Every action within the ministry of Jesus seemed aimed at trying to reduce inequity, and find ways to “bring the poor to the table”. In this passage, I see a Jesus who is trying to help his disciples see a potential pitfall of the ministry of bringing greater justice that he has put them on. He is, after all, only a couple of days away from his execution at this point in his ministry, and he needs to put the finishing touches on what he has taught to those closest to him. In modern, western style bullets, here is how I read the message:

• Of course we are here to help the poor, and bring those who are outcast into the fold of the Kingdom of God – we should be doing this every day.
• In your zeal to “do good”, be careful that you don’t end up at each other’s throats in criticism over the best way to do good – this is the easiest way for evil to enter into your midst.
• Apply your goodness and kindness to the problem right in front of you, and apply it with zeal and gusto.
• Do not allow your attention to be taken from the problem that has been given to you and is right in front of you. This is hard to avoid, as our natural tendency is to be anxious about a distant problem, as this is sometimes easier than applying ourselves to the problem at hand. This is also an easy way for evil to make your hands idle.
• God will supply the problems and challenges that you need in your life to move forward – do not question this by trying to focus on other problems – solve what you have in front of you.

Now I don’t know how closely my reading of this message is to what Jesus meant when this event took place. We are just guessing and accepting really that the event even took place like this. However, this message is easy to read from the event, it is consistent with the rest of the teaching of Jesus, and it is consistent with what you would expect within the time-plane that the event was to have taken within, (days before his execution).

This message is dramatically different than a message that even begins to imply that Jesus was “OK” with the notion that there should be large discrepancies between the poor and the rich in the world, and that we should not try to make the world more just and equitable place.

Don’t fret and be anxious over the problems that are enduring and complex. Try to solve them, of course, but don’t think that there is a quick fix. Focus each day on the problems that are on your plate, and work to make the world a more just and equitable place. Actions are much more effective than anxieties.

Who Dishonors Our Vets - Sheehan or Bush?

I read a piece slamming Cindy Sheehan for what she is doing. I am always glad to hear from those who agree or disagree with me, provided there is some degree of sense of logic to what they write. In this case, I wasn’t sure that I could understand the logic, and could not see much sense in what was written.

The essence of the piece seemed to be that women (mothers especially) should be rooting for those women who live in parts of the world where their sons are brainwashed into doing horrible things like suicide bombings, and the women had to stand by powerlessly as this happened. The piece, (of course) attacked this woman by stating that he husband (and others in her family) did not agree with her.

Unless I am mistaken, this is exactly what Ms. Sheehan is doing. And by stating that her husband doesn’t agree with her, the author is displaying exactly the sort of misogynistic arrogance that makes Ms. Sheehan’s stance so noteworthy.

This woman raised a fine young man. An Eagle Scout as I understand, with many other honors to his name. She is proud of her son, as well as her family’s long history of distinguished service to this country. Her son was apparently proud to sign up, and who knows – she may have been proud to see him carry on a family tradition. At any rate, he believed that he was honorably serving the society and culture that raised him.

Now that he is dead, she simply wants to know if he was. The web of lies that took us to war is what dishonors the men and women who are dying there, not those who question those lies. She has the courage to question those lies, and President Bush obviously doesn’t have the courage to answer her question.

Our enemies today use lies and coercion to enroll impressionable young men into their ranks, and they strap suicide bombs on these young men and tell them of the great honor that it will be to die for their country. And the mothers have to sit by and watch – powerless to say anything – powerless to do anything. We are right to criticize this effort. We are right to see the disgrace and evil in this.

And in our country, when we have leaders who lie to us and deceive us to take us to war, are not their lies as disgraceful as those of our enemies? The only difference is that in our country, the mothers of those young men still have the right to stand up and question these leaders. We may not have the right to go to a “town hall” meeting that we pay for as taxpayers unless we are Republican supporters of the President, we may be losing our civil rights at an alarming rate, but for now, a mother still has the right to question leaders who she thinks may have lied to her.

If these leaders were men of courage and honor, they would sit with her and answer her questions – and the questions of the country. If they are cowards and scoundrels, they will attack this woman, and try to paint her as unpatriotic, and say that her opinion doesn’t really count, since her husband doesn’t agree with her.

Thanks G-d for those millions of true American patriots who have given their life and blood to assure this woman’s right to question openly. Thank G-d for the hundreds of thousands who serve today to protect that right. Shame on this President and this administration for dishonoring their sacrifice with their lies and deceit, their cowardly attacking of the woman who raised a soldier who died for their cause, their shameful profiteering from the lives of Americans.

More about "facts"

There really isn’t much disagreement about the facts surrrounding the Katrina response, though some in the media would like us to believe that there is. By creating the myth that we can’t agree on the facts, the media is able to allow whatever side that they support to hide from the facts.

On this Katrina discussion, the issue (I believe) that many people are raising can be boiled down to a couple of key points. These, by the way, are perspectives not facts.

1. The response of the federal government to the disaster was not adequate – perhaps even shameful – especially in light of the fact that we have been spending billions on “homeland security” since 9/11, and one would hope that this would have allowed us to be better prepared for disasters.
2. The response of the President, in particular, is shameful. He continued to vacation and politic for days after the hurricane hit, rather than show a sense of urgency to provide aid to the region.
3. Especially in light of the response of the President and the federal government to the hurricane in Florida that resulted in much less damage and loss of life, this appears to be a case of doling out the federal help to those who the President likes.
4. The political appointees that the President has put in charge of important entities like FEMA show him to be far more concerned with rewarding political friends than with serving the people of this nation – especially when compared to previous administrations.

The timeline that MoveOn.org sent out seems to be pretty factual, according to the research that I am able to do. Nothing that I see in this timetable conflicts with anything that Betty also reported that she had heard on cable news.

Regarding the Red Cross reference that Betty saw on the news, it appears that the Red Cross is working directly with local authorities and the National Guard to set up in the most effective place and manner. The Red Cross “applauds” and is full agreement with the decisions that have been made. For the facts, here is the link to the Red Cross site:

http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html#4524

Regarding the “refused to let FEMA in” report that Betty sited, I can find only opinion and conjecture, no fact on this issue. But I do have what I think is a good “theory” based on what I have read. That is, when the Bush administration took over from the Clinton administration, they set about to change everything that they could. One of the changes that they made at FEMA was that rather than a collaborative response to disasters with state and local authorities, they created clear separation between state response and federal response. Whether this is good or bad, in this case it may have created a communication void that both sides are now trying to use to their political advantage. In any case, this appears to be exactly the sort of red herring that the administration has become so adept and providing the media as a way of diverting attention – exactly what got me fuming in the first place.

So here we sit, really in agreement on the facts, yet the media has us convinced that “we don’t know enough”, or that there are “conflicting facts”. There are a great many places where the facts as pretty clear, and I have seen little disagreement:

• It was known as Katrina was coming to land that this would be catastrophic.
• Bush took a few days to personally react. Good or bad?
• His FEMA director had virtually no EM experience, seems to have been politely fired from his last job of 12 years or so as a commissioner of some Arabian horse foundation or some such thing, and his 2 top deputies were PR people from the Bush campaign with no EM experience. Good or bad?
• The Louisiana National Guard is largely not at home, they are in Iraq, along with the specialized amphibious equipment that apparently only they have. This equipment is designed and built to help with exactly this sort of flooding catastrophe. What are they doing in Iraq? Should they be there? How much more effective and immediate would our response have been if they were home with their equipment where they belong?

Again, the play by the administration through the media to shift focus away from the response of the federal government is exactly what has me so upset.

So, how do I react to the media? Depending on where I fall on the perspective line, do I simply look to sources who will give me support for my perspective, or do I evaluate the information that I receive from conflicting sources, and see how it changes my perspective? If the media that I listen to sees that “their guy” is in trouble on this issue, they have repeatedly created confusion and the myth that there are conflicting “facts”.

Clearly, MoveOn.org leans far to the left, as Betty says. When I receive information from them, I must take into consideration the high likelihood that they are giving me only the facts that support their position. I have found that while they support one side clearly, they provide very well-vetted and well supported information, or facts. By the same token, if I receive information from the Heritage Foundation, or Focus on the Family, it has the same clear lean far to the right, and they will only provide information that will support their position. I could use the term “hysterical” with any of these organizations, provided the position that they support is different from the position that I support, and if they support the same position that I support, then I will probably call them “justifiably passionate” or something like that.

There is a difference between presenting one side of a story – which is what I expect from partisan organizations – and presenting information that is meant to mislead. I have to be smart enough to see the difference – to divorce myself from my position long enough to discern the nature of the information that I am looking at.

Rather than allow ourselves to be manipulated by the media, (which appears to run the state), what if we were willing to truly look at the facts, and debate our perspectives with one another. We can agree to disagree over perspectives, but this should not be the case with facts. Rather than dismiss the issue as “confused”, what if we honestly reviewed the facts together, then debated our perspectives on those facts?

Fact or Perspective?

My friend Betty wrote the following:

“I think we simply don't know enough unbiased "facts" about almost everything/anything to have an informed opinion, only "interpretations of facts." Given that we all have different life experiences and therefore have different filters, of course we are going to have different opinions.”

In addition to this comment, last winter, my brother and sister and I were having political discussion, (which we commonly do), and were discussing a particular issue about which we disagreed, and my sister made the comment that, “It just depends on your perspective”. While I agree that perspective drives everything, the issue that we were discussing was not one of perspective, but of fact.

When my sister made this comment, it really set me back and made me think. When Betty added her comment above, it brought this back to the top of my mind.

I think that we have a crisis going on right now, and that crisis is our difficulty in discerning the difference between fact and interpretation (or perspective). It is just now striking me how big a crisis this is. There is a big difference between fact and perspective, but we seem to be struggling with that difference today.

Below, I have some examples to review, but before I get to those, I want to discuss this problem. You see, when the media creates this confusion by mixing opinion with news, as they have been doing for the past few years, they create an environment where we don’t seem to see the difference. There is not a gray area here – facts are facts. What you do with those facts, and what they represent to you, that is where opinion comes in.

I don’t think that there is such a thing as a “biased fact”, there are only facts. The bias occurs when only some of the facts are shared, and the reporting of those facts is overlaid with opinion. If the media is actually reporting news, it is difficult for it to be biased – only the listener can add bias based on their “life experiences and filters”, as Betty says.

But there is very little actual “reporting” in the media today, and quite a bit of overlay. This is a change from years past, when there was a clear delineation between news and commentary. In addition, the “news” that you see or hear depends entirely on which outlet you watch or listen to or read – I am often astounded at the difference in coverage that the same story receives depending on the source.

Then there is the laziness issue. People don’t want to be challenged. We don’t want to have to think and be open to change. We have been taught that all that matters is that we be on a “winning team”. We listen to the sports talking heads to be indoctrinated on what we should be saying regarding sports. We listen to the political talking heads to find out what we should think and say about politics.

This is not football, this is life. If we want to be lazy about sports, fine. But when it comes to politics, we need to turn off the talking heads. We need to hear all sides of the story, and form our own opinion, and have that open to change as the information that we get changes. Since the news sources will only tell their half of the story, we have to be willing to listen to all sides – even the ones that we don’t agree with. And most of all, when we listen, we need to filter out the nuggets of “fact” that are hidden within the commentary, and clearly see the difference.

I think that it “is only a matter of perspective” if I am only listening to one side of the story. If that is the case, then it appears that my “facts” are different than your “facts”. I need to be willing to hear you and “take your side” long enough to sift through what you say and vet the facts out of it, and find where those facts disturb my universe. Because clearly, no matter how hard I try, my presentation of the facts will sometimes (not always) reflect how I am interpreting those facts.

Let me use a few examples that will hopefully stir everyone up.

• FACT: Our federal budget has been running deficits for many years. The deficits are masked to some degree and larger than they initially appear because we have been using Social Security trust fund money to fund the operating fund of the budget. This money will have to be repaid to the trust fund for it to remain solvent. These deficits add up year after year and become the “national debt”. One can view the debt in terms of actual dollars, in which case you will see the graph spike a bit during WW1 and WW2, then steadily decline until around 1981, when it begins to explode. One can also view the debt in relationship to the GDP (Gross Domestic Product, or how big our economy is). Viewed in relationship to our GDP, you will see the graph spike up during WW1, then steadily decline until the Great Depression, when it begins to climb again, then it spikes to its highest level during WW2. It steadily declines following the war as we pay down our war debt. It begins to rise again in 1981, and rises steadily until about 1993 or 1994, when it reverses and begins to decline. This decline continues until 2000 or 2001, at which point we have reduced the debt to about the level that it was in 1956 or 1957. In 2001, the debt begins a sharp rise, and continues to rise today so that it is now higher than the previous high point in 1992 – 1993, headed toward the 1945 -1946 wartime high unless the trends are reversed. In fact, current projections show a continued rise, and a crisis in 2017 or 2018 when the trust funds need to be re-funded with the dollars that we have been using to subsidize general operating funds since about 1980. Right now, the federal debt equates to over $100,000 per American family.

REFERENCES:

http://www.aier.org/2004pubs/RR20.pdf

http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/?article=noll.publicdebt

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/bp153

http://www.concordcoalition.org/issues/feddebt/debt-facts.html

The above is fact – it is not perspective. Google these subjects on your own to research the subjects.

· Perspective A: Federal debt is not a bad thing, and the current rise in debt is a result of our war on terrorism. Like all wars, this debt will be repaid as the economy continues to grow. The rise in debt during the Reagan and Bush senior years was acceptable as it resulted in economic growth, just like the rise in debt during the 30s was OK as it resulted in saving the economy and the country.

· Perspective B: Debt should not be increasing EXCEPT to fund a war effort or to fund extraordinary rescue efforts, (such as the Great Depression or Hurricane Katrina.)

• FACT: During the period 1959 – 2004, tax rates for individuals have risen (combined federal and payroll taxes) from about 10% to about 13%, while tax rates for corporations have fallen from about 4% to about 1.3%. When you add the fact that an increasing tax burden has been placed on state and local governments, this disparity is sharper. In addition, all of the individual tax increase comes in payroll taxes, which are slanted heavily toward redistributing the tax load onto low and middle wage workers.

REFERENCES:

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/bp153

Again, the above is fact.

· Perspective A: Private enterprise and wealthy individuals power the economy, and should not be penalized with high tax rates. The early part of the 20^th century was marked by a lean toward socialism, and the resulting penalizing of private enterprise, and in recent years we have simply reversed that trend and put the tax burden back where it belongs – on all of the people.

· Perspective B: The Progressive movement in the early part of the 20^th century moved us toward a more just and progressive world, with progressive tax rates that asked the wealthy to share their wealth with others at a higher rate than the poor were asked to share. This is reasonable in a just world, and resulted in an unprecedented economic boom that placed the US firmly on top of the world economy. By regressing back to regressive tax rates, we are simply redistributing wealth into the hands of the wealthy, and putting the brakes on the economic engine of the last century, dooming millions to essential servitude and inescapable poverty.

• FACT: While in office, Bill Clinton engaged in sexual activity with an intern. He tried to cover-up the activity. He lied to the American people and to Congress about the activity. (I don’t think I need to put any references in here at all…)

· Perspective A: This is shameful activity by the leader of our nation, and we should all be embarrassed. We need to restore dignity and honor to the office. This is probably just the tip of the iceberg – if you can’t trust the man, what else has he lied about?

· Perspective B: Not only did he engage in the activity, but he probably enjoyed it, and frankly, why should I care? Hillary should be good and pissed-off, but I don’t hire Presidents based upon their marital arrangements or sexual habits. The big crime here was the fact that we spent $50 million investigating the man’s sexual habits, and that is just the formal investigation – who knows how much more we spent on the impeachment process etal? The fact that the press produced, published, and distributed pornography by their continued coverage of this silly ordeal is probably the worst offense of all. He did the deed, he lied about it, and who cares? I would probably lie about it too. The rest of the world was laughing at us, not with us on this one.

• FACT: The Bush administration used 9/11 as a tool to carry out a pre-existing desire to invade Iraq. I could spend pages documenting sources, but I will refer you generally to insiders such as Richard Clark and Paul O’Neil, as well as the 9/11 report itself, and the now public official British documents – the Downing Street Memos. In addition, as recently as today, those close to Bush such as Trent Lott admit that this was the case. It is clear from insiders and pre-existing documentation that there was a desire to invade Iraq, and that within days of the 9/11 attacks, Bush and those in his administration began an effort to tie Iraq to terrorism to justify attacking and occupying the country. This effort included citing evidence of WMD that they knew to be false, (the yellow-cake, Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame story, well-documented in many sources). It also included the “fixing” of intelligence to meet their requirements, (the now public Downing Street memos). We went to war to rid Iraq of the WMD that we “knew” were there. (Again, many public sources of Bush, Cheney, and other senior officials stating that they “knew” the weapons were there, and in some cases, knew where they were.) But in fact, the basis of this knowledge was weak or fabricated in many cases. According to the CIA before the war, there was no link at all between bin Laden and the terrorists on one hand, and Saddam and Iraq on the other. President Bush and his administration repeatedly tied the two issues together, suggesting that we needed to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”. According to polls, a high percentage of Americans came to believe that there was a link, (in the teens to over 50% depending on the poll and the time) even though CIA intelligence and common sense suggested otherwise. (Saddam and Osama hated each other, and each represented exactly the thing the other was trying to get rid of.) It cannot be established as fact that the campaign of the administration resulted in the American people being misled, it can only be established that the administration engaged in a campaign to mislead, and that the American people became misled. President Bush lied to both Congress and the American people on this issue. Since our invasion, the CIA reports that Iraq has now become a major training ground and recruiting ground for our terrorist enemy.

REFERENCES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Liberation_Act

http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1240541,00.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7460-2005Jan13.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NIM501A.html

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter12-h.htm

http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/blog.html

http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html

· Perspective A: Regardless of what happened in the lead-up to the war, Saddam was an evil man, and the world is better off without him. Period. If we had it to do over, we should do the same thing. The ends justify the means.

· Perspective B: This is an honesty and integrity issue. It is not alright to lie to the American people in order to carry-out your agenda, and certainly not within the moral fiber of our nation to invade another on false pretense. If we wanted to have a national debate about whether we should invade other countries in order to rid them of evil dictators, then we should have done that, and Iraq probably would not be high on the list – there are other nations where we could have greater impact at less cost. In terms of national security, the action that we have taken has made us far less secure by providing an excellent recruiting tool for the terrorists. Our deception leading up to the war has reduced our credibility in the world, and thus our ability to lobby and pursue diplomatic solutions to problems. The diverting of resources from our “homeland” has made us less secure here. The actions of our President are shameful, and he should be impeached. We need to restore dignity and honor to the office. This is probably just the tip of the iceberg – if you can’t trust the man, what else has he lied about?

And here’s a fun one…

• FACT: The Christian church, as we know it today, was formed in the 4^th century CE. Prior to that point, there was a movement that began with Jews who were devoted to a man named Jesus, and grew into a fairly broad movement of both Jews and non-Jews. This movement had many factions, with sometimes broadly divergent theology, as well as widely differing beliefs about who Jesus was, and how they should live their lives. In the 4^th century, when Constantine decreed Christianity the official Roman religion, he essentially “endorsed” one of the “factions” within the movement. This faction became “Orthodox Christianity”, or Roman Christianity, while all other forms became heresy. From that point forward, there have been multiple instances where this Roman Church has used violence and destruction to wipe out competing beliefs and “theology”, most especially competing Christian beliefs and “theology”.

· Perspective A: Orthodoxy is the “true” Christianity, and there is evidence that links the orthodox beliefs back to the earliest believers. Other beliefs are, indeed, heresy, and are evil influences within true Christianity.

· Perspective B: There is evidence linking “orthodoxy” back to the earliest believers, just as there is evidence linking gnosticism back to the earliest believers, and many other “forms” of the emerging Christianity. There is great wisdom to be found in these different forms, most of it tied back to Jesus, and it is this wisdom and the seeking of it that ties us together as Christians.

Tell Us Again, Teddy, Where the Buck Stops

It is becoming clear that the New Orleans catastrophe resulting from hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst natural disasters in our country’s history. As such, I think that it is understandable that the authorities who we hire (through elections and taxes) to manage and respond to problems and disasters were overwhelmed and not able to respond as well as they would have liked.

There. Simple statement – how can you argue with that? Local authorities were overwhelmed. State authorities were overwhelmed. Federal authorities were overwhelmed. And that is the right order, is it not? Don’t we expect local authorities to call on state and federal assistance only when they are overwhelmed? And don’t we expect state authorities to call on federal assistance only when they are overwhelmed? Bottom-up management in action.

And from a top down perspective, we certainly expect the federal government – with its vast resources – to proactively seek to provide assistance to “lesser” entities when it is clear that they are going to be overwhelmed. That is how it has worked for quite a number of years, through quite a number of catastrophes.

Thus far in this post, I can’t imagine that there is very much controversial in what I have written. But this is the point that this probably changes, because I have to say that I am sick and tired of the refusal of this administration to be accountable for anything that it does or does not do. Those who lean right and tend to support President Bush will now (most likely) find controversy in what I have to say.

I assume that mistakes have been made in this effort as are made in every effort. I assume that these mistakes have been made by governments and bureaucracies at all levels – local, state, and federal. Voters at each level will have to hold those people accountable for their performance

It will be up to the local authorities to identify and fix the mistakes that they have made, and they should be held accountable for their performance by local voters. The people of the local parishes in the South will have to hold them up to scrutiny when the time comes.

It will be up to state authorities to identify and fix the mistakes that they have made, and they should be held accountable for their performance by state voters. The people of Louisiana (and other states) will have to hold them up to scrutiny when the time comes.

As for the national media, and the vast majority of the people in this country, the only entity accountable to us is the federal government. It is upon the federal government, and their response to this disaster, that our focus should be maintained. Not that we should spend much energy on it now – right now we should be focused on providing aid to those in need.

Once we have provided the aid required, and have FUNDED THIS AID, then we should focus on the rebuilding effort, decide who should be paying for this effort, and FUND THE REBUILDING EFFORT. We have many precedents to follow regarding how much the federal government should be funding the rebuilding of “at-risk” infrastructure and private property, and we should be following those precedents, or we should be publicly debating and changing the role of the federal government in this regard.

Then, we should be holding our federal government accountable for their performance during this disaster. We should do this in the media and at the voting booth. The fact that this administration is spending its time and effort trying to “spin” things is such a way to re-focus the national media on state and local efforts rather than federal efforts has the top of my head coming off. These people have refused to accept accountability for any action that they have taken in the past 5 years, and now with Americans dead by the thousands, they continue to shirk accountability.

Note that I say “they” here, as it is hard to really focus on President Bush alone. For the past 5 years, we have seen him pointing his finger everywhere else whenever bad things happen, so we have grown accustomed to this new “shared accountability” style. Let me tell you how I feel about shared accountability.

I had a boss for several years with whom I disagreed about many things. Although we had disagreements that were often loud, table-pounding affairs, we also had an abiding respect for one another. He demanded of his top people that when you were wrong and had made a mistake, you admitted it – hat in hand – and you filed it away as a lesson that you had invested yourself in, and a mistake that you would not make again. He used to say that so long as you defended your mistake, you could not learn from it. And if you were going to be a leader, he used to say, your shoulders must be broad enough to carry not only your own mistakes, but also the mistakes of those who report to you. That was the essence of leadership – the courage and strength to be fully accountable for your actions and the actions of those who worked for you. Regarding “shared accountability”, he had a very simple response: When everybody is accountable, then nobody is accountable.

And that seems to be how this president runs his administration. Let’s have an investigation – let’s investigate ourselves. Let’s study it – by the time the study is done, the press will have moved on to something else, and the American people will have forgotten the issue, and we won’t have to be accountable.

I’m sick of it frankly. Have the guts to stand up and say, “The buck stops here – I am accountable.”

• The fact is that we have used our National Guard as a foreign occupying force – a job that they were NOT designed to do – and we have stretched our armed forces very thinly. This is not an interpretation of fact, this is a fact. This fact certainly had some impact on the ability of our government to respond rapidly to a disaster that they knew was coming. Accept this and be accountable for it.
• The FEMA director lies to the people (a way of defending the slow response) by saying that nobody could anticipate the break in the levies as. Note that clearly at this stage, they knew that they had a response problem, and were trying to justify the reasons for the slow response. Yet, he had apparently been briefed just days before on the fact that these levy breaks were a likely result of this hurricane – before the hurricane had hit. Accept the fact that you knew it was likely, and that you failed to respond quickly with anything approaching adequate aid. Perhaps adequate assistance would have been impossible anyway?
• Our national focus regarding taxation during the last 5 years has been on cutting taxes. We cut taxes even as we wage war – unprecedented in American history. Part of this effort to cut taxes means that we must find ways to continue to cut funding to programs, in order to try and reduce the huge deficits that this tax-cutting frenzy creates in our national budget. Among the programs that the administration cuts are programs aimed at fixing the very levies that broke. For the first time in 30 years, construction and upgrading of these levies was stopped during this administration. This is a fact, not an interpretation of fact. If you are on the left, you will interpret this fact and say that they did this to fund the tax cuts for the wealthy. If you are on the right, you will interpret this and say that these programs were not effective, and were wasteful. In either case, be accountable.
• In fact, it appears that since about 2002, there has been a fairly loud cry from those in that area that they are sitting ducks for exactly this disaster. They have loudly protested the funding cuts that they have seen stop the sorts of contingency preparedness that was clearly required, and mitigation efforts that had been underway. Again, if I believe in the policies of this administration, then I need to be accountable for the fact that it appears that I may have been wrong on this one – perhaps it was a mistake to stop these programs – perhaps a few more lives could have been saved? Or perhaps not – perhaps the programs were so useless that they would have made no difference at all? I don’t know, but I should be accountable enough to at least ask the question rather than trying to blame someone else.
• And what about the bigger picture here. We have invested so much of our grandchildren’s money in this effort to “fight the terrorists over there instead of over here”, without ever talking about what it costs to do this. Is it possible that in this process, we have taken our eye off of the ball here at home, and have allowed our ability to respond to homeland disasters erode significantly? Is it possible?

I could go on about this, but the bottom line is that I am sick of the lack of courageous leadership within this administration. Courageous leadership would stand up and say something like, “We have a disaster to deal with right now, so I don’t have time for spin. When we are done with triage within this disaster, then I expect the American people to review the performance of me and my administration in this disaster, and I stand singly and solely accountable for the mistakes that we have made, and I share accountability for the things that have gone well with those in my administration.” Wow, now that would be leadership!

But instead of real leadership, we have the president and all of his spin patrol trying to divert attention from themselves, and on to state and local officials.

Shame, shame, shame.

Where is my hero Teddy?