Month: May 2012

You can buy Bruce Bartlett’s latest book, The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform – Why We Need It and What It Will Take, here. Read him regularly at the Economix blog. Previous video of Bruce here. “Ask Anything” archive here.

Jim Pethokoukis makes the case for dismantling the biggest banks (one of Huntsman's best ideas in the primary debates): 

America doesn’t need 20 banks with combined assets equal to nearly 90 percent of the U.S. economy, or five mega-banks?—?JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs?—?with combined assets equal to almost 60 percent of national output, three times what they were in the 1990s. That amount of complexity and financial concentration?—?which has grown worse since the passage of Dodd-Frank?—?is a current and continuing threat to the health of the U.S. economy.

Now don’t blame market failure or unintended results of deregulation. Banks that big and complex and interconnected are both the unsurprising outcome of Washington’s 30-year expansion of the federal safety net and the cause of its ongoing existence. When you combine a “too big to fail” guarantee from Uncle Sam with the natural human tendency toward irrational exuberance, you have the key elements in place for another unaffordable financial crisis. 

Scheiber wonders if Romney will capitalize – and call for an end to too-big-to-fail: 

In the end, this strikes me as the kind of risk a rational candidate would take if he were the underdog, but not if he thought he was going to win. So perhaps the simplest explanation is that Romney increasingly likes his chances.

Earlier Dish on the subject here.

Here's a sane perspective from a respected legal Mormon elder:

Reverence for the United States Constitution is so great that sometimes individuals speak as if its every word and phrase had the same standing as scripture. Personally, I have never considered it necessary to defend every line of the Constitution as scriptural. For example, I find nothing scriptural in the compromise on slavery or the minimum age or years of citizenship for congressmen, senators, or the president. President J. Reuben Clark, who referred to the Constitution as “part of my religion,” ⁶ also said that it was not part of his belief or the doctrine of the Church that the Constitution was a “fully grown document.” “On the contrary,” he said, “We believe it must grow and develop to meet the changing needs of an advancing world.” ⁷

That was also the attitude of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He faulted the Constitution for not being “broad enough to cover the whole ground.” In an obvious reference to the national government’s lack of power to intervene when the state of Missouri used its militia to expel the Latter-day Saints from their lands, Joseph Smith said,

“Its sentiments are good, but it provides no means of enforcing them. … Under its provision, a man or a people who are able to protect themselves can get along well enough; but those who have the misfortune to be weak or unpopular are left to the merciless rage of popular fury.”

Smith knew whereof he spoke, of course. But it's great to have the LDS church on board with the Constitution as a living, evolving document. Does Romney believe that? Or is he an originalist? Another good question to ask him when dealing with the interaction of his religion and governance.

But then I look up a few references made in the piece to previous revelations, and it's hard to maintain a straight face. Note this from the "Revelation given to Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Kirtland, Ohio, 16 December 1833". Jesus tells Smith:

In order that all things be prepared before you, observe the commandment which I have given concerning these things. Which saith, or teacheth, to purchase all the lands with money, which can be purchased for money, in the region round about the land which I have appointed to be the land of Zion, for the beginning of the gathering of my saints; All the land which can be purchased in Jackson county, and the counties round about, and leave the residue in mine hand.

Like Matt and Trey, I love the idea of Jesus designating Jackson County, Missouri as the new Zion. But a new Zion is what America is, according to Mormons. And its Constitution was divine, because Jesus himself said so:

And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood.

Here is Jesus explaining that he was behind the Founding Fathers and the Constitution (he also took pains to deal with a minor matter in the same revelation: "And again, I say unto you, it is contrary to my commandment and my will that my servant Sidney Gilbert should sell my storehouse, which I have appointed unto my people, into the hands of mine enemies.")

Christianity in this reading becomes something that endorses limited government, separation of powers and individual liberty. It is politically indistinguishable from the United States and yet it is a universal truth. And that truth must be spread around the world. Mormonism is perhaps the perfect religion for neocons to encourage in the citizenry. It mixes patriotism, liberty and American exceptionalism with the indispensable admixture of divine blessing.

It's also, of course, a mainstream Christian heresy. But only Ross Douthat seems prepared to call it that in public.

(Painting: a Christianist – not Mormon – understanding of the fusion of Christianity and American nationalism. See it in interactive form here.)

@fakedansavage, I accept and look forward to debating you. As I said in my challenge, anytime, any place. myop.us/KFsOG8

— Brian S. Brown (@briansbrown) May 29, 2012

Dan explains the backstory:

Brian Brown, the head of the National Organization for Marriage, publicly challenged me to a debate in the wake of Bullshitgate. Brown said he would debate me "anytime, anywhere." Brown expected, no doubt, that I would pack a hall with hooting, hollering supporters of marriage equality who would boo and shout him down. (Which was probably what he was after—it would've allowed Brown to play the victim and complain about hypocritical, intolerant liberals.) Instead I invited Brown and his wife to come to dinner at my house and meet my husband and son. No booing crowd, no grandstanding. Dinner. I would have to acknowledge Brown's humanity by extending my hospitality, he would have to acknowledge mine by accepting my hospitality. … 

It looks like I'm gonna have to clear all the Catholic kitsch out of our living room and dining room—my 5' plaster Jesus, our 3' plaster Mary, all my other plaster saints, the dozens of rosaries hanging around their plaster necks, the stack of disintegrating hymnals on the mantle, etc. 

"I am a natural born citizen. My parents were American citizens. I was a citizen at birth," – George Romney, father of Mitt, in a statement from his archives. He was born in Mexico, where his family had moved to continue to practice polygamy.

A four-year old is well-tutored in the love and compassion of Jesus. Update from a reader:

The church is in Greensburg, Indiana, where Billy Lucas was bullied to death for being perceived to be gay in September 2010. It was Lucas’s suicide that led to the creation of the It Gets Better project.

But sometimes it doesn’t, I guess.

A different situation than coming out for marriage equality: eliding the distinction between "Polish death camps" and "Nazi death camps in Poland". Obviously no harm was intended by the president. But the prime minister reveals the depth of the feelings involved:

Donald Tusk underlined that when one uses the phrase "Polish death camps", it's as if “there had been no Nazis, no German responsibility, no Hitler". - That is why this reaction was instigated not so much by national pride, but by our sensitivity to such situations. The truth about the Second World War is important and must also be important for other nations - he added.

I have to say the explosive reaction to the terminology – despite the fact that Obama was honoring an anti-Nazi Pole – blindsided me. No doubt there will be a formal apology. But ginning this up into some kind of campaign attack seems silly to me. Which means Romney will probably try to exploit it.

She can get very tough on the corgies, apparently. But she doesn't text:

Waldman's take:

At the moment, there remains a strong incentive to support the status quo, lest you be targeted in your next race as some kind of hippie-lover. The incentives on the other side, on the other hand, are almost nil. When was the last time somebody lost a race for being too tough on drugs? The half of Americans who favor marijuana legalization are not an organized voting bloc that gets together to punish its opponents at the polls.

Its private funding has collapsed by a half after its ad campaign equating climate change activists with the Unabomber.