Do You Think of Yourself as a Consumer or a Conservator?

One of the things that intrigue me is how unscientific most people seem to think. I think most of us learned the scientific method in primary or secondary school, at least I hope so. Science has dominated scholarship for years and yet, so many people, even those trained in the sciences seem to not think very scientifically on most subjects. I am surprised by the number of doctors who often rely on antidotal information over scientific studies.

When I was young I read a book by C.P. Snow, “The Search.” Now the man has written 44 books, but this one caught my eye as a must read for folk who want to know about science. C.P. Snow as I recall was a crystalogist, aah call him a chemist. He writes about science at its beginnings when the field was wide open and discoveries were being made all over the place. It excited me about science and its practice.

Now you know I’m a pastor, a theologian, and a person who basically views things with the eyes of faith. But I am also a scientist, a social scientist with a B.A. was in sociology and I prize my scientific background. I see not conflict between science and religion, they walk hand in hand as we try to understand the world in which we live.

Today 95% of climatologists, the scientists who study our world’s climate systems, agree that we have global warming – 95%! Today, according to a Rasmussen poll 68% of folks polled think climate change is serious which is a significant shift from 2009 when on 46% of Americans thought it was a problem and 48% thought it was exaggerated.

Bill Moyers last Sunday visited with Tim DeChristopher who went to prison protesting an auction of gas and oil drilling right to 150,000 acres in publicly owned land in Utah. He falsely bid on most of the parcels, which is illegal as he lacked the money to pay for them and went to jail. He was offered many plea deals (see previous article) but chose a jury trial and jail to make his point. He has a documentary coming out, Bidder 70 that I’m anxious to see. It also pleased me that now he is going to seminary to be a Unitarian minister.

DeChristopher remains optimistic about the planet’s survival but wisely he questions how people will react to global warming change – adapting and working together, or warring over the remaining resources. Good question. Scary question.

This all brings me to the hard part, the title of this piece. Personally put, am I a consumer or a conserver? I would hope you’d ask yourself the question as well. Sadly, I think I have to condemn myself as one of those with a large carbon footprint. I live in two buildings, which we heat year round (at least one of them) even if we go south. We are very bad recyclers. We don’t garden. I love energy burning gadgets. We’re okay with insulation but we could have a more efficient dwelling. And we live in a country that uses 19% of the total primary energy consumption; 98 quadrillion Btu of 511 total world Btu. China uses more but look at their population. They have a population of 1,354,040,000 and ours is 315,931,000. Or has we have heard we are 5% of the world’s population and use 20% of its resources.

This self-examination can suck. But we all need to listen to our scientists and think about the future and what we can do in the present or our future progeny may be at war with each other over resources. I guess we are now. It is oil now, but the next fight will be over water.

Jury Nullification

Do juries have to follow the law in rendering a verdict? That seems like a silly question doesn’t it, of course they have to follow the law, or do they. What if a jury feels a law is unjust; can they reach their own conclusions?

The 7^th amendment doesn’t say much: “In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

Several of the first amendments deal the courts. The 4^th requires search warrants, the 5^th has to do with eminent domain and due process as well as double jeopardy, the 6^th is about the right to speedy trial and confronting your accuser, the 8^th deal with excessive punishment.

But it all goes back to the framers of the constitution wanting to follow English Common Law going back to the 12^th century (Magna Carta). They wanted checks upon the powers that be (government) if they seemed unjust to the common folk. Thus it is part of our history to have jury nullification that the jury can indeed go against the law of the land if they think it is unjust. Not all judges like this idea much.

In our country 95% of court decisions are outside the jury by your peers process, or deals are made. It is very efficient. It also means the poor folk don’t get the same justice as rich folk who can afford jury trials. We all know how many BP leaders, Bankers who broke the law, and CEOs or cheat go to jail; but smoke a joint and off to the slammer you go.

Of course, if everyone got a jury trial the courts would be clogged up even more than they are even though human rights are trampled upon now. Ah, like banks, and big business, and the like, perhaps the country is just too big to be governed well.

It is like government regulations that have no one or too few to to enforce them. Dodd-Frank the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Acts was a good piece of legislation. But what has it done?

I have always been fascinated by the law from the Code of Hammurabi to Roman Law to Byzantine Farmer’s Law to English Common Law as well as biblical law. Law is an essential part of civilization. But law in our country has become so combative justice often gets lost in the process.

Jury trials should be like serving in the military; something citizens should be expected to do and do. Twelve men and women, peers, guided by the law, rendering justice as they see fit. It is not a very even or even just process all the time, but it has merit and should be practiced.

Can We Recover the Republic?

I wrote an article in May, Read Any  Good Books Lately, where I talked about a book by Lawrence Lessig titled One Way Forward: The Outsider’s Guide to Fixing the Republic. It is one of the best political books I have read. What I think is excellent is the Lessig moves beyond political partisanship to areas where the 99%, from the Tea Party to the MoveOn organization should be able to unite and work together for a common cause, or has he puts it, against a common enemy.

In that article we noted that 30-70% (likely the higher) of politicians time or thereabouts are working for election or re-election – so we don’t get a very good bang for our buck in terms of our elected public servants. In that process congressional leaders search out and are sought out by big money interests and become indebted to them thus leaving serving special interests rather than the public good. This is far from what the republic is about. It leaves us with a plutocracy, which caters to the upper 1%. Citizens United (80% of us opposed this decision across party lines) and Super PACs now dominate the political scene to the detriment of the common citizen.

All parts of the political spectrum ought to be able to understand government gone awry and unite in fighting against it while maintaining their personal beliefs and ideologies and continue to work for them.

Lessig also creates solutions to deal with these problems, which seem to me sensible and creative. First, public elections should be publicly funded. He gives an example a system where we get “democracy vouchers” to citizens of say $50 which in tern they can use to support the campaigns of the candidates they choose. He would also allow contributions from citizens up to $100 per election. This simple solution would generate up to $7 billion dollars, which is more than triple the dollars raised for the 2010 congressional elections. Note this encourages voter participation in the campaign. Lessig would not ban “independent expenditures by individuals or corporations but limit them to $100. Goodbye super PACs.

Lessig recommends a number of groups working on such plans such as MovetoAmend.org and GetMoneyOut.org that promote these ideas. He also mentions the Coffee Party, which originally was a response to the Tea Party but has since expanded its vision to overall reform. Lessig makes a great comment about Citizens United and democracy: “Citizens United may have shot it again, but the body was already cold.”

Lessig calls for congress to become engaged in these reforms and proposes a pledge for them to make: “I hereby pledge to do whatever it takes to end the corrupting influence of money in our government.” This is followed by three principles: 1) to provide the public elections are publicly funded; 2) To limit, and make transparent, contributions and independent political expenditures; and 3) To reaffirm that when the Declaration of Independence spoke of entities “endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” it was speaking of natural persons only.  One can go to TheAntiCorruptionPledge.org for citizens and congressional leaders to make this pledge. You can also go to the site to see if our congressional representatives have made such a pledge.

Presidents also need to take the lead in such a reform movement, as did FDR, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan. Obama needs to follow in their footsteps as his actions do not seem to have kept up with his campaign rhetoric. I see Obama’s genius in involving the common folk in raising money for his campaign and needs to do the same in making needed changes to our electoral system. He also seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place with intractable congressional leaders.

Lessig suggests an Internet-based process where citizens become delegates to the American Elect Convention. There is such an organization developed in May of 2011 by Peter and Eliot Ackeerman, which Lessig saw as emphasizing our polarization too much and relied upon moderates. He now sees them moving beyond this to real reform of the election system. Now he encourages us to join AmericanElect.org and become delegates. You can maintain your political affiliations but you gain voice in the process of selection.

Lessign also believes we need Constitutional change as seen in the Grant and Franklin Project; or the constitution needs an amendment, which can be accomplished two ways, the only one has ever been used. Typically amendments come when 2/3rds of congress propose an amendment and then 3/4ths of the states much ratify it. The other method is for 2/3rds of states to call Congress to “call a Convention for proposing Amendment.” Wow. The founders saw this, as a viable way for citizens forcing change and it’s right there in Article V of our constitution. There is an organization for this as well: CallAConvention.org. You can sign up.

Inertia, lack of concern, or the belief that we really can’t do anything about our governmental situations holds many voters from getting involved. Plus they just are not well educated in the process. Lessig’s ideas would help educate and motivate if his ideas gain a large enough forum. People don’t care, but they need to.

I felt moved by this book to include a large article for this blog and to send to family and friends for their consideration. I hope that you will read it, evaluate, check sources and then get involved in some manner beyond general politicking.

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I am attaching Lessig’s proposed 28^th Amendment here.

1.     For the purpose of securing the independence of the legislative and executive branches, Congress shall: 

(1) fund federal elections publicly, at no less than the equivalent of the total amount spent in the election cycle when this article is ratified; 

(2) limit any non-anonymized contributions to candidates for federal office to the equivalent of $100;

(3) have the power to limit, but not to ban, independent political expenditures within 90 days of an election, including, but not limited to, expenditures in support of, or in opposition to, a candidate for federal office.

2.     The First Amendment shall not be construed to limit legislation enacted pursuant to this article, save to assure content and viewpoint neutrality. Neither shall the First Amendment be construed to limit the equivalent power of state or local legislation enacted to regulate elections of state or local officers. Nor shall the First Amendment be construed to vest in any non-natural person any unalienable constitutional rights. 

3.     Congress shall by law establish an agency for federal elections which shall enforce the provisions of this article, and whose principal officers shall be non-partisan commissioners who have served at least 10 years as a federal judge. The agency shall have standing to enforce the provisions of this article judicially in the federal courts, and the judicial power shall be construed to extend to actions by the agency against Congress.

4.     The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

The Deficit: Henny Penny Was Wrong

When Obama took office from Bush the budget deficit was 10.1% of GDP. Today is 4% of GDP and is projected to be 2.1% by 2015. Hmmm, remember the hullabaloo about the debt that would skyrocket under the Democrats? We don’t here much about that lately.

Just think if progressive work on the infrastructure had been supported rather than blocked where the debt would be. In addition to good middle class jobs that would be created.

Oh well, better keep the sequester going, or things might get too good and the whiners would know what to do.