Mr. Pinsky makes three main charges I would like to address.

The first of these is his complaint that left-wing Jewish writers are primarily responsible for critical work about the role of dominionism and Christian Reconstructionism in evangelical Christianity. Those he names: Sara Diamond, Michelle Goldberg, Rabbi James Rudin, and Rachel Tabachnick do indeed hail from Jewish backgrounds, but there are many non-Jews, including evangelicals, who have prominently written about these subjects. I have written extensively about them myself, notably in my 1997 book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst at Political Research Associates in Somerville, MA has written widely about these things in books and articles. Although we did not coin the term, he and I certainly popularized the use of the term dominionism in the early 90s. But evangelical seminary professors Wayne House and Thomas Ice predated all of our books in this area, in their 1988 book Dominion Theology: Blessing or Curse?. Steve Clapp wrote an influential feature article in Christianity Today magazine about Christian Reconstructionism in 1987. Bill Moyers did a TV documentary in 1987. More recently, Rev. Dr. Bruce Prescott a national leader in the moderate Baptist movement published a six-part series at Talk to Action on dominionism based in part on his personal experiences in the right wing takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention; and when the Religious Right, led by a well-known Christian Reconstructionist named Steven Hotze, took over the his local Republican Party in Houston in the early 90s. There are many, many such examples. The fact is that these matters have been prominently written about by journalists and scholars, Christian and non-Christian, evangelical and non-evangelical for decades. In any case, writing about these things did not begin in 2006 nor has writing in this area been dominated by Jews.

(For a primer on dominionism and Christian Reconstructionism in the context of the current controversy, see Berlet’s essay “Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That’s Undermining Democracy.”)

Second, Pinsky claims that various liberal “exposes” about dominionism are of “a splinter, marginal figure, such as David Barton or John Haggee [sic]“. But neither Barton or Hagee are in fact, marginal figures in evangelical Christianity or in wider public life. We could say much about both of them but suffice to say that Barton was named one of the nation’s “25 Most Influential Evangelicals” by Time magazine in 2005 and for many years served as the vice-chair of the Texas GOP. Barton was repeatedly featured on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show at its height. His books are widely used in evangelical Christian schools and home schools. For his part, Hagee is one of the best known evangelists in the world. His show is seen by millions each week around the world and is carried by several networks. His organization Christians United for Israel remains a powerful if controversial entity, and its annual Washington conferences are routinely addressed by senior pols such as Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). His support was courted and received by 2008 presidential contender John McCain until a controversy led to their mutual renunciation, making headlines around the country. Controversial? Yes. Marginal? Far from it.

Finally, I would ordinarily be glad to join Pinsky in criticizing people who make sweeping, factually unsupported generalizations about evangelicals. Good reporting and scholarship requires using fair terms, making reasonable distinctions, and drawing well-founded conclusions based on facts. But I cannot join Pinsky in this case, because none of the writers he names engage in the behavior he complains about. In fact, he does not cite a single example in support of his inflammatory charge. Yet Pinsky would have us believe that these writers are trying to smear all evangelical Christians by using an unfair “caricature” of evangelicals as “dark conspirators trying to worm their way back into political power at the highest levels.”

He claims it all began in 2006

“and every two years since in the run-up to the presidential and off-year congressional elections, books and articles suddenly appear — often written by Jews — about the menace and weirdness of evangelical Christianity.”

He further claims:

The thrust of the writing is that these exotic wackos — some escaped from a theological and ideological freak show — are coming to take our rights and freedom.

He goes so far as to call all this “demonization” and compares the work of the aforementioned writers with anti-semitic smears suffered by Jews over the centuries.

“We didn’t like it, when people said we had horns and tails, ate the blood of Christian children and poisoned the wells of Europe with plague, much less conspired to rule the world through our Protocols.”

But Pinsky is engaging in a false equivalence to hype a case he has not made. Again, he offers not a single fact in support of his charges.

Perhaps most remarkably, he writes all this in the service of an article headlined “The Truth About Evangelicals.”

If truth was Pinsky’s aim, he missed by a mile.

A three-way debate among GOP POTUS contenders Trump, Palin, and Cain would be Teabagger Comedy Hour. Let’s look into the special Dirty Hippies crystal ball, and see what would transpire. It would be broadcast on FOX and co-moderated by David Brooks (in a show of bipartisanship) and for gravitas, Andrew Breitbart.

The night gets off to an energetic start as Palin demands Trump and Cain’s foreign policy credentials. She wilts a little when she realizes (belatedly) Cain has actually served overseas. Oopsie! (No, it was actually Alan West who served overseas, not Cain.) It just doesn’t hold up to some closed-door speech she gave to a trade group in Hong Kong. That’s what happens when the only newspapers you read are your own press clips.

Trump goes on the attack by challenging first Cain’s citizenship and then Palin’s college grades. Cain boasts about his business expertise and tells The Donald, “You’re fired!”

There’s a lengthy interlude where Trump and Cain compete to see who loves capitalism more, but when a moderator pipes up and reminds them that Presidents must make public their tax returns, The Donald balks and Palin blanches a little.

The two reality tv stars ridicule the radio guy. (Breitbart gets some licks in too, as he has a dog in this fight.) Trump offers his beauty pageant and many (ex-)wives as proof he loves women; Palin offers herself as proof she loves women. “See? I love them so much I am one.”

Cain says he embodies the American dream of hard work and pizza sales. Crickets from Palin and Trump.

Results from real-time polling show it’s a three-way split: people who like bumpits say Palin won, bald people say Trump won, and people who like pizza say McCain won.

(Eh, what’s that you say? That’s not John McCain? OHHHH. *blink* *blink*)

Post-debate, Trump sends angry photocopies of magazine articles marked up in Sharpie to his opponents, while Palin’s ghost-Tweeter snarks in unintelligible sentence fragments and then longer, equally unintelligible sentence fragments on Facebook.

Cain issues a press release reminding his opponents that his name is Herman, not Barack. And it’s Cain, not McCain.

You betcha.

OK, whatever you say, Herbert McCain.

There’s a kerfuffle over whether Palin trademarked the term “You betcha” or no, and whether anyone else can use it besides her.

FOX, CBS, CNN, ABC, and NBC devote THREE days of news coverage over the tag line “You betcha.”

There, I think I just saved you from paying attention to three months of GOP presidential campaigning plus a “debate”. You may safely ignore them now.

This afternoon in the Rules Committee Rep. Jim McGovern gave prepared remarks about an amendment he plans to introduce to prohibit any federal funds from being used to advertise on Fox News!

Excerpt from the statement Rep. McGovern made to the Rules Committee (note these may not be his exact words as I was sent this before he spoke, but the ideas remain the same):

”

Mr. Chairman, this bill is a bad idea.

We all know what’s going on here.  The reason this bill is before us is that a discredited, right-wing activist recently made a selectively-edited, 11 minute video of a two-hour conversation.  The target of his little sting was a fundraising executive at NPR who no longer works there.

That executive made what appeared to be disparaging remarks about the Republican Party.  Now, if you look at what he actually said, in full context, it’s clear that he was paraphrasing what other Republicans had said about the direction of the party.

In any case, there is absolutely no reason to cut off funds for NPR because of this issue.  There is no reason to jeopardize the news and entertainment that millions and millions of Americans rely on and enjoy.

But if you insist on going down this road, Mr. Chairman, then we should be “fair and balanced” in the way we do it.

Over the past several years, it has become clear that the Fox News channel is wildly biased.  They continue to employ a talk show host who called President Obama a racist.  They continue to employ several prospective Republican Presidential candidates as “analysts,” giving them hours and hours of free air time.  And their parent company has donated millions to GOP-linked groups.

My amendment would prohibit federal funds – taxpayer dollars – from being used for advertising on the partisan, political platform of Fox News.”

So there you have it.  Finally, our friend @StopBeck is getting some help from DC.  For those that don’t know @StopBeck with his legions of friends have just about put the fork in Glenn Beck…no advertisers in the UK for months…over 300 advertisers here in the US stopped dead in their tracks.

And now Rep. McGovern steps up to the plate and hits a home run.  Will the ammendment pass? I’d like to dream it would but I’m a realist.  Does it make a statement and help to give the people an actual voice in DC? In the words of she who shall not be named “you betcha (wink)”

X-posted from Jazz from Hell

Forget about whether you’re liberal or conservative, pro-union or anti. A simple question: in either the public or the private sector, would you not expect a college grad who has worked his or her job for 4 years to be paid significantly more than someone with a high school diploma who’s had his or her gig for 2 years?

And if the college grad were in fact paid more, would that be unfair somehow? Would it be cause for jealousy and resentment? Apparently, USA Today thinks so.

The tabloid lies with statistics through the first 7 paragraphs of this 8-paragraph “analysis.” Here’s the lede:

Wisconsin is one of 41 states where public employees earn higher average pay and benefits than private workers in the same state, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Still, the compensation of Wisconsin’s government workers ranks below the national average for public employees and has increased only slightly since 2000.

Graphs 3 and 4:

The analysis of government data found that public employee compensation has grown faster than the earnings of private workers since 2000. Primary cause: the rising value of benefits.

They could have mentioned that 37 percent of public workers belong to a union, versus 7 percent in the private sector, but that’s just a quibble.

Wisconsin is typical. State, city and school district workers earned an average of $50,774 in wages and benefits in 2009, about $1,800 more than in the private sector. The state ranked 33rd in public employee compensation among the states and Washington, D.C. It had ranked 20th in 2000.

And very careful readers only get a dose of reality — a limited one — in the final graph:

Economist Jeffrey Keefe of the liberal Economic Policy Institute says the analysis is misleading because it doesn’t reflect factors such as education that result in higher pay for public employees.

That’s right, their analysis just compared average wages, and didn’t adjust for different job requirements, age, education or experience. It’s not misleading, it’s entirely meaningless. Unless, of course, you think that high school grad with less experience should be paid the same.

As I wrote last year, Public sector workers have, on average, more experience and higher levels of education than their counterparts in the private sector (they are twice as likely to have a college degree). Economist John Schmitt found that when one controls for those factors — comparing apples to apples –state and local employees earn almost 4 percent less than their brethren in corporate America. (Even accounting for their greater benefits, state and local employees still make less in total compensation than they would doing the same work in the private sector.)

The thing that I find so egregious about this is that the reporter, Dennis Cauchon, spoke with an economist who told him this, but didn’t include any of the numbers I cite above. This is how people are being mislead to believe that public workers are the new welfare queens.

Here’s an email for corrections and clarifications:  accuracy@usatoday.com, and here’s an editorial feedback form. If you’re sick of this kind of distortion passing itself off as unbiased journalism, let ‘em know.

Now it’s Harry Reid’s turn! That’s right, Harry Reid! More liberal than Russ Feingold last year, and just as liberal Bernie Sanders! TPM summarizes the National Journal‘s picture-heavy, fact-lite story. They’re slightly less off-the-mark with identifying the most conservative members, but since “conservative” isn’t used constantly as a demonizing term, this has less of impact politically.

Here’s TPM’s summary of NJ‘s multiple-way ties for first place “most liberal” and “most conservative” in the House and Senate, compared with their actual rankings in order via the DW-Nominate ranking system regarded as the gold standard amongst serious academics, and based on aggregating all but the most lopsided floor votes–with less than 0.5% on the losing side. (Website here.) Unfortunately, the DW-Nominate rankings for 2010 haven’t been released yet, so we have to use 2009 figures, but as we’ll see in a moment, comparing DW-Nominate rankings to NJ‘s 2009 rankings doesn’t change things very much at all (even though Reid didn’t make the “most liberal” ranking then). Reid, of course, isn’t even in the more liberal half of the Democratic caucus, while two others on the list–Cardin and Stabenow–are right on the cusp:

So, out of 9-way tie for first, National Journal managed to get exactly two Senators that ranked in the top 9 according to the DW-Nominate scale. The average DW-Nominate rank for these senators was 18.3, compared to an average rank of 5 for the actual group of the 9 most liberal senators. That’s 3.7 times higher than it should be, if National Journal‘s rankings were accurate. If we look back at National Journal‘s rankings for 2009, we discover that they did a better job in terms of getting a lower average score–but with a smaller list, so the end result is that their average was actually even higher–4.2 times higher than it should have been. So they were, in fact less accurate than the measure we get by comparing this year’s rankings with last years DW-Nominate data:

Things are even worse on the House side. Comparing the 2010 “most liberal” list to actual DW-Nominate rankings for 2009, there is not a single member on National Journal‘s list of 7 who scored in the top 7. Being from Southern California myself, I found it particularly amusing that Linda Sanchez and Judy Chew were on the list–while no one in the know in LA would even rate them as the most liberal representative from California, much less Los Angeles. Maxine Waters (ranked #3 by DW-Nominate) would take that honor easily on both counts. Pete Stark and Bob Filner (#s 6 & 7 respectively) would not be far behind statewide, while Diane Watson (#25) would also be well ahead of Chu in the LA Area. (Two other Californians–Lynn Woolsey and George Miller come in at #16 and #20 respectively.) As far as making direct comparisons are concerned, the average for this list of 7 is 23.7, 5.9 times higher than it should be:

But that’s positively psychic compared to how well National Journal did in 2009, with an average of 39.0 coming it at 8.7 times what it should have been:

Interestingly, the National Journal is far more accurate when it comes to ranking conservatives. But that still leaves them plenty wide of the mark. Their 2010 Senate top rankings gave us two of the top 8 slots in the 8-way tie for first, and their average score was “just” 3.1 times higher than it should be. Notable outliers: Johns McCain (#28) and Thune (#24).

Back in 2009, there was none of this group tie stuff, so just to make comparisons possible, I’ve listed the top five together, and of those, National Journal managed to three senators who actually belonged in the top 5. The average score was less than twice what it should have been:

They must have had Dione Warwick working for them that year!

Switching over to the House side, the gap between liberal and conservative ranking accuracy narrows considerably, even though they managed to get one of the top 5 named in their 5-way tie for first. Still, they ended up with an average 5.9 times higher than it should have been–the same as for liberals:

Once again, National Journal did even worse, comparing it’s 2009 picks to the 2009 DW-Nominate data, but the drop-off was not as bad as on the liberal side, so comparatively they did less poorly: “just” 6.5 times to high, compared to 8.7:

Still, one has to think they’d do better by just putting up pictures on a wall and playing darts.

In fact, Huffington Post’s administrators wouldn’t even make an exception for Mayhill Fowler. You remember Ms. Fowler — she broke the campaign-trail story about candidate Barack Obama speaking about Pennsylvanians to wealthy patrons at a fund raiser. To refresh your memory, he said, “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

In October 2010, because the Huffington Post continually stonewalled her efforts to be compensated for her work by the site and to seek funding for investigative projects despite the attention and traffic she brought to the site, Ms. Fowler informed the Huffington Post that she would no longer contribute to it.

Founding editor Roy Sekoff responded in part that “we have indeed tried to build a community around citizen journalism.” Note to Roy: invoking the phrase “citizen journalism” does not give you a free pass to withhold pay. Since when did one’s status as a citizen or a journalist preclude one’s right to a fair wage?

But, along with those who point out that political posts are responsible for a small percentage of the traffic to Huffington Post, Nate Silver writes in the New York Times, “that the average [HuffPo] blog post — which we estimate generated a couple thousand page views — was worth about $13 in advertising revenue. The median blog post, with several hundred views, was worth only $3 or $4. Even Mr. [Robert] Reich’s strongly-performing post was worth only about $170, by our estimates.”

Meanwhile, at  Tech Dirt, Mike Masnick makes a better case than HuffPo itself does for nonpayment of bloggers:

The reason that people chose to blog for free at the Huffington Post was because it’s a fantastic platform for exposure. [They] chose — of their own free will — to post at the Huffington Post for free . . . because they clearly got value out of doing so. . . . To then say that the only proper thing is to pay them is completely missing the point. It’s an attempt to retroactively go back and change the terms of a deal.

In other words, let the buyer beware. Ms. Fowler writes “think for a minute what it means when you throw yourself into working for a place, as I did, without first walking into the company’s human resources office to sign some paperwork that legally binds you and your employee to a relationship.”

In her resignation letter, Ms. Fowler goes to the heart of the matter.

. . . at the end of the day . . . I want to be paid for my time and effort — or at a minimum, to get a little remuneration in return for the money I spend myself in order to do original reportage. I would not expect to be paid for punditry. The Huffington Post [provides] a platform for 6,000 opinionators to hold forth. Point of view is cheap. I would never expect to be paid there when the other 5,999 are not. However, the journalism pieces I have done in the past year seem to me as good as anything HuffPost’s paid reporters Sam Stein and Ryan Grim produce.

Her jab at commentators aside, it’s true that the few writers who are paid for commentary in the media are, for the most part, reporters rewarded with a desk job. The rest of us must content ourselves with a “platform” like that of the Huffington Post. In fact, the crux of the problem is that there are too many of the rest of us to expect to get paid. While the best nonaffiliated commentators surpass most newspaper columnists, lacking a reporter’s resume, they’re barred from positions as paid columnists.

From another perspective, a nation that overfloweth with writers is a happy problem. It means that many more people are not only participating in the national dialogue but are also realizing their creative potential. Sure, they’re generated by the new outlets that the web provides us. But, equally to the point, they’re  a product of word processing technology such as Microsoft Word, which represents an exponential advance in ergonomics over the typewriter. (I know the latter was a creative boon to many. But trying to make corrections and revisions on them probably stopped as many aspiring writers in their tracks as typing first drafts enabled others.)

Of course, with word processing technology, as with music-making technology, the risk is run that creators will soon outnumber consumers. In fact, I experienced that sense of seldom being read with fiction, on which I worked first as a writer. When I migrated from fiction to political analysis and commentary, though, I felt like I was welcomed into a community and, while under-read, at least read to some extent.

Nevertheless, we still deserve to be paid. Though it’s not one that addresses the eternal capital v. labor dialectic, especially since we’re obviously locked out by the likes of the Huffington Post, a solution may exist. I’ve seen some plans for payment by readers, but, traffic-incentive based, they’re so complicated that they require a learning curve. As an editor, who’s witness to how few of Ms. Word’s capabilities — not even page numbers! — most writers use, not to mention disdaining concern for traffic builders like SEO-friendly heads, I’m fairly sure that neither many writers nor readers will take the time to familiarize themselves with such a payment system.

How about this instead? A reader deposits $10 in a PayPal-like account and then, via a widget on various sites, instead of just Facebook-”liking” articles or clicking on the links to engage in the time-consuming process of promoting them to other social networks, he or she clicks on a dime icon and sends it into a fund for that writer. That’s 100 dimes to drop for each other. One thousand dimes equals $100 (presumably minus a small administrative fee) for the writer. Simple or what?

In the end, though, it must be said that it’s to Huffington Post’s shame that it never set aside — never mind money — even staff resources to devise a model for attracting funds for contributors.

First posted at Scholars & Rogues.

“We are the first generation to leave our kids worse off than we were. How did this happen? Why is there such a wide distance between the rich and the middle class and the poor? What happened to the middle class? We did not buy boats or fancy cars or diamonds. Why was it possible to change the economy from one that was based on what we made and grew and serviced to a paper economy that disappeared?”

Those are the words of a 69-year-old woman, written to Bernie Sanders. They appear in At Grave Risk, Bob Herbert’s New York Times op-ed this morning.

For all our focus on what is happening in Wisconsin, which is certainly important, let us not lose sight of what has already happened, to far too many.

As Herbert puts it at the beginning of his column, which you MUST read,

Buried deep beneath the stories about executive bonuses, the stock market surge and the economy’s agonizingly slow road to recovery is the all-but-silent suffering of the many millions of Americans who, economically, are going down for the count.

going down for the count – an image from the boxing ring, where one of the competitors has been knocked out, or, if you prefer, down and out.

Those here know that Bernie Sanders would read letters like this. He personally responds to stories like these. He has been screaming for years about what is happening to ordinary Americans.

He is unusual. Too many of our political leaders are too focused on the next election, on not offending those whose financial and political support they want for that next election.

In the meantime, consider other words from that opening paragraph: all-but-silent suffering – the stories that somehow our media ignore in favor of the manufactured assemblage of tea party types.

Yes, the destruction of unions over the past few decades has been a part of it. So has globalization. Both are the product of mindsets that cross party lines, that focus on “economic competitiveness” to the degree that everything else becomes subservient. Thus we have a Democratic administration whose focus on education is framed in terms of international competition and which place such emphasis on STEM – science, technology, engineering, and math – in a way that surprises considering how many in those fields are currently without jobs. It is a corporate wet dream to have an oversupply of labor that is unprotected by unions and by government to drive down their labor costs.

Corporate interests, and their lackeys – in the Republican party to be sure, but among far too many Democrats – frame their arguments in terms of greedy workers, in industry as well as in education and other government functions. Having unconscionably slashed benefits to their own workforces they now seek to turn those workers again the few people who still have full benefits, government employees. This kind of turning out of power groups against one another is an ancient practice of the rich and powerful in this country. Among the landed gentry of the South, it was to turn the white working class against the blacks. Racism was a convenient tool then, it remains one today. Only now it is not just blacks, but Hispanics, foreigners of all stripes. Never mind that many of the rich benefit directly from the work of undocumented aliens, as a certain state-wide Republican candidate in California illustrated last year with household help, and as one Republican presidential aspirant trying yet again for his party’s nomination illustrated with the lawn service he used.

We read of the angst, the depression, the approaching desperation in the words offered to Senator Sanders.

“All we want to do is work hard and pay our bills. We’re just not sure even that part of the American Dream is still possible anymore.”

People want to work, yet unemployment, if calculated honestly, is well above 10% and likely to remain there for many years. In some communities it is over 20%. What do people with family ties there do?

Instead we continue to waste trillions upon unnecessary military expenses and endeavors. Iraq and Afghanistan have financially burdened our progeny to an extend of national indebtedness unimaginable when I was the age of the teenagers I now teach. Yes, we assumed great burdens during World War II, but when that war and the fighting in its offshoot in Korea came to an end, we taxed ourselves and paid down that burden on future generations. We had incremental tax rates of more than 90%. We even forgave the debts European nations owed us through the Marshall plan. And the nation thrived economically.

We recognized as a nation that we still had unmet needs, and expanded the social network through the programs of the Great Society, and even while fighting another unnecessary war in Southeast Asia paid down the debt, had a national surplus. The American dream stayed alive, was expanded for many.

And now? I read Herbert and my heart aches. But I am not surprised. He is not the only one who has been trying to call our attention to what is happening. Other writers, some politicians, many bloggers – including me – have been saying that the American dream is disappearing.

Bernie Sanders gets letters like this because people believe he still cares. They may not feel that way about other politicians.

The final paragraph in Herbert’s piece is from outside Sanders’ constituency:

A couple facing foreclosure in Barre, Mass., wrote to Senator Sanders: “We are now at our wits end and in dire straits. Our parents have since left this world and with no place to go, what are we to do and where are we to go?” They pray to God, they said, that they will not end up living in their car in the cold.

Can I be cynical and point out that at least they have a car to turn to, and many in this country do not.

I have a job. Some of my fellow teachers will lose theirs at the end of this school year. Many entered teaching for less pay in return for what they thought was job security and delayed compensation of pensions and health insurance. Now in our economic crisis they are losing those, if they keep their jobs. Teachers in many jurisdictions have lost stipends, are undergoing unpaid furlough days. We struggle to pay our bills, to maintain our homes. Yesterday we had to spend over $1,000 on plumbing that had to be addressed. We are now two highly educated people of middle class background who have no margin of error. And we are lucky. We do not have our own children, and so far we have not had to help support our older relatives, although one is dependent upon government assistance for her care, assistance that may soon disappear, and thus fall upon her children, including us.

If this nation is unwilling to be honest with what is happening, it will not just be the American dream that disappears. it will be hope. It will be democracy.

It already is justice. People have ripped off the system for trillions and gotten away with it. Any attempt to hold them accountable gets blocked – by politicians and judges bought and paid for by those who are transgressing against the rest of us.

This is perhaps not new. After all, one reason we went to direct election of US Senators is because the state legislatures that used to elect them were in some cases effectively subsidiaries of railroads and banks. It was a populist uprising that changed that. Now the wealthy fund “popular” uprisings that include in their agenda removing direct election of Senators.

But forget about political ideology. It is a cover for our shame as a nation.

Bernie Sanders speaks out. People write to him.

We need more than one senator.

We need people across the nation to speak out, to act.

Except for too many it is already too late.

Their dream is no longer dying. It is cold and in the ground.

The numbers of whom that is true is increasing, far too rapidly.

Bill Clinton used to quote from Proverbs 29:18, that where there is no vision, the people perish. Vision is the ability to look ahead. Vision combined with hope is what makes positive change possible.

People are losing hope. Some have already given up. Their voices are not heard, they are shouted out by anger provoked and manufactured by those who seek to profit for themselves and those like them, and to hell with the rest of us.

Letters to a Senator. Perhaps my title is too mild? Perhaps it should be screams of agony written to the one politician who still seems to listen?

I read Herbert. That is, I read the letters he quotes and the additional words he offers.

I did not need to.

I see it around my state of Virginia, where there are communities with effective unemployment rates over 30%.

I hear it in the voice of a student who asked to speak with me after class on Wednesday, who told me her family had lost its business and was about to lose its home, and she did not know how much longer she would be coming to school.

I read it in newspapers, on line and in dead tree editions, when they pay attention long enough to realize what is happening in this nation.

Herbert’s column should be read by everyone here. It should be sent to every elected official and candidate for public office. Of course some will ignore, others will politicize.

America is becoming immoral.

We already have a GINI coefficient that is embarrassing in how much economic inequity we have, and that inequity continues to increase. But as a nation we refuse to address the causes of that inequity, and pursue policies that only make it worse.

In the process we make our people insecure at the most basic level, the ability to know one can feed and house and clothe oneself and one’s family.

Letters to a Senator – letters that tell a Senator who will listen that the American dream is dying, that America is dying.

What else can we say?