I Don't Believe in Miracles

Nobel Laureate and one of a very few people who “get it” (or tell the truth) anymore, Paul Krugman, wrote an excellent piece the other day in the NYT debunking the myth of the “Texas Miracle” that has supposedly happened under Governor Rick / General Robert E. Perry. It’s great piece and although it doesn’t go far enough (to use one of his own famous critiques) I recommend that everyone read it, just I as Recommend reading pretty much ANYTHNG this man writes. (Barry? Are you listening?)

And last night the Gym some ass-hat two machines down from me not only had Fox News On, but had it turned UP. (Usually the TV's are muted and just show subtitles.) So I got to listen to a marvelously fact-free response from the four members of the Fox Panel who HAVE NOT won Nobel Prizes in Economics. Devoid of rational response, or evidence to support their so called “miracle,” they report to calling [Krugman's analysis] the “Alien Invasion” theory suggesting either that Krugman credits illegal immigration ALONE for ALL of Texas’ growth, or that he was suggesting that little green men, perhaps from Mars, were somehow to thank. And of course, the average Fox viewer is more likely to hear that explanation and think, “Wow, that Krugman sure is a nut!” rather than, “Wow, these Fox peoples sure are stupid!” Because remember:

A LIBERAL WILL TELL YOU WHY YOUR ARGUMENT IS WRONG.


A CONSERVATIVE WILL TELL YOU WHY YOUR ARGUMENT IS LIBERAL.

(As an aside, between how pissed off I was getting listening to Fox and the Trainer playing the Greatest Hits of the Rocky movies with one his clients, I did have a really good workout!)

(Another aside - I couldn't find a transcript of the Fox segment, but while looking for one, I found almost the next best thing: This Idiot's Blog.  Check it out, although preferably not right after you've eaten! We got a future Hall of Shamer here, for sure. I'm curious to see if he has the balls to let my comments post(he did! good on him!), and the chops to respond to them. Or come here! If he does, who knows? It might get interesting.)

Well, anyway, I’m all for debunking “Miracles” as anyone who understands my Humanist and Skeptical Philosophy already knows. And I heard an EXCELLENT story on NPR this morning that started where Krugman left off and ran with it, showing even more reasons why the “Texas Miracle” is unlikely to apply to the broader economy. You can find a transcript and audio HERE, but here are some of the highlights:

1) Population Growth: Texas has had an influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal, yes, but also many people moving there from other States. And, as Mister Krugman pointed out, it’s not like EVERY STATE’S population can grow based on people moving there from OTHER STATES. So, either it IS (or will have to be) an actual “Alien Invasion,” as Fox sarcastically put it, or it won’t work. Nice work there, Fox.

2) Public Sector growth has been every bit as robust as Private Sector growth. Liberals would be neither surprised nor bothered by this, but remember: He’s promising small Government. Apparently what’s been good for Texas will NOT in fact be good for the rest of the Country – at least according to him and his Tea-Backers.

3) The overwhelming majority of the private sector jobs have paid minimum-wage or less. Governor Perry, please, despite what your Tea-Backer and Supply-Side buddies will tell you, we don’t just want jobs. We want GOOD PAYING JOBS. Filling the economy with part-time, minimum wage jobs (or worse) is NOT what we’re looking for!

4) Despite all that Public Sector Growth – that the Right isn’t even prescribing? Texas ranks 49th in per pupil public school spending, and 50th – tied with Mississ-fucking-ssippi (or as my father-in-law calls it: The states that keep West Virginia from being LAST in anything) in the percentage of adults that go without health insurance.

5) Texas residence still go without many of the services that residents of every other state enjoy. Remember folks, because this is his recipe for success: Sub-Minimum Wage Jobs, and no Public Services. THAT’s the Texas “Miracle.”

6) Perry's “Enterprise Fund,” which gives taxpayer money to companies to come to, or expand in, Texas. *ugh* OK, putting aside that this is little more than Rick Perry giving tax-payer money to the company’s that back his campaign (alone enough to warrant his removal from office) this might sound a bit familiar. In one of the rare instance in which I agree with the tea-baggers, another word for this is… duh-dah-daaaaaah: STIMULUS. (You know: That thing they want to GET RID OF so we can have MORE JOBS?) (Idiots.) And in one of those rare instances that I agree with Rick Perry, depending on how this is administered this can be a good thing. Of course, I’d prefer public works projects to strait corporate giveaways, but, in a rare instance where Paul Krugman and Rick Perry would agree, the economic effect is largely the same: IT CREATES JOBS. But, of course, this will likely be off the table when it comes to the rest of the country.  The Tea Party Republican Retards have no intention of spending any money to fix anything. (At least, not while Obama's in office.)

And finally, the one that PISSES ME OFF THE MOST…

7) What kind of companies thrive in Texas? What are the biggest employers there, the ones driving most of that jobs growth? Well… Enron, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Marathon Oil, Shell Oil, Texaco… You see the pattern yet? Mostly Oil Companies and other Energy Companies. And those guys have been doing great while the rest of the country’s economy remains in the shitter. Why? BOWEL-BASHINGLY HIGH GAS PRICES, THAT’S HOW!!!! These companies have made it their business model to siphon off as much of the rest of country's growth as possible! Well… OK… I’ll say potential growth, because with these greedy little fuckwads operating the way they do, they rest of the country will basically NEVER GROW AGAIN. Does that sound alarmist? Think about it. Since ~2005 or thereabouts (I've noticed it pretty clearly since the days after Hurricane Katrina) the pattern has gone in lockstep perfection:

1: Gas prices go up =>the economy slows.

2: Slow economy => no jobs => less demand => gas prices drop.

3: Low gas prices mean people have more money, as they are no longer being strangled by the oil companies. (Thank you, Mister Keyenes!)

4: More money => more demand => economy starts to improve.

5: Economy improves, demand goes up => GAS PRICES GO UP.

6: GOTO 1

And it doesn’t make a difference whether the oil is foreign or not. (Shell is a Dutch company. They still employ a lot of Texan-Americans.) The problem is that oil and gas (energy) prices will ALWAYS act as drag on the economy. They will ALWAYS be a negatively correlated indicator. Until we break their stranglehold we will not be able to escape this pattern. It’s like a tax on the rest of the economy, but one who’s rate actually goes up to the point that it kills growth as soon as there IS any. And nowhere has this kick-in-the-balls been more evident than in my home state of Michigan. High gas prices killed the SUV. That’s great for the environment, don’t get me wrong. It needed to happen, and it was inevitable that big-Auto would need to transition off of them. But the gas prices have gone back down since then! They slowed the economy and were really what kicked off the mortgage crisis. (Not the kindling, of course, just the spark.) And the two brought the Big Three automakers to the brink of bankruptcy. And we haven’t had a robust recovery – because the Republicans and big oil won’t LTE US!

Nice going.

Oh yeah… and as for the whole Low-Tax, low Regulation business environment?

8) Texas job growth has not kept pace with its population growth: They have higher unemployment that the high-tax, highly regulated, robust public service providing states of New York and Massachusetts. (You remember Massachusetts, right? The state with near-universal health care coverage, compared to Texas’ rank of dead last?)

So THAT’S his recipe folks:

• Shitty, Low paying jobs

• No public services

• Little to no health insurance

• Underfunded schools

• High gas prices

You know what? If THAT shit works? I just might start believing in “miracles!”

In defense of secular humanism. (not really)

NOTE:  I wrote this earlier today.  I stand by the overall point, but I was in a pretty pissy mood at the time and it comes through in the tone.  Even so, I don't plan on changing it.  So... "Bitter Rant Warning" I guess.

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I’m getting a little tired of hearing about miracles lately. And I’d like to share two particularly egregious uses of this term lately that really irked me in this regard.

The first one was a story that we heard this past weekend. We were hanging around with some conservative, religious friends of ours. (Nothing extreme mind you, they’re good people and a great family with wonderful kids – just decidedly conservative and definitely religious.) ANYWAY, they were telling us a story about a friend of theirs who’s child recently had a heart transplant. Now, we’re talking about a YOUNG CHILD here – 8 or 9 years old? He’s on their son’s baseball team. Last year he couldn’t even run the bases due to his heart problems. (They let him hit, but let someone else pinch run for him.) And just recently, after the transplant, and after the recovery, etc… he hits a home run and runs the bases by himself.

Now is that an AMAZING STORY? Yes. MOVING? Yes. Bring a grown man to tears? YES. And this kid met Tiger infielder Brandon Inge while he in the hospital, and Inge, after hitting a home run himself in a game for the kid himself, WAS brought to tears in the dugout. So it DID, in fact, bring a grown man to tears! Hey: It’s a truly inspiration story! To go from planning the kid’s funeral arrangements to watching him hit a home run a run the bases and living a good, strong, healthy life? It’s amazing. I’m still floored by it, even as I write this. But something she said has stuck in my craw every since: “You just don’t see miracles all that often.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve said many times that I respect people’s faith and this time was no different. I have no problem with people having FAITH, but in saying this was a MIRACLE, she was effectively crediting God with his survival. But the REAL reason this child is alive today is because DOCTORS went to school, DOCTORS learned how to perform this procedure, DOCTORS did research to develop the procedure, PATIENTS died when the procedure was still in it’s infancy… What I’m saying is, that MANY, MANY people hade HUGE sacrifices of their time, their money, their talent and in some case their very lives, in order to make this moment possible. That this child was even alive, let alone thriving, was an amazing HUMAN accomplishment. So please pardon me if I’m not bending over backwards to thank God for it. The only hand that God played, if any, was in giving that poor kid a bum ticker in the first place. If anything, HUMANS intervened to either defy God’s conscious will, or else fix what he failed to get right. To “thank god for the miracle” is to dismiss all the WORK and SACRIFICE that so many HUMANS did to make it happen.

Now… you might think that I’d be more accepting of the invocation of the word “miracle” as it relates to THIS STORY, about an 11 year old girl with Asberger’s Syndrome, lost for 4 days in a snake infested Florida swamp being found and rescued alive and well, save for some scratches and bug bites. And it was just dumb luck that the guy who found her even did so! So that was LUCKY. And it was LUCKY she wasn’t bitten by a snake. And it was LUCKY that she wasn’t eaten by an alligator. And it was LUCKY she didn’t fall and break her leg, or hit her head, or drown. And in [Obi-Wan’s] experience: There’s no such thing as LUCK. So why can’t I concede this one? With all that LUCK (or random chance working out in her favor) leading to her survival, why can’t I concede that God intervened? Why can’t I call this a MIRACLE?

Simple. Because in doing so I would have to conclude that God is evil.

How do I reach that judgment? Simple. Where was God a few months ago in Haiti? Where was God every time a child DOESN’T survive something? Where was God when my children were born with Autism? Where is God when all these children die as their idiot parents try PRAYING and FAITH HEALING in rejection of MODERN MEDICINE? Where was God back when our species’ infant mortality rate was 50% in the first year of life? Where was God’s guidance when the Church was deciding what to do with pedophile Priests? Where was God when my Grandfather died of esophageal cancer six months after retired, after busting his ass his whole life to provide for his family? Where was God two years ago when my very dear friend – a regular churchgoer, I might add - from a brain tumor? If that’s God’s work? FUCK God.

To credit God with ACTING in any one case, is to say the he consciously chose not to act in every other case. And if we accept this, I would find it very odd that God seems to favor us more and more as a species as MEDICAL SCIENCE improves, even as we become LESS RELIGIOUS. Does God just like babies more now than he did a century ago? Is a 0.1% (or whatever it is now) infant mortality rate do to GOD’S work – or HUMANITY’S? (I think the answer is there is obvious, and I’m going to punch you if you conclude otherwise!) Not only does God show seem to favor us more and more (sarcasm) as medical science improves, but he even seems to favor CONUTRIES these days that do more medical research, regardless of their native religion or level of belief. One’s faith, one’s religion, has nothing to do with it. Antibiotics don’t wok any better or any worse in Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindu’s, Buddhists or Atheists. And no group is any more or less likely to get a disease or survive a disaster. The only factors than make any difference all – modern infrastructure, medical science, civilized society, etc… – are all the result of purely HUMAN endeavor.

And what’s more, I see this all as a SERIOUS indictment of intelligent design as well. As I look around, as I learn (and realize) more about how both our species and our societies evolved, I can not help but reach the conclusion that this DID in fact all come about randomly. I can see and accept NO OTHER explanation. Between all the things that go wrong with our bodies and minds in terms of disease, all the peril we face from the natural world, and how we destroy each other with war and poison each other with pollution… I’m sorry but this is just not the work of an INTELLIGENT designer.

The “I” in ID, if anything, stands for INCOMPETENT.

If there IS a God, or some other form of DESIGNER, either he’s stupid, or he’s evil. No one would deliberately design such a weak, vulnerable, irrational species like ours, and put it a world as fraught with danger as this one, unless they were either C-Students, or Psychopaths.

And THAT’S why the above examples aren’t miracles. These kids didn’t survive BECAUSE of God’s work. If he’s up there at all, they survived despite his capriciousness and/or incompetence. (Evil or Stupid – take your pick.) Believing otherwise is no more than a comfortable delusion that dismisses the work of the flech and blood HUMAN BEINGS that REALLY made these “miracles” happen.