tales of copper city

Across the border line

I spent the morning across the U.S.-Mexico border at Naco, commemorating two years of operation for El Centro de Recursos para Migrantes, the Migrant Resource Center.  A special part of the ceremony was to dedicate our new toilet, a much appreciated addition by volunteers and migrantes.  The baño was built by some of the volunteers and others who are friends of the Center.

Founded by Cecile Lumer and Peter Young, both of Bisbee, the purpose of the center is to offer food, clothing, water, limited medical attention, a telephone call to family, and, for many, money to return home by bus, if the returned migrants so wish.  

The system is rigged

The State of the Union speech the president gave last night was good, but I'm still concerned that President Obama is not fighting the way he should to defeat our democratic system's built-in advantages for conservatives and the status quo. 

There is no doubt that the president understands how the system is biased against progressive change; yet he shows little tendency to use the resources of his office to fight back against these biases by really getting into the faces of some conservative Democratic Senators or by constantly reminding the public about how the system is stacked in favor of money and power.

I write a lot about how we have two systems of democracy in the U.S.: progressive democracy and conservative democracy that uses the built-in biases of our Constitutional order originally designed to defend the Slave Power (the South) and slavery and ever since to defeat a more progressive democracy.  

"Our wars are killing us."

"Our wars are killing us" is the name of the excellent piece by Tom Englehardt at Tomdispatch.com.  The folks in Massachusetts are worried about the deficit according to one interpretation of the Republican victory.  

One trillion dollars over 10 years seems too much, even if we do cover almost all Americans and get closer to controlling health care spending.

But the voters in Massachusetts aren't worried about the one trillion dollars we will spend in Afghanistan; oh no, that's for our national security, like the two or three trillions we will spend on Iraq.  

Health security no; national security yes.

Of course, our wars are killing them, Iraqi and Afghani civilians who have committed no crime except getting in the way of our national security steamroller. For every death of a terrorist killed by a drone, the Brookings Institution says that we will kill 10 civilians.  (See Tomgram: Droning On."  

And, of course, each one of these death by drones will only help Al Qaeda recruit more young men to get on airplanes with bombs hidden on their persons.

What in the world is wrong with the American voter, anyway?  

What happens after Massachusetts?

Yesterday, I would have wagered that Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Attorney General and Democratic candidate for the Senate in Massachusetts would in the end squeeze out a victory on Tuesday. 

I was wrong.  And now we will have endless analyses about what happened and what needs to change. Here's mine.

1.  Retail politics.  People everywhere like to be asked for their vote, face-to-face as much as that is possible. Massachusetts especially likes retail politics. Martha Coakley didn't seem to appreciate this fact and even if she did she isn't good at it, and this counts in a state that reveres hands-on politics. 

Actually, I think Coakley knew her weaknesses and she was determined to coast to victory given the overwhelming number of registered Democrats. Why give a political unknown free publicity with a too aggressive campaign? And this angered Independents and some Democrats and energized the Republicans.  

And by the way, where was the White House back when it became obvious that Coakley was running a bad campaign?  Why did they wait until it was too late?

Above all, voters don't like to be taken for granted.  They read that as arrogance.  I saw the same thing happen here in a small town election and it ain't pretty.

2. The divides within the Democratic party. The far more important point is that the Democrats have a huge problem.  The opposition Democrats  face within their own party in rounding up sufficient votes for victory, whether in reforming Wall Street or health care, has not been lost on the ordinary voter, whether Democrat, Independent, or Republican.  

This endless controversy has given the average voter pause. Who is taking their side when they are losing their homes and the banks are thumbing their nose at the Obama administration? And given all the confusion over health care reform, do the Democrats know what they're doing?

Government

I found this entry under government in Frederick Buechner's Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary.

If...governments don't reflect the dreams of the people they govern or serve their wills...you wonder what on earth governments are.  Reading the newspapers you get the sense of them as small, irascible groups within each capital---far more of them men than women---who behave in ways that under normal circumstances would land them in the slammer in no time flat. They seem to have a life and purpose of their own quite apart from the lives and purposes of anyone else. They are perpetually locked in desperate struggles with each other that have little to do with the general human struggle to live and let live with as little fuss as possible. It's we ourselves who have given them the power to pull the whole world down on our heads, and yet we seem virtually powerless to stop them...

About the only objection I have to Buechener's lament is that it is too narrow in scope.  The same powerlessness we feel toward our democracy we also feel toward those gigantic institutions in the so-called private sector who control our lives in ways that we are powerless to prevent.

I have taught government and politics all my life and in my retirement I wonder if in my teaching I had become something of an apologist for a democracy that has simply proved inadequate to our times and challenges, incapable of bringing the powers that be, inside and outside of government, back to the business at hand of helping us live out our days with as little fuss as possible. 

Instead they largely seem interested keeping us on the edge of our seats waiting for the next fresh hell that government should have prevented or prepared us for years ago.

The other plot to wreck America

Frank Rich's Sunday New York Times op-ed piece, "The Other Plot to Wreck America" is crucial reading about the upcoming Congressional hearings on the fiscal crisis beginning with the September 15, 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Listening, again

In hearing or reading about how we as a nation talk to each other---how little we listen and learn---I was brought back to a blog entry I wrote last summer after the Fourth of July about listening.  I wrote about listening in the context of "focusing" a kind of meditation that I fitfully practice.  But "listening" is also central in the writing of another author that I "listen" to: James P. Carse and particularly his book, The Silence of God.  I have written about Carse before.

This book is the best thing I have ever read on prayer, on faith, and on the power of listening and being heard. 

As a former college professor who often described the graduate school setting as "the academic captivity," I now realize its most devastating feature: no one listens.  Professors don't listen to each other and they don't listen to students and, consequently, students tune out professors. And then professors go home with the voice of God in their mouths and there no one listens to them, either. This creates the most incredible loneliness, all the way around: the academic captivity.

At any event, I thought I would run the entry again because it captures so great a weakness that I suffer and should, above all else, seek to remedy. It is the principal spiritual challenge I face.

A very wise economist

I have learned over the years to be careful that I pay attention to the right economists.  Too many of this breed are simply ideologues for free market fundamentalism. But Joseph Stiglitz is one very wise and experienced economist and his article on lessons we should have already learned about markets is well worth reading.  It's in the China Daily, of all places.

The private sector

He sits in bed upstairs in the dark thinking about his new life. The other side of the bed is empty. He is alone in the house. The park across the street is dark and silent. Traffic is gone.

May is spending the month down at their farm; he drives down on the weekends. After the election, she said she wanted to think about things, about what the future holds but he knows she has left because of what is happening to him, letting him work it out at last. Dahlia, their dog, went with May.

He goes over his trip to Boston, the day before, once again. Since the election and his party's loss he has had several phone calls but none even vaguely interested him except one from a major foundation.

The head of the foundation was an old friend; they were together at medical school. The offices were sumptuous, filled with dark paneling. He confessed to his friend however that he wasn't sure that he wanted to take up arms again.

"Charlie," his friend said, "You don't want to go into the private sector. You've been commissioner for over a decade. You've spent your life trying to do the right thing. You can continue that here. Sooner or later this will all be over. We can actually pay you what you're worth. And you know how much May loves Boston." 

His friend adds, "I know how you must feel. For the first time in your life, you must be worried about the future."

Charlie remembers flinching at these words but keeping it inside, as always. Charlie stopped worrying about the future years ago.

The prophet Elijah

"Is Mr. Exum here?"

The voice from the shadow at the front door startles me. I get up from the couch and go over to the screen door and to the woman I now see standing there. It is about 10:00 in the morning on a Tuesday, in the summer of 1963. 

I remember it is Tuesday because Granddad and I always go for breakfast on a Tuesday morning, and we had gone to the Bluebonnet Cafe earlier that day.

"He's up at the grocery store. He'll be back in a moment." I crack open the screen door a bit and look up the street. 

I see Granddad just turning the corner, a couple of blocks up, coming our way, carrying a sack of groceries. He is wearing a straw hat, a white shirt, and gray khaki pants.

"Here he comes now." I feel like I ought to invite her in, but I don't know her. I stand waiting at the door. I notice that she has a covered bowl in her hand.

"No, I’ll wait out here," she said, as if I had asked her in. "I'm from the church. My name is Mrs. Martha Green. Please call me Martha.”