Trevor Potter - the financing of Elections

Heard Trevor Potter speak at Chautauqua in July 2013

• Money and Politics
• Former chair of the Election Process
• Campaign Finance Law
• Delinquent intersection between money and politics
• Chief counsel to Stephen Colbert
• Just remember he's the funny one
• Lower the tone on money and politics
• Where are we in the financing of elections
• Corporations have the same right to contribute to political campaigns as do private individuals
• $100s of millions donated from non traceable sources
• $7 Billion spent on the last election
• 337% increase in 20 years
• 2008 less than half that
• $85 Million Senate race
• The Supreme Court has ruled that spending limits on elections is unconstitutional 
• The government can only appeal that candidates spend less
• No legal limit on campaign spending
• The Buckley decision
• No limits on self-funded candidates
• First Amendment was written to prevent restriction of free speech even if that speech was against the government
• But what does this have to do with restricting campaign spending
• 1904 - one robber baron said when Teddy Roosevelt was elected - 'we bought his election, he just didn't continue as though he had been bought'
• 1907 corporations were limited to what they could contribute
• Citizens United in 2010, the majority of the Supreme Court agreed that corporations had the legal status of persons an therefore shouldn't be restricted in terms of campaign contributions
• Where are we?
• Corporate money? Yes
• Foreign money? No
• It is now the Supreme Court and not Congress who determines who can contribute and who cannot
• The huge jump in campaign contributions because of the Citizens United 
• Dark Money - you don't know where the money is coming from
• Justice Anthony Kennedy - what was he smoking? To think that all corporate campaign money could be traced 
• Gutting of the disclosure provisions
• Names like Americans for a better America
• Corporations like these veiled contributions, don't have to answer for their campaign spending to the public or to their shareholders
• Congress could change this but they are deadlocked
• It is not clear how they thought that the process wouldn't be corrupted?
• The court was simply wrong in thinking that this would be independent
• Wholly independent turns out not to be!
• Where does the money come from?
• Average Americans - lowest recordable level $200
• What percentage 1/3 of 1% of Americans donate at the
• Minimum donation
• 163 people gave over 50% of total Superpac donations
• Worried that it will be limited to a couple of guys in a room
• The rich being left out by the super rich
• Most donors are men
• 222 Obama 2012
• Total number of fundraisers attended for his reelection campaign
• 9 Reagan 1984
• Total number of fundraisers for his reelection campaign 
• 4 hours - daily congressional schedule making fundraising calls for a safe seat, more for a contested seat
• Corporate Spending - hasn't changed in terms of union contribution but significant increases for private corporations
• SuperPacs may be bad for America but they are good for CBS
• Negative ads are effective, they undermine confidence in a candidate
• Motivation - Justice Kennedy - making profits, corporations can be sued for poor returns
• When a corporation enters a political race it is with the intent of supporting the short term profit interests of the company
• This entrenches the status quo
• I am not a US company and I don't make decisions based on what's good for the US - former CEO Mobile Exxon Lee Raymomd
• It is important exposé the ugliness of political fundraising Chris Murphy -   recently elected Senator
• What constitutes the greatest threat to US democracy - campaign spending -
• Members of congress are spending 1/2 their time dialing for dollars
• If you have money you have a leg up on the competition
• American Anti- corruption act
• PAC / Superpac / secretly
• PAC is a political action committee
• It is an organization, opening a bank account having a treasurer registered with the government
• Candidate can have a pact - a candidate action pac
• Super PAC - no limit on amounts
• Regular pacs have a $5,000 limit
• As long as the group is only doing independent expenditures 
• It has unlimited resources independent of candidates - so called independent ads
• The anonymity of the donor? What is the argument for anonymity - they ought to be disclosed
• Requiring people to declare who I am is forcing or compelling speech
• Is there any chilling affect on contributions if names are revealed?
• The story of Target and Minnesota 
• Target contributed $500,000 to a candidate who was pro business but who was subsequently a anti-gay candidate
• Target took a real hit because of anti-gay legislation
• Bain capital - super PAC tried to hide under the radar
• The values of full disclosure help uphold democracy - people need to know who the speaker is - 

Ali Veshi

Ali Velshi spoke at Chautauqua in July 2013.

• Are Markets Moral?
• Worked for Lee Hamilton
• Give me my money back
• Honoured to be here
• I am here as a story teller
• My job is to pass stories around
• Al Jazeera America
• Markets and Morality
• Question? Are the markets moral?
• Are markets moral, immoral, amoral,
• Or value neutral?
• Audience split between immoral and amoral
• Twitter - fruit markets?
• Human nature means limits have to be imposed
• Where does morality come from?
• The ethical glue that holds us together
• What is considered right and wrong?
• Commerce - some exchange involved, structure regarded
• Markets are amoral, the less regulated the greater efficiency but the greater discrepancy the more immoral markets become
• How should markets be governed?
• It has brought wealth to many but today the markets are terrifying
• The buccaneer days of the Robber Barons - systems which pointed to fascism, dictatorship
• Roosevelt thwarted that
• Many blame Roosevelt for creating obstacles
• The backlash against the markets is still on the rise
• The market - the institution of trade
• Protesters say that CEOs shouldn't be making many times what the lowest paid employees make
• Gordon Brown argues the market should be regulated
• We are an economically bifurcated society
• These problems are not new, there have been times where great polarization also existed
• The corrupting influence of money itself
• Ruskin 150 years ago - mandate for corporate leaders 
• Should provide for the nation, can provide jobs for all
• Good pay for all
• Honesty is the best policy
• Honesty begets trust
• Strong leadership for those who can implement change
• Those who have wealth use it for good
• Markets should be servants for the people
• Is the market itself the problem?
• It can be tough to be heard
• Markets tend to follow mathematics rather than the social good
• The ongoing challenge of the right balance between the individual and society
• Group interest or individual - what is more important?
• Socially responsible funds - help the environment
• Morals - how do they impact investment returns - investing in guns produces high returns
• Principles aren't principles until they cost you
• Stopped doing business in South Africa - impacted apartheid
• Immorality in the markets - is the evil the market itself or those who abuse it? Like athletes who take performance enhancing drugs - is the fault the sport or the athlete?
• The mortgage crisis - packaging debts by Banks and farming them out meant the banks were no longer on the hook
• Cigarette and drug companies - horrible instances of malfeasance only indicate that dishonesty is rampant
• We want fairness and transparency
• The fracking debate
• Regulation if applied fairly is acceptable
• Small businesses are perceived as friendly because their owners are like those around them - neighbours
• We are our brothers' keeper first
• Some corporations try to act morally
• Markets are moral even if they don't know they are
• Markets can generate prosperity which when used by people generate great good
• An effective tool
• Market is a like a cat // doesn't matter if it's black or white just as long as it catches mice
• Shakespeare in the Park - free with long lines but when some get ahead without the wait 
• Line standers - no longer a public good; homeless people standing in line for Supreme Court hearings
• Scalping tickets - used to be an issue, stubhub -
• Market makes no comment re: morality 
• A longing for corporate decency
• Technology flattens the buying process
• Designers may get 100% of the proceeds through an Internet sale but the cost is much less
• Unions in the 1950s was 3 in 10 workers
• Systems inefficiencies get weeded out but the loss of good fair wages is part of the outcome
• Personal responsibilities exceed regulatory things
• Benefit corporations enlightened way to go
• Sub-prime lending crisis immoral even though not breaking the law
• Everyone is on high alert
• We have had a culture of maligning regulation, public service - 
• Implementing social audits
• We will be the best effectors of market change if we exercise ourselves
• Stocks go up despite layoffs
• We have got to find a way for people to be fully employed and profitable
• Sell your desks and chairs before you lay off
• Move employees to 4 days rather than lay one of them off
• How can we redeploy employees?
• Layoffs impact so many not just the people laid off but the ancillary industries like restaurants are also affected 
• If it bleeds it leads - is CNN moral?
• Give the news that is most important before the news that is juiciest
• Too big to fail - companies have to submit a living will 

EJ Donne

EJ Donne - heard him speak at Chautauqua in July 2013

• Our divided political heart
• Justice, morals, the equal dignity of every person regardless of who they are
• Justice we assume can't be bought or sold
• Wealthy people can buy their way out of the draft
• The writ of money and the rule of the economy
• Health care a market proposition
• Why should children hopelessly snared in poverty which is no choice of their own be denied the necessities of life including healthcare?
• The need to temper markets with morals 
• Does this land or my way best represent American values?
• 'Americans can be relied to the right thing after they have exhausted all the possibilities' - Churchill 
• Our arc bends toward justice
• From the very beginning we have both an individual and community entities 
• We, the people - Declaration assumes community
• Pledging to each other mutual care, working together
• The first negative political ad - the Declaration of Independence
• They were not anti- government
• First version of socialized medical plan was in 1790 to care for seamen
• One nation birthed in disagreement - born out of competing values
• Made compromises rooted in the idea of being ruled by the people
• A refutation of laissez faire economics
• The radical individualism 35 years in the late 1800's
• The power of high finance over government in the 1920's
• Restored by government - limits on business
• Markets worth it only when under moral leadership 
• The language of the market place dominates public discourse 
• We used to talk about immunizing young children - now we talk about investing in our children 
• Strengthening family values are worth doing whether they justify economic calculations or not
• Poverty - does it make economic sense to address the problem in solely economic terms?
• The questions of economic concern are moral when it is about what food access, housing
• The Market is in dire need of criticism
• The market can't be credited with solving all problems
• It is very good with measuring profit
• But not good at creating universal health care
• Market depends on the notion of Common good, on trust depending on virtues 
• Insiders and outsiders - pollute our economics
• Economics our politics
• A capitalist society relies on non-capitalist values 
• We must see each other as members of the same body
• Whenever this flag is flown, we take care of our own
• Bruce Springsteen - Building a nation where we can survive depends on our making conditions where we can survive
• Talking Fair Trade
• What effect will this have on people
• Free trade can't be used to undermine good jobs
• How economies can be governed?
• I will believe Texas believes corporations are people when they execute one
• A call to take care of more than their own
• Remarkable tweet from Tampa Bay - "How cool would it have been had Robert Zimmerman offered to drive Traynor a ride home?"
• Religious opinion 
• Where does Jesus call for a cut in the capital gains tax?
• When family values are used to bash gays and lesbians it is wrong
• But when it is used to take issue with inequality, the incarceration of 2 million black men in prison
• Door to door is still the best way to address the real issues
• Health care is complicated 
• 60% of employers cover health care down from 85% after the 2nd world war

Chris Hedges

from quotesgram.com

Rise up lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you --
Ye are many, they are few!         Percy Bysshe Shelley

Why do you stand
they were asked, and
Why do you walk?

Because of the children, they said, and
because of the heart, and
because of the bread.                 Daniel Berrigan

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. Howard Zinn

My notes from a session with Chris Hedges when he spoke at Chautauqua in July, 2013.

• my Dad was a Presbyterian Minister
• An outspoken supporter of the Civil Rights
• GBLT rights supporter from the late 60's
• Church harsh on him for his GBLT activism
• in one of his last services he conducted Easter service for the GBLT community
• he believed marriage is a sacrament between two committed people who love each other
• All liberal institutions have collapsed
• What happened?
• How was it that progressive forces have been destroyed?
• More people died for labour rights in the US than any other country!
• WW1 broke out - the collapse of the Eastern Front - no support in the US for the war
• the first instance of mass communication being used to win Americans over to a position they initially resisted. It reconfigured American society persuading people by emotional appeal rather than using logic or reason
• The effectiveness of mass communication - very few are able to resist - even intellectuals have succumbed
• The proliferation of mass communication - the creation of black publicity
• has instituted the psychosis of permanent war where the dreaded Hun becomes the dreaded red
• Severe repression of criticism, for one - the Swedish-American labour activist Joe Hill hung on trumped up charges
• Madison Avenue inculcates consumer mentality, American society is contaminated by a culture of lies
• The systematic destruction of radical forces, reducing change to mere incremental reform
• Howard Zinn's History of America, birthed of his awareness of 'the voices never heard!' 
• In our day people like Noam Chomsky shut out from the mainline media streams
• Numerous mechanisms to shut people out
• All of the openings in American history were radical - the suffrage movement, the labour movement, the civil rights movement
• and yet now the Civil Rights movement has been gutted with the recent Supreme Court decision
• Predatory class has no impediment
• No self imposed limits on capitalism - everything is a commodity
• We live in a global system of Neo-feudalism
• We moved from an empire of production to an empire of consumption
• Clinton /Obama - politicians who 'feel your hurt but instigated NAFTA; the deregulation of the media, the gross civil violations of NSA'
• Once in the street - you are worth nothing
• In prison prisoners paid $1 an hour - an economic commodity
• Corporate funding equal in Democratic as in Republican
• We have undergone a corporate coup d'état  - and they have won
• Democratic Party would be on the far right in Europe
• The systematic killing of descent
• There is no way to vote against Goldman Sacks
• Global oligarchy
• Drones, privatized armies. Night raids in our own cities
• Don't play the game
• We must recapture the moral imperative of radical movements
• The question is not how do you get the right people to rule, the matter is how do you get the people who rule to be afraid
• America is a deeply violent culture
• The Christian Right - fundamentalists once reluctant to become political - the celebration of grasping the cross with the gun - target the vulnerable, blame the demise of society on gays, trade unionists, feminists,
• Bankrupt liberalism
• We have systematically killed radicalism
• Occupy movement gave expression to the majority
• Health care should be a million miles from capitalism, but in the US we are trying to marry the two. It is a moral degeneration where private insurance companies hold young sick children hostage
• Richestan - where the rich live separate from America and yet rule America
• Corporations are systems of death - formal mechanism; our formal channels of governments can't stop them.
• Corporations are colour blind
• Speaking truth to power - a faith responsibility
• We have nothing else less than civil disobedience to defend us
• Faith that the good draws the good - the essence of faith
• The power of the powerless is that truth can be recognized when it takes to the streets
• We must stand up for what is right; it is not impractical - it is a very lonely walk
• Like Martin Luther King we must 'take non-violence as my lawfully wedded wife'
• The poor have been abandoned by the liberal class
• We cannot go back to where we were
• A material diminishing is not a spiritual diminishing
• The government is frightened
• The government doesn't even trust the police to protect them
• They trust private corporations like NSA
• Keep doing the good you are doing
• Draw the good to the good
• The truth we speak is accessible to the frontline defenders - ie the police
• MSNBC the same as FOX except with a different spin
• The voices are there, hidden but out there
• Read Cicero, don't tune out the voices like Jeremiah Wright, Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader

Esther de Waal - On Henri Nouwen and Rembrandt's painting of The Prodigal Son

Notes from Esther de Waal's opening talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 10, 2016.
Her comments were based on Nouwen's book 'The Return of the Prodigal', which in turn were his reflections on Rembrandt's masterpiece.

• We are even more lost
• Coming home and staying there, where true love is to be found
• It is the gift that we are to lay claim to
• Where do you dwell?
• Christ's answer is 'come and see.'
• How does Henri go beyond his deep searching?
• The new monasticism - to keep the still centre in our lives
• If you are looking for theology in Wales, look for the poets
• The visual was very important for Henri
• When I am too tired to read, to tired to do or to pray, I can still look at art
• Looking at a painting with my heart's eye
• Quite deliberate steps - battered by mission and vision statements
• The need to look with long and prayerful attention
• The need to enter into art
• June 19, 1983 - Henri first encounters the Return of the Prodigal
• Just completed a 6 month tour of the US, overwhelmed by his own neediness
• In July 26, 1986 he goes to St. Peterburg's to see the painting
• It is a huge painting 6 feet by 8 feet
• He sees the feet of the prodigal
• Luther called the parable the gospel within the gospel
• Picasso drew a painting of the prodigal before he comes home
• Illusion - to play with words
• The story of the prodigal are the root of the 3 Benedictine rules
• Listening quietly, listening intently
• To change, to move forward,
• To come home, staying in the loving embrace of the father
• We are lost, we have lost the key to our heart, profound and inescapable journey
• Henri sat for hours in front of the painting in the Hermitage, there day after day
• The feet - the bare feet which has experienced the harshness of the earth
• The duality of the two hands
• One hand tender and the other strong, two diverse voices both speaking the words of truth
• Eyes that go into our innermost self, one so compassionate
• Neither of those eyes were judging looks
• How do you see?
• You can glance, you can look but only for what you want to see
• Look, stay still, gaze into the innermost being of your subject
• Holding himself still before the haze of God; that gaze without judgment, and this the gaze we are to look with at others
• It means you see Easter in the other
• You forget the labels, you gaze with the eyes of the resurrection
• The eyes of the elder son, are the eyes of judgment, frozen anger, resentment - he has worked hard and has done everything expected of him
• Look at him leaning on his staff, fashionable head gear, very, very scary
• Contrary to the generous master who invites labourers to come and be pay regardless of how long they work
• Figures are frozen in time

15th Century 'Holy Trinity' (Troiksa) Icon by St. Andrei Rublev

• 15th Century icon - 3 people sitting in a circle
• They are all relating
• Feet happily on the ground
• The cup among them - the cup of suffering
• The unity of the trinity bring relief to the suffering of the Russian people
• Holding things together
• The box holding the bones of the Martyrs
• We are drawn in to that table, that circle of
• Love,  the hands united pointing to the cup
• They can listen to one another, it is a circle of love that we are being called to
• Can't tell who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - the deep communion among the free
• The listening eyes, the gift of the gaze

• The prodigal can't remain kneeling forever
• His heart has been pierced by the love of his father, you are re-energized, full of love to express itself in love and action
• The need to revisit his forgiveness
• Forgiveness is the greatest gift for freedom and healing
• Being the beloved - are you going to receive it?
• The way you look at someone can transform them
• Can you see the resurrected person? Isn't this the gift of L'Arche, this household of love?

Esther de Waal - 2 - The Only Question Worth Asking

photo of Esther de Waal from 'Spirituality and Practice'

Notes from Esther de Waal's 2nd talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 11, 2016.
Her comments were based on Nouwen's 'The Genesee Diary', the diary of his 7 month sabbatical at a Trappist Monastery in upstate New York in 1974.

• Henri's Spiritual journey - familiar with the rule of St. Benedict
• An entry point for knowing God
• Celtic spirituality - a fruitful resource cultivating unity in the midst of division
• Henri Nouwen's writings combined art and spirituality
• Helps us to pause in the threshold
• Locked in time as we are, desiring the timeless
• To live with the door of transcendence left open
• Weaving a tapestry
• Listening, beauty, the role of the visual
• Seeking and searching all our lives
• Where are you rooted?
• The search for home, how do we come home, how are we centred?
• How can we live in the forgiving love of God?
• I live with fear - God speaks through Henri
• What a complex man he was
• I don't mind if it doesn't all add up
• Mystery - Henri wrote as though he was holding something back
• Being part of a group for a short time and then returning to a place of solitude
• Shared experiences of homecoming - Genesee - the Trappists
• The Benedictines by the 12th Century had become influential
• Some of them went back to its origins, reclaiming the roots of the monastic life
• How have I become at the end of the day any more loving? The only question worth asking regardless of one's vocation
• To read is one thing, but to create an experience makes it living
• Carrying a rhythm throughout life
• The Genesee Diary a great introduction to the Benedictine monastic life is all about
• Struggling with a divided heart - Henri found solace in the uncluttered - the cloisters - the spring of living water, the fountain, the living stream of God's word
• At first Henri is resistant, resents that while there no one sends him letters
• Resents the work, totally inept with technology, breaks the bread machine, dragging stones from the river from which a chapel is built
• I came to love those stones, he wrote at the end of his diary, where he worked
• Stirring the soup and memorizing the psalms
• Learns the rhythms
• 'I was very impressed with the discerning ear of Father John'
• Go and try and be more alone
• Confessions grow out of his meditations 
• the deeper you go into God, the deeper you enter into loving others
• The road ahead isn't going to get any easier, but my love for God is going to run deeper which changes everything
• Reaching out - the book written in Genesee - he had learned the Psalms
• 3 extracts from his Trappist time 
• listen to your struggles, the answer to your question is hidden in your heart
• protecting each other's uniqueness
• silence opens up in us a space where the word can be heard

Ron Rolheiser - the spirituality of Henri Nouwen

photo from Ron Rolheiser.com

Notes from Ron Rolheiser's first talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 10, 2016.

• Henri taught theology for 16 years
• He had an intelligence to challenge the heart
• His unique stunning popularity
• His cadence, his writing, his formula for writing
• His was a very gentle voice
• Most popular writer in terms of spirituality in the last 70 years
• Academic legacy - stunning popularity
• He purged himself of the language of academia
• He'd distill ideas like wine from grapes
• Simple rather than complex
• It takes a great mind to be simple
• He was an artist, he could turn a phrase
• He developed a new language for spirituality
• He opened the field of spirituality to Protestants
• At Harvard and Yale he made spirituality topical, he brought it into the mainstream
• Humiliation brings about depth
• He was a deeply wounded and a hushed soul
• He couldn't hide his weakness
• His wound opened him up
• Henri wrote spirituality rather than write about spirituality
• He sought to find the language of the heart
• He wrote a new language about how God has touched our lives
• He tries to be direct
• He wrote about Jesus, intimacy about Jesus - not about Jesus Christ
• He tried to write as a human being not as a priest
• His formula for writing - work hard to reach simplicity
• Worked at it for hours and hours
• He worked at his craft for hours
• Radically simple without being simplistic
• He would take his own pains and break them open for everyone to read
• To be a saint it is to will the one thing (Kierkegaard)
• Life a trial - wanted poverty and luxury
• Devotional without being pious
• The liberals can't pious and the pious can't be liberal
• Dorothy Day and Henri Nouwen could be both
• He was a pacifist but he didn't alienate people with the language
• He was an iconoclast without being alienating
• Always left you with hope, without abandoning struggle
• Language sensitive to human weakness even as it moves us to the sublime
• Put on the big mind and believe the good news
• Metanoia is the opposite of paranoia
• Metanoia is the Greek word for 'Repent'
• There are no righteous people
• It is not a question of whether your family is dysfunctional but how much
• He is the saint for the complex
• Prior to 1970 there was no word 'spirituality'
• Struggle to get your life together
• Puberty is God's gift to drive you out of the house
• Trying to give your life away - how can I be more helpful? How can I give my life away?
• How can I live so my dying will be a gift?
• Mourn my people mourn
• Mourn for the absence of warmth
• Mourn for absence of love, the dark force of evil - cry for redemption for freedom