paying-attention

-- Before 9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Waterboarding and Signing Statements, but After He'd Presided Over a Record Number of Executions as Texas Governor.

He made the most of the opportunity to push his political agenda, and to equate privatization with charity. Bush didn’t get a totally resounding welcome at Notre Dame. When he delivered the commencement speech in 2001, many students wore armbands protesting his support of capital punishment. Here is what he said:

Text of President Bush's commencement address at Notre Dame University on May 20, 2001 in Notre Dame, Indiana

Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please be seated.

Thank you, Father Malloy (ph), and thank you all for that warm welcome, Chairman McArtin (ph), Father Scully (ph), Dr. (Nathan) Hatch, Notre Dame trustees, members of the class of 2001.

I have spoken on this campus before. It was in 1980, the year my dad ran for vice president with Ronald Reagan. I think I really won over the crowd that day.

In fact, I'm sure of it because all six of them walked me to my car.

That was back when Father Hesburg (ph) was the president of this university during a tenure that in many ways defined the reputation and values of Notre Dame. And it's a real honor to be here with Father Hesburg (ph) and with Father Joyce (ph). Between them, these two good priests have given nearly a century of service to Notre Dame. I'm told that Father Hesburg (ph) now holds 146 honorary degrees.

That's pretty darn impressive, Father, but I'm gaining on you. As of today, I'm only a 140 behind.

Let me congratulate all the members of the class of 2001. You made it, and we're all proud of you on this big day.

I also congratulate the parents who after these years are happy, proud and broke.

I commend this fine faculty for the years of work and instruction that produced this outstanding class.

And I'm pleased to join my fellow honorees as well. I'm in incredibly distinguished company with authors, executives, educators, church officials and eminent scientists.

We're sharing a memorable day and a great honor, and I congratulate you all.

Notre Dame, as a Catholic university, carries forward a great tradition of social teaching. It calls on all of us, Catholic and non-Catholic, to honor family, to protect life in all its stages, to serve and uplift the poor.

This university is more than a community of scholars. It is a community of conscience and an ideal place to report on our nation's commitment to the poor and how we're keeping it.

In 1964, the year I started college, another president from Texas delivered a commencement address talking about this national commitment. In that speech, President Lyndon Johnson issued a challenge. He said: This is a time for decision. You are the generation which must decide. Will you decide to leave the future a society where a man is condemned to hopelessness because he was born poor? Or will you join to wipe out poverty in this land?

In that speech, Lyndon Johnson advocated a war on poverty which had noble intentions and some enduring successes. Poor families got basic health care. Disadvantaged children were given a head start in life.

Yet, there were also some consequences that no one wanted or intended. The welfare entitlement became an enemy of personal effort and responsibility, turning many recipients into dependents.

The war on poverty also turned too many citizens into bystanders convinced that compassion had become the work of government alone.

In 1996, welfare reform confronted the first of these problems with a five-year time limit on benefits and a work requirement to receive them. Instead of a way of life, welfare became an offer of temporary help, not an entitlement but a transition. Thanks in large part to this change, welfare rolls have been cut in half. Work and self respect have been returned to many lives. This is a tribute to Democrats and Republicans who agreed on reform and to the president who signed it, President Bill Clinton.

Our nation has confronted welfare dependency, but our work is only half done. Now we must confront the second problem -- to revive the spirit of citizenship, to marshal the compassion of our people to meet the continuing needs of our nation. This is a challenge to my administration and each one of you.

We must meet that challenge because it is right and because it is urgent.

Welfare as we knew it has ended but poverty has not. When over 12 million children live below the poverty line, we are not a post- poverty America. Most states are seeing the first wave of welfare recipients who have reached the law's five-year time limit. The easy cases have already left the welfare roles.

The hardest problems remain: People with far fewer skills and greater barriers to work. People with complex human problems like illiteracy and addiction, abuse and mental illness. We do not yet know what will happen to these men and women or to their children. But we cannot sit and watch, leaving them to their own struggles and their own fate.

This is a great deal at stake. In our attitudes and our actions we are determining the character of our country. When poverty is considered hopeless, America is condemned to permanent social division, becoming a nation of caste and class, divided by fences and gates and guards.

Our task is clear, and it's difficult. We must build our country's unity by extending our country's blessings. We make that commitment because we're Americans. Aspiration is the essence of our country. We believe in social mobility, not social Darwinism. We are the country of the second chance where failure is never final. And that dream has sometimes been deferred. It must never be abandoned.

We are committed to compassion for practical reasons. When men and women are lost to themselves, they are also lost to our nation. When millions are hopeless, all of us are diminished by the loss of their gifts.

And we're committed to compassion for moral reasons. Jewish prophets and Catholic teaching both speak of God's special concern for the poor. This is perhaps the most radical teaching of faith that the value of life is not contingent on wealth or strength or skill, that value is a reflection of God's image.

Much of today's poverty has more to do with troubled lives than a troubled economy. And often when a life is broken, it can only be restored by another caring, concerned human being.

The answer for an abandoned child is not a job requirement, it is the loving presence of a mentor. The answer to addiction is not a demand for self sufficiency, it is the personal support on the hard road to recovery.

The hope we seek is found in safe havens for battered women and children in homeless shelters and crisis pregnancy centers, in programs that tutor and conduct job training and help young people who may happen to be on parole.

All these efforts provide not just the benefit but attention and kindness, a touch of courtesy, a dose of grace.

Mother Teresa said that what the poor often need, even more than shelter and food, though these are desperately needed as well, is to be wanted. And that sense of belonging is within the power of each of us to provide.

Many in this community have shown what compassion can accomplish. Notre Dame's own Lou Nanny (ph) is the former director of South Bend Center for the Homeless, an institution founded by two Notre Dame professors. It provides guests with everything from drug treatment to mental health services to classes in the great books to pre-school for young children.

Discipline is tough. Faith is encouraged, not required. Student volunteers are committed and consistent and central to its mission.

Lou Nanny (ph) describes its mission as repairing the fabric of society by letting people see the inherent worth and dignity and God-given potential of every human being.

Compassion often works best on a small and human scale. It is generally better when a call for help is local, not long distance. Here at this university you've heard that call and responded. It is part of what makes Notre Dame a great university.

This is my message today. There is no great society which is not a caring society, and any effective war on poverty must deploy what Dorothy Day called the weapons of spirit. There's only one problem with groups like South Bend Center for the Homeless: They're aren't enough of them.

It's not sufficient to praise charities and community groups. We must support them, and this is both a public obligation and a personal responsibility.

The war on poverty established a federal commitment to the poor. The welfare reform legislation of 1996 made that commitment more effective. For the task ahead, we must move to the third stage of combating poverty in America. Our society must enlist, equip and empower idealistic Americans in the works of compassion that only they can provide.

Government has an important role. We will never be replaced by charities. My administration increases funding for major social welfare and poverty programs by 8 percent. Yet government must also do more to take the side of charities and community healers and support their work.

We've had enough of the stale debate between big government and indifferent government.

Government must be active enough to fund services for the poor and humble enough to let good people in local communities provide those services.

So, I've created a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Through that office we are working to ensure that local community helpers and healers receive more federal dollars, greater private support and face fewer bureaucratic barriers. We have proposed a compassion capital fund that will match private giving with federal dollars.

We have proposed allowing all taxpayers to deduct their charitable contributions, including non-itemizers.

This could encourage almost $15 billion a year in new charitable giving.

My attitude is, everyone in America, whether they are well off or not, should have the same incentive and reward for giving.

And we're in the process of implementing and expanding charitable choice, the principle already established in federal law that faith- based organizations should not suffer discrimination when they compete for contracts to provide social services.

Government should never fund the teaching of faith, but it should support the good works of the faithful.

Some critics of this approach object to the idea of government funding going to any group motivated by faith. But they should take a look around them. Public money already goes to groups like The Center for the Homeless and, on a larger scale, to Catholic Charities. Do the critics really want to cut them off? Medicaid and Medicare money currently goes to religious hospitals. Should this practice be ended? Child care vouchers for low-income families are redeemed every day at houses of worship across America. Should this be prevented? Government loans send countless students to religious colleges. Should this be banned? Of course not.

America has a long tradition of accommodating and encouraging religious institutions when they pursue public goals.

My administration did not create that tradition, but we will expand it to confront some urgent problems.

Today I'm adding two initiates to our agenda in the areas of housing and drug treatment. Owning a home is a source of dignity for families and stability for communities. And organizations like Habitat for Humanity make that dream possible for many low-income Americans.

Groups of this type currently receive some funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The budget I submit to Congress next year will propose a three-fold increase in this funding, which will expand home ownership and the hope and pride that come with it.

And nothing is more likely to perpetuate poverty than a life enslaved to drugs. So we propose $1.6 billion in new funds to close what I call the treatment gap -- the gap between the 5 million Americans who need drug treatment and the 2 million who currently receive it.

We will also propose that all these funds, all of them, be open to equal competition from faith-based and community groups.

The federal government should do all these things, but others have responsibilities as well, including corporate America. Many corporations in America do good work and good causes, but if we hope to substantially reduce poverty and suffering in our country, corporate America needs to give more and to give better.

Faith-based organizations receive only a tiny percentage of overall corporate giving. Currently six of the 10 largest corporate givers in America explicitly rule out or restrict donations to faith- based groups regardless of their effectiveness.

The federal government will not discriminate against faith-based organizations and neither should corporate America.

In the same spirit, I hope America's foundations consider ways they may devote more of their money to our nation's neighborhood and their helpers and their healers. I will convene a summit this fall asking corporate and philanthropic leaders throughout America to join me at the White House to discuss ways they can provide more support to community organizations, both secular and religious.

Ultimately, your country is counting on each of you. Knute Rockne once said, "I have found that prayers work best when you have big players."

We can pray for the justice of our country, but you're the big players we need to achieve it. Government can promote compassion. Corporations and foundations can fund it, but the citizens -- it's the citizens who provide it.

A determined assault on poverty will require both an active government and active citizens. There's more to citizenship than voting, though I urge you to do it. There's more to citizenship than paying your taxes, though I'd strongly advise you pay them.

Citizenship is empty without concern for our fellow citizens, without the ties that bind us to one another and build a common good. If you already realize this and you're acting on it, I thank you.

If you haven't thought about it, I leave you with this challenge: Serve a neighbor in need, because a life of service is a life of significance.

Because materialism ultimately is boring, and consumerism can build a prison of loss. Because a person who is not responsible for others is a person who is truly alone. Because there are few better ways to express our love for America than to care for other Americans. And because the same God who endows us with individual rights also calls us to social obligations.

So let me return to Lyndon Johnson's charge: You're the generation that must decide. Will you ratify poverty and division with your apathy? Or will you build a common good with your idealism? Will you be a spectator in the renewal of your country, or a citizen?

The methods of the past may have been flawed, but the idealism of the past was not an illusion. Your calling is not easy, because you must do the acting and the caring. But there is fulfillment in that sacrifice which creates hope for the rest of us. Every life you help proves that every life might be helped. The actual proves the possible, and hope is always the beginning of change.

Thank you for having me, and God bless.

As was his wont, Bush gave lip service to Catholic teachings. This was not the case with some other Notre Dame Commencement speakers, who have included Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Condeleeza Rice.

Apparently many Catholic leaders would prefer to be shined on by hypocrites rather than engage in the kind of social outreach that might genuinely reduce the number of abortions.

Mary Ann Glendon wrote an excellent book years ago, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law. In it she made a very good argument for laws that are more woman, child and family friendly -- including but not limited to prohibiting elective abortions. Her book provided several examples to support the argument that outlawing the procedure is not, by itself, the most effective way to end the practice. She cited countries with restrictive laws and poor safety nets, where illegal abortions are common, as well as countries where abortion is allowed but rarely practiced because women do not see pregnancy as a life tragedy.

Don't get me wrong. Professor Glendon is profoundly pro-life, and even declined personally to attend the Notre Dame ceremony this year. As a scholar and law professor, though, she has always been able to recognize the power of context.

I am one of the people who feels that Obama is capable of changing the context enough to vastly reduce the demand for abortions in this country. That is not pro-death. As a Catholic I am embarrassed that my church leaders are so determined to make our faith community a subsidiary of the religious right -- and thus of the Republican Party. I would hate for my own parish to lose its tax exempt status, but with all this politicking it is harder and harder to justify.

Labels: Catholic Church, George W. Bush, Notre Dame commencement

Oh my gosh, I just found out that the power company in Boston is called "Unitil." Doesn't anybody there speak Spanish? Why would they choose a name that is such a close anagram for inutil - meaning useless?

Last week the New York Times ran a column by Judith Warner about the warm feelings she gets from different aspects of the Passover and Easter season. Warner wrote,

"...I am Jewish. But for nine years, from age 5 to 13, I attended an Episcopal school, went to chapel, sang in the choir. To this day, in good moods, my mind fills with hymns, and on a certain kind of spring day, a day that’s full of promise and hope, I see sunshine streaming in through stained glass windows, graceful specks suspended in the light over highly polished wood pews.

I would never call myself a Christian. But if you begin the Lord’s Prayer, I will join in, with feeling.

'It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason,' Charles Darwin wrote in 'The Descent of Man.'

My heart sings to the organ chords of the Doxology.

It is an instinctual, not altogether reasonable, sort of thing..."

I found her column true, although I did not identify with everything she said. How could I? It was about personal memories, and my memories are completely different than hers. Well, maybe not completely different -- my heart also sings to the organ chords of the Doxology. It is one of the reasons that I am so impatient with the music at my current church. I don't think it is as good as the music at the church I grew up in, but the main point is that it is different.

That's the problem with growing up and moving away and changing religions. One of the main reasons that I started singing in the bilingual choir at my church is that I didn't have to contend with my own expectations. All the Spanish music is new to me, and I happily take the other choir members' word for it if a song is considered an "old favorite."

But it isn't just religion and music that follows Darwin's rule. For the last few weeks my daughter and I have been exchanging complaints about the horrible spring weather where we live. I grew up in the Midwest, so to me great spring weather is a little (or a lot) overcast and rainy, with a continued chilly breeze. Spring means you're emerging from the cold and ice of winter, but it is gradual, and days that start out cool stay that way -- and will continue to do so for at least another month.

My daughter goes to school in Chicago. She is a New Mexico native, and she expects spring weather to be warm and sunny. Maybe it will rain, but the clouds will last twelve hours at a time or less. Days that start out cold and windy will probably stay windy, but the sun will come out and by afternoon you will probably be able to get rid of the jacket you wore in the morning. To me this is a form of torture. Bright sunlight gives me a headache, and I can't stand getting into a hot car that has been sitting in the desert sun.

On the other hand, she is impatient and depressed with the continued cold. At first I thought it was just her personality, but now I realize it is her upbringing. Midwestern stuff will always be the norm for me, even though I haven't lived there in years and have no intention of moving back. But she has different expectations.

Wherever she goes, my daughter will always judge climates by the standard of a 5000-foot altitude, zero humidity and reliable sunshine. Chicago doesn't have a chance.

I saw this just this morning on the American Papist blog. Even though it's a day late, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

He's not my favorite religious figure -- his holiday owes more to Dionysus than to Jesus -- but I do like the graphic.

St Patrick's Day here was unseasonably warm, not so positive for me but the local weather geeks treated it as good news. I'm not sure why people in a desert climate should be averse to some free water (i.e. rain) once in a while....

Labels: St. Patrick

I really think I need to go back to school and take some economics classes. Maybe we all do. I'm having trouble understanding why AIG needs to pay "retention bonuses" to people who bankrupted the company. I understand the idea of fulfilling a legal obligation to avoid a more expensive lawsuit, but I would link the payouts to some quasi-voluntary resignations. If a particular teacher scares off all the students, resulting in no tuition payments and bankruptcy for the school, doesn't it make sense to get rid of that teacher?

In a related story,
The mainstream media isn't always wrong. Sometimes those who are up to no good -- whether in the political, the financial, or any other realm -- use the public's distrust of big media to protect themselves. Because media credibility is so badly damaged (and why that is would be a-whole-nother subject) most of the time they get away with it. This case in point is from the Financial Times' "Alphaville" blog:

Point counter point: AIG, Goldman and the NYT

Posted by Sam Jones on Mar 16 12:17.

Does anyone care to remember this story on AIG, from the New York Times, back in September? More to the point, does anyone remember the trouble it caused?

It was one of a series of articles that appeared in the mainstream press contemporaneous to AIG’s bailout that dissected just what the insurer had been doing that made it so risky, and so systemically important.

We cite the NYT article in particular though, for this paragraph:

Although it was not widely known, Goldman, a Wall Street stalwart that had seemed immune to its rivals’ woes, was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner, according to six people close to the insurer who requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. A collapse of the insurer threatened to leave a hole of as much as $20 billion in Goldman’s side, several of these people said.

… which caused something of a furore.

Goldman strenuously and very publicly denied the gist of the allegation. So aggressive was their rebuttal, in fact, that the wires even wrote up seperate stories on it. Here’s Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc rejected as “seriously misleading” a published report on Sunday that said the Wall Street bank had as much as $20 billion of exposure to the troubled insurance giant American International Group Inc.

Lucas van Praag, a Goldman spokesman, on Sunday said the Times article was wrong to suggest that Goldman had reason to be concerned about AIG’s problems.

“Although we have said many times on the record that our exposure to AIG was, and is, not material, the reporter chose to pursue a story line which suggests, by innuendo, that is not the case,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

“For the avoidance of doubt, our exposure to AIG is offset by collateral and hedges and is not material to Goldman Sachs in any way,” he continued. “The conclusions about our interests that readers of the New York Times article are invited to reach are seriously misleading.”

Now, of course, we have AIG’s counterparty list. And guess who tops it?

Goldman Sachs.

Goldman is the proud recipient of $12.9bn in payments from AIG and AIGFP. (Specifically, $2.5bn from CDS collateral postings, $5.6bn from Maiden Lane III payments for CDS positions, and $4.8bn in payments related to securities lending. The Maiden Lane III portfolio was, of course, created in December specifically help reduce the burden of CDS collateral postings facing AIGFP proper - it bought the underlying CDO tranches from the CDS counterparties)

For the record then, it certainly was not the NYT that was “seriously misleading”.

We wonder whether things might yet get uncomfortable for Goldman. After all, they’re in rather an awkward position: on the one hand, according to their above PR line, they didn’t need AIG’s money at all (it was, to paraphrase, immaterial whether AIG went under or not). And yet, on the other hand Goldman is - gosh - the largest recipient, via AIG, of taxpayers’ money.

Labels: AIG, Alphaville, Goldman Sachs, mainstream media, The Financial Times, The New York Times

As a follow-up to my previous post, I recommend a "Time" photo essay on Chip Kidd.

It also includes his comments about each piece. My one disappointment was that among the best covers in the essay is a book by Augustin Burroughs -- in my opinion an even bigger fraud than Jane Smiley.

What a waste of design talent.

Over on the Abe Books newsletter, Beth Carswell writes about the 30 Novels Worth Buying for the Cover Alone. She notes:
Let's hear it for the book designers. For every Milan Kundera, Jeffrey Eugenides and Aldous Huxley, there is a Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich, a Leah Carlson-Stanisic and a Gregg Kulick – all designers of memorable cover art. They give a visual perspective to somebody else's written art, find balance in color and shape, simplicity and uniqueness. A book must stand out on the bookstore bookshelf yet cover designers rarely receive the recognition that authors do. In appreciation of these unsung artists, here are 30 of my favorite fiction covers – all worth buying for the cover alone.

What a great concept! Here are some of the examples: Arkansas, by John Brandon, cover design by Keith Shore; Rant, by Chuck Palahniuk, cover design by Michael Collica; The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera, cover design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich; Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, cover design by Gregg Kulick; My Mistress' Sparrow is Dead, by Jeffrey Eugenides, cover design by Leah Carlson-Stanisic; and 25 others.

All available new or used, I am sure, from Abe Books.

Labels: book covers, fiction, graphic design