The New Year = Big news in 2010 that won’t seem so big in 2011
By Andrew Dyrli Hermeling
Everyone knows that the media [and bloggers] have a way of blowing certain stories out of proportion in an attempt to make their existence a little more justified. Sometimes they are right (swine flu) and sometimes they are wrong (bird flu). In the spirit of the new year I have decided to post my top five 2010 stories that will prove to be blips rather than booms a year from now.
5. Kim Jung-il announces successor – Considering that his successor, Kim Jung-un has been raised in the same intellectual cave where his father was raised, the vowel in their respective names will be the only real change.
4. Ground Zero Mosque – This story is already disappearing for a number of reasons. First, it isn’t really a mosque. Second, many Christian leaders are actually in support of it since they have the foresight to know that any restriction of religious freedom could someday come back to bite them in the butt. Third, have you seen pictures of the building…? It looks pretty awesome.
3. Ban on Earmarks – Congress vows to crack down on earmarks… then proposes eye-droppers to assist in Gulf cleanup. NEXT!
2. WikiLeaks - Simply put, WikiLeaks has proven to be all foam, no beer. In fact, the only thing I find truly offensive about the whole situation is the attention given to it. For example, anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to global politics knows that Sunni Muslims make up the majority in every Muslim country except Iran, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan (although I will give a free pass to those who didn’t know the latter two). A quick Islamic history lesson or even a quick perusal of current Iraqi state building will make it quite clear that there is little love between these two groups. So obviously Iran makes Syria nervous. What will Julian tell us next, that there is tension between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland? Keep stories about Qaddafi’s nurse where they belong, in People magazine.
1. The Tea Party – I know this sounds like my usual Tea Party bashing, but I promise that it is not. They mobilized voters in 2010 with great success. However, regardless of what politicians get done or leave undone in the new year, the Tea Party has had its moment. Allow me to explain. Let’s play pretend…
Scenario #1. Boehner et. al. follow to a tee (pun intended) the mandate handed to them and the moderates who were swayed to vote Republican by the spectre of deficit will consider the job done and move on. Furthermore, just as Bill Clinton heeded the people’s cry for a balanced budget in 1994, Obama and the Democrats are forced to do the same in order to have even a prayer in 2012. While many voters agreed with the Tea Party on issues of spending, they are not ready to embrace their more reactionary views on race or the environment. Thus, with spending under control, moderates do what they do best, swing back and forth holding the radical wings of either party in check.
Scenario #2 (the most likely scenario) – If the Tax Cut Compromise is any indication, the Tea Party endorsed candidates that were elected will prove no match for politics as usual and both parties will find themselves bogged down by the usual unwillingness to cut their preferred spending. With Dems still holding onto the Senate, it is unlikely that the new Health Care Reform will be cut down while the House will continue to resist any cuts in military spending. Furthermore, reasonable people will finally realize that while the Tea Party sure does complain a lot, in the end they are unwilling to do what it takes to actually fix the problem. (In all fairness, Glenn Beck does make the point that anyone who advocates spending cuts must be willing to cut military spending, although he is surely in the minority here.)
Either way, I don’t see much of a future need for Tea Party energy
The Fickle Majority
By Andrew Dyrli Hermeling
Cable news may refer to November 2nd as a midterm election, but I propose we rename it the season of the fair-weather voter. It seems that every leap year, Americans remember that their votes have four year implications. Why then do most voters suffer from a crippling bout of Fickle Fever whenever the midterms come along? Despite the fact that votes are being cast for six-year termed senators and governors managing multi-billion dollar budgets, voters seem to be trapped in the ‘what have you done for me lately’ voting pattern that is more appropriate for the localized elections of representatives. The legislative ramifications of senatorial elections are arguably more profound than the election of a president, yet they are treated with far less respect when they fall on midterm years.
Marco Rubio, Tea Party Candidate for US Senate
To discuss this more concretely, let’s focus on the issue du jour, government spending. As with most voters, I fear the specter of an unmanageable national debt. However, when one particular issue becomes magnified to the point of being the sole criteria for voting, a candidate’s other policy stances (or lack there of) become diminished. While such a one sided approach to voting may be appropriate for those being elected to the House, the fact remains that while the issues of importance will change, those elected to the senate will remain. Such short sightedness can have dangerous ramifications.
Single-issue voters have always been around and always will be. I cannot foresee a time when card-carrying Greenpeace or Focus on the Family members will vote against their respective causes. And invariably, one advocacy group spends an autumn on cloud nine every two years as the national mood closely resembles the causes that they have advocated for so steadfastly. I am sure many life-long John Birch Society members are sticking their tongues out at all those who called them irrelevant. But their time will come, just as it did for Pro-life voters who now find their former cause célèbre a mere footnote on campaign websites.
And thus the strongly convicted are left with only prayers for the support of the Fickle Majority. And those who find the tempestuous winds of the election cycle blowing their dreams away from them must see their deepest fears coalesce into a stark reality: senators and governors finding their way into office on a stance that will matter far less to voters in a year or two. Which leads me to my final question. Are we truly willing to risk the progress made in exchange for a balanced budget?
Do ‘Not Hide Yourself From Your Own Flesh’
By Austin
Sarah has a good challenge for us in her latest post: what is a theological response to this disparity in underemployment for people of color?
For two millenia, the Christian church has understood the four Gospels in terms of Isaiah. It is the most quoted book of the OT in the NT, and in particular, Isaiah 40-66 has provided the basic understanding of what Jesus has done. So it’s only appropriate to look at one particularly powerful passage, Isaiah 58, for a glimpse of a response. 
This chapter is really about worship. The prophet speaks of Israel’s sins, and responds to Israel’s attempted penance. The people ask, “‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not?” The response they get is
Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,
and oppress all your workers.
Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to hit with a wicked fist.
Fasting like yours this day
will not make your voice to be heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day for a person to humble himself?
Is it to bow down his head like a reed,
and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Will you call this a fast,
and a day acceptable to the LORD? (vs. 3-5)
Yahweh sees this fasting as a self-serving justification, like when a politician stands with this wife after infidelity and apologizes, telling how he “hurt” lots of people. This contrition is false contrition because it is a lament for lost power – and as the prophet calls to the elite of Israel, the true nature of this lament is to hedge their power, to get back to that place where they can oppress their workers, compete and jocky for more power.
So what does a true fast look like?
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (vs. 6-7)
The correct way to fast, the correct way to worship, is not to deny yourself in order to regain your power, but to deny yourself in order to give to another.
Think about this for a second. What does fasting have to do with breaking “every yoke?” Calvin said that the essence of the Christian life is to deny yourself. Why? For the sake of your neighbor. Right worship is not so much connected with right belief as with ethics, with breaking all oppression, with bringing the homeless into your house, with feeding the hungry, clothing the naked.
This phrase “hide yourself from your own flesh” is perhaps the most interesting phrase of the passage. Who is “your own flesh” here? The context makes it clear: the hungry, the homeless, the naked. So in not giving, not breaking yokes, not overcoming oppression, we are hiding ourselves from ourselves, those others who are us.
So what is an initial Biblical response to the underemployment of people of color? It appears that the first response is to realize they are our own flesh. What is happening to them is happening to us. Once we fully realize this – which means we change our practice -
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you take away the yoke from your midst,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday. (vs 8-9)
The end of ”pointing of the finger” is a start (stop blaming the poor!), the end of speaking wickedness goes further, and healing springing up is the end.
So what does God think of these underemployed people of color (along with all people of course!)? Apparently he sees their welfare as a part of the worship due to him, and apparently only then will
your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in.
Goldman Sachs and Fraud
By Austin
Big story today: Goldman Sachs is being sued by the SEC. Read this for background. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has a nice little explanation.
The long and short of it (no pun intended)? Goldman Sachs may have intentionally sold investors products they knew would fail, and had a different department in the firm set up to cash in when they did. This is called shorting.
It works like this. Goldman Sachs sold Credit Default Obligations to investors. These are basically “insurance policies” on debt that Goldman Sachs had. Say Sachs gave a loan to party A. Sachs needs to have X amount of collateral according to certain rules. But Sachs wants that collateral to invest in other things. So, they ask their investors to sell them “insurance” on that collateral. If part A defaults, the investor will be on the hook for the money. If they do not, Sachs will pay an insurance premium plus fees to the investor (making them happy), while not having to have collateral.
So, they sold these CDO’s to investors (the product was called Abacus 2007-AC1). Then, they acted as a broker to traders inside their firm, particularly the hedge fund manager John Paulson. He then short sold these products. The catch? John Paulson was the one who chose the mortgages in the CDO’s in the first place.
Think about this for a second. A short sale works like this:
a. An investor has some security, like a CDO.
b. A broker, like Goldman Sachs, lends this security to a trader.
c. A trader, in this case Paul Johnson, sells these securities for a certain price (say $100 a share), because the trader expects the price to go down.
d. When the price goes down (say to $80 a share), the trader buys them back at the lower price (pocketing the difference of $20), and gives them back to the investor.
The problem? The CDO’s were chosen by Paulson! In other words, he knew what was in them, and then bet they would go down in value! And when the mortgages started defaulting, and the investors were on the hook for the money, the value of the securities plummeted. As they did, Goldman Sachs ate up the profits from short selling.
What a world.
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