The Problem Now

I don’t watch a lot of PBS, but from time to time I do catch Bill Moyers’s show.  For Bill’s final show on PBS (Bill Moyers Journal) he interviewed Jim Hightower about what is happening in public life and government.  I don’t make time to catch Hightower’s radio show, but moving to Tulsa may motivate me to find Hightower on the web.  Here is a question and answer from Moyers to Hightower.  Click on Truthout to read the entire transcript.  Click Bill’s name to learn more about his show.

Transcript from Bill Moyers Journal: Interview with Jim Hightower | PBS | May 1, 2010 | Truthout

JIM HIGHTOWER: If you’re too big to fail, you’re too big period. And now they’ve become not only too big to fail, but too big to care.

BILL MOYERS: So when you identify yourself as a populist, what are you saying?

JIM HIGHTOWER: I’m saying pretty clearly that I see the central issue in politics to be the rise of corporate power. Overwhelming, overweening corporate power that is running roughshod over the workaday people of the country. They think they’re the top dogs, and we’re a bunch of fire hydrants, you know? Out here in the countryside. And they can do what they want to with us. What’s been missing is what can we do about it? And those people in Iowa, by the way, are not alone. There are people in Minnesota doing that, people in Oregon that I know. People in Texas. All across the country.

It’s about the long haul. And the target is not government, it’s those who are pulling the strings of government, which are those corporate lobbyists and the money that the corporate executives and now corporations directly can put into our campaigns.

, 05/02/2010. Category: Culture.

Oh, they got it all wrong!

One of my morning activities includes reading some major papers online.  This morning I saw this Op-Ed by Nicholas Kristof who writes for the New York Times.  Mr. Kristof has been reporting from the Sudan this week.  Like many, he too has reflected on the latest apparent cover-up by the Catholic Church of priests that have abused children.  This time, though, it reaches to the Vatican and maybe even to the Pope.  Kristof is in the Sudan and filed this Op-Ed about what he is witnessing as the real Catholic church serving forgotten people.  Here are two paragraphs.  Click the headline to read more.

Who Can Mock This Church?
by Nicholas Kristof | May 1, 2010

As I’ve noted before, there seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan. The Vatican certainly supports many charitable efforts, and some bishops and cardinals are exemplary, but overwhelmingly it’s at the grass roots that I find the great soul of the Catholic Church.

Sister Cathy would like to see more decentralization in the church, a greater role for women, and more emphasis on public service. She says she worries sometimes that if Jesus returned he would say, “Oh, they got it all wrong!”

, 05/02/2010. Category: Culture, Theological Rant, Youth Ministry.
Next page →
← Previous page