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Saturday, September 05, 2009
CFI Indiana September 2009 Schedule
Rockford Higher Criticism Examiner: Moby Dick is true. It really happened.
| The on-going battle between faith and rationalism Within the term “biblical higher criticism,” the word “higher” is merely relative, to distinguish what was once called “lower” biblical criticism,... Read more » Rockford Higher Criticism Examiner, John F. Felix  John F. Felix is a freethinking student of philosophy, science, literature, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and a family man just passed the 25-year mark, loving Chicago and Rockford, IL, lifeways. He is a published poet, and performs freelance research for authors and scholars (expertise: creating of new versions of ancient e-texts). Send John a message. |  | |
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Rockford Higher Criticism Examiner: How to auto-post to your blog and auto-tweet to twitter just by publishing an article.
| How to auto-post to your blog and auto-tweet to twitter just by publishing an article. Like many people, I resisted social networking sites like Facebook and twitter, as well as social bookmarking services like Digg or Stumbleupon. My online e-cquaintances pressured me into at least taking a look. The way to rationalize participation... Read more » Wednesday, September 2, 2009 Rockford Higher Criticism Examiner, John F. Felix John F. Felix is a freethinking student of philosophy, science, literature, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and a family man just passed the 25-year mark, loving Chicago and Rockford, IL, lifeways. He is a published poet, and performs freelance research for authors and scholars (expertise: creating of new versions of ancient e-texts). Send John a message. | | |
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Freethought Examiner: Pacific garbage patch and religious fanaticism
| By now, many may be wondering if I will be tracing every human ill to religious fanaticism, mania, pathology and psychosis. On a global scale, there is much to be said for the notion that religious delusion has created a tremendous amount of suffering,... Read more » Freethought Examiner, D.M. Murdock  D.M. Murdock, also known as Acharya S, is an independent scholar of comparative religion and mythology from a "freethinking" perspective. She is the author of The Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God, Who was Jesus? and Christ in Egypt. Her work was featured in the movie Zeitgeist and Bill Maher's Religulous. Her main website is TruthBeKnown.com. | |
Friday, August 28, 2009
[Real World Atheism] Why We Didn't Crash
Why We Didn't Crash
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, August 24, 2009
SYDNEY -- The hardest slogan to sell in politics is: "Things could have been a whole lot worse." No wonder President Obama is having trouble defending his stimulus plan.
If governments around the world, including our own, had not acted aggressively -- and had not spent piles of money -- a very bad economic situation would have become cataclysmic.
But because the cataclysm was avoided, this is an invisible achievement. Many whose bacon was saved, particularly in the banking and corporate sectors, do not want to admit how important the actions of government were. Antigovernment ideologues try to pretend that no serious intervention was required.
So everyone goes back to complaining about high deficits and the shortcomings of government as if nothing had happened. This is now creating problems for Obama on health care.
One person who empathizes with our president is Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. He argues that if the governments of the world's biggest economies had not injected "$5 trillion plus into the real economy" in stimulus and had not taken other coordinated actions, we would have relived "the tawdry tale of the 1930s."
"In March of this year, the world was staring down the barrel of a Great Depression," Rudd said in an interview here last week. "This is a case study in bringing the world back from the brink, and it was American leadership from President Obama that was the key to that." Rudd is Obama's political kinsman not only because they are philosophically in tune but also because the 51-year-old Australian's election in November 2007 foreshadowed Obama's own.
The leader of the center-left Labor Party, Rudd ousted one of George W. Bush's best friends, conservative Prime Minister John Howard, by riding the same theme of change and the same generational tide that carried in his American friend.
Yet if Rudd praises Obama, he also praises Bush for acting swiftly when the global economy began coming apart in the fall of 2008. As Rudd put it in a speech to the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, Bush acted in dire circumstances, at a moment when "global financial flows ground to a virtual halt." In fact, for all the flaws in the execution of the bank bailout program, Bush's willingness last fall to put the urgent need for massive action above his own ideological proclivities is likely to go down as the most enduringly constructive act of his presidency.
Rudd argues that in the last months of Bush's administration and the first months of Obama's, every economic indicator pointed to "catastrophe." He speaks of banks running out of money, developers whose credit was frozen and signs of panic among individual savers.
What prevented a repeat of the 1930s, he says, is that the world's governments actually learned from that era, particularly from "the deliberations on the Great Depression by John Maynard Keynes." The British economist stressed the imperative of government action at moments when the private economy falters.
If anything, Rudd has it easier than Obama. Australia's unemployment rate in July was 5.9 percent, compared with 9.4 percent in the United States. Technically, at least, Australia has so far avoided recession.
And Rudd's conservative predecessor, unlike Obama's, was fiscally responsible. Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan points out that even after his government's large stimulus spending, the country's budget deficit will peak at 4.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2009-10. In 2009, Swan noted, the U.S. budget deficit will hit 13.6 percent of GDP.
Then there is the biggest difference in the national political situations: Australia already has a national health system. This means that Rudd has been able to concentrate on the economy and cap-and-trade legislation while Obama has found himself battling in the health-care trenches.
But Swan has some words of encouragement for Obama. The fight for government-led universal health coverage in Australia during the 1970s and '80s, Swan said in an interview, was "every bit as tough as the debate in the United States." He added: "Thirty years on, we've got this system which, whatever its flaws, is one of the most effective in the world." In other words, once it's in place, government-guaranteed universal health coverage becomes an unassailable social gain. Obama's chances of securing such a victory will improve if he can overcome reflexive antigovernment propaganda that ignores how governments kept the world economy from falling off the cliff. In Rudd, he has a willing witness.
ejdionne@
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/23/AR2009082302034.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/realworldatheism/
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, August 24, 2009
SYDNEY -- The hardest slogan to sell in politics is: "Things could have been a whole lot worse." No wonder President Obama is having trouble defending his stimulus plan.
If governments around the world, including our own, had not acted aggressively -- and had not spent piles of money -- a very bad economic situation would have become cataclysmic.
But because the cataclysm was avoided, this is an invisible achievement. Many whose bacon was saved, particularly in the banking and corporate sectors, do not want to admit how important the actions of government were. Antigovernment ideologues try to pretend that no serious intervention was required.
So everyone goes back to complaining about high deficits and the shortcomings of government as if nothing had happened. This is now creating problems for Obama on health care.
One person who empathizes with our president is Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. He argues that if the governments of the world's biggest economies had not injected "$5 trillion plus into the real economy" in stimulus and had not taken other coordinated actions, we would have relived "the tawdry tale of the 1930s."
"In March of this year, the world was staring down the barrel of a Great Depression," Rudd said in an interview here last week. "This is a case study in bringing the world back from the brink, and it was American leadership from President Obama that was the key to that." Rudd is Obama's political kinsman not only because they are philosophically in tune but also because the 51-year-old Australian's election in November 2007 foreshadowed Obama's own.
The leader of the center-left Labor Party, Rudd ousted one of George W. Bush's best friends, conservative Prime Minister John Howard, by riding the same theme of change and the same generational tide that carried in his American friend.
Yet if Rudd praises Obama, he also praises Bush for acting swiftly when the global economy began coming apart in the fall of 2008. As Rudd put it in a speech to the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, Bush acted in dire circumstances, at a moment when "global financial flows ground to a virtual halt." In fact, for all the flaws in the execution of the bank bailout program, Bush's willingness last fall to put the urgent need for massive action above his own ideological proclivities is likely to go down as the most enduringly constructive act of his presidency.
Rudd argues that in the last months of Bush's administration and the first months of Obama's, every economic indicator pointed to "catastrophe." He speaks of banks running out of money, developers whose credit was frozen and signs of panic among individual savers.
What prevented a repeat of the 1930s, he says, is that the world's governments actually learned from that era, particularly from "the deliberations on the Great Depression by John Maynard Keynes." The British economist stressed the imperative of government action at moments when the private economy falters.
If anything, Rudd has it easier than Obama. Australia's unemployment rate in July was 5.9 percent, compared with 9.4 percent in the United States. Technically, at least, Australia has so far avoided recession.
And Rudd's conservative predecessor, unlike Obama's, was fiscally responsible. Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan points out that even after his government's large stimulus spending, the country's budget deficit will peak at 4.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2009-10. In 2009, Swan noted, the U.S. budget deficit will hit 13.6 percent of GDP.
Then there is the biggest difference in the national political situations: Australia already has a national health system. This means that Rudd has been able to concentrate on the economy and cap-and-trade legislation while Obama has found himself battling in the health-care trenches.
But Swan has some words of encouragement for Obama. The fight for government-led universal health coverage in Australia during the 1970s and '80s, Swan said in an interview, was "every bit as tough as the debate in the United States." He added: "Thirty years on, we've got this system which, whatever its flaws, is one of the most effective in the world." In other words, once it's in place, government-guaranteed universal health coverage becomes an unassailable social gain. Obama's chances of securing such a victory will improve if he can overcome reflexive antigovernment propaganda that ignores how governments kept the world economy from falling off the cliff. In Rudd, he has a willing witness.
ejdionne@
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/23/AR2009082302034.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/realworldatheism/
Rockford Higher Criticism Examiner: Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Woodstock, IL windows worth a trip from Rockford – Part 1
| Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Woodstock, IL windows worth a trip from Rockford – Part 1 According to the online document “HOW WE GOT HERE, A Brief History of the Congregational Unitarian Church,” By Patrick Murfin, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Woodstock, located about 38 miles by car from downtown Rockford,... Read more » Friday, August 28, 2009 Rockford Higher Criticism Examiner, John F. Felix John F. Felix is a freethinking student of philosophy, science, literature, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and a family man just passed the 25-year mark, loving Chicago and Rockford, IL, lifeways. He is a published poet, and performs freelance research for authors and scholars (expertise: creating of new versions of ancient e-texts). Send John a message. | |
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Thursday, August 27, 2009
PaleoBabble
PaleoBabble |
Posted: 27 Aug 2009 02:22 PM PDT Just when you think preaching can’t get any more insipid, you find yet another logic-defying sermon out there on the web. “Thanks” to the person who sent this to me. Some surface observations on the problems with this “Bible lesson”: 1. Since the NIV *printed* the longer ending of Mark, isn’t it true that there are in fact 678 verses in Mark? Didn’t he just count them for us? 2. As educated students of the textual history of the Bible (any Bible) know (guess that excludes this pastor), verses were not original to the text of either testament. That means that versification is artificial from the get-go, so any numerical “truth” derived from counting them is, well, paleobabble. Chapter divisions were added in the 13th century. During that century, Stephen Langton (ca. 1227), a professor at the University of Paris, and Cardinal Hugo de Sancta Cara (ca. 1244-1248) pioneered the chapter divisions. (One wonders how this preacher might react to catholics being the source of the chapter divisions). Much earlier than this, the NT was divided into sections ca. the Council of Nicea, and before that the Hebrew Masoretes divided their canonical texts into section, paragraph, and phrasal divisions using accenting traditions. These divisions (oh, horror!) do not coincide with the KJV divisions or those used by other modern English translations. It is not known exactly when versification was added, but the oldest such scheme seems to be Italian Dominican biblical scholar Santi Pagnini (1470–1541; another catholic!), though his system was not popularly adopted. As Christopher Smith notes in an article produced for a magazine I edit, “Robert Estienne created an alternate numbering in his 1551 edition of the Greek New Testament.” The first English New Testament to use the verse divisions was a 1557 translation by William Whittingham (c. 1524-1579). None of this probably matters to the speaker, though, since he appears to be a King James only adherent. That brings me to the next problem. 3. The King James Only view that is apparent from this sermon is foreign to the reality of history of the biblical text. Readers are encouraged to read two volumes on this nonsense that are quite informative and helpful. First, there is Carson’s King James Version Debate, The: A Plea for Realism (1979); then there is White’s King James Only Controversy, The: Can You Trust Modern Translations?. Even fundamentalists like Roy Beacham would denounce the KJV only position: One Bible Only?: Examining Exclusive Claims for the King James Bible. My point here is that this view is completely on the fringe — and there are real reasons why it is. Frankly, the KJV debate is really a debate about the NT. None of its arguments work with respect to the Hebrew Bible (they don’t work on the NT, either, but applying them to the Hebrew text is where it really gets laughable). 4. My King James Bible says that 666 is “the number of a man” (Rev. 13:18) not the number of a manuscript tradition or publisher or versification scheme. 5. Jesus (I assume that’s who he means by the video title - the greatest preacher) didn’t assign verses to the Bible, nor does he ever reference them. Nor did he write Mark (or any other NT book). If the preacher is talking about himself, then substitute his name for Jesus accordingly. I’ll fly my flag at half mast again tonight, not for Ted Kennedy, but for the state of the American pulpit.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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[Real World Atheism] The Debilitating Myth of the 'Free Market' Alternative
The Debilitating Myth of the 'Free Market' Alternative
by Robert Freeman
www.CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/24
When choosing a pet, do you prefer unicorns or bunnies?
I prefer unicorns because, though bunnies are
undeniably snuggly, unicorns have a much better color.
That lustrous pink fur beats out dull brown every time.
And if you can get one with wings -- well, how can
floppy ears compete with that? It isn't even close, is
it?
This is something like what the healthcare debate is
about. It's not about real alternatives. Rather, it's
about the choice between a realistic alternative that
can actually extend coverage while lowering costs -- the
public option -- and a fantasy: the "free market"
option.
And health care is only the most readily available of
industries that illustrate our fatal fetishistic
fixation with the "free market" myth. Our thrall to
that myth makes it impossible to have a rational debate
about almost any economic issue. For vast swaths of
the U.S. and global economies bear as much resemblance
to "free markets" as do unicorns to real pets.
There is, for example, no free market in health care.
Most markets for health insurance in the U.S. are
dominated by one or two players. They easily collude
to keep prices high, choices low, payouts at a minimum,
and new competitors from entering. This is exactly
what both common sense and economic theory would
predict when few firms dominate a market. Economists
call it "oligopoly."
Hospitals operate as oligopolists as well. I live in a
small town in California. It doesn't matter to me that
there are many thousands of hospitals across the
country. The "relevant" market for my health care
needs extends only a few miles. For most people in
America, there are at most two "competitors" in the
hospital delivery business, if that. This is not a
competitive market. The lack of true choice and the
vendors' incentives and ability to collude, make a
mockery of the idea of "free markets."
Or consider the pharmaceutical industry. Though there
are many firms, the vast majority of the prescriptions,
sales, R&D, and profits are controlled by very few
companies. In many critical drugs, because of our
patent laws, there is only one provider. And George W.
Bush passed a $700 billion health care law that
specifically forbade the U.S. government from using its
buying power to secure lower drugs prices for
government purchases. So much for the rigor of
competition.
There is simply no effective competition in these
markets and the results show it. The U.S. spends twice
per capita what other industrial nations spend on
health care with inferior outcomes. Adam Smith, the
founder of modern economics, foretold this when, in
1776, he wrote in The Wealth of Nations, "People of the
same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy
against the public, or in some contrivance to raise
prices."
So what is the point in even arguing about "free
market" alternatives? It is like arguing for unicorns
as pets. It is fantasy. When raised to a matter of
policy prescription, it is worse. It is social
psychosis.
The fact of such social psychosis is not an accident
either, and it, too, derives from the same narrow
ownership and control of a vital industry. Only thirty
years ago, the media industry contained over 50
independent companies delivering television, radio,
newspapers, and magazines. Today, there are five giant
conglomerates that control more that 80% of all the
media sales in the country.
These media conglomerates are owned by a very small,
very wealthy elite whose interests lie not in promoting
democracy in political markets or competition in
economic ones, but precisely in preventing them. Their
aim is to divert attention from the staggering
concentration of wealth at the top of the economy and
the steady impoverishment of all the rest. They tout
the sham rituals of democracy such as town hall
meetings precisely to disguise the takeover of real
government by large corporate interests. Meanwhile,
the constitutional protections of civil liberties for
the people are quietly, slowly, relentlessly
dismantled.
The power and collusion of the media oligopoly were
never better illustrated than in the run-up to the Iraq
war. We now know that all of the putative
justifications for that war were false. None of that
mattered. The neo-conservative political elite and
their wealthy capitalist masters wanted a war so they
manufactured one with the help of their hirelings in
the mainstream media. Truth had nothing to do with it.
Indeed, alternative voices, those that actually spoke
the truth, were ruthlessly, viciously mocked and
suppressed.
The entire country was frog-marched into a nakedly
illegal colonialist takeover of a sovereign country
that had not attacked the U.S., had not threatened to
attack the U.S., had no interest in attacking the U.S.,
and had no capacity to attack the U.S.
Such is the power of controlling one of the most
influential industries in the world, that you can, at
will, manufacture a war that will expend trillions of
dollars, raise the price of oil, and increase
government deficits -- all to your benefit. Or, in the
case of health care, that can elevate moronic screamers
to the level of cultural prophets or anoint six
senators representing 3% of the country to prevent real
competition in markets that you also control.
This narrow control of critical markets extends far
beyond just the health care and media industries. It
applies to industries across the entire economic
spectrum.
There are only a handful of companies selling soda pop.
There is essentially only one company selling desktop
operating systems. Two companies sell more than 90% of
all batteries. Three companies sell over 80% of the
beer, cigarettes, and breakfast cereals consumed
nationally. Only two companies in the world sell large
airplanes for commercial travel. Only two companies
make the microprocessors that power PCs or the switches
that power national-scale telephone networks.
In watches and clocks, railroad engines, jet engines,
integrated oil production, sporting goods, musical
instruments, motorcycles, man-made fibers, tobacco,
music, wireless phones, chemicals, vitamins, industrial
process control machinery, satellites, pharmaceuticals,
networking equipment, and many other industries, fewer
than six firms control virtually all of the entire
world's production!
Such levels of "industrial concentration," as it is
called, have never existed before in the history of the
world. It reflects the consolidation of the world's
wealth into the hands of a very small plutocratic elite
which manage the world's commerce among themselves, for
themselves. And this concentration is growing rapidly.
This is part of what the recent trend toward
"globalization" is all about.
The big players in major countries have "gone global"
by buying up or shutting down smaller players in other
countries. In 1973, $75 billion was spent by
international companies buying up other companies that
competed against them in foreign markets. By 1993,
that figure had soared to $500 billion and by 1999 had
risen still another five-fold, to $2.4 trillion. It
continues to increase still today, creating a global
marketplace in which more and more industries are
dominated by fewer and fewer larger and larger
companies.
The result is an extraordinary transfer of wealth and
income from consumers and the middle class to monopoly
producers and their owners. In 2007, the top 1% of the
U.S. population owned 60% of all business assets.
Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of the population owned a
mere 2.5% of such assets. The bottom 40% owned
nothing. U.S. income distribution has become more
unequal than at any time since 1928, just before the
Great Depression. In the ten years between 1996 and
2006 two thirds of all the growth in the entire U.S.
economy went to the top 1% of income earners.
This is far more akin to a feudal world than it is to
"free market" capitalism. In this, the real world, a
very few ultra-rich families -- think of the Bourbons,
the Tudors, or the Hapsburgs -- own everything,
including the government, and everybody else owns
nothing, save the labor they must render to their
wealthy overlords in exchange for the right to live.
This has profound implications for the efficiency of
the economy. There is simply not enough purchasing
power in the hands of consumers to clear markets of
goods. In the past three decades, this shortfall in
demand has been compensated for by the government
running massive budget deficits. The national debt has
grown 10-fold in the past 30 years and is forecast to
double again in the next ten. The burden of paying for
that debt will enslave working Americans for
generations to come, effectively, forever.
And as much as all of this is a matter of economic
concern, it has grave implications for the viability,
indeed, the survival of democracy. When extreme size
becomes extreme wealth, and when global economic power
is exercised as preponderant national political power,
how do we insure the survival of democracy?
Democracy depends on "one person, one vote". The motto
for monopoly capitalism might well be, "One dollar, one
vote." The two institutions -- democracy and monopoly
capitalism -- are incompatible. The one will
inevitably destroy the other. This is what Supreme
Court justice Louis Brandeis meant when he wrote, "We
can either have great concentrations of wealth or we
can have democracy. But we cannot have both."
Large corporations are able to exercise extraordinary
political influence through campaign contributions,
lobbying, and control of the media. By these means,
they are able to have legislation enacted that favors
themselves over the public: trillions of dollars
sluiced to themselves through "bailouts;" guarantees
against having to actually compete; differential tax
rates on capital versus labor; environmental
regulations that go un-enforced; etc. This, of course,
only further accelerates the concentration of private
wealth and political power into narrow hands with the
consequent further erosion of democracy.
How do we balance the democratic rights of individual
citizens and the economic rights of small consumers
when political and economic giants stride the
landscape, concerned only with their own
self-aggrandizement and almost inevitably hostile to
the interests of the larger public?
In the case of an oligopolized media fomenting
ignorance, hatred, and resentment in the place of
knowledge, discourse, and deliberation, how can we even
know what we need to know to operate a civilized
country? There can be neither informed consumer choice
in economic affairs nor consent of the governed in
political. And that is precisely the intent.
Since the answer to these questions will effectively
decide the future of democracy, it may well be the most
important economic policy question facing America
today. Of course, Americans love everything free:
land of the free, home of the brave; let freedom ring;
live free or die; buy one get one free. That's why
it's so hard to shake the illusion of free markets:
we've centuries of indoctrination into the idea of
their existence as synonymous with our own. Myths die
hard, the more so, those at the heart of our cultural
identity.
But we expect children to grow up, to stop believing in
unicorns. We need to hold the same standard for
ourselves as citizen-adults. We should use the chimera
of "free markets" in health care to keep the spotlight
on all such industrial concentration. It is not
glamorous or sexy, like unicorns, but it is ever so
much more real and ever so much more at the heart of
our nation's survival.
Robert Freeman writes on history, economics and
education. He can be reached at
robertfreeman10@ [1].
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/realworldatheism/
by Robert Freeman
www.CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/24
When choosing a pet, do you prefer unicorns or bunnies?
I prefer unicorns because, though bunnies are
undeniably snuggly, unicorns have a much better color.
That lustrous pink fur beats out dull brown every time.
And if you can get one with wings -- well, how can
floppy ears compete with that? It isn't even close, is
it?
This is something like what the healthcare debate is
about. It's not about real alternatives. Rather, it's
about the choice between a realistic alternative that
can actually extend coverage while lowering costs -- the
public option -- and a fantasy: the "free market"
option.
And health care is only the most readily available of
industries that illustrate our fatal fetishistic
fixation with the "free market" myth. Our thrall to
that myth makes it impossible to have a rational debate
about almost any economic issue. For vast swaths of
the U.S. and global economies bear as much resemblance
to "free markets" as do unicorns to real pets.
There is, for example, no free market in health care.
Most markets for health insurance in the U.S. are
dominated by one or two players. They easily collude
to keep prices high, choices low, payouts at a minimum,
and new competitors from entering. This is exactly
what both common sense and economic theory would
predict when few firms dominate a market. Economists
call it "oligopoly."
Hospitals operate as oligopolists as well. I live in a
small town in California. It doesn't matter to me that
there are many thousands of hospitals across the
country. The "relevant" market for my health care
needs extends only a few miles. For most people in
America, there are at most two "competitors" in the
hospital delivery business, if that. This is not a
competitive market. The lack of true choice and the
vendors' incentives and ability to collude, make a
mockery of the idea of "free markets."
Or consider the pharmaceutical industry. Though there
are many firms, the vast majority of the prescriptions,
sales, R&D, and profits are controlled by very few
companies. In many critical drugs, because of our
patent laws, there is only one provider. And George W.
Bush passed a $700 billion health care law that
specifically forbade the U.S. government from using its
buying power to secure lower drugs prices for
government purchases. So much for the rigor of
competition.
There is simply no effective competition in these
markets and the results show it. The U.S. spends twice
per capita what other industrial nations spend on
health care with inferior outcomes. Adam Smith, the
founder of modern economics, foretold this when, in
1776, he wrote in The Wealth of Nations, "People of the
same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy
against the public, or in some contrivance to raise
prices."
So what is the point in even arguing about "free
market" alternatives? It is like arguing for unicorns
as pets. It is fantasy. When raised to a matter of
policy prescription, it is worse. It is social
psychosis.
The fact of such social psychosis is not an accident
either, and it, too, derives from the same narrow
ownership and control of a vital industry. Only thirty
years ago, the media industry contained over 50
independent companies delivering television, radio,
newspapers, and magazines. Today, there are five giant
conglomerates that control more that 80% of all the
media sales in the country.
These media conglomerates are owned by a very small,
very wealthy elite whose interests lie not in promoting
democracy in political markets or competition in
economic ones, but precisely in preventing them. Their
aim is to divert attention from the staggering
concentration of wealth at the top of the economy and
the steady impoverishment of all the rest. They tout
the sham rituals of democracy such as town hall
meetings precisely to disguise the takeover of real
government by large corporate interests. Meanwhile,
the constitutional protections of civil liberties for
the people are quietly, slowly, relentlessly
dismantled.
The power and collusion of the media oligopoly were
never better illustrated than in the run-up to the Iraq
war. We now know that all of the putative
justifications for that war were false. None of that
mattered. The neo-conservative political elite and
their wealthy capitalist masters wanted a war so they
manufactured one with the help of their hirelings in
the mainstream media. Truth had nothing to do with it.
Indeed, alternative voices, those that actually spoke
the truth, were ruthlessly, viciously mocked and
suppressed.
The entire country was frog-marched into a nakedly
illegal colonialist takeover of a sovereign country
that had not attacked the U.S., had not threatened to
attack the U.S., had no interest in attacking the U.S.,
and had no capacity to attack the U.S.
Such is the power of controlling one of the most
influential industries in the world, that you can, at
will, manufacture a war that will expend trillions of
dollars, raise the price of oil, and increase
government deficits -- all to your benefit. Or, in the
case of health care, that can elevate moronic screamers
to the level of cultural prophets or anoint six
senators representing 3% of the country to prevent real
competition in markets that you also control.
This narrow control of critical markets extends far
beyond just the health care and media industries. It
applies to industries across the entire economic
spectrum.
There are only a handful of companies selling soda pop.
There is essentially only one company selling desktop
operating systems. Two companies sell more than 90% of
all batteries. Three companies sell over 80% of the
beer, cigarettes, and breakfast cereals consumed
nationally. Only two companies in the world sell large
airplanes for commercial travel. Only two companies
make the microprocessors that power PCs or the switches
that power national-scale telephone networks.
In watches and clocks, railroad engines, jet engines,
integrated oil production, sporting goods, musical
instruments, motorcycles, man-made fibers, tobacco,
music, wireless phones, chemicals, vitamins, industrial
process control machinery, satellites, pharmaceuticals,
networking equipment, and many other industries, fewer
than six firms control virtually all of the entire
world's production!
Such levels of "industrial concentration," as it is
called, have never existed before in the history of the
world. It reflects the consolidation of the world's
wealth into the hands of a very small plutocratic elite
which manage the world's commerce among themselves, for
themselves. And this concentration is growing rapidly.
This is part of what the recent trend toward
"globalization" is all about.
The big players in major countries have "gone global"
by buying up or shutting down smaller players in other
countries. In 1973, $75 billion was spent by
international companies buying up other companies that
competed against them in foreign markets. By 1993,
that figure had soared to $500 billion and by 1999 had
risen still another five-fold, to $2.4 trillion. It
continues to increase still today, creating a global
marketplace in which more and more industries are
dominated by fewer and fewer larger and larger
companies.
The result is an extraordinary transfer of wealth and
income from consumers and the middle class to monopoly
producers and their owners. In 2007, the top 1% of the
U.S. population owned 60% of all business assets.
Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of the population owned a
mere 2.5% of such assets. The bottom 40% owned
nothing. U.S. income distribution has become more
unequal than at any time since 1928, just before the
Great Depression. In the ten years between 1996 and
2006 two thirds of all the growth in the entire U.S.
economy went to the top 1% of income earners.
This is far more akin to a feudal world than it is to
"free market" capitalism. In this, the real world, a
very few ultra-rich families -- think of the Bourbons,
the Tudors, or the Hapsburgs -- own everything,
including the government, and everybody else owns
nothing, save the labor they must render to their
wealthy overlords in exchange for the right to live.
This has profound implications for the efficiency of
the economy. There is simply not enough purchasing
power in the hands of consumers to clear markets of
goods. In the past three decades, this shortfall in
demand has been compensated for by the government
running massive budget deficits. The national debt has
grown 10-fold in the past 30 years and is forecast to
double again in the next ten. The burden of paying for
that debt will enslave working Americans for
generations to come, effectively, forever.
And as much as all of this is a matter of economic
concern, it has grave implications for the viability,
indeed, the survival of democracy. When extreme size
becomes extreme wealth, and when global economic power
is exercised as preponderant national political power,
how do we insure the survival of democracy?
Democracy depends on "one person, one vote". The motto
for monopoly capitalism might well be, "One dollar, one
vote." The two institutions -- democracy and monopoly
capitalism -- are incompatible. The one will
inevitably destroy the other. This is what Supreme
Court justice Louis Brandeis meant when he wrote, "We
can either have great concentrations of wealth or we
can have democracy. But we cannot have both."
Large corporations are able to exercise extraordinary
political influence through campaign contributions,
lobbying, and control of the media. By these means,
they are able to have legislation enacted that favors
themselves over the public: trillions of dollars
sluiced to themselves through "bailouts;" guarantees
against having to actually compete; differential tax
rates on capital versus labor; environmental
regulations that go un-enforced; etc. This, of course,
only further accelerates the concentration of private
wealth and political power into narrow hands with the
consequent further erosion of democracy.
How do we balance the democratic rights of individual
citizens and the economic rights of small consumers
when political and economic giants stride the
landscape, concerned only with their own
self-aggrandizement and almost inevitably hostile to
the interests of the larger public?
In the case of an oligopolized media fomenting
ignorance, hatred, and resentment in the place of
knowledge, discourse, and deliberation, how can we even
know what we need to know to operate a civilized
country? There can be neither informed consumer choice
in economic affairs nor consent of the governed in
political. And that is precisely the intent.
Since the answer to these questions will effectively
decide the future of democracy, it may well be the most
important economic policy question facing America
today. Of course, Americans love everything free:
land of the free, home of the brave; let freedom ring;
live free or die; buy one get one free. That's why
it's so hard to shake the illusion of free markets:
we've centuries of indoctrination into the idea of
their existence as synonymous with our own. Myths die
hard, the more so, those at the heart of our cultural
identity.
But we expect children to grow up, to stop believing in
unicorns. We need to hold the same standard for
ourselves as citizen-adults. We should use the chimera
of "free markets" in health care to keep the spotlight
on all such industrial concentration. It is not
glamorous or sexy, like unicorns, but it is ever so
much more real and ever so much more at the heart of
our nation's survival.
Robert Freeman writes on history, economics and
education. He can be reached at
robertfreeman10@ [1].
------------------------------------
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[Real World Atheism] Socialized Medicine? Not Quite
Published on Sunday, August 23, 2009 by The Washington Post
Socialized Medicine? Not Quite
5 Myths About Health Care Around the World
by T.R. Reid
As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.
I've traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:
1. It's all socialized medicine out there.
Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying the bills. Others -- for instance, Canada and Taiwan -- rely on private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But many wealthy countries -- including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland -- provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.
In some ways, health care is less "socialized" overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet's purest examples of government-run health care.
2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.
Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation's 200 private health insurance plans -- a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn't like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.
In France and Japan, you don't get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as "in-network" lists of doctors or "pre-authorization" for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment -- and insurance has to pay.
Canadians have their choice of providers. In Austria and Germany, if a doctor diagnoses a person as "stressed," medical insurance pays for weekends at a health spa.
As for those notorious waiting lists, some countries are indeed plagued by them. Canada makes patients wait weeks or months for nonemergency care, as a way to keep costs down. But studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations -- Germany, Britain, Austria -- outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries.
In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don't bother to make an appointment. One Thursday morning in Tokyo, I called the prestigious orthopedic clinic at Keio University Hospital to schedule a consultation about my aching shoulder. "Why don't you just drop by?" the receptionist said. That same afternoon, I was in the surgeon's office. Dr. Nakamichi recommended an operation. "When could we do it?" I asked. The doctor checked his computer and said, "Tomorrow would be pretty difficult. Perhaps some day next week?"
3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.
Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise -- private-sector, for-profit health insurance -- is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient than ours.
U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.
The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.
4. Cost controls stifle innovation.
False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who's had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.
Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)
5. Health insurance has to be cruel.
Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a "preexisting condition" -- precisely the people most likely to need the insurers' service. They employ armies of adjusters to deny claims. If a customer is hit by a truck and faces big medical bills, the insurer's "rescission department" digs through the records looking for grounds to cancel the policy, often while the victim is still in the hospital. The companies say they have to do this stuff to survive in a tough business.
Foreign health insurance companies, in contrast, must accept all applicants, and they can't cancel as long as you pay your premiums. The plans are required to pay any claim submitted by a doctor or hospital (or health spa), usually within tight time limits. The big Swiss insurer Groupe Mutuel promises to pay all claims within five days. "Our customers love it," the group's chief executive told me. The corollary is that everyone is mandated to buy insurance, to give the plans an adequate pool of rate-payers.
The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.
In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.
This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.
Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.
Given our remarkable medical assets -- the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research -- the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.
© 2009 The Washington Post
T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, is the author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care," to be published Monday.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
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To visit your group on the web, go to:
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Socialized Medicine? Not Quite
5 Myths About Health Care Around the World
by T.R. Reid
As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.
I've traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:
1. It's all socialized medicine out there.
Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying the bills. Others -- for instance, Canada and Taiwan -- rely on private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But many wealthy countries -- including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland -- provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.
In some ways, health care is less "socialized" overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet's purest examples of government-run health care.
2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.
Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation's 200 private health insurance plans -- a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn't like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.
In France and Japan, you don't get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as "in-network" lists of doctors or "pre-authorization" for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment -- and insurance has to pay.
Canadians have their choice of providers. In Austria and Germany, if a doctor diagnoses a person as "stressed," medical insurance pays for weekends at a health spa.
As for those notorious waiting lists, some countries are indeed plagued by them. Canada makes patients wait weeks or months for nonemergency care, as a way to keep costs down. But studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations -- Germany, Britain, Austria -- outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries.
In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don't bother to make an appointment. One Thursday morning in Tokyo, I called the prestigious orthopedic clinic at Keio University Hospital to schedule a consultation about my aching shoulder. "Why don't you just drop by?" the receptionist said. That same afternoon, I was in the surgeon's office. Dr. Nakamichi recommended an operation. "When could we do it?" I asked. The doctor checked his computer and said, "Tomorrow would be pretty difficult. Perhaps some day next week?"
3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.
Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise -- private-sector, for-profit health insurance -- is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient than ours.
U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.
The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.
4. Cost controls stifle innovation.
False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who's had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.
Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)
5. Health insurance has to be cruel.
Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a "preexisting condition" -- precisely the people most likely to need the insurers' service. They employ armies of adjusters to deny claims. If a customer is hit by a truck and faces big medical bills, the insurer's "rescission department" digs through the records looking for grounds to cancel the policy, often while the victim is still in the hospital. The companies say they have to do this stuff to survive in a tough business.
Foreign health insurance companies, in contrast, must accept all applicants, and they can't cancel as long as you pay your premiums. The plans are required to pay any claim submitted by a doctor or hospital (or health spa), usually within tight time limits. The big Swiss insurer Groupe Mutuel promises to pay all claims within five days. "Our customers love it," the group's chief executive told me. The corollary is that everyone is mandated to buy insurance, to give the plans an adequate pool of rate-payers.
The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.
In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.
This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.
Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.
Given our remarkable medical assets -- the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research -- the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.
© 2009 The Washington Post
T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, is the author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care," to be published Monday.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
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To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/realworldatheism/
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Freethought Examiner: The Institute for Human Continuity a hoax?
| "End of the world" scenarios are big business, in religion and in trade, such as books, movies and so on. Christian Apocalyptic/Armageddon novels and videos have sold hundreds of millions of copies, especially during chronological milestones... Read more » Freethought Examiner, D.M. Murdock D.M. Murdock, also known as Acharya S, is an independent scholar of comparative religion and mythology from a "freethinking" perspective. She is the author of The Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God, Who was Jesus? and Christ in Egypt. Her work was featured in the movie Zeitgeist and Bill Maher's Religulous. Her main website is TruthBeKnown.com. | |
Rockford Higher Criticism Examiner: Cannibalistic Christianity: former Rockford, IL scholar serves up psychedelic food for thought.
| Cannibalistic Christianity: former Rockford, IL scholar serves up psychedelic food for thought. After publishing the first article on former Rockford native freethinker, Earl Lee, a pamphlet he authored entitled “Among the Cannibal Christians,” from See Sharp Press in Tuscon, AZ, 1999, arrived in the mail. The 32-page essay details... Read more » Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Rockford Higher Criticism Examiner, John F. Felix John F. Felix is a freethinking student of philosophy, science, literature, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and a family man just passed the 25-year mark, loving Chicago and Rockford, IL, lifeways. He is a published poet, and performs freelance research for authors and scholars (expertise: creating of new versions of ancient e-texts). Send John a message. | |
[Real World Atheism] Winter Holiday Break Dispute
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a state/church watchdog and the nation's largest association of atheists and agnostics, has written public school officials in Petoskey, Mich., to object to unconstitutional wording on the school calendar.
On Aug. 18 during a closed session, the school board voted unanimously to change the wording of the school calendar from "Winter holiday break" to "Christmas
break." That was eight days after the board treasurer, Jack Waldvogel,
sent an inflammatory e-mail to district staff and board members.
Either make the change voluntarily, Waldvogel said, "or I will make a
motion to change it at the NEXT Board meeting, and raise such a stink,
and bring out every redneck Christian Conservative north of Clare, to
compel the District to do so." The e-mail also said: "Our children need
to know we are a Christian nation and taking all reference to a higher
being out of our educational vocabulary is wrong."
The Foundation, which has more than 400 Michigan members and 13,900 nationwide, was alerted to the situation by a member in Petoskey.
"Changing the wording to Christmas break so that Petoskey school
children know that 'we are a Christian nation' violates the most basic
and fundamental principles of Establishment Clause jurisprudence," said Rebecca Kratz, FFRF staff attorney, in a letter to the district.
The change also violates the principle set down in Lemon v. Kurtzman
that requires government action to have a secular purpose, Kratz said.
"Mr. Waldvogel's intent and purpose for recommending the change was
based wholly on religion. There is no secular purpose for the change
when the school district's top administrators and elected officials
clearly indicate to the public that they want children to know of
Christianity and of the existence of a higher being."
In an Aug. 20 story
in the Petoskey News-Review, Superintendent John Scholten said the
district will follow the board's directive. "It will now be called
Christmas holiday break."
Waldvogel told the newspaper he thought his e-mail was only
going to the board and administrators and not districtwide.
"Unfortunately, it got back to the free world. . . . I certainly would
have tempered it if I knew it was being sent to everyone." He said the
e-mail was meant to be "tongue-in-cheek." (His e-mail ended with:
"Don't assume this is a joke. I'm being as serious as I possibly can
here.")
Waldvogel chairs the Emmet County Republican Party and made news nationally
in October 2008 with another e-mail, sent after presidential candidate John McCain pulled out of Michigan: "What a slap in the face to all the thousands of people who have been energized by the addition of Sarah Palin
to the ticket," Waldvogel wrote. "I've been involved in County Party
politics and organization for 40 years, and this is the biggest dumbass
stunt I have ever seen. He has given up on our State? What a total and
complete crock of crap."
The Foundation's letter to the district also notes that the
board's action illegally advances religion over nonreligion and prefers
Christianity over all other faiths: "The previous wording reflected an
enlightened respect and viewpoint for the community's diverse
population and the District should restore its original wording on the
school calendar."
School board members' e-mail addresses are here. If you contact them or the school district, please be polite and concise and include your name for maximum effectiveness.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., is a national association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics) that has been working since 1978 to keep church and state separate.
Freedom From Religion Foundation • PO Box 750 • Madison, WI 53701 • (608) 256-8900 • e-mail us
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
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To visit your group on the web, go to:
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On Aug. 18 during a closed session, the school board voted unanimously to change the wording of the school calendar from "Winter holiday break" to "Christmas
break." That was eight days after the board treasurer, Jack Waldvogel,
sent an inflammatory e-mail to district staff and board members.
Either make the change voluntarily, Waldvogel said, "or I will make a
motion to change it at the NEXT Board meeting, and raise such a stink,
and bring out every redneck Christian Conservative north of Clare, to
compel the District to do so." The e-mail also said: "Our children need
to know we are a Christian nation and taking all reference to a higher
being out of our educational vocabulary is wrong."
The Foundation, which has more than 400 Michigan members and 13,900 nationwide, was alerted to the situation by a member in Petoskey.
"Changing the wording to Christmas break so that Petoskey school
children know that 'we are a Christian nation' violates the most basic
and fundamental principles of Establishment Clause jurisprudence," said Rebecca Kratz, FFRF staff attorney, in a letter to the district.
The change also violates the principle set down in Lemon v. Kurtzman
that requires government action to have a secular purpose, Kratz said.
"Mr. Waldvogel's intent and purpose for recommending the change was
based wholly on religion. There is no secular purpose for the change
when the school district's top administrators and elected officials
clearly indicate to the public that they want children to know of
Christianity and of the existence of a higher being."
In an Aug. 20 story
in the Petoskey News-Review, Superintendent John Scholten said the
district will follow the board's directive. "It will now be called
Christmas holiday break."
Waldvogel told the newspaper he thought his e-mail was only
going to the board and administrators and not districtwide.
"Unfortunately, it got back to the free world. . . . I certainly would
have tempered it if I knew it was being sent to everyone." He said the
e-mail was meant to be "tongue-in-cheek." (His e-mail ended with:
"Don't assume this is a joke. I'm being as serious as I possibly can
here.")
Waldvogel chairs the Emmet County Republican Party and made news nationally
in October 2008 with another e-mail, sent after presidential candidate John McCain pulled out of Michigan: "What a slap in the face to all the thousands of people who have been energized by the addition of Sarah Palin
to the ticket," Waldvogel wrote. "I've been involved in County Party
politics and organization for 40 years, and this is the biggest dumbass
stunt I have ever seen. He has given up on our State? What a total and
complete crock of crap."
The Foundation's letter to the district also notes that the
board's action illegally advances religion over nonreligion and prefers
Christianity over all other faiths: "The previous wording reflected an
enlightened respect and viewpoint for the community's diverse
population and the District should restore its original wording on the
school calendar."
School board members' e-mail addresses are here. If you contact them or the school district, please be polite and concise and include your name for maximum effectiveness.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., is a national association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics) that has been working since 1978 to keep church and state separate.
Freedom From Religion Foundation • PO Box 750 • Madison, WI 53701 • (608) 256-8900 • e-mail us
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
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[TC-Alternate-list] Mark 16:9-20 as the Original Ending of the Gospel of Mark
Steven,
SA: "What to you is the compelling evidence that Mark was not the author of the resurrection account as the original ending of his Gospel."
That is a well-phrased question, because (although this view is not necessary for the case for the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20) I think that verses 9-20 were written by Mark as a freestanding composition, and that this originally separate composition was attached to the Gospel of Mark by his colleagues at Rome after Mark was forced to stop writing at the end of v. 8.
It would be convenient, in some ways, if the evidence indicated that Mark did proceed to write verses 9-20. That would be a simpler scenario that the one I have pictured. But I don't think the evidence allows such a simple conclusion. That view is /too/ simple; it is simpler than my approach, yes – like a bridge that only reaches halfway across a canyon is simpler than one that reaches all the way across. Here are the pieces of evidence, listed in no particular order, that drive me to the view that Mark 16:9-20 is not the ending that Mark was preparing to compose when he was writing 16:8.
(1) The transition from 16:8 to 16:9 is grammatically very harsh. Mark uses "gar" 67 times on other occasions, and every time it does not end a sentence. The end of 16:8 looks like an interrupted sentence. It is grammatically feasible, but not linguistically probable at all as the conclusion of a narrative. The alleged parallels in an essay by Plotinus, and in a speech by Protagoras, are not the same sort of thing. Plotinus substantially post-dates Mark and the points at which the collections of Plotinus' essays start and stop reflect the editing of Plotinus' assistant Porphyry. As for Protagoras, he simply ends his speech with a clarifying parenthetical phrase. Neither of those compositions resembles the "cliff-hanger" at the end of Mark 16:8. Whereas the closing phrases in the essay by Plotinus, and the speech by Protagoras, wrap up loose ends, the gar-phrase in Mark 16:8 creates one.
Although some interpreters have viewed the end of 16:8 through an optimistic lens, and regarded it as some sort of open-ended invitation to the reader (although the question of exactly what sort of invitation it is varies from interpreter to interpreter), it seems to me that one could tear off the Gospel of Mark at a number of points in 16:1-8, and the same interpreters, using the same optimistic lens, could squint a meaningful and brilliant open-ended ending into existence. It requires much less squinting to see that the end of 16:8 looks like an interrupted sentence because it /is/ an interrupted sentence. Mark's failure to complete the half-sentence indicates that he did not complete the narrative as a whole.
(2) The group of women in 16:8 is not revisited; we go from a group of women that includes Mary Magdalene in 16:8, to an appearance exclusively to Mary Magdalene in v. 9, with no explanation. We never get back to the group of women anywhere in 16:9-20. We never get back to the group of women. Dr. Bruce Terry has pointed out that Mark repeatedly brings a pericope to a close and reopens the narrative with a fresh scene. But in those other sudden transitions (such as from 2:12 to 2:13), things wrap up tidily in the first pericope. That is not the case here. In this case, there is unfinished business in the first scene: Mary Magdalene is in the group of women in 16:8. Nothing is said about how she separated from the others.
Dr. Terry mentioned one case of a pericope with unfinished business which merits further explanation: in 14:65-66, we see the narrative camera focused on a scene where Jesus is being slapped, and then the camera turns back to Peter, and when it returns to Jesus in 15:1, the servants who were slapping him are gone. He compares this to the disappearance of Mary Magdalene's companions. However, it looks to me like the "servants" in 14:65 ("officers" in the NKJV; "guards" in the ESV) should be understood as a group of soldiers whose job was merely to guard Jesus until He was called for, at which point the other soldiers would take Him to trial. In other words, Jesus is handed off from one group of soldiers, in 65a, to a second group of soldiers, or "servants," in 65b. There's a textual variant here – EBALLON versus ELABON – and we also face the question of how hUPHRETAI ought to be translated. But no matter how one slices it, the result remains the same: if the hUPHRETAI = "servants," whose job is only to watch Jesus until the soldiers take Him to trial, then it is no surprise that we don't see then again, since the trial before Pilate commences in 15:1. And if the hUPHRETAI = "officers," leaders of the soldiers, then we /do/ see them again, in the group of soldiers on hand in chapter 15, mentioned in 15:16. Either way, this is not the same kind of inexplicable disappearance of characters that we see between 16:8 and 16:9.
(3) A reference to "the first day of the week" appears in 16:2. Mark would thus have no reason to use the phrase "on the first day of the week" again in 16:9. If 16:9 began a new composition, though, the phrase would be completely appropriate, as would be the new parenthetical phrase that Jesus had cast out seven demons from Mary Magdalene. (The phrase that refers to the seven demons is not particularly question-raising if one assumes that 16:9-20 was written by Mark right after he wrote 16:8, but it is even more appropriate if 16:9-20 existed as a freestanding composition.)
(3) Mark indicates, by foreshadowing a rendezvous between Jesus and the disciples in Galilee in 14:28 and 16:7, his intention to describe a rendezvous between Jesus and the disciples in Galilee. As Croy and other authors have shown, Mark establishes a pretty clear pattern of prediction-followed-by-explicit-fulfillment in Mark. However, what is predicted in 14:28 and 16:7 is not explicitly fulfilled in 16:9-20. The encounter between Jesus and the disciples in 16:14ff. could be assumed to have occurred in Galilee, but elsewhere Mark makes the fulfillments explicit, leaving no need for the reader to make assumptions.
(4) In 16:10-13, EKEINOS is used as a pronoun four times, and again in 16:20. Mark uses EKEINOS as a pronoun in 12:4-5, too, so this cannot validly be considered a "non-Markan" feature of 16:9-20. But it does show that 16:9-20 is written in a more condensed, more "staccato" style (as more than one author has put it) than 16:1-8. That would be natural in a short freestanding composition that Mark had composed as an easily memorized summary of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances. In this regard it is comparable to the staccato-style summary in First Corinthians 15:3-7. EKEINOS is repeated, somewhat rhythmically, as WFQH is somewhat rhythmically repeated in I Cor. 15:3-7.
Now, on one hand, a person could say that this merely shows the nature of the source Mark was using as he wrote the Gospel of Mark, just as the stylistic features in I Cor. 15:3-7 show the nature of Paul's source without /being/ Paul's source. So this feature is not strong enough to stand alone as evidence that Mark 16:9-20 was not Mark's own deliberate ending. On the other hand, it interlocks with the other points; that is, this feature is neatly explained by the same premise that explains the rest. Those who would argue that Mark 16:9-20 is a natural continuation from 16:8 need to explain why Mark suddenly began to write in this condensed style.
(5) In 16:7, the women, including Mary Magdalene, are instructed by the angel to go tell Jesus' disciples "that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him," but 16:9-11 only says that Mary Magdalene reported that Jesus had appeared to her, and that Jesus is alive and that she had seen Him. It does not say that she said anything about Galilee, or about the angel at the tomb, or about the angel's message. This is accounted for more naturally by the idea that 16:9-20 was attached, than by the idea that Mark wrote it at the same time that he wrote 16:1-8.
(6) 16:7 seems to foreshadow an encounter in Galilee in which Peter will be prominently featured. But in 16:9-20, the climactic reunion between Jesus and the apostles does not feature Peter in any special prominence at all.
(7) The preceding six points stand completely separate from this point, and I expect this point to be persuasive only to those who already see the Proto-Mark model as a probable solution to the Synoptic Problem. If Matthew 28:8-10 and 28:16-20 represent the contents of Matthew's copy of Proto-Mark, then we have grounds to expect Mark to follow up on 16:8 with an ending that resembles Matthew 28:8-20, minus the intervening verses in 28:11-15 about the guards. Such an ending would interlock smoothly with 16:8: the fear of the silent women is relieved when Jesus personally appears to them and restates the angel's command; they report to the disciples; the disciples dutifully depart to Galilee; in Galilee Jesus meets the disciples (and restores Peter, though this is not mentioned in Matthew 28), and commissions them to spread the gospel everywhere.
This interlocks so smoothly with Mark 16:8 that the interlock is /suggestively/ easy, indicating that such an ending was in Proto-Mark, and would thus be the sort of ending which Mark would have intended to follow 16:8 in the Gospel of Mark. But that is not the sort of ending we have in 16:9-20; instead, we see no further trace of Mary Magdalene's companions as Mary Magdalene alone is featured; we see the disciples disbelieving her report; there is no statement to the effect that the disciples left Jerusalem and went to Galilee. This is all accounted for if 16:9-20 is not the ending that Mark had been expecting to write after 16:8.
Besides noting those seven reasons for concluding that 16:9-20 was not written by Mark as the conclusion of the Gospel of Mark, I would also note that the lack of a transition between 16:8 and 16:9 appears to reflects the reverence of the editor (a Roman colleague of Mark) for both Mark 1:1-16:8 and for the LE. A newly composed ending, made expressly for the purpose of concluding the Gospel of Mark, would have a smoother transition. Such high respect for the LE indicates that the editor regarded it as both authoritative and appropriate, and this indicates, in turn, that it was either a Markan composition (a point supported by all the Markan features in 16:9-20 already noted by Farmer) or a composition known to have been approved by Mark and/or Peter for the church at Rome.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
------------------------------------
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SA: "What to you is the compelling evidence that Mark was not the author of the resurrection account as the original ending of his Gospel."
That is a well-phrased question, because (although this view is not necessary for the case for the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20) I think that verses 9-20 were written by Mark as a freestanding composition, and that this originally separate composition was attached to the Gospel of Mark by his colleagues at Rome after Mark was forced to stop writing at the end of v. 8.
It would be convenient, in some ways, if the evidence indicated that Mark did proceed to write verses 9-20. That would be a simpler scenario that the one I have pictured. But I don't think the evidence allows such a simple conclusion. That view is /too/ simple; it is simpler than my approach, yes – like a bridge that only reaches halfway across a canyon is simpler than one that reaches all the way across. Here are the pieces of evidence, listed in no particular order, that drive me to the view that Mark 16:9-20 is not the ending that Mark was preparing to compose when he was writing 16:8.
(1) The transition from 16:8 to 16:9 is grammatically very harsh. Mark uses "gar" 67 times on other occasions, and every time it does not end a sentence. The end of 16:8 looks like an interrupted sentence. It is grammatically feasible, but not linguistically probable at all as the conclusion of a narrative. The alleged parallels in an essay by Plotinus, and in a speech by Protagoras, are not the same sort of thing. Plotinus substantially post-dates Mark and the points at which the collections of Plotinus' essays start and stop reflect the editing of Plotinus' assistant Porphyry. As for Protagoras, he simply ends his speech with a clarifying parenthetical phrase. Neither of those compositions resembles the "cliff-hanger" at the end of Mark 16:8. Whereas the closing phrases in the essay by Plotinus, and the speech by Protagoras, wrap up loose ends, the gar-phrase in Mark 16:8 creates one.
Although some interpreters have viewed the end of 16:8 through an optimistic lens, and regarded it as some sort of open-ended invitation to the reader (although the question of exactly what sort of invitation it is varies from interpreter to interpreter), it seems to me that one could tear off the Gospel of Mark at a number of points in 16:1-8, and the same interpreters, using the same optimistic lens, could squint a meaningful and brilliant open-ended ending into existence. It requires much less squinting to see that the end of 16:8 looks like an interrupted sentence because it /is/ an interrupted sentence. Mark's failure to complete the half-sentence indicates that he did not complete the narrative as a whole.
(2) The group of women in 16:8 is not revisited; we go from a group of women that includes Mary Magdalene in 16:8, to an appearance exclusively to Mary Magdalene in v. 9, with no explanation. We never get back to the group of women anywhere in 16:9-20. We never get back to the group of women. Dr. Bruce Terry has pointed out that Mark repeatedly brings a pericope to a close and reopens the narrative with a fresh scene. But in those other sudden transitions (such as from 2:12 to 2:13), things wrap up tidily in the first pericope. That is not the case here. In this case, there is unfinished business in the first scene: Mary Magdalene is in the group of women in 16:8. Nothing is said about how she separated from the others.
Dr. Terry mentioned one case of a pericope with unfinished business which merits further explanation: in 14:65-66, we see the narrative camera focused on a scene where Jesus is being slapped, and then the camera turns back to Peter, and when it returns to Jesus in 15:1, the servants who were slapping him are gone. He compares this to the disappearance of Mary Magdalene's companions. However, it looks to me like the "servants" in 14:65 ("officers" in the NKJV; "guards" in the ESV) should be understood as a group of soldiers whose job was merely to guard Jesus until He was called for, at which point the other soldiers would take Him to trial. In other words, Jesus is handed off from one group of soldiers, in 65a, to a second group of soldiers, or "servants," in 65b. There's a textual variant here – EBALLON versus ELABON – and we also face the question of how hUPHRETAI ought to be translated. But no matter how one slices it, the result remains the same: if the hUPHRETAI = "servants," whose job is only to watch Jesus until the soldiers take Him to trial, then it is no surprise that we don't see then again, since the trial before Pilate commences in 15:1. And if the hUPHRETAI = "officers," leaders of the soldiers, then we /do/ see them again, in the group of soldiers on hand in chapter 15, mentioned in 15:16. Either way, this is not the same kind of inexplicable disappearance of characters that we see between 16:8 and 16:9.
(3) A reference to "the first day of the week" appears in 16:2. Mark would thus have no reason to use the phrase "on the first day of the week" again in 16:9. If 16:9 began a new composition, though, the phrase would be completely appropriate, as would be the new parenthetical phrase that Jesus had cast out seven demons from Mary Magdalene. (The phrase that refers to the seven demons is not particularly question-raising if one assumes that 16:9-20 was written by Mark right after he wrote 16:8, but it is even more appropriate if 16:9-20 existed as a freestanding composition.)
(3) Mark indicates, by foreshadowing a rendezvous between Jesus and the disciples in Galilee in 14:28 and 16:7, his intention to describe a rendezvous between Jesus and the disciples in Galilee. As Croy and other authors have shown, Mark establishes a pretty clear pattern of prediction-followed-by-explicit-fulfillment in Mark. However, what is predicted in 14:28 and 16:7 is not explicitly fulfilled in 16:9-20. The encounter between Jesus and the disciples in 16:14ff. could be assumed to have occurred in Galilee, but elsewhere Mark makes the fulfillments explicit, leaving no need for the reader to make assumptions.
(4) In 16:10-13, EKEINOS is used as a pronoun four times, and again in 16:20. Mark uses EKEINOS as a pronoun in 12:4-5, too, so this cannot validly be considered a "non-Markan" feature of 16:9-20. But it does show that 16:9-20 is written in a more condensed, more "staccato" style (as more than one author has put it) than 16:1-8. That would be natural in a short freestanding composition that Mark had composed as an easily memorized summary of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances. In this regard it is comparable to the staccato-style summary in First Corinthians 15:3-7. EKEINOS is repeated, somewhat rhythmically, as WFQH is somewhat rhythmically repeated in I Cor. 15:3-7.
Now, on one hand, a person could say that this merely shows the nature of the source Mark was using as he wrote the Gospel of Mark, just as the stylistic features in I Cor. 15:3-7 show the nature of Paul's source without /being/ Paul's source. So this feature is not strong enough to stand alone as evidence that Mark 16:9-20 was not Mark's own deliberate ending. On the other hand, it interlocks with the other points; that is, this feature is neatly explained by the same premise that explains the rest. Those who would argue that Mark 16:9-20 is a natural continuation from 16:8 need to explain why Mark suddenly began to write in this condensed style.
(5) In 16:7, the women, including Mary Magdalene, are instructed by the angel to go tell Jesus' disciples "that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him," but 16:9-11 only says that Mary Magdalene reported that Jesus had appeared to her, and that Jesus is alive and that she had seen Him. It does not say that she said anything about Galilee, or about the angel at the tomb, or about the angel's message. This is accounted for more naturally by the idea that 16:9-20 was attached, than by the idea that Mark wrote it at the same time that he wrote 16:1-8.
(6) 16:7 seems to foreshadow an encounter in Galilee in which Peter will be prominently featured. But in 16:9-20, the climactic reunion between Jesus and the apostles does not feature Peter in any special prominence at all.
(7) The preceding six points stand completely separate from this point, and I expect this point to be persuasive only to those who already see the Proto-Mark model as a probable solution to the Synoptic Problem. If Matthew 28:8-10 and 28:16-20 represent the contents of Matthew's copy of Proto-Mark, then we have grounds to expect Mark to follow up on 16:8 with an ending that resembles Matthew 28:8-20, minus the intervening verses in 28:11-15 about the guards. Such an ending would interlock smoothly with 16:8: the fear of the silent women is relieved when Jesus personally appears to them and restates the angel's command; they report to the disciples; the disciples dutifully depart to Galilee; in Galilee Jesus meets the disciples (and restores Peter, though this is not mentioned in Matthew 28), and commissions them to spread the gospel everywhere.
This interlocks so smoothly with Mark 16:8 that the interlock is /suggestively/ easy, indicating that such an ending was in Proto-Mark, and would thus be the sort of ending which Mark would have intended to follow 16:8 in the Gospel of Mark. But that is not the sort of ending we have in 16:9-20; instead, we see no further trace of Mary Magdalene's companions as Mary Magdalene alone is featured; we see the disciples disbelieving her report; there is no statement to the effect that the disciples left Jerusalem and went to Galilee. This is all accounted for if 16:9-20 is not the ending that Mark had been expecting to write after 16:8.
Besides noting those seven reasons for concluding that 16:9-20 was not written by Mark as the conclusion of the Gospel of Mark, I would also note that the lack of a transition between 16:8 and 16:9 appears to reflects the reverence of the editor (a Roman colleague of Mark) for both Mark 1:1-16:8 and for the LE. A newly composed ending, made expressly for the purpose of concluding the Gospel of Mark, would have a smoother transition. Such high respect for the LE indicates that the editor regarded it as both authoritative and appropriate, and this indicates, in turn, that it was either a Markan composition (a point supported by all the Markan features in 16:9-20 already noted by Farmer) or a composition known to have been approved by Mark and/or Peter for the church at Rome.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
------------------------------------
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