Heaven's Gate and where religions come from

I just finished listening to 10 episodes of Glynn Washington's podcast about the history of the cult known as Heaven's Gate. Two people--a man who called himself Do and a woman who called herself Ti--became convinced that they were God's messengers, or maybe God incarnate, or messiahs or prophets of some sort, and they gathered believers around them and worked for 20 years at purifying themselves, and then they all committed suicide.

There are many ways to think about this whole thing, but to me, what this shows is that people can be completely sincere and convinced of things that are manifestly not part of actual reality, and they can give their very life for it--and still be wrong.

And that makes me think about the apologetics around Christianity, which I was taught and which I believed for a long time: namely, that we can be sure that the resurrection of Jesus really happened because the apostles all died as martyrs, convinced of this fact, and there's no way they could have believed it unless it had really happened. Therefore, since they believed it enough to die for it, it must have actually happened. And therefore, we can know that Christianity is true.

I have stopped believing that Christianity is true for some time now. And I am sure, now, that the fact that the apostles believed that Christ had risen is no proof that he actually did.

The gospels report that as he died, Jesus cried, My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?

When I taught a Bible study to a group of Japanese women, they were pretty stunned when we got to this verse. And I think every believer, if they experience this for the first time, will agree, this is pretty shocking.

But Christians have salve for this wound; they explain that it's from a psalm, that it doesn't mean that Jesus lost hope during his suffering, or that God had actually forsaken him.

It seems likely to me that Jesus really thought he was God's messenger, and that as he died, he really thought that he was badly mistaken, that he was abandoned by God..

The disciples are depicted as being shattered by his death, filled with despair, ready to qabandon the whole thing as a bad dream.

But then, somehow, many, most of them, became convinced that he wasn't really dead, that his body was gone, and that he was among them in some semi-physical/semi-spiritual form.

Given everything we know about death, and everything we know about belief, and everything we know about human psychology and the ability to believe what is literally unbelievable, it seems to me that the likeliest thing as that they were deluded. A person who has been dead for 3 days does not come back to life--but even if they did, even if Lazarus somehow walked out of that tomb, they would come back to life as physical beings. Not as beings that can walk through walls, appear and disappear, not as beings that float up to heaven, never to be seen again.

The story of the resurrection is all mixed up. Was it his body that was raised back to human life? or was it his ghost or spirit that somehow dwelt among the disciples? The four gospel accounts, plus Paul's, say yes to both. The details are inconsistent, the story is not coherent, the tomb is empty, the stone has been rolled away by angels, there are angels (maybe one, maybe two) in the tomb, they tell the disciples different things.

It's just what you would expect from people who are believing something that they really don't know, really haven't seen.

It's just what you would expect of a delusion.

They weren't lying. They weren't trying to deceive anybody.

But they were mistaken, they were wrong. Jesus was dead, and like all dead people, he stayed dead.

Just like the woman known as Ti in Heaven's Gate died, and remained dead. And her followers, desperate to believe that she was an incarnation of God, waited for her to return and finally decided to commit suicide in order to meet her in the air. The disciples of Jesus told themselves the same kind of story--he's coming back! We'll meet him in the air! We'll live with him forever in some other realm.

Glynn Washington points out to us that the Heaven's Gate cult is no more foolish or unbelievable than any other religion, than Christianity and the belief in the resurrection.

My take-away is sort of the flip of that--belief in Christianity and the resurrection is not a bit more reasonable or rational or likely or true than the belief of Heaven's Gate that space aliens were going to take them to heaven in a UFO.

People, humans, have an amazing ability to reason, but we also have an amazing ability to be deluded, to believe unbelievable, irrational, impossible things.

Jesus preached to his followers for 3 years, and his teachings are in some ways definitely admirable and noble. And then he died, and people have built an amazing edifice upon what he said and taught for 2000 years. Some people, many in fact, still think he's coming back.

It's about as likely as Ti and Do coming in a space ship with a bunch of aliens to bring us all to a superhuman level.

Romney's Bain Problem

It doesn't matter to me whether Romney's SEC filings were a fraud and a felony or just a legal fiction. What matters is that this reveals that Romney's claim that he made money by "working hard" is a big fat lie. He is now demonstrated that a guy like him makes money by doing so little that could be called "work" that it's hard to tell when he did or didn't stop "working."

Compare that to the life of a real worker. A strawberry picker, a janitor, a bus driver--those guys know damn well whether or not they are working and why they get a pay check.

A nurse, a doctor, a teacher--they do work that makes them tired at the end of the day. A college professor who has a part-time gig writing for the Times and who bangs out books and goes on tour to promote them--not as much sweat as the strawberry picker, or even the nurse, but nevertheless, real, time-consuming work that can be seen and measured.

Big shots like Romney, however, who pull in the real big money? Their work is so ethereal, so subtle and sublime, that ordinary people can't actually perceive whether or not they are still doing that "work" or whether they are just collecting money that falls from the sky into their bank accounts. They themselves might be a little unclear about whether they still "work" or whether they are, as Romney claimed, now "unemployed."

Jeez, even multi-million dollar basketball players and movie stars have to at least show up and do something to collect those enormous paychecks. But a guy like Mitt? It is all a matter of metaphysics whether or not he still "works."

This week I received an email from my brother explaining his view of our economic situation. My brother has a good high-school education, and is a pretty smart guy. He has always worked at blue-collar-type jobs, basically as a delivery guy. He lives a modest lower-middle class life, and he is a thoughtful and intelligent person. My guess is that he listens to a lot of Fox News and/or talk radio, but I don't know that for sure, since we live a continent apart.

Here are a couple of points he makes:

I see the economy as being based on manufacturing and tangible goods. What's made here anymore other than cheesburgers? And I see labor unions having a big part of the problem. If I ran a business and had the choice of paying an employee $50 an hour or $5 an hour to do the EXACT same thing, which do you think I'd choose ? All unions do is make "demands". The company isn't supposed to make a profit. To quote (a former employer who ran a small neighborhood grocery store), "Profit is not a dirty word ." Without the union , the company would just screw everyone.....without the company......there'd be no JOB!!

Let's begin by thinking about why one person owns a company and another person works for him, and where the profits come from. So to take the case of this particular small-business owner, he took over the business from his father, who probably started it from scratch and built it up to a nice little business. (Or to take a similar but larger-scale business, take Hood Milk as an example.) The guy who starts a business saves up his own hard-earned money, and at some point invests it in starting a business, at considerable risk to himself. If the business fails, he will lose everything. He may be the main worker at the beginning, and he probably works long hard nerve-wracking days. Of course he deserves to earn a profit on his money. Otherwise, why would he take such a risk?

But as time goes on, and the business grows, he begins to hire other people to do some of the work. Those people have less risk, so all they are being paid for is their labor, not the chance to earn or lose money on their investment. So of course they make less money than the owner.

In some cases, however, it is the workers who are doing all the work, creating all the wealth (profits) and they may even be risking their lives to do so, but a very small part of that wealth accrues to them, and a vast amount goes to the owner(s). If a man owns a coal mine, how much of the profits are generated by the labor of the coalminers, and how much by the guy who owns the land that happens to have coal under it, and who invests in the machinery? Sure, the owner or the company has made a huge investment in order to get that coal out of the ground, but so have the miners, who actually produce the coal on a day to day basis. How is that profit to be divided up?

A generation ago, the top people in a company might make 20, 30, or 40 times what the average worker made. Meaning that one guy at the top was believed to be producing something of value that was equal to what 40 of his employees did. Today, in big companies, the top guys make on average 344 times what the average worker makes. One guy is worth as much as 344 "little people."

Now of course in a company like Snell's Market, or even Hood's Milk, that might not be the case. But in the Fortune 500 companies, that is the amount of wealth that the CEOs skim off, and claim as their "fair share" of the profits that are created by the company.

I think it is legitimate to ask whether the people in suits making the decisions are actually the ones who are "earning" the money, or whether something is out of whack here.

So what would be the point of a union? It's the only way that the people doing the actual work can apply any pressure and retain a fairer share of the profits that they contribute to. As you say, as an owner, sure, you'd rather keep the $50 and pay the worker just $5. Unless there is some counter-pressure, wages will go lower and lower, until we're all living like medieval peasants or sharecroppers. Why not? If the employer controls all the jobs, and can get the workers to compete against each other for the lowest possible wage, it pushes everyone lower.

Did you ever see the movie They Shoot Horses, Don't They? When people are desperate, they can be taken advantage of and made to compete against each other. And who wins? Well, for a while, the rich guys win. Until they have all the money and no customers! Then lack of demand will cut into their profits, and in the end, everyone is worse off. (for details, see The Great Depression.)

And from where does ANYONE get the brass gonads to speak about "Re-distribution of Wealth ?" I can't understand the concept. Because someone works hard & gets rich, it not only makes them an ogre, but they should be "compelled" to hand it over to No-account jerks ? Not in my book. The only reasons I can find for my OWN lack of wealth are that I ain't smart ( or lucky) [or hard-working] enough.

So the same point prevails here. Where did this wealth come from? Did the rich person earn it all by herself, with no help from society at all? And no help from her employees? Then she can keep it all. J. K. Rowling, for example, who created the Harry Potter series. She deserves to get rich, since she created something of value all by herself. But in most cases, wealth is not created single-handedly. It is created by many people, including the street-sweepers who keep the city clean enough that people will go shopping. So they also deserve a share.

Creating Jobs

The United States needs to create more jobs, and it needs to cut the deficit. These two objectives would seem to be in harmony, not in opposition, since people with jobs pay taxes, and people without jobs not only do not pay taxes, they cost the government money. So there must be a way to cut the deficit by creating jobs, jobs that pay enough that they workers can eat and also pay taxes.

To go about cutting the deficit by cutting government spending and laying people off is like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. The more the government cuts spending, the more the people who did the things that the money was spent on will lose their jobs. (Even the federal government can't spend money without buying things, and when we buy things, we generate the need for someone to make those things and sell those things to us. And most of what the government spends money on is services, provided by people who get paid for providing those services.)


So it seems obvious to me that the government needs to keep spending money and employing people both directly and indirectly. Cutting spending can not make us prosperous. Unlike a family, when the government cuts spending, it doesn't maintain the same level of income. It cuts income at the same time, so now it's just operating at a lower level all around. (I understand that to some people, that is the actual goal. These are people who are motivated by a political philosophy that is opposed to government as an article of faith.)

So let's compare two methods of trying to create a more balanced budget while increasing jobs. One approach is to cut government spending, cut taxes, especially on high-income entities such as wealthy people and corporations, and look for this to work its way through the economy until it reaches the point that private businesses start hiring more workers.

Another way is to raise taxes on high-income entities, thus increasing the government's revenues, and then spending that money to do useful things, or even useless things, but things that require manpower (and womanpower).

Basically, the Republican approach vs. the Democratic approach, or the free-market approach vs. the Keynes approach.

We have basically run an experiment over the past 12 years as to what happens when tax rates are low and corporations have excess money and wealthy individuals and entrepreneurs have a large share of the nation's wealth in their portfolios. The results are in: they do not use that money to create jobs.

Not too surprising since "creating jobs" is not what anyone wants to do. A business person is not in the business of creating jobs. Not at all. Quite the contrary. A business person's goal is to create profits. Income. Wealth. Money. Not jobs. Jobs are an expense. Workers cost money. A business owner no more wants to create jobs than she wants to create taxes or inventory. Jobs, employees, are a cost of doing business. The more an employer can produce with fewer workers, the more money she makes. (Sure, she might want to create a job for herself, or her nephew, but in general, she does not want more employees, she wants fewer.)

If a company could make all its products or services with robots, and if the robots could design and create more robots, that would be the ideal. Products and services would flow out of the company, bringing in income, and no tiresome workers with their needs for health care and incentives would be needed. Nirvana. Perfection.

So is there anyone, other than unemployed people who want to see jobs created? Well the president and his party have a motive to increase jobs. People who get a job on his watch might vote for him. People who lose theirs will almost certainly not. (Note to Mr. Obama: even if they are African-American, their sense of pride in you will only go so far. A black person who lost his job in the past 3 years is a person whose vote is on the line.)

So what does this tell us? Businesses will create jobs only as a last resort, when they can't produce enough goods and services to meet demand any other way. Given a choice between money in the bank or another employee to manage, they will take the money in the bank every time. As they are doing this very moment.

However, if you tax that money away from them and put it back into circulation, you can use the money directly to create jobs.

Is this socialism?

No, this is reality.

If taxes went up on those people who have money they aren't using in any productive way, that money could be given to the state and local governments who are currently laying off teachers and police officers . Those teachers and police officers would spend that money, creating jobs for food servers and hair cutters. The food servers and hair cutters and police officers and teachers would not go on unemployment. Instead they would pay taxes. Oh look, more revenue to the federal government from both directions-- at the top and at the bottom. And thus the deficit could also be cut.

Is it fair to tax money away from people who have earned it, in order to create jobs for people who are not smart enough to find a job on their own? Well, only if the goal is a lower federal deficit, lower unemployment, more widespread prosperity, and ultimately, a better overall climate for people to create wealth.

Look at the way sports are managed in this country. A team that is rich and successful could buy up all the best players and dominate the game. Other teams wouldn't have a chance, and ultimately, the sport would not be interesting enough to watch, thus destroying not only the poor teams, but the rich successful one as well.

So mechanisms are put in place that function much like taxes on the rich. The team with the worst record (or almost the worst, to avoid incentives to lose) is allowed to pick first, in order to keep the sport balanced enough that it works for all the teams. Yes, there will always be winners and losers, but if the winners over-dominate, it hurts the entire game.

The same is true in the economy. Unless wealth is redistributed, it will tend to accumulate at the top so much that it will eventually destroy the whole system.

Smart rich people, like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates understand this. Thus they actually support higher taxes, and they re-distribute their wealth on their own.

It's too bad President Obama doesn't see what they see, shake off his fear of being called a socialist, and do what he can to save capitalism, as FDR did.

10 Years Later

It is 10 years since the day that will always be known just as a date--September 11th. That also happens to be my parents' wedding anniversary, and this is the 62nd anniversary of their marriage.

I remember the fear that followed after that day in 2001--Was another attack imminent? Was anthrax part of the plot? I remember the strange combination of pride and humiliation, fear and faith. I lived 3000 miles away, yet it colored my life like it colored every American life.

I also remember the growing doubts about what really happened. Was there more to the story that we weren't being told? Gradually, I came to accept that most of what the government said happened on September 11th was more or less the truth. I still have some doubts about WTC 7, the 47-story building that collapsed from *not* being hit by an airplane. I still have some questions about why all the planes had so few passengers on board, and why a person I know got a "gut feeling" to pull all his money out of the stock market on September 10th. But I am willing to accept that strange things just happen to happen.

The one story that I still believe is a manufactured lie, however, is the story of the heroic passengers on Flight 93 in Shanksville, PA. This flight was scheduled to travel from Newark, NJ to San Francisco. It was taken over by hijackers some 45 minutes into the flight. After that, passengers supposedly made cellphone calls in which they learned that their hijacking was part of a pattern of hijackings, and that 2 planes had already hit in New York City.

Although there are some unlikely aspects to the story so far, up to this point, the story may well be true. But the rest of the story seems like pure propaganda to me. One passenger leaves his cellphone open and says, Let's Roll! A group of passengers rush the cockpit to try to eject the hijackers. And then, what next?

Well, either the passengers take the controls, or they don't. If they take the controls, if they disable the terrorist-pilot and fight off the other 3 terrorists, what would they do? They would contact the ground (with the help, perhaps, of the flight attendants, who must have some idea of how the radio operates) and air traffic controllers would do their best to enable them to land the plane somehow.

On the other hand, perhaps they are not able to overpower the 4 terrorists (though it's something like 35 to 4). The terrorist-pilot remains at the controls of the plane, but he hears the mob of angry passengers outside the door. This is the final and official story of what happened:

"The 9/11 Commission Report concluded that "the hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them" so the hijackers deliberately crashed the plane into the ground.

Now why would they do that? The hijackers intended to die by crashing the plane into the White House or the Capitol, presumably. Why would they panic and crash it into an empty field? What did they have to lose by doing their best to fight off the mob of passengers and continuing with the flight?

When the heroic story was first told, the narrative was that the passengers had made the noble decision to crash the plane, sacrificing themselves for their country. That didn't make any sense at all, so the story was revised to say that the heroic passengers so rattled a group of suicidal killers that the terrorists themselves made the choice to crash the plane rather than...what? Rather than fly it into the White House? Rather than get into a fistfight with the passengers?

The question of whether orders to shoot down the plane was ever given to the military has been raised, and the obvious answer is that that would have been a reasonable choice. A female military pilot has stated that she fully intended to crash her fighter jet into the commercial airliner to take it out before it could reach the Capitol.

I think that if the government and the military did make the choice to shoot down the plane, it would have complicated the narrative considerably, and diverted attention towards arguing about whether the US government should ever attack its own civilians in such a manner.

But that's what I think happened. I think the plane was shot down by the US military.

I don't see any reason that the hijackers would have preemptively killed themselves and their passengers in order to avoid a tussle in the cockpit.

And this means that I believe the government has created an elaborate heroic story, backed up by a fictionalized movie to cement it in the public imagination, in order to avoid a lot of hard questions.

Would the government do such a thing? Ask Jessica Lynch. Ask the family of Pat Tillman.

Keeping government small and local

Tea Party types, and conservatives in general, like to rail against Big Government, and they want to keep government as small and local as possible. They claim that the Constitution was written with that expectation (it probably was) and that therefore, that is how it should always be (a questionable premise).

So my question is, How would that work out in the face of an event like what happened last week in Japan? Suppose Japan had most of its power and control vested in individual prefectures. What happens when an entire prefecture (several, in fact) are devastated all at once?

In the United States, we had the Katrina event, which brought devastation to several states. Absent a strong central government to help with recovery and to spread the cost around, how is a local government supposed to cope?

We face the possibility of destructive events on the scale of Japan's in the Pacific Northwest and from San Francisco to San Diego in California. And then there's the Yellowstone Caldera and the New Madrid Fault, if you run out of things to worry about.

The benefit of having a strong and effective national government is obvious. Any time risk is shared by a larger pool of people, it is minimized on individuals. That's how insurance works, and that's how government works. We need to stop demonizing government and think about the only thing worse than a government in control, and that is lack of a government in control.

A loving and merciful God?

Ok, let's say that human beings were created by a direct act of a God who is omnipotent and loving. God cares about human beings, made them in His own image, and created a special place for them, which we call Planet Earth.

So what went wrong along the way? How did God overlook the fact that the planet He created for these humans was cracked and fractured and prone to generating massive earthquakes unpredictably, causing great suffering, loss of life, and laying waste the work of man's hands? Did the God not understand the basics of physics, the principles of seismology?

Did He do this deliberately, knowing that random large-scale loss of human life would be the result? Is it intended to test the faith of those humans who trust Him? Maybe make them more dependent on God (who then turns around and proves completely undependable)?

Did He just not care?

Or is the simplest answer that God did not carefully place us on this planet, and in fact God exists to the extent that human beings help and care for each other compassionately, and not to any other extent?

Where is God when the earth buckles and the sea pours over the land? The only place I can see Him (or Her) is in the brave, patient, compassionate, duty-driven actions of those who try to rescue their pets, their children, their parents grandparents, and complete strangers.

Pray for Our Miners

It is heart-breaking to see and hear the people of West Virginia, whose loved ones are almost certainly dead at the bottom a coal mine that exploded from a mixture of toxic dust and gases, say, Pray for our miners! I fully respect and empathize with their belief that they need Someone to depend on., to survive in such a difficult livelihood.

But coal-miners' families surely prayed for their miners throughout the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries, here and in Great Britain--and yet miners continued to die. Probably the families of coal miners in China also pray for their miners, and still they die in large numbers.

But over the past 50 years in the United States, the number of coal mine fatalities was drastically reduced, not by prayers, but by strong unions and strong government regulation. Maybe God never thought of that, or maybe God is the force in those union miners and those government bureaucrats who insist that the safety of working men is more important than the corporations' profits.

What those grieving families need to do, once their tears dry, is to use their churches and their union halls and their radio stations to stand up and say, Enough. We won't send our men down into unsafe mines with dozens of safety violations. We won't stand by, proud yet cowed, in fear that if we speak up, the only livelihood we have will move elsewhere.

Maybe they will recognize that God really doesn't work in such mysterious ways. He works in a very obvious way--through the actions of human beings who recognize their own worth and the worth of other people and who refuse to accept injustice and suffering as God's will.

Another letter to the President

Dear Mr. President,

As you consider how to proceed in Afghanistan, I have a few thoughts that I hope you will consider. We are trying to support the idea of free and fair elections in Afghanistan, in the hopes of building a democracy there. That seems like a noble idea, but I believe it is unrealistic. As results have shown, there is massive "fraud" in the elective process there.

I believe that this kind of "fraud" and "corruption" is inevitable, and is a sign that Afghanistan is not at the point in its development to be suited to our concept of democracy. Democracy depends on an educated citizenry, while Afghanistan's literacy rate is very low. Democracy also depends on a concept of human society that sees each person as an independent actor, able and willing to make choices that differ from his or her friends, family, and neighbors. But not everyone thinks that way. In a tribal society, the needs of the tribe outweigh one's own personal opinions. The idea of standing up for one's own ideas and opinions is not something that is reasonable to everyone on this planet.

I think we should accept Afghanistan for what it is--a country that consists of tribal groups, with local strongmen as leaders, and work within that framework. Perhaps a king would make more sense than an elected president. It is possible to have a king, and still respect the rights of the people.

The more we push for fair elections in Afganistan, the more we play into the hands of the Taliban, who are naturally more in touch with the realities of life in Afghanistan. Look at those pictures of women in burkas, casting their votes. Do you really think that each person is free to vote her own conscience? Even in the city of Chicago, union leaders and ward bosses influence people's votes. What can we expect in Afghanistan?

Your responsibility as president is to protect our borders, to prevent terrorists from penetrating our country. It doesn't matter what some radicals in Afghanistan think of us, as long as they are not capable of getting into the United States and attacking us.

I am not willing to expend another dollar or another American life to support a questionable democracy in the distant country of Afghanistan. The only thing Afghanistan ever did to us was to allow terrorists to live there. Well terrorists also lived in Germany and Great Britain and Florida. This is not our country and not our responsibility.

Of course the generals want more soldiers and more time, When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is military force, everything looks like it needs more military force. It's not up to the generals! It's up to civilian leadership, and that means you.

Act like a man of peace, and end the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. When the people of Afghanistan are ready for representative democracy, they will fight for it themselves. All this training is a joke--soldiers who believe in what they are fighting for can be trained to do so in a very short time, as the Taliban shows. The national army can't be trained because they don't want to be trained.

If you escalate the war in Afghanistan, it will show beyonf a shadow of a doubt that you are in thrall to the military-industrial complex of constant war. Be a man of peace. Bring the troops home.

Sincerely,

Evelyn Uyemura

Letter I sent to the President

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations on being chosen for the Nobel Peace Prize. I agree with your assessment that the intent of this prize is to spur action. And I am happy to hear that you intend to donate the prize money.

May I make a suggestion: use this money, and your prestige, and whatever political power you have, to bring peace to your old neighborhood, the south side of Chicago.

We have all heard the story of Emmett Till, and how his death at the hands of white racists in Mississippi in 1955 and his funeral in Chicago touched the hearts of a nation and began the progress towards civil rights.

But look where we are today: black youths beating each other to death in that same city. Children, like your daughter, and like my daughter, a student at the University of Chicago, fearing for their lives when they walk to and from school.

How can we have any hope of bringing peace in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Israel and Palestine, if we cannot even bring peace in a great American city like Chicago? If the money and attention and care that goes into fighting wars half a world away were focused on our own inner city, maybe we could have a hope of saving these young people who fall victim to random violence.

You are in a unique position, and the eyes of the world have twice been turned in your direction, and in the direction of Chicago. What better use could you make of this prize money, and of this opportunity, than to try to bring peace to Chicago. Please don't let this moment pass.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Incidently, the passwords to send a message to the president are most weird. The first one was "shoplift 000," and then there was an error, and the second one was "spooks Tazzer." wtf? That random word generator thing has racist tendencies!

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize?

Seriously? I actually didn't believe it when I saw the headline in my email this morning. Had to get 2 sources before I could believe that it is true.

Now, I love Obama as much as anybody. I think he is the right man to be president at this time, and I try not to worry too much about him being ineffective. (healthcare reform, anyone?)

But I think this is a ridiculous choice by the Nobel committee, and I think it devalues the meaning of the Peace prize. It was given mainly as a slap in the face to Bush.

Obama is the commander in chief of a military that is currently occupying two foreign countries, and he's considering expanding the presence in one of those countries. Guantanamo still isn't closed. Detainees are still imprisoned at Bagram Airforce base, and apparently are being sent there from countries outside of Afghanistan.

7 or 8 years from now, if Obama has turned the US into a peace-loving country that pays more attention ot the well-being of its citizens than it's "interests" abroad, he will deserve a Peace Prize.

Now? Well, you don't give prizes to people to encourage them to do something. You give the prize after they've done it.

I think this is silly and embarrassing, and possibly even manipulative. Bad call, Nobel Committee.

Let's talk taxes

And just to keep it neat and simple, let's talk local taxes. City or county taxes.

It is taxes that allows the county of Los Angeles to run a public library system. I was at the library a couple of times this week, and I saw a lot of kids who probably come from low-income families, I saw people using the free computers to look for jobs and print out resumes, I saw old people reading the newspapers, and so on. It seemed to me like a very good thing. Most countries don't have anything like the public libraries we have, not even England or Japan.

If it were not for our public libraries, people with the money to spare could buy books in bookstores or through amazon.com. I can afford to buy books, and I do spend a fair amount of money per year buying my own books, magazines, and videos. I don't depend on the public library, though I like going there.

But if less government is better government, and if lower taxes are better than higher taxes, then it follows that we would be better off without taxing people to pay for libraries. If rich people want to donate books to poor kids, that's their choice, but why should successful, prosperous people who work hard and earn enough money to buy their own books have their money confiscated to allow access to books by people who haven't made the same good choices in their own lives?

Why should booksellers have to compete against public libraries that completely undercut them on cost? If we eliminated public libraries, more copies of books would be sold, increasing the income of hard-working authors, which would be good for the economy. Why should JK Rowling sell only one or two copies of Harry Potter to the library, to be read by dozens of kids? It seems awfully unfair to Borders and Amazon.com as well as Blockbuster, JK Rowling, and Houghton Mifflin that they pay taxes which then go to undermine their profits!

And ya know what? I bet some of those kids I saw at the library the other day speaking a foreign language have parents who came into the country illegally. That elderly Korean guy reading the Korean newspaper (my tax dollars being used to buy foreign language books and newspapers?!) could have over-stayed his visa. He may very well be an illegal himself.

This is essentially the same argument that is used on a broader scale to argue that we can't afford health care for all, that high taxes are unfair, that government should stay out of our lives. Is it convincing in regards to public libraries? Would anyone vote to close down their local libraries and sell the buildings in order to raise money, so as to lower taxes?

We take things like public libraries (and public schools and public highway systems) for granted. But if they had to be voted into existence now, would such a proposal pass? Or would people be standing up at meetings screaming, "I buy my own damn books and newspapers and dvds, and I'll be damned if I'll let some bureaucrat decide what books the city should buy. I fought for this country, and why should I be forced to pay for books in Korean and Japanese and Spanish, which I don't even read, or pay for books that are going to be read by kids whose parents came here illegally!! This thing will bankrupt us!"

Guilded Age 2

Paul Krugman recently posted a graph showing over almost 100 years what percentage of the nation's income lands in the pockets of the top 0.01% of the country. In other words, it's a measure of inequality, or the growth in wealth of the richest of the rich.

When the record-keeping began in 1913, the top sliver of the country earned less than 3% of the money earned in that year. (In a strictly egalitarian society they would, I suppose, have earned 0.01%) The income of the rich peaked in 1928, just at the verge of the Great Depression, with the wealthiest one-hundredth of a percent of the population receiving 5% of the income. After the crash, their share dropped down to around 2%, and then there was a long moderation, from 1943 to around 1983, when the rich's share of all income earned hovered just above 1%.

Since I remember much of that time period, I can say that it was a time when the working class became the real heart and soul of America. Working men could buy houses and cars and take their 5 or 6 kids on vacation, and their wives could stay home and raise the kids. Middle class people could send their kids to college, and college students from the lower middle class could work for 3 months and earn enough to pay their room and board for the next 9 months. If they took a year off, they could save enough to pay for 2 years of school. It was a good time, in other words. And rich people seemed to be doing ok too. (though I didn't know any of them! But you didn't hear of too many jumps out of Wall Street windows!)

The picture begins to change in the 80s, with the rich crossing the 2% line for the first time since 1938. And then the line bounces between 2 and 3% for a while, and suddenly between 1997 and 2007, it leaps up to 6%, the highest level ever.

The data only goes as far as 2007, but there does seem to be a notable coincidence--the last time the rich controlled so much of the income, the Great Depression happened. This time, we're calling it the Great Recession of 2008.

Do I point this out because I'm jealous of the top 0.01% of income earners and want to punish them for being richer than me. No, I assure you, that's not the point.

The point is that it is deleterious for everyone, for the entire economy, when a very small number of people receive a large share of the wealth that is generated. Why? Because money that is spent creates demand for goods and services, creating jobs and opportunities for those in the lower segments of the population. And if those jobs are paid a slightly higher proportion of the income that comes into a corporation, it benefits everyone. That's why we had widespread prosperity and growth from WW2 till the 1980s.

But when money pours into the pockets of the very rich, they have no need to spend it. They invest it in the stock market instead, producing bubbles as capital expands much faster than the markets for actual good and services (since those at the bottom are more numerous but have less to spend.)

The spike is probably somewhat self-generating--as more money is in the hands of the wealthy, they invest more, driving up the price of stocks artificially, creating paper wealth, which shows up as income. But meanwhile, the real wealth, which is produced at the bottom of the food chain, and also largely consumed there, stagnates, so the spike leads directly to the crash. Paper wealth evaporates, reducing the rich folks share of the income, but not actually touching their lifestyle, while at the bottom, people living paycheck to paycheck lose their homes and their jobs and their health insurance, and their kids lose their chance to go to college, so the crash, though it hurts the rich more on paper, actually hurts the poor in personal ways.

What could stop the spike and collapse pattern? It seems like 2 things--more reasonable behavior by corporate boards, stopping the inflationary spiral of top executive pay and spreading the wealth more evenly down through the totem pole (Wal-Mart, for instance, doesn't *have* to create the 3 richest people in the country and also pay its workers low wages. The see-saw could tip the other way.)

And government could provide the nudge in the form of a tax system that treat all income equally, whether it is earned by work or by investment, and by raising the marginal tax rate on large incomes, so that corporations and small businesses would be incentivized to leave the profits at work in the company productively, rather than sucking them out and distributing them in wages and bonuses, which money is used for speculation rather than worthwhile investment in actual productivity.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/even-more-gilded/

Who's really Killing Granny?

No death panels needed, really.

Try to imagine yourself in this situation: You are 60 years old. You ran your own business for years, paid for your own health insurance, and then you had the misfortune to be diagnosed with cancer. Three times. You can't work as hard as you used to, but you can and must still work. So you find a job that covers your insurance.

And then you get fired.

Not so bad--COBRA requires that you be allowed to keep your coverage, as long as you pay for it. For 18 months. So for the past 14 months, this 59 year old cancer survivor has lived on unemployment, paid probably more than her income to remain covered, and searched for a job that will include health benefits. Not surprisingly, in this economy, the market for older, cancer-surviving, grey-haired women isn't all that hot, and so far, she hasn't found a job. If she doesn't have one in December, she will be without income and without health insurance.

She had medical bills to pay out of pocket in 2005 of $33,000, so odds are that those took a big bite out of her savings. And of course, if she was a real smart cookie, she had money in mutual funds in a 401k, but those have dropped by half for most of us, so it's pretty unlikely she can pay for private medical insurance anyhow, but with her medical history, under our current system, it's most likely that no insurance company in the country would take her at any price.

God forbid that we should have rationing. God forbid that we should have inefficient bureaucracy. Thanks heavens we have the freedom to choose our own doctors.

And if you worked all your life and have the misfortune to have a life-threatening illness before age 65, well let's hope God is on your side, because otherwise, you are on your own.

Here's the story and a picture of this woman. Look at her and think about her when you think of why our "health care system" might need a few tweaks.

Random Thoughts on Labor

Throughout American history (and probably all history) there has always been a two-tier system of workers, one paid at the "full-pay" level, and one that is expendable in various ways.

At first, there was slavery. Slaves could be called upon to do any work that no one else wanted to do, and they were paid only subsistence.

When slavery went out of fashion, child labor came into play. And when child labor went out, women came into the marketplace. Female workers could be hired on a casual short-term basis, let go when work decreased, and they could be paid less than a man. And of course, in that same time frame, black workers were also paid less and had none of the rights and privileges of a white male worker.

When blacks and women finally gained a legal right to equal pay--not until the 1970s and 80s--there was a big gap. Who would fill in this gap between full-time, benefit-receiving, mainstream workers and the fluctuations in the market? Who would do the dirty work? That just happens to be when large numbers of illegal or undocumented workers began pouring into the country. That is also when out-sourcing began to be viable. With the internet coming of age, the niche that once would have been filled by educated but lower-paid, temporary female workers (housewives, women between graduation and marriage or child-reading) was filled by skilled or semi-skilled workers in China and India. The niche previosuly filled by "Negroes" was now filled by "Mexicans."

In academia, that very same niche, the last-hired, first-fired, non-benefit, no-commitment niche, is filled by part-time instructors.

In most cases, including that of part-time academic workers, the promise is that if you accept this low position on the totem pole, at some point, you can move into the mainstream. And then a new class of marginal workers will have to be brought in to fill your role.

I Voted!

I woke up at 4 am this morning, to the sound of rain. Oh no, not rain on election day! Got up and showered at 5:30, and got ready for the day. I waited till just after 7:30 to go vote, hoping not to have to stand in line. By 7:30, the sun was out and every leaf glistening. "Morning has broken, like the first morning." I decided to walk over to Lincoln School, in case there was any difficulty parking. Right by the school, a car started backing out of its garage unexpectedly and almost hit me--a car with Ron Paul signs all over it. Figures. The crossing guard made sure I got across the street all right, and I felt like it was 1957 and I was walking to school for the first time!

Kristen's friend Sarah W-R was one of the poll workers, and she told me that there had been a considerable line at 7 am when they opened, which had just cleared. There were only 3 people ahead of me. I saw Kristen's name there, marked as Vote By Mail, and they tried to convince me that I had already voted by mail, but I drew my finger along the line and showed them that I was on the line above. Old age, not voter suppression. One poll worker had a sign indicating that she spoke Japanese and another had a sign indicating Chinese.

Obama's name was first on the ballot, and McCain was not second but third, I think. I inked it carefully, and after I took it out, I checked again to be sure that the mark was in the right spot.

By the time I was leaving, another line was building up, as parents came to drop their kids off for school and vote at the same time.

I walked home in the glistening morning sunlight feeling the Hope! feeling the Yes We Can!

My students were asking me yesterday who I planned to vote for. All I would say was, I'm gonna vote for the winner! Please God let it be true! I enjoyed this vote more than any vote I can ever remember. I also enjoyed voting No on Prop. 8. Since when would we vote to take rights away from people?

Now the tension builds!

The Secret Life of Bees

For several years now, I've been teaching The Secret Life of Bees in my 1A and 1AX classes. Student reaction to the book has been almost uniformly positive, from international students and American students, from white students and black students, and somewhat from men, as well as women. Several times over the semesters, students have wanted to see the movie, but there wasn't a movie. I imagined what a good movie it might make, and when I heard that Dakota Fanning was going to play the lead (at least 2 years ago an internet rumor), I was surprised because she seemed too young.

But she grew up, and the movie was finally made and was released this weekend. Sam and I went to see it this afternoon. (Thanks, Sam! It's not really your kind of movie, but I appreciated your presence.) One of the first things I noticed was that an 11:30 am movie on Friday in south Torrance was quite full, and a substantial portion of the audience was African-American women and couples. Later I read that there is some concern that if it is perceived as a "black film" it won't play to white audiences. I am not too concerned about that. Millions of white women have read and loved the book. In fact, i was more concerned whether black people would accept the movie. There is some controversy about the fact that a white woman wrote a book that some (few) see as co-opting or stealing cultural icons that rightly belong to the black community. Here's hoping that, as in politics, so too in daily life, we can all appreciate a story that involves both black and white people in all their separate and intertwined glory. (Incidently the director and several of the producers, as well as the majority of the actors, of course, are black. But the lead is a white girl, and it's her story.)



So how was the movie? It's hard for me to say, in a way, because I have so internalized and memorized the plot that I can't really see how well the movie stands on its own. The movie stuck quite closely to the book, putting many of the most memorable lines directly into the actors' mouths. And almost miraculously, to me, the feel and tone of the movie seemed close to that of the book. But, as is almost inevitable, some of the depth is lost. A few of the cuts seemed regrettable to me. I have imagined so vividly so many times the scene when Lily and Rosaleen bathe in the creek after a disagreement that it *feels* as if I've seen it. But that scene, with its strong baptism imagery, was not included. Also, the scene when they stop to rest at Lily's church and steal a fan was omitted, as were any details about how Lily springs Rosaleen from the hospital (a much simpler scenario, that the young sheriff was busy flirting when the two walked out) was perhaps more believable, but it took away some of the charm of Lily's personality.

Also, it was more explicit from the beginning that Lily had held the gun that killed her mother, and so the pivotal scene at the end, when Lily runs after T. Ray to ask who really did it is necessarily changed to her asking if her mother had really come back to get her or not. Perhaps that works better, since it makes her quest not one to find out if she did it, but to find out if her mother loved her or not, which is a deeper and more universal quest.

The most significant plot change actually seemed to improve upon the plot of the book: the issue that got Zach in trouble and led to May's suicide. Rather than a fight between young black boys and older white guys over a rumor about Jack Palance bringing a black woman to the theater (though, oddly, the mention of that is left in), what happens is that Zach and Lily themselves sit together in the "colored" section of the movie, and the white guys storm in and abduct Zach. Again somewhat miraculously, he escapes with only a black eye and a few bruises, but is gone long enough to move the plot forward. And also nicely, Zach's mother is one of the Daughter's of Mary, and May learns of Zach's abduction when his mother slips into the house to pray before Our Lady of Chains.

The acting was mostly really good. Dakota Fanning was just right as a barely adolescent girl with a quick mind and a wounded spirit. (She reminds me very much of my niece Hannah.) I couldn't quite see Queen Latifah as August in my mind, but she plays the part well. Perhaps the best jobs were done by the guy who played T. Ray, as a believable angry redneck, whose wounded heart is conveyed with subtlety. I think I was most impressed with the character of May. I could never quite picture someone singing Oh Susannah as therapy, but she hummed it very lightly before dissolving into tears, and her cock-eyed smile and intensity was better than I could have imagined. The weakest character, for me, was June. I had difficulty, first of all, with her appearance and clothing style, since I certainly never pictured June in tight jeans and a form-fitting NAACP t-shirt (nor did I find that believable for the time period.) I also didn't feel that her anger and resentment came across as anything more than simple nastiness.

I wished there had been more period touches, more of a 1964 feel to it. Sam also felt that it didn't feel like he remembers 1964, or even like I remember Auburn, Alabama in 1973. A bit more of the music, and more of African-American culture and the feel of the Civil Rights movement would have made me really feel that I had time-traveled to South Carolina in 1964.

But my final judgment? Better than I expected. And a story I still love.

The Last Debate

So we're down to the wire, and this is the last chance these two guys have to talk to the whole country before we vote.

So here's how McCain starts it off. After shoe-horning Nancy Reagan's name into the intro (remember Reagan? remember how warm and fuzzy he made you feel? Remember how old he was? ok, never mind), his first major point is this:

Americans are hurting right now, and they're angry. They're hurting, and they're angry. They're innocent victims of greed and excess on Wall Street and as well as Washington, D.C. And they're angry, and they have every reason to be angry

Wow, the word angry 4 times in the first 20 seconds or so? Guess who's feeling angry tonight? Man, Freud got that projection thing right.

Then he brings up the semi-mythical beast, Joe the Plumber:

You know, when Senator Obama ended up his conversation with Joe the plumber -- we need to spread the wealth around. In other words, we're going to take Joe's money, give it to Senator Obama, and let him spread the wealth around.

I want Joe the plumber to spread that wealth around. You told him you wanted to spread the wealth around.

The whole premise behind Senator Obama's plans are class warfare, let's spread the wealth around. I want small businesses -- and by the way, the small businesses that we're talking about would receive an increase in their taxes right now.

Who -- why would you want to increase anybody's taxes right now? Why would you want to do that, anyone, anyone in America, when we have such a tough time, when these small business people, like Joe the plumber, are going to create jobs, unless you take that money from him and spread the wealth around.

Poor McCain. He thinks that Americans live in fear of someone "spreading the wealth around." Well maybe in Sedona they do. But out here in the flatlands, our biggest fear is that the wealth will keep on doing what it's been doing (statistically speaking) for the past 8 years, which is clumping all up at the very tippy-top. So a little wealth spreading doesn't scare us, Senator McCain. We know how it's gone, we know who has the wealth. And it isn't plumbers who work for it. It's investment bankers who play games with it.

He actually said: "We need to encourage business, create jobs, not spread the wealth around."

Oh that's beautiful. Encourage business, but don't spread any wealth around! Keep it where it belongs--in rich guys pockets!

McCain also revels in his oldness, his memories of things that happened before most Americans were even born. Talking about the urgent need for town hall meetings (the lack of which forced him to call Obama a terrorist), he reminded Americans that this is "the way Barry Goldwater and Jack Kennedy agreed to do, before the intervention of the tragedy at Dallas."

Right. I was in the 4th grade then, and I am eligible for the Senior Special at IHOP. I don't think Obama was even born. Neither were most of his voters. Look it up in your American history book, you bunch of punks!

He also refers to the good things the government did in the Great Depression, as if it were only yesterday.

Then there are the times when he references things that even those of us who try to follow all these things just can't quite follow:

Let me just say categorically I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies. Whenever you get a large rally of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people, you're going to have some fringe peoples. You know that. And I've -- and we've always said that that's not appropriate.

But to somehow say that group of young women who said "Military wives for McCain" are somehow saying anything derogatory about you, but anything -- and those veterans that wear those hats that say "World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq," I'm not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they're great citizens.

Hunh? What is this about Military wives for McCain? And Veterans of our many wars? And let's be serious here. Those numbers at "our rallies"? McCain isn't drawing crowds like that. Only Palin is.

He finally got up the courage to accuse Obama of, um, knowing Bill Ayers. And then he said this:

ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy

Get out. Destroying the fabric of democracy? By registering Mickey Mouse to vote? Damn, and when Mickey shows up and flashed his ID, we're gonna have to let that rodent vote! And there goes the neighborhood.

McCain pounced on Obama for saying he'd "look at" offshore drilling, calling it an example of how Obama's "eloquence" was deceiving people. Except that it was McCain doing the deception in this case, because the transcript clearly shows that what Obama had said the paragraph before was:
"And I think that we should look at offshore drilling and implement it in a way that allows us to get some additional oil. "

McCain also used this old tried and true method of casting doubt: compare Obama to...Herbert Hoover? Seriously?

Senator Obama wants to restrict trade and he wants to raise taxes. And the last president of the United States that tried that was Herbert Hoover, and we went from a deep recession into a depression.

All of you out there over the age of 80, who were actually alive when Hoover was president, I know you'll never forget how much you hated Hoover, and you will see that Obama is his direct descendent.

He also tried to scare the bejezus out of us all by telling us that under Obama, our health care will be like Canada's and England's. Nooooo! You mean like where Americans go to get drugs at a price they can afford? You mean like where people who have cancer or their kids have cancer, and all they have to focus on is dealing with the illness, and not also worry themselves sick dealing with insurance companies? You mean where a pregnant woman who needs to go on bedrest doesn't lose her insurance coverage? You mean where people aren't being forced into bankruptcy to pay for a one-week stay in the hospital? You mean where small business owners don't also have to worry about how they could possibly pay for their own insurance, much less that of their employees? That damn terrorist, doing that to us!

He ended up grinning into the camera, telling Joe the Plumber that at $250,000, Congratulations, you're rich! haha. (because everyone knows that don't touch rich. Cindy, now that's what I mean by rich!)

All in all, it was a pitiful performance by an angry old man who is despreately trying to distance himself from his own party (one of his biggest selling points is how often he can disagree with his own party, and he seems to think there's something wrong with anyone who belongs to a party he actually supports).

I can't wait to vote, and to see the results pour in.

Let Me See if I Understand This

Ok, so I'm trying my best to follow the panic of 2008 and the bailout/rescue plan. My understanding is that people got caught up in a price spiral that was actually speculative in nature.

So instead of houses, let's pretend that they were buying Beanie Babies. When my daughter was in late elementary school Beanie Babies were all the craze. At first people bought the cute little stuffed toys for their kids to play with. The manufacturer, sensing a fad, starting releasing "limited editions" and otherwise manipulating the availability of particular versions. So a toy that started out costing $5.99 or so was being re-sold for much more than that. People bought special plastic covers for the heart-shaped tags in order to keep the tag neat because that would add to the value of the toy as a collectible. Many people kept their special ones in custom-designed clear plastic cases and never let little grubby hands near them. The belief was that a $5.99 toy bought today would probably be worth $100 in the near future. A few people actually paid $100 for a single toy.

So suppose I got caught up in that mania. I notice that $5.99 toys can be sold for $12 in a few weeks time. Geez, that's a fast profit. So I buy 1000 of the things. Invest $6000, expecting to sell them later and get $12,000 back. Easy money! A lot of other people are also buying them at the same time, which is one of the things that is already making the price rise.




After a few months, I try to sell my Beanie Babies. But the fad has passed and the market has cooled. It turns out that there are not too many people who really want $100 toys after all. Now I'm stuck with items that aren't worth as much as I expected. In fact, I start seeing them at yard sales for $1.

Well, lesson learned. Now I have a garage full of mistakes.

Except that, unfortunately for me, I didn't actually take that original $6000 investment out of my savings account. I actually borrowed it. Paid for it with my credit card, in fact. And I still owe--well, thanks to the miracle of compounding, I actually owe more than $6,000. I owe $7000. So I have a $7000 debt and a pile of collateral that's worth less, maybe a lot less, than $7000. How much is it worth? Well, in order to answer that question accurately, I have to find a buyer or buyers for 1,000 Beanie Babies. Maybe there aren't any buyers at all. Maybe if I hold a yard sale or put them on ebay, the selling price will be only 5 cents, because the intrinsic value of them is basically nothing at all. No one needs a Beanie Baby.

If this were a story about houses and mortgages, that last sentence wouldn't be true. Housing is a need and houses do have at least some intrinsic value, or at least the land does. How much land is worth depends, of course, on where it's located and what else is around it. There may be lots of land between 2 meth houses in some depraved suburb or inner city that have essentially no worth under present conditions. The taxes on it would be more than its useful value. But for the most part houses are worth something.

What is scarier than houses is paper. Specifically, Credit-Default Swaps, which if I understand the story correctly, were bought and sold like Beanie Babies, except they can't even be played with by bored children. They are promises, backed by nothing at all, that were sold for millions of dollars.

And sometimes they were "leveraged," ie bought with debt.

I think that's what's really gone wrong. Not housing, which people value for a reason, but financial instruments that were of less real value than a Beanie Baby.

Weirder and weirder

http://www.alternet.org/rights/97939/?page=entire

"On June 8, 2008 Palin was publicly blessed, with the "laying on of hands" before six thousand Wasilla area church members, by Head Wasilla Assembly of God Pastor Ed Kalnins and on the same day both Kalnins and Palin described, at a "Masters Commission" ceremony at the Wasilla Assembly of God church, how she had been blessed prior to winning the Alaska governorship by an African cleric known for driving the "spirit of witchcraft" out of a town in Kenya, after which town supposedly crime rates dropped "almost to zero."

Sarah Palin's churches are actively involved in a resurgent movement that was declared heretical by the Assemblies of God in 1949. This is the same 'Spiritual Warfare' movement that was featured in the award winning movie, "Jesus Camp," which showed young children being trained to do battle for the Lord. At least three of four of Palin's churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of this movement, which is referred to as The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit or the New Apostolic Reformation. The movement is training a young "Joel's Army" to take dominion over the United States and the world.

Along with her entire family, Sarah Palin was re-baptized at twelve at the Wasilla Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska and she attended the church from the time she was ten until 2002: over two and 1/2 decades. Sarah Palin's extensive pattern of association with the Wasilla Assembly of God has continued nearly up to the day she was picked by Senator John McCain as a vice-presidential running mate.

Palin's dedication to the Wasilla church is indicated by a Saturday, September 7, 2008, McClatchy news service story detailing possibly improper use of state travel funds by Palin for a trip she made to Wasilla, Alaska to attend, on June 8, 2008, both a Wasilla Assembly of God "Masters Commission" graduation ceremony and also a multi-church Wasilla area event known as "One Lord Sunday."

At the latter event, Palin and Alaska LT Governor Scott Parnell were publicly blessed, onstage before an estimated crowd of 6,000, through the "laying on of hands" by Wasilla Assembly of God's Head Pastor Ed Kalnins whose sermons espouse such theological concepts as the possession of geographic territories by demonic spirits and the inter-generational transmission of family "curses". Palin has also been blessed, or "anointed", by an African cleric, prominent in the Third Wave movement, who has repeatedly visited the Wasilla Assembly of God and claims to have effected positive, dramatic social change in a Kenyan town by driving out a "spirit of witchcraft."

The Wasilla Assembly of God church is deeply involved with both Third Wave activities and theology. Their Master's Commission program is part of an three year post-high school international training program with studies in prophecy, intercessory prayer, Biblical exegesis, authority and leadership.

Watch Bruce Wilson's video documentary detailing the extreme Religious Right connections to the Wasilla Assembly of God church, "Sarah Palin's Churches and the Third Wave":

The pastor, Ed Kalnins, and Masters Commission students have traveled to South Carolina to participate in a "prophetic conference" at Morningstar Ministries, one of the major ministries of the Third Wave movement. Becky Fischer was a pastor at Morningstar prior to being featured in the movie "Jesus Camp." The head of prophecy at Morningstar, Steve Thompson, is currently scheduled to do a prophecy seminar at the Wasilla Assembly of God. Other major leaders in the movement have also traveled to Wasilla to visit and speak at the church.

The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form "Joel's Army" to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God.

While segments of this belief system have been a part of Pentecostalism and charismatic beliefs for decades, the excesses of this movement were declared a heresy in 1949 by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and again condemned through Resolution 16 in 2000.

The beliefs and manifestations of the movement include the use of 'strategic level spiritual warfare' to expel territorial demons from American and world cities. Worship includes excessive charismatic manifestations such as hundreds of people falling, 'slain in the spirit,' and congregations laughing, jerking, and shrieking uncontrollably.

In early 2008 an outbreak of those phenomena commenced at the palatial former ministry estate of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, recently bought up and restored by prominent Third Wave author and leader Rick Joyner's Morningstar Ministries. The (spiritual) "breakout" lasted for many weeks and was publicized in an extensive collection of video footage available on YouTube. Healing services in the Third Wave movement claim to heal the sick and injured through methods that in some cases can appear bizarre - including, as in recent cases involving Todd Bentley, the patient being head butted or kicked by the anointed healer. Recipients of such "spiritual" or miraculous healing make a wide range of astonishing claims - to have been cured of life-threatening illnesses, had joints repaired or replaced, been given gold teeth or gold fillings, regrown stunted limbs and even had deformed skeletal structures straightened and reshaped. Worldwide mission efforts of the movement are built around the idea of combating witches, warlocks, and generational curses, which prevent churches from being able to take root.

Mike Rose, senior pastor of Juneau Christian Center has a long relationship with Rodney Howard-Browne, credited with being the instigator of the outbreak of 'Holy Laughter' around the world, including the Toronto Airport Revival. Thomas Muthee visited Wasilla Assembly of God and gave 10 consecutive sermons at the church, from October 11-16 2005. As both Palin and Wasilla AoG Head Pastor Ed Kalnins have attested, Thomas Muthee 'prayed over' Sarah Palin and entreated God to "make a way" prior to Palin's successful bid for the Alaska governorship. Muthee made a return visit to the Wasilla Assembly of God in late 2008. Thomas Muthee's Word of Faith Church is featured in the "Transformations" video which details an account on how Muthee drove "the spirit of witchcraft" out of Kiambu, Kenya, liberating the town from its territorial demonic possession and enabling a miraculous societal transformation. The "Transformations" video set is used as an argument for social improvement through spiritual instead of human means, and as the best method for fighting corruption, crime, drugs and even environmental degradation.

In the video, producer George Otis declares that after Thomas Muthee and his followers banished the "spirit of witchcraft" from the town, the crime rate in Kiambu dropped almost to zero, along with the rate of alcoholism, and according to Otis most of the residents of the town joined churches. The "Transformations" video has helped spark a network of 'Transformation' ministries and mission organizations and 'transformation' has become a buzz word for change based on supernatural instead of human efforts.

The Third Wave, also known as the New Apostolic Reformation, is a network of Apostles, many of them grouped around C. Peter Wagner, founder of the World Prayer Center. This center, which was built in coordination with Ted Haggard and his New Life Church in Colorado Springs, was featured in an article by Jeff Sharlet in Harpers, May 2005, "Soldiers of Christ." Sharlet was one of the first to write in the secular press about the World Prayer Center which is often referred to by those familiar with the Third Wave as the 'Pentagon for Spiritual Warfare.' It features computer systems that store the data of communities around the world, mapping out unsaved peoples' groups and spiritual mapping information for spiritual warfare. Wagner has his own group of about 500 Apostles in his council and each of these Apostles has ministries under their authority, sometimes hundreds or thousands. Recently various networks of Apostles came together to form the Revival Alliance. Leaders of the Revival Alliance including Rick Joyner of Morningstar anointed Todd Bentley whose Lakeland Healing Revival has recently been a controversial topic in the Evangelical world.

Wagner's top leaders often conduct spiritual warfare campaigns against the demons that block the acceptance of their brand of Christian belief, such as 'Operation Ice Castle' in the Himalayas in 1997. Several of their top prophets and generals of intercession spent weeks in intensive prayer to "confront the Queen of Heaven." This queen is considered by them to be one of the most powerful demons over the earth and is the Great Harlot of Mystery Babylon in Revelation. (The "Great Harlot [or 'whore'] of Mystery Babylon" theme also figures prominently in the sermons of Texas megachurch pastor and Christians United For Israel founder John Hagee, former endorser of John McCain's 2008 presidential bid.) Wagner and his group also claim that the Queen of Heaven is Diana, the pagan god of the biblical book Ephesians and the god of Mary veneration in the Roman Catholic Church. Following the 'Operation Ice Castle' prayer excursion which included planting a flag for Jesus on Mt. Everest, one of the lead prayer intercessors from the excursion, Ana Mendez, reported that there had been dramatic results including, "millions have come to faith in Asia... and other things happened which I believe are also connected...an earthquake had destroyed the basilica of Assisi, where the Pope had called a meeting of all world religions; a hurricane destroyed the infamous temple 'Baal-Christ' in Acapulco, Mexico; the Princes Diana died... and Mother Theresa died in India, one of the most famous advocates of Mary as Co-Redeemer."

Church of the Rock, led by Senior Pastor David Pepper, has taken their youth to participate in 'The Call, Nashville.' This event is held at various locations around the country under the leadership of Lou Engle, also featured in the movie "Jesus Camp." At these events youth are worked into a frenzy of anger and consternation at supposed national moral corruption. Engle, who shuffles while he preaches in imitation of Jewish prayer, is featured toward the end of the "Jesus Camp" video documentary.

The Third Wave movement is cross-denomination and is not synonymous with any specific denomination, nor is it synonymous with Evangelical or Fundamentalist. Although the movement emerged from Pentecostalism, it draws its support from a variety of denominations and religious streams. They believe they are forming a post-denominational church to take the world for the end times. To date, all of the writing and objections to this movement have emerged from other Evangelicals and Fundamentalists who believe the movement to be unbiblical. Also, it is other conservative churches that refuse to embrace the 'outpouring of the Spirit' that are targets of much of the anger of the movement."

You can find more information on the Third Wave movement and additional links to the activities of Palin's churches on www.Talk2action.org in the following articles:

Sarah Palin's Churches and the Third Wave, Part One

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/5/0244/84583

Sarah Palin's Churches and the Third Wave, Part Two with embedded video:

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/5/03830/11602

The video is also posted at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K_1Eit0pxM