What does it cost to get $2.4 billion in unemployment benefits extension?
President Obama is scheduled today to put his signature to HR 3548, the unemployment extension bill that’s been struggling to make its way out of Congress for over a month. Thousands of unemployed Americans will applaud this move by Congress and the White House. Despite the protracted process of getting the bill through the Senate after an initial version was passed in the House, this is much-needed legislation that will help unemployed Americans whose benefits have or will run out in all 50 states.
***Also included in this bill is an extension of the homebuyer tax credit to April 2010. The bill totals $24 billion in economic stimulus through these programs.
The House voted 403-12 today to approve Senate amendments to H.R. 3548, the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009, and sent the measure to
President Obama for his signature. The bill extends unemployment insurance benefits but also includes a provision added in the Senate that will expand businesses` ability to “carry back” net operating losses suffered during the current recession in order to claim a refund from taxes paid in previous years.
You see- you aren’t allowed to just pass a bill extending unemployment benefits at the cost of $2.4 billion dollars, because that would be socialism. It takes another $21.6 billion to grease the palms of the people who own the “moderates” and the “fiscal conservatives,” and once you get the cost up to $24 billion, you have achieved “capitalism.”
Please tell me I am interpreting this wrong. I would love to be wrong about this. I really would. I’m sure no bad can come from artificially propping up the housing market with tax credits.
Tim H
Retroactive tax cuts for corporations. A Blue Dog wet dream.
MBSS
10 billion is a late fee because congress forgot to return “North Shore” to the video store in the 80’s. this is an unfortunate aspect of governing. also, 200 bucks is for a joementum pizza party which no one attended except for mccain. talk about governmental waste. they threw away half the pies, and only ate half of the canadian bacon and metamucil one.
Jesse
I share your bleak sentiment over the past couple of days, John. Truly depressing times.
burnspbesq
Chill, y’all. Extending the NOL carryback period is something that has been done in every recession since I started practicing tax law. It’s a basic part of the recession-fighter’s toolkit. It puts money in the hands of businesses, large and small, that will spend it. And changing the carryback period is just a timing issue; losses that can’t be carried back to generate refunds will be carried forward and deducted against future income.
It should have been part of the original stimulus package.
Little Dreamer
Spending is only bad when it’s not completely ruinous. If we don’t keep adding water to Grover Norquist’s bathtub, how in the hell can America ever drown?
PeakVT
It seems like every time I turn around Congress is extending the carry-back tax provision. It must cover everything back to the founding of the East India Trading Company by now.
pablo
Reality Bites! Sweet Jesus,
Help Me Keep My Job
in the 21st Century!
burnspbesq
@PeakVT:
Actually, no. It only goes back as far as the construction of the Erie Canal.
burnspbesq
@Little Dreamer:
I just want to make sure there is enough water in Grover Norquist’s bathtub to drown Grover Norquist.
HRA
@pablo:
Great site! Passing this on.
Alan
IIRC, didn’t the $700 billion TARP bill cost an additional $150 billion to get passed after McCain postponed his campaign to energize the “fiscal conservatives” to vote against the first bill?
Imagine a world without these “fiscal conservatives” ….
dhd
Although 8 years of Bushonomics have made me very cynical about tax-credit stimulus programs, I actually think the first-time homebuyer tax credit is pretty effective. The net effect it has on house prices is, as you’d expect, less than the amount of the tax credit itself, so it’s not exactly propping up unsustainable prices, particularly in markets where your typical first-time homebuyer is paying upwards of $200k.
What it is doing is convincing people to buy houses who would otherwise be inclined to stay out of the market until well after the point it has completely collapsed – in other words it is softening the landing of the housing market. Also, it has a sustained stimulus effect, since it is keeping real estate agents solvent in the short term, then pumping a bunch of cash back into the economy (most likely in the form of home improvements…) once tax day rolls around.
Personally I would have added some extra conditions to it, like having it apply to existing homes only, financing through credit unions or community banks, and having the tax credit itself go towards rehab and green renovation, but… at least it’s not going straight to Goldman Sachs…
Leelee for Obama
@burnspbesq: is there any way, at all, that financial finagling can be made any more confusing or opaque? Seriously-if this is how things get done, it’s a wonder we have have anyone who can do taxes at all without a degree from MIT.
JMG
Realtors write big checks to Congressional candidates. The end.
There isn’t an economist of any ideology who thinks the housing tax credit works on any level.
MBSS
couldn’t grover just take a shower instead?
Reverend Ruppert
The housing bubble didn’t pop, it just deflated a little. Solution? More air.
And of course, this couldn’t possibly affect any other segment of the economy. Also, too, subsequently.
Brick Oven Bill
This is a good observation, and another example of why charity is superior to government re-distribution of wealth.
The current system is actually worse than represented. Of that $2.4 billion in unemployment funding, probably half will make it into the hands of the unemployed. Take a look at the federal pay scales ($78,000 median, plus gravy benefits, I recall), and the fancy buildings in Washington DC, for a hint at where the other half ends up.
Observe the new cars in government parking lots.
If a worthy person needs $5, I can give him $5, and it costs me $5. It does not cost me:
$5 times ($24 billion / $2.4 billion) divided by (0.5) = $100.
The cost of $5 to me is less than the cost of $100 to me. Thus charity is superior to government.
MBSS
the math is not debatable. BoB has won teh internets.
Tim in Wisconsin
As a renter, I’m sick and tired of subsidizing home ownership. From mortage interest deductions to state property tax deductions to homestead credits, the economics of home ownership pretty much depend on renters providing cash to homeowners in the form of tax credits.
In my market, the $8000 first time buyer credit actually slightly increased the price of starter homes. One still had to get a mortgage for the whole price even though they were getting 8k in equity from the feds. We tried to get a mortgage of course (it’d be crazy not to) but apparently grad school income doens’t count as real income, so according to them our household income is $0 per year. Kind of hard to get a loan with that salary.
burnspbesq
@Leelee for Obama:
Oh, heck yeah, Congress could make it more complicated. Let’s bring back the investment tax credit, for one. Or let’s play with Code Sections 411 and 412 in an effort to get more employers to sponsor old-school defined-benefit pension plans.
Stop me whenever you want – I can keep going like this for a looooooong time.
Seriously, though, the fundamental problem with tax complexity – and we all know this on some level – is that there are two ways for Congress to divert money from the Treasury to its pet sectors of the economy. One is to write checks (grant subsidies), and the other is to provide tax benefits. Guess which one is less transparent? Yup, good guess.
And this isn’t likely to ever change, because if you really get hardcore about eliminating what tax policy geeks refer to as “tax expenditures,” you run smack into political reality, because the three biggest tax expenditures are the home mortgage interest deduction, the deduction for charitable contributions, and the deductions for employer contributions to retirement plans and health insurance.
Sucks, but there it is.
Zzyzx
Why I both love and hate living in WA. Jim McDermott is coming up in a list of names of Democrats who oppose the health care bill. That stuns me – he voted against the Iraq War for pete’s sake – but this was the first time I got to vote my representative and demand a vote; he usually already agrees with me. Maybe this is a purism thing.
So I call and after I talk to his receptionist she immediately says, “He will be voting for the bill.” So yay for my guy doing the right thing but where’s the fun if you can’t at least threaten first?
Michael
Hey, will everybody who knows anybody who might be going off his nut let me know? If they’re going to take out bunches of people, I want to buy them plane tickets and reserve their hotel space at CPAC; or make sure they have cab fare to take them to oil boardrooms in Dallas and Houston; or make sure they’ve got subway fare to Wall Street……
slippy
@MBSS: Couldn’t Grover just fuck himself off into outer space?
parksideq
Next congressperson to claim that they’re a “fiscal conservative” gets punched in the neck. Please FSM, let it be John Boehner (though he deserves to get punched just for always having a smarmy asshole look on his face 24/7).
MBSS
in space no one can hear you scream.
bemused
OT but something amusing just now in the House debate on cspan. Rep Louise Slaughter slipped & pronounced John Boehner’s name “Boner”.
Leelee for Obama
@burnspbesq: This is why I’m not an accountant, or much of a mathematician. I see your point though, it’s gonna happen, regardless, so I’ll just grumble quietly.
Chad N Freude
@Leelee for Obama: I have a degree from MIT, and I have some difficulty with TurboTax.
Raenelle
Capitalism IS the social means of production and individual ownership. And those elements ultimately contradict each other–as we’ve seen again and again and again and again. Marx was right about that. The only question worth debating is whether he was also right about democracy, that’s it’s powerless to reform that system.
Chad N Freude
If you cut through Grover Norquist’s skin, you find lizard skin.
Leelee for Obama
@Chad N Freude: That’s the most damning aspect of how convoluted this kind of thing is. Is it just a way to make sure tax preparers and software manufacturers have a market? Seriously.
Grumbling in the corner, I am.
mogden
Both are lousy policies. But who cares! We’re fiscally insane, and we’re partying now and damn the hangover!
burnspbesq
@Leelee for Obama:
Perhaps this will help take your mind off it. I needed a jolt to get my ass in gear this morning, and this seems to be working nicely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnwCiR9igBk&feature=related
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Tax lawyer?
Omnes Omnibus
@Chad N Freude: … and if you cut through the lizard skin, you find slime mold. No offense to perfectly respectable slime mold intended.
Chad N Freude
@Leelee for Obama: As burnspbesq has pointed out, the tax code moves only in the direction of increased complexity.
asiangrrlMN
Just fuck me with a rusty pitchfork an eleventykajillion ways of Sunday and be done with it. I can’t handle being cut to death by a hundred bamillion paper cuts.
Omnes Omnibus
@asiangrrlMN: Have a cookie, you’ll feel better.
Chad N Freude
@asiangrrlMN: Shouldn’t that be “a hundred Obamillion paper cuts”?
Leelee for Obama
@burnspbesq: That was cool! Thanks!
@Chad N Freude: And ain’t that ever the truth!
@asiangrrlMN: Have 2 cookies, and a glass of sherry. Then, you’ll definitely feel better. No sense taking chances.
arguingwithsignposts
before I read through the comments on this thread, I just want to point out that the “$” means dollars, so “$2.4 billion dollars” is redundant.
Leelee for Obama
@arguingwithsignposts: Noted. Redundancy is redundant. It’s a government conspiracy to wear us down, to nubs. But, I’m not bitter, much.
BTW-how the hell are you?
Alan
Tacking on all the additional spending for “fiscal conservatism’s” sake pales in comparison to the “doom loop” our leaders are doing their best to ignore.
Chad N Freude
@arguingwithsignposts: Are you challenging me for the position of BJ Supreme Pedant?
Jack
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/11/actually_existing_capitalism_i.html
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/guest-post-capitalism-socialism-or-fascism.html
Without commentary or comment.
asiangrrlMN
@Omnes Omnibus: Had one. Need another.
@Chad N Freude: Bwahahahahahahaha! Fucking hilarious.
@Leelee for Obama: Bourbon. Definitely a bourbon kinda day.
arguing, good to see you, Mr. Pedant.
arguingwithsignposts
@Leelee for Obama:
I’m up and down like a pinball at the moment. One weekend not traveling and I’m trying to stay upbeat, but that’s a challenge.
@Chad N Freude: It’s on, CNF! :)
Zzyzx
Put on CSPAN. This is insane. The Republicans are trying to shout down the debate.
Leelee for Obama
@Alan: That was a major buzz-kill, Alan. Not a surprise, really, just there in b & w, for all of us to get a clench from.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: Shouldn’t that be “it’s on like Donkey Kong?”
Omnes Omnibus
@Zzyzx: That gives me confidence that the bill will pass.
Brian J
I’ve read that it mostly affects people who were going to buy houses anyway and simply changes the date of their planned purchase. It also supposedly delays any necessary correction in the housing market.
Bill H
@dhd:
Friend of mine in San Diego, realtor for the past 20+ years, tells me that four of his last five sales the $8000 tax credit has been used as the only down payment. House has therefor been bought with zero actual down payment. His experience tells him that of those four, at least three will default within one year.
So rather than people who “would otherwise be inclined to stay out,” the tax credit is bringing in people who “would otherwise be unable to get in” because they could not afford to. Does that sound familiar?
Brian J
Assuming more fiscal stimulus is necessary, and I think it is*, why not simply pay people to do something–anything–rather than giving people a tax credit to buy homes? If the goal is to help the economy in some way, and you’ve got lots of people who are unemployed, why not pay them to pick up trash or plant trees or, if it’s possible, something more complex?
*I say this only because, after going from blog to blog to blog, I come across a bitching fest between two economist over the preference of monetary policy versus fiscal policy. I only understand a little of this argument, which is very frustrating.
Cain
@dhd:
I’m in the middle of buying a home and the tax credit is going to come in quite handy.
cain
Zzyzx
Bachman just used the phrase, “the economic economy.”
Cain
@Zzyzx:
I’m in the same boat. My rep voted against the Iraq war too, and pretty much voted on issues how I wanted to. It’s quite boring and that’s fantastic.
cain
Omnes Omnibus
@Zzyzx: Well, duh. That is the the part of the economy that deals with the economy, not those other parts of the economy that deal with non-economic things like monetary policy, inflation, and other obviously non-economic economy things. Also.
arguingwithsignposts
@Zzyzx:
Bachmann shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a microphone. And the people who voted her into office should be held criminally liable for her idiocy.
Comrade Darkness
Can I just say that the carry back is fucking bullshit.
The government as moral hazard generator. What a bunch of dupes.
ksmiami
B.O.B – they have actually um done studies that have proven that Government actually is better and more effective at delivering services than any charity. We need an effective government, not one that just plunders wealth to give to cronies as your side wants. The problem is the Republicans have broken government and it will take time to rebuild effective agencies while team tea party shouts Nazism from an angry seething mob.
Also, 78 k is really not a lot for an average salary and a lot of people in government have given up higher paying tracks to serve despite normally higher levels of educational attainment. In other words, unlike the majority of Repukes in Congress, I want smart people in government, not effin morons like Heck of a Job Brownie.
Chad N Freude
@Bill H: This sounds like misfeasance on the part of the lender.
Michael
Reading that article, it is apparent that this current deference to the counterintuitive whims of capital is now pervasive throughout the Anglosphere. Trickle on capitalism was the engine which drove us into crisis, and we’re bing ill-served by top down crisis planning.
I’ve come to realize that the dipshits who are driving the bus now are the descendants of the same dipshits that created the Depression – they’ve stewed about Roosevelt’s bottom up solution for the past 70 years, and their message machine has long dialed in the Scots-Irish lumpenproles for fervent ideological support even when it wasn’t to the lumpenprole advantage.
After all, they’re the only people stupid enough to continually support a system that is failing them, just over dog whistles.
Chad N Freude
@arguingwithsignposts: CNF? What is this CNF of which you speak?
arguingwithsignposts
@Chad N Freude: LOL. Was that an extra space in that comment?
asiangrrlMN
@arguingwithsignposts: Amen, brother. Bugs the everlasting shit out of me that she’s from MN.
Chad N Freude
@arguingwithsignposts: The only extra space around here is in my head. I really don’t know what CNF is supposed to mean.
Comrade Darkness
@Brian J: No doubt. Our local parks need some trash picked up. Given an hour, any city mayor could put every unemployed to some kind of useful task for 20 hours a week. Take the “elevate house prices so developers get richer” stupid pet tricks out of the budget (the stimulus AND the existing mortgage interest tax credit). House prices will fall to affordable levels where people will buy on their own, when they are ready (not because they have been bribed to buy before they are financially ready) and send that money as grants to cities instead.
arguingwithsignposts
Plus, this is an opportunity to say how beautiful is the BJ community. Snarky, educated, supportive, all rolled into one. Great people.
arguingwithsignposts
@Chad N Freude:
You’re kidding, right, *C*had *N* *F*reude. CNF. get it?
Brian J
@Cain:
Nobody is saying it’s not going to help. Who wouldn’t like $8,000? But is it really necessary? Is it really going to make or break your decision to buy a home?
By the way, I am not really criticizing you for taking it. If I were in your position, I’d almost certainly take the money as well.
geg6
@Tim in Wisconsin:
I hear ya. I will always be a renter. I am single, over 50, and make less than $40,000 per year. I can’t afford to buy, even if I wanted to.
But I pay lots of taxes anyway. I always hear about the horrible property taxes that ruin everything for everyone. But there are so many lovely write-offs for homeowners. I get exactly no write-offs. All I get is rent increases. From one of those home owners.
It often pisses me off.
asiangrrlMN
@Chad N Freude: Your name, dude. C(had) N F(reude).
@arguingwithsignposts: Right back at you, and so true.
Chad N Freude
@arguingwithsignposts: It’s totally unreasonable to expect me to recognize my own initials. Damn you, AWSP. (Or should that be just A?)
Chad N Freude
@arguingwithsignposts: We should prove our greatness by conquering the world.
Brian J
@Comrade Darkness:
I always wonder why there isn’t more of a push to get people to do stuff like this. Nothing is free, and on a large enough scale, the money might seem wasteful, but if there are pretty basic tasks that can be done and people willing to do them, why not try it out when a lot of people would benefit, especially in a big city where such problems are presumably worse? I remember visiting my friend who went to Fordham’s Bronx campus a couple of years ago and being astonished at the garbage thrown on the ground on the streets. I don’t mean to sound like a Broken Windows preacher, but I imagine it would improve the streets in a number of ways, not to mention put money in peoples’ pockets, if we had people pick it up a couple of days a week.
dhd
I’m frankly amazed that it is possible to use the tax credit as a down payment on a house, especially since one doesn’t receive it until next April! Apparently, banks have learned nothing. Also really surprised that grad school income doesn’t count as real income.
Then again, not everybody lives in Pittsburgh. For what it’s worth, I’m hoping that the tax credit will help the local community development corporations sell all the infill houses they’ve built on the block behind mine, and will help my friends buy $75k rowhouses and $100k four-squares and be able to rewire them and put in high-efficiency furnaces and such.
Perhaps I’m not seeing the big picture…
geg6
@dhd:
Well, I live in Pittsburgh and I can’t afford a $75k rowhouse or a $100k four-square. Not even an $8k tax credit would help me. I could probably get the mortgage, considering that pretty much anyone who breathes gets approved these days (except, of course, grad students). But I’d be in a world of shit pretty quick if I did. And any re-wiring and high-efficiency furnaces would be out of the question. Not to mention any utilities at all.
John Sears
I’m going to try to get a house while this credit is in effect, even though I never wanted to own a home. I’ve been driven slowly insane by apartment living.
My first apartment was owned by the university I went to, and it was fantastic beyond words. Quiet as a tomb, huge and spacious, 24/7 on-call maintenance, you name it, 600 bucks a month. Great neighbors, since I lived in the international student building.
It’s just crazy, but no matter who I rent from in the private sector, I get screwed. My first private sector apartment my one next door neighbor was a psycho who threatened to kill my mom when she came over to visit, and the downstairs neighbors were drunks who littered the hall with beer bottles. My second apartment, the next door neighbor had a teenage girl who would crank the stereo for hours every day. My third, the one I’m living in now? Let me tell you about these asshats. There was a flood in the basement because the foundation sprang a leak and it was raining all week. I find out after it floods my little storage area down there. I call them to tell them; they laugh at me and blow me off.
In one year here, I’ve had: a bad fridge, 2 bad dryers, bad washer, bad kitchen sink, broken AC, broken heat, bad bathroom sink, bad telephone wiring (that ATT had to fix for me), leaky pipes in the wall (which when their maintenance dude tried to fix he burst and flooded our bathroom, walls, and destroyed the ceiling of the place beneath us). Oh, and the roof’s sprung leaks twice.
I’d kill to stay a renter with a decent landlord, but I’m convinced they don’t exist.
arguingwithsignposts
CNF, it’s AWS for the record. :)
parksideq
OT, but as much as I understand why the formalities are happening on the House floor, how much more debate is truly needed before they vote for the damn thing? Whose yea or nay is about to be swayed as a result of the procedurals, honestly?
It’s not like this bill was the focus of intense media coverage, legislative arm-twisting, and billions of tweets over the past 8 months or anything.
geg6
@parksideq:
Well, personally, I really, really WANT some debate on the Stupak amendment. I want it debated big time. Mother fucker and his buddies, the Great Child Abuse Racket (aka: the Catholic Church) want to take away any and all abortion coverage in not just the public option, but as an option for ANY health insurance coverage.
So debate is needed, IMHO.
parksideq
@geg6:
Well, when you mention that, debate away! Hopefully that amendment fails as hard as the Phillies (too soon?).
John Sears
@geg6: I’ve had it, I’m officially against the health care bill if the stupak amendment is attached.
This reform bill will not work. The public option will not have the pricing power to compete, even the CBO says it will be gamed and they’ll dump all the sickest people on it. The guarantees against cutting off your policy when you get sick, or preventing denials on pre-existing conditions are meaningless. The insurance companies will just jack the price up to the absolute legal maximum, then add fees and deductibles until all the people they don’t want to cover flee to the PO, which will drown in debt, while the private insurers get subsidies for ripping us off.
They have a thousand ways to game the system, and this bill bans about six of them. Whoopity shit.
It’s absolutely unconscionable to use this weak, shitty-ass health bill as a trojan horse to roll back abortion and women’s rights.
Cain
@Brian J:
It won’t since I didn’t plan for it and I saved up my pennies for a down payment. I’m not even selling my current home yet since we worked to almost nearly pay that off. But I probably have more “floating” money so perhaps I could invest in the house I built which means I hire contractors to fix the showers, set up a home theater system, possibly by a new tv.
So I won’t say that there isn’t any harm. On the other hand, I probably use the money to stick it in a healthcare savings account. Give to charity, whatever. Put off a couple of mortgage payments.. you name it. You want a normal middle class person to spend in this downturn.
cain
geg6
@parksideq:
Nah. But then, I’m from Pittsburgh. And it’s a little hard to feel Philly’s pain when your team holds the record for most losing seasons.
@John Sears:
Agreed. This is total bullshit and Pelosi went along with it to get the endorsement of the US Council of Bishops for the health care bill. Fuck them and fuck Nancy Pelosi.
Anoniminous
@Comrade Darkness:
Being a hard-ass I completely agree. If you’re going to accept Public Money then you can get out and do Public Work.
The Works Progress Administration was one of the most successful New Deal agencies. Harry Hopkins, almost totally unknown now, had decades of previous Social and Public Health experience before he took a job with the Roosevelt administration and knew the problems with Charity — something our local nutburgers need to learn — and ensured a Work Requirement was part of Roosevelt’s policies.
Given the rotten mess most of our Public Space in urban areas is the Obama administration needs to ‘Take a Lesson.’
kay
@geg6:
Pelosi’s House is ideologically broad. It’s what she has. I don’t know, geg, do we want a purge of anti-abortion Democrats? I don’t know if that’s what I want.
The GOP is really, really narrow. Essentially she’s negotiating a “bipartisan” bill, but it’s all Democrats.
Pretend they’re moderate Republicans. That’s the essential reality.
Anoniminous
I’m in moderation.
DAMN moderaton.
Moderation in the pursuit of BJ commenting is no virtue.
WOLVERINES!
Too.
Also.
Leelee for Obama
@kay: Once again, kay, you nail it. The attack on regular insurance plans can’t stand, but the Federal money part is what we’ve had for a long time-what needs to be done is to beef up the PO once it gets to reconciliation with the Senate. Like you said earlier, every Repub knows it has to happen-they’ll make hay on it, but I think once it passes, people will begin to see that Dems had balls and Repubs, not so much.
Max
@kay: I agree. It’s because we as Dems are so broad that we hold the majorities.
I respect the spectrum of ultra-lib to blue dog. I’m a moderate, so I live in the middle.
Our varied ideologies is what attracts indies. It’s more representative of America (except the south).
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
Look up Marcy Kaptur, D, OH. She’s not my rep, but I agree with her on every single issue, but one.
We’re identical twins, ideologically, with one glaring exception: she’s an anti-abortion Catholic.
I don’t want to lose or alienate people like her.
This isn’t a Leiberman situation. She’s what we want.
John Sears
@kay: Absolutely purge them, if they’re so unAmerican they want to put the CATHOLIC CHURCH in charge of our goverment.
I will not, absolutely will not, tolerate or go along with this country becoming a damn theocracy, just to appease some wishy-washy misogynistic fuckfaces who worship an panty-sniffting invisible man living in the clouds.
John Sears
@Max: America is a pluralistic society with the establishment of religion, ANY RELIGION, specifically forbidden to the government.
This is not representative of America. This is a serious assault on the very core values of America.
Max
@John Sears: I’m sorry, abortion is a very complicated and personal issue.
I am not willing to say that opposition is always based in religion.
I also think we need to accurately understand the scope of the Stupak Amendment. It will not effect anyone who has private insurance. Abortion already isn’t covered for the majority of those women.
I don’t think that insurance should cover abortions, unless it is medically necessary to save the life of the mother or in the case of rape.
Abortions are not cost prohibitive to those that choose to have the procedure. They are roughly $300 and low-cost ones are available thru various women’s rights and pro-choice organizations.
I’d rather we direct funding to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
I say this as a women who is pro-choice and not religious.
Ailuridae
@kay:
Its pretty clear that is exactly what she advocates. Remember, this is the same poster that slandered Bob Casey as a prospective “no” vote for real health care reform without an iota of evidence except he was anti-abortion.
Leelee for Obama
@John Sears: John, if we purge everybody who doesn’t agree with us, how, exactly, are we different from the wingers? This is a nation of 300+million people. Getting anything done is like crawling naked over broken glass, in a hurricane.
We have to find the places where we CAN agree, and do the most good for the most people. Yes, it pisses me off to no end that abortion is a hobby horse so often. But, to be honest, I’d rather compromise on this, slightly, than lose health-care coverage for women who may then NOT get pregnant, because they have birth-control, or they may have their babies because the cost will not send them into financial disaster. I have two kids. I wanted more, but I couldn’t afford them, I could barely afford to raise the ones I had. If I had had insurance, I would have had my tubes tied and that would have settled it. But, I didn’t, so I couldn’t. I used something too old fashioned for words-I said no when I had to. Among many other problems, it ended my marriage. C’est le vie. But, insurance would have helped us.
Purity isn’t possible, likely, or even desirable. 1984 is a cautionary tale, remember.
Leelee for Obama
@kay: I like Kaptur. I’ve seen her a few times, and she’s got her shit together.
John Sears
@Max: BZZRT, absolutely WRONG on the facts!
The vast majority of private health insurance plans (87% according to The Daily Beast) already cover abortion services.
So people in the exchange, aka the poor suckers already screwed over by the system, will likely be denied abortion coverage available to their economic betters. The idea that private insurers are going to run two separate segregated account ledgers to keep the government money separate from the private copays and premiums is absurd, and even if they did so, it would be an unnecessary layer of expense that wastes precious resources and money.
This completely misses the point. The cost that Planned Parenthood or some other organization charges is hardly the only cost, when 86% of US counties lack a single solitary abortion provider. Many states realize this and add a stupid waiting period, not found with any other legal medical procedure, to force more time off work, humiliation, hotel rooms, food and travel costs on top of the cost of the abortion itself.
Finally, I think we can pretty easily say that the opposition from the Dem caucus on this issue comes from religion when they say so TO THE WASHINGTON POST:
The Council of Bishops needs to find something else to do. Surely there’s a fascist government somewhere in Central America they can prop up, or a massive conspiracy of child molestors to facilitate, right?
John Sears
@John Sears: Yeesh, this shit has me so mad I can’t properly format a block quote.
John Sears
@Leelee for Obama: You’re comparing me to 1984 for wanting to uphold basic civil liberties and prevent the Catholic Church, literally the Catholic Church, the actual fucking bishops, from taking over an important area of governmental policy?
To 1984?!
Seriously. Wow.
I don’t know how to respond to that.
Is there absolutely nothing you WON’T compromise on to in the name of ‘getting anything done’?
Leelee for Obama
@John Sears:
No argument there, but they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. I was raised Catholic, and walked away very young. Many others did as well, but not enough. They are still here, still causing problems. They are not alone. We are a very divided country on this issue-
We will not see the end of religious influence in our lifetimes-I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true, and dealing with it is what we have.
kay
@John Sears:
Marcy Kaptur supports every liberal position with the exception of abortion.
She’s been the sometimes lone voice in dissent when we decided to hand the whole country to the finance sector. She’s a senior member of the House, but she isn’t on any important committees. I suspect that’s because she’s taken some really risky populist positions, back before populism was fashionable.
She’s a liberal workhorse, a reliable anti-war vote, she’s been busting ass for 20 years trying to slow the radical free market lunatics, and you’re willing to tell her to shut up and sit down? I’m not.
Leelee for Obama
@John Sears: OK, too much. I was trying to make a point about conformity, and I went off my rails. I apologize.
We can’t purge the different thinkers, or we will be as marginalized as we want the tea-party wingers to be.
Again, I apologize. Hyperbole ain’t my normal default.
John Sears
@Leelee for Obama: My mom and stepdad and step-grandmother are Catholics, and they’d never tolerate this shit, though why they don’t leave the Church is beyond me.
Religion is not the problem here. Theocratic shitheads and their spineless Dem enablers, combined with panty-sniffing monsters like Stupak, they’re the problem. I couldn’t give half a shit what magical delusion a person worships, or not, in their spare time, so long as they keep their shit out of my life.
John Sears
@kay: I’m telling her to honor the fucking oath to preserve the Constitution that she took when she took office.
If she can’t do that, she needs to resign. I don’t care if she’s sitting, standing, or hopping up and down on a fucking pogo stick when she does.
John Sears
@Leelee for Obama: Fair enough.
I spent my middle school and high school years in a very religious part of the country, and they made my life a completely unbearable hell. I feel very strongly about the separation of church and state as a result, because I’ve seen firsthand what happens when you let religion run civil society, and it’s an ugly fucking mess.
It always has been. My great-grandfather was driven out of Indiana back in the day (1910s). His crime? Being a Catholic.
(Of course, Indiana in those days was run by the Klan, who are, of course, Protestants. The theocrats can’t even agree amongst themselves. Which is another fantastic reason to keep them out of government )
Leelee for Obama
@John Sears: That would be the world we want to live in. Unfortunately, it’s not the world we have now. Do we throw out the whole effort, because Stupak is an obstructionist? He wouldn’t get away with this, if there weren’t others who would support him. He knows who they are.
As I’ve said in other threads, I never considered abortion for myself. But, I support the right-to-choose for everybody. We won’t get past the Hyde Amendment until we can stop abortion being equated with murder. That’s not gonna be easy. I often wonder why the pro-choice movement let that happen. Maybe, it’s a kind guilty conscience thing. But, being able to provide birth-control, pregnancy, maternity and well-baby care affordably will change the dynamics, because there will be fewer abortions.
Church Lady
@John Sears:
Dude, if you want to get so worked up over abortion, kindly please obtain a vagina. Until you do, STFU.
John Sears
@Leelee for Obama: Yes. We throw out this whole sorry mess if it means compromising core civil rights for women, or anyone else.
Absolutely, every time, without compromise. Burn it all fucking down.
It doesn’t matter much in the long-run. Even the best case scenario from the CBO and other shows health care spending in the US essentially flat after reform, at about 16% of GDP. Europe spends about 10%. Some lower, some higher. The highest is Switzerland at 12%. We cannot compete internationally when we throw 4% of our GDP in a furnace year after year, so we’ll either end up right back at fixing this in a few years, or drown in medical debt.
Combine that with the lack of reform in the financial markets and the next big economic shock will finish this country off. Days like today, and people like Stupak, make me think we deserve it.
John Sears
@Church Lady: Right, I can’t talk about abortion if I’m not a woman.
Or voting rights if I’m not black.
Or immigration if I’m not hispanic.
I’m talking about RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION, and I have been religiously persecuted, so fuck you.
John Sears
@Church Lady: My wife says that she finds your opinion both hilarious and offensive, by the way.
“It’s an important topic, why shouldn’t everyone be allowed to talk about it? Or is it just ‘women’s business’, like raising children or buying shoes?”
Me, I think you’re just a fucking idiot.
Brachiator
The larger problem is that the Obama Administration is filled with people in Treasury who think it important to “get money into people’s hands as fast as possible” but who have no idea as to how to increase the number of businesses or jobs or how to get the economy rolling again.
Extending unemployment compensation is necessary, but most people would prefer to have a job rather than extended benefits.
The home buyer credit extension is easy, because it requires no new thinking, just adding on to what was already done. But the previous credit was a massive fraudulent giveaway that made the financial bailouts look almost rational. There was no need for anyone to prove that they had actually bought a house, and the IRS is swamped with amended returns claiming the credit prepared by fraud mills. And this is ordinary joes pulling a scam, not sophisticated Wall Street types. At least one claim for the home buyer credit was on a return for a four year old “taxpayer.”
There have been news stories about the bankruptcy of CIT Financial and about how the government will lose the $2 billion that they gave the firm in bailout money (Goldman Saks even found a way to make $300 million as CIT crumbled). As a recent WaPo story noted, companies like CIT are important to small businesses, more Main Street than Wall Street.
So here’s where we are: official unemployment has passed 10 percent. Credit card companies are jacking up their rates to 30 percent in advance of some modest reform, having suckered the president and the Congress into delaying enforcement until 2010. The credit markets for small business is collapsing. Home loan modification rackets are ramping up, and banks and mortgage companies are still using the corrupt lending practices and loan re-packaging schemes that got them into trouble in the first place.
And the Democratic Party dominated Congress is pleased with itself because they have extended unemployment benefits and are sending retired people an extra $250.
In context, the unemployment compensation in the absence of some bold economic thinking ain’t soc i al ism. It’s stoopidity.
Leelee for Obama
@John Sears: If the GDP numbers will stay flat, what’s going to happen if we do nothing? 20%? More? I think doing nothing, along with the financial sector continuing their rampage will make us Somalia in very short order.
Will Canada then invade and save us? Hell, even Mexico?
I don’t think nothing is an option.
Days like this make me nauseous. And, you may be right about some deserving it, but not everyone.
Max
I also think it’s important to recognize that the bill still has to go to conference.
Waxman just told Boehner that there is “no guarantee” that amendment makes it out of conference.
I think it’s important to recognize the good the churches do with respect to shelters, africa, the poor, the hungry, aids work, the disabled, etc. Again, I’m not a religious person, agnostic, but am able to see that not everything is black or white.
John Sears
@Leelee for Obama: The end result is the same. Maybe the country lasts a couple of years longer with reform than without.
It’s not much comfort for me, and if we have to use the First Amendment as toilet paper to get it, then I can’t support that.
As for me, days like this make me shaky with rage. Being told to shut up because I have Y chromosomes didn’t help.
John Sears
@Max: I recognize when churches do good.
I also recognize when they do tremendous evil, like how the Catholic Church has turned El Salvador into a nightmarish police state over abortion.
Brachiator
@Anoniminous:
Harry Hopkins was good. Francis Perkins was better, and responsible for the heart of New Deal Reforms.
Public works projects won’t get the job done, especially with a far larger public sector in terms of federal and state workers than existed in FDR’s time. Construction requires fewer workers and employs relatively few women, and so would not have as great an impact on total unemployment as it did in the days of the WPA.
What is required is not something that attempts to recreate Depression era remedies, but solutions that are appropriate to the complexities of the current economic mess. And here, sadly, the Obama Administration and the Congress are fumbling for answers. Worse, the Republicans are totally clueless, and don’t even have a full grasp of the problem, let alone any solutions.
kay
@John Sears:
I don’t know how that works. Religious people have all sorts of opinions informed by their religion.
Kaptur would say her pro-life position is informed by her religion, but she believes it’s also sound public policy.
She’s anti-war for different reasons, some of them budgetary (as rare as that is) but if her anti-war position were instead informed by her religion would she be barred from debating that too?
I don’t like the sound of that.
J. Michael Neal
They live in St. Cloud. Isn’t that punishment enough?
As for the tax provisions, count me against the homebuying credit as it is completely worthless for its stated policy goals. As for the NOL carryback provision, I’m good with that. As burnspbesq pointed out, it’s a timing issue. The only way that these companies don’t pay the same amount of taxes in the end is if they don’t have any profits going forward, in which case, the penalty is that they go bankrupt.
The net cost to the Treasury isn’t the amount of the current tax break. It’s the interest the government has to pay on the money not collected over the period before it would have been used as a deduction in the future. Given that the Treasury is currently paying about zero percent on its short term debt, that also means that the net cost is close to zero. In exchange, the businesses have more cash now. This is a good thing.
Church Lady
I find your railing on in support of abortion rights just as offensive as I find any male railing against abortion. While you may be supportive of the idea of abortion rights, the strident tone of your posts on the matter are jarring. And yes, white people screaming about civil rights louder than the minorites affected are just as offensive.
We get that you are against the Stupak amendment. We also get that the passage of the Stupak, or failure of same, will have no effect on your person right to obtain an abortion, since you are unable to get pregnant. Unless, of course, there is something about you that we don’t know….
J. Michael Neal
The problem with trying to put the unemployed to work doing public service is that the public sector unions would, quite justifiably, go berserk. It would mean that their jobs were being done by a bunch of low paid temps. That isn’t any more acceptable for the government than it is for anyone else.
I’m all for more infrastructure projects, but hire people through the normal process and pay them as such.
eemom
@John Sears:
fwiw, I certainly agree that your Y-chrom doesn’t disqualify your opinion, and you’re quite right in the comparisons you made.
And right to be angry about the outrages you describe.
But I’m with Leelee, against burning the whole fucking house down because there are termites in the basement.
This bill is going to HELP people. To condemn it on grounds of ideological purity is just plain fucked up, IMO.
Though I seriously doubt anybody is going to convince you and your fellow ideologues of that, so maybe we should all just STFU.
Leelee for Obama
@John Sears: Please note that Church Lady got no support there. I don’t think me need to have the XX chromosomes to support women. I would have loved to have my Pop support a woman’s right to choose. To my knowledge, he never did, despite having 2 daughters, 3 granddaughters and 2 greats. ( now 4 greats, but he died before the latest editions)
My brothers and our sons are a different story. Modern men, so to speak.
I can’t agree with burning the whole thing down, but I admire your passion, John. I once was a radical, myself, but I wound up living longer than radicals should. Reality is relentless, the way the river that cut the Grand Canyon was.
John Sears
@kay: In this case we have demands for health care being made by the church directly through its representatives, and Congress bending over backward to enact those demands.
It doesn’t get much clearer than that, for establishing religion.
There is absolutely no sound medical or health care reason to deny abortion coverage. None. Zippo. It is safer and cheaper than pregnancy, for society and for the woman involved.
John Sears
@eemom: It won’t fix the problem, it delays the death of the patient, and not by much.
As for being an ideologue, yes. I am an ideologue. I believe in the Bill of Rights. I don’t believe in tearing it up to achieve short-term gain.
Our civil rights are worth more than that. Our country, sick and sad as it is, is worth more than that.
I haven’t told anyone to shut the fuck up though, not even church lady, who started the personal attacks and wants to disqualify me from an area of public life because of my genetic code and the way I was born.
John Sears
@Church Lady: Har har, a tranny joke!
Hilarious!
A: You ignored me in that I’m not just complaining about abortion, but rather about larger religious persecution. So even if your standard of ‘you have to be in group x to complain’, which is unbelievably stupid, was to apply, I, being a victim of religious persecution, have the right to complain about it.
Has anyone ever tried to have you committed to an asylum for your religious beliefs? No? Really, I’m just shocked.
Even if it was just an abortion issue, I’d still speak out, because I believe in civil liberties.
B: Once again, and I can’t stress this enough. Fuck you. Fuck you and your self-righteousness, fuck you and your balkinization of politics, fuck you and your exclusion of an entire gender from an important national topic. Fuck you for your shortsightedness, fuck you for your lack of empathy, fuck you for failing to understand that an infringement of liberty on anyone is an infringement on everyone.
Or, to quote a religious person: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Oh, and for good measure:
Fuck you.
John Sears
@Leelee for Obama: I recognize that Church Lady didn’t get support, and I’m grateful for that.
It’s so odd to have women hate you, as a man, for being a feminist.
I don’t actually consider myself a radical, I think of myself as an idealistic pragmatist. Since, after months of study, I’ve concluded that this bill has zero chance of fixing the problem, I can’t pragmatically support it very hard. If the Stupak amendment, a truly radical attempt at putting religious control over women’s health, passes, then I’d have to conclude the harm the overall bill causes is far greater than the aid.
I realize other people evaluating the same evidence might reach another conclusion.
Brachiator
@Leelee for Obama:
Allowing theological concerns to determine medical practices is a poison bill that Obama and the Democrats are insane to allow. They can talk compromise all they want, but this will come back to hurt them big time.
And it’s not just the abortion issue. It’s prayer as medicine and junk science “alternative” medical practices.
It’s one thing to allow different voices in the debate. But government should not allow narrow, subjective, religious concerns to hijack medical policy decisions.
kay
@John Sears:
I’m sorry, John. I still think your test is unworkable. I don’t like the idea of parsing every amendment for possible religion-influenced content by the process of elimination.
John Sears
@Brachiator: Oh yeah, I’d seen that blurb this week and completely forgotten about it.
Prayer doesn’t work. Large scale studies have proven it. I’m not for the government paying for any medical procedure that doesn’t work, whether it’s Pharma pushing dangerous untested drugs or faith healers pushing their chanting and mumbling.
I’m shocked, shocked that there’s religious intrusion into healthcare on an issue other than abortion.
Dr. Morpheus
@Little Dreamer:
In other words, Grover Norquist — Weaken American until it can be drowned in a bathtub.
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
You’re still a radical :)
John Sears
@kay: I don’t have a formal test, but if the governmental policy serves only a religious purpose, and has no grounding in rational public policy, even actively harming and discriminating against people who hold different beliefs, then it’s establishment and can’t be allowed.
There’s a reason the vast majority of health plans already cover abortion. It’s a safe and effective medical procedure, scientifically valid and proven. (Or rather a large number of them)
As for a specific test, apparently the test in question is called the Lemon test, and comes from a case involving funding private schools with public dollars.
This violates all three. It has no secular legislative purpose, since abortion is a safe, legal and cost effective medical procedure. It advances religion, in that it directly faciliates the goals of the Church in limiting abortion. It DEFINITELY entangles us with religion to have the damn Bishops writing our legislation.
Good enough for me.
John Sears
Goddamnit, I have more trouble with that b-quote today.
Also, I have work to do on my car, which I’m apparently allowed to do because I have a penis. (fuck you, Church Lady).
Plus it gets dark at 4 pm here in Madison in november. So I need to get cracking.
Thanks all, for an interesting discussion.
(Except Church Lady, who can go fuck herself with a rusty piece of metal.)
Leelee for Obama
@Brachiator: I hadn’t heard about this prayer thing, so I’ll have to read up on it. On spec, I’d say it should be ditched, post-haste. Not because of religion, but because it doesn’t work. The religious aspect makes it more controversial, I admit. I didn’t know Christian Scientists charged their followers for prayer healing, though I guess I was naive about it.
I will think on this whole thread for awhile. I still lean toward something is better than doing nothing. I’ve never had health insurance, so I’m kind of knowledgeable in that respect. The slippery slope argument is always the thing you don’t want to get involved in-but here it is. I’m gonna go cook something edible.
John Sears
Oops, I guess I went too far with the profanity in that comment and got it moderated. Ok, got mad. Sorry.
Regardless, I have to get working on a car issue. Only an hour and a half of light left up here.
G’nite and thanks for the discussion, everyone but Church Lady of course.
J. Michael Neal
Yes, it does, mostly because you seem to have no idea what “establishing religion” actually means. It has zero to do with who lobbies Congress or who supports a given policy or what arguments they use.
Originally, “establishing religion” was about one thing only: using tax money to support a particular denomination at the expense of all others. Prior to the Revolution, the New England states, and particularly Massachusetts, collected tax money and dispensed it to the Congregationalist churches in the area. Exactly which Congregationalist churches in a given area was quite controversial, as it was a period that saw a splintering of the religious establishment into a number of different sects, including what became the Unitarian Church, for those of a liberal religious bent. “Establishing religion” thus meant *exactly* what it sounds like: establishing a particular church as the official religion of a polity through the use of tax dollars.
Over time, it has come to mean something more broad than that. It includes the idea that a governmental body can not make explicitly religious displays without including those of all religions. This clearly is something that the Founders never intended, but I’m okay with it, as the nature of American society has changed.
It does not, and, really, can not mean that Congress isn’t allowed to listen to a religious body or institution when it is making policy. The Constitution requires that we have a secular government in operation, but the sources of moral authority can come from anywhere. Frankly, I think that the idea that churches shouldn’t be involved in expressing moral views as to what is right and wrong and the morality behind legislation is repellent, in exactly the same way that I would find it repellent to prevent the ACLU from participating in the crafting of legislation. They represent the views of many Americans, and are every bit as valid an interest group as any other. Let them push their views.
That doesn’t mean that I think that the Catholic Church is pushing *good* legislation here. Quite the contrary; I think it’s terrible. It’s not bad enough to reject the entire bill, which does a lot of good things. Necessary things. Essentially, you are telling me that I should never have the ability to buy individual health insurance because of my pre-existing conditions. Exactly why you want to perpetuate such a dismal situation because we aren’t getting everything we want eludes me.
Then again, I don’t share your view on the church/state matter. Your arguments about constitutionality are absurd on their face, and betray a complete lack of understanding about both the original intent of the First Amendment and the jurisprudence that has governed it in the intervening couple of centuries. By acceding to the Catholic Church’s demands, no one is starting a slippery slope to anywhere, because they have always had the ability to affect policy through their lobbying. We’re at the bottom of that particular slope, and always have been. It’s a slope that we should be at the bottom of.
eemom
“Our country, sick and sad as it is, is worth more than that.”
How can that be, when according to you it’s going to hell anyway?
I don’t believe in abstracts about what “our country” is worth. Given its history, I personally don’t believe it’s worth much.
What I do care about is people not dying when medicine could help them. I don’t know what you mean about “delaying death” — that’s all ANY medical care can do, actually.
I wonder, too, if your “months of study” have assessed exactly what practical impact the Stupak amendment will have on the availability of abortion to poor women, given the monstrous obstacles that many of them face already.
rikyrah
the bridges and roads all across the country are on the brink of disrepair. I’d much rather spend money trying to rebuild THIS country through those public works projects. It’s not like the American infrastructure is ‘top of the line’. it’s old and getting older, and hasn’t been repaired in at least 2 generations.
J. Michael Neal
Again, no. It very clearly has a secular purpose. In fact, the *only* purpose it serves is secular. The act of getting an abortion is not a religious act, and legislation regulating it can not be religious in nature.
You are confusing the ideas of legislation that is secular in purpose from legislation that is secular in motive. Religious inspiration to pass legislation is perfectly valid. Quite frankly, it’s impossible to have any legislation that isn’t, since the impulse for legislation almost always has a moral component, and many, if not most, Americans derive much, if not most, of their morality from their religious beliefs. The idea that “we can’t legislate morality” is so ridiculous that it pains me that anyone ever makes the argument. The primary reason that we outlaw murder is a moral one. We legislate morality all the time. Get used to it.
What separates this from, say, teaching intelligent design, is that ID involves the government in actively promoting a particular religious viewpoint. Once it is determined that it is not science, then it has no purpose other than pushing a specific set of religious beliefs.
That’s not true of abortion. It doesn’t involve teaching a religion. It involves regulating an act that is being performed for entirely secular reasons. A woman decides whether or not to get an abortion for reasons that, usually, are not religious in nature. The doctor isn’t performing an act of religion. It’s a medical procedure. It is every bit as much a legitimate policy decision as is deciding whether or not to cover the cost of a particular drug.
Again, this doesn’t mean that I think it is a good policy choice. As I said above, it’s terrible. But it’s not, in any way, unconstitutional. I find the entire argument that abortion is a constitutional issue to be very weak, even including Roe v. Wade, which was a thoroughly contorted decision that doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. The idea that it is improper to decide that it is unconstitutional, or even should be, for Congress to regulate the public funding of abortion because the Catholic Church is against it is completely unmoored from any existing jurisprudence.
This doesn’t meet either the second or the third test for unconstitutionality, either.
Brachiator
@J. Michael Neal:
It’s not the listening to a religious body that’s the problem. It is crafting legislation to comply with the dogma of any church or religious institution.
And if the Catholic Church, or any other religious body, wants to lobby Congress, then let them give up their religious exemption, and be taxed like any other business.
We are the Founders. The Constitution means what it means to us today, not only what the framers meant when it was written. The Federalist papers, for example, shows how the founders were arguing over issues of interpretation from the beginning. There has never been anything such as original intent, except in the reveries of Justice Scalia and like-minded followers.
Wile E. Quixote
This pretty much describes what the entire Catholic Church is about. Everyone should watch it.
Chuck Butcher
Oh horseshit. See Jefferson just for starters. Proposing that everybody had the same ends in mind for specific portions of the Constitution is flat out stupid, there were debates you might consider as some evidence of that.
Xenos
@bemused:
When two vowels go a-walking, the first one does the talking.
J. Michael Neal
Sure. Different men had different views. However, when you look at the end result of those debates, the Founders, as a collective body, clearly didn’t have this position in mind.
You are attacking a strawman that is not what I said.
Dr. Morpheus
@Bill H:
I would like to see hard facts (i.e., links to economic survey data) that this is true, not just “a friend of mine said…”.
Not intended to be a slur against you Bill H., but you are just a guy on the Intertubes.
And even if your story is true, unless there’s a significant trend toward that kind of lending/real estate transactions it doesn’t cast a negative light on the tax credit, per se.
J. Michael Neal
I don’t disagree with this, as is clear from the sentence right after the one you quoted. Again, you are attacking something I didn’t say.
It means that the Catholic Church has successfully lobbied its position. Again, the motive for writing the legislation is irrelevant to the tests as to whether or not a law establishes a religion. Congress can pass legislation to adhere to any dogma it likes, so long as the *effects* of that legislation are secular. You may not like that, but it is the basis of American law, and has been for the entire existence of this country.
I would love to hear your plan for preventing Congress from crafting legislation based upon religious dogma that is both clear in its boundaries and comprehensive without equally limiting lobbying by secular organizations. I’m betting that you can’t do it. Where does a religion stop and secular reasoning start?
You mean like the ACLU is taxed just like any other business? Your concept of which organizations are taxed and which are not seems to be a bit off. Under US law, the Catholic Church is very clearly a non-profit organization, regardless as to whether or not it lobbies for legislation. As it is, it’s actually *more* restricted than an organization like the ACLU, because it can’t explicitly endorse specific candidates.
Dr. Morpheus
Then it sound less like careful consideration of the effects of home ownership policy and more like plain ol’ sour grapes.
Hey, I’m in very similar circumstances and probably won’t be able to ever own a home either. But I don’t begrudge the fact that some of my friends are home owners via government programs like first time home owners lending, etc.
Dr. Morpheus
Exactly, not to mention that HCR can be perfectly over the years without the great hullabaloo that’s framing the current legislation.
I know that it’s been mentioned before that Social Security and Medicare both had severe restrictions when they were first passed.
Come on people, is the only thing that will satisfy you is some sort of legislative immaculate conception?
It sure seems like it.
Dr. Morpheus
Goddman, the blockquoting code here really needs fixing.
Dr. Morpheus
Okay, here’s what I wanted it to look like:
Exactly, not to mention that HCR can be perfectly over the years without the great hullabaloo that’s framing the current legislation.
I know that it’s been mentioned before that Social Security and Medicare both had severe restrictions when they were first passed.
Come on people, is the only thing that will satisfy you is some sort of legislative immaculate conception?
It sure seems like it.
Brachiator
@J. Michael Neal:
The effect of legislation restricting abortion is not secular. The effect of legislation restricting contraception is not secular. The effect of legislation seeking to restrict in vitro fertilization is not secular. It conforms to the dogma of the Catholic Church.
Dr. Morpheus
And so you’d rather sacrifice me and everyone else who’s unemployed’s life on YOUR altar of ideological purity?
Seriously? Wow.
Is there no one that you will NOT sacrifice in order to maintain your ideological holier-than-thou purity?
Chuck Butcher
Jefferson as President was one of the outcomes. Try reading him, no he doesn’t specifically state a ban on nativity scenes, he does quite explicitly state that money extracted from the citizen should not be used to promote a teaching above others. How the State making a religious advertisment in the form of a nativity scene isn’t exactly that you explain to me.
Are you proposing this was a secret? Or that the VA legislative efforts weren’t part of the modeling? I own and have read over 1500 pages of rather small print of his Writings and I can’t find anything in my memory to support your idea that he would consider or account today’s stance as overkill in that arena.
You speak of the Founders intent in a political document as though none of them foresaw or recognized “modern” problems. He would have nothing to do with establishing a national day of “prayer and fasting” as being none of his business as President even though it would have no legal constraint. That is a direct correlation to your stance.
kay
@John Sears:
Yeah. I’m familiar with the Lemmon test.
Kaptur’s amendment isn’t unconstitutional, John, under the First Amendment, and the subsequent case law. Wait until the bill passes, then challenge that portion on First Amendment grounds. You’ll fail.
The Bill of Rights is like any other law, in that your personal interpretation doesn’t govern.
If you feel we’ve veered from original intent on First Amendment jurisprudence, that’s another matter.
J. Michael Neal
That. Does. Not. Matter.
Look over the history of jurisprudence on this question. Whether it conforms to the dogma of the Catholic Church is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the *effects* of the law are secular. Repeating the fact that it does over and over doesn’t make the case that this makes it unconstitutional.
John Sears
@J. Michael Neal: Show me a single secular purpose for banning abortion.
Show me one.
One reason. One actual, grounded in facts reason that it should be banned from being funded alongside every other legal health procedure.
It is religious, whether you want to admit it or not. Likewise, putting adulterers to death with stones would be a secular act. The rocks aren’t religious. They’re rocks. But it’s religious all the same.
@Brachiator: Absolutely. Right on.
John Sears
@Dr. Morpheus: The health care bill WILL NOT WORK.
The insurance companies will game it and the public option, if it’s enacted, will die.
The CBO agrees. The law will not be enforced, the insurance companies will win.
It won’t even be allowed to turn on for 3 years! We’re barely holding on now!
Argh.
And for that, you want to let the Christian Scientists take taxpayer money for prayer, and the Catholics write the law regulating abortion, and who knows what other gems we haven’t even found out about yet.
Fantastic.
J. Michael Neal
So what? Jefferson never had dictatorial powers to say that the Constitution meant what he said it did. Finding the beliefs of one of the individuals involved with drafting the Constitution doesn’t say very much about what the body of authors meant by it.
Jesus christ, people are making a bunch of irrelevant arguments.
I have no intention of explaining it to you, because you are still arguing against statements I never made. I think that nativity scenes on public property is establishment of religion, and I’m glad that it is now so judged. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the original intent of the First Amendment did not hold that, if one judges by what the group AS A WHOLE, meant by it. That Jefferson sometimes (and I emphasize the “sometimes” because Jefferson was one of the most frustratingly inconsistent writers ever; read some of the letters Madison sent him pointing out instances where Jefferson said something completely clueless) said things that imply that he believed otherwise is fine, but doesn’t mean that the group agreed with him.
Now you are telling me that I agree with positions that I explicitly said that I disagree with. You’re being an idiot. I agree that the idea that the Constitution evolves is a good thing. I approve.
My point is that American jurisprudence has *never* held the same thing that you do. It didn’t at the beginning of the Republic, and none of the evolution over 220 years has taken it to that point.
You, and a couple of others, are expounding a view that is idiosyncratically yours. It has no grounding in US law. That doesn’t make it wrong in the sense that it would be completely inappropriate for US jurisprudence to evolve such that it is, though I would oppose such an evolution. However, don’t claim that you are supported by existing law in any way, because you aren’t.
I also continue to challenge anyone to write a set of guidelines that prohibit religious dogma from being the basis of legislation that makes coherent sense.
John Sears
Abortion is a safe, legal, highly cost effective medical procedure. Carrying a fetus to term is far riskier and more expensive than abortion. Banning it from a health care bill designed to improve healthcare costs and outcomes is utterly incoherent.
Prayer is an expensive, completely nonviable and ineffective pseudo-medical flim-flam. Allowing it to be paid for out of public dollars is completely incoherent.
John Sears
I’m going to go now, because my blood pressure is getting rather elevated by the idea that banning the public option from covering a safe, legal medical procedure after a group of religious whackos lobby congress isn’t religious entanglement, or that paying Christian Scientists to mumble and shake and twitch theatrically while praying to their bronze age idol isn’t establishment of religion, and on and on and on.
The religious whackos write our laws, they pay for their churches out of our money, they punish women for their sexual hangups through the power of our Congress, and we all slide down into oblivion. But hey, at least we did it for ‘moral’ reasons, right? That makes it all better.
And hey, when the Mormons pay off Congress to ban chocolate, why, that’s secular too. Selling chocolate is secular, and banning it for no reason other than superstition from magic golden plates must be secular too.
We can just open the floodgates to any wealthy religious institution with an axe to grind, a true expression of capitalism. No matter how many people it hurts, no matter how many people it tramples and imprisons and kills, it’s all ok, so long as we don’t actually build a physical church, it’s secular.
Church Lady
@John Sears,
I don’t hate you, I just think you’re just a little too worked up about something that doesn’t affect you directly. It may affect, in some way, those you love or care about, but you are acting like someone is trying to crawl up your uterus, and you don’t have one. Caring is one thing, going off like your are (i.e., burning down the house) is positively obnoxious. Ideologues like you (wanting the perfect – according to you- instead of the good) are one of the reasons that so little is ever accomplished in Washington.
No, I have never been persecuted for my religious beliefs, but that might have something to do with the fact that the very few I have tend to be typically mainstream. I’d be interested in knowing exactly how you have been persecuted for your religious beliefs and who/why someone would want to have you committed to a mental facility.
Since you are obviously so committed to abortion rights, would I be remiss in assuming that you volunteer to work at clinics, helping these women whose cause you so wholeheartedly support? Do you donate to groups like Planned Parenthood and Emily’s list? I hope that you do – it would at least allow me to respect you for putting your money and your time where your mouth is.
J. Michael Neal
Preventing federal money from being spent upon a medical procedure. That is a secular purpose. Money is secular. The procedure is secular. The whole thing is secular. Point me to a religious *purpose* for the legislation. Not motive – purpose.
Nothing about the motives of why it is being restricted make any difference to this argument. Congress can enact it from any motive that they like. That has nothing to do with its purpose. The relevant question is what actually happens. The effects of the bill must have a religious component on their own terms with no reference as to why it was passed. Only then can it establish a religion, and, even then, it doesn’t necessarily.
Of course, despite the fact that this is the case, you aren’t really asking whether or not the *purpose* of the legislation is religious. You are asking me whether or not I can construct a *motive* for it that is not religious. Sure. It’s actually pretty easy:
A fetus is a person, and it is murder to kill a person. Therefore, we should not allow the federal government to fund it.
There you go. A completely secular argument for the amendment, with no religious reference whatsoever. I disagree with it, but I’m not stupid enough to pretend that it doesn’t exist.
Now, you are going to argue that the reason anyone thinks that a fetus is a person is because of religious beliefs. First, you are wrong, depending upon how one defines religion; there are atheists who believe that. Reason tells them that a fetus is a person. Second, so what? You are making two of three implicit assumptions, none of which holds:
1) The belief that a fetus is a person is somehow a less religious belief. This is, at best, debatable. What are the boundaries of what constitutes religion? You’re going to find that that’s a really slippery question.
2) You assume that your definition of what constitutes a person isn’t arbitrary. It is. There is no obvious dividing line that separates human from not-human. You can come up with definitions that are consistent, and depend upon scientific knowledge, but that does not lessen their arbitrariness. You’ve picked one, probably that has to do with viability, but there is nothing inherent to that choice that is definitive. The question of whether a particular set of cells is a human being is necessarily a philosophical one, and there’s no way to separate religion from that. Until not too long ago, cell collections that had dark brown skin were not held to be legal persons. Clearly, that argument was a moral abomination, but it is no more clearly false on its own terms than the argument that a fetus is. It’s an arbitrary distinction. That doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, as I agree with it. It’s still arbitrary, as will be *any* decision as to where to make the distinction.
3) You might argue that, even if a fetus is a person, the rights of a woman not to have to carry it outweighs the rights of the fetus to live. This is probably where we part ways; it seems fairly clear to me that, if a fetus is a legal person, then its right to live is greater than a woman’s right not to carry it for nine months. Again, though, neither position is logically incorrect. It’s a value call. That means that it involves thought that can’t be separated from religion.
John Sears
@Church Lady: Argh, I thought I was done.
Ok, when I was in high school, my principal tried to expel me for religious reasons, and forced my parents to take me to a shrink to be evaluated. He had convinced one of my best friends’ parents to have him institutionalized a couple of years before, and thought it would work in my case. Instead the psychiatrist sided with us, and somewhere my parents still have a writeup stating that, despite the opinion of larger Indiana society, being an atheist does not make one insane.
I was persecuted for 6 years in that place. The administration actually assigned other students to spy on me (they admitted to this), documenting what I did, said, who I associated with. He was trying to drive me to suicide.
Instead, my friends and I caused him so much stress he had a massive heart attack and nearly died, my senior year of high school.
Still, I had nightmares every night for four years. I drank myself to sleep. I gained a massive amount of weight and nearly lost hope of ever getting out of there alive.
I do donate money to Planned Parenthood, not that this somehow makes my concerns more or less legitimate. I can’t donate much time for anything, because I’m recovering from a stress-related digestive ailment that nearly killed me and may be related to the severe weight gain and strain from my time in small town Indiana. (It might not. It’s resisting diagnosis. )
I am going to law school starting in the spring. I hope to work for the ACLU, because they stood up for me and my fellow students during this time, and were one of the very few groups that ever cared. The one letter from the indiana branch of the ACLU to our principal did more good than 12 years of attending church with my family. I’ll never forget their kindness.
J. Michael Neal
I didn’t ask you to provide a secular reason why abortion should be funded by the government. You are avoiding the question. I asked you to come up with a set of guidelines that would separate religious, and thus impermissible, motives for writing legislation from non-religious ones that are acceptable. That’s not a question that references a particular policy. I want to know how you want to make that distinction in general.
As I said, there are a ridiculous number of completely irrelevant responses to my posts in this thread. I’m getting the impression that none of you have a relevant answer, and you’re trying to obfuscate that with a blizzard of bullshit.
I agree with this, too, though this still isn’t an argument that it is unconstitutional. Policy can be hideously bad and still be permissible. Now, if you want to lay out an argument as to why this part is the establishment of a religion, in its legal sense, you’d be on more solid ground. You might even win in court, though I don’t think it’s a slam dunk.
Actually, I take that back. Given the composition of the current Supreme Court, you’d lose. However, with other Courts that have existed in the past, and easily could again in the future, you’d win.
Brachiator
@J. Michael Neal:
The purpose and the effect of laws restricting abortion, contraception and in vitro fertilization do nothing seek to force the nation to submit to the dogma of the Catholic Church. In fact, you are not even making a good argument about the secular effect of a law here, unless you mean that a law passed by the federal government is secular by definition simply because it is not the decree of a theocracy.
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
It would be impossible to do unless that law specifically mentioned a “brand name.” Laws are secular once that qualification is missed.
I will argue til the sun burns out that law fails the test of being moral short of laying limits on itself. Law is backed by force and that in itself disqualifies it from moral standing. The fact that most moral philosophies/religions are also a form of constructing social order does mean that attempting social order will inevitably include some aspect of one or the other.
No, I don’t agree with John Sears that abortion regulation is going to fail the 1st as much as I despise the attempt to force a religious/moral view down women’s throats. If social order were the litmus test of laws, something a bit different might be the outcome, but it in reality it isn’t always.
BTW:
The public view of this may be exactly as you propose, I argue that at least some clearly understood such. For pete’s sake, you will have people assert that the 2nd is about hunting, while the debates have specific references to hunting as a side benefit.
John Sears
@J. Michael Neal: Religious purpose: Catholics believe unborn babies go to Purgatory. The law prevents the death of these unborn by making abortion more expensive than pregnancy, in the hopes that some poor women will not be able to afford to get the abortion they want or need.
I love the idea that the Bishops of the Catholic Church are lobbying to restrict abortion for a SECULAR purpose. That is completely hilarious and disingenuous. You’re lying, either to yourself or me, and I don’t care which.
There is no scientific basis to define a fetus as a person. A fetus is a clump of cells with a distinct genetic makeup and no ability to survive on its own. So are sperm and eggs. They’re not people. A fetus has no consciousness, an incomplete brain, no knowledge, memories or experience.
It is not arbitrary to say that a person, a living, breathing, viable person not dependent on another human for biological support is a distinct entity from a parasitical half-developed creature that filter feeds on the blood of another human being and has the potential, at severe pain and significant risk of death to the developed organism, to become autonomous and functional on its own at some date in the future, barring medical complications.
In order to ‘protect’ these fetuses you must sacrifice all rights of a woman to sexual freedom and autonomy. Her life, her body, is less important than that lump of cells. Her decisions matter less, and if she dies to support it, so be it. You would divide the human race in half and declare one half inferior, not just to the other, but to potential others not yet born. THAT is an abomination.
J. Michael Neal
Really? In what way is government money not secular? In what way is a medical procedure not secular? Please tell me anything about this law that is not secular *without* any reference to the motives for its passage. You can’t tell me that it was passed because people think that a fetus is a person, because that is a reference to the motives. You can’t tell me that it’s religious because the Catholic Church is pushing it, because that is a reference to the motive.
Again, the difference between this and a nativity scene in public is that a nativity scene is both an effect of the policy, and religious in nature. Therefore, the effect of it is to advance a religious viewpoint. It’s the same thing with intelligent design, since courts have ruled that it is a religious doctrine. You can not avoid religious content when you implement the teaching of it.
What is religious about the effects of a law preventing government funding of abortion? Is Congress spending money inherently a religious act? Is choosing to get an abortion inherently a religious act? (If so, it’s hard to see, by your reasoning, how the government *could* fund it.) Is the doctor performing a religious act when he performs an abortion?
What is the religious content?
John Sears
@J. Michael Neal: You’re the one dodging the question. You challenged me to produce a set of guidelines to ban a religious basis for a coherent bill. With my two examples I showed how the bill is completely and utterly incoherent.
Or are you arguing that you can make law from religion for no reason at all now? Have you dropped to coherence test from your standard?
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
An absolute canard, it is illegal because social order demands that it be so, within certain limits. It is not a question of morality or the State would not do it, soldiers would not do it, self-defense would not be an excuse, etc, etc. It is banned within constraints that promote social order not morality. It is no wonder you get all tangled up once you assert legislating morality is what we do. It is not what we do unless we want to fuck up the works and you can prettly clearly see how fucked up the works get when you attempt it.
John Sears
@J. Michael Neal: Ignore the abortion for a second.
How is paying the Christian Scientist to pray not a religious establishment?
Church Lady
@John Sears:
Good luck and best wishes on your admission to law school. I hope you are successful and are able to go on the career of your choice. Once you have graduated, you will be in a position to argue Constitutional law with J. Michael Neal. I believe he recently saw for the bar exam, but I might be confusing him with another BJ commenter. For the time being, I suggest you back out of the room slowly, because he is kicking your ass six ways to Sunday.
Chuck Butcher
@John Sears:
John your argument is possibly a good one for abortion access but it does not answer all questions of social order regarding unlimited access to abortion and you know it doesn’t. Religion is not required for there to be questions in point of abortion and limits. I’ll not try to use the extensive space to argue what limits are appropriate and what are not, I simply note that limits will be required as much as “free speech” or “free press” will have limits imposed and religion/morality aren’t required.
Chuck Butcher
@Church Lady:
And your inability to see that J Michael Neal is as FOS is pretty telling. Neither one has it right. But, then, I’ve crossed swords with you before and found yours to be made of cardboard.
Brachiator
More evidence that the Democrats in Congress, and the Obama Administration, are the real opponents to effective regulation of the financial markets (Goodbye to Reforms of 2002).
Weak financial regulation. Weak health care reform. The stink of capitulation to special interests weakly perfumed with the dubious claim of compromise.
Remind me again why I voted for these dopes?
I don’t expect the Democrats to deliver everything that I would like to see. But they are serving shite on a shingle and expecting me to act as though it is sweet strawberry jam.
John Sears
I am going, regardless of what people think of whether I’m winning or losing. It’s a sick world where people would value a fetus more than my wife, my sister, my mother.
I don’t care about what the law precisely says on this point right now. It’s perverse beyond words that anyone would think that. Yet, apparently, some people, including some people here, do.
It’s repulsive. It’s making me want to cry, and worry about the safety of the women I care about living in this country.
So I’m going to go. Later.
Chuck Butcher
@Church Lady:
Good luck in the priesthood…
I’m pretty sure there are such things as varing opinions on … oh say … The Supreme Court of the United States??
J. Michael Neal
No, you don’t. You object to forcing this particular moral view down women’s throats. You have no objection, I’m betting, to forcing the moral view that they shouldn’t shoot random people on the streets down their throats. I’m betting you’re not opposed to forcing the moral view that women shouldn’t be allowed to provide fraudulent mortgages to poor people down their throats.
As I said, I find it amazing that people can have such a shallow understanding of their own beliefs that they could seriously argue that they despise forcing moral views down anyone’s throats. There is probably a very small set of people that believe this, but the view qualifies them as hard core sociopaths.
This is both wrong and irrelevant. It’s irrelevant because the scientific definition of what constitutes a human being may inform the view of what legally constitutes a human being, but it does not control that view. It is, inherently, a subjective question.
It’s wrong because, while a fetus is just a clump of cells with no ability to survive on its own and an incomplete brain, that does not mean that science conclusively proves that it is not human. It only does so if you have already assumed the things that constitute personhood. There is no obvious reason why a complete set of human DNA is not the scientific definition of what makes someone a person. You are trying to use science to prove something that it is incapable of proving. It’s not a scientific question.
No, this is a religious motive, not purpose. Part of the problem is that you seem to misunderstand what “purpose” means in this context. Yes, in plain English, this constitutes a purpose, but that’s not the relevant definition here. “Purpose,” in this context, is divorced from motive. Again, to show that this involves the establishment of religion, you *must* be able to make the argument that the policy itself is religious in nature, not the motives for introducing the policy. No matter how many times you keep making this argument, it doesn’t become any more relevant.
It is entirely arbitrary to declare that independent breathing is a necessary prerequisite for legal personhood. The same is true for everything else you say here. Just because you can construct a logical argument for why it is does not mean that it is not arbitrary. It depends entirely on judgments that are not logically obvious.
If you want to say that it is not arbitrary, please explain to me why it is that being separate from the mother is necessary for legal personhood. Do so without referencing arbitrary assumptions that lead you to that position.
Yes, it is, given assumptions that abortion opponents make that aren’t any more arbitrary than the ones you are making. From the positions of the assumptions that they have made, let’s restate your paragraph:
“In order to “protect” these women, you must sacrifice all rights of a human being to life and autonomy. Their life, their body, is less important than her sexual freedom. Their life matters less, and when it dies to support it, so be it. You would divide the human race into parts, and declare that one part inferior, not just to the other, but to every other one that will ever be. THAT is an abomination.”
That’s every bit as logically valid argument as the one you are making. I happen to disagree with it, but that’s because I don’t buy the assumption that a fetus is a legal person until fairly late in the pregnancy. I agree with you on that. The difference is that I don’t delude myself into thinking that my beliefs don’t contain a large arbitrary component.
Chuck Butcher
@Brachiator:
Wouldn’t I love to be able to disagree with you. But, you act as though this is something new so I’ll suggest to you that you look to Jefferson v Hamilton or Hamilton dead in a duel to see how the business of wealth and power has been about gaming whose favor it was in rather than about the people.
J. Michael Neal
The decision that a particular social order is preferable to another one is a moral decision. That the banning of murder upholds that social order does not mean that it is not a moral decision. It is perfectly possible to have a functional social order in which various forms of what we consider to be murder are legal. In fact, the social order in most places and most times in history have done so. As you point out, there are certain instances where killing someone is not considered murder in our society. These are moral questions.
Do you disagree that the social order imposed by the Roman Republic wasn’t functional? Yet, there was an entire class of inhabitants that it was perfectly legal to kill for whatever reason you wanted. The decision to outlaw the killing of slaves, and then the abolition of slavery itself, was a moral decision. The public decided that it was immoral to allow the enslavement of people, and so they pressured Congress to fight a very bloody war to impose that moral view through legislation.
The law is a moral statement.
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
You lose dumbass.
Go fellate Church Lady, don’t fuck with me. I’ll hand you your ass if you make assertions about me.
J. Michael Neal
Huh? Is anyone pretending that this is somehow a change? The only thing that this would be is a change in regulator. The FASB was empowered by legislation from Congress, and the SEC has always had the power to overrule it. In fact, it has done so on a number of occasions, sometimes prompted by Congress and sometimes not.
In fact, it would almost certainly be unconstitutional for Congress to allow the FASB to set accounting regulations without giving some executive branch body the authority to overrule it. This gets into separation of powers arguments, and exactly what bodies Congress is allowed to vest with power. The Constitution gives Congress the power to authorize the Executive to impose regulations. It does not give it the power to vest regulatory power in private bodies.
Arguably, giving the FASB, as well as the PCAOB (just to name bodies connected to accounting), the power to set regulations at all is unconstitutional. It passes muster only thanks to the reinterpretation of much of Congress’ right to regulate the economy during the New Deal. It’s certainly possible to read the Constitution as requiring that the power be vested directly to an executive agency. There’s a suit going to the Supreme Court right now making this argument with regards to the PCAOB. I suspect that they are going to lose, but it is notable that the argument has enough support to get certiorati, so it’s not completely ridiculous.
J. Michael Neal
Okay, I was wrong. You think that women (and men, I guess) should be allowed to provide fraudulent mortgages to poor people. I’ll keep this in mind when discussing financial regulation with you.
J. Michael Neal
Oooh, what a tough guy. I’m terrified.
Tim in Wisconsin
You want a secular reason to outlaw abortion? I’ll bite.
Abortion is inheriently discriminatory in that a woman can unilaterally terminate her parental obligations prior to the birth of the child while a man can’t. He can’t order her to get an abortion and must therefore pay child support. Meanwhile, if a man wants the child and the woman does not, he cannot compel the woman to carry the child to term. Both parties freely consented to the act that conceived the child, but one is completely subservient to the other from that point onward. Since there is no way to provide equal protection, it must be banned.
That’s not what I actually believe, of course. I think that abortion is morally wrong. Clearly, my position on that and just about every other issue (where I take the liberal position) is invalid becuase I’ve picked a faith tradition that shares my stake on these issues. I’ll just go watch Glenn Beck and dream about Sarah Palin now, since I don’t pass the litmus test. But before I go, I’ll remind you that the biggest reason that Republicans had any power in the last twenty years was the hemmoraging of pro-lifers from the Democratic Party. If you want to out-teabag the teabaggers, go ahead, but don’t be surprised if absolutely none of your agenda gets passed.
Church Lady
Chuck! Long time, no see. It’s good to know that you’re as cantakerous as ever.
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
I see you decided you had a bit more work to do after you ascribed to me things I don’t believe or hold reasonable. Nice try with the Romans and morality. You could try to argue whether holding people as property is immoral, it is simply irrational to try to divide human into human/sub-human.
You try to argue that my view of morality is dependent on whether there is a law, it isn’t. My moral view point may be similar or wildly dissimilar to yours and I don’t give a fuck whether a law somewhat coincides with it or not. I care that it works in a reasoned and logical manner in line with what I will nearly agree are moral limits on government in the Constitution.
My moral definition of what counts as moral murder may vary wildly from the governmental version, it doesn’t matter. I don’t mind that there is moral congruence with legal opinion, making it a definer as you do is ludicrous and a willingness to fellate Church Lady.
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
You really don’t know how to argue do you? I said nothing any logic would allow you to get to the point where I’m fine with it either morally or legally. I’d say we have some pretty good implications that it is bad for social order. I’d say that leaving people with no recourse beyond … say … pitchforks and torches is bad for social order. My view of the morality of the question is immaterial.
As I said, dumbass.
Chuck Butcher
@Church Lady:
I am.
I like seeing you even more when you frame your points well. Sometimes you do miss rather badly, not always by any means.
J. Michael Neal
@Chuck Butcher: Your position makes no sense. Why is it irrational to divide the human race up into human and sub-human?
No, I didn’t. I argued that your view of what laws should be enacted is based upon your moral views. That is going to be true for almost everyone. That an enacted law is immoral in your view does not change the fact that the motive of those who support it is based in morality. They have legislated morality, even if it isn’t yours. I’m betting that there are other laws that you support, that you agree with because of your moral views, and you believe in imposing it even on those who disagree with you.
This is grossly incomplete. You do not care solely that the law works in a reasoned and logical manner. There are many, many reasoned and logical ways that the law can be constructed that you would oppose for moral reasons.
You want to pretend that your moral views are the result of logical thinking, and that any opposed moral beliefs are irrational. This is arrogant beyond belief. Roman law was certainly reasoned. It was at least as logical as ours, given the assumptions that lay behind it, which were, themselves, as logical as the ones that underlay ours. It was also morally wrong, but it certainly worked. Look at how long first the Roman Republic, and then the Roman Empire lasted.
J. Michael Neal
Okay.
No, it isn’t, because you just made an argument based upon morality. The idea that there should be some way to resolve social problems without resorting to rebellion is a moral statement. You think that that is a better society when the peasants don’t need to burn things down to get justice. Great. I wholeheartedly agree, but that’s a statement of morality. You have a view as to what law should say in order to produce a just, fair, and prosperous polity. It’s hard to find an argument that is more the basis of morality than that; it’s what it’s all about.
This delusion that you have arrived at your view of what the law should be purely through reason, without resort to your morality is ridiculous.
Church Lady
We were already off track in this thread (sur-priiiise!!!), but at this point, everyone involved has completely left the reservation. I’m out of it, but I’ll continue to watch, just for the entertainment value.
Good luck and may the best man/men win.
Chuck Butcher
J Michael Neal seems to be bound and determined to make the mistake that law is dependent on some moral/religious framework. That same type of view is frequently used by the right to insist that atheists can’t be moral or “the wrong religion” means you’re scum.
I’m real sorry to inform him that morality and logic don’t have to go hand in hand and neither do they have to deny each other. Mistaking one for the other is not smart. J Michael insists that the law is a reflection of morality, by his lights a 3/5 personhood was moral. It was a reflection of that society’s view of social order, for pete’s sake see Jefferson for the moral/order disconnect and its outcomes.
Lincoln did Abolition for political/order reasons, not moral ones – despite some congruence with his morality.
His failing is obvious, morality and laws frequently don’t align, laws we see as totally immoral were on the books. Trying to measure the laws of prohibition on morality starts to get into the morality of outcomes and blows up completely there. Child pornography fails my moral test, it is illegal because it offends social order to have children subject to misuse in something they cannot defend from. Murder offends social order for an obviously simple reason, it is dangerous as hell to be around it. I don’t know what moral authority it is that he appeals to for the prohibition, certainly not the Old Testament, etc, etc, etc. He believes it is and the accident that the law is congruent with his belief leads him to assert cause and label me FOS. Sorry buckwheat, a mistaken belief system does not make a system work the way you’d like it to. It will make it malfunction badly and we have lots of those results to deal with. Look to the laws that are functioning very badly and you will find “legislating morality” as opposed to social order.
J. Michael Neal
@Church Lady:
Hey, I’m still trying to figure out if I want to fellate you, though I’m still working on the mechanics of that.
Brachiator
@Chuck Butcher:
RE: I don’t expect the Democrats to deliver everything that I would like to see. But they are serving shite on a shingle and expecting me to act as though it is sweet strawberry jam.
I have no idea what your point is. I expect some Democrats, and almost all Republicans, to be corrupt goons. However, I expected the president and at least some Democrats to be more principled. I am not yet willing to write them all off.
But it is a risky play for the Democrats to promise so much and to deliver so little. And a risky play for cynical special interests to feel smugly happy.
Jefferson v Hamilton. Hard to see who is supposedly representing “the people” here. And “Hamilton dead in a duel” – a conspiracy?
J. Michael Neal
No. No, no, no. How many times do I have to explain this? Just because something is legal does not mean that it is moral. It can be extremely immoral. What I am saying is that the law as it is enforced necessarily reflects the morality of those who enact it. I am, in no way, claiming that they can’t be monstrously wrong in their morality.
I have no problem asserting that my view of what is moral is better than that of other people. I sure as hell have no problem arguing that my morality is a lot better than anyone who thought, or thinks, that slavery is moral.
What I do not assert is that my moral beliefs are founded on logic, because they aren’t. They can’t be. I may use logic in building from those foundations. I hope I do. The foundations, though, are value statements that are not logically provable.
I believe that a just society is one that spreads the benefits of its wealth widely, and that public policy should be designed with the goal of making sure that everyone in society has a certain minimum amount of wealth, and that they have the opportunity to earn more. That’s a moral belief, not a logical one. I use logic to develop that moral foundation through concepts like the declining marginal utility of money. It’s still a moral position, though.
I firmly believe in legislating that morality. Even if you don’t believe it, I’m perfectly comfortable imposing it upon you if you want to live in the same society I do. Legislating it doesn’t make it moral; it either is or isn’t on its own merits. You don’t get to opt out of what a sufficient number of your fellow citizens think is moral, even if you disagree.
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
Not my morality, but it is dangerous to my health and well being for that burning to be going on. That’s what you don’t get, a reasonable economic distribution may fit my morality, but flatly it is better for my wallet and my survival to have people able to afford my services and not demand at gun point that I provide them.
Social order is about making it safe for us to be around each other and to prosper in the process. You seem to assume that I have some moral objection to blowing some of those fuckers out of their shoes to demonstrate that screwing me is a bad idea. I really don’t. I am constrained by the fact that I’d screw myself considerably worse by doing it and having a lot of people doing it would screw me up as well. You’re an idiot to keep asserting that I must base my thinking on morality that matches something you understand as moral. You assume that your morality matches most of the country’s because murder is illegal.
I give a damn if you can get 80% of the population to agree with your proposition that the law is moral, it doesn’t make it so and it doesn’t make it work to do it. You keep telling me what I think and believe to make it conform to your POV and that is really stupid.
I do not pretend to mind read, you seem to. I have played in politics long enough to know something about the disconnect between espoused morality and outcomes. I watch outcomes closely.
You can call me immoral if you like, that is your measure not mine.
Brachiator
@Tim in Wisconsin:
Just because outcomes are asymmetrical does not mean that you should outlaw abortion. You might as well say that you should outlaw marriage.
Until DNA and some changes in society came along, the legal presumption most places was that any child conceived in a marriage was the child of the husband and his wife. But now we have some situations in which a lover is making a claim to custody even when a husband agrees to support a child as his own after learning of a wife’s infidelity.
And we have some situations in which a husband, learning that he is not the biological father of children that he raised and supported for years, now arguing that he should no longer be required to provide support for children who are not “his.” Courts have been reluctant to go along with negating responsibility in this last case especially.
The law as it stands is unfair to someone here. But there is no easy solution that would not make someone suffer even more.
Of course, we could ban marriage and make all children wards of the state. Would that work for you?
Actually, here the man is subservient to the child he must provide support for, not to the woman. Life is tough.
But just because something is morally wrong does not mean that it should be illegal. Adultery, for example.
cj
It’s the Republicans evil plan to prove that Democrats spend more money while they have control by not voting on a bill unless more money is added. And Democrats just go right along with it. Sad.
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
Hmm, I’m to accept your limitations as mine? What authority do you appeal to as your basis for determining my moral foundations or the rest of the nation’s? I guess I see how you operate, if you can’t I can’t so you’re right. Because your morality is obtained through illogic, all morality must be?
I give up, I didn’t have any hope of convincing you, but your argument needed kicking in public. It no longer is an argument, you just assert that I can’t do it because you can’t.
Chuck Butcher
@Brachiator:
The real crux of the matter is that you can’t sort out a mess like abortion by appealing to morality. The sides are entrenched on that basis and outcomes don’t get measured as a part of the process. Getting to the best interests of society by appealing to wildly varying moral systems is not workable. That is at least a part of what drive the religious right crazy, things must conform to religion and they just won’t. Not even themselves.
Chuck Butcher
Artificial conditions can obtain on both a bubble and a burst bubble. Neither condition is the norm and neither is desirable.
There are a lot of very real reasons the tax code encourages home ownership versus rental. There are also some features of that which are simply the result of special interests. There is little reason to apply an interest tax break to mortgages on million dollar homes, there is a good reason to make it easier to own a home than to have to rent. Calling a home an investment is inaccurate, it is more of a savings bank.
That doesn’t make it reasonable to buy out of reach or that in some cases renting isn’t a better option. Housing should never be a prime driver of the economy, it is however a large factor.
J. Michael Neal
Why should I agree with you? There are undoubtedly people for whom in whose self interest it would be better to structure society in a way that they can strip you of your wallet and everything in it, and keep it for themselves. If you want to have a society made the way you want it, you are going to have to impose your morality on them.
Why is that a good thing? Because you, and I, think that it is good for it to be so. That’s a moral belief. It is perfectly logical to believe that the world should not be ordered in a way that makes it safe for us to be around each other. I have a very strong belief that it is wrong to shape the world in that fashion, but it isn’t necessarily illogical. Various applications will likely involve illogical structures built on that moral belief, but the base belief is neither logical nor illogical, because it is a subjective statement of values.
How many times do I have to say that this is not true before you understand? You seem to be incapable of reading even the parts of my posts that you quote in your own.
I assume no such thing. From the fact that society has made murder illegal, I intuit the belief that most of society thinks that it is immoral. Whether the rest of society thinks that it is immoral has no bearing on whether I think it is immoral.* With regards to murder, it so happens that mt views on morality are very close to those of most of my fellow citizens. For the purposes of this argument, though, that’s a coincidence, not something that necessarily follows.
*Obviously not true on a second order analysis. There’s no escaping the fact that my beliefs on morality were shaped by a process in which the moral beliefs of those around me were a strong influence. In a first order analysis, though, what everyone else thinks is moral does not dictate what I think is moral.
What I am telling you is that you are wrong if you think that your belief about desirable laws is divorced from your beliefs about morality. It is delusional to think that the former does not flow from the latter. It is not just a coincidence that your beliefs about how the law should be structured are in congruence with your morality. It’s very much a cause and effect relationship. When you advocate for a law, you are advocating for imposing your morality on others.**
**There are a very small number of exceptions, laws that don’t have any moral content. I can’t come up with one at the moment, but they exist. These are the purely procedural decisions. I’m ignoring them when I say “all laws” or some such phrase, because it’s not a material element of the law.
I have made no comment about whether you are a moral or an immoral person. I suspect that, like most people, I would agree with most of your moral beliefs, and disagree with some. Does that make you immoral? I don’t want to get into that discussion, both because I have no idea, and I do have to get some work done tonight.
What I have said is that you have a set of moral beliefs, and that those beliefs cause you to have certain beliefs about what the law should be. I am also claiming that, when you act upon those beliefs and argue for a particular law, you are arguing that you (and those who agree with you) should be allowed to force that moral belief down the throats of those who don’t hold it through the action of passing that law. You are legislating morality.
To get back to the original point, I am also claiming that the foundation of your moral beliefs is no more inherently logical than is that of a Christian fundamentalist who believes that a ban on abortion should be the particular law that is forced down other people’s throats. At the level of first principles, both of you (and I, too) are relying upon subjective value beliefs that can not be proven one way or the other. All moral beliefs have a certain amount of alogical (rather than illogical, since it is neither logical nor illogical) thinking. This necessarily means that you believe in imposing laws on other people based upon principles that are, in their heart, not logical but moral.
I also claim, though haven’t stated explicitly before, that the alogical decisions that the Christian fundamentalist makes at the base of their morality are not made less valid relative to your alogical decisions just because they are derived from a religion. Both sets are equally valid. If we are going to allow subjective value decisions to influence our legislation, and it is impossible not to do so, then everyone’s subjective decisions must be allowed into the forum of public debate.
I readily acknowledge that this is a subjective value decision on my part. There’s no logical reason why everyone’s voice needs to be allowed into the debate. However, this is why I have challenged you to provide me a set of guidelines that will tell us when someone is arguing from a base of religious, and thus impermissible, subjective value decisions rather than a permissible, non-religious set. So far, you have provided no such guidelines. All you have done is stated that the people arguing from a religious basis are doing so from a set of alogical principles. To which I say, “Duh. I knew that.” Why should their specific set of alogical beliefs disqualify them from making policy unless they are prepared to ignore their principles?
I am arguing that people are allowed to band together based upon a shared set of moral beliefs and lobby the legislature to impose their moral beliefs upon others through the mechanism of passing laws. No matter whether they call their group “the ACLU” or “the Catholic Church,” their voice should be heard, and it is perfectly permissible for their dogma to be the basis of legislation.
Lastly, I am arguing that whether or not legislation based upon any particular set of subjective value beliefs is permissible or not under the US Constitution does not, and really can not, be determined by which set of values underlies it. For it to be the establishment of religion, the effects of the law must have religious content, not the motives.
Honestly, you’ve already won most of the debate. The mere fact that something having secular effects does not disqualify it from permissible legislation means that your set of subjective values is considered superior to your opponents, in terms of its legal status. I think that this is a good thing, but it is definitely a better starting place for us. In a lot of ways, what the religious folks are fighting over at the moment are the leftover scraps. Those scraps are important, but let’s not lose track of the fact that this is overwhelmingly a secular society.
Tim in Wisconsin
@Brachiator:
I wholeheartedly agree. While morality is the reason that I’m opposed to it, I can’t just tell others that they’re wrong. I’m not even sure that I want it outlawed; we’re certainly not doing everything that we can to reduce unwanted conceptions or provide pre-and-post-natal support to mothers. My injection of my own personal ethics was the kickoff to a sarcastic rant directed at John Sears who would prefer that I just go jump parties.
J. Michael Neal
Then do so. Tell me how your first principles are not subjective. You can’t do it, because there are always assumptions that you can’t prove. Let’s try a couple:
1) Why is it a moral imperative that other people to be well off?
2) If you keep responding to #1 through an appeal to self interest, tell me why it is moral that you be well off?
3) How does your answer to #2 make your self interest more important than that of those who would be better off in a different system?
4) Why is slavery immoral?
5) Does might make right?
6) Is aggressive war immoral if it benefits you?
7) If you agree that it is moral to incarcerate someone for the rest of their life, why is it immoral to torture them?
8) What is the nature of justice?
9) Where do moral principles originate? What gives them their authority?
J. Michael Neal
Just because religious people think that something is immoral doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be illegal.
addubito
Just out of curiosity, J. Michael Neal, is it your position that it is by definition impossible for the regulation or prohibition of a secular act to stem from religion in such a way as to violate the First Amendment?
Brachiator
@J. Michael Neal:
We agree here in principle.
However, a religious institution attempting to pass laws that are nothing more than a reflection of its religious dogma is anathema.
A health plan revision which recognized faith healers as medical practitioners who could be reimbursed for their services, for example, if pushed by any evangelical church.
The issue here is that often religious dogma is incompatible with democracy. It is one thing to debate the morality of something, and whether or not it should influence what should be law.
It is something else again for a religious institution to seek to make something illegal because of its church doctrine, doctrine which is not subject to debate, but which must be accepted by that religion’s adherents.
I know deeply religious people who believe that dancing and wearing jewelry is immoral. They have absolutely no rational basis for these beliefs, which are merely a reflection of how their religious leaders interpret their religious texts. If they attempted to get laws enacted that prohibited dancing or decorative jewelry, I would oppose them every step of the way.
J. Michael Neal
So would I, but that’s because they are wrong. I don’t care what the source of their moral beliefs are. The fact that they would be advocating for this legislation for religious reasons doesn’t make any difference to me.
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
You cannot use your inability to do something mine. That you cannot see it I can accept without a problem, but you cannot define me by your measuring stick.
You keep using a lot of words to tell me why you see things the way you do as you don’t offer a single piece of logic to show that I’ve failed to use logic, you simply deny it.
Appealing to first and second principles in arguing your limitations has no effect on mine. If I appeal to someone’s morality I recognize that I’m making an emotional argument. So what? I’m a political animal and a part of that toolbox is reaching people, it doesn’t mean that it changes the rude truth of laws because a shitload of people hold your view. Would I prefer to use reason? You demonstrate why I can’t rely on it.
Chuck Butcher
you’d like me to show that meeting the self interst of more than less is logical in an economic model rather than moral?
In the face of you asserting that it is moral? You like your two headed coin do you?
J. Michael Neal
Put up or shut up. If you can derive your first principles purely by logic, do it. Show me how it’s done.
J. Michael Neal
Okay. If you want to assert that self-interest is the sole basis of your morality, I’ll put you into that small group of people I mentioned at the top. It also makes you a raging sociopath, but I guess that’s not my problem.
I would ask how we are supposed to build a just society based upon your self-interest.
Chuck Butcher
You propose that morality in the first case is illogical and propose to reason forward from there. Knock yourself the fuck out. I’m a raging sociopath?
J. Michael Neal
If the sole basis of your moral beliefs is self-interest, yes.
As it happens, I don’t believe you when you tell me that it is, so I doubt that you are a raging sociopath. Still, that’s the position you seem to have staked out.
Not quite. I argued that the basis of morality is inherently neither logical nor illogical. That’s not an axis that can really examine those choices. After that, people do use logic to build up the details of their moral beliefs.
Church Lady
@ J. Michael Neal (205) responding to Chuck Butcher (199)
“There are undoubtedly people for whom in whose self interest it would be better to structure society in a way that they can strip you of your wallet and everything in it, and keep it for themselves.”
Hmmmm, are we perchance alluding to the dreaded “redistribution of wealth”? That is something I thought the majority or commenters here have no problem with. Does Chuck only have a problem with that if it’s his wealth? If the government, by law (their gun) takes an increased amount of my wealth, in the form of taxation, that I deem unreasonable, to pay for things that others feel are just and good, but which I do not care about, do I have the right to feel that I am being robbed?
Just asking the both of you.
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
I have to be a god botherer to have a first principle?
Fine: I’m alive and I’m in an interconnected system of beings and I’d like that to work well for me.
My health and well being are dependent on my existance within an interconnected system, success or failure of that system directly affects my survival.
Blah, blah, blah
Or do you expect me to write a book to get to “treat others as you would be treated” or other bits of morality that you posit are illogical? Or do you actually?
J. Michael Neal
Well, it depends upon your definition of “redistribution of wealth.” It is redistribution when the titans of finance manage to vacuum up all the money and pay it to themselves as bonuses, despite the fact that they collapsed the economy. I would argue that doing so is also in their self-interest. I would further argue that it’s immoral.
Unless you are going to argue that everyone’s self-interest leads to exactly the same policy outcomes, you need to explain how we arrange it so that no one’s morality (self-interest) is imposed upon anyone else, despite this difference. If you are going to argue that everyone’s self-interest leads to exactly the same policy outcomes, I’m going to tell you that your beliefs sure as hell aren’t rational.
Sure. You have the right to feel any way you want. I’m not even going to try to stop you.
The real question is whether or not it is unreasonable for you to have to pay for the stuff. That depends upon what you consider to be unreasonable. Do you have any way to derive exactly how much is reasonable based purely upon logic?
J. Michael Neal
I have no idea how you arrived at the conclusion that this question follows from anything I’ve said. Obviously, the answer is, “No.” Everyone has first principles, no matter what their religious beliefs are or aren’t.
Okay. We’re still at nothing but self-interest as the basis of your morality.
Okay. You still haven’t said anything particularly useful, or dispelled the idea that self-interest is the basis of everything.
Yeah, I expected you to leave out the hard parts.
Not a book, but it would be nice if you would provide enough to produce a basis for the idea that all morality can be based upon self-interest without imposing someone’s morality upon someone else.
The largest problem with this as a structure is that there are going to be times when the moral structure you seem to want to create from this basis conflicts with your self-interest. I deny that it will always be in your self-interest to act in a way that is not deeply sociopathic. Using some game theory terminology, I can see that you can logically construct a system in which it is usually in your interest to cooperate. I don’t see any way that you can construct a real world, functioning morality of self-interest in which it is *always* in your self-interest to cooperate.
There have been any number of times in my life that I could get away with immoral acts that would benefit me and that had no chance of backfiring on me. I’m pretty sure that that’s true of everyone. Assuming that that’s true of you, and if it’s not, it is certainly true that the folks at Goldman Sachs have had such moments, you have at least one of four problems:
1) Explain how it is that, with an ethic of pure self-interest, you can turn down those opportunities. What is the basis of your morality that allows you to ignore your self-interest in these situations?
or
2) Explain how it is that a legal structure that allows you to get away with such actions does not involve imposing your morality on people that don’t share it
or
3) Explain how it is that having other people impose a legal system on you that does not allow you to take such actions does not involve them imposing a legal system upon you that you don’t share
or
4) Explain what the purely logical basis of everyone else having your self-interest as the basis of their morality.
Chuck Butcher
You have a right to balance your ability to strip the nation bare against those people’s willingness to gut you like a fish and walk away with all of it.
OR
You can balance what you take with what it takes for the system to prosper so that people can afford your products and if you can’t manage that you become a danger to the system.
OR
You can quit being stupid enough to postulate that this nation hasn’t always had managed capitalism which essentially does set limits on your ability to rape your neighbors because you’ve got enough to do it but also creates a system rigged so that you can get enough to rape them.
OR
We can talk about redistribution of wealth in the terms of what is actually the fact, which is upward over the last thirty years so you’re the thief using a rigged system if that’s you.
OR
We can look at how the system best works for the most. That would include you also if the system stays healthy which requires broad prosperity. Socialism repeatedly fails the test of working best for most, but unmitigated capitalism also fails that. Your self-interest is best served by a healthy system and that includes wide spread prosperity rather than a concentration. If they system cannot police itself it will be policed, most likely by taxation, incentives, and disincentives out of its self protection. It has proven unwilling to police itself. Where those hits are going to fall to be useful I don’t have the economic numbers to get specific.
I can state that there is a limit what the top and shareholders of an enterprise can take out and leave enough to pay for a stable and prosperous work force. When you pass that line, your workforce can no longer afford to play and your market suffers along with others. This tendency has crashed the system previously and very nearly brought it being burned down. Bad results. Much worse than being taxed. Essentially wealth pays protection money. That would probably qualify as “immoral” if wealth wasn’t also a racket.
Chuck Butcher
appologies, moderation hell
You have a right to balance your ability to strip the nation bare against those people’s willingness to gut you like a fish and walk away with all of it.
OR
You can balance what you take with what it takes for the system to prosper so that people can afford your products and if you can’t manage that you become a danger to the system.
OR
You can quit being stupid enough to postulate that this nation hasn’t always had managed capitalism which essentially does set limits on your ability to rape your neighbors because you’ve got enough to do it but also creates a system rigged so that you can get enough to rape them.
OR
We can talk about redistribution of wealth in the terms of what is actually the fact, which is upward over the last thirty years so you’re the thief using a rigged system if that’s you.
OR
We can look at how the system best works for the most. That would include you also if the system stays healthy which requires broad prosperity. Soc**lism repeatedly fails the test of working best for most, but unmitigated capitalism also fails that. Your self-interest is best served by a healthy system and that includes wide spread prosperity rather than a concentration. If they system cannot police itself it will be policed, most likely by taxation, incentives, and disincentives out of its self protection. It has proven unwilling to police itself. Where those hits are going to fall to be useful I don’t have the economic numbers to get specific.
I can state that there is a limit what the top and shareholders of an enterprise can take out and leave enough to pay for a stable and prosperous work force. When you pass that line, your workforce can no longer afford to play and your market suffers along with others. This tendency has crashed the system previously and very nearly brought it being burned down. Bad results. Much worse than being taxed. Essentially wealth pays protection money. That would probably qualify as “immoral” if wealth wasn’t also a racket.
J. Michael Neal
I categorically deny that this is a conclusion that is logically supported by the evidence if you mean it to apply to everyone. It is absolutely in the self-interest of some of the people to have wealth extremely concentrated, namely the people that get to hold on to that concentration.
You are asserting that pure self-interest can be the basis of morality without imposing it upon anyone. To make it work, you have to adopt a definition of self-interest that means that some people must behave in ways that do not make them better off.
This does not work.
Chuck Butcher
You do want a book.
1) First of all backfiring is much more likely than not, regardless of your opinions of it, so I’m going to avoid going there. I have no certainty and a strong probability of failure. Criminal thinking is not my course.
2)You can have the law or you can have me and a .45 and a complete willingness to use it. A choice.
3) WTF? I act as I choose, there are consequences if the State chooses. If I really don’t want those consequences, I comply. The State told me a certain numbered ball would mean I was drafted, I said you can put me in jail. I was not willing to comply and would force them to deal with me.
4)The only real difficulty is that people seem to look to the short term rather than the long. I give you Church Lady. My long term success is dependent on trust and other’s success and my ability to trust. Whether I get more or less than some others, their mutual success will drive my ability to succeed long term.
I have the illogic to have loved ones. Their success is important to my emotional well being. (love is quite rational as a species survival mechanism)
Surely that’s inadequate and virtually all those questions require much more but I ain’t writing a book.
Chuck Butcher
@J. Michael Neal:
Really? Ask Church Lady how her 401K is doing.
Ask TR why he abandoned {R} principles.
Chuck Butcher
I’m not going to go any farther with this, nobody else cares and no publisher has offered enough advance.
J. Michael Neal
One of your problems is that you really aren’t thinking in a manner of self-interest. It may be the case that, from the starting position it isn’t in your self-interest to behave in an immorally greedy fashion. I still deny that it is true that even you can go your whole life without facing situations in which your self-interest dictates defection from from a broader set of morals.
Still, that’s not really important. It is absolutely true that, as life advances, some individuals move into a situation in which self-interest demands that they defect. Take the people working high positions on Wall Street. Over the past decade, it was completely in their self-interest to grab as much wealth as they could. The negative consequences didn’t even come close to outweighing the gain.
If your morality is based upon self-interest, then it changes over time as your self-interest changes. The set of moral principles that it produces when you are 20 and just starting out in the world aren’t the same as they are when you are 50 and in a position to score really big, or when you are 70 and near death, or in any other situation. Based upon self-interest, the advantages of the security provided by a concern for widespread distribution of wealth stop holding much value for some people in society, even in the unlikely instance that they applied to everyone when they were young.
Chuck Butcher
You want to define self interest as it pleases you to oppose what I’ve set out. You can specify a hypothetical self interest for your purposes, I’ve told you mine. It really hasn’t changed much since I started trying real hard to understand how I would operate without appealing to the FSM or such. That was a really long time ago.
I seldom get into this type of discussion because it is one hell of a lot more complicated than appealing to a book of regulations. If you wanted a birth place I suppose hedonism with a dose of what Ayn didn’t think about since she got into asshattery starting somewhere somewhat useful. Take Christianity, Islam, Bhudism, etc and tear them apart into what they’re talking about in relation to social constructs and you start to see that there is a functional logic there, just buried to hell and gone. It’s like the cloven hoof proscription, trichnosis is real, there is logic to what looks like mystical animal avoidance.
Chuck Butcher
Look, screw whether a religion is the word of god, they last because they work as social constructs, the contract they make works well enough that their society doesn’t implode. This means that within them are rational seeds of a contract, we blow it given much of any excuse. The pantheons looked very human and much of what they were about were actual social contracts with internal logic.
You are repeatedly told to save your soul, the ultimate in self interest. The long view. I’m not nearly as heretical as you suppose. I am the actor, the motivator, and ultimately responsible for my stuff, it is about me. Do I like the feeling of being loved? Perhaps I’d better run my show so that I am. Well what about altruism? I have improved my surroundings. You propose you could make a mess of this, well surely, just as surely as the words of Christ have been made a mess of. You can drive a car through a crowd or on the road…so?