OlsonOnline

Render unto Caesar

" 'God Damn America,' the people of Sadr City must rage, as the bombs shake their homes and tear the flesh from their friends and family. 'God Damn, America,'I mutter, echoing the good Reverend Wright, as I witness the indifference of the American people to the war crimes committed by our nation's leaders."  --Phillip Rockstroh

"The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, ... and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came... . Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, ... so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."   

--Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

And I say:  woe to those who claim that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is obligated, through self-imposed silence, to further the political career of Barack Obama.   Those making that demand confuse the call of the religious life with the call of politics.   They conflate the transcendent with the temporal, God with Caesar. 

Even the estimable Thom Hartmann, a self-proclaimed Christian, argues that  Jeremiah Wright should have postponed his media blitz until after the November elections.  That's his firm belief, despite his acknowledgment of the truth of much of what Wright has said in the past three days.

And further woe to all the talking heads, millionaires and celebrities all, far removed from the slums and ghettos,  who are quick to characterize Wright's comments about Obama speaking "politically" as a slander and an ill-timed blow to his electoral chances.   I say Wright merely revealed the obvious.  Politicians temper their speech and their positions for political purposes.  Their goal is to get elected.   Obama is no exception.  He has been politic in his pronouncements on guns, gays, and most revealingly, God.  He has pandered to the Israel lobby.  He has hinted at the use of military force in Iran.  He has voted for continued funding of the Iraq War to "support the troops." 

If I were a churchgoing man --like most Oregonians, I'm not-- I'd like a man like Jeremiah Wright as the pastor of my church, a man who speaks truth to power and seeks justice for the oppressed while preaching compassion and forgiveness for the oppressors. 

Religion without compassion can hardly be called religion at all.  In the words of the scholar Karen Armstrong:

"The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion."

 

More Jeremiah Wright

I note that John McCain has now raised the issue of Barack Obama's affiliation with the controversial Jeremiah Wright after vowing that his campaign would take the high road.

Given McCain's embrace of the blathering evangelical literalist John Hagee, that's hypocrisy in its purest sense.  It also reveals the media's simpering devotion to McCain and its knee-jerk pro-Israel sympathies.  The mainstream media is obsessed with Wright, but says little about McCain-Hagee. 

Apparently you can spew vitriol about gays and the disastrous consequences of their parades as long as you don't "damn" America for it's genocidal history and it's murderous foreign policy.  And you can blurt out anti-Semitism without repercussions as long as you voice support for America's staunch nuclear ally --Israel-- in the Middle East, even if that support is compromised by Israel's expected demise in the soon-to-come battle of Armageddon.

Which of the two --Wright or Hagee-- is truly delusional?

(The American Israel Public Affairs Committee --the most influential American pro-Israel lobby-- and the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman have embraced Hagee as well.  McCain's hypocrisy pales in comparison.)

If Jeremiah Wright's damning of America is a campaign issue --only ignorance and intolerance makes it one in a country that separates church and state-- then McCain's embrace of the delusional, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic John Hagee, for "political" purposes, should surely be an even more legitimate, and publicized, campaign issue.

Jeremiah Wright revisited

Bill Maher called him a "dick".  Chris Matthews announced that he wasn't interested in hearing anything more from Reverend Wright.

My brother wrote that Wright was a "borderline nutcase", and that, unlike Martin Luther King, would hardly "merit a footnote" in history.

Hillary Clinton has cynically used (and misused) the issue of Pastor Wright to her political advantage.   And even Barack Obama himself, although refusing to "disown" his longtime pastor, has condemned his remarks as unpatriotic.

After Jeremiah Wright's appearance on Bill Moyers' Journal Friday evening, they (and all his  critics) should beg his forgiveness.  I include myself for not acknowledging my ignorance of the man and his work when I denied comparing Wright to Martin Luther King.  I was wrong.  I now believe that a comparison between the two, in many respects, is warranted. 

Pastor Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, I've concluded, is smart, articulate, well-educated and profoundly insightful about the black experience in America, and the influence of that experience on American Christian theology:

"The shame of being a descendant of Africa, was a shame that had been pumped into the minds and hearts of Africans from the 1600s on, even aided and abetted by the benefit of those schools started by the missionaries, who simply carried their culture with them into the South and taught their cultures being synonymous with Christianity. So that to become a Christian, you had to let go of all vestiges of Africa and become European, become New Englanders and worship like New England, worship God properly and right. Well, that shame was a part of the shame that many Africans in the '60s and the '70s were feeling."

The University of Chicago Divinity School taught Wright about the hermeneutics of black theology:

"Hermeneutic is an interpretation, it's the window from which you're looking is your hermeneutic. ... Dr. James Cone put it this way. The God of the people who riding on the decks of the slave ship is not the God of the people who are riding underneath the decks as slaves in chains. If the God you're praying to, 'Bless our slavery' is not the God to whom these people are praying, saying, 'God, get us out of slavery.' And it's not like Notre Dame playing Michigan. You're saying flip a coin; hope God blesses the winning team, no. That the perception of God who allows slavery, who allows rape, who allows misogyny, who allows sodomy, who allows murder of a people, lynching, that's not the God of the people being lynched and sodomized and raped, and carried away into a foreign country."

That's the context, "the frame", of Wright's controversial sound bite snippets from past sermons.  The "No no no ... God Damn America!" is spoken in the context of the biblical prophetic tradition of "condemning" --Wright reminds us of the etymology of "damn"-- a government for it's sins.  The post 9/11 sermon saying "America's chickens have come home to roost" --quoting Malcolm X-- is uttered in the context of this government's terrorism against oppressed minorities at home --Native Americans, African-Americans, Japanese Americans-- and abroad --in Grenada, in Panama, in Iraq.

And  Bill Maher's "he's a dick" comment?  That was in response to Obama's defense of Wright --his refusal to "disown" him-- repaid with what Maher interpreted as ingratitude. Here's the offending remark:

"He's [Obama] a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different worlds."

Two different worlds indeed.  I wouldn't expect Maher to understand the distinction.  He has little use for pastors or any adherent of what he calls an irrational belief in "the talking snake." 

Jeremiah Wright speaks Monday at the National Press Club.  I'm sure you can catch it on C-Span.  But read the entire Bill Moyers transcript for come context.

We're in dire need of context.

More Merkley

Not only has Jeff Merkley loaned his campaign $250K to prop up his faltering bid to win the Oregon Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, he's also charging a small fortune for military vets  to hobnob with war hero Max Cleland at the Bridgeport Brewery. 

Here's part of his e-mailed invite:

"The Merkley campaign is offering a special opportunity for veterans to meet  
Max next Tuesday, April 29. Tickets for a private photo reception are $250, 
but  we're offering a special discount for veterans to attend for just $150. 
Tickets  are limited, so buy yours today! ...
 
"If you want to meet Max and Jeff, but $150 is a little steep, consider  
buying a general admission ticket for just $50."

I wonder if the plan is to keep the cheapskate general admission participants behind a rope line to avoid offending those who pay the full $150.

Let's hope Jeff Merkley supports meaningful campaign finance reform, public financing of elections, for example, so that the poor rabble aren't excluded from events like this one.

 

Merkley's pandering politics

You may have read both the Willamette Week and Oregonian coverage of Jeff Merkley's decision to return a $2300 donation to Palestinian-American lawyer Hala Gores because of  her comments critical of Israel.  And how other donors who support Palestinian rights are upset with Merkley for abandoning his sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians in favor of a staunch pro-Israel stance.  (Here's Loaded Orygun's take on the Merkley incident.)

One such donor calls Merkley a coward and a hypocrite. 

I call him a typical establishment Democrat pandering to the influential American Israel lobby, not all that different from the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates.

In a paper written at the behest of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and presented at a Jewish Federation of Portland forum, Merkley even defended the "fence" built by Israel to separate Jewish settlements from the Palestinian population as a necessary "security wall".   So did establishment Dem John Kerry back in 2004.   

(Funny, isn't it, how Democratic candidates John Kerry back in 2004, and now the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, have both been labeled by the Republican opposition as the most liberal members of the U.S. Senate, despite their moderate positions on most issues.  Including Israel.)

The establishment bias toward Israel also infects the  mainstream media.  Consider the O's editorial Tuesday lambasting "private citizen" Jimmy Carter for his meddling in American Middle Eastern policy by daring to meet with Israel's sworn enemy, the "terrorist" group Hamas.  Never mind that Hamas was the winner in the last Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections -- the democratically elected winner.

The Oregonian condemns Hamas for not supporting Israel's "right" to exist, and for its vow to liberate "all of Palestine".  Others* claim that Hamas wants to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth".  It's as if Arab extremists plan a second Jewish Holocaust.  I don't think that's anywhere close to the truth.   The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not that simply explained.

Here's my take.  Hamas --and Palestinians in general-- object not to the state of Israel, but to the exclusively Jewish state that treats its million Palestinians as second class citizens.  It objects to the encroachment --an official and deliberate Likud government policy--  of Jewish settlements into U.N. designated Palestinian territory.  It objects to the "security wall".

Here's what I think must happen to establish a just peace in Palestine.  Most have advocated a two state solution for peace in the region.  I think it's time to seriously consider a one state solution, a state that respects the rights of Arabs and Jews alike, a state perhaps called neither Israel nor Palestine. 

Impossible?  Perhaps.  But some have advocated a one state solution, modeled after South Africa, as the only feasible way to resolve the long simmering conflict.   It would take leadership, perhaps most importantly American leadership, to make it happen.  But it's long past time to give it a try.

*(Steve Novick, whom I support for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Oregon, is one of the others who view the state of Israel as threatened by the enemies that surround it, including Hamas.  Here's his position paper on Israel.)

High stakes graduation tests coming to Oregon

Oregon's decision to require students to pass multiple choice reading and math tests* for high school graduation is a bad idea.   The tests will likely drive up the high school drop-out rate which, as recent, though rather suspect, data show, is already alarmingly high, especially among at-risk minority and low income students.

Why a bad idea? 

A quantitative study of 16 states with high school graduation exams by Amrein and Berliner at Arizona State University (2002) showed that

"...state adoption of high-stakes testing policies leads to increased drop-out rates, decreased graduation rates, and higher rates of younger individuals taking the GED equivalency exams."

The American Psychological Association writes that

"...high-stakes decisions [like graduation] should not be made on the basis of a single test score, because a single test can only provide a "snapshot" of student achievement... ."

The International  Reading Association has a similar view:

"IRA strongly opposes such high-stakes testing."

So why has the Oregon Board of Education now decided to require kids to pass the same CIM tests that a third to a half of all sophomores fail in order to get their diplomas?  It will make them "try harder", say the "experts".   

The evidence says otherwise.  But some educational leaders are so enthralled with testing for accountability that they're willing to overlook --or ignore-- research that, if they took the time to read it, would tell them that high stakes multiple choice tests are a really bad idea. 

*(The writing sample is an authentic --or performance-- assessment.  I think it's a good idea that students demonstrate they can communicate coherently in writing before they're awarded their high school sheepskins.)

2:49:12

That's my 24-year-old son's time in today's Boston Marathon, a personal best by over six minutes on a deceptively difficult course. 

He beat Lance Armstrong -- the seven time winner of the Tour de France and a superb all-around endurance athlete-- by nearly two minutes. 

All in all, the 112th running of the nation's oldest marathon with the closest women's race in the event's history --neck and neck until the last few meters--  provided for an exciting morning.  At least in this household.

Well done, Andrew Olson!

How Dozono lost my vote

As a long time opponent of Wal-Mart, it came down to this:

"That is not the kind of message you want to send to the business community, suggesting that the largest retailer in the world is not welcome here," he said.

The "he" in that quote from the Oregonian's coverage of Friday's City Club debate between Portland mayoral candidates Sho Dozono and Sam Adams is Dozono responding to Adams' question about whether he --Dozono-- would have voted to allow another Wal-Mart store in Portland.  (Adams is on record as opposing both the Ardenwald/Sellwood store and the proposed Hayden Island development.)

As the supposedly pro-business candidate, Sho Dozono apparently doesn't "get" the impact of Wal-Mart superstores on surrounding small businesses.  Nor the danger to local economies of the aggregation of retail power in a single global corporation with close commercial and manufacturing ties to China. 

Along with Sam Adams, I think that the Wal-Mart mega-corporate model is ultimately bad for American business.

I therefore agree with the O's endorsement of Sam Adams for Mayor in today's paper.  And with Steve Duin before that.  "Sam the Tram" will get my vote. 

Notable

What's been deemed newsworthy in the last Presidential debate is the performance of the two moderators --Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos-- not the performance of the  two candidates.  The moderators' tactics provoked this letter from leading left-wing media analysts accusing them of avoiding questions about serious issues and turning the debate into an exercise in "tabloid journalism".

Maybe so.  But more notable to me was the blatant pandering by both candidates to gun owners and the Israel lobby when policy questions were asked in the second half of the debate.  Obama said this about gun ownership and the ban on handguns in Washington D.C.:

"As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms."

He then acknowledged that he has "...never favored an all-out ban on handguns."

The Supreme Court has yet to rule definitively on whether the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms.  If Obama believes in the individual right to bear arms, then Washington's ban on an entire class of firearms is clearly unconstitutional.

When questioned about Iran's threats to Israel, both candidates said the United States' would respond militarily if Iran attacked it's ally, Hillary most emphatically:

"...I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States."

Never mind that Israel, the only Middle Eastern nuclear power, is fully capable of defending itself. 

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Meanwhile, the only true American statesman working for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is shunned by Likud leadership for daring to speak to leaders of Hamas:

"The boycott will not be remembered as a glorious moment in this government's history. Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life to humanitarian missions, to peace, to promoting democratic elections, and to better understanding between enemies throughout the world."

The backdrop to Carter's visit is the ongoing resettlement of Jews on Arab land and the continued persecution of Palestinians with road blocks, check points, and off-limit areas even within the Palestinian West Bank. 

Orthodox Jews, prime backers of the illegal settlements, are at the same time incensed at the Likud government for allowing the sale of leavened bread during Passover:

"But Orthodox Jewish groups say that it violates the spirit of what Israel is meant to be -- a Jewish state."

That's the paradox of Israel in a nutshell:  Is Israel truly a democratic haven for all Jews, observant or not, or is it a theocracy run by the most intolerant of its citizens?

A new group consisting of "prominent" Jews has sprung up in the United States to counter the influence of lobbying organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the cause of peace.  I say it's long overdue.

AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups contribute 40% of campaign funds to Democratic candidates, which explains why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are loathe to say anything at all that may be construed as sympathetic to Palestinians and critical of the Israeli government.   

School Board fights over Title I money --and counselors

At issue in Monday's board meeting was allocation of money for counselors at Portland's elementary schools, the determination for which is based on both school enrollment numbers and Title I eligibility.

In the background (but not directly mentioned) was the recent Tribune revelation that Title I services are by law provided to private school students in the Portland district who meet Title I criteria.  That surprised some school board members, notably Bobbie Regan and David Wynde.  Wynde called it an "anomaly" of federal policy.  And of No Child Left Behind:

"Poor kids in private schools are not left behind, but poor kids in public schools are left behind."

At Monday's meeting, Wynde set his sights on the poor public school kids who don't attend Title I elementary schools and therefore are denied federal money, which, as Wynde pointed out, can be used for counselors.  The need for counseling at non-Title I schools, namely Buckman and Glencoe, Wynde said, is just as great as at those which do get Title I money.  At least for some kids. 

Given that Wynde has (or has had) children enrolled at Buckman, the insinuation that federal money should be diverted from reading and math remediation to counseling at the district's poorest schools so that more money might be freed up for FTE positions --counselors-- at wealthier schools, especially schools of choice like the arts magnet Buckman, seems rather odd.  And more than a little suspicious. 

But then again, perhaps I read too much into David Wynde's Title I observation.

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The deeper issue is the role of counselors in the schools.  And whether they're worth the money.  I have mixed feelings about school counseling, dating back to my middle school teaching experience.

As you know, I'm a huge proponent of team teaching.  When I once suggested that our counselors take a role in the classroom --a scheduled role (counselors are certified teachers, after all) as a part of the team, with their own groups of students-- I was promptly rebuffed.  I came to the conclusion that counselors don't want to be in the classroom.  That's a big reason they become counselors in the first place. 

Our counselors spent an inordinate amount of time showing new kids around the school, meeting with students individually to discuss school rules infractions, and running kids (again individually) through a computer-based career awareness program.   In other words, they spent precious little time on the actual education of kids which, of course, is what school is all about. 

At traditional middle and high schools, counselors are responsible for scheduling kids into classes, keeping track of graduation credits, and familiarizing students with colleges.  Those responsibilities are all, if you'll forgive me, a waste of time, especially in reformed and teamed schools.  There's no reason teachers, given the proper structure, couldn't do those things. 

I paint, needless to say, with a broad brush regarding the role of counseling in schools.  Good counselors, especially those trained in resolving social, emotional and psychological problems, most importantly in the elementary grades (K-5 and K-8), can be valuable additions to a school's staff. 

In a time of limited resources, educational leaders, including school board members, need to start thinking outside the box about how to provide the resources they agree are necessary to the successful education of our children.  That starts with defining "successful education", and ignoring side issues like test scores and their correlate, the "achievement gap".