Jim Wallis: A New Gilded Age

[Sapphire Blue]

Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Jim Wallis: A New Gilded Age


The New York Times ran two pieces this week that tell us a great deal about where our country is economically. On Sunday's front page, "The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age" told the story of how

many of the nation's very wealthy chief executives, entrepreneurs and financiers echo an earlier era—the Gilded Age before World War I—when powerful enterprises, dominated by men who grew immensely rich, ushered in the industrialization of the United States. The new titans often see themselves as pillars of a similarly prosperous and expansive age, one in which their successes and their philanthropy have made government less important than it once was.

The story noted:

Only twice before over the last century has 5 percent of the national income gone to families in the upper one-one-hundredth of a percent of the income distribution—currently, the almost 15,000 families with incomes of $9.5 million or more a year, according to an analysis of tax returns by the economists Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty at the Paris School of Economics. Such concentration at the very top occurred in 1915 and 1916, as the Gilded Age was ending, and again briefly in the late 1920s, before the stock market crash. Now it is back...

As if to prove the scientific law that for every action, there is an opposite reaction, the Monday front page headlined "A New Populism Spurs Democrats on the Economy."

Democrats are talking more and more about the anemic growth in American wages and the negative effects of trade and a globalized economy on American jobs and communities. They deplore what they call a growing gap between the middle class, which is struggling to adjust to a changing job market, and the affluent elites who have prospered in the new economy.

It is indeed time for a new populism, a new progressive era. Charges of class warfare will certainly be raised, and when they are, let us point out that it is indeed—the class warfare of tax cuts and budget priorities that make the rich richer while decimating low-and middle-income families.


http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2007/07/jim-wallis-a-new-gilded-age.html

[mediaman007]

1. Class Warfare? Hell, Ronald Reagan began the weathy's assault on the

poor and middle class in 1981. Now listen to them bitch because they get called on their theft.

[AX10]

2. K & R!

[greyl]

3. Is he preaching to the choir on this to win us over on other issues?

"For Wallis, religion is not one possible source among many for influential narratives of justice; the Bible is the source. (There is one place in the book where he speaks of "our biblical and other holy texts," but he doesn't elaborate or clarify the reference.) He does allow that the United States is a pluralist society and that it includes citizens who do not share his theology, his religious conviction, or his embrace of the Bible as Scripture. Moreover, he argues that Christians ought to engage in democratic public debate, to bring themselves under what he calls "democratic discipline," rather than attempting simply to take over the mechanisms of the state. Yet Wallis states again and again his overarching perspective: "The real question is not whether religious faith should influence a society and its politics, but how." Religious faith is no generic category here; it means biblical religion.

http://www.slate.com/id/2111701

In the case of abortion, schizophrenia abounds: First Jim Wallis, the moderate evangelical preacher who speaks frequently on behalf of religious progressives, tells us we shouldn't focus on this issue at all; then he expounds on what the Democrats should do to attract "'centrist' Catholic and evangelical voters." Wallis says the Democrats should "welcome pro-life Democrats--Catholics and evangelicals--and have a serious conversation with them" about how to reduce teen pregnancy, make adoption easier and conditions for low-income women better. It is odd for a progressive religious leader to suggest that Democrats, rather than Republicans, are the obstacle to helping teens and low-income women but perhaps not surprising from a man whose personal commitment to dialogue has included demonstrating at a nuclear plant and an abortion clinic on the same day.

Wallis is the most visible antiabortion cleric in the progressive movement, but even those who are personally pro-choice won't touch the issue. The Rev. Bob Edgar, a pro-choice former member of Congress who now heads the National Council of Churches, has been active in a number of the new groups that are promoting a progressive religious agenda excluding women's equality and reproductive rights. That's because some of the council's members hold different opinions on these issues, and it does not want to offend the Catholic Church. For the same reason, the oldest of the religious left groups, the Interfaith Alliance, refuses to take a position on controversial social issues, opting for a vague commitment to "tolerance."

Such evasiveness not only works to the advantage of religious conservatives but hampers attempts to articulate a coherent religious left agenda. After all, these issues, especially international access to safe and legal abortion and recognition of the civil rights of gay couples, are as important to a comprehensive vision of a just society as is the eradication of poverty and the creation of a secure and peaceful world.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041213/kissling

Ever since George W. Bush's reelection in November, a victory secured at least in part by the intense devotion of his Christian right base, the rest of us have been wondering how to respond.....
.....
When liberal evangelical leaders like Jim Wallis argue that liberals should soften their support for abortion and gay rights, and when Democratic centrists like Bill and Hillary Clinton advocate this view, they are acting as if the Christian right had brought about a new national consensus to which liberals must accommodate themselves. Yet 85 percent of Americans want their kids to learn about condoms and birth control in their sex education, not abstinence only; 70 percent thought Congress should not have intervened in the Terri Schiavo case; two thirds say they support gay civil rights and gay civil unions; and the majority of Americans — even the majority of Republicans — still support legal abortion.

http://www.jewishcurrents.org/2005-july-kaplan.htm

[Perky]

5. Look Most Christians are opposed to abortion

But that does not mean we do not affirm the individual's right to make their own decision. It is the fundamental belief, (and I mean that sincerely, that we can not ans should not impose our believs on those who do not believe either from the pulpit, the street corner, the ballot box or the petition.


It is simply not the way Jesus went about His earthly ministry.

If He is our Guide, we need totreat the individual with complete respect. We think there is far too much abortion, we also think there is far too much poverty and pain and injustice and war.

Abortion is a very tough subject for evangelicals, but our first resposnibility as evangelicals is to love undocnitionally.

[greyl]

6. I appreciate your post, but abortion isn't the only topic of those 3 links. nt

[OHdem10]

4. Just saw a piece on AC 360

This is quite interesting:

Most Important Issue to each of three main Christian Groups

Evangelicals Terrorism and ECONOMY

Mainline Protestants: Health Care

Catholics: Economy

The above issues trump abortion. Abortion is down the list
of their issues.


Good News for Democrats. There are shifting sands and noticeble
numbers moving toward Democrats politically

Good News for Guilliani on GOP side. Abortion and Hot Button Issues
are not at the top of the list.

[nolabels]

7. His main story is that it isn't working that well but don't touch it..........

Don't touch the decrepit evil thing or it might break all together

Please, the idle threats already,

who would give a pinkers damn in the first place,

seems as far as most can see and at just about any rate,

that it's already broke in just a matter of factly way :argh: