Where I live: January 2005 Archives

A good day for C-SPAN and blogging. I only hope the power stays on.

2:11 PM UPDATE: It's still raining. And icing. Limbs are falling from the trees. We've got one line down going into our house but power and cable are still on. I got a call from the staff at the computer labs; power is off at school so we closed them down. I can only hope my router doesn't blow with all the power pops we're having here. My Mac just blinked off but the PC's hanging in there...

Our driveway. The yard is littered with limbs too.

The Oklahoma legislature outlawed cockfighting because of its cruelty to the roosters, which are slashed and pecked to death while human spectators bet on the outcome. A Democratic State Senator says it costs $100 million in business. (Where do they come up with these numbers?) His sollution:

To try to revive it, he has proposed that roosters wear little boxing gloves attached to their spurs, as well as lightweight, chicken-sized vests configured with electronic sensors to record hits and help keep score.

All Things Considered talked to him.

Staying in a borrowed house in Savannah, I had only broadcast television. No cable. At 11:30 this Sunday morning I tuned in. On five of the seven channels was Christian broadcasting. Here's some of what I did not hear:

The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. "Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general." Divorce is more common among "born-again" Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers.

There's more, lots more, in "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience" in Christianity Today. And what's the proposed solution?

Weeping and repentance are the only faithful responses to the sweeping, scandalous disobedience in the evangelical world today.

Okay. What precisely does that mean?

It is a deep, heartfelt sorrow for offending the Holy Sovereign of the universe and a strong inner resolve to embrace the conversion—the complete reversal of direction—that our forgiving Savior longs to bestow.... Daily, we can pray to the Lord to transform us more and more into the very likeness of Jesus.

Somehow, I don't think that'll do it. But there is hope. Read on.

From an editorial in today's Atlanta Journal Constitution:

On Thursday, a federal judge summoned the courage and conviction to uphold the U.S. Constitution and thwart efforts by creationists to insert their religious beliefs into Georgia's public schools. U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ordered the immediate removal of evolution disclaimers on high school science books in Cobb County, ruling that the controversial stickers ran afoul of the constitutional divide between church and state...In affixing the stickers to textbooks, the Cobb County school board wasn't looking to enhance the science education or critical thinking skills of students. Cornered by a petition with 2,300 signatures, board members were just bowing to public pressure.

Last night Nightline did a terrific piece on the creationist drive in Dover, PA to mandate that teachers read a statement about "Intelligent Design" during biology lessons. Hijacking the word "objectivity" and trying to cloak itself in science, "Intelligent Design" holds "that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause." And they're not talking extraterrestrials here.

At a party recently I had a conversation with a Georgia Military College biology teacher. A Brit who's the son-in-law of the Commandant, he spoke of the problems teaching biology here. For example some students flat out refuse to even listen in class. He believes the problem is Constitutional and boiled it down to this: the lack of religious education in school. He believes religion should be taught in school. All religion. World religion. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, you name it.

Now there's a thought. What would the creationists think of that?

As seen on various cars in the community.

It's been 70 degrees here every day for the last week and is scheduled to stay that way next week. So today we took the dogs and a picnic lunch to the Bartram Forest. We picked up sandwiches on the way at the Goodie Gallery. There was a slovenly young fellow with a Harley t-shirt which read:

I like snatching kisses.
And vice versa.

Now how are they going to blame that on the Blue States?

Train tracks snake in around and through this town that I live in. Very close to homes and Georgia College dorms. So I note the train wreck in Graniteville, SC, a ghost town now - 8 dead, 58 hospitalized, hundreds more treated, and thousands driven from their homes. From the New York Times:

Ten months ago, government safety officials warned that more than half of the nation's 60,000 pressurized rail tank cars did not meet industry standards, and they raised questions about the safety of the rest of the fleet as well. Their worry, that the steel tanks could rupture too easily in an accident, proved prophetic. On Thursday, a derailment in South Carolina caused a catastrophic release of chlorine.

The problem's not going away anytime soon. Because pressurized tank cars remain in service for up to 50 years, some could be hauling hazardous chemicals through Milledgeville in 2039. What's needed is strong government safety regulations, similar to those imposed on the airline industry. My Republican neighbors would disagree.

After reading the NY Review of Books article earlier, I finally sat down and watched the Frontline documentary, "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?" that has been sitting on my TiVo since November. From the transcript, after a sequence describing the role Wal-Mart played in the demise of Rubbermaid:

HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] It seemed to me that it wasn't just a plant dying, a set of corporate values was passing away. Ten years ago, Rubbermaid, with its reputation for quality, was named most admired. Last year, Wal-Mart, with its reputation for its cost-cutting, was most admired.

[on camera] If you look at the shift from Rubbermaid as the most admired company in 1994 and Wal-Mart as the most admired company today, in terms of the larger American economy, what does that mean? What does that say about the touchstones of success?

Prof. GARY GEREFFI, Duke University: Rubbermaid represented an innovation-oriented high road towards U.S. competitiveness. I think Wal-Mart represents a cost-driven, low-price low road towards U.S. competitiveness. And in a sense, they're two dramatically different styles in which the U.S. economy can be organized. I think the Wal-Mart model is winning out.

Now the problem is, even though this isn't news to me, I shop at Wal-Mart. Not often and only for the most trivial stuff, but if even I am drawn there by cheap stuff, how do we ever change things? I won't shop there again.

Doug forwarded me this New York Review of Books article on Wal-Mart. Its well documented thesis, the exploitation of the working poor is central to the business strategy of the world's largest and most powerful corporation. Some highlights:

As of last spring, the average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, $1,000 below the government's definition of the poverty level for a family of three. Despite the implied claims of Wal-Mart's current TV advertising campaign, fewer than half— between 41 and 46 percent—of Wal-Mart employees can afford even the least-expensive health care benefits offered by the company.

...One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.

Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5 million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state's program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart employees having a child in the program.

The article concludes that there is every prospect this strategy and its harsh practices will continue to spread throughout the economy. One industry I often wonder about is the airline industry. We hear that the new upstart airlines are efficient and not burdened by the legacy costs of the older carriers. What are the legacy costs? Better working conditions, higher pay and pension plans. I thought a goal of civil society was a higher standard of living, instead large swaths of our society face a deteriorating one.