Telling the Wartburg Story

I just learned that the campus-wide theme for next year is the heading of this post. This creates ambivalence on my part. On the one hand, I'm a firm believer--as a veteran Q sorter--in the proposition that he who controls the narrative (or tells the story) wields the power. On the other hand, I'm not sure that upper-Midwesterners are comfortable, in the Garrison Keillor caricature, of "telling their own stories." It's a cultural no-no, bordering on bragging,and it's an overall attractive feature, in my view, of life in this part of the country. But, on yet another hand, if the theme is an invitation to do better than "Being Orange" as a marketing way of selling the value of a Wartburg education, then I'm all for the possibilities that this opens. So, in a bit of an offbeat thread on Obamadogs, here's the call for a better -- more honest, more effective -- alternative to "be Orange" as a way of attracting the interest of the better students soon to be in the process of deciding which colleges to attend. Please feel free to nominate your creative suggestions for a new marketing theme to replace "be orange." If we generate a sufficiently diverse and defensible set of alternatives, I'll compile them into a Q sample and we can undertake a study that we may want to present to the Powers that Be.

Where's Waldo... er, I mean Where's Obama?

One of the most powerful and depressing stories in Winner-Take-All-Politics (WTAP) is the weak opposition to the political freight train of big business over the past three decades put up by the Democratic Party. A party whose origins are in the working class and its efforts to gain a political voice in the depths of the Depression when collective bargaining was claimed as an essential equalizer in the battle with the wealthy should be deeply and energetically motivated by the recent chain of events: a capitulation of the extension of the Bush tax cuts for those at the top, the movements against public-employee unions in Midwestern states with strongly progressive histories, the outsourcing of virtually the entire manufacturing sector's labor force, the weak-tea responses to the financial industry's looting of our economy in the wake of mindless government deregulation and/or failed enforcement of existing laws -- all of these should stir the ire of a party purportedly dedicated to leveling the political playing field between the haves and the have-nots.

Meanwhile, where has President Obama been? He has repeatedly passed up golden opportunities to counter the weak arguments of the free-market fundamentalists, as if he's a puppet on the string of corporate campaign contributions or has no faith in the common sense of ordinary citizens--or both. It's a distressing sign, but it's an encouraging one to Republicans who had concluded earlier that Obama is too popular personally to take on in 2012 with a top-tier challenger. My view: Don't be surprised if Jeb Bush is persuaded to allow himself to be "drafted" as a late entry into the nomination fray after the first few events fail to produce a front runner and intra-party squabbles threaten to blow GOP prospects of a big win in the House, Senate, and White House. Granted, many regard another Bush as toxic in the wake of Bush fatigue from W's two terms. But Jeb is no W, and he alone in my view has the capacity to fuse the two wings of the Republican party that are represented by the traditionalists and the Tea Partiers.

Whether this suspicion bears fruit or not, Obama is not performing in a manner that will excite his 2008 voters, especially those who remain Independents, to cast a second ballot on his behalf. I'm not saying a Republican Tidal Wave in 2012 will solve our problems. Indeed, they will likely worsen the condition of the middle class, strengthen the debilitating addiction to imported oil, and rollback the tepid promises in health care coverage for those without health insurance contained in the Patient Protection and Health Care Affordability Act. The tight grip of the very wealthy on our politics will become even tighter; and, quite possibly, it will be the Democratic Party that undergoes a transformation akin to the one underway among Republicans now. One would hope so; what passes for a party of the not-so-well-off now is pretty thin gruel indeed.

DT

Governor Haley Barbour in Iowa

'Iowa feels a whole lot like where I'm from'
"I look forward to getting to spend time with people who care about their schools, care about their kids and go to church on Sunday," Barbour said in Des Moines, among three stops during his swing through Iowa.

Sane Energy Policy

Check out the NY Times editorial today regarding the insanity of a country with 2% percent of the world's oil reserves using 25% of the world's oil, most of it imported from a politically volatile region where the cost of our imports, under current inflated prices for crude oil, are just under $ 1 trillion annually. Consider that we pay the same amount to defend our access to the same original sources -- from Saudi Arabia to the Gulf States to Iraq -- and the completely irrational nature of our absence of a decent policy to transition to a non-petroleum-based energy system gains clarity. And so, frankly, does the idiocy of the House Republicans' declaration of war on the EPA, coupled with their call for drilling for oil anywhere and everywhere. Obama, for his part, has said all the right things, as is usually the case. Unfortunately, he quietly tip-toes away from the fight following his impressive oratory. The Times editorial correctly points out that inspiring words are not enough to ween us away from an addiction to other countries' oil and from a view of the energy future that is thoroughly irresponsible.

The President's approval ratings have been receeding again after the bump following the "compromise" on extending the Bush tax cuts. To be sure, he has a full plate: a Republican full-court press on the deficit as Public Enemy No. 1, not only on Capitol Hill but in the thirty states with Republican governors and state legislative majorities, a current crisis in Libya, the potentially catastrophic effects of the nuclear meltdown stemming from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. But even so, Republicans have calculated that the president can be rolled, and the evidence unfortunately seems to support such a view.

Politics ain't a walk in the park, and this president has walked away from too many promises made during his campaign for change. He promised to close down Guantanomo within a year of his inauguration; it's still open for business, and the Administration has stated that military tribunals can go forward with the enemy combatants still incarcerated there. He promised as well "to put on a pair of comfortable walking shoes and walk along with union workers" forced to strike by union-busting corporations, including presumably public-employee-union-busting governors in states like Wisconsin. But the President has been disappointingly silent on matters that were once litmus tests for Democratic Party leaders. Instead of the unimpressive crop of Republican presidential hopefuls for 2012, perhaps what this president needs is a challenge from a real Democrat within his own party. Anything short of that will not apparently get his attention: nice words are not enough!

Wisconsin, Act II: Collective Bargaining Goes Caput?

Tonight Republican Senators in Wisconsin, in a controversial maneuver that may be overturned by the judiciary, split apart the collective bargaining provisions from the fiscal parts of the "Budget Repair" bill that has been stalled for three weeks due to the departure of Senate Democrats from the state so that a quorum -- required to act on any spending bill -- could not meet to consider Governor Walker's divisive budget proposal.

The action began by the formation of a sham "conference committee" with representatives from the two legislative chambers acting as if to reconcile conflicting versions of the same bill passed by the two chambers. In this Republican-only committee, the spending and the collective bargaining provisions in the original bill were separated into two separate bills. The committee then "reported" the non-spending provision as a separate bill to the Senate, convened with a lower quorum threshold because no spending was in the bill to strip public employee unions of their ability to collectively bargain for salary or benefit increases beyond cost of living increases in the former.

Critics have reacted in an understandably hostile way, pointing to the demonstration this action gives to the governor's motives in busting unions all along rather than solving a budget crisis.

The online fundraising arms of the progressive left have launced drives to raise a half million dollars overnight to fuel the recall drives underway to remove Republican control of the Senate. Michael Moore, fresh from an appearance in Madison over the weekend, called upon supporters of the unions to travel to Madison to demonstrate in a nonviolent way their strong disagreement with the actions of the Wisconsin Republicans.

Does this mean the impasse over the issue of workers' rights is over? No, this effort may actually activate pro-union support rather than tamp it down. Public opinion had already changed against Walker and the Republican legislators. As the details become known of the manner in which this measure was addressed, the odds are that the Republicans will pay a very large political price.

The Rise of the Religious Right

This may be getting a bit ahead of the curve, but Trevor's post on the dispirited politics of the spiritually enlivened members of the East Saint Louis community raises in my mind the role that the religious right has played in the past thirty years in American politics. Rather than spawning or energizing a mass movement of Christians appalled at the politicization of their religion to serve blatantly un-Christian ethics, we witnessed a self-proclaimed "Christian" effort that is far from the teachings of Jesus: from increasingly childhood poverty rates to killing doctors who've performed abortions to pushing imperialist foreign policies, to supporting capital punishment, to denigrating the worth of those who serve others as public employees, teachers, and community organizers on behalf of the poor--how is that Christian teachings have been hijacked to serve the self-serving political views of a partisan effort which has concentrated wealth in the hands of the few and demonized those who've sought to utilize government leverage to help the least of us?

What happened to the New Testament? To the Sermon on the Mount? To the beatitudes? Whatever happened to the ethic of service that is pilloried as inferior to a life's journey in the private sector where the acquisition of wealth and things is given a sanctified status that borders on idolatrous?

Why not mass movements in US?

Hey PS 460 class - It has been odd not seeing you all the past week, I hope you are having great breaks!

While finishing up the "Mass Movement" book on long car rides on my service trip to St. Louis, Chicago, and Minneapolis, I have had the time to observe, work with, and speak to many people who live in the most desolate parts of these cities and try and relate their experiences to this book. One experience that has had me thinking the past few days is one that our group had in East St. Louis on Monday. We worked at a thrift store and a food kitchen in the heart of East St. Louis, Illinois, a town that is consistently rated as the poorest city in the United States. The people that I spoke to have absolutely nothing. No money, no home, and no job. Not only do a majority of the people not have jobs, but there are no places for these people to work. E. St. Louis was once a roaring factory city that boasted a population of 80,000 people, mostly white workers and families. When the factories began closing, the white population moved out, and the town became a ghost town with no employment opportunities and very cheap housing. The current ethnic breakdown is 98% African-American and it has the highest murder and rape rates in the country.

In all, it seems as though the people of this community have nothing to look forward to. I was told by a man that they have "no hope for change," and that he lives every life "prepared to get caught in a shoot out." My question is why are these people not rising up and trying to change the suppression that they have been put into? Why are they simply compliant with the way of life they are living if they are "prepared to die."

One possibility that I have noticed is a very strong faith in this community. I have not spoken to one person in East St. Louis that did not tell me about their love for Christ. They have nothing, but they are so hopeful for redemption in Christ, but have no hope for change from the government leaders that are not changing their situations or creating jobs.

Is this what is stopping a movement, that they are hopeful of what they believe is to come in the afterlife and they are not concerned with changing their current situation?

Sorry if this does not make sense, haven't been getting much sleep.