An Amazing Preacher Gives the Religious Right a Lesson on the Bible

The wonderful Reverend Curt Anderson of Wisconsin has an op-ed piece in the Huffington Post, that should put all members of the Religious Right/Conservative/Tea Party group to shame.

Because they have joined the ranks of the corporate world, labelling workers as "greedy" and the unemployed as "lazy", when they should go back to the roots of their faith and remember that the Bible and other religious texts, are critical of the wealthy and business elite who wear their riches and power as a cloak of privilege.

Reverend Anderson explains why he is in support of the workers in Wisconsin, because it's what the Bible tells him to do.

My name is Curt Anderson. I am the Senior Minister at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Madison, Wisconsin; and I am on the Board of the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of South Central Wisconsin. There is one theme that is constant throughout the Bible. In Deuteronomy, we read: "You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether your own people or aliens who reside in your land." In Jeremiah: "Woe to him who makes his neighbors work and does not give them their wages."

There is nothing fair about the governor of Wisconsin's proposal to virtually eliminate collective bargaining for public workers and unilaterally force public employees to start paying for health insurance and contributing to their pensions. This has been proposed without consultation, without bargaining, without even any concept of shared sacrifice.

There are no provisions to close tax loopholes that benefit corporations. There are no proposals to consider even minor tax increases for the wealthiest members of our state. There are no proposals to restructure Wisconsin's income tax system, where the wealthiest sometimes pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than middle-class working families.

Interfaith groups like KAIROS, Anderson's group, Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice, and others, demand social justice. The Religious Right that Stephen Harper has camped out on Parliament Hill represent the very worst in religion, and the reason why so many end up rejecting the Church. They advocate for greed and you don't have to be religious to know that that is just wrong.

Jim Flaherty recently announced that he will be spending $6.5 million to advertise his government's tax policies as helping Canadians. What won't be included in this taxpayer funded blitz, is the fact that taxes only went down for the wealthy, while Canada's working class have seen an increase.

The protests in Wisconsin are growing, with tens of thousands taking to the streets in solidarity. In a desperate measure they tried to shut down the worker's website, but they are not deterred, and polls show overwhelming support for the workers.

And in Indiana where the Republican government is also trying to push through a union busting agenda, the Democrats have left the state, to avoid having it passed. This is the people fighting back and it's about damn time.

Let's hope we can inspire the same kind of movement in Canada. Where religious organizations, unions, advocacy groups and all Canadians not in support of the Corporate Welfare State, will march together. We are in a unique situation now with an election on the horizon.

A time when our voices can become the loudest.

The State of Democracy and the State of Wisconsin

As we watched with jubilation the protests in Egypt that deposed their dictator, and subsequent uprisings across the Middle east and Africa, there are others brewing in the United States, that while also inspiring, are a little frightening.

In Wisconsin a large group of citizens are holding protests against their government's decision to try to bust the unions. I don't know if their governor Scott Walker has a brother who like like Rob Ford's in Toronto, after his attack on the working class, told them all to get jobs, but I think this could get ugly.

The gun loving, corporate sponsored Tea Party crowd, has piled into buses, planning an attack on the workers. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Wisconsin protests: why 'week of rage' matters to rest of America

The Wisconsin protests are providing one of the first signs that the Midwest could become the primary testing ground for November’s tea party revolution. Plans by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) and the legislature to gut collective bargaining – the tool by which public unions secure pay and benefits – for most public employees could spill into other Midwest states ...

No region of the country was more comprehensively recast by the 2010 elections than the seven states of the upper Midwest that arc from Minnesota to Ohio. Where before Democrats had held the upper hand, Republicans now have a virtual stranglehold on politics, controlling both houses of the legislature and the governors’ chairs in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

The full import of that switch has become apparent on the streets of Madison, Wis., this week. At least 25,000 union Wisconsin protesters amassed Friday morning in and around the Capitol to protest the governor’s plans. Earlier in the week, there had been as many as 40,000. Schools have been canceled, and one rally lasted a marathon 17 hours. With the state's tea party activists set to counterprotest Saturday, the drama has set the scene for the streets of Madison to become a surrogate for the clash of broader forces that currently define American politics.

The "clash of broader forces" represents the clash not between rich and poor, or even Republicans and Democrats, but between The Corporate Welfare State and The Social Welfare State. I only hope that when those Tea Party revellers leave their buses, that they are searched for weapons.

Robert Reich has an excellent column in the Huffington Post, suggesting, and rightfully so, that this is all part of a larger Republican strategy to ensure corporate rule. Not unlike Stephen Harper's who has filled government departments with lobbyists, and corporate coffers with our tax dollars.

The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class -- pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.

By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.

Divide and conquer. The classic neoconservative strategy. They blame the poor and the elderly, hoping we won't start adding up how much money has gone to their corporate buddies, who have fed so heavily from the public trough, that they can barely roll their way to the bank. Thank heavens for online banking or they might have to actually break a sweat while robbing from the working class.

Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich -- making the Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.

Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty, have made it easier on the poor dears, by making them all pay a mere 15%, and with deductions and loop holes, wealthy corporations probably won't pay any tax at all. Heck maybe they'll be eligible for refunds.

Just like the Republicans, who Reich says "pit average working Americans against one another, distract attention from the almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the top, and conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and entrench that wealth and power."

The protests in the Midwest will not only be a test of the power of the Kazillionaire Koch brothers' Tea Party movement, but a test of the power of America's working class, many of whom are now barely working.

And the world will be watching.

The Corporate Welfare State and Harper's Law and Order Agenda

Canada's Corporate Welfare State and Their Attack on Public Education

Canadians Can no Longer Afford the Corporate Welfare State

Stephen Harper's spending is out of control. We can no longer afford to prop up the Corporate Welfare Stare. It's that simple.

This is so typical of neoconservatism. Ronald Reagan created the most homeless people in U.S. history but his own government spending ballooned out of control.

Stephen Harper is determined to repeat the mistakes of his Republican counterparts.

It's time for him to go.

Next Election Will be the Corporate Welfare State Against the Social Welfare State

Pundits are saying that the next election will be Stephen Harper vs Michael Ignatieff, but they are way off base.

The next election will be about the Corporate Welfare State vs the Social Welfare State. We've had five years of the first and it's almost ruined us. All this talk about an unprecedented global economic crisis. Phooey.

The economic crisis was caused by corporate greed, and they made us clean up their mess, while they pocketed huge bonuses. And it's been the gift that keeps on giving. As Ralph Surrette says:

Properly translated, the government’s official nonsense about stimulating the economy would read like this: We will deepen the deficit and deprive the country of infrastructure and social spending in order to advance the worldwide cult of billionaires ascendant, in the hope that they’ll leave us a few crumbs.

The nonsense runs deep and persists despite being thoroughly debunked. One of the debunking forces is the government’s own Finance Department, whose figure show that cutting taxes is one of the poorest ways to create jobs, giving 20 cents growth for every dollar of taxes cut. Spending on infrastructure, on the other hand, gives $1.40 per dollar spent, and supports for the unemployed and the poor also around $1.40.

Latest polls have been reassuring, because they prove that Stephen Harper has no idea what Canadians want. Not to worry though.

WE ARE GOING TO SHOW HIM.