There be wild things

It is wild out there. In the USA I mean. Things are “different,” for sure. Better or worse? Different.

The President’s has appointed various czars. He is not the first to do so. A “czar” is an appointed, not elected, “official.” Unlike Cabinet secretaries, also appointed, the czars are subject to no approval by Congress and no oversight other than the President’s. One of Obama’s czars recently ran afoul when his past was unpacked by the press: he had made many radical statements, some anti-American and pro-Communist etc. He is gone.

One of the czars is the “Pay Czar.” His” job?” To determine salary levels and the like. Acccording to what? Who knows?

Today it has been announced that Ken Lewis, CEA of Bank of America, has “been ordered” to turn back all salary he has so far received for 2009 and to receive no bonuses for the year as contracted for. Who has the power to issue such an order in a free society? The Pay Czar!!!!!

It is wild out there. It is different.

The US Chamber of Commerce is launching a $25 million ad campaign to “defend capitalism” and the private sector. In the USA!

It is wild out there. It is different.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to seeing the kids’ movie, Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak, the author of the original book bad a great philosophy which disturbed parents who naively assume life can be and should be sugar-coated. He exposed “the dark side” of childhood and life. Such recognition, of course, is the only way to soar above it and triumph as a mature human being. Sugar-coating is both pretense and self-defeating.

There are wild things out there.

I do not pretend to know the intimate details of the BOA dealings at the time of the Merrill Lynch take-over, nor exactly the terms upon which bail-out money was given to banks a while back. But, it would be ‘wild” if it included a written agreement that the Pay Czar could decree that a man, charged with no crimes, had to work a year for nothing! Lewis was due to receive, I understand $53 million, in retirement money. That is certainly a load of dough and seems “unfair” with so many unemployed around. But, is this what the “free society” has come to? That the government can post facto take away what you have been given already? Who’s next? What salary level is to be deemed unfair?

Prophetic faith can cry out about injustice; can lambast “those who eat my people like they eat bread” and the like; dressed in “finery” while others wander in rags. Prophetic faith can and must and, perhaps, all too rarely does. But know this:

In the Bible prophetic faith speaks most often, most directly, most bluntly, and with its clearest pronouncements of doom, to those who abuse political power.