In this Issue:

I Support the President – Commentary by Rev. Michael S. Piazza
Monday Night Mixer: February 12 at Metro Grill
What the President Got Right: Give Bush credit for his energy proposal
Join H4PJ Today and Receive a Free Copy of The Real antiChrist
Bush Library Threatens City’s Reputation and Safety: New H4PJ Campaign
The George W. Bush Library: Scholarly Mecca or $500 Million Oxymoron?

Commentary: I Support the President
by Rev. Michael S. Piazza

Hope for Peace & Justice recently joined a coalition of faculty and staff from Southern Methodist University and a group of United Methodist clergy to oppose the George W. Bush Presidential library being located in Dallas (www.StoptheLibrary.com). With Mr. Bush’s approval rating at record lows, I have to admit that it feels a bit like “piling on.” Still, it would kill me to see a city that we have worked so hard to transform be stigmatized as the official home of this presidency and the seat of his proposed $500 million think-tank. So, perhaps to ease my own conscience, I have been looking for something nice to say about the President, and I discovered that I actually agree with him.

There, I said it, and my nose didn’t grow. It is true. While Mr. Bush was deservedly panned for a staggeringly hollow State of the Union message, there were a couple of items that should have caught our attention and won our support. For one thing, he actually used the phrase “climate change” and called us to do something about it. I was beginning to wonder what world the conservatives were living in. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe has made it an embarrassing tenant of his faith that global warming is a fraud and succeeded in keeping most of his party toeing that line. Mr. Bush is to be congratulated for making the break to return to reality. Perhaps he realized that, someday, his daughters might have children and he wants his grandchildren actually to be able to breathe. Or perhaps he realized that he will soon be returning to live in Dallas, where the air is hazardous to breathe a good portion of the year. Whatever his motive, he deserves our gratitude.

The other issue we should be rallying to support him for is his call to raise the required fuel economy for cars, trucks and SUVs. While his actual proposal of a four percent per year increase seems very small, the cumulative effect could be tremendous over the course of 10 years. This would mean that a car that averages 21 mpg would have to average 31 in 10 years. With millions of vehicles on the road, this would result in a dramatic drop in oil consumption. While woefully inadequate as an energy policy or as a plan to reduce oil dependency, it is still a good idea and a step in the right direction.

Let’s support the President and pressure congress to pass clean, clear, simple legislation that requires automobile makers to do exactly what the president suggested.

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Monday Night Mixer Announced
Monday Night with Mike
Dallas Mixer February 12
5-7pm | Metro Grill

Our next “Monday Night with Mike” will be February 12 at Metro Grill, located at 4425 N Central Expressway; Dallas, TX 75205; just south of Knox-Henderson streets. The event will begin at 5 p.m. and last until around 7 p.m. Michael Piazza will be there to discuss his book and upcoming H4PJ events. There will be a cash bar at happy hour pricing.

Monday Night with Mike is a free event, to which everyone is invited! This is a great way to meet other people who are passionate about peace and justice issues, and an excellent opportunity to introduce your friends to the work that we are doing. Rev. Michael Piazza, President of Hope for Peace & Justice, will speak about current issues and give an update about the tour promoting his new book, The Real antiChrist. We will have copies for sale and Rev. Piazza will be available to sign copies. Please mark your calendar for this special event. Invite your friends and family and then stay for dinner to brainstorm what you can do to work for peace and justice.

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What the President Got Right
Give Bush credit for his energy proposal
By Gregg Easterbrook
Originally Published by Slate.com

It "fell far short" (Washington Post editorial) and offers only "marginal" gains (New York Times editorial) and is "nonsense" (Charles Krauthammer) and "isn't much" (Thomas Friedman). All these are descriptions of the energy policy proposal in George W. Bush's State of the Union address last week. They don't match the plan itself.

Last week Bush proposed something environmentalists, energy analysts, greenhouse-effect researchers, and national-security experts have spent 20 years pleading for: a major strengthening of federal mileage standards for cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks. The No. 1 failing of U.S. energy policy is that vehicle mile-per-gallon standards have not been made stricter in two decades. Nothing the United States can do in energy policy is more important than an mpg increase. Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and, until last week, George W. Bush had all refused to face the issue of America's low-mpg vehicles, which are the root of U.S. dependency on Persian Gulf oil and a prime factor in rising U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. But now Bush favors a radical strengthening of federal mileage rules, and last week to boot became the first Republican president since Gerald Ford to embrace the basic concept of federal mileage regulation (called the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard).

This should have been Page One headline material—PRESIDENT CALLS FOR DRAMATIC MPG REGULATIONS. Instead, most news organizations pretended Bush's mpg proposal did not exist, or buried the story inside the paper, or made only cryptic references to it. In his 2006 State of the Union address, when Bush said America was "addicted to oil" but proposed no mpg improvements, critics rightly pummeled the president. Now Bush has backed the needed reform, and the development is being downplayed or even ridiculed.

What's going on? First, mainstream news organizations and pundits are bought and sold on a narrative of Bush as an environmental villain and simply refuse to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts the thesis. During his term the president has significantly strengthened the Clean Air Act to reduce air pollution caused by diesel fuel and diesel engines, to reduce emissions from Midwestern power plants, to reduce pollution from construction equipment and railroad locomotives, and to reduce emissions of methane, which is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. You'd never know these reforms even happened from the front page of the New York Times, which for reasons of ideology either significantly downplays or fails to report them. Second, with the war in Iraq appearing a fiasco of the first magnitude, editors and pundits feel Bush must be ridiculed on all scores—even when he offers intelligent, progressive proposals. This is mendacious; it also backfires, since mocking everything the president says reduces the impact of objections specific to his foreign policy.

Click here to continue reading

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The Real antiChrist: How America Sold Its Soul Join H4PJ and Receive a Free Copy! Bishop John Shelby Spong calls The Real antiChrist, “A searing indictment of popular Christianity by a passionate Christian.” When you sign up to support H4PJ on a monthly basis, we will send you a free copy of Rev. Piazza’s new book. Click here to sign up today! Since September 11, 2001, the Religious Right has used fear to manipulate America. It has used 19 terrorists to make us so afraid that we are willing to abandon our values and do things that are virulently anti-American and un-Christian. The sale of millions of books in the Left Behind series, which portrays the Religious Right’s apocalyptic vision, is just one example of how fear-based religion is foundational to what is going on in this country. That demon has to be named and called out if we are to be free of it.

Bush Library Threatens City’s Reputation and Safety
Stopthelibrary.com to ask city councils to take a stand

Last week, Hope for Peace & Justice (H4PJ), a faith-based social justice organization, launched a petition drive to stop the George W. Bush Presidential Library and political think-tank from being built at Southern Methodist University (SMU) due to concerns about the safety of local residents and the reputation of Dallas.

“The Bush Library will no doubt be a target for terrorists,” said Rev. Michael Piazza, President of Hope for Peace & Justice. “The library will be a symbolic target and local residents need to be aware of the consequences of building the Bush Library at SMU.”

Many have also raised questions on building the infrastructure to handle the hundreds of thousands of potential visitors which will need additional roads and lanes of traffic built along US 75 and Mockingbird Lane.

Rev. Piazza sent letters to the mayors and councilors for the three area cities of Dallas, Highland Park and University Park. The letter, available online, encourages city leaders to pass a resolution against the Bush Library, citing the above reasons.

At stopthelibrary.com, people can sign a petition that will be delivered to the mayors and city councils of Dallas, Highland Park and University Park. Petitions gathered on the website will also be delivered to Gerald Turner, President of SMU, and the Board of Trustees.

“Dallas has worked for decades to escape the reputation as the ‘City that killed Kennedy,’” said Rev. Michael Piazza, President of Hope for Peace & Justice. “We do not need to return to that right-wing reputation. Playing host to Mr. Bush’s well funded neo-conservative think-tank will taint our reputation indelibly. Residents need to guard their reputation and say, ‘No thank you Mr. President.’”

Stopthelibrary.com represents a non-partisan coalition of organizations, SMU faculty and residents seeking to bring awareness to the consequences of building the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas.

People concerned about the consequences the Bush library might have on the region are encouraged to go to www.stopthelibrary.com for more information and to sign the petition.

Hope for Peace & Justice (www.h4pj.org), based in Dallas, Texas is equipping progressive people of faith to be champions for peace and justice. Through grassroots efforts, Hope for Peace & Justice seeks to give voice to principles such as the creation of a culture of peace rather than war, equal rights for all people not just the majority, and education as a means of societal transformation rather than economic separation.

Related Links

Stopthelibrary.com
Sign the Petition

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The George W. Bush Library:
Scholarly Mecca or $500 Million Oxymoron?
By DOROTHY SAMUELS
Originally Published by the New York Times

The news reports that President Bush’s representatives seem to be closing in on a deal to put a half-billion-dollar presidential library and policy institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas has inspired the predictable lame jokes and references to “The Pet Goat.”

But the project raises issues that are no laughing matter, touching on the writing of history, the university’s scholarly mission, governmental integrity and the rule of law.

S.M.U.’s negotiations regarding Mr. Bush’s library are bound to have a large public impact, which is why I’m hoping that the university’s president, R. Gerald Turner, and members of his board of trustees (presuming Laura Bush, the best-known trustee, has removed herself from the deliberations) can be persuaded to withhold a final go-ahead unless two basic conditions are met.

First, the university should insist that Mr. Bush rescind Executive Order 13233, his 2001 directive that reverses — illegally in the view of many leading historians, journalists and legal thinkers — the strong presumption of a public right of access to presidential papers embedded in the 1978 Presidential Records Act.

Under this early exertion of presidential power, both sitting presidents and former presidents (and even their heirs) can indefinitely postpone public release of sensitive material past the law’s usual 12-year waiting period by simply denying a request for access. No explanation is required, and there is no provision for appealing the denial to a trained professional archivist.

Instead, the executive order requires the person requesting the material to begin a costly and time-consuming lawsuit challenging the stonewalling. It’s a formula for keeping embarrassing facts secret in perpetuity and for thwarting a full and accurate accounting of a president’s time in office, which, presumably, was among S.M.U.’s prime goals in seeking to be home to the new presidential edifice, along with enhancing the university’s visibility, prestige and available financial resources.

Mr. Turner told concerned faculty members that the new library would house “a treasure trove of documents and artifacts that describe one of the most intense and controversial periods in our history.” For a university interested in promoting historical research and open inquiry, especially one located in the president’s home state, it’s undoubtedly a mighty tempting prize. But that is all the more reason Mr. Turner and the trustees owe a duty to act decisively to protect the university’s reputation, the public’s right to know and history itself from Executive Order 13233, and Mr. Bush’s ignominious penchant for excessive secrecy.

Second, there is the pesky issue of fund-raising. Following the corruptive path blazed by White House predecessors, Mr. Bush and members of his library committee apparently plan to spend the administration’s remaining days trying to coax huge contributions to the budding library complex from friends and well-heeled special interests. Under present law, the identity of presidential library donors, and the amounts they contribute, need not be disclosed. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, supports legislation to change that, but its timing and fate remain unclear. Meanwhile, S.M.U. officials have an opportunity to advance government integrity, and avoid entangling the university in potentially compromising secret fund-raising, by insisting on disclosure.

Dozens of theologians and S.M.U. faculty members have objected to locating Mr. Bush’s library and institute at the university, saying among other things that his awful record on civil liberties, the war in Iraq and the abuse of prisoners should preclude any university affiliation. They have it wrong. But so do those who would minimize the university’s duty for making sure the highest standards of scholarship, openness and ethics govern the entire enterprise.

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