political leaders - Quaker Ranter

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Martin Kelley — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 20:45:23 +0000

Websites are starting to talk about a Donald Trump presidential cabinet and the names highlight a curiosity of this election: many of the principle insiders come from Northeast Corridor states that voted for Hillary Clinton. Rudolph Giuliani and Chris Christie, are, like the whole Trump family, metro New Yorkers and as far as I know Newt Gingrich lives in northern Virginia.

I’ve lived in Chris Christie’s New Jersey since he was elected governor and I find it really hard to believe he’s suddenly going to have a strong interest in the Midwestern red states that gave Trump the win. You can point to VP-elect Mike Pence of Indiana, but as far as I can tell he was only brought on for strategic reasons and is not part of the Trump circle.

What really can Trump do to bring back the good paying jobs that disappeared decades ago? Our economy has been shifting regardless of which party occupies the Oval Office. There’s sops and pork to be doled out, but the national economy has been centralizing in the big coastal cities that our new political leaders call home (the same would have been true with a Clinton presidency). What if Trump’s election is the ultimate prank: red states selling their vote to a New York developer who will mostly continue to develop the New York-to-DC corridor?

Warriors against the War

Martin Kelley — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:22:44 +0000

In the news: more than 1,000 service members sign petition to end Iraq War (Stars and Stripes), organized by the Appeal for Redress campaign sponsored by a handful of military antiwar groups including Nonviolence.org alums Veterans for Peace. The simple petition reads:

As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

Supporting the troops means making sure American lives aren’t being wasted in dead-end wars. Their service and their sacrifice has been too great to continue the lies that have fueled this conflict since the very beginning, starting with the mythical Saddam/Al Qaeda connection and the phantasmic weapons of mass destruction. The current escalation (euphemised as a “surge”) of troop levels is simply an escalation of a badly-run war plan. When will this all end?
*Update*: President Bush has admitted that the Iraq government “fumbled the executions.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/washington/17prexy.html. Meanwhile, the UN puts the “2006 Iraqi death toll at 34,000”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/world/middleeast/17iraq.html. When will Bush admit he’s fumbled this whole war?

Of Floods and Prophets

Martin Kelley — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 21:31:42 +0000

The tragedies were reflections not on the power of nature but on the power of our human disregard for one another.
When the ramparts of New Orleans burst and flooded its streets and homes, I was at a hospital preparing to welcome a child. As my partner and I celebrated new life we saw images of people trapped in attics, heard tales of loved ones swept away as they sought to protect their children. We watched other new parents and their vulnerable children caught without food, water or services in a city suddenly unable to operate.
The tragedies show our human disregard. The trapped were almost all African American. They were almost all poor. Stories on the news–shot-at helicopters, mass violence in the Convention center–reflected America’s racist imagination more than reality. The levees failed because our political leaders ignored the recommendations of government engineers and scientists and slashed spending on storm protection. Even the hurricane itself was supercharged by a century of burning fossil fuels, our disregard for nature and our stonewalling over the reality of global warming.
A favorite image of pacifists comes from a line in the Book of Isaiah, that part in that talks about beating the swords into plowshares. But surrounding passages have been echoing in my ears lately. Like this one:
bq. Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hatest; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.… Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings before mine eyes; cease to do evil. Learn to do well; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, please for the widow. Isaiah 1:13–17.
The righteous indigation that followed the images from New Orleans is fading. Life is returning to normal in Washington DC and the high costs of recovery (and the continuing costs of Bush’s wars) will be shifted to the poor. We cannot stay silent to the vain oblations of our government. It is time to do well and protect the poor. It is time to relieve the oppressed and demand justice for the human decisions that led to broken levees.
This isn’t all finger-pointing: we each need to seek a self-judgement about our American lifestyles that have fuelled global warming with its consumeristic disregard for consequences. We need to depend upon each other more, seek a community deeper and more interlaced than that offered by Walmart and McDonalds. We are all part of one another, part of the earth and brethren to our human family. We need to gather together as a people who know that government and consumerism alone can never address our society’s deepest needs and that vain oblations alone will do nothing to put away the evil of our doings. We need to get angry and sing a song of change. We need more Isaiahs.