AT&T Puffs Rick Perry

I've been fed up with price gouging and poor service from AT&T for a number of years.

Now, there is another reason for switching to an alternate service provider.  AT&T has provided nearly a half million dollars to fund Texas Governor Rick Perry's political campaigns.

Currently, they are purchasing and distributing his book to promote his presidential campaign.

Lankford Defends Tea Party

The Oklahoman is reporting that U.S. Representative James Lankford  says "he didn't like negative language being used to describe members of the tea party."

The Oklahoma Gazette reported that Lankford, formerly a Southern Baptist youth camp director, made a special video appearance at the theocratic "Reclaiming America for Christ" at First Baptist Church in Moore last month.  Other theocrats appearing were Paul Blair, pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma State Attorney General Scott Pruitt, and State Representative Sally Kern.

Professors David Campbell of Notre Dame and Robert Putnam of Harvard have an essay in yesterday's New York Times revealing that their research indicates that the tea party is really a theocratic party.  The professors contend that the tea party is rapidly losing popularity and that it's stridency risks expelling moderate voters from the Republican Party for a generation.

Judging from the sentiments being expressed by Lankford at his town hall meetings, I doubt that Lankford feels inclined to temper the intransigence of his tea party/theocratic agenda.

Those charting the effect that the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention is having on American politics would do well to follow the career of James Lankford.

Oklahoma is Seventh From the Bottom on Child Well-Being

News reports are indicating that the 2011 Kids Count Fact Book reveals that Oklahoma ranks 43rd in the nation on child well-being.  Here are some of the grim facts about the lives of children in Oklahoma:

The state's lowest rankings were in child death rate (47th), teen birth rate (46th) and infant mortality rate (45th). 

Desiree Doherty, executive director of the Parent Child Center, said the data point out some very concerning, entrenched trends. 

"It's dreadful Oklahoma continues to be in the lowest quarter in child well-being. Think what that means for the future of our state," she said. "More than 50,000 babies are going to be born in Oklahoma this year. How can they thrive and be prepared for school and for life when they are growing up in generational poverty?" 

One of the largest increases was a 16 percent increase in the number of children living in poverty. The state ranks 35th in the category with 22 percent of children living in poverty (income below $21,756 for a family of two adults and two children). 

"Little ones can't pull themselves out of poverty. They can't protect themselves from adults who are harming or exploiting them. They are completely dependent on the adults who are protecting them. What are we going to do about that?" Doherty said. "I think there must be implications for policy makers, for human services and for everyone who is concerned about the future of our community."

The best way for individuals to address these concerns is to get involved with and support the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy.   Work with them to protect kids in Oklahoma.

On Being Manipulated by Plausible Explanations

Wrestling with an inoperable refrigerator yesterday reminded me of a conversation I had years ago with a highly successful commissioned salesman.

 Thirty-three years ago, my wife and I were shopping to purchase a refrigerator for our first home.  We were comparison shopping at J C Penney's and Sears.  We went to Sears first because, according to Consumer Reports, Kenmore appliances had a reputation for dependability.  Then we went to Penney's.  As soon as the salesman at Penney's heard that we had already been to Sears, he launched into an explanation why we wanted a Penney's refrigerator with a hard plastic interior rather than a Sears refrigerator with a porcelain interior.  He pulled a produce drawer out about three quarters of the way and then closed the refrigerator door and let us watch as the back edge of the drawer banged on the inside panel of the refrigerator as it closed.   He advised us that we would never have to worry about the unsightly appearance of chipped porcelain around the produce drawers with a Penney's refrigerator.

I had seen people close doors while drawers were open before and I had seen porcelain chips on old washing machines and other appliances, so his explanation sounded plausible enough to make me wonder about the wisdom of buying a refrigerator with a porcelain interior.  My chief concern, however, was still dependability.  When I asked him about that, he showed me a Penney refrigerator that had been manufactured by General Electric which he said had one of the most dependable names in the business.   That, and the modest discount at which the Penney's unit sold in comparison to the Sears unit, was enough for me to let him sell me a refrigerator.

Ten years later, almost to the day, the Penney's refrigerator went out.  The Sears unit that a relative bought years before we bought ours was still working fine -- and there were no chips in porcelain anywhere on it.  Since my relative's refrigerator lasted nearly a decade longer than mine, it's easy to see who got the most bang for their buck.

Reflecting on that experience led me to believe that a slick salesman had manipulated my thinking by offering a plausible explanation for why the information in Consumer Reports was not always reliable.

Refrigerators are not the only thing that slick salespeople are selling.  Right now there are a lot of slick Wall Street hucksters and misguided tea party activists who want you to believe that cutting Social Security and Medicare is the only way to restore confidence in Wall Street and in our nation's creditworthiness after S & P's downgrade.  Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC, explains that this is ridiculous:

However the Wall Street crew knows that most people do not follow the economy and finances closely. So they just made up a bogus story with the hope that the country would buy it. Thus far they have already gotten politicians and reporters to push their line that the debt downgrade led to the stock market plunge.

Needless to say, those pushing for cuts in Social Security and Medicare will freely use the story of the downgrade market plunge to advance their agenda without fear of ridicule from the media. As a result, we can expect a continual parade of public figures saying that we need big cuts in these programs in order to prevent another market crash and economic collapse.

If these programs are to be protected, it is essential that the public provide the missing ridicule. Any politician who has so little understanding of financial markets and the economy to blame the stock market plunge on the downgrade should not be involved in designing economic policy. Any reporter or columnist who makes such a connection should be in a different line of work.

People who understand economics know that Social Security and Medicare have nothing to do with the country's economic problems. Unfortunately such people have been virtually excluded from the national economic debate by the people with money who want to undermine these programs.

NOTE: Nothing in this blog should be construed as an endorsement of Sears refrigerators. In 1988 we replaced the Penney's refrigerator with an Amana refrigerator (purchased at a Sears store) that was still working fine when we replaced it in 2007 with a top-of-the-line Kenmore Elite refrigerator. Yesterday, after but 3 years and 10 months worth of service, that exorbitantly expensive stainless steel clad refrigerator required $295.00 worth of repairs. (No, it was not a problem with the ice maker which has never been connected. It was a 30 minute service call to replace a starter switch that turns the compressor on.)

Don't Mess with Dublin Dr Pepper

The first church I pastored was at Clairette, Texas which is 15 miles east of Dublin "Dr Pepper" Texas on Texas Highway 6.  Dublin is the oldest existing Dr Pepper bottler and it never switched its recipe from pure sugar to cane syrup.  Dr Pepper fans who know the taste difference are fiercely loyal fans to those who use the original recipe.

Dr Pepper Snapple, however, is suing Dr Pepper Dublin for selling their product outside a restricted territory.  I'm a fan of Dr Pepper Dublin.  I wish they were selling it in Oklahoma.

I confess that, at times, I too have trekked to Dublin to run a stash of it that I hide in my basement to serve for special occasions.  Don't mess with my Dublin Dr Pepper!

Tom Cole and the Bush Tax Cuts

I went to U.S. Representative Tom Cole's townhall meeting yesterday at the National Weather Center in Norman.  After Cole indicated that he favored a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, that  reform of "entitlement programs" was necessary and inevitable, that he opposed raising taxes to address the national budget deficit,  and raised alarm about the effect that rolling back tax breaks for the oil industry would have on Oklahoma's small independent oil exploration companies, I was given an opportunity to ask him a question. 

I informed Rep. Cole that I know at least two petroleum geologists who are beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts and who are not pleased that the cuts were extended in this time of national fiscal crisis.  They are particularly concerned about the effect that budget cuts are having on early childhood education and on other federal programs designed to protect kids from the adverse affects of poverty and disease.  I reminded him that children comprise 25% of the population in Oklahoma, that 35% of those children are living in abject poverty, and that a whopping 49% of the children in Oklahoma are living in families at the low income level.  A good education is the only way for these children to escape a cycle of poverty from one generation to the next.

 I advised Rep. Cole that the Oklahoma petroleum geologists that I know are ready, willing and eager to make sacrifices to protect children, the disabled, the disadvantaged and elderly from the adverse effect of budget cuts.  They want to share in the sacrifices that must be made to reduce the federal budget deficit.  I asked him to stop blocking them from the opportunity to shoulder their share in the sacrifices that all Americans must make to restore our nation to fiscal health.

Judging from the reaction my remarks received, around 70% of the attendees at that townhall meeting agreed with me.

Rep. Cole did his best to show sympathy with my concerns and allay fears that budget cuts would fall disproportionately on the young, the elderly and the disabled while defending the extension of the Bush tax cuts.  He stated something to the effect  that the Bush tax cuts only amounted to something like $700 billion  and that was not enough to make a dent in our $14 trillion dollar national debt.  That did not sound right to me, but at that time I did not have accurate figures at my fingertips.

I did some checking this morning to discern the real effect of the Bush tax cuts.  In the process, I discovered that Cole was comparing apples to oranges.  The $700 billion is roughly the cost of the two year extension of the Bush tax cuts.  It reduces revenue to the government by more than $300 billion a year, which is 20% of the current $1.5 trillion annual budget deficit.

Two years before the original cuts expired, more than $2 trillion of our $14 trillion dollar national debt was directly accountable to the Bush tax cuts:

In 2001 and 2003, Bush signed legislation that cut taxes, much to the benefit of the affluent. The first cut was designed to help the economy after the Internet bubble collapsed. The second was to boost growth after the 2001 recession ended. Kogan estimated the tax cuts have cost the Treasury $1.7 trillion in revenue to date. Of course, that may not be one bit disturbing to the taxpayers who've watched their tax bills go down. The only problem is, the cuts have been critical in opening up the gargantuan budget gap that Obama will face. Because Bush did not reduce spending, Washington has paid about $265 billion in interest on loans to cover the lost revenue. So the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts really cost around $2 trillion.

The Bush tax cuts cost around $300 billion a year plus the interest on loans to cover lost revenue, so well over $2.6 trillion of our $14 trillion national debt is directly attributable to the Bush tax cuts -- plus another $700 billion and interest on loans due to the extension of the tax cuts. Add another $3 trillion plus interest for unpaid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus another $6 trillion plus interest to bail out Wall Street and our deregulated finance industry and it becomes very clear how our nation became so burdened with debt.

Rep. Cole played a big role running up this debt.   I wish I had seen a little remorse on his part for the misguided leadership he and others provided that helped to get us into this debacle.

Beyond Dialogue: Baptist-Muslim Partnership

Beyond Dialogue from Bruce Prescott on Vimeo.

July in Oklahoma was Hottest Month ever Recorded in U.S.

This from Joe Romm at the Climate Progress blog:

As for Oklahoma, Jason Samenow of the Capital Weather Gang notes:

In Oklahoma, the heat and drought were a punishing double whammy. In a vicious cycle, the dry soil intensified the heat and the heat dried out the soil. The result: heat unprecendented in any state at any time.

He directs us to The Oklahoma Climatological Survey, which reported this news:

Grover Cleveland was serving his second term as President in 1895. Victoria was the Queen of England and Will Rogers was still a teenager. It is also the year that statewide average temperature records begin for the United States. There have been 1399 months pass by since 1895. Multiply that number by 48 and you have 67,152 months of temperature records for the contiguous states. How hot was it in Oklahoma last month? Of those statewide average temperature records for the 48 states, none has been hotter than July 2011 in Oklahoma.

That’s hot — but not hot enough to move the state’s top deniers (see “Oklahoma, Where the Governor Tells Residents To Pray For Rain; Oklahoma, Where the Senator Mocks the Deadly Heat Wave“).

Abrahamic Faiths Post-9/11

Abrahamic Faiths Post-9/11 from Bruce Prescott on Vimeo.

Videocast of Rev. William Lawson's Speech

Rev. William Lawson Speech from Bruce Prescott on Vimeo.

Videocast of Barry Lynn's Speech

Barry Lynn Speech in Houston from Bruce Prescott on Vimeo.

Podcast of Barry Lynn's August 5th Speech in Texas

Podcast (26MB Mp3) of Rev. Barry Lynn's speech on August 5, 2011 at the Family, Faith and Freedom Rally at Mt. Ararat Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. The rally was sponsored by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union in response to the prayer rally called by Texas Governor Rick Perry to launch his 2012 Presidential ambitions.

Expanding the Care Deficit to Reduce Financial Deficits

As I traveled to and from meetings in Washington, D.C. I have been reading Zygmunt Bauman's "Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers".  Considering the debt ceiling crisis that came to a head while I was in D.C., here are a couple paragraphs from Bauman's book that stand out:

"As the need for public services has increased, American voters have come to favor reducing the supply of care that government provides, and many favor turning to the beleaguered family as the main source of care," notes Arlie Hochschild.  They find themselves, however, falling out of the frying pan into the fire.

The same consumerist pressures that associate the idea of "care" with the inventory of consumer commodities like orange juice, milk, frozen pizza, and microwave ovens strip the families of their social-ethical skills and resources and disarm them in their uphill struggle to cope with the new challenges -- challenges aided and abetted by the legislators, who attempt to reduce state financial deficits through the expansion of the "care deficit" (cutting funds for single mothers, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the elderly).

What the Tea Party Hath Wrought

This from a Reuters news story today:

The dysfunctional gridlock in Washington has also raised concern over the long-term decline of U.S. economic power and the status of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

"The U.S. is experiencing an 'end of empire' moment and the dollar share of global reserves is likely to fall gradually," said Jim Leaviss, head of retail fixed income at M&G Investments in London.

Southern Baptists Support Hard Line on Budget Crisis

Last week, Richard Land, Director of the Southern Baptist Convention's political arm, issued a call for all Southern Baptists to contact their congress persons and support the Tea Party proposal to "cut, cap and balance" the federal budget.  That proposal failed to pass the Senate.

Today, reports are indicating that the hardline "cut, cap and balance" crew is at the forefront of the group that refuses to compromise to find a solution to the budget impass.

Most Americans do not agree with Southern Baptists and the "cut, cap and balance" crew.  News reports from the conservative state of Oklahoma are indicating that a full two thirds of those who called Senator Tom Coburn yesterday were in favor of congress working out a compromise to get the debt limit raised.

For more than 30 years, the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention has honed and cultivated an uncompromising stance in every conflict in which they have engaged.  Documentation of intransigence by men like Richard Land, who helped lead the takeover of the SBC in the 1980's, is readily available for anyone interested in reading the history of the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC.  The history of the work of the "peace committee" in the late 1980's is particularly instructive.  From the outset the fundamentalist line was, in effect, "My way or the highway."  Needless to say, the work of the peace committee did not end with peace.  It ended with convention moderates leaving and forming a new convention -- the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

If a compromise cannot be worked out and no solution is found to our nation's debt crisis, Southern Baptists will be one of the most central impediments to the kind of pragmatic, rational governance that is necessary to preserve a healthy pluralistic democracy.

On Being Biased Against Self-Serving Economics

We live at a time when a few influential oligarchs have successfully employed the power of money, mass media and political action to take control of the mechanisms of civil order.  First they deprived the government of the means to regulate their greed, then they reduced taxes to starve the government of income sufficient to sustain the services that it provides, and now they are refusing to insure the creditworthiness of the government.  When they are finished they will have succeeded in dismantling FDR's "New Deal" and thereby put an end to the ideal of a government that accepts the responsibility for the plight of the poor in times of economic disruption.

At times like this it is wise to remember the words of Walter Brueggemann in his book on Peace:

Jesus' popular and more effective ministry was among those who for one reason or another were shut out, excluded from the benefits of the system.  In the New Testament, Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, freed the demon-possessed.  These are not to be understood as simple acts of compassion, but as dramatic challenges to a system that had deprived some of food, cut some off from health, and denied their humanness.  What all these outcasts had in common was their failure to honor the law.  And those who did honor the law could not get good jobs or positions of influence; nor could they enter the holy place.  They were cut off from access to God and to human well-being.

It was the law, the principle of order, that excluded them.  And the benefactors of the law, represented by the chief priests, scribes and Pharisees, viewed the law as God-given and eternally ordained.  Jesus came into conflict with them on behalf of the poor.  He exposed their law as a human device for manipulating power for the benefit of some and the disadvantage of others (Matthew 15:1-20; 23:1-36).  Jesus critique of the law was not made because the law was bad religion, but because it was used in the service of self-seeking politics and self-serving economics.

Richard Land Lies Again

Brian Kaylor and Robert Parham at Ethics Daily are calling out Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission Southern Baptist Convention for telling lies and slandering the names of the President and the First Lady.

On his SBC produced radio program, Richard Land said President Obama was "living like a playboy" in the White House and accused him of travelling more and spending more money than any other White House.  Land also accused Michelle Obama of making a "tenfold" increase in the staff for the First Lady.  Kaylor provides documentation that both allegations are false.

Land obviously intends to defame the President and the First Lady by making them appear profligate both fiscally and morally.  The term "playboy" is clearly associated in the public mind with persons who live a licentious lifestyle.  Land also appears intent on inflaming indignation against the President and his wife for extravagant living at a time of fiscal belt tightening in both the national budget and in the budgets of families across the country.

Richard Land is no stranger to the art of lying to promote the political agenda of the religious right. He's been a leader in that movement for more than thirty years.

Robert Parham, Executive Director of Ethics Daily, calls for an apology from Richard Land:

"These are egregious errors. But his assertion that the president lives like a playboy is strikingly shameful and completely unacceptable for a Christian minister."

"Frank Page, the SBC's chief executive officer, and Bryan Wright, the SBC's elected president, should insist that Land publicly apologize for his malicious playboy statement and correct the record," said Parham. "They should issue a letter of apology to the president. Unless they distance themselves and the SBC from such statements, then they allow Land to present Southern Baptists as a malicious and untruthful people. If they are silent, then they make a mockery of the 2011 SBC resolution calling for civility in public discourse."

Parham is right.  It is inexcusable for a religious ethicist, representing one of the largest religious bodies in America, to publicly pronounce such slander and libel against the President and his wife.

Ignore the Signs at Your Own Risk

Three visitors today at Yosemite National Park ignored warning signs to keep back from Vernal Falls and were swept away by the rushing waters.  They are presumed dead.

Some people -- like the Tea Partiers in the U.S. House of Representatives -- seem intent on ignoring warning signs.  Recent polls show that most Americans want Congress to raise the debt ceiling.  Polls have long shown that most Americans do not want to see social security and medicare benefits cuts.  Polls show that 72% of Americans favor raising taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year.

The only polls that the Tea Partiers are looking at are the election results of the last election, but they did not run on a platform that refused to raise the debt ceiling and they did not run on a platform for cutting social security and medicare benefits.  Had they done so, they probably would not have been elected.

While they claim to have a mandate from the voters, I think the Tea Partiers know that they will be facing massive opposition by voters in the 2012 election cycle.  That's why these ideologues are intent on pushing their unpopular agenda now.  I'm glad to see them to finally show their true "dismantle Roosevelt's 'new deal'" colors.  Unfortunately, we are facing the same kind financial crisis that Roosevelt's 'new deal' was designed to solve. 

If the Tea Party continues to hold the line, there is danger that more than their short political careers are going to be swept away.  As unemployment rises, as the interest on our outstanding debts balloon because of default, and as the world economy plunges into a depression, the stress is going to produce some unnecessarily early obituaries for many Americans who foolishly put their trust in Tea Party ideologues.

Pope Seeks to Influence 2012 Elections in the U.S.

The Roman Pontiff has appointed Charles Chaput, one of his most conservative and political archbishops, to head the Catholic diocese in Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania is one of the battleground states in the 2012 elections.

On Privatizing by Breaking the Bank (Reprise)

As the U.S. government is facing gridlock over the need to raise the debt limit, cut expenses and raise revenues, I thought I would review some of my early blogs to see if anyone had the foresight to see this disaster coming.  Here's a reprise of a blog from October 12, 2005:

Common Dreams has posted an insightful essay by Bill Willers on "Breaking the Bank: The Rightwing Road to America's Privatized Future." Here's are a couple paragraphs from the article:

Since the introduction of the massive Republican tax cuts, many observers understood immediately that they were to plunge government into debt, thereby undercutting its ability to fund social programs such as Medicare and Social Security, and to administer public domain that has long belonged to all citizens in common.

In May of 2003, Princeton economist Paul Krugman wrote that "gimmicks used to make an $800-billion-plus tax cut carry a price tag of only $320 billion are a joke ... The people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need."

The regressive world we are creating for our children and grandchildren is beginning to look more and more like the feudalistic system of the middle ages.

Note:  Paul Krugman won the nobel prize in economics in 2008.   Both the Obama administration and congress continue to ignore his analysis of the economy.