Category: Worshipping Mammon

Jesus and the prosperity gospel

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

This month, I’ve been reading biblical scholar Reza Aslan’s fascinating “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth”, and highly recommend it. One of the things that really got my attention was how he described the political uproar of Jesus’ time, and the deep wish for a political savior. Sounded a lot like the Tea Party!

Aslan said his favorite representation of Jesus was from the 1970 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, and then pivoted to the issue of the prosperity gospel.

“The fastest growing Protestant movement in North America is this movement that is referred to as the prosperity gospel,” he said. “This is the gospel preached by people like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes — and when I say people, I mean charlatans. The argument of the prosperity gospel, if I can put it flippantly, is that Jesus wants you to drive a Bentley. That is basically what the argument is. That what Jesus wants for you is material prosperity, and that if you literally give, you will literally be given tenfold. That’s not a metaphor, as it is in most churches. It is literal. You give me $10 and Jesus will give you $100.”

“This is as profoundly an unscriptural interpretation of Jesus that exists,” Aslan remarked. “I mean, if there is one thing that is just so clear cut and just not open to interpretation at all of any kind when it comes to Jesus’s message, it is his condemnation of wealth.”

“And yet, not only does this version of Christianity exist, as I say, it is honestly the fastest growing version of Protestant evangelical Christianity in North America. That’s because Jesus can be whatever you want him to be, and the Christian message can be whatever you want it to be.”

Earlier in his speech, Aslan said that Jesus advocated an “absolute reversal of the social order, in which those on the top and those on the bottom will switch places,” citing Luke 6:20-26.

Porn flick about Comcast would be called ‘Insatiable’

~ odd man out ~ 3 Comments

Swamp Rabbit and I were reading that Comcast, the nation’s No. 1 cable provider, has bought out Time Warner Cable, the No. 2 provider. I wondered aloud what’s become of the Federal Communications Commission, the outfit that is supposed to prevent media corporations from establishing monopolies that exploit consumers. And where is the so-called Department of Justice? These questions are at least as old as the 1980s, when Ben Bagdikian wrote The Media Monopoly.

“The FCC done got neutered,” the rabbit said. “I been livin’ in this swamp for years, but I know that. Where you been?”

Good question. I try to keep up with change, but I can’t figure out how the feds justify allowing companies like Comcast to make such crudely obvious power grabs. It’s hard to overestimate the effect of Comcast’s multimillion-dollar lobbying efforts, or the power of David Cohen, Comcast’s executive vice president. But still…

Here’s part of the explanation, from Guardian UK’s Dan Gilmor:

America’s cable companies grew up in the cozy embrace of local governments that gave them monopoly franchises, which they’ve expanded over the years via mergers and acquisitions, not just normal growth. The noncompetitive local franchise model means that when one cable giant buys another, the customers generally have the same choices as before for subscription TV (cable or satellite) and internet service (cable or phone company DSL).

Whose interest is served by such a deal? The shareholders of TWC and Comcast would be thrilled, for sure. So would the NSA and other surveillance statists, who would undoubtedly be happiest if we reverted to the era when a single behemoth telecommunications enterprise served, for all practical purposes, as an arm of the spy services.

The other main winners would be the remaining telecom “competitors” that would be part of an ever-cozier oligopoly of enterprises that upgrade reluctantly and, compared to providers in other developed nations, grossly overcharge their customers. So look for more mergers, even less user privacy, higher prices and – if this is possible for the generally loathed cable companies – even worse service.

Call it the reality of pervasive political corruption. As City Paper’s Daniel Denvir wrote:

Philadelphia’s elected officials will no doubt line up to back Comcast, which recently announced its plans to build a second (taxpayer-subsidized) skyscraper here in its hometown. This is a company that works hard to make political friends, and which is energetically supporting Gov. Tom Corbett’s imperiled reelection campaign.

But still… Isn’t it the job of the feds to make sure gluttonous corporations don’t morph into entities so powerful they can crush competition by buying the people who write the laws? And wasn’t that a naive question?

Maybe the current FCC commissioners and the DoJ have decided today’s media monsters are too big for quaint anti-trust laws. We should know by the end of the year.

Bread and water? Beats jail food

~ odd man out ~ 1 Comment

Fog Over Disturbed Water

Pig meat gives me bad dreams; I don’t eat it unless there’s nothing else. Philosopher and Animal Liberation author Peter Singer would tell me there is always something else, that “We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet — for the sake of hamburgers.” And hot dogs. But Singer hangs out at Princeton, not in a swamp.

“Why didn’t you swipe soyburgers instead of swine meat?” the swamp rabbit asked me again today, in the spirit if not the style of Singer. “Or a head of lettuce. How hard is it to steal lettuce, Odd Man?”

He’s still angry about having to split a pack of wieners with me on Saturday, when the temperature in these parts plunged to near zero. He was angry on Sunday, too, but the weather was better. Warm air flowed in so fast the whole swamp fogged up as the ice melted.

I woke up Sunday night — or dreamed I woke up — and saw dead people floating out of the fog toward my shack. One was my late Great Aunt Nan, who used to give me candies and warn me to stop being a bad boy. This time she issued her old warning in a ghostly tone. “Bread and water. That’s all they feed you in jail.”

Not true, I thought, recalling a piece last month in Truthdig by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges about Aramark Corporation, a Philadelphia-based professional services company that supplies food for inmates at 600 jails and prisons nationwide — food that, according to Hedges, sometimes isn’t fit for your dog to eat, or maybe even your rabbit:

…In February 2009 a Camden County, N.J., health report found that the Aramark-run kitchen in the county jail had “mice throughout kitchen and storage area.” Mouse droppings were discovered in butter. Several food items, including grits, chicken, rice and beef, were not stored at temperatures low enough to protect against contamination. Prisoners at the county jail in Santa Barbara, Calif., went on a hunger strike last summer to protest the Aramark food, and inmates at Bayside State Prison in New Jersey went on a hunger strike in October for the same reason…

I’ll stop there, in case you’re looking forward to lunch. Hedges’ piece is reminiscent of passages from The Jungle and addresses some of the ways big corporations are cashing in on the fact that incarceration rates in the United States are the highest in the world.

Hedges is an unabashed foe of corporatism, so it’s no surprise he wrote a negative piece about Aramark. But I’m wondering why The Philadelphia Inquirer or some other prominent mainstream news entity hasn’t done an “objective” report on the many complaints about the kitchen facilities and jail food served up by this services giant, a Fortune 500 company that has its own high-rise office building in Philly and generates $12 billion a year in revenues.

Maybe I just answered my own question.

Footnote: See Prison Legal News for more on prison food services.

Summers’ end (exit Iago)

~ odd man out ~ 1 Comment

“Look, it’s Larry Summers,” said the swamp rabbit, pointing at an oil slick on the wetlands that surrounds my shotgun shack in Tinicum. “I think he’s heading north, maybe back to Harvard.”

“No way,” I said. “He gambled away a big chunk of Harvard’s endowment.”

We’d just read that Summers will not be nominated to head the Federal Reserve Board. One less malignant hustler using a powerful post to undermine the quality of life of Americans who aren’t rich. I can’t think of a better possible story out of Washington, D.C. Maybe if Summers had been knocked on his ass by someone who lost a home to one of the banks he helped bail out during the economic crisis he helped cause.

No surprise that Barack Obama, according to The New York Times, had wanted Summers for the job but apparently didn’t choose him because of the political risks:

…But as that Oval Office meeting last year also suggests, Mr. Obama’s one concern about nominating Mr. Summers has been the potential for a Senate battle — not only from Republicans spoiling for fights, but also from Democrats who view Mr. Summers as having been too friendly toward deregulating big banks when he was Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration…

“Too friendly” — how’s that for polite understatement? Summers played a key role in the repeal of Glass-Steagall. After the big banks went belly up, he saved them with taxpayers’ money, much of which should have been spent to replace millions of lost jobs, and on a large-scale foreclosure-blocking program. And now, even though he won’t head the Fed, the self-satisfied little toad is still playing Iago to Obama’s Othello.

Footnote: From a piece by Peter Beinart that explains why the Democratic Party will become even more like the GOP unless progressives fight to completely overhaul it:

From Tony Coelho, who during the Reagan years taught House Democrats to raise money from corporate lobbyists to Bill Clinton, who made Goldman Sachs co-chairman Robert Rubin his chief economic adviser, to Barack Obama, who gave the job to Rubin’s former deputy and alter ego, Larry Summers, Democrats have found it easier to forge relationships with the conservative worlds of big business and high finance because they have not faced much countervailing pressure from an independent movement of the left.

Atlantic City’s ultimate crap-out, a.k.a. Revel

~ odd man out
Revel is a bust, but A.C. is still a great place for enterprising job seekers.

They echoed in my head this morning, the words of the swamp rabbit as he confronted me at my shotgun shack in the Tinicum swamp: “What’s your plan, Odd Man?”

The pesky little rodent mocks me because I tend to bitch about being broke. He tries to provoke me into jumping off the porch into the swamp to try to wring his scrawny neck. His other favorite question is, “If you’re so smart, Odd Man, how come you ain’t rich?”

He still jokes about my recent trip to Atlantic City, where I tried to get work with the beach patrol, making sure the women’s bathing skirt hems were no more than four inches higher than their knees. (Atlantic City is trying to become more of a family resort, or so I have read.)

The women kicked sand in my face when I tried to get hold of their legs, so I took a walk to see if Revel was hiring. Revel, you might recall, is the $2.4 billion, 47-floor casino-hotel that was going to transform A.C. from a blue-collar gambling town into a chic destination for vacationers who enjoy lunch prepared by Michelin chefs, a dip in the rooftop pool overlooking the ocean, and a few hands of baccarat before the full-body massage. And God help any troglodyte who tried to smoke a cigarette in this upscale consumers’ paradise.

But Revel wasn’t hiring. In fact, it was trying to bounce back from bankruptcy by pulling a one-eighty regarding ambiance. Its fate will hinge on whether it can re-invent itself as a hangout for hardcore low-level gamblers (slots players, ugh) rather than a haven for would-be sophisticates. As for the smoking ban — would you like a fresh ash tray with your cigarette, ma’am?

The swamp rabbit got a few laughs out of Revel’s new incarnation, especially when I told him it had secured $350 million in “exit financing” when it emerged from bankruptcy. He said, “If the guys who run this place are so dumb, how come they ain’t busted?”

Which happens to be the question of the decade, one that reporters never get around to asking about the thieves who still run the economy-killing Wall Street banks that survived only because of government bailouts.

Footnote: Revel’s main financial backer used to be Morgan Stanley, which received a $107.3 bailout from the Fed after the economy tanked in 2008.

One more: A recent newspaper story headlined “Revel sued by gamblers who felt cheated by casino’s ‘You Can’t Lose’ campaign,” provides more evidence that the people who run Revel are dumber than swamp rabbits.

The whiners

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Gin and Tacos:

The iconic political image of the post-Reagan era, for my money, is the 2003 Schwarzenegger campaign (in the California gubernatorial recall election) using “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister as its theme song. To see Arnold and his fellow Orange County millionaires on stage stiffly pumping their fists to a dated song about the terrible unfairness of it all was…rich. It requires the kind of total lack of self-awareness usually found only in ancillary characters in slasher movies.

If there’s one thing I honestly, legitimately do not understand about politics, it’s how so many well-off conservatives have managed to convince themselves that they are the victims of an unfair society. They are the luxuriously oppressed, the forgotten, long-suffering minority that has everything that money can buy. The urge to grab these people, shake them, and scream “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR LIFE? WHAT DO YOU NOT HAVE? HOW ARE YOUR NEEDS GOING UNFULFILLED?” is overwhelming. With right-wingers I know well, I have actually done this on more than one occasion. The amount of delusion necessary to allow someone to sit in front of a 70″ TV in a giant house with two luxury cars in the garage and complain about the unfairness of it all is incomprehensible.

Go read the rest.

But why no criminal charges?

~ odd man out ~ 2 Comments

From AP:

The latest federal lawsuit over alleged mortgage fraud paints an unflattering picture of a doomed lender: Executives at Countrywide Financial urged workers to churn out loans, accepted fudged applications and tried to hide ballooning defaults.

The suit, filed Wednesday by the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, also underscored how Bank of America’s purchase of Countrywide in July 2008, just before the financial crisis, backfired severely.

The prosecutor, Preet Bharara, said he was seeking more than $1 billion, but the suit could ultimately recover much more in damages.

“This lawsuit should send another clear message that reckless lending practices will not be tolerated,” Bharara said in a statement. He described Countrywide’s practices as “spectacularly brazen in scope…”