Hoop Dreams 2.0

 

Last Thursday I figured I might as well make an attempt to complete a NCAA tournament bracket, especially considering the President could find time to do one (he’s doing pretty well too).  I promise he has much more to do than I at the moment, so if he could take five minutes to do it, I could too. 

 Though my bracket suffered some bumps and bruises along the way, it remained fairly in tact.  This was especially encouraging considering it fared better than the bracket of some who do this for a living.  This is where things get interesting.  I’ll keep you posted. 

Bear Market

GO TO now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them is a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. 4 Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. 5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

James 5:1-5

Don’t look now; the market is bear, and far too many Americans have found their cupboards bare. Thousands more who lack their own cupboards, and houses for that matter, have begun taking shelter in motels and tent cities. We as a nation are in dire straits. Moreover, the conditions in the job market have plummeted to the point that a Rhode Island Strip Club believes it can take advantage of the skyrocketing unemployment rate by hosting a job fair to fill 30 empty positions. Somewhere out there Taraji P. Henson is singing and Terrence Howard is nodding along in approval.

It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp

Amid this crisis, American International Group, the insurance behemoth whose tentacles spiral across the globe, announced a $61.7 billion quarterly loss on the same day most of the nation learned it distributed at least $165 million dollars (but potentially $218 million) worth of bonuses to its executives. This was in addition to $121 million worth of previously scheduled bonuses and after the company received $170 billion dollars of our money. As we have heard more times than we might have ever wanted, the bonuses were defended by arguing they were the product of contractual obligations forged before the financial crisis. Nevertheless, Professor Lawrence A. Cunnningham of George Washington University Law School has identified a slew of perfectly legal means for abrogating the payments, yet few seem to heed such advice because chaos rules the day.

As a taxpayer and now shareholder in the company, I was a bit incensed by it all, and the rest of the general public seems to agree with those sentiments. The worst part of it all is that it did not end there.

Not to be outdone by A.I.G., Citigroup Inc. announced its reward for Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit and his lieutenants steering the company shares to a value below the price of a Starbucks’ frappuccino was a new $10 million executive suite.  If only ever field held such rewards for incompetence.

The furor over executive bonuses at A.I.G. even caused Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to call for greater levels of scrutiny of executive compensation and called for banking supervisors to pay “close[r] attention” to compensation practices. One would imagine he should have stumbled upon such a revelation sooner, but bettter late than never I suppose.  Additionally, some members of Congress say they have heard the clamoring of their constiutients, and are promising revenge to quell the growing public fury. Nonetheless, these are the same people who resisted proposals for imposing executive compensation limits.  In earlier years, these were the same people who demanded the government drastically limit regulations of our financial markets under the guise of free market principles.  When those free market principles failed before our very eyes, these are the same people who demanded that Sen. Chris Dodd insert exemptions into the stimulus bill that allowed bailout recipients to receive bonuses.  These efforts thwarted the efforts of Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Olympia Snowe to insert a provision that would force recipients of government funds to cap their bonuses at about $100,000. These people decrying the greed of Wall Street are the same people who used our money to dole out $9.1 million worth of bonuses to their staff last year.  There’s a reason why I do not place my trust in people, especially not these people.

It’s been encouraging to see ordinary Americans take the streets and express their outrage in this despicable practice, yet the answer does not rest solely in our right to peacefully assemble (and unfurl our fury on such worthy recipients).  The above-cited warning offered in the epistle of James comes as more than an indictment on the greed of the wicked, but it also offers solace to the poor and down trodden who cry out to God. Does He see?  Does He hear?  Does He care? Here, scripture reminds us how the Great Judge sees and hears all, and will execute His judgment both unexpectedly and suddenly. This manifest avarice we witnessed this past week will not last, and if any good comes from it is that we all have witnessed the potential end of much of life as we know it on Wall Street.  Let’s hope when it does, some of these executives join Terrence Howard and Ms. Henson in their singing.

Hoop Dreams

 

 

Beware the Ides of March . . .

I’m a basketball enthusiast.  Typically the only television I watch has something to do with the sport, and I often find myself in someone’s gym making an attempt to play a bit.  I’m generally more of a fan of the NBA, and typically do not watch much of the college sport.  Consequently, I rarely, if ever, complete a tournament bracket (I don’t think I’ve done so since high school).  Nonetheless, I figured if the President can make time to fill out a bracket, I certainly could as well, especially since I attend law school at a university in the tournament.  Here’s my shot at it.  I’m doing all right so far, but it’s still early.  We’ll see.  I’ll keep you posted. 

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

FROM WHENCE come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2  Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.  3   Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

 James 4:1-3

On this day six years ago the United States-led coalition began bombing the Iraqi city of Baghdad.  President Bush addressed the nation nearly an hour after the initial bombing began, and stated the purpose of the U.S.-led invasion was to “disarm Iraq, free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.”  He further declared:

The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.  We will meet that threat now, with our Arm, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.

Since that fateful evening, hindsight has rendered even the most ardent supporters of our efforts in Iraq with the ability to observe such efforts were initiated on false pretenses. Time Magazine has chronicled our six-years in Iraq in photographs, and noted how the War’s sixth year anniversary has witnessed escalating violence and increased uncertainty.  Regardless of your stance on our invasion and ensuing conflict, this is an excellent opportunity to reflect on the level of carnage and destruction that has transpired since this time six years ago, and remember from whence wars come.   To give you a clue, it’s not weapons of mass destruction.

Government AIDS

 

With all this talk about government intervention in our financial markets, it was somewhat overlooked that last week the Obama Administration selected Jeffery S. Crowley, Senior Research Scholar at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute, to direct the Office of National AIDS Policy.  While some have lauded the decision, others have found the selection “underwhelming.”  Particularly, The Root’s Kai Wright took issue, “not with who Crowley is, but rather who he is not.”  While Wright readily acknowledges Crowley understands “the challenges of today’s epidemic and, importantly, sets about solving them from a community-based perspective,” he takes issue with the fact Crowley is an openly gay white man. 

Wright laments such a decision as “so 1996” because in selecting Crowley, Wright believes the Obama administration missed an opportunity to clearly articulate how it will grapple with the widening racial disparities in rates of infection. Wright does not diminish the strength of Crowly’s credentials, but still contends because of who he is not, Crowley lacks a fundamental vantage point that will allow him to fully peer through the nebulous haze of our modern day plague to offer viable remedies to the staggering nature of the AIDS epidemic in the black community. 

Wright suggests “many smart, talented black people working on AIDS inside and out of government” remained more poised to tackle this menacing issue. His contentions, while quite compelling, presuppose government intervention remains the answer.  That is where Wright and I part ways. Our government should and could help mightily to solve this problem, but the onus falls squarely on us.

While the world first learned of AIDS and HIV roughly twenty-seven years ago, our nation was truly placed on notice on November 7, 1991 of the perils of our lascivious ways. Nonetheless, the proliferation of AIDS within the black community has single-handedly become the most crippling epidemic to engulf our people since the institution of chattel slavery and its menacing progeny: Jim Crow segregation.  We know full well of the scars of the aforementioned plagues upon our people, but the most disheartening factor when considering the AIDS epidemic is that in most instances, it is a self-inflicted wound.  I know varying societal factors play key roles in the proliferation of AIDS amongst our people, but at its crux, we must be honest enough with ourselves to admit that AIDS is mostly preventable. 

Our leaders, most specifically those within the church, bear a greater level of responsibility in addressing this issue because of the magnitude of its impact amongst our people, combined with the moral and spiritual implications, especially when you consider the level of influence they wield.  Presently most churches in our community do not do or even say enough regarding sex.  Being reared in the church I can attest to the fact that typically black preachers tell black youth (and black singles for that matter), “Don’t do it, unless you’re married, and then you can do what you want to . . . “   I do not suggest  handing out condoms after  youth lock-ins or after singles meetings, but I do believe we need to become more vocal in the matter of sexuality.  At present, we simply do not talk about it unless we are shunning homosexual marriage. 

 

ABC covered this extensively around the time of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the discovery of HIV.  In the special, Peter Jennings noted how little the black church dares to address the issue.  In the special Bishop T.D. Jakes is quoted saying something to the effect of there are no scriptures in the Bible about AIDS in an effort to explain why he does not speak about the issue publicly (though his church does have an AIDS ministry).  Though that may be literally true, there are plenty of scriptures that he could use in order to convey God’s truth on moral governance, with particular regards to sexual purity, and even use examples of how God forewarned His people about the cost of disobedience.  I have seen too many televangelists systematically twist and manipulate the b line of one scripture into an hour sermon in order to convince me to send money to their programs, and find it appalling to hear that one cannot use clear and consistent doctrine to address one of the prevailing issues of our day.   I guess there’s no money to be made in the talk of AIDS, that is shamefully the only reason I can see why we would not address it at its core, especially when so many preachers now a days pride themselves in “keeping it real.” 

Just as God had Moses declare many of the ill effects that would result from disobedience when presenting the law (Deut. 28); the church should speak on what the bible mandates regarding purity: the why, the how, and what (happens when you disobey), then consistently teach us practical means on how to live a lifestyle that pleases God.  In that regard we may at least become armed with the information that so few of us lack in this area, so even if God forbid, we choose to stray, we know the magnitude of our actions.  So many of us are just stubborn and ignorant.  For instance, you would not believe how many sexually active adults I have encountered that have no idea about certain facets of AIDS contraction (I know one girl who thought you would wash AIDS off in a shower after having sex with an infected person as long as it was done immediately following intercourse, I know scores of others that did not know the disease could be contracted via oral sex, etc.).  

Many of those in the church hear sound doctrine, but as a good friend would say, they “do not take it home with them.” Nevertheless, far more often than not, I find that preachers will not mention this area much at all, regardless of whether the congregation has shown that they will obey.  I will not pretend to have all of the answers, and will not pretend to be a pastor, but I hold firmly to the belief that we could address this more effectively if we addressed it (from the time our children were children) and offered practical means to live the Word.  We do it with so many other subjects (e.g. walking in your destiny, money management, etc.).  And lack of faithfulness on the part of congregants (or lack of results for obedient congregants) have not discouraged some from preaching their messages (most particularly in regards to adhering to prosperity doctrine) I believe we could make a grander attempt to do so here, and should have the courage to doing so God’s way.