It says the number of groups in the "Patriot" movement stood at 1,360 in 2012, up from 149 in 2008 when Barack Obama was first elected president, an increase of 813%. The report said the rise was driven by opposition to Obama and the "spluttering rage" over federal attempts at gun control.
Those who were identified as "militia" groups or the paramilitary wing of the Patriot movement, numbered 321, up from 42 in 2008, the SPLC said in its report.
Concern over a "truly explosive growth" of groups on the radical right, along with a rise in domestic terrorist plots, has prompted the SPLC to write to US attorney general Eric Holder and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, warning of the potential for domestic terrorism and urging them create a new, inter-agency task force to assess whether it has adequate resources to deal with it.
The report says that the numbers far exceed the "high-water mark" of 820 groups in 1990s when the rise in militias was fuelled by the Waco siege, the Brady Bill and the 1994 assault weapons ban.
Richard Cohen, the SPLC president and a member of the Department of Homeland Security's group to counter violent extremism, wrote in the letter: "On October 25, 1994, six months before the Oklahoma City bombing, we wrote attorney general Janet Reno about the growing threat of domestic extremism. Today we write to express similar concerns.
"As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns."
Timothy McVeigh drove a truck full of explosives into a federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, killing 168 people, 19 of them children under six, and injured hundreds more.
"We are seeing a real and rising threat of domestic terrorism as the number of far-right anti-government groups continues to grow at an astounding pace," said Mark Potok, SPLC senior fellow and author of the report. "It is critically important that the country take this threat seriously. The potential for deadly violence is real, and clearly rising."
Potok said that the demographic factors driving the rise in such groups began before Obama became president – the census bureau predicts that whites will become a minority group in the US by 2043 – but have been fuelled by the changes in America he represents. The growth in extremism has been helped by the "successful exploitation over illegal immigration" and by anger over the gun control debate, he said.
Law enforcement officials have uncovered numerous terrorism conspiracies born in the militia subculture, including plots to spread poisonous ricin powder, to attack federal installations, and to murder federal judges and other government officials, the report says.
Potok cited a study by the Combating Terrorism Center at the West Point military academy, which found that right-wing violence in 2000-2011 surpassed that of the 1990s by a factor of four. He expected extremism to rise, as anger over gun control had become a "grassroots rebellion". He said that 20 states are considering laws that would aim to nullify federal gun control measures and 500 sheriffs mainly in western US, who say they will not enforce any such measures.
Daryl Johnson, a former Department of Homeland Security official, said in a press call that SPLC's numbers were likely to be a "on the conservative end" because they did not include clandestine and underground groups which did not have a presence on the internet.
Johnson, who was a member of the now-disbanded non-Islamic terrorism unit at the Department of Homeland Security, authored a report in 2009 warning about the increasing dangers of right-wing extremism which created a political firestorm, and was later withdrawn. He said it was "quite unsettling" that nothing had changed at the DHS in the last four years despite the rise in extremism.
Although only a small pool of individuals associated with such groups were potentially violent, and radicalisation was difficult to analyse, Johnson said: "This pool of potentially violent extremists should raise a red flag of concern."
He urged FBI and local law enforcement officials to assess the threat, and said more analysis was needed.
The SPLC's report on hate and extremism, contained in its quarterly intelligence report, also found that hate groups remained at a near-record level of 1,007 groups in 2012, a slight drop from the 1,018 groups documented in 2011.
SLPC defined "Patriot" groups as those who believe that the federal government is engaged in a conspiracy, is prepared to engage in martial law, would take away guns and would force the US into some kind of so-called "One World Nation".
The hate groups listed in this report include neo-Nazis, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, Klansmen and black separatists. Other hate groups on the list target gay people, Muslims or immigrants, and some specialise in producing racist music or propaganda denying the Holocaust.
Read the report from the SPLC.. I have the report from West Point saved .. I'll get it for the Board tomorrow .. . much too lazy to do it tonight .. . I really don't think any of us are surprised ... we've been watching this work out .. heck I would say since 2008 ... and every year since it's just gotten worse..
Iowa GOP Lawmakers Try To Curtail Divorce, Worry It Makes Young Women More 'Promiscuous'
By Will Wrigley and Amanda Terkel Posted: 03/05/2013 9:43 am EST | Updated: 03/05/2013 11:59 am EST
A bill making it harder for couples to divorce was approved by an Iowa state House subcommittee on Monday, with a supporter of the legislation arguing it is necessary to prevent young girls from being more "promiscuous."
The bill would make "no fault" divorces illegal in Iowa for parents of children who are minors. Now that it has been approved by the three-person subcommittee, it is ready for debate by the full state House Judiciary Committee, according to NBC 13 Des Moines [ http://whotv.com/2013/03/04/proposed-bill-making-divorce-harder/ ].
State Rep. Tedd Gassman (R), one of the seven Republican sponsors of the bill, said that the legislation is an attempt to keep families together -- something he believes is a pillar that will keep the country from falling apart.
Gassman also suggested that divorce can affect children's behavior, specifically that it can make teenage girls more likely to engage in sexual activity than children of parents who are not divorced.
Speaking about his granddaughter, whose parents recently divorced, Gassman said, "There's a 16-year-old girl in this whole mix now. Guess what? What are the possibilities of her being more promiscuous? What are the possibilities of all these other things surrounding her life that a 16-year-old girl, with hormones raging, can get herself into?"
Opponents of the bill said they believe that the law may actually damage families further. State Rep. Marti Anderson (D-Des Moines) believes that her parents stayed together for too long and that eight years of tension between them still affects her and her siblings today.
"The stay-together time was very, very damaging to my family and although we're all adults now, I'm not sure any of us have ever really gotten past that," said Anderson.
All 50 states currently allow no-fault divorce. Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied divorce, has found that such laws help women, leading to a drop in domestic violence [ http://www.salon.com/2010/06/17/no_fault_divorce_new_york/ ].
The Iowa legislation, according to NBC 13, would allow divorce only in cases of adultery, physical or sexual abuse, imprisonment or if one partner is missing for more than a year or the couple has lived apart for more than two years.
Arkansas Abortion Law Takes Effect After State Senate Overrides Veto Of Restrictive Bill 02/28/13 LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas became the eighth state Thursday to enact a near-ban on abortions starting in the 20th week of pregnancy, and by next week it could outlaw most procedures from the 12th week onward, which would give it the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. The Republican-led Senate voted 19-14 along party lines to override Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe's veto of a bill barring most abortions starting in the 20th week of pregnancy that was based on the disputed notion that a fetus can feel pain by that point. The Arkansas House voted to override the veto Wednesday. ... [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/arkansas-abortion-law_n_2781456.html [with comments]
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Abortion Bill Veto Overridden By Arkansas State Senate
By ANDREW DeMILLO 03/05/13 04:30 PM ET EST
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- The Arkansas Senate voted Tuesday to override Gov. Mike Beebe's veto of legislation that would ban most abortions from the 12th week of pregnancy onward and give the state the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.
There was no debate before the 20-14 vote. Beebe told legislators in his letter explaining his veto Monday that he believes the proposal is unconstitutional and conflicts with the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. But the bill's sponsor said after Tuesday's vote that he thinks the Democratic governor is wrong.
"That's not valid. The U.S. Constitution says nothing whatsoever about abortion. This is governed by case law," said Sen. Jason Rapert, a Republican from Conway.
The House sponsor of Rapert's bill said she'll ask that chamber to vote on an override Wednesday. Only a simple majority is needed in each chamber to trump a governor's veto. If the House overrides Beebe's veto, the 12-week ban would take effect later this year.
Last week, the Republican-controlled Legislature overrode Beebe's veto of a separate bill outlawing most abortions beginning in the 20th week of pregnancy. That bill, which immediately became law, is based on the disputed notion that a fetus can feel pain by then and thus, deserves protection from abortion.
So-called fetal pain laws enacted in other states are being challenged in court, and abortion rights proponents have said they would sue to block Arkansas' 12-week ban if it's approved. The 12-week standard is based on when a fetus' heartbeat can typically be detected through an abdominal ultrasound.
"Just like we said last time, the Legislature has the final say," Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said after Tuesday's vote. "So we'll see what the House decides to do.
"We don't purport to guess what either house of the Legislature will do on any issue, so we just, at this point, (there's) nothing for us to do but watch and see what happens. The governor's already stated his position pretty strongly," DeCample said.
All 14 Senate Democrats voted against the override, including five who supported the ban last week.
"I still agree with it. It's the thing to do," said Sen. Bobby Pierce, D-Sheridan. He said he voted against the override as a courtesy to the governor.
Beebe contends that both measures are unconstitutional and contradict Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion until a fetus can viably survive outside the womb, generally around 22 to 24 weeks. Beebe says the state would have to waste money defending the bans in court, and noted that Arkansas paid nearly $148,000 to attorneys for plaintiffs who successfully challenged a 1997 late-term abortion ban.
The 12-week ban would prohibit abortions when a heartbeat is detected using an abdominal ultrasound. It includes exemptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother and highly lethal fetal disorders. The 20-week prohibition includes all of the same exemptions except for fetal disorders.
The measure is among several abortion restrictions lawmakers have backed since Republicans won control of the House and Senate in the November election. Republicans hold 21 of the 35 Senate seats, and 51 of the 100 seats in the House.
Beebe has signed into law one of those measures – a prohibition on most abortion coverage by insurers participating in the exchange created under the federal health care overhaul.
If ultimately approved, the 12-week restriction wouldn't take effect until 90 days after the House and Senate adjourn. Lawmakers aren't expected to wrap up this year's session until later this month or April.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas has vowed to sue if the state enacts the 12-week ban – and the group said it was considering legal action over the 20-week restriction as well. Planned Parenthood has called the 12-week ban the nation's most restrictive anti-abortion law.
"I think we're one step closer to the most intrusive abortion law in the country and it sets Arkansas back decades in public perception in the minds of other people: potential employers, businesses and people who might want to move here," said Rita Sklar, the ACLU of Arkansas' executive director.
The original version of Rapert's bill would have banned abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, but he changed the measure after facing resistance from some lawmakers worried that it would require a vaginal probe.
Women who have abortions would not face prosecution under Rapert's bill, but doctors who perform abortions in violation of the 12-week ban could have their medical licenses revoked.
Arkansas 12-Week Abortion Ban Becomes Law Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) appears outside of the Senate chamber for an interview after he and his colleagues voted to override Gov. Mike Beebe's (D) veto of his proposed 12-week abortion ban. 03/06/2013 The Arkansas House of Representatives voted 56-33 on Wednesday to override Gov. Mike Beebe's (D) veto of a ban on abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, ensuring that the most restrictive abortion law in the country will now go into effect. Under the new law, proposed by state Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway), doctors who perform abortions on a woman who is more than 12 weeks pregnant will lose their medical licenses unless the woman is a victim of rape or incest, her life is in danger or the fetus has a highly lethal abnormality. Republican supporters of the bill argue that abortion should be banned that early in a pregnancy because the fetal heartbeat can be detected at that point. Several states, including Arkansas, have passed bans on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, based on the medically unsubstantiated theory that fetuses can feel pain at that point. But Arkansas is the first state to pass a 12-week ban. [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/arkansas-12-week-abortion-ban_n_2821739.html [with comments]
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Arkansas GOP struggling to keep up with America
The Rachel Maddow Show February 1, 2013
Rachel Maddow spotlights Arkansas State Senator Jason Rapert, sponsor of a mandatory vaginal probe bill and exposed in a new video railing against "minorities running roughshod over what you people believe in," as well as disturbingly recent support for slavery by Republican legislators and curious corporate campaign donations.
Fetal Pain Law: Federal Judge Strikes Down Idaho Law Banning Abortions After 20 Weeks Of Pregnancy
Protesters opposed to legislation requiring women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound demonstrated outside the Idaho Capitol in Boise on March 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Jessie L. Bonner)
By TODD DVORAK and REBECCA BOONE 03/06/13 11:44 PM ET EST
BOISE, Idaho -- A federal judge has struck down Idaho's law banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on beliefs held by physicians and others that the fetus is able to feel pain at that point.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled late Wednesday in favor of Jennie Linn McCormack, who was 33 at the time she decided to challenge the state's so-called fetal pain law and other abortion laws.
Idaho was one of seven states to adopt fetal pain laws in 2011, following in the footsteps of Nebraska's approval of the law in 2010. But those laws are no longer the most restrictive. This week, lawmakers in Arkansas overrode a veto of a near-ban on the abortion procedure starting from the 12th week of pregnancy.
In his 42-page decision, Winmill sided with McCormack and her attorney, Richard Hearn, declaring Idaho's fetal pain law places an undue burden on a woman's right to have an abortion. The judge also took the Legislature – dominated by Republicans in both chambers – to task for the motives driving adoption of the law, finding that efforts to protect a fetus don't outweigh a women's right to choose.
The judge found "compelling evidence of the legislature's `improper purpose' in enacting it," Winmill wrote. "The state may not rely on its interest in the potential life of the fetus to place a substantial obstacle to abortion before viability in women's paths," he said.
The ruling also finds unconstitutional at least two other Idaho laws dealing with abortion that Hearn and McCormack also challenged.
One is Idaho's requirement that first-trimester abortions be performed by a physician in a staffed office or clinic, a law that makes most drug-induced abortions, such as RU-486, illegal. The ruling also targets a law requiring that second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital and a statute that criminalizes the woman in some cases for undergoing the procedure.
"Historically, abortion statutes sought to protect pregnant females from third parties providing dangerous abortions," Winmill wrote. "As a result, most states' abortion laws traditionally criminalized the behavior of third parties to protect the health of pregnant women – they did not punish women for obtaining an abortion. By punishing women, Idaho's abortion statute is therefore unusual."
McCormack originally filed her lawsuit in federal court against Bannock County's prosecuting attorney on grounds the new fetal pain law was unconstitutional. She initially sought class-action status against prosecutor Mark Hiedeman, who filed criminal charges against her alleging she had an illegal abortion.
McCormack was charged after police began investigating after finding a fetus in a box in January 2011. An autopsy determined it was between five and six months gestation. Police said McCormack told them she didn't have enough money to go to a licensed medical professional, so her sister helped her access abortion-inducing drugs online.
A judge later dismissed the criminal case without prejudice for lack of evidence, but left open the possibility for prosecutors to refile.
In her lawsuit, McCormack challenged the lack of access to abortions for women in her region, as well as the ban on abortions after 20 weeks.
She noted there are no elective-abortion providers in southeastern Idaho, forcing women seeking the procedure to travel elsewhere.
McCormack was unmarried and unemployed at the time of her pregnancy – with an income of $200 to $250 a month – and already had three children. She couldn't afford the time or money it would take to travel to Salt Lake City to get an abortion, the lawsuit says.
South Dakota Abortion Wait Bill Passes State Senate 02/28/13 PIERRE, S.D. -- A measure that in some cases could extend what is already the longest abortion waiting period in the U.S. won final approval Thursday from the South Dakota Legislature. The GOP-controlled Senate voted 24-9 to pass the bill, which was approved earlier by the House. The measure will become law if signed by Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who has not commented on the bill but is a long-time opponent of abortion. Women seeking abortions in South Dakota currently must wait three days after seeing an abortion clinic doctor before they can have the procedure. The bill would make it so that that weekends and holidays do not count in calculating the three-day waiting period. Supporters said the change would make sure a woman has time to reflect and receive counseling before ending a pregnancy, ... [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/south-dakota-abortion_n_2785082.html [with comments]
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Personhood Mississippi Tries Again, Says Voters 'Were Confused' Before 03/06/2013 [...] The language of the proposed amendment has been rewritten in a way that may sound more appealing to voters. The 2011 ballot initiative declared that the term "person" should "be defined to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the equivalent thereof." This year's proposed initiative is a bit more vague, stating, "The right to life begins at conception. All human beings, at every stage of development, are unique, created in God's image and shall have equal rights as persons under the law." [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/personhood-mississippi-ballot-initiative-2014_n_2819746.html [with comments]
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Amazon Removes 'Keep Calm And Rape' T-Shirts; Seller Solid Gold Bomb Apologizes 03/04/2013 Amazon faced criticism Friday after customers pointed out offensive T-shirts, with slogans that seem to promote domestic abuse, and the retailer allowed the clothing company to continue to sell the products for several hours. The problem began when site users alerted Amazon.co.uk that one of its merchants, U.S.-based clothing seller Solid Gold Bomb, was offering T-shirts with the slogan "Keep Calm and Rape a Lot," according to the BBC [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21640347 ]. Solid Gold Bomb apologized for the shirts, but Amazon continued to allow Solid Gold Bomb to sell other shirts with variations on the same theme. Some of these shirts had phrases like "keep calm and knife her" and "keep calm and grope a lot," according to the BBC. The shirts are a play on England's famous World War II "Keep Calm and Carry On" slogan. Furious Twitter users proceeded to bombard both Solid Gold Bomb and Amazon's social media accounts: [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/02/amazon-removes-keep-calm-rape-t-shirt_n_2798682.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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UNC Sexual Assault Response To Be Investigated By U.S. Department Of Education
UNC is facing a federal investigation over complaints that it mishandled sexual assaults on campus.
By Tyler Kingkade Posted: 03/06/2013 8:18 pm EST
The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights will investigate the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill over allegations the university mishandled allegations of sexual assault on campus.
Robin C. Murphy, an official with the Office for Civil Rights, announced federal authorities were opening an investigation in a letter sent to the plaintiffs and obtained by The Huffington Post.
"Based on the information you provided in your complaint and in extensive supplemental documentation, we are opening your allegation for investigation," Murphy wrote.
UNC has denied the school pressured Manning to limit reporting of sexual assaults, and insisted the school reported incidents beyond those included in her initial compilations. The university also hired Gina Smith, a Philadelphia-based consultant and former prosecutor, to advise officials in reforming the school's sexual assault reporting policies.
"The University has received a letter from OCR and we will respond appropriately to their requests and cooperate fully," UNC spokeswoman Susan Hudson said in an email to The Huffington Post on Wednesday.
Officials with the Department of Education could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening. Murphy's letter said OCR will remain a "neutral fact-finder" in the investigation.
Celeste Greig, California Republican, Claims Pregnancy From Rape Is Rare Since former Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) comments about "legitimate rape," the GOP has tried to get its members to stop talking about the topic. 03/02/2013 The president of California's oldest and largest GOP volunteer group took a wrong turn while trying to criticize GOP candidates' missteps on women's reproductive rights when she argued that pregnancies resulting from rape are rare "because the body is traumatized." Celeste Greig leads the California Republican Assembly, which former President Ronald Reagan once called "the conscience of the Republican Party [ http://www.californiarepublicanassembly.com/ ]." It works to elect conservative Republicans to public office. Greig spoke to reporter Steven Harmon with the Bay Area News Group in Woodland, Calif., while in Sacramento for the GOP's spring convention on Friday. She criticized former U.S. Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) comment that it is "rare" for a woman to get pregnant after a "legitimate rape [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/19/todd-akin-abortion-legitimate-rape_n_1807381.html ]" because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." "That was an insensitive remark [ http://www.dailydemocrat.com/news/ci_22699914/california-gop-leader-steps-into-rape-pregnancy-controversy ]," Greig said. "I'm sure he regretted it. He should have come back and apologized." She then went on, however, to agree with Akin's premise that such pregnancies are uncommon. "Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized," she added. "I don't know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don't know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act." [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/02/celeste-greig-rape_n_2796875.html [with comments]
Pope Benedict XVI departing St. Peter’s Square in a helicopter on Thursday, leaving behind questions about how the church might evolve. Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By MAUREEN DOWD Published: March 2, 2013
COLM TOIBIN has plenty of experience getting inside women’s heads.
The lyrical Irish author wrote “Brooklyn” about the aching loneliness of a young Irish woman who emigrates to New York in the ’50s to find work.
In a short story called “A Priest in the Family,” part of a collection called “Mothers and Sons,” Toibin conjures a proud, elderly Irish mother who learns that her son, a priest, is pleading guilty to sex abuse charges.
In a short story in the current New Yorker, his protagonist is an older Spanish woman who rejects a request to meet once more with an old lover who got her pregnant, one of Franco’s officers during the Spanish Civil War.
Still, I ask the writer, how did this former altar boy from County Wexford have the nerve to climb inside the head of the most revered woman in history?
“It took a lot out of me emotionally,” the 57-year-old Toibin conceded, calling from his apartment on Riverside Drive, where he stays when he is teaching English literature at Columbia University.
In “The Testament of Mary,” a one-woman show with Fiona Shaw previewing later this month on Broadway, Toibin imagines his own version of how the Virgin Mary felt about crucifixion — “the most foul and frightening image that had ever been conjured up by men” — and whether she really had not known Joseph in a biblical sense.
To borrow a phrase that nuns once applied to naughty children in my school, the play is a bold, brazen piece. Toibin wrote it first as a stage monologue, then turned it into a novel and has recast it again for Broadway. His illiterate but intelligent Mary, with echoes of Antigone and Electra, is no idealized, asexual, docile Madonna, tenderly cradling her son’s bleeding body, Pietà-style.
This Mary runs away from the crucifixion to save herself (“the pain was his and not mine”) leaving others to watch Jesus die, wash his body and bury him. This Mary misses sleeping with her husband. This Mary disdains the “misfits” who flocked around her son.
She resents his two disciples — “the men who come to oversee my final years” as protectors or guards — for pressuring her to help mythologize Jesus as the son of God. She notes wearily that one scowls at her “when the story I tell him does not stretch to whatever limits he has ordained.” The men patiently explain to her “what had happened to me at my son’s conception” and rewrite her story about fleeing the crucifixion to be more nurturing.
“All my life when I have seen more than two men together I have seen foolishness and I have seen cruelty,” she says of the disciples, “but it is foolishness that I have noticed first.”
She disdains their drive for power, which calls for hiding the truth to protect the institution they are building — a story line that echoes this week as the male enclave in the Vatican roils with old rituals, new scandals and the cascading shame of even more sulfurous sexual abuse revelations.
Toibin, who describes himself as a lapsed Catholic, said he was inspired when he went to Venice and saw Titian’s radiant “Assumption of the Virgin,” and then “up the road” saw Tintoretto’s chaotic crucifixion painting.
“The idea that we were somehow saved and redeemed by a crucifixion seems strange to me,” he said. “The idea of human sacrifice is something we really have to think about, even people who are practicing Catholics, the idea of taking a single individual for the sake of any cause.”
He has written about visiting Catholic shrines in Europe and about his shame growing up gay in a church where homosexuality could not be mentioned. He talks about how strange it is to see the church recede in Ireland to the point that Dubliners seem more obsessed with shopping than Mass on Sundays.
He was relieved when his play opened in Dublin and church leaders there reacted calmly.
I wonder what he thinks of the pageantry in Rome. He is dubious about the showy helicopter exit of Benedict to nearby Castel Gandolfo: “There’s absolutely no reason why he couldn’t have gone by car. The roads in Italy are really good.” But he expresses admiration for the easy affection between the 85-year-old former Holy Father and his 56-year-old private secretary, Msgr. Georg Gänswein, whom Toibin has described as “remarkably handsome, a cross between George Clooney and Hugh Grant, but in a way more beautiful than either.”
Benedict may have given up his flashy red loafers, downgrading to brown ones made for him in Mexico, but he is taking “Gorgeous Georg,” as the younger German is known, to live in his new home, a monastery in the Vatican. Some cardinals are worried about the arrangement of having Gänswein serve two pontiffs, by day as prefect of the new pope’s household and at night as secretary to the emeritus pope.
“An 85-year-old man having such a beautiful companion with him morning and night to talk to and walk with,” Toibin said. “It’s like the end of a novel. It’s what all of us want for ourselves, straight or gay. It’s better than sex.”
I ask him whether he thinks the church will evolve under a new pope.
“Everyone is hoping for some change,” he said. “If you could see nuns making sermons. Clerical celibacy has to be abolished and soon. And we must quickly begin the process of allowing women into the priesthood.
“They need to think very carefully about not recognizing that gay people, like all other people, are made in God’s image. It’s just possible that they have more gay priests than they know. I think most gay priests are very good people in the priesthood for very good reasons, and actually faithful to the vows of celibacy. On the issue of gays, Benedict made things even worse.”
As Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict called homosexuality a “more or less strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil.” As pope, he reiterated the church view that homosexuals were “objectively disordered” and that men who had such tendencies could not be allowed into seminaries. He called gay marriage a threat to “the future of humanity itself.”
Toibin says that the church must have tolerance, and that its leaders have lost any sense of how their sanctimonious denunciations clash with their scandals and imagery, causing nothing but pain.
“I remember being at the Vatican at Easter 1994,” he recalled, “and watching all the cardinals and bishops, wonderfully powerful old men with great chins, sitting nobly with a long row of extraordinarily beautiful young seminarians standing behind, shading them with different colored sun umbrellas, some of which were pink.
“It was remarkable that none of them seemed to know what it looked like, and I watched it thinking, somebody must tell them.”
Cardinal O'Brien makes 'sexual conduct' admission as new gay accusations emerge
Cardinal Keith O’Brien has resigned as Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric following allegations of 'inappropriate' behaviour Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Cardinal Keith O’Brien, formerly the most senior Roman Catholic cleric in the UK, signalled that he did make homosexual advances towards young men.
By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor 8:14PM GMT 03 Mar 2013
He confessed that his “sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected” and asked for forgiveness from those he had “offended”, as well as the entire Catholic Church and the people of Scotland.
The former Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh – who only a week ago was on course to take part in the election of the next Pope – said he would now withdraw completely from public life.
His admission came as fresh details emerged of the allegations of “inappropriate” behaviour against him by four men – three priests and one former priest.
For the first time, it emerged that the accusations included attempting to touch, kiss, or have sex with them.
One of the accusers also claimed that the Church wanted to “crush” him and that he had been warned not to let the allegations become public or risk “immense damage” to it.
The admission leaves the Church in disarray and will have a devastating effect on its attempt to get its message across.
Cardinal O’Brien was the most high-profile and outspoken opponent of gay marriage in Britain, condemning it as a “grotesque subversion”.
He warned that the plans, supported by the governments in Westminster and Holyrood, would open the way to “further aberrations” and said society “would be degenerating even further than it already has into immorality.”
His comments earned him the title “Bigot of the Year” from the gay rights group Stonewall.
But last night Evan Davis, the BBC presenter, who is gay, posted a message on Twitter suggesting that the Cardinal’s fierce rhetoric might have been a way of suppressing his own “torment”.
In one of the last acts of his pontificate, Pope Benedict effectively sacked Cardinal O’Brien last Monday, just 24 hours after the allegations of “inappropriate conduct” appeared in The Observer.
Although the Cardinal had already tendered his resignation as Archbishop, as he is approaching 75, the Pope took the unusual step of making clear it was to take immediate effect.
The Cardinal also withdrew from the Conclave meeting this month to elect Pope Emeritus Benedict’s successor, in what Vatican historians said was a completely unprecedented move.
In a short statement issued by the Catholic Church in Scotland Cardinal O’Brien made no direct reference to his sexual preferences.
But he made clear that he had initially contested them because of their “anonymous and non-specific nature”.
“However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” he said.
It follows the publication of further details of the claims against him, which are being investigated by the Vatican.
The Observer reported that one of the sworn statements said: “He started fondling my body, kissing me and telling me how special I was to him and how much he loved me."
The former priest, who is married, alleges he was a 20-year-old seminarian when the Cardinal, who was then his Spiritual Director, made his advances.
He said that although he was straight, he had remarked at the time that it would have been “easier to get through seminary if you were gay”.
He told the newspaper: “This is not about a gay culture or a straight culture. It's about an open culture.
“I would be happy to see an openly gay bishop, Cardinal, or Pope.
“But the Church acts as if sexual identity has to be kept secret.”
“To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.
“I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”
Mr Davis tweeted: “I think people who struggle to suppress their homosexual urges find that expressing anti-gay views gives them fortitude in their torment.”
Ralph Napierski, Fake Bishop, Sneaks Into College Of Cardinals, Caught By Swiss Guard
Ralph Napierski (L), a fake bishop, poses with cardinal Sergio Sebiastiana as the cardinal arrives for talks ahead of a conclave to elect a new pope on March 4, 2013, at the Vatican. The Vatican meetings will set the date for the start of the conclave this month and help identify candidates among the cardinals to be the next leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. (Image credit: VINCENZO PINTO/AFP/Getty Images)
The impostor, identified as Ralph Napierski [ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/03/04/fake-cardinal/1962197/ ], was reportedly caught sneaking into a gathering of cardinals. Before his ruse was discovered, Napierski had already passed by a security station manned by Swiss Guards and had even posed for photos with at least one high-profile (and real) cardinal.
According to USA Today, security became suspicious of Napierski when they realized his cassock seemed shorter than appropriate. Also tip-offs: Napierski wore a black fedora instead of a skull-cap, and his bright purple sash was actually a common scarf.
As non-Catholic kids, we did wonder about priests. But we were way off
Scotland's Catholic population is of mostly Irish descent, Keith O'Brien included, with consequences not always predictable, writes Ian Jack. Photograph: Angus Blackburn/Rex Features
In the Scotland of my youth, religious identity was layered like geology. Catholicism seemed shrouded in mystery, which led to childish speculation, but a very different reality has emerged
Ian Jack The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013
When we were boys and girls, did we have any idea what priests got up to? Perhaps some Catholic children did, when they came across those now identified as bad apples, but for the rest of us they remained rarely seen, black-clad figures who (we were told) exercised a severe power over their congregations. Old films showed them as shrewd and humorous characters played by the likes of Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy, and though as Protestant or at least non-Catholic children we never swallowed that sunny version, they appeared sinister to us only in the most general way. I remember a moment of teenage speculation when, looking at the drawn curtains of a priest's house one winter's night, one of us wondered about the female housekeeper's role. A dozen years later, post-midnight in the lounge of a grand Dublin hotel, I saw a group of bibulous priests getting pie-eyed in what one of Cardinal Keith O'Brien's accusers would call a "late-night drinking session". To anyone raised with the purse-lipped notion that men of God should always be sober, this was a memorable scene, and for quite a few years after, maybe even until the advent of Father Ted, it represented my idea of "inappropriate behaviour" in the priesthood. That the same priests might end up undressing one another would then have been a preposterous suggestion.
We knew so very little. The clerical uniform successfully erased the individual inside it, so that instead of seeing a 25-year-old man of amiable intention and uncertain sexuality – quiet Pat Flannery, say, from the next street – we saw a member of a secret society with a lineage that went all the way back to the Spanish Inquisition. But then, we were on the outside. As a family of non-believers, we rarely saw the inside of the village kirk, but we knew the minister and the Bible he read from. The Catholic church – "the chapel", we called it – was a different matter. It had wooden sides and a corrugated iron roof and lay on the outskirts of the next village, where it had been built for migrant Irish workers at the beginning of the last century. On Sundays, our Catholic neighbours would put on their best clothes and walk over the hill to reach the hut's Latin ceremonies, which, when we occasionally heard them as passers-by, seemed to us superstitious and foreign.
It wasn't a barrier to friendship. The regular attenders included two of my closest playmates, Patsy and Neal, and when we drew apart, the reason wasn't chapel, but Scotland's state educational system. Since 1918, it has funded separate Catholic schools where priests have full rights of access and the church can veto the appointment of any teacher on grounds of inadequate faith and character. The funding has always been contentious – "Rome on the rates" in the old catchphrase of its opponents – and the division gets much of the blame for Scotland's persistent sectarianism. But in a country where 16% of the population is nominally Catholic, no political party is likely to abolish it. For my Catholic friends it meant a complicated journey each morning to St Columba's in Cowdenbeath, the school that later recruited Keith O'Brien as a science teacher after his ordination in 1965. Separate buses meant separate departures and homecomings. We lost touch.
In the long run of things, this hardly mattered. I made other friends who were Catholic or, more accurately in a post-religious age, friends who have "a Catholic heritage". None of the many questions that I expected would bedevil our conversations – papal infallibility, Irish state censorship, the Ne Temere decree and so on – ever gave us much trouble. And yet certain habits of mind endured. It had once been important to know who was and wasn't a Catholic, not in my case to deny them a job, but to avoid giving offence. In Glasgow, I worked on a newspaper where religious identities were layered like geology. On the editorial floor: mixed. Below in the composing room: mainly Protestant. Further below, in the machine room where the presses ran: substantially Catholic.
There were careful conversations. "I hope you don't mind the question but are you a Catholic by any chance?" a subeditor colleague asked one night. No, but why might he think so? "Because you're wearing a shirt and no tie, but you've buttoned your top button. It's something I've noticed Catholics do." Sometimes the task of identification ran in the other direction. When another colleague was talking about Kirkcaldy, I mentioned the fact that my mother was from that town. "Your real mother?" he asked with a meaningful glance over his reading glasses, implying there were other kinds, perhaps (I could never be sure) in the form of Masonic lodges. The composing room had more direct methods. Compositors wanted to know which team you supported and when you said neither Rangers nor Celtic, that you were a Dunfermline or a Thistle man, a subsequent question arose: "No, but which team do you really support?"
Of course, these questions conflated religious with ethnic identity: more than from theological dispute, they stemmed from Ireland's conquest and Irish migration. When Pope Benedict visited Scotland in 2010, his welcoming party was careful to stress Scotland's own pre-Reformation history and thus to nativise its Catholicism, but Scotland's Catholic population is of mostly Irish descent – O'Brien was born in County Antrim – with consequences not always predictable. My own grandmother, for example, liked to pronounce the republican De Valera as Devil Era, and detested the colour green so much that even the Christmas cards we sent her had to be green-free. But a form of denial may have been at work here, given the unknown but certainly Irish origins of her father and old stories that priests had once coming knocking at the family's door, anxious to reclaim their lost sheep.
Who knew? And now, who cares? In the 1960s, the Catholic church still loomed large in the secular as well as Protestant imagination as an authoritarian and repressive force, demanding obedience from states and individuals, and interfering in everything from library books to birth control. Its doctrines may not have changed much, to judge by Cardinal O'Brien's beliefs, but these days fewer of us pay attention. Whether the accusations against him are true or false, the television still shows us pictures of elderly men decked out in primary colours imagining they matter. Majesty, history, mystery: these may have been the impressions they once conveyed, with their thrones, their curia and their white smoke. But now … well, one can't help thinking of the poor ashamed wizard when the curtain collapses in Oz.
Our earlier suspicions were too ordinary: behind the drawn curtains, an occasional housekeeper fondled and a whisky bottle unstoppered. In truth, a vast male organisation pledged to celibacy was in a great sexual stew.
As church attendance drops, Europe's most Catholic country seeks modern pope
Catholic believers pray during the celebration of the Assumption of Mary at Jasna Gora Monastery in Czestochowa, Poland, on Aug. 15, 2012. Poland is one of the most devoutly Catholic countries in Europe and is the birthplace of John Paul II. Kacper Pempel / Reuters
By Donald Snyder, Special Correspondent, NBC News Tue Mar 5, 2013 4:41 AM EST
Polish Catholics are hoping for a new pope with fresh vision.
In Poland, widely considered the most Catholic country in Europe, the church has been plagued by dwindling attendance, surging secularism and increasing alienation among young people.
“Well-educated young people from the cities are leaving the church,” said Marej Zajac, a writer for the Polish Roman Catholic weekly magazine Tygodnik Powszechny.
According to Poland’s Statistical Institute of the Catholic Church, weekly church attendance has dropped from 53 percent of the population in 1987 to less than 40 percent in 2011. It’s the lowest number ever recorded, said Bruce Porter-Szucs, a history professor at the University of Michigan who writes extensively about Poland.
This is a far cry from 1978, when Poland’s Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II, imbuing Poles with pride – and the Polish Catholic Church with unprecedented energy. That was evident in 1979 when John Paul conducted an eight-day pilgrimage to Poland. Approximately 13 million people – one-third of Poland’s population – came out to greet him.
After John Paul’s death, the commanding role of the papacy in Polish life diminished.
And, as in other parishes around the world, priests in the Polish Catholic Church are facing allegations of sexual abuse. These abuses, often concealed, are seriously damaging the church – especially because critics say the Catholic leaders in Poland are not dealing aggressively with the problem.
Growing secularism is another issue the Polish Catholic Church faces. Church observers say the Vatican must focus on contemporary issues and that there needs to be a Christian renewal to counter the secularism.
“Benedict XVI’s thinking was shaped by the problems of the 20th century,” said Zbigniew Nosowski, editor-in-chief of the Catholic monthly Wiez. “But now we need a pope who will help us face the rapidly emerging problems of the 21st century.”
Nosowski said the church lacked a strategy to deal with mounting contemporary problems throughout Benedict’s papacy. He foresees the church accepting a married priesthood this century as a way to counteract the decline in men seeking the priesthood.
“We will need more priests to fulfill our basic ritual demands – like performance of the Eucharist,” he said.
Some religion writers say the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI could provide an opportunity for other equally bold changes, such as open discussion of birth control, civil unions and in vitro fertilization.
“If we can accept the resignation of a pope, we should be able to accept other big changes,” said Adam Szostkiewicz, a writer for Polityka, a secular liberal magazine. “People here are prepared for deeper changes and a more democratic style of managing things.”
Liberal church leaders supporting change are a dwindling minority, and the Polish church is tilting to the right.
The Polish Catholic Church openly supports the conservative Law and Justice party, which aggressively opposes the moderate coalition government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his Civic Platform party. Overt church involvement in politics has alienated moderate Catholics.
“It could destroy the identity and unity of the Catholic Church in Poland,” said Zajac. “We are Christians because we believe in Jesus Christ and not because we vote for a political party favored by the church.”
Christian moderates are also angered because many Polish bishops support Radio Maryja, an ultraconservative Catholic radio station run by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Catholic priest and Redemptorist.
Priest Tadeusz Rydzyk (center), chairman of Radio Maryja, demonstrates on Sept. 29, 2012, in Warsaw against Poland's centrist government in a rally called by unions, an ultra-Catholic movement and politicians. Janek Skarzynski / AFP - Getty Images, file
Radio Maryja’s broadcasts have been accused of demonizing Jews, gay men and lesbians, and of opposing Polish membership in the European Union as a corrupting influence. Critics say it has become the voice of the Catholic Church. Others challenge that claim.
A new pope must distance himself from the Polish church’s swing to the far right, said Stanislaw Obirek, a professor of anthropology at Lodz University and an expert on the church. He was a member and teacher in the Jesuit order until 2005.
Obirek said the Polish church started to support radical right-wing groups after the death of Pope John Paul in 2005. The new pope must counter this trend by promoting further democratization of Polish society, he added, stressing that the church cannot continue to cling to its traditional role in a rapidly changing world.
“Polish Catholicism has to radically change itself to adapt to social, religious and political conditions,” he said. “Or else condemn itself to marginalization.”
Don Snyder, an NBC News producer for more than 25 years, is a special correspondent for NBCNews.com.
WARSAW, Poland — Lech Walesa, the Polish democracy icon and Nobel peace prize winner, has sparked outrage in Poland by saying that gays have no right to a prominent role in politics and that as a minority they need to "adjust to smaller things."
Some commentators are now suggesting that Walesa, the leading figure in Poland's successful democracy struggle against communism, has irreparably harmed his legacy.
Walesa said in a television interview on Friday that he believes gays have no right to sit on the front benches in Parliament and, if represented at all, should sit in the back, "and even behind a wall."
"They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights, the greatest hours, the greatest provocations, spoiling things for the others and taking (what they want) from the majority," he told the private broadcaster TVN during a discussion of gay rights. "I don't agree to this and I will never agree to it."
"A minority should not impose itself on the majority," Walesa said.
The words have enraged many.
"From a human point of view his language was appalling. It was the statement of a troglodyte," said Jerzy Wenderlich, a deputy speaker of Parliament with the Democratic Left Alliance.
In some ways the uproar says as much about Poland today as it does about Walesa.
Walesa, Poland's first democratic-era president, is a deeply conservative Roman Catholic and a father of eight. But, the democracy he helped create in 1989 from the turmoil of strikes and other protests has had a profound social transformation in recent years.
Poland is a traditionally conservative and Catholic society that long suppressed discussions of gay rights. The topic was essentially taboo under communism, and in the early years of democracy. The Polish church, which has a strong role in political life, still holds that homosexuality is deviant, while gays and lesbians say they face discrimination and even violence.
However, much has changed. A watershed moment came in 2011 when a new progressive and anti-clerical party – Palikot's Movement – entered Parliament for the first time. Taking seats for the party were Anna Grodzka, a transsexual, and Robert Biedron, who is openly gay. These were all historic firsts.
The two have been in the public eye while lawmakers have debated a civil partnership law. Though lawmakers have recently struck down proposals, the discussions continue. A new campaign was just launched to fight taboos.
Some predicted the consequences for Walesa could be serious.
A national committee devoted to fighting hate speech and other crimes filed a complaint with prosecutors on Sunday in Gdansk, Walesa's home city, accusing him of promoting "propaganda of hate against a sexual minority."
Walesa is no longer active in Polish political life, though he is often interviewed and asked his opinion on current affairs. Much of his time is spent giving lectures internationally on his role in fighting communism and on issues of peace and democracy.
"Now nobody in their right mind will invite Lech Walesa as a moral authority, knowing what he said," Wenderlich said.
Monika Olejnik, a leading television journalist, said Walesa "disgraced the Nobel prize."
Some, however, said they were not surprised by Walesa's words.
"I am surprised that only now we are noticing that Walesa is not in control of what he says and that he has views that are far from being politically correct," said Adam Bielan, a conservative Polish member of the European Parliament.
The hate speech of the homosexual agenda is becoming ever prevalent in today's society ... as activists in the movement step up to attack not only marriage, but the Saints of the Catholic Church.
Mother Jones on Friday posted Inspire's graphic, which is titled "The Nation Standing On 'No Values.'" The graphic cites a Gallup poll that says half of American adults are in favor of gay marriage [ http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/08/11603182-half-of-americans-support-gay-marriage-in-new-gallup-poll ]. A photo of Obama is flanked by a caption that reads, "My stance is still evolving ... I think same sex couples should able to get married."
(Note: This caption consists of quotes from two separate interviews. Furthermore, Obama never actually said, "My stance is still evolving." What he said, on Dec. 22, 2010, was "My feelings about [same-sex marriage] are constantly evolving. I struggle with this.")
The graphic also calls former U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, who is openly gay, a "symbol of the American dream." There's an altered photo of Frank and his husband from their wedding next to the words "Just married," which are printed in a creepy, blood-spattered font.
Graphic from Spring 2013 release of Inspire, Issue 10.
Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress takes veiled swipe at Tim Tebow
Senior pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas. RNS photo courtesy First Baptist Church in Dallas.
Chris Strauss | Feb 28, 2013
(RNS) So much for turning the other cheek.
After evangelical icon Tim Tebow canceled his scheduled appearance at First Baptist Church in Dallas [ http://www.firstdallas.org/ ] because of controversial remarks made by senior pastor Robert Jeffress, the pastor appeared to fire back at the New York Jets quarterback in his sermon Sunday (Feb. 24).
In the 10-minute speech, which the church made available on YouTube [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzpJHIhH6Hc (below, as embedded)] under the heading “Dr. Jeffress Responds to Tebow Controversy,” Jeffress addresses the attention he had received without mentioning Tebow by name. But after thanking all of the people who had stood by him recently, he strongly rebuked those who didn’t.
“I am grateful for men of God like these who are willing to stand up and act like men rather than wimping out when it gets a little controversial and an inconvenient thing to stand for the truth,” said Jeffress, who received a standing ovation before he spoke. “God bless men like that.”
“There are some people who would say, ‘God’s given me a different ministry. God has called me to go preach about the love of God. I’m not called to preach about sin and controversial things. I’ve been called to preach about the love of God.’ And they’re sincere when they say that. But they are sincerely wrong. The fact is you cannot talk about the love of God. The love of God has no meaning whatsoever unless you understand the judgment of God that all of us deserve.”
“While I was looking forward to sharing a message of hope and Christ’s unconditional love with the faithful members of the historic First Baptist Church of Dallas in April, due to new information that has been brought to my attention, I have decided to cancel my upcoming appearance. I will continue to use the platform God has blessed me with to bring Faith, Hope and Love to all those needing a brighter day. Thank you for all of your love and support. God Bless!”
The church was much more benign in response to Tebow’s cancellation last week.
In my relatively short time on this fair planet, I've learned that queer people are not only dangerous but incredibly powerful.
Hardly a week goes by without a politician, religious figure or breathless talking head having a public meltdown about the "gay agenda" and our plot to take over the world and douse it in glitter and lube.
Now, as if we weren't busy enough dooming entire nations and civilizations, a new, even more terrifying threat to mankind is apparently brewing, and in recent weeks a hot-pink alert has been sounded: Gay men want to play sports, and, even worse, we expect to use the same locker rooms as straight men.
That's right: Not only do we want to be able to get married, adopt children and be free from discrimination; we now have the audacity to believe that we should be able to play on professional sports teams without cowering in the closet! And after we've practiced or played a game, we want to be able to take a hot shower!
[Some in the gay community claim] that there wouldn't be any sort of physical attraction for a gay athlete toward any of his straight teammates -- which would cause those very uncomfortable situations. He's gay; he's not dead. He can't just flip a switch and turn off his feelings when he walks into the locker room.
Of course he's going to have feelings of attraction toward a teammate or two. It's human nature. These are some of the most physically fit and desirable human beings on the planet. The gay athlete isn't going to notice that? ... Attractive people know when they're being "checked out" and it leads to those very awkward moments.
Because I have a thing for silly, clueless straight men (whether in or out of the locker room), I'm going to take a few minutes out of my otherwise hectic day to break a few things down for them:
1. Please do not flatter yourself by thinking that gay men must be interested in having sex with you. Contrary to popular belief, we do not need to be physically restrained like Hannibal Lecter in a straightjacket and modified hockey mask anytime we come within 30 feet of a penis. Gay men may have the most unflappable discipline and self-control in recorded history, having been denied so many things for so long, and while we might enjoy the view, trust me, you're safe. And sure, gay athletes would be sharing a locker room with "some of the most physically fit and desirable human beings on the planet," but here's a newsflash: We're surrounded by those kinds of guys almost every time we walk into a gay bar. Who works out more and is more fastidiously groomed than gay men? We kind of have the market on hotness cornered.
2. Whether you realize it or not, we're already at the gym working on our fitness next to you (well, maybe not you, Bryan Fischer) and then showering and going on our merry way. When's the last time you read about a gay man sexually assaulting a straight man at New York Sports Club? Never. If anything, it's the "straight" married guys trolling the steam rooms hoping to get lucky whom you should be worried about. Those poor wives!
3. While the fantasy of "turning" a straight guy to the dark side definitely exists for many gay men, the reality is that most straight guys wouldn't know what to do with us, and with all the troublemaking we've already committed ourselves to on a daily basis (see above), we just don't have time to train you on how to give a proper blow job. (But here's a free tip anyway: Watch the teeth!).
It's also important to consider that the heterosexual players involved have feelings, too, and they're no more or less valid than the feelings of those in the gay community. It's amazing how many people feel free to criticize and tell athletes how they are supposed to feel, as if that's anyone else's right.
Oh, boohoo, Mark! You really want us to feel sorry for straight athletes who have never known the abject terror and despair of hiding their sexuality for fear of potentially losing their careers, their friends, their families -- the most important parts of their lives and who they are? I do not have a drop of sympathy for these straight guys, especially as many of them have helped create and secure the kind of locker room environment that has kept gay players from coming out of the closet in the first place.
Gay men are now proudly serving in the military, in even closer quarters and under way more pressure than professional athletes, without any problems. When (not if, because it's only a matter of time) a professional athlete finally comes out, the world will not come to a screeching halt. No one is going start spontaneously vomiting hot blood or go hysterically blind.
And you have to remember that we're already everywhere. We're doing crunches beside you at the gym. We're contemplating which ice cream flavor to purchase in the frozen food aisle. We're teaching your children, unclogging your sink, praying in the pew behind you and, yes, playing on your favorite sports team. And once we've come out, we're certainly not going back in so that you can feel "safer" or be spared objectification. (Having straight men experience what straight women are subjected to countless times a day wouldn't be the worst thing, right, ladies?)
We're on the brink of ushering in a radically brand new world, and you can either join us or get out of the way. We're here, we're queer, we're in your locker room and we're going to keep on scoring whether you like it or not.
Jesus didn't come to make our lives fair, but to set us free. To become born again and have our mind renewed through Christ is true Freedom through Righteousness; not Equality through fairness. Love is not a right; it is a God-given privilege bought at an extreme price -- death on a cross. Jesus freely gave His life for you and me so we can have the privilege to be with Him in Heaven. God only ordains, blesses, and accounts for marriage as being a covenant between a husband and wife. Society, however, will always find cheap imitations of the real thing, promote it, then sell it. Realize this is not hate speech, I speak every word out of love.
Love is a choice.
Poem by Apologetics, music by J. Rodriguez, produced by P. Bates
Coming Out to My Homophobic Mother as a Straight Ally
By Mia Norton Posted: 03/05/2013 10:13 am
I welcomed the new year with open arms. 2013 promises great things for my life and my family, one of them being that I am finally living a life with clarity, understanding and true compassion. I experienced firsthand the fact that inquiry invites advocacy and knowledge is power. I had grown and progressed in my journey, though there had been one huge, gaping chasm that I had been ignoring: my mother. Along with a host of other topics, this was certainly one that I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she and I would not see eye-to-eye on. At some point I will address my relationship with my mother at greater length, but for now, for brevity's sake, I will focus solely on our inevitable clash over my LGBT advocacy.
Aside from remarks here and there over the last several years, I had never directly taken up this issue with my mother. I had never had the provocation to do so until just last month, when a gay relative contacted my sibling to share that my mother had written him with a heavy-handed dose of spiritual advice. This created a festering wound amongst my siblings and me as we mulled over it and discussed in horror the fact that our mother would do such a thing. Until this point she had never been so direct and outspoken on this issue. She handled controversial and uncomfortable discussions relating to "sins of a sexual nature" not by direct conversation but with gradual influence of attitude and tone showing her obvious disapproval. I remember riding in the car with my family during their visit to California in 2009. We yielded for a lesbian couple, who crossed the street arm-in-arm as my mother clutched her Bible and muttered verses like incantations that would protect us from the influence of the evil that was being displayed so unapologetically.
After weeks of agonizing over how to respond to my mother, sometimes questioning whether I even should, I decided that I would write her a letter. This would be my official coming out as a straight ally. I sat down and watched For the Bible Tells Me So [ http://www.forthebibletellsmeso.org/indexc.htm ] once again before I started writing. This time I tried to watch it with her perspective in mind. I tried to empathize with her view and make some sense of her belief. One would think that it would not be such a challenge to understand where she is coming from, given that this is where I spent nearly 30 years of my life as well, but I wanted to be sure that I was sitting down to write her with an attitude of compassion and a desire to open up productive dialogue. I did not want to shut her down within the first paragraph. So I wrote and rewrote. I proofread. And finally I was prepared to send it. I ordered a copy of the film, doubting that she would be willing to watch it but hoping that there would be some small chance that she would let down her guard long enough to hear me out. Besides, if I didn't give her a chance, then I could very well be underestimating and limiting her propensity for change.
From what I am told, she received her letter just a few short days later. She refused to read it. Instead, she burned it, an outward expression of her hostility and anger at the thought of even considering another's view. We have not had one conversation since that day. She left me a very forced, formal voicemail barely even acknowledging that I had written. She has declined to return any of my calls since. I am experiencing utter disappointment mixed with hurt and laden with disgust that after a decade of sending me handwritten letters of condemnation and chastisement, she would not even give me the courtesy of entertaining my carefully prepared letter to her.
This has not been an easy time for her, as she has had to deal not only with my attempt to reason with her but with heavy-hearted conversations from my siblings as well. I know that she is reeling, most likely feeling like she has failed as a parent. Right now she is being faced with outward expressions from her children that contradict every effort she made to train us up in the likeness of God. I am not angry at her. I do feel sorry for her, but the act of burning my letter pains me and makes me wonder whether there will ever be an honest, productive dialogue between us.
Over the past weeks I have been feeling such emotion over this strain in our family. I know how many times I have found it helpful to read other people's coming-out letters to their parents, whether they come out as gay or as straight allies, so I have decided that if my mother refuses to engage in a respectful discussion, if she is chooses not to hear the pleadings of her children, perhaps someone else's mother will. Maybe I will find solace in sharing my letter to my mother with others who are embarking on similar journeys. So, without further ado, I share with you my greatest stand as a straight ally:
To my beloved mother:
I have spent the last two weeks with knots in my stomach, trying to decide how to communicate my heartache and upset with you. Without beating around the bush, I keep in contact with [our cousins], and we have been in communication about the letter you sent them over the holidays. When I first read the words on my screen, I felt a deep shock of pain shoot through me. I had to sit and read and reread the words that were written by you. I felt angry, shocked and disappointed. "God does not let those who turn against the way he created them into the kingdom of heaven..."
I have spent the last several weeks really considering my reaction to this and trying to decide what course of action I would take. I haven't called or been in communication, as I haven't really known what I wanted to say. So after much thought and unrest I decided that I should write this letter.
Your words were deeply, deeply hurtful. Not just to [our cousins] but also to the family that supports them and even the extended family that shares a similar experience and like-mindedness. I have spent the last several years putting an incredible amount of time and research into this subject, and I cannot stand by silently when I see someone being persecuted for who they are, who they were born to be or even (dare I say?) who they were created to be. I understand every argument you may pose on this topic. I know them well, you see, because I am my mother's daughter. I was raised under very diligent instruction. So when this topic of homosexuality became personal to me, close and within my inner circle, I had to take a step back and look at it from a neutral perspective. I knew the arguments of the fundamentalists and the evangelical churches; what I didn't know was the other side. I was very familiar with Leviticus 20:13, Leviticus 18:22, the passages in Genesis 18 and 19 about Sodom and Gomorrah and even Romans 1:26. What I did not know was what explanation the rest of the population had on this subject.
So I set out to find answers. Are we born straight or gay? Is it a choice? Are gay people perverted sexual deviants? Does reparative therapy have any grounds? Can a gay person be a Christian? Please understand that my intention with this letter is not to sway your views, nor to argue my perspective, nor even to change your belief. Such a motive would be a waste of both of our time. Instead I am writing to tell you how I feel. I am writing to open up lines of communication in hopes of a better understanding of one another and, in turn, a deeper relationship that is based on honesty and fostered in love.
This past September you and I had what I feel was the most honest discussion we have ever had in my life. I was able to articulate to you my feelings and perspectives with a boldness that I had never expressed before. Did it hurt to hear it and hurt to have to say it? Sure, but I had come to an impasse. I could choose to accept a surface-level, formal relationship, or I could speak up in hopes of propelling our relationship forward, onto an even playing field where we could strive toward a mutual respect of one another's differences and just love one another. As I said then, isn't the fact that we love each other enough to sustain a relationship? Even if we cant agree on politics, religion or even some parenting strategies, you are my mother, and that is reason enough for me to invest myself into having a good relationship that is built on love.
I have come to a 180-degree change in my views on homosexuality. I joined [my local] PFLAG chapter seeking support and wanting to gain more understanding. I have felt such heartache knowing how many gay people are mistreated, even persecuted, for simply being who they are. It literally makes me ill to see precious, wonderful people being singled out and treated with such contempt. I have asked myself time and time again, "Can't people see the damage and pain they are causing with their words? Don't they see the long-lasting and far-reaching effects that their intolerance is causing in the lives of others?" At times I have found myself feeling angry, and I've even felt a strong disdain for conservatives who oppose my supportive view of people who are gay, until someone pointed out to me that my desire for tolerance had allowed me to become intolerant of anyone who held a different view than I did.
That was hard to digest. It's something I am still processing and striving to balance. I proudly consider myself an activist. I am a straight ally for the gay movement, and I am very focused on equality. The gay movement is indeed the civil rights movement of our era. But still, I would be hypocritical in wearing my "NO HATE" T-shirt if I were harboring contempt against those who are not supportive of the cause. This is still a growing process for me, because words of intolerance and hatred, and even well-intended words from my mother, evoke a strong reaction from me. I feel protective of those I love, and I feel such deep sympathy for those who suffer under the conditional love and dogmatism of those around them.
At the same time I am learning to feel empathy toward those who are unapologetic for projecting their views onto others while insisting that they have a God-given right to dispense unsolicited advice at the expense of another's happiness. Someplace behind my anger and defensiveness I can see a glimpse of myself, a glimpse of the person that I used to be, and my heart softens a bit. I can look on with a measure of compassion for others who so flippantly pass judgment and advice because I have stood in their shoes. This journey to understanding or even acceptance of something that is so foreign to the heterosexual fundamentalist mindset is deeply personal and completely individual. I had to come to terms with this in my own time, in my own way, so I must respect the journeys of others. You will not agree with anything I have said here; I know that that is an absolute. My intention is not to argue my views; I simply need to tell you how I feel. I am my mother's daughter, and I too need to speak about what burdens my heart, not with the intention of causing pain but because I believe in this idealistic relationship between us where love is the foundation.
It seems awkward to communicate so openly with you. There is something engrained in me that says that it's unnatural to speak against one's own mother. But just as I said in September and said again earlier in this letter, I would rather have a shot at a relationship that is genuine than suffer silently in a relationship that has no real sincerity or substance. I can't go forward harboring pain or being afraid to simply be myself or be allowed to live my life freely with my own views and goals. I don't want to be in a relationship that is conditional, where affection and love can be removed for the crime of individual thinking and free thought. In the same regard, I would never ask for something that I couldn't give in return. We should be mutually free to peruse our interests and live by our convictions without it diminishing the bond we share as mother and daughter.
So the intent of this letter is to simply express my perspective and attempt to call to your attention the hurt that has been inflicted by your letter. I know in my heart that you truly, truly intended only good with your penned words, but they have had the opposite effect of driving a wedge between that branch of our extended family and our portion of family members who will unknowingly wonder why [they] no longer feel comfortable returning. I am not sure what kind of restitution could be offered to them, but I have offered my sincere apologies for the injury that has been caused.
The only thing that I ask of you is that you be willing to spend 196 minutes of your time to watch the enclosed film, For the Bible Tells Me So. I say "196 minutes" because I am asking you to view it twice: once to feel your own emotions, feelings of disagreement or even repulsion, and once more to really listen to the stories of the families and hear the voices of those who are going through their own personal journeys. That is all I ask: Just watch the film. You don't have to change your mind. You don't have to explain or defend your views to me. Just be willing to hear the voices of others.
I love you so very much, and all I want in my future is to have a strong, happy and honest relationship with those who mean the most in my life. I read this quotation just today:
"It takes great courage to grow up and become who you really are." --e.e. Cummings
This quotation is true to me. Standing up, speaking out, striving for authentic relationships, being myself and loving who I am -- these are my goals in life. Thank you for receiving my words, for giving my perspective consideration and for building an open and loving relationship with me.
I love you more than I can express.
I don't know what the future holds for my relationship with my mother or even my extended family. I am aware that at this time, I have more family members who would rather that I just stay silent than family members who understand my activism and my desire to advocate for change and equality. Because this subject has grown deeply personal to my family, it has become something that is testing the bounds of our relationships, challenging the ideas of unconditional love and, in some cases, shining a light on people's unwillingness and inability to consider other ideas and be open to change. However, I can say that in spite of the pressure to conform, and in the the face of isolation, I have reached a point in my life where I am standing confidently on my own feet, unapologetically and tirelessly ready to be a voice for reason and change. It has been a long and personal journey, but I have a peace and a purpose now that I have never known before, and I am proud to be a straight ally.
No freedom till we're equal. Damn right I support it!
The award-winning talk show host and comedian followed in the footsteps of Clint Eastwood, who joined more than 100 established conservatives in signing a legitimate Supreme Court-bound brief [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/clint-eastwood-prop-8-gay-marriage-_n_2783489.html ] in favor of allowing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples the right to legally wed in California.
Though DeGeneres' entertaining piece won't carry the same legal weight as Eastwood's brief potentially could, it's nonetheless poignant. She writes:
"Portia and I have been married for 4 years and they have been the happiest of my life. And in those 4 years, I don't think we hurt anyone else's marriage. I asked all of my neighbors and they say they're fine.
But even though Portia and I got married in the short period of time when it was legal in California, there are 1,138 federal rights for married couples that we don't have, including some that protect married people from losing their homes, or their savings or custody of their children."
Describing her much-publicized coming out as "one of the hardest things I ever did," DeGeneres continues, "I hope the Supreme Court will do the right thing, and let everyone enjoy the same rights. It's going to help keep families together. It's going to make kids feel better about who they are. And it is time."
On Feb. 28, the Obama administration urged the Supreme Court [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/obama-gay-marriage_n_2783912.html ] to strike down California's ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, staking out a legal theory that would forbid states from banning same-sex marriage if it were adopted by the court.
"The designation of marriage," wrote Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr., "confers a special validation of the relationship between two individuals and conveys a message to society that domestic partnerships or civil unions cannot match."
'Man of Sorrows': The Minister Who Helped a Woman Kidnap a Child Mennonite supporters of Ken Miller (right) gather to sing hymns during his trial. Three years ago, Lisa Miller renounced her homosexuality, left her partner, and fled the country with their daughter. The author forms an unlikely friendship with the Mennonite leader who aided her escape. Mar 4 2013 http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/man-of-sorrows-the-minister-who-helped-a-woman-kidnap-a-child/273661/ [with comments]
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Sondra Scarber, Texas Lesbian, Says She Was Attacked In Anti-Gay Hate Crime
Posted: 03/01/2013 1:19 pm EST
A Texas-based lesbian claims she was beaten unconscious after coming to the defense of bullied child at a playground.
Scarber says she tried to intervene after she witnessed older children teasing her girlfriend Hillary Causey's 4-year-son Jaxon around when a scuffle erupted between her and a child's father.
The man, who has not been identified in news reports, began punching and kicking Scarber while shouting a series of anti-gay slurs.
"When he walked up thinking it was father and mom with the kid, he wasn’t as angry, but then when he figured out it was a female, he got like super pissed, and I don’t know why," Causey told the news station. “He was like, ‘Well, if you think you’re a man…I’m going to treat you like a man.’”
On Feb. 15, the Massachusetts Department of Education issued a new set of rules for teachers on how to handle transgender student issues [ http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2013/02/28/watch-bill-oreilly-says-supporting-trans-students-truly-madness ], such as bathroom use and sports team affiliation, the Associated Press reported. Gunner Scott of Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition told the AP that the guidelines will be "immensely helpful to those parents who have been struggling with making sure that the school environment is safe and welcoming of their child."
The Massachusetts derivative [ http://www.doe.mass.edu/ssce/GenderIdentity.pdf ] explains the teachers shouldn't confront a student's parents because, "Some transgender and gender nonconforming students are not openly so at home for reasons such as safety concerns or lack of acceptance."
However, O'Reilly seems to think it is complete lunacy. He said he believes that the guidelines obstruct parents' rights.
After mocking transgender name changes [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/02/28/1650971/bill-oreilly-supporting-transgender-equality-in-schools-is-truly-madness/ ], O'Reilly said, "Here’s how insane you are and this whole thing is, and this is truly madness, ladies and gentlemen. You’re telling me that a kid can go to a public school in Massachusetts, immediately upon entering the school take off the kid’s shirt and put on a dress, go to the girls’ room when he’s a boy, and then change his name from John to Tiffany. And then after school, put the shirt back on, go home, and he’s still John."
Equality Matters' Carlos Maza, who was the first to report on O'Reilly's response to the guidelines, refutes the Fox News pundit's argument.
Studies have shown that over half of all transgender people experience family rejection, with roughly 20 percent becoming the victims of domestic violence from a family member after coming out. Allowing teachers to “out” transgender students to their families without their permission puts those students at risk for rejection, abuse, and even homelessness. This family rejection also puts transgender students at greater risk of depression, substance abuse, and suicide.
Other conservatives have sported a similar attitude.
"These school administrators, ... you think of them as what the Nazi concentration camp guards must have been like, where they are doing this horrible evil and they are just taking orders or something. They believe in it," he said.
National Organization For Marriage Uses Tyler Clementi Suicide To Tout Anti-Gay Agenda
An anti-gay group used Tyler Clementi's suicide to suggest that gay activists exploit gay youth. Here is a photo of Clementi at a family function before his death. (AP Photo/Clementi Family, File)
By Cavan Sieczkowski Posted: 03/05/2013 10:47 am EST
During a recent college appearance, a spokeswoman for a pro-marriage conservative group used Tyler Clementi's suicide to promote an anti-gay agenda.
Jennifer Morse, president of the National Organization for Marriage's (NOM) Ruth Institute, spoke to Catholic students at Iowa State University last month about marriage and sexuality, according to Equality Matters. During her speech, the NOM spokeswoman mentioned Clementi while discussing the exploitation of gay youth by equality activists.
Morse's Feb. 17 talk did not mention how Clementi was a bullying victim, but rather suggested he could have used a friend who was able to be there "without coming onto them or without judging them and that kind of stuff." She also alleged gay activists do not help in situations with troubled youths.
We get this idea that the gay rights movement is very militant and they’re demanding this and pushing that, but when you really get down to it, a lot of the young people are quite confused and lonely and need help and support and they’re getting help and support not from the Christian community, they’re getting help and support from the gay activists who have their own thing that they’re doing which is not necessarily to help the individuals but they’ve got some sort of political vision.
“To exploit our late son’s name to advance an anti-equality agenda [ http://www.advocate.com/society/2013/03/04/tyler-clementis-family-wants-apology-nom ] is offensive and wrong,” his parents said in a news release obtained by the Advocate. “By doing so, the National Organization for Marriage proves that not only is there no low they will not sink to, to advance their cruel agenda — but that neither they nor Ms. Morse have any grip on reality. The very idea that Tyler’s tragedy happened because of too much support — instead of not enough — is ludicrous. Shame on them.”
GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign and Equality Matters joined Clementi's parents in calling for an apology.
"This is among the more reprehensible tactics we've seen from NOM, and this is a group whose internal documents touted the use of racially-motivated tactics to pit Black and Latino people against their own LGBT friends, neighbors and family members," GLAAD President Herndon Graddick said in a statement. "Now they're using Tyler's story to pit young people against their own peers."
NOM's Ruth Institute [ http://www.ruthinstitute.org/ ] promotes "traditional marriage" for the purpose of procreation with an overall goal of "making marriage cool."
Listen to a recording of Jennifer Morse's speech (below).
A gay Oregon man was allegedly struck in the head with what's been described as wrench or other "bolt-cutting tool" by a passerby angered by the sight of his dog's dyed-pink fur.
Jim Clyburn: Antonin Scalia Rejects Voting Rights Act Because He's 'White And Proud'
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) criticized Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia over comments he made about the Voting Rights Act. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
By Jennifer Bendery Posted: 03/01/2013 4:25 pm EST | Updated: 03/01/2013 5:27 pm EST
WASHINGTON -– Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Friday that he was "absolutely shocked" to hear Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia describe a key piece of the Voting Rights Act [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/voting-rights-act-supreme-court_n_2768942.html ], one of the most significant achievements of the civil rights movement, as a "perpetuation of racial entitlement" earlier this week.
"I'm not easily surprised by anything, but that took me to a place I haven't been in a long time," Clyburn said of Scalia's comments, during an interview with HuffPost. "What Justice Scalia said, to me, was, 'The 15th Amendment of the Constitution ain't got no concerns for me because I'm white and proud.'"
Now the third most powerful Democrat in the House of Representatives, Clyburn's work on civil rights issues goes as far back as the age of 12, when he was elected president of his local NAACP youth chapter. He organized civil rights demonstrations in college, and even met his wife in jail after a protest.
Growing up in South Carolina, Clyburn said he "grew almost immune" to the racist comments being made around him. He said he will never forget hearing the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) defending his opposition to the 1957 Civil Rights Act by saying, in Clyburn's paraphrased words, "Our negroes are pleased with their plight."
Even though it's been more than 55 years since Thurmond's remarks, Clyburn said the same sentiment can be felt in comments like those made by Scalia. He pointed to a wave of state voting laws [ http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/election-2012-voting-laws-roundup ] that made it harder to vote in the last election cycle as proof of the "obvious" need for the Voting Right Act to stay intact.
"When you have in 2012 ... states making changes to their laws that you can look on their face and see that these changes will make it harder for minorities to have their votes affect the results that they intend, you say that we don't need [the Voting Rights Act] anymore? Is this some kind of entitlement?" Clyburn asked. "Well, the Constitution of the U.S. is an entitlement for everybody."
A request for comment from a Supreme Court spokeswoman in response to Clyburn's remarks was not immediately returned.
The bottom line, said Clyburn, is that the 1965 civil rights law has "had a positive impact on the voting rights of people traditionally denied the right to vote. To ignore that, to me, is beyond the pale. It means you went to the bench with an agenda."
He added, "Playing around with the Voting Rights Act is playing with fire."
Rachel Maddow To Jon Stewart: Scalia A 'Troll ... The Guy On Your Blog Comment Thread Who's Using The N Word'
Posted: 03/01/2013 9:17 am EST | Updated: 03/01/2013 9:46 am EST
Rachel Maddow had some choice words for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia during an appearance on Thursday's "Daily Show."
Maddow told Jon Stewart that she had been flabbergasted to be watching Scalia and his fellow conservative justices lambasting the Voting Rights Act at the same time as a statue honoring Rosa Parks was being unveiled at the Capitol Building nearby. She particularly took umbrage at Scalia's line [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/voting-rights-act-supreme-court_n_2768942.html ] that the law was a "perpetuation of racial entitlement," comparing him to an Internet "troll":
"He's a troll. He's saying this for effect. He knows it's offensive and he knows he's going to get a gasp from the courtroom, which he got, and he loves it. He's like the guy on your blog comment thread who is using the n-word. 'Oh, it made you mad? How about if I say this? Does it make you mad? Did it make you mad? Did it make you mad?' He's that guy! He's that kind of guy! When we're all shocked that he said something so blatantly racially offensive while talking about the cornerstone of the federal Civil Rights Act, he's thinking, 'Oh yeah!'"
Rachel Maddow explains one suggestion that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was referencing his own writing on Affirmative Action when he talked about "perpetuating racial entitlement" during oral arguments about the Voting Rights Act.
Scalia's point (in the context of a extended, slashing attack on racial preferences) was that affirmative action works on the idea that because of past discrimination, present generations owe a "debt" to those who have been disadvantaged by discrimination. Scalia, needless to say, thought that the idea was repugnant and even racist -- and he said so.
...
In his article, Professor Scalia did not write about how affirmative action might become entrenched, and hard to displace. But there was the idea that affirmative action gives us a system of racial spoils that are provided to the minority race, spoils not based on present merit or need, but only on past discrimination.
Flanders reiterates that we can't know for sure if Scalia was drawing parallels between affirmative action and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, but at least he gives us one possible framework in which to understand the Justice's perspective.
If you're interested, Scalia's original 1979 paper is here:
By Marian Wright Edelman Posted: 03/01/2013 6:30 pm
“Our minds fasten on that single moment on the bus -- Mrs. Parks alone in that seat, clutching her purse, staring out a window, waiting to be arrested. That moment tells us something about how change happens, or doesn’t happen... We so often spend our lives as if in a fog, accepting injustice, rationalizing inequity, tolerating the intolerable. Like the bus driver, but also like the passengers on the bus, we see the way things are -- children hungry in a land of plenty, entire neighborhoods ravaged by violence, families hobbled by job loss or illness -- and we make excuses for inaction, and we say to ourselves, that's not my responsibility, there’s nothing I can do. Rosa Parks tells us there’s always something we can do. She tells us that we all have responsibilities, to ourselves and to one another. She reminds us that this is how change happens -- not mainly through the exploits of the famous and the powerful, but through the countless acts of often anonymous courage and kindness and fellow feeling and responsibility that continually, stubbornly, expand our conception of justice -- our conception of what is possible.”
at the February 27 unveiling of the beautiful new statue of Mrs. Rosa Parks in the United States Capitol’s Statuary Hall the first black woman so honored. The ceremony also included eloquent remarks from congressional leaders and a stirring performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by the military choir that was a tribute to this bright North Star to freedom. Mrs. Parks, like Harriet Tubman before her, lit our nation’s way. The president’s words were a needed reminder that Mrs. Parks was just one very bright star in a constellation of sacrificial black and white stars who pushed and pulled our nation forward on the long stony road of struggle, activism, and sacrifice that began generations before her birth in Tuskegee, Ala., 100 years ago. So many Americans keep looking for the next Dr. King or Mrs. Parks to come and solve our problems and save us from our own responsibility to act. But Mrs. Parks and Dr. King were always part of a much larger whole. On the particular day in December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus, she was one of a trained cohort of civil rights leadership in the city who had been putting the community infrastructure in place waiting for the right spark to ignite the needed anti-Jim Crow movement time in Montgomery. Jeanne Theoharis’s new biography The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks [ http://www.amazon.com/Rebellious-Life-Mrs-Rosa-Parks/dp/0807050474 ] (and other recent books) is now shedding extra light on the fact that there was much more to Mrs. Parks than the story of the quiet seamstress who one day was just so tired she finally decided to sit down.
In reality, Mrs. Parks was not only a seamstress but a respected local activist; was willing to work without a spotlight but was not meek or quiet; and did not spontaneously act out of the blue just because she felt tired. Mrs. Parks was neither complacent nor long suffering, and had been fighting for equality and justice years before December 1955. In fact, like most Black people raised under Southern segregation, Jim Crow, and injustice, Mrs. Parks resented them from the day she was born.
Before her arrest Mrs. Parks had served as the secretary of the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) for more than 10 years. As part of her work with the N.A.A.C.P. she investigated cases of violence and sexual assault against black women, including Recy Taylor, a married black mother who was walking home from church when she was abducted at gunpoint and gang-raped by a group of six white men in Abbeville, Ala., in 1944. In response, Mrs. Parks helped found the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor, which attracted nationwide support and which the Chicago Defender called the “strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade.” Although Mrs. Taylor’s attackers had admitted their guilt to local authorities, they were not convicted of the crime or punished -- and Mrs. Parks was not done fighting injustice.
Nor was she alone. In all of her battles before and after her own arrest, Mrs. Parks was part of a coordinated movement of others sharing the same goal. The summer before her arrest she attended Highlander Folk School near Knoxville, Tenn., a training center for activism in civil rights and workers’ rights. Immediately after her arrest, Mrs. Parks was supported by N.A.A.C.P. colleagues including E.D. Nixon and others in Montgomery actively watching for the right moment to act. Alabama State College professor and Women’s Political Council President Jo Ann Robinson was one of the key unsung heroines who were the backbones of most civil rights struggles who waited and watched for the right incident and opportunity and were prepared to help seize the moment and propel it into a larger movement.
Although many people think of Dr. King as the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it’s important to remember that Dr. King did not found or spark that movement or most campaigns that developed into major movements across the South. He responded to the demands of the communities whose cups boiled over and was able to embody and communicate their hopes and dreams. In fact, when the Montgomery movement began, the community needed someone to be out in front. As the youngest and newest preacher in town, Dr. King was the top candidate because he had the least baggage. So he rose to the occasion and responded to and eloquently articulated the movement already in place. As it happened, the Montgomery Bus Boycott quickly showcased Dr. King’s enormous God-given ability as a leader and spokesperson with enormous courage. But what took place in Montgomery was repeated in Selma, Birmingham, and elsewhere and in the sit-in and Freedom Rider movements: Dr. King did not start those local movements himself either, but used his powerful eloquence and moral voice and willingness to go to jail with local people to amplify those movements already in process led by extraordinary local people like Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham and the incredible Black children of Birmingham who stood up to fire hoses and police dogs and filled Birmingham’s jails with child energy, courage, and determination to be free. Photos of these children under attack circulated around the globe led President Kennedy to submit what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to Congress and Birmingham’s White power structure to agree to end Jim Crow in Birmingham’s public facilities.
Today, too many would-be movement leaders simply want to be Dr. King or Mrs. Rosa Parks: they want the glory and privilege of leadership without the burdens or sacrifice and sustained hard work. Movements are not built from the top down by powerful leaders but percolate from the bottom up from people who share common grievances. Nor are they the result of individuals acting alone, although the courageous actions of one individual can provide a powerful defining symbolic spark -- just as with the image of the dignified and proud Mrs. Parks sitting on that bus and refusing to move. But if Jo Ann Robinson had not been watchful and ready with a mimeograph machine to run off 30,000 flyers to circulate to Montgomery’s black community about Mrs. Parks and calling for a bus boycott, and had not pushed her Dexter Avenue Church’s young pastor into the forefront, who knows what might have happened? So we can and should be enormously inspired by Mrs. Parks at that moment. But we should be equally inspired and informed by all the work she and others did behind the scenes before and after that day, and by all of the other women and men whose names we’ll never know who worked to end racial injustice before and after December 1, 1955. Their individual and collective decisions to stand up for themselves and one another created the Montgomery movement -- and the Montgomery movement changed America’s conception of what was just and possible.
It is past time for another transforming movement in America today to challenge rampant and morally obscene wealth and income inequality in our nation and the materialism, militarism, poverty, and racism Dr. King warned could destroy us. We have come a very long way toward honoring the Declaration of Independence’s affirmation that “all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights” and overcoming some of the effects of the huge birth defects of slavery, Native American genocide, and the exclusion of women and non-propertied white men from equal footing in our new nation. But we must continue to move forward until a level playing field is a reality and resist those who seek to move us backwards into a second Post Reconstruction era through voter suppression, mass incarceration, failing schools, absent jobs, and rampant poverty. This will require committed and prepared marathoners like Mrs. Parks, not sprinters or self marketers seeking momentary glory in our ten-second attention span media-driven culture. Movement building is a complex and long term struggle that must be pursued with both urgency and persistence and a critical mass of citizens must step up to the plate and stay there until real change happens.
The German playwright Bertolt Brecht said: “There are those who struggle for a day and they are good. There are those who struggle for a year and they are better. There are those who struggle all their lives. These are the indispensable ones.” Mrs. Rosa Parks was an indispensable one who struggled all of her life for freedom and justice as did countless unknown Black citizens. So let us not just celebrate her example and that of the young preacher leader and people of Montgomery, let’s follow their example.
Rich Americans Are Nearly Twice As Likely To Vote As The Poor
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- the richest person in New York City -- emerges from a voting booth, early 08 November, 2005, after voting in the mayoral election in New York that had Bloomberg running against challenger Democrat Fernando Ferrer. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)
By Bonnie Kavoussi Posted: 03/01/2013 2:18 pm EST | Updated: 03/02/2013 10:25 am EST
Part of the answer may be that the rich vote more than the poor. Seventy-eight percent of Americans making over $150,000 per year voted in the 2008 election, while less than half of those making under $30,000 per year voted.
Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.
Documentary Calls for "A Place at the Table" for Hungry
Published on Mar 1, 2013 by PBSNewsHour
Fifty million people go hungry in the United States every day, including one in four children, according to U.S. government reports. Ray Suarez speaks with director Lori Silverbush about her new documentary, "A Place at the Table," which challenges the viewer's assumptions about who is hungry and why.
Inside The 2013 Billionaires List: Facts and Figures
Luisa Kroll, Forbes Staff 3/04/2013 @ 6:58AM This story appears in the 25. März 2013 issue of Forbes.
The ranks of the world’s billionaires, as monitored and tallied by our global wealth team, have yet again reached all-time highs. The 2013 Forbes Billionaires list now boasts 1,426 names, with an aggregate net worth of $5.4 trillion, up from $4.6 trillion. We found 210 new ten-figure fortunes. Once again the U.S. leads the list with 442 billionaires, followed by Asia-Pacific (386), Europe (366), the Americas (129) and the Middle East & Africa (103).
Resurgent asset prices are the driving force behind the rising wealth of the super-rich around the globe. While last year almost as many fortunes fell as rose, this year gainers outnumbered losers by 4-to-1. Many new names made the list thanks to free-spending consumers. To name a few: Diesel jeans mogul Renzo Rosso at $3 billion, retailer Bruce Nordstrom at $1.2 billion and designer Tory Burch at $1 billion.
Carlos Slim is once again the world’s richest person, followed by Bill Gates. Amancio Ortega of Spanish retailer Zara moves up to No. 3 for the first time. He is the year’s biggest gainer, adding $19.5 billion to his fortune in one year. He moves ahead of Warren Buffett, despite the fact that the U.S. investing legend added $9.5 billion to his fortune. This is the first year since 2000 that Buffett has not been among the top 3. The year’s biggest loser is Brazilian Eike Batista, whose fortune dropped by $19.4 billion, or equivalent to about $50 million a day. His rank falls from no. 7 to no. 100 in the world.
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The World’s Billionaires The names, numbers and stories behind the 1,426 people who control the world economy. http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
On June 18, 2011 artists Ligorano/Reese presented a temporary monument in the garden of Jim Kempner Fine Art in NYC called "Morning In America." The installation was witnessed by hundreds and lasted a total of 8 hours throughout the hot day.
...A THOUSAND CUTS is a timelapse video of the event. The soundtrack was inspired by an excerpt from Senator Bernie Sanders 8 hour filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor against the extension of the Bush tax cuts and the effects on the middle class. It is orchestrated to music by composer/violinist Michael Galasso.
Total student debt stands at $966 billion as of the fourth quarter of 2012, the N.Y. Fed said in press materials [ http://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/mediaadvisory/2013/Lee022813.pdf ], with a 70 percent increase in both the number of borrowers and the average balance per person. The overall number of borrowers past due on their student loan payments has also grown, from under 10 percent in 2004 to 17 percent in 2012.
Fewer people with student loans are buying homes, according to data in the report. Of borrowers ages 25 to 30 who are taking out new mortgages, the percentage of those with student debt has fallen by half, from nearly 9 percent in 2005 to just above 4 percent in 2012.
The fed report sees a connection, stating, "The higher burden of student loans and higher delinquencies may affect borrowers' access to other types of credit and the performance of other debt."
CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman Rohit Chopra told reporters, "Many of us have raised questions about the student debt domino effect on the economy."
"I don't like to use the word 'crisis,' because it's a 'crisis' that really can't melt down the same way that the mortgage market did," Chopra said on HuffPost Live [ http://live.huffingtonpost.com/#r/segment/cfpb-private-student-loan-crisis-debt/5127753002a760285400057b ]. "In fact, a lot of the student loan issues are just going to be a drag on the economy, because young people aren't going to be able to participate like a generation ago when they're making very large payments out of their salaries every single month instead of putting it to better use."
The growth in student debt is due to a combination of more students attending college, more parents taking out loans for their children's education and a lack of options to discharge the debt, the fed reports. In 2005, congressional Republicans pushed through a new law that made private student loans nearly [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/14/private-student-loans-bankruptcy-law_n_1753462.html ] impossible to discharge in bankruptcy. While student debt tops all other forms of consumer debt, it's the only kind that cannot be absolved in bankruptcy.
Here are two things that are true about the economy today.
(1) The Dow Jones industrial average is poised to set a new record as corporate profits stretch to all-time highs.
(2) There are still fewer working Americans today than there were before the start of the Great Recession.
The fact that these two things can be true at the same time might outrage you. But it shouldn't surprise you. In the last 30 years, there has been a great divergence between growth and workers' incomes, as the New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/business/economy/corporate-profits-soar-as-worker-income-limps.html?pagewanted=all ] reminds us today. Corporate profits have soared, in the last decade especially, particularly because of three things: Globalization has pushed down the cost of labor available to multinational corporations; technology has allowed companies to make more with fewer workers, in general; and Big Finance has gobbled up the economy, as the banks' share of total corporate profits has tripled to about one-third [ http://esoltas.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-rise-of-finance.html ] since the middle of the last century, according to Evan Soltas.
Here's the short story of corporate profits, GDP, and workers' income since the Great Recession. As you can see, corporations rode a wild roller coaster, but they quickly found their way back on top. GDP has been sluggish and overall labor income has struggled to keep up with even that sluggish pace.
Here's the longer view. Zoom out to the turn of the century, and you can see that this isn't a "recession" trend. It's just a trend that the recession has amplified. Corporate profits starting eating the economy around 2003, around the time the housing market started delivering massive profits to finance companies.
And the even longer view. Zoom out to 1970, and you can see that corporate profits started to take off, relative to GDP growth, in the 1990s, before exploding in the last decade.
For another look at the long story, here's a graph that compares labor's share of the economy (BLUE) to corporate profits' share of the economy (RED). There has been a steady shift away from workers toward capital since the early 1970s but the real action comes around 2000. Corporate profits double their bite of the economy and labor's share, already at a post-WWII low, falls another four percentage points steeply.
Taken together, these graphs don't tell us that corporations have utterly decoupled from the economy. When the economy crashes, we all crash together: corporate profits, employment, and growth. But when the economy recovers, we don't recover together. Corporations rack up historic profits thanks to strong global demand, cheap global labor, and low interest rates, while American workers muddle along, their significance to these companies greatly diminished by a worldwide market for goods and people.
A growing economy and lower unemployment should eventually give U.S. workers a long-deserved raise (and so should rising labor costs overseas that persuade more companies to hire domestically). But improvements in technology and the ability of companies to hire locally as they chase worldwide demand are just two factors that should restrain any optimism we can keep corporate profits from gobbling up more and more of the economy. Workers still need help -- and they certainly won't find it [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/business/economy/corporate-profits-soar-as-worker-income-limps.html?pagewanted=all ] in the sequester.
Air Force veteran Brett Culver, of Newalla, Okla., talks with Texas state trooper Deon Cockrell at a Recruit Military job fair in Oklahoma City on Jan. 31. Some employers use credit reports in hiring decisions, according to a new report. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
By Saki Knafo Posted: 03/04/2013 6:55 pm EST | Updated: 03/06/2013 2:27 pm EST
Emmett Pinkston served in the military for 30 years, first in the Marines, then in the Air Force, then in the Army. He helped coordinate security for President George W. Bush during the G8 Summit on Sea Island, Ga., in 2004, and worked as an intelligence analyst in Iraq from 2005 to 2007, some of the deadliest years of the war.
But when he tried to get a job as an airport security worker in 2011, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration turned him down, citing a credit report that showed him $8,000 in debt.
To Pinkston's disbelief, the TSA described him as a potential security risk. "They said there was a possibility that I would be vulnerable to bribes to let people through the gate," he recalled. "I was absolutely no security risk to any airport or port or any operation in this country," he added matter-of-factly.
The wide use of credit checks by employers has kept many Americans out of work, contributing to the country's epidemic of joblessness and possibly leading to discriminatory hiring practices, according to a new report by Demos [ http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/imce/Discredited-Final.pdf ], the New York-based policy and advocacy organization. In essence, the debts incurred during the recession have prevented people from getting back on their feet and paying back what they owe, trapping them in a vicious cycle of debt and unemployment.
In a survey conducted last year, Demos interviewed more than 1,000 low and middle-income households carrying credit card debt for three months or longer. "Among job applicants with poor credit, one in seven were advised they would not be hired because of their credit," said Amy Traub, the author of the report.
Many had gone into debt after becoming unemployed during the recession. Others lacked health coverage and owed money to hospitals, or had children to support. "As a society these aren't generally reasons why we say someone should get a job or not get a job," said Traub.
Tanya Clay House, the public policy director for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, noted that black and Latino households are more likely to have poor credit than white ones, perhaps because of the high rate of unemployment among minorities: 13.8 percent of African-Americans and 9 percent of Latinos are unemployed, compared with 7 percent of whites.
Clay House argued that policymakers could increase employment in black and Latino communities and boost the nation's overall economic well-being by forbidding the use of credit checks by employers. "This is something that has to be done in concert with any type of jobs employment programs or anything else that is done with the economy," she said on a call with reporters on Monday.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D–Tenn.) agreed. "The use of credit checks is a growing trend, and a dangerous one," said Cohen, who sponsored the Equal Employment for All Act [ http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr645/text ] to prohibit employment credit checks in most cases. "It's kind of created an interest group that fights this legislation because the credit-check people make money out of it," he said.
Norm Magnuson, a spokesman for the Consumer Data Industry Association, questioned the reliability of Demos' information. "Employers don't necessarily tell people we're not hiring you because of bad debts," he said. "There are a lot of reasons they might not hire you."
In response, Traub cited a 1970 law, the Fair Credit Reporting Act [ http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/031224fcra.pdf ], which requires employers to tell rejected applicants if a credit report played any role in the decision not to hire them.
In Pinkston's case, the question of whether a company can spot a potential thief or slacker by looking at someone's credit history turned out to be moot. The $8,000 debt was the result of an error, and it was eventually wiped from Pinkston's credit record.
Pinkston said the TSA is now considering him for other positions. Meantime, he's working at a Federal Express center in Brooklyn, N.Y., and struggling to pay rent on a studio apartment. "When you make it more difficult to rebound financially and find good people to help organizations grow and prosper, you're slowing the amount of economic recovery communities are having," he said.
Costco CEO: Raise The Minimum Wage To More Than $10 Per Hour
Costco CEO Craig Jelinek at the Costco store in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
By Bonnie Kavoussi Posted: 03/06/2013 11:10 am EST | Updated: 03/06/2013 11:10 am EST
President Barack Obama wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour. And the CEO of one of America's largest retailers says such a move would be good for workers and businesses alike. In fact, he says raise it even more.
"An important reason for the success of Costco’s business model is the attraction and retention of great employees," Jelinek added. "Instead of minimizing wages, we know it's a lot more profitable in the long term to minimize employee turnover and maximize employee productivity, commitment and loyalty. We support efforts to increase the federal minimum wage."
Senate Report Said to Fault JPMorgan March 4, 2013 While a trader known as the “London whale” has come to represent a multibillion-dollar blowup at JPMorgan Chase, Congressional investigators have discovered that the problems involved more senior levels of the nation’s largest bank. [...] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/senate-report-said-to-fault-jpmorgan/ [with comments]
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CFTC Derivatives Proposal Would Weaken Rules Meant To Prevent Another Crisis, Advocates Warn
Federal derivatives market regulator are proposing watering down rules meant to prevent another derivatives crisis, like the one that nearly felled AIG in 2009. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
By Eleazar David Melendez Posted: 02/28/2013 8:02 pm EST | Updated: 03/01/2013 3:43 pm EST
The federal regulator overseeing trading in derivatives [ http://www.cftc.gov/index.htm ] -- an opaque realm worth hundreds of trillions of dollars at the center of the global financial crisis -- is moving to loosen proposed new restrictions, rendering the markets vulnerable to fresh instability, said advocates for greater scrutiny.
A proposal that would allow continued private trading of derivatives with less transparency for market participants is being pressed by at least three commissioners on the five-member Commodities and Futures Trading Commission -- two Republicans and one Democrat -- according to sources familiar with the deliberations. The body’s chairman, Democrat Gary Gensler, opposes the measure, these sources said.
“The banks have been intensely lobbying to keep it as it is,” said R. Raymond May, founder and CEO of derivatives trading firm Odex. He said the rule being considered by the CFTC “doesn’t change anything from what we had before.”
Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group in Washington, said the proposed change amounts to watering down rules intended to avoid another calamitous financial crisis.
“This keeps the swaps markets looking very similar to where they are today,” Stanley told the Huffington Post. “All this dangerous activity would remain concentrated within a few -- five or six -- too big to fail banks that are so central to the economy. The markets would remain unstable, which threatens everyone.”
Trading in credit derivatives proved seminal in the wave of panic that threatened much of global finance in 2008. Amid an American housing boom, major investment banks bought and sold mortgages in a lucrative trade that became worth trillions of dollars. They sliced and diced home loans into bonds, and then bet on increases and decreases in the value of those bonds via exotic instruments known as derivatives -- meaning investments linked to the value of some other good.
At the height of the boom, some $203.5 trillion worth of derivatives was in circulation in global markets. As housing prices dropped and homeowners fell into delinquency, many of the bonds constructed of mortgages became worthless, bringing down the derivatives linked to them. Financial institutions such as the insurance giant AIG and the investment bank Merrill Lynch found themselves on the hook for tens of billions of dollars in losses they could not cover, resulting in taxpayer bailouts.
As the markets absorbed the reality that many lenders faced similar straits, financial markets recoiled, making money tight even for creditworthy households and businesses, and turning an ordinary recession into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
The Dodd-Frank financial reforms adopted by Congress in 2010 were aimed at preventing a replay of that scenario. The law tasked the CFTC with creating a new marketplace in which banks would trade derivatives openly, with their positions disclosed to the public.
Previously, trading had occurred mainly over the telephone, in private deals between large players. Congress mandated that most of the trading should be restricted to a central computerized market, a “central limit order book” in industry jargon.
But a key exception granted traders of very exotic or large derivative positions the right to exchange their wares privately. Critics said that would reduce transparency and benefit the biggest banks that dominate the field.
In an effort to limit the scope of the trading that could take place under that exception, regulators initially proposed that derivatives traders doing business outside of a central exchange would have to involve at least five so-called counterparties, meaning investors taking the other side of a trade.
Now, according to people with knowledge of CFTC deliberations, commissioners are pressing a rule that would allow traders to negotiate the sale of derivatives privately, outside the exchange, even when there are only two other counterparties.
“There were significant compromises made in the Dodd-Frank Act,” said Stanley, the financial reform advocate. “Then the initial proposed regulation had an additional compromise. Then industry lobbyists complained those proposals were too extreme. Now, we’re ending up very close to where we were in 2008.”
People inside the CFTC who spoke on condition they not be named said the key swing player in the latest development is Democratic Commissioner Mark Wetjen, who is aligning himself with the two Republican commissioners on the panel to pass the latest proposal. Where the other Democratic commissioner, Bart Chilton, stands on the issue remains unclear, these sources said.
Wetjen and Chilton declined to comment. The CFTC sources said Wetjen has embraced the proposal as a way to address what he portrays as the difficulty of restricting derivatives trading to exchanges. Wetjen has contended the original threshold of five counterparties would have prompted banks to find loopholes around the regulation, these people said.
Dennis Kelleher, an advocate for financial reform who leads a Washington-based non-profit Better Markets, argued that the real motive of the change is to enable Wall Street to continue its profitable, but reckless, gambling on derivatives.
“As we said to Commissioner Wetjen and other commissioners in recent meetings, gutting the … rules will only help Wall Street’s biggest banks continue to control the marketplace and will defeat the purposes of financial reform,” Kelleher said in a written statement. “The law was passed because Wall Street caused the biggest financial collapse since the Great Crash of 1929 and has inflicted the worst economy on the U.S. since the Great Depression. Financial reform is supposed to prevent that from happening again. The CFTC must stand up to Wall Street, reject self-serving, profit-maximizing arguments, and protect the American people.”
A Stealth Tax Subsidy for Business Faces New Scrutiny
Video [embedded] Bond Giveaway: The Times’s Louise Story on corporations that enjoy billions of dollars in tax-free financing.
The Barclays Center in Brooklyn, on opening night in September 2012. Richard Perry/The New York Times
Bank of America Tower, center, at 115 West 42nd Street in New York. Tina Fineberg for The New York Times
The headquarters of Goldman Sachs in Lower Manhattan. Mario Tama/Getty Images
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH and LOUISE STORY Published: March 4, 2013
The last time the nation’s tax code was overhauled, in 1986, Congress tried to end a big corporate giveaway.
But this valuable perk — the ability to finance a variety of business projects cheaply with bonds that are exempt from federal taxes — has not only endured, it has grown, in what amounts to a stealth subsidy for private enterprise.
A winery in North Carolina, a golf resort in Puerto Rico and a Corvette museum in Kentucky, as well as the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the offices of the Goldman Sachs Group and the Bank of America Tower in New York — all of these projects, and many more, have been built using the tax-exempt bonds that are more conventionally used by cities and states to pay for roads, bridges and schools.
In all, more than $65 billion of these bonds have been issued by state and local governments on behalf of corporations since 2003, according to an analysis of Bloomberg bond data by The New York Times. During that period, the single biggest beneficiary of such securities was the Chevron Corporation, which issued bonds with a total face value of $2.6 billion, the analysis showed. Last year it reported a profit of $26 billion.
At a time when Washington is rent by the politics of taxes and deficits, select companies are enjoying a tax break normally reserved for public works. This style of financing, called “qualified private activity bonds,” saves businesses money, because they can borrow at relatively low interest rates. But those savings come at the expense of American taxpayers, because the interest paid to bondholders is exempt from taxes.
What is more, the projects are often structured so companies can avoid paying state sales taxes on new equipment and, at times, avoid local property taxes. While some deals might encourage businesses to invest where they might otherwise not have invested, there are few guarantees that job creation or other economic benefits actually occur.
Budget analysts say these bonds amount to a government subsidy, in the form of forgone tax revenue. While it is difficult to calculate the precise dollar amount of the subsidy, given the number and variety of these bonds, experts say the annual cost to federal taxpayers could run into the billions.
“The federal government doesn’t cut a check for this, but it costs the government in terms of lower tax revenue,” said Lisa Washburn, a managing director at Municipal Market Advisors, an independent municipal research firm in Concord, Mass., that assisted The Times with its analysis.
“If these companies were to issue taxable bonds instead, then the federal government would receive tax revenues on them.”
Ms. Washburn added that the gain to companies, and bond buyers, can be big and long-lasting.
Chevron used most of its federally tax-free borrowings to expand a refinery in Pascagoula, Miss. Archer Daniels Midland, the agribusiness giant, used about $180 million in tax-exempt bonds to improve its grain-processing facilities in Indiana and Iowa. Alcoa raised $250 million to renovate an aluminum plant in Iowa.
Such financing arrangements are now worrying some state and local officials. Many are concerned that the budget battles in Washington will mean less federal money for them, and that the federal government might try to limit the scope of their own tax-free financing.
Some of the subsidized business projects are almost indistinguishable from public works. American Airlines, for instance, another big user of tax-exempt bonds over the last decade, used $1.3 billion of these securities to finance a new terminal at Kennedy International Airport. That terminal is owned by the City of New York; American is the builder, the borrower and a tenant.
As political controversy over the federal deficit has mounted, some fiscal experts have taken aim at this sort of tax-exempt borrowing. The team at the Bipartisan Policy Center [ http://bipartisanpolicy.org/projects/debt-initiative/about ] led by Alice M. Rivlin, a former member of the Federal Reserve, and Pete V. Domenici, the former Republican senator, has called for ending it. A spokeswoman for the center said that such a change could bring in $50 billion for the federal government over 10 years.
The Obama administration would take a different approach, capping the value of the tax break that wealthy bond buyers enjoy, whether they buy private activity bonds or conventional municipal bonds [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/municipal_bonds/index.html ]. Some of the bonds in The Times’s analysis are subject to the alternative minimum tax [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/alternative_minimum_tax/index.html ], but taxpayers who incur the A.M.T. typically do not buy those bonds. There are also tax-exempt private activity bonds that are used for hospitals and universities. The Times did not include those in the analysis, because they do not benefit profit-making companies.
It was Ms. Rivlin who, as founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, issued one of the first major reports on private activity bonds, which the report said were invented by officials in Mississippi eager to attract business during the Depression. In a 1981 report [ http://www.gao.gov/assets/280/272369.pdf ], Ms. Rivlin found that the bonds were in much wider use than previously understood. Companies were using the federal subsidy to build Kmarts, McDonald’s restaurants, private golf courses and tennis clubs — even a topless bar and an adult bookstore in Philadelphia.
“These trends have cast into sharp relief the questions concerning the public purpose” of the subsidy, Ms. Rivlin wrote at the time. “So far, federal legislation has left the definition of ‘public purpose’ to state and local governments.”
Finally, in 1986, in a sweeping tax reform signed by President Ronald Reagan, Congress set limits on qualified private activity bonds, giving each state a yearly allotment. Some projects, like airports and wharves, were not subject to the yearly limits. Others could not be financed with tax-exempt bonds at all, including golf courses, stadiums, hotels, massage parlors and tanning salons.
But over time, Reagan-era concerns about budget deficits faded, and so did some of the limits on tax-exempt private activity bonds. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2008 that use had risen to a record high and that once-forbidden projects like stadiums, hotels and golf courses were back.
“It is not clear whether facilities like these provide public benefits to federal taxpayers,” the G.A.O. stated in its report [id.].
In the years since 1986, Congress has lifted the caps on some states’ or cities’ allotments, often in response to natural disasters and other emergencies.
After the terrorist attacks in 2001, for example, Congress approved $8 billion worth of tax-exempt Liberty Bonds, which were in addition to New York State’s normal allotment and could be used to keep companies from moving out of the neighborhood near ground zero. Goldman Sachs used around $1.6 billion of tax-exempt bonds under the program to help pay for its headquarters in Lower Manhattan. In a related program, Goldman agreed to keep 8,900 jobs in the city but has not met that level for the last three years, according to public records.
A spokesman for Goldman did not dispute that its jobs levels have been below 8,900 but said the bank was meeting its obligations.
The Liberty Bond program allowed for a limited amount of tax-exempt financing for projects beyond Lower Manhattan. That’s how One Bryant Park L.L.C. was able to use $650 million of tax-exempt bonds to build the Bank of America Tower in Midtown.
In 2005, Congress created a similar program to spur rebuilding in areas of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi that were ravaged by Hurricane Katrina [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hurricane_katrina/index.html ]. The Times’s data shows that much of the bond proceeds went to the oil and gas industry, or to showcase projects like hotels or the Superdome. In 2008, Congress passed the Heartland Disaster Tax Relief Act [ http://www.irs.gov/uac/Tax-Law-Changes-Related-to-Midwestern-Disaster-Areas ], a bond program to help 10 Midwestern states hit by flooding and tornadoes. The goal was to help businesses rebuild their destroyed property. But by the time the program was set to expire at the end of last year, the criteria had been expanded to include new businesses.
But weeks later, Indiana received alarming news: Pentagon officials said that fertilizer from Fatima’s operations in Pakistan had been turning up in Afghanistan, in homemade bombs used against American troops. Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana [ http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/feb/26/54-hed1-15-inches-of-story/ ] has delayed the project while the Defense Department investigates. The $1.3 billion is now sitting in escrow and will have to go back to the bond buyers if the project is rejected.
Why There's a Bull Market for Stocks and a Bear Market for Workers
By Robert Reich Posted: 03/05/2013 2:05 pm
Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 14,270 -- completely erasing its 54 percent loss between 2007 and 2009.
The stock market is basically back to where it was in 2000, while corporate earnings have doubled since then.
Yet the real median wage is now 8 percent below what it was in 2000, and unemployment remains sky-high.
Why is the stock market doing so well, while most Americans are doing so poorly? Four reasons:
First, productivity gains. Corporations have been investing in technology rather than their workers. They get tax credits and deductions for such investments; they get no such tax benefits for improving the skills of their employees. As a result, corporations can now do more with fewer people on their payrolls. That means higher profits.
Second, high unemployment itself. Joblessness all but eliminates the bargaining power of most workers -- allowing corporations to keep wages low. Public policies that might otherwise reduce unemployment -- a new WPA or CCC to hire the long-term unemployed, major investments in the nation's crumbling infrastructure -- have been rejected in favor of austerity economics. This also means higher profits, at least in the short run.
Third, globalization. Big American-based corporations have been expanding and hiring around the globe where markets are growing fastest -- even while the U.S. market is lackluster. Tax policies and trade policies have encouraged them.
Finally, the Fed's easy-money policies. They've pushed investors into the stock market because bond yields are so low. On Tuesday, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was just 1.9 percent.
All of this spells widening inequality in America, because the people who invest the most in the stock market have high incomes. Those who rely most on wages have lower incomes.
Corporate profits are claiming a larger share of national income than at any time in 60 years, while the portion of total income going to employees is near its lowest since 1966.
As my colleague Immanuel Saez recently found, all the economic gains between 2009 and 2011 (the last year for which data were available) went to the richest 1 percent of Americans. The bottom 99 percent has continued to lose ground.
The sequestration is likely to make all this worse, since it will slow the U.S. economy and keep unemployment higher than otherwise.
It will also hurt the most vulnerable. Some $1.9 billion in low-income rental subsidies are being eliminated, affecting 125,000 people. Cuts to the Department of Agriculture will eliminate rental assistance for another 10,000 low-income rural people. Meanwhile, 100,000 formerly homeless people are likely to be removed from their current emergency shelters.
More than 3.8 million Americans receiving long-term unemployment benefits will have their monthly payments reduced by as much as 9.4 percent, and lose an average of $400 in benefits over their period of joblessness.
The Department of Education's Title I program, which helps schools serving more than a million disadvantaged students, will be cut $715 million, and $400 million will be cut from Head Start, the preschool program for poor children. And major cuts will be made in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which provides nutrition assistance and education.
Rarely before in American history have public policies so radically helped the most fortunate among us, so cruelly harmed the least fortunate, and exposed so many average working Americans to such widespread insecurity.
We’re just a few weeks away from a milestone I suspect most of Washington would like to forget: the start of the Iraq war. What I remember from that time is the utter impenetrability of the elite prowar consensus. If you tried to point out that the Bush administration was obviously cooking up a bogus case for war, one that didn’t bear even casual scrutiny; if you pointed out that the risks and likely costs of war were huge; well, you were dismissed as ignorant and irresponsible.
It didn’t seem to matter what evidence critics of the rush to war presented: Anyone who opposed the war was, by definition, a foolish hippie. Remarkably, that judgment didn’t change even after everything the war’s critics predicted came true. Those who cheered on this disastrous venture continued to be regarded as “credible” on national security (why is John McCain still a fixture of the Sunday talk shows?), while those who opposed it remained suspect.
And, even more remarkably, a very similar story has played out over the past three years, this time about economic policy. Back then, all the important people decided that an unrelated war was an appropriate response to a terrorist attack; three years ago, they all decided that fiscal austerity was the appropriate response to an economic crisis caused by runaway bankers, with the supposedly imminent danger from budget deficits playing the role once played by Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Now, as then, this consensus has seemed impenetrable to counterarguments, no matter how well grounded in evidence. And now, as then, leaders of the consensus continue to be regarded as credible even though they’ve been wrong about everything (why do people keep treating Alan Simpson as a wise man?), while critics of the consensus are regarded as foolish hippies even though all their predictions — about interest rates, about inflation, about the dire effects of austerity — have come true.
So here’s my question: Will it make any difference that Ben Bernanke has now joined the ranks of the hippies?
Earlier this week, Mr. Bernanke delivered testimony [ http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/testimony/bernanke20130226a.htm ] that should have made everyone in Washington sit up and take notice. True, it wasn’t really a break with what he has said in the past or, for that matter, with what other Federal Reserve officials have been saying, but the Fed chairman spoke more clearly and forcefully on fiscal policy than ever before — and what he said, translated from Fedspeak into plain English, was that the Beltway obsession with deficits is a terrible mistake.
First of all, he pointed out that the budget picture just isn’t very scary, even over the medium run: “The federal debt held by the public (including that held by the Federal Reserve) is projected to remain roughly 75 percent of G.D.P. through much of the current decade.”
He then argued that given the state of the economy, we’re currently spending too little, not too much: “A substantial portion of the recent progress in lowering the deficit has been concentrated in near-term budget changes, which, taken together, could create a significant headwind for the economic recovery.”
Finally, he suggested that austerity in a depressed economy may well be self-defeating even in purely fiscal terms: “Besides having adverse effects on jobs and incomes, a slower recovery would lead to less actual deficit reduction in the short run for any given set of fiscal actions.”
So the deficit is not a clear and present danger, spending cuts in a depressed economy are a terrible idea and premature austerity doesn’t make sense even in budgetary terms. Regular readers may find these propositions familiar, since they’re pretty much what I and other progressive economists have been saying all along. But we’re irresponsible hippies. Is Ben Bernanke? (Well, he has a beard.)
The point is not that Mr. Bernanke is an unimpeachable source of wisdom; one hopes that the collapse of Alan Greenspan’s reputation has put an end to the practice of deifying Fed chairmen. Mr. Bernanke is a fine economist, but no more so than, say, Columbia’s Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and legendary economic theorist whose vocal criticism of our deficit obsession has nonetheless been ignored. No, the point is that Mr. Bernanke’s apostasy may help undermine the argument from authority — nobody who matters disagrees! — that has made the elite obsession with deficits so hard to dislodge.
And an end to deficit obsession can’t come a moment too soon. Right now Washington is focused on the idiocy of the sequester, but this is only the latest episode in an unprecedented run of declines [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/business/as-budget-cuts-loom-austerity-kills-off-government-jobs.html ] in public employment and government purchases that have crippled our economy’s recovery. A misguided elite consensus has led us into an economic quagmire, and it’s time for us to get out.
Imagine a plot to undermine the government of the United States, to destroy much of its capacity to do the public's business, and to sow distrust among the population.
Imagine further that the plotters infiltrate Congress and state governments, reshape their districts to give them disproportionate influence in Washington, and use the media to spread big lies about the government.
Finally, imagine they not only paralyze the government but are on the verge of dismantling pieces of it.
Far-fetched? Perhaps. But take a look at what's been happening in Washington and many state capitals since Tea Party fanatics gained effective control of the Republican Party, and you'd be forgiven if you see parallels.
Tea Party Republicans are crowing about the "sequestration" cuts beginning today (Friday). "This will be the first significant tea party victory in that we got what we set out to do in changing Washington," says Rep. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), a Tea Partier who was first elected in 2010.
Sequestration is only the start. What they set out to do was not simply change Washington but eviscerate the U.S. government -- "drown it in the bathtub," in the words of their guru Grover Norquist -- slashing Social Security and Medicare, ending worker protections we've had since the 1930s, eroding civil rights and voting rights, terminating programs that have helped the poor for generations, and making it impossible for the government to invest in our future.
Sequestration grew out of a strategy hatched soon after they took over the House in 2011, to achieve their goals by holding hostage the full faith and credit of the United States -- notwithstanding the Constitution's instruction that the public debt of the United States "not be questioned."
To avoid default on the public debt, the White House and House Republicans agreed to harsh and arbitrary "sequestered" spending cuts if they couldn't come up with a more reasonable deal in the interim. But the Tea Partiers had no intention of agreeing to anything more reasonable. They knew the only way to dismember the federal government was through large spending cuts without tax increases.
Nor do they seem to mind the higher unemployment their strategy will almost certainly bring about. Sequestration combined with January's fiscal cliff deal is expected to slow economic growth by 1.5 percentage points this year - dangerous for an economy now crawling at about 2 percent. It will be even worse if the Tea Partiers refuse to extend the government's spending authority, which expires March 27.
A conspiracy theorist might think they welcome more joblessness because they want Americans to be even more fearful and angry. Tea Partiers use fear and anger in their war against the government -- blaming the anemic recovery on government deficits and the government's size, and selling a poisonous snake-oil of austerity economics and trickle-down economics as the remedy.
They likewise use the disruption and paralysis they've sown in Washington to persuade Americans government is necessarily dysfunctional, and politics inherently bad. Their continuing showdowns and standoffs are, in this sense, part of the plot.
What is the President's response? He still wants a so-called "grand bargain" of "balanced" spending cuts (including cuts in the projected growth of Social Security and Medicare) combined with tax increases on the wealthy. So far, though, he has agreed to a gross imbalance -- $1.5 trillion in cuts to Republicans' $600 billion in tax increases on the rich.
The President apparently believes Republicans are serious about deficit reduction, when in fact the Tea Partiers now running the GOP are serious only about dismembering the government.
And he seems to accept that the budget deficit is the largest economic problem facing the nation, when in reality the largest problem is continuing high unemployment (some 20 million Americans unemployed or under-employed), declining real wages, and widening inequality. Deficit reduction now or in the near-term will only make these worse.
Besides, the deficit is now down to about 5 percent of GDP -- where it was when Bill Clinton took office. It is projected to mushroom in later years mainly because healthcare costs are expected to rise faster than the economy is expected to grow, and the American population is aging. These trends have little or nothing to do with government programs. In fact, Medicare is far more efficient than private health insurance.
I suggest the President forget about a "grand bargain." In fact, he should stop talking about the budget deficit and start talking about jobs and wages, and widening inequality - as he did in the campaign. And he should give up all hope of making a deal with the Tea Partiers who now run the Republican Party.
Instead, the President should let the public see the Tea Partiers for who they are -- a small, radical minority intent on dismantling the government of the United States. As long as they are allowed to dictate the terms of public debate they will continue to hold the rest of us hostage to their extremism.
President Obama Makes a Statement on the Sequester
Published on Mar 1, 2013 by whitehouse
President Obama delivers a statement about moving forward in light of severe budget cuts that will start to take effect today, and answers questions from the press. March 1, 2013.
John Boehner Compares Tax Proposals Of White House To Stealing
By Michael McAuliff and Sabrina Siddiqui Posted: 02/28/2013 1:10 pm EST | Updated: 03/01/2013 2:50 pm EST
WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared Thursday that seeking more revenue in order to reduce the federal deficit or to replace sequestration's pending budget cuts is tantamount to stealing from Americans.
Boehner was asked why House Republicans are ruling out any further tax hikes to fix America's finances, when the more than $2 trillion in deficit reduction passed over the last two years is weighted in favor of cuts over revenue by a ratio of more than two to one.
"The president got his tax hikes," Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill, referring to some $600 billion in tax increases Congress passed in the fiscal-cliff deal that ended the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes above $400,000.
"The American economy is going to create more tax revenue this year than any other year in our history. We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem," Boehner added. "How much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government? I'm for no more."
Boehner also repeated his position that the House had no responsibility to propose a new replacement for sequestration because lawmakers passed two bills -- now expired -- to do so in the last Congress.
Those bills, however, replaced only a year's worth of sequestration, amounting to less than $100 billion. Sequestration mandates $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, and neither of the GOP plans suggested how to find the entire amount.
ITEP report says race to no income tax based on flawed theory
Posted by Scott Rothschild March 2, 2013 at 9:09 a.m.
The effort by Gov. Sam Brownback and several other Republican governors to eliminate personal state income taxes is based on an economic theory that is "extremely flawed," a new report by a non-partisan research group says.
Brownback has depended on the claims of supply-side economist Arthur Laffer that states without personal income taxes are outperforming those with state income taxes. Last year, Brownback hired Laffer for $75,000 to help draw up the governor's tax proposal.
But the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy says income tax cuts don't appear to actually stoke state economies.
"In reality, states that levy personal income taxes, including the states with the highest top rates, have seen more economic growth per capita and less decline in their median income level over the last 10 years than the nine states that do not tax income," the ITEP report states. "Unemployment rates have been nearly identical across states with and without income taxes."
Laffer's claims are based on growth in Gross State Product, which is related to population trends, and he asserts that tax policy is behind the migration of people into low-tax states.
But ITEP says population growth in states isn't determined by tax policy. The report says the growth is more attributable to low housing prices, warm weather and high birth rates in those states.
The ITEP study looks at median family income, which shows that while income has declined in most states over the past decade, the declines have been smaller in states with income taxes. Five of the nine states without income taxes are doing worse than average in median income growth.
And ITEP says that Laffer's theory fails to take into account that some states don't choose to levy an income tax because they have an unusual economic resource, such as oil, coal or tourism.
Deregulation fantasies lead to consumer nightmares
By Paul Robbins Posted: 12:00 a.m. Sunday, March 3, 2013
How has deregulation worked for you? Was it good for your banks, your airfares or your insurance rates? The City of Austin owns and manages Austin Energy, a municipal utility that is our city’s largest asset. Some people think we ought to deregulate [i.e. sell off/privatize, see e.g. http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2013-02-22/wild-card-austin-energy-and-the-puc/ ] Austin Energy. But looking at the record of deregulation in Texas, I think you will find it’s a bad deal.
Electricity to Texas consumers in areas formerly serviced by utility monopolies was deregulated in 2002. Promoters of the concept of unrestrained competition tend to ignore history, events and even market forces, deluded that they have the perfect economic system. Unfortunately, deregulation promised low-cost service and left high consumption, higher bills, more pollution and even bankruptcy of some of the service providers in its wake. Here’s more about why we should keep local control.
• History. The early history of electricity in Central Texas was one in which public power systems attempted to solve problems created by private utilities. The City of Austin began operating its own system in 1895 to compete with an existing private utility because of the company’s predatory prices and poor service.
Private utilities saw no profit in serving most of the Texas Hill Country, prompting the state to create the Lower Colorado River Authority, whose power was sold to electric coops and municipal utilities. Funding for the original infrastructure was provided by the federal government during the New Deal.
• High Bills in the Deregulated Market. According to data from the U.S Energy Information Administration, between 2004-2011, the average residential cost for deregulated utilities was 41 percent higher than if they had been served by the state’s municipal utilities. The average cost for deregulated utilities for all classes (including commercial and industrial) was 23 percent higher.
During this time period, Texans who lived in deregulated areas paid $37 billion (in 2013 dollars) more than if they had been served at municipal utility prices.
• High Consumption in Deregulated Utilities. According to the same data, the average consumption in Austin’s utility was 18 percent lower than the average of deregulated utilities. Because Austin was customer-oriented, it invested in energy efficiency, enacted better building codes and built a new efficient gas plant. Meanwhile, various deregulated utilities spent their money on more expensive generation options and took on leveraged debt to pay for them.
• More Pollution in Deregulated Utilities. Higher consumption of deregulated utilities also means more pollution. Austin Energy’s pollution profile is among the lowest in the state because it has invested in efficiency, wind power and solar.
• Ability to Meet Peak Demand. Before deregulation, building more summer peak capacity was considered to be part of the cost of providing a stable electric grid in the hot Texas climate. However, in a deregulated market where each power plant tries to operate at a profit, the margin for peak power is too small for many private investors.
Peak capacity in the Texas operating system (ERCOT) is alarmingly low, despite outrageous incentives recently offered by the Texas Public Utility Commission of up to 200 times the cost of baseload power. It is possible that the deregulated system could be short of sufficient reserve margins as early as 2014.
• Bankruptcy of Deregulated Utilities. It is ironic that since Texas deregulation, five electric generation companies that operated in the state have gone bankrupt and a sixth is teetering on the edge. This financial instability will lead to investors being wary of putting money into the Texas deregulated market or at least lead them to charge higher interest rates.
Meanwhile, Austin has been so well managed that our bond rating has recently gone up, and people want to invest here because they know we’ll pay our bills.
• The Local Benefit. Austin Energy’s annual profits of $105 million are invested in Austin’s streets, parks and libraries. We keep the profits. The biggest electric companies in Texas are owned by private companies based in New York, New Jersey and Ohio.
So before you invite the blessings of deregulated utilities, look at the real history and record. When advocates start regaling you with the virtues of the free market, and the market has this many problems, be very cautious. I’ve never been to a market that I didn’t have to pay for.
Aspartame In Milk: Dairy Industry Seeks Approval To Drop Label For Artificial Sweeteners 02/28/2013 Got diet milk? The dairy industry for the past three years has been hoping to sell you some under the guise of just plain "milk," so that chocolate and strawberry varieties that contain artificial sweeteners would no longer need to carry a special label. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [ https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/02/20/2013-03835/flavored-milk-petition-to-amend-the-standard-of-identity-for-milk-and-17-additional-dairy-products ] acknowledged a 2009 petition from the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation that seeks to drop the FDA requirement to label milk and other dairy products as "artificially sweetened" when they contain sweeteners such as aspartame. [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/aspartame-milk_n_2764729.html [with comments]
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Chuck Schumer Background Check Bill Loses Key Republican Co-Sponsor
By Sam Stein Posted: 03/06/2013 5:56 pm EST | Updated: 03/07/2013 1:28 am EST
NEW YORK -- Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is proceeding on legislation expanding background checks of gun purchases without his first choice for a Republican co-sponsor, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)
The Huffington Post was first to report [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/05/background-check-bill_n_2814310.html ] Tuesday that Schumer and other Democrats were planning to move the bill -- the backbone of President Barack Obama’s gun policy reforms -- without Coburn’s support. On Wednesday, with the deadline to submit the legislation to the Senate Judiciary Committee approaching, the decision became official. The two sides could not reach an agreement over whether sales records should be kept for private gun purchases.
A Schumer aide sent over the following guidance:
{A} sticking point has emerged with Senator Coburn over the issue of whether private sellers should be required to maintain a paper record of their transaction. Currently, commercial dealers are required to keep such a record on their premises after a sale; our bill would simply extend this same requirement to sales by private sellers. Current law already forbids the federal government from harvesting these records in a centralized database or otherwise creating a registry, and our bill would continue that policy. But without requiring a record for any private sales, it is impossible to ensure compliance with the background-check requirement our bill would impose.
Throughout this process, Senator Coburn has negotiated in complete and utter good faith, but there is an honest difference of opinion over this provision. As much as we wish to earn Senator Coburn’s support, Senator Schumer is not prepared to negotiate away the record-keeping requirement in its entirety, lest it make the law unenforceable. Accordingly, Sen. Schumer spoke to Senator Coburn yesterday (Tuesday) to let him know that while the lines of communication will remain open between their offices, he intends to begin approaching other Republican senators in earnest about the proposal. Senators Kirk and Manchin had already been feeling out other Republicans, and Senator Schumer will now join in that pursuit.
In the meantime, while this new round of outreach begins, a version of the bill must be submitted by 5 pm today for the purposes of the committee mark-up tomorrow. To that end, our office intends to file a bill that closely mirrors Schumer’s “Fix Guns Check Act of 2011,” which was first introduced last Congress. This bill omits many of the modifications Schumer, Kirk and Manchin have already agreed upon as part of their forthcoming bipartisan compromise. But for the time being, Schumer will advance the original, strongest version of the bill while the three senators together shop their compromise approach to potential co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who had been working on the legislation as well, announced Wednesday that they would not support Schumer’s bill as submitted. Theirs was a largely ceremonial statement, as the bill will ultimately be replaced with something more closely resembling the Schumer-Coburn compromise.
Wednesday's development is an obvious setback for the legislation, since Coburn has an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association and his support for the bill would have basically guaranteed its passage through the Senate. On the other hand, the fact that Coburn has said that he agrees with most of the legislative language he negotiated with Schumer suggests that other Republican co-sponsors are there to be had.
A Senate Democratic aide insisted that they were still attempting to secure the Oklahoma Republican's support. "The lines of communication remain open," the aide said.
In a statement to The Huffington Post, a spokesman for Coburn, John Hart, said he was "still hopeful they can reach an agreement."
Gun control advocates are also a bit torn. Jim Kessler, founder of the centrist-Democratic organization Third Way and a former director of policy and research at Americans for Gun Safety, told The Huffington Post it would be fine with him if sales records weren’t kept in certain instances, provided those instances were limited. Others say it is essential to the bill.
Another Senate Democratic aide working on a federal trafficking statute -- another component of gun control legislation -- said that the law would be “toothless” if it didn't require sales records be kept.
"How do you prosecute straw purchases without a record of purchase?" the aide asked.
New polling shows legislators obedient to NRA over constituents
The Rachel Maddow Show March 6, 2013
Rachel Maddow describes a new campaign by Mayors Against Illegal Guns that pits polling data showing widespread support for background checks for gun purchases against the NRA ratings of the legislators who represent constituents whose views are opposite those of the NRA.
High tech homemade guns untouched by government regulation
The Rachel Maddow Show March 1, 2013
Rachel Maddow updates a previous report on the use of 3D printing technology to manufacture guns, showing that improved quality allows the production of high capacity magazines completely outside the realm of government oversight.
North Carolina Bill Would Dismiss Democrats From Various Boards
N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
By John Celock Posted: 02/28/2013 2:53 pm EST | Updated: 02/28/2013 3:05 pm EST
North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature is set to do battle over legislation that would allow the state's new Republican governor to make a sweeping overhaul of several of the state's regulatory boards.
Lawmakers are scheduled to consider legislation that would remove Democratic members from a series of powerful boards, including those overseeing public utilities, coastal issues and the state lottery, and would allow Gov. Pat McCrory (R) to appoint his own members in their place, WRAL.com reports [ http://www.wral.com/boards-bill-revamped-in-house/12159304/ ]. The current board members are serving fixed terms, which prevents McCrory from having any immediate affect on the agencies. The legislation is not going unchallenged, however, as GOP state House committee members are seeking to change the proposal, which originated in the Senate.
"I feel like the parent that sends a kid to college and they come home at Thanksgiving and you don't recognize them," Apodaca said during the House committee meeting. "My God, what have you done to my child?"
McCrory is North Carolina's first Republican governor in 20 years, and the boards are stocked with appointees of his three Democratic predecessors. Republican supporters of the legislation have said the changes are not about giving McCrory patronage but to allow for new board members with new experience to take office [ http://www.wral.com/boards-bill-back-on-fast-track/12163950/ ].
A McCrory spokesperson could not be reached for comment on the governor's position on the legislation.
"Remember how the goal of the radical Islamists is to force existence back to a time when Mohammad walked the earth?" Gutfeld said. "The only difference between them and the divestors is the radical Islamists cut to the chase."
"But I endorse this divestment movement, and would like to see Harvard -- where the students favor divestment overwhelmingly [ http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/12/the-fight-for-fossil-fuel-divestment ] -- give up oil entirely," Gutfeld said. "Let the kids and their idiotic professors freeze their Marxist asses off next winter."
Gutfeld insisted the campaign is part of an ideology that's "killing America" and mocked student hunger strikes, saying "they could stand to lose a few pounds."
Co-host and former Bush press secretary Dana Perino called the movement "asinine," and Andrea Tantaros called it the "stupidest thing" she's ever seen.
In a recent interview [ http://www.caintv.com/AllenWest-1316 ] with former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, however, West didn't entirely rule out the idea of making another political run.
"If God wants me back on Capitol Hill or wherever, that will happen," West said. "I will always be ready to serve my country in whatever capacity that my fellow Americans would have me serve."
Louisiana Voucher School Students Taught Hippies Were Dirty, Rude, Rock-Loving Satan-Worshippers
By Nick Wing Posted: 03/06/2013 8:33 pm EST | Updated: 03/07/2013 12:55 am EST
If Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) loses a legal battle over his school voucher program, his state's tax dollars may no longer go toward sending students to private institutions to learn that hippies were all a bunch of disheveled, drug-addled, godless philistines.
Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles; these youth became known as hippies. They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners. Rock music played an important part in the hippie movement and had great influence over the hippies. Many of the rock musicians they followed belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship.
Sure, the description reads like it was written by someone whose only knowledge of hippies was imparted while being forced to watch the musical "Hair" repeatedly under threat of violence, but it's probably the most innocuous of the questionable voucher school textbook passages that have drawn scrutiny.
As Mother Jones documented last year [ http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/07/photos-evangelical-curricula-louisiana-tax-dollars ], other nuggets of historical "knowledge" have included, "Dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time," "God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ," and "The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well."
Louisiana children voluntarily enrolled in certain private schools will be taught these lessons whether the voucher system prevails or not. But if Jindal gets his way -- and he's said he'll take the issue to the Supreme Court [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/bobby-jindal-louisiana-school-vouchers_n_2280419.html ] if he has to -- the state will continue to pay for many students to receive this miseducation.
Al Stefanelli - Georgia State Director, American Atheists, Inc. 11 Oct 2011
Whenever I hear a believer state, in one fashion or another, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” I know that there is an impending breakdown in the likelihood that a reasonable, rational, intelligent and diplomatic conversation is going to take place. Those oh-so non-judgmental patrons of Christianity, Islam and Judaism who believe that their god has given strict, unbending, draconian, bronze-age commands on certain issues land them squarely on the flat, worn-out faces of the brick-walls we know as ignorance and intolerance. Throw in a dose of hatred and bigotry, for good measure.
Many times these beliefs, indoctrinations and superstitions end up with horrific results against humanity, either directly or indirectly. I’ve got permanent palm prints on my face from my own hands as a result of being told by some of these kooks that, under no uncertain terms, they fervently believe that:
• Homosexuals should be killed • Cross-dressers should be killed • Adulterers should be killed • Members of other religions should be killed • Members of no religions should be killed • Children should be beaten with sticks • Television is the gateway to hell • The Internet is the gateway to hell • The movies are the gateway to hell • Women are the gateway to hell • Dead babies will burn in hell forever • Mentally ill people will burn in hell forever • People who drink alcohol will burn in hell forever • People who drink coffee or tea will burn in hell forever • Eating certain foods will send you to burn in hell forever • Everyone “else” will burn in hell forever • A blood transfusion will get you and your soul annihilated • Women should not be allowed to own property • Women should not be allowed to vote • Women should stay at home and have babies • Women should always be submissive to their husbands • A husband has the right to beat his wife • A husband has the right to rape his wife • A husband has the right to have more than one wife • A husband has the right to a pre-pubescent wife • Pedophilia s the fault of atheists and secularists • Obama is the Anti-Christ and should be destroyed • The United States was founded as a Christian Nation • The <insert holy book> is the only true word of god • The earth is 6000 years old, Satan made it look older • The earth is 6000 years old, God made it look older • Evolution was invented by Satan, evolutionists worship him • Members of other religions are insane and deluded • Members of no religion are insane and deluded • There is no such thing as mental illnesses; it is just the results of living in sin • Only god and faith can be trusted for healing (thousands of children die each year as a result) • The earth is really flat (yes, these people still exist) • Black people are cursed by god to forever be servants and slaves • Some people should be burned alive • Some people should be tortured, then burned alive • If their god tells them to kill strangers, they are compelled to obey • If their god tells them to kill their friends, they are compelled to obey • If their god tells them to kill their family, they are compelled to obey • If their god tells them to kill someone for drawing a harmless cartoon, they are compelled to obey • If their god tells them to kill themselves in the process, they are compelled to obey
I think you get my drift. Now, mind you, there are not very many people who hold all of these to be commands from their god, as they represent a few different aspects of all the Abrahamic religions. However, while holding any one of these beliefs signifies a possible breakdown of the ability for rational thought, there are some Judeo-Christian-Islamic sects and cults that can (and do) claim most of these as part of their dogma. Some of them are considered mainstream.
Church And State...
Many of the people who hold a significant amount of these beliefs currently occupy seats in the United States Senate and House of Representatives as well as key White House cabinet positions. A couple have recently held the office of the President. Worse yet, there are hundreds and thousands who hold local offices, are teaching in our public schools, are responsible for the careers of subordinates and many walk around with guns and badges. The number of people in our military who hold many of these beliefs is simply frightening, because they hold positions all the way up to the rank of General.
It is toward these people that many of us non-theists draw the line of diplomacy and tolerance, and where we insist on pointing a finger in the direction it belongs. The unwillingness of the extreme right wing Christian/Muslim/Jew to budge from these horrific beliefs, no matter how many times they have been proved utterly and incontrovertibly wrong, is reason enough for us to be decidedly undiplomatic in our discourses.
Due Dilligence...
I have received a fair share of admonishments from fellow unbelievers about my polemic attitude toward these nut jobs. Some of them still believe that it does more damage than good to hold the positions that I do, and that my attitude does not engender in these whackos a desire and willingness for them to listen to our side of the discussion. Well, they are right. However, what they fail to understand is that I really don't care.
When it comes to these people, I see no other way to communicate with them. I interact with perfectly normal believers all day long. My family consists of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Deists and even a Buddhist or two, and I’ve got news for my fellow “diplomacy only” minded atheists; most of them are just as equally fed up with these wingnuts as we are.
There is no diplomacy with these individuals, and very often their reaction to just being in the presence of an atheist warrants our undiplomatic, intolerant finger-pointing. Besides, I am not out to win a Nobel Peace prize, nor am I out to make friends with anyone who holds the beliefs I listed above as truth. I don’t give one, single iota of credibility to their beliefs and I will continue to make it my mission in life to make it as difficult as I possibly can for them to be perceived as anywhere near resembling normal people.
They are dangerous, ignorant, uneducated, hate-filled, narrow-minded, bigoted, intolerant, self-righteous fools that have been brainwashed into believing that committing some of the most horrific acts of inhumanity toward their fellow men, women and children are the want, will, desire and command the sick, twisted, perverted, megalomaniac of a deity that they have turned their god into.
A huge other "think" needs to be foisted upon anyone who is under the impression that these whackos deserve to be treated diplomatically or with any tolerance for these toxic beliefs. Likewise to anyone who thinks that these individual's points of view even deserve to be included as equal in any sense of the word with rational, reasonable discourse.
Copyright 2011 AMERICAN ATHEISTS (emphasis in original)
Everything You Need to Know About the Italian Election Threatening the World Economy
By Matthew O'Brien 5 Feb 28 2013, 11:53 AM ET 2
.. linked to Grillo, about 2/3 down in yours ..
The euro crisis was a financial crisis. Now it's a political crisis -- that could create another financial one.
(Reuters)
Just when we thought we were out, the euro crisis pulls us back in.
This time, it's Italy and its inconclusive elections that are rocking financial markets. More specifically, it's the strong showing of comedian-cum-blogger-cum-candidate Beppe Grillo together with the umpteenth political resurrection of the reflexively corrupt Silvio Berlusconi that have stock indices slumping around the globe. Both are anti-austerity, and, to varying degrees, anti-euro -- a toxic brew that threatens to make bond markets queasy (though not because austerity or the euro are good for Italy).
Basically, the euro crisis was a financial crisis. Now it's a political crisis. And that could create another financial crisis.
Saving the euro requires a transfer of money between the rich states, like Germany, and the struggling states, like Greece and Italy. Germany says to them: You can have our money, or the European Central Bank (ECB) will print you some, but there's a price. The price is your government does whatever we want. And we want austerity.
This looks like a good deal for bond markets, at first, because, say, Italy avoids default, and Germany keeps the eurozone together. But it's an awful deal for ordinary Italians during a recession with massive unemployment, because austerity deepens the recession and increases unemployment. So international investors feel rewarded, and the public feels screwed.
The problem with screwing the public in a democracy are these little things called "elections", where the people have the occasion to tell their leaders to stop screwing them. Thus, you have a riotous election in Italy that bashes the high priests of austerity, and throws the immediate future of the euro into doubt. The bond market doesn't like that.
Italy's elections didn't deliver a a clear governing coalition, but they did deliver a clear enough message: The people are fed up with austerity. So fed up that they're willing to entirely disreputable figures to stop it. Now, it wasn't quite a wipeout for Italy's mainstream parties, but it was bad enough, and only looks to get worse as the economy does (which it certainly will if austerity continues). Here's how the elections broke down.
-- Pier Luigi Bersani. The leader of the center-left party is the candidate of less enthusiastic austerity and structural reforms, but austerity and structural reforms nonetheless (or so markets hope). Bernani's Democratic Party came in first in Italy's lower house -- which triggered a rule giving it an automatic majority -- but came in a close second in the upper house, where there is no such majority trigger. It can't form a government on its own, but, as we shall see, it doesn't have a clear coalition partner either.
-- Silvio Berlusconi. He's baaack. After personally spending a year in political exile, Berlusconi's center-right party finished second in the lower house, and captured a razor-thin majority in the upper house. It's been a remarkable -- and, to markets, horrifying -- comeback for the billionaire media mogul best known for alternating between sex and corruption scandals during his previous stints as prime minister. Indeed, it was just over a year ago that the then-75-year-old Berlusconi looked politically finished -- and he had the euro-establishment to thank for it. In November 2011, the ECB basically engineered his ouster .. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/18/the_ecb_s_disastrous_dual_mandate.html .. by letting Italian borrowing costs surge to ruinous levels as punishment for reneging on promised reforms. Berlusconi's coalition partner quickly defected under this financial blackmail, and Monti was installed in his stead. (The ECB, of course, then promptly brought interest rates back down). This quiet coup has unsurprisingly turned Berlusconi into a more vocal anti-austerity and anti-euro critic -- and that makes creating a workable coalition a big problem.
-- Beppe Grillo. It's not everyday a former comic starts a political party that wins the largest share of the vote, but today is apparently that day for Italy. This is not a joke. Grillo, a raunchy comedian turned blogger, founded his Five-Star Movement back in 2010 as an online protest movement against the political status quo, but since then, its brand of austerity-skepticism and euro-skepticism has turned it from punchline to powerhouse. That's a problem, since its economic agenda is incoherent, at best. Among other things, they want to: 1) hold a referendum on euro membership, 2) stop austerity, 3) stop paying its debt, and 4) move to a 20-hour workweek. Oh, and as Joe Weisenthal .. http://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-explains-beppe-grillo-2013-2 .. points out, Grillo wants to give every schoolchild free iPads too. Why not? Now, there's a smart case to be made for leaving the euro -- especially for an uncompetitive country with a primary surplus, like Italy -- but this is not quite it.
It's not as if austerity has reduced borrowing costs by reducing debt levels. It's increased debt levels. You can see that in the chart below, via Paul Krugman, .. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/paul-de-grauwe-and-the-rehn-of-terror/ .. which compares austerity measures with changes in debt ratios in the euro zone. The more austerity you do, the more your debt increases.
[ that chart we've seen before ]
In other words, austerity has hurt growth more than it's helped borrowing costs. But that still doesn't explain why it's helped borrowing costs at all. After all, why would a self-defeating debt spiral increase confidence? Well, it doesn't. At least not market confidence. But it does increase ECB confidence in the government.
Countries that borrow in a currency they don't control have a big problem. They can actually default. In other words, they can run out of it, since they can't print it. And that creates another big problem. If investors even think a country might run out of money, it's more likely to do so. They'll demand higher interest rates to lend to it, and those higher rates will put more strain on the government's budget -- making investors ask for even higher rates, and so on, and so on. It's a bank run on a country.
There's only one way to end a bank run, and that's with a lender-of-last-resort. Think about it this way. A bank run happens when lenders are nervous are other lenders are nervous that the bank will run out of money. But suppose there were an infinitely deep-pocketed lender who never gets nervous, and who you know never gets nervous, who threw as much money at the bank as it took to assuage these fears. The panic would pass. The ECB begrudgingly began backstopping countries in this way last summer -- which is when Europe's sovereign debt markets cooled down. As you can see in the chart below from Joe Weisenthal .. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-amazing-power-of-a-few-words-from-mario-draghi-2012-10 , yields on Spanish bonds receded from bankrupting levels as soon as ECB chief Mario Draghi promised to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro last July.
But there's a catch. The ECB conditioned this "whatever it takes" on countries carrying out austerity. In other words, the ECB said it will buy a country's bonds in unlimited amounts as conditions warrant -- what it calls "Outright Monetary Transactions .. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/09/ecbs-new-bond-purchase-programme " (OMT) -- only so long as that country cuts its deficit.
It's perfectly logical, and perfectly crazy. Let's tackle the logical part first. If countries know the ECB will always buy its bonds, they'll lose any incentive to bring their budgets closer to balance. The ECB, of course, doesn't want to underwrite reckless spending -- and so conditionality was born as a way around this moral hazard. But here's the crazy part. The ECB (and Germany) have given southern Europe a way to avoid Armageddon today, but not tomorrow. Europe has, albeit reluctantly, done whatever it takes to keep the euro from falling apart, but it hasn't done anything to keep growth from doing so. The ECB hasn't done any big monetary stimulus, and Germany hasn't done any big fiscal stimulus. This combination of mega-austerity in southern Europe, less austerity in northern Europe, and too tight money everywhere has been an avoidable catastrophe. Europe has averted the panic, but not the depression.
And now the depression is bringing back the panic. Voters across southern Europe have lost patience with policies that condemn them to perma-slump -- and markets worry that will make the ECB lose patience with southern Europe. In other words, markets are pushing up Italian borrowing costs now not because they want austerity, but because they know the ECB does. If the past is any guide, the ECB will probably "punish" Italy by letting it dangle for a few weeks -- passively watching its bond yields rise to danger levels -- until its politicians fall back in line.
But like all unsustainable things, this will eventually end. Voters in southern Europe will eventually fear never-ending depression more than they fear leaving the euro. It's already begun. Politicians like Beppe Grillo in Italy and Alexis Tsipras in Greece are only getting more popular the more austerity and tight money destroy their economies. They're smartly biding their time, and avoiding any actual responsibility, while Europe's political mainstream discredits itself by championing obviously failed policies. The ECB and Germany need to give southern Europe a plausible way to start growing again so unemployment will come down -- and not over some hazy long-run, when we're all dead -- or the euro is doomed. The cranks will win.
Europe seems oblivious. As Jonathan Portes .. http://notthetreasuryview.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/i-pointed-late-last-year-that-european.html .. points out, Olli Rehn, the Vice President of the European Commission, criticized economists for criticizing austerity. The eurocrats think the failed policy isn't the problem, but rather other people pointing out it's a failed policy.
That's almost as bad a joke as Beppe Grillo winning the most votes in Italy.
Christians of all denominations maintain that the Early Church was widely persecuted. They state that in the first few centuries after the death of the Messiah, Christians were hunted, tortured and killed just for following Christ. This persecution is believed to have begun with the deaths of Stephen, the Apostles, and then the Christians persecuted under a long succession of cruel and vindictive Roman emperors.
This history of early Christianity establishes Christianity as a religion of innocent sufferers; as a church beleaguered and under attack. In periods of crisis or perceived crisis Christians of all stripes have returned to this stereotype of the early church in order to find themselves and understand their experiences. This is true even today: during the debate over the HHS mandate last year, a Catholic Bishop said that President Obama was attacking Christians just like the Roman emperors, Hitler and Stalin had. In August 2011 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum publicly complained that the "gay community ... had gone out on a jihad" against him. In the course of the last election, similar statements were made by Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, to name but a few.
This is not just a case of election-day banter or political nastiness. Just recently, Fox News host Todd Starnes accused NBC of persecuting Christians because of a skit that aired on Saturday Night Live. The accusation may appear flimsy, but the advertising boycott of NBC that resulted was not. The rhetorical power of persecution language is very real.
These evaluations of modern society and Christianity's place in it trace themselves back to the early Church. Christianity is responsible for changing the way that we think about persecution. Were it not for the belief that early Christians were persecuted, Christian identity would not be so intimately linked to the experience of persecution. It is precisely for this reason that understanding the history is so important.
Intriguingly, when we look at the ancient evidence for the treatment of early Christians a very different picture emerges. The vast majority of our ancient sources for persecution in the first century were written in the second century and beyond. The stories about the deaths of the apostles, for instance, were written as late as a hundred years later and modeled on the fanciful genre of ancient romance novels.
Even the earliest, most ostensibly trustworthy martyrdom stories have been edited and reworked. The authors of these accounts borrowed from ancient mythology, changed the details of events to make the martyrs appear more like Jesus, and made the Roman antagonists increasingly venomous. The motivations of these later authors and editors, who have gone unheralded by history but who shaped our understanding of the world, are arguably more fascinating than the martyrdom stories themselves. No doubt there are kernels of truth at the heart of some of some of the stories, but we do not have evidence of persecution.
The Roman evidence is also ambiguous. If Nero did target Christians after the great fire of Rome in 64 C.E. -- and the are good reasons for thinking he did not -- his treatment of them stemmed less from a desire to harm Christians than it did from his need to deflect blame from himself. Ancient Romans who spread the story about Nero saw his actions as contemptible and unjust.
Archeological evidence reveals that on those occasions when Christians did die en masse it was the result of general legislation intended to defend and fortify the empire. Christians were not named directly in imperial legislation until the second half of the third century, and it was only from 303-305 C.E., in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, that we see anything resembling the brutal persecution of popular imagination. Christians did die. And Christians were occasionally persecuted, but should two years of persecution under Diocletian lead to nearly 2,000 years of Christian persecution complex?
The idea that Christianity is persecuted and needs to defend itself from external and internal attack comes from the victorious Church of the fourth and fifth centuries and beyond. It is a story that has brought comfort to the suffering, sick and oppressed, but it is a story that was used -- expanded, exaggerated and even invented -- to exclude heretics, that legitimized great violence and that continues to disrupt civil discourse. And it precisely this -- the effect that this inflated myth of persecution has had on modern politics and discourse -- that makes it imperative that we get our facts straight.
When disagreement and dissent are conflated with persecution, dialogue, collaboration and even compassion become impossible. You cannot reason with your persecutors, you have to fight them. If persecution becomes a badge of honor and a sign of moral superiority then what reason is there to try and persuade others of one's arguments? Framed by the myth that we are persecuted, dialogue is not only impossible; it is undesirable. Moreover, it overshadows actual persecution. Christians around the world endure violence and oppression today. But those experiences are overshadowed by complaints that conflate disputes over lawmaking with persecution. If persecution language is not reserved for situations of actual persecution, then unspeakable violence becomes indescribable. Disagreement becomes martyrdom and martyrdom becomes disagreement.
How conservatives invented “voter fraud” to attack civil rights
Broward County Canvassing Board member Judge Robert Rosenberg stares at a dimpled punchcard ballot November 23, 2000 during the recount of the 2000 presidential election. (Credit: Reuters/Colin Braley)
Phony complaints of voter fraud are the essence of a decade-long effort by the right to reverse civil rights law
Excerpted from "Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy [ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465018467 ]"
Just when it seemed that the democratic process had reached its apotheosis with the election of America’s first black president, a political earthquake occurred in 2010 that threatened all that had been accomplished since 1965. Two years after Obama’s election, the midterm elections saw a conservative backlash that swept Republicans back into office in droves. As the media focused on the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives and increases in the Senate, more important developments were occurring closer to home. Republicans now controlled both legislative bodies in 26 states, and 23 won the trifecta, controlling the governorships as well as both statehouses. What happened next was so swift that it caught most observers off guard — and began surreptitiously to reverse the last half-century of voting rights reforms.
All across the country following the 2010 midterms, Republican legislatures passed and governors enacted a series of laws designed to make voting more difficult for Obama’s constituency — minorities, especially the growing Hispanic community; the poor; students; and the elderly or handicapped. These included the creation of voter photo-ID laws, measures affecting registration and early voting, and, in Iowa and Florida, laws to prevent ex-felons from exercising their franchise. (Florida’s governor, in secret, reversed the policies of his Republican predecessors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, policies that would have permitted one hundred thousand former felons, predominantly black and Hispanic, to vote in 2012.) Democrats were stunned. “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens in voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” said President Bill Clinton in July 2011. Once again, the voting rights of American minorities were in peril.
The newly elected Republican officials were able to act so quickly because they had the help of an ultraconservative organization known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Its founder was the late Paul Weyrich, a legendary conservative writer and proselytizer who founded both ALEC and the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank dedicated to limited government, an economy free of federal regulations and the sanctity of traditional marriage. Backed by conservative corporations such as Coca-Cola, Philip Morris, AT&T, Exxon Mobil and Walmart, among many others, and funded by right-wing billionaires Richard Mellon Scaife, the Coors family and David and Charles Koch, ALEC provided services for like-minded legislators and lobbyists. ALEC wrote bills and created the campaigns to pass them. Its spokesmen boasted that “each year, more than 1,000 bills based on its models are introduced in state legislatures, and that approximately 17 percent of those bills become law.”
High on ALEC’s agenda were voter identification laws, which it hoped would have the effect of undercutting Obama’s support base so that conservative politicians who supported ALEC’s goals could be elected. Speaking to a convention of evangelicals in 1980, Paul Weyrich said, “Many of our Christians … want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote … As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Weyrich believed that America was suffering from what he called “a plague of unlawful voting” that the new laws would combat.
But according to the best analyses, there was almost no evidence of illegal voting. Wisconsin’s attorney general, a Republican, examined the 2008 election returns and discovered that out of 3 million votes cast, just 20 were found to be illegal. A wider study conducted by the Bush Justice Department had found similar results for the period 2002 to 2007. More than 300 million people had voted, and only 86 were found guilty of voter fraud, and most of them were simply mistaken about their eligibility.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration and Republicans, believing in the existence of widespread voter fraud, generally made its elimination a top priority. In 2007, the Bush Justice Department fired seven U.S. attorneys for supposedly failing to prosecute cases of voter fraud that the attorneys claimed did not exist. To combat voter fraud, ALEC proposed a state voter ID for those citizens who lacked a driver’s license or other means of identification that had once been acceptable, like a Social Security card. Among the many young politicians ALEC nurtured was Scott Walker, a future governor of Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s voter photo-ID law was one of the first pieces of legislation the new governor signed into law in 2011, and it became a model many other states followed. It required that potential voters show a current or expired driver’s license, some form of military identification, a U.S. passport, a signed and dated student ID from an accredited state college or university, or a recent certificate of nationalization. If voters had none of these documents, they could present a birth certificate to receive a special photo ID issued by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Such requirements made voting extremely arduous for the very people who disproportionately supported Barack Obama in 2008, such as racial minorities, students and the elderly.
Among those who found it difficult to comply with the new law was Gladys Butterfield, who had voted in every local, state and presidential election since 1932. She had stopped driving decades ago, so she had no license. Her birth certificate was also missing. She did have a baptismal record, but that document was not acceptable as proof of identity in her home state. Therefore, under Wisconsin’s new law, she had to obtain a special government ID available only at an office of the Department of Transportation (DOT) before she could vote in the next presidential election. She was wheelchair-bound, and so she was dependent on a family member to drive her to the nearest DOT office. (She could not apply online because she lacked a current license.) A quarter of the offices were open only one day a month and closed on weekends. Sauk City’s office was perhaps the hardest to visit; in 2012 it was open only four days that entire year. Many other states’ DOT offices posed similar problems: odd schedules, distance from public transportation and the like.
With her daughter Gail’s help, Butterfield applied for a state-certified birth certificate, costing twenty dollars, which she could show as proof of American citizenship. Next she had to visit the DOT. Transporting a wheelchair was a problem, as was the inevitable wait in line to fill out the forms and have her picture taken. She was charged $28 because she did not know that it would not have cost her a cent if she had explicitly requested a free voter ID. DOT officials were instructed not to offer applicants a free ID unless applicants requested one. (When an outraged government employee e-mailed friends of the news and encouraged them to “TELL ANYONE YOU KNOW!! ANYONE!! EVEN IF THEY DON’T NEED THE FREE ID, THEY MAY KNOW SOMEONE THAT DOES!!,” he was abruptly fired for “inappropriately using work email,” said an official.)
Before the Republican victory in the 2010 midterms, only two states had rigorous voter ID requirements. By August 2012, 34 state legislatures had considered photo ID laws and 13 had passed them; five more made it past state legislatures only to be vetoed by the Democratic governors of Montana, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina and New Hampshire. By that same summer, a number of states already had the new laws in place: Pennsylvania (where it was estimated that 9.2 percent of registered voters had no photo ID), Alabama, Mississippi (approved by referendum), Rhode Island, New Hampshire (whose state General Court overrode the governor’s veto) and five whose sponsors were all ALEC members — Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. In Alabama, Kansas and Tennessee, people wishing to register or vote must show their birth certificate. To acquire that document, they must pay a fee, which many believe is the equivalent of the poll tax, banned by the Constitution’s twenty-fourth amendment. Minnesota’s citizens would vote on a state constitutional amendment in the 2012 election; if passed, voters could cast their ballot after showing a government-issued photo ID.
What these policies had in common, beside their connection to ALEC, was their negative impact on minorities. The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s Law School estimated in October 2011 that the new voter ID laws could affect more than 21 million potential voters, predominately African Americans, Hispanics, students, the elderly and the poor.
Other voting laws passed in the wake of the 2010 midterms were just as injurious as the voter ID laws and threatened not merely minorities but also people likely to vote for Democratic candidates. Florida’s new voter law turned Jill Cicciarelli, a 35-year-old civics teacher, into a criminal. She inadvertently ran afoul of H.B.1355, which tightened the state’s already strict regulations governing the registration of new voters. The 158-page bill became law 24 hours after it passed because Governor Rick Scott considered it essential to combat “an immediate danger to the public health, safety or welfare.” Cicciarelli, who taught government and sponsored the Student Government Association at New Symrna Beach High School, was on maternity leave when the law went into effect in July 2011, so when she returned to school that fall she was unaware that she was about to commit a crime. In her senior government class she discussed the 2012 presidential election and, as she had many times before, organized a campaign to preregister those students who would turn 18 before November. Eventually 50 students applied, and after a few days she sent the forms to the county election office. “I just want them to be participating in our democracy,” she said later. “The more participation we have, the stronger our democracy will be.”
The new law required third-party registration organizations to register with the state election office, receive an identification number, undergo training and turn in their application forms no later than 48 hours after their completion. (Previously, registration was voluntary and the completion deadline was 10 days, but it was rarely enforced.) Cicciarelli violated each of the new provisions and could be fined up to $1,000 for missing the due date and an additional $1,000 for failing to register. When Ann McFall, Volusia County Supervisor of Elections, learned of Cicciarelli’s infractions in late October, she reluctantly alerted the secretary of state’s office that the teacher had violated the new law’s requirements, potentially a third-degree felony if investigators determined that she was guilty of “willful noncompliance.” “I was sick to my stomach when I did it,” McFall later told a reporter, “but my job was on the line if I ignored it.”
Republican state representative Dorothy Hulkill, running for reelection in 2012, was one person who liked the Florida law. She believed it would limit voter fraud and stop people from “engaging in shady activities designed to give Democrats an unfair advantage.” Who these people were, she did not say.
The controversy over Florida’s new voting law did not stop there, however. Soon five other teachers were accused of similar infractions. The entire group was dubbed the “Subversive Six” by an Internet blogger who had tired of criticizing the Florida schools’ traditional preoccupations, evolution and sex education.
By targeting a wide swath of American voters not because of race but rather because of their political sympathies, the legislators in these states had struck a serious blow to the suffrage of hundreds of thousands of citizens, all in ways that the creators of the Voting Rights Act had never imagined. Because of Florida’s new law, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters announced that for the first time in 72 years, it would not register new voters in 2012. That time-honored job had become too risky. “It would … require our volunteers to have an attorney on one side and administrative assistant on the other,” said League chapter president Diedre Macnab. She called the law “a war on voters.” Other organizations like Rock the Vote, which registered 2.5 million new voters in 2008, and the Florida Public Interest Research Education Fund also ended their activities. It was not only the young who responded to such registration drives and who now found a well-traveled route to the polls blocked: Census figures indicated that in 2004, 10 million new voters, among them many African Americans and Hispanics, registered with the help of community-based groups. Under the new voting laws, many of these men and women would likely never make it to a voting booth.
Some of these new efforts to restrict voters’ access to the polls exposed significant racial biases on the part of the Republicans responsible for them. Colorado, Iowa and Florida compiled lists of registered voters they thought ineligible and attempted to remove them from the voting rolls. Florida officials determined that 180,000 citizens were suspect; 74 percent of them were African American and Hispanic, groups more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. Governor Rick Scott became so concerned that illegal aliens could vote that he demanded access to the Department of Homeland Security’s database, and they eventually granted his request. The Florida secretary of state found that thousands of registered voters could be considered “potential noncitizens” and removed them from the voting rolls. Further examination by more objective analysts concluded that significant errors had occurred: only 207 of the suspect 180,000 voters were judged unqualified.
Among those caught in the net were elderly World War II veterans and many other longtime American citizens whose only offenses, in many instances, were being nonwhite. Florida’s election supervisors refused to follow the governor’s orders and stopped purging voters from the rolls. Nevertheless, Republican-dominated Lee and Collier Counties continued to remove those they considered suspicious.
Florida’s attempt at voter purging was not a new phenomenon. A more informal practice known as “caging” had been used mostly by Republican campaign officials for decades throughout America. It was simple: Letters marked nonforwardable were sent to black citizens and those that came back unopened resulted in the addressee being removed from the voting lists. No less than the Republican National Committee was found guilty of caging in the 1980s, and a federal decree ordered them to desist at once, although Republicans still employed it decades later.
Some states also attempted to suppress minority voting by curtailing early voting, which had avoided problems such as crowded polling places and voting machinery that often broke down from overuse. Early voting meant that more people could be accommodated over a longer period of time in, for example, Cleveland, Akron, Columbus and Toledo, cities in Ohio with a heavy concentration of pro-Democratic black voters and a scarcity of voting machines. In the two years following the 2010 midterms, Georgia, Maine, Tennessee, West Virginia, Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin all passed laws shortening the period during which citizens could cast their ballots. Ohio and Florida also eliminated voting on the Sunday before the election. This especially could have a profound impact on future minority voting. In 2008, 54 percent of African Americans voted early, many on that Sunday, when churches held “Get Your Souls to the Polls” campaigns that brought blacks and Hispanics to the voting booths. Obama won Florida with 51 percent of the vote in 2008. In Ohio, another narrow victory for Obama, 30 percent of the state’s total voters, 1.4 million people, voted during the early period, which was then 35 days before the election. Under each state’s new law passed in 2011, it was shortened to 16 days.
Voters in Maine were so incensed that the new law had eliminated election-day registration that a coalition of progressive organizations quickly collected 70,000 signatures, enough to trigger the state’s “People’s Veto,” putting the measure to a vote. On November 8, 2011, the law was repealed in a special election: “Maine voters sent a clear message: No one will be denied a right to vote,” noted Shenna Bellows, head of the state’s ACLU.
Although Republicans continued to insist that the new laws were created solely to fight voter fraud, GOP officials twice revealed another motive. At a meeting of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in June 2012, Mike Turzai, the House majority leader, boasted openly that Pennsylvania’s new law would affect the next presidential election. Proudly listing the GOP’s achievements, Turzai said, “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: Done.” Similarly, when, in August 2012, the Columbia Dispatch asked Doug Preise, a prominent Republican official and adviser to the state’s governor, why he so strongly supported curtailing early voting in Ohio, Preise admitted, “I really actually feel that we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African American — voter turn-out machine.” These admissions indicate that winning the presidency by suppressing the minority vote was the real reason behind the laws requiring voter IDs, limited voting hours, obstructed registration, and the like that Republican legislatures passed since the party’s victory in 2010.
Gary May [ http://www.udel.edu/History/bio/may_gary.html ] is a Professor of History at the University of Delaware, and author of Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy (Basic Books; April 2013).
Woman Disfigured in Lye Attack Reveals New Face Carmen Blandin Tarleton, of Thetford, Vt, underwent a transplant in February after a 2007 attack in which her estranged husband doused her with industrial strength lye, burning more than 80 percent of her body. May 1, 2013 http://abcnews.go.com/Health/woman-disfigured-lye-attack-reveals-face/story?id=19082675 [with embedded video report, and comments]
..ALL emphasis except Whitewash, next, and italic is mine .. hope others find this as much a RICH read as it was for me !
Whitewash
The party on the brink of destroying the Voting Rights Act reminds us that Republicans were really the great civil-rights leaders all along.
By Frank Rich Published May 5, 2013
Strom Thurmond, whose primacy in the GOP’s racial realignment is the most incriminating truth the right keeps trying to cover up. (Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux)
.. skip to page 4 of 5 ..
It’s a leading plank among these revisionists that Goldwater and other conservative heroes opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 championed by that “low-rent” Johnson only because of constitutional objections (much like those Paul raised about the law in his 2010 Senate campaign). As Noemie Emery tried to make this case .. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/keep-fear-alive_608013.html?nopager=1 .. in 2011 in The Weekly Standard, “the law was opposed by leading members of the emerging conservative movement—Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and William F. Buckley Jr.—for reasons having to do with small-government principles that nonetheless permitted their theories and the interests of the segregationists for that moment in time to converge.”
She and her fellow travelers in racial revisionism protest too much. To believe that the convergence between lofty conservative theory and expedient racial politics was innocent, you have to forget Buckley’s 1957 declaration that “the white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically.” You have to ignore Goldwater’s famous 1961 political dictum that the Republican Party “go hunting where the ducks are” and pander to southern white conservatives. You have to believe that it was a complete accident that Reagan chose Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the “Mississippi Burning” slaughter of three civil-rights workers, to deliver a speech on “states’ rights” in 1980. You also have to disregard the political game plan codified by Kevin Phillips, the Nixon political strategist whose book The Emerging Republican Majority .. http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Republican-Majority-Kevin-Phillips/dp/0870000586 .. helped cement the party’s “southern strategy” of mining white backlash to the civil-rights movement. Speaking to the Times in 1970, Phillips said, “The more Negros who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are.” Or, in Goldwater’s earlier parlance, the ducks.
To buy that it was only “small-government principles,” uncorrupted by cynical racial politics, that led these conservative leaders to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you most of all have to redact the crucial role played by Thurmond when he bolted to the GOP in 1964 and enlisted in the Goldwater campaign. By all accounts, Goldwater himself was not a racist. But he knew the political value of playing the race card. There was no reason for him to welcome the militant white supremacist Thurmond into the GOP except for the obvious one: His presence sealed the deal with voters who wanted confirmation that, whatever Goldwater’s “principled” opposition to the Civil Rights Act, his election as president would help assure that similar laws would be resisted for years to come. (Goldwater, not so incidentally, was the only senator in either party who filled in for Thurmond .. http://cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9609/10/ .. when he took a bathroom break during his record filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.) Thurmond gave the Republican ticket—and by extension the entire party—the imprimatur of a top-tier bigot. The South Carolina senator had previously left the Democrats to run as a third-party Dixiecrat in 1948— “All the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes,” he had declaimed then—and had opposed civil-rights legislation, even anti-lynching laws, ever since.
The primacy of Thurmond in the GOP’s racial realignment is the most incriminating truth the right keeps trying to cover up. That’s why the George W. Bush White House shoved the Mississippi senator Trent Lott out of his post as Senate majority leader .. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/politics/20CND_LOTT.html .. in 2002 once news spread that Lott had told Thurmond’s 100th-birthday gathering that America “wouldn’t have had all these problems” if the old Dixiecrat had been elected president in 1948. Lott, it soon became clear, had also lavished praise on Jefferson Davis and associated for decades with other far-right groups in thrall to the old Confederate cause. But the GOP elites didn’t seem to mind until he committed the truly unpardonable sin of reminding America, if only for a moment, of the exact history his party most wanted and needed to suppress. Then he had to be shut down at once.
A decade-plus after Lott’s fall, the whitewashing of Thurmond and his role in defining the modern GOP continues. When Joseph Crespino, a historian at Emory University, published the most authoritative study on Thurmond to date, Strom Thurmond’s America .. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0809094800 , last year, The Wall Street Journal assigned a review to a writer named Lee Edwards .. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444508504577595433195614946.html , whom it identified as a Goldwater biographer and “a fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.” What the Journal didn’t say—but Crespino did, in his book—is that Edwards was also “an assistant press secretary in the Goldwater campaign and editor of a 1965 exposé of alleged Communist connections to the civil-rights movement.” Unsurprisingly, Edwards’s review portrayed old Strom as a principled constitutional conservative and a “shrewd pragmatist who loved the Old South but welcomed the New South, with its voting rights for all citizens.” In Edwards’s estimation, “the majority of South Carolina voters, black as well as white,” would accept so benign a judgment. Edwards also praised Thurmond for being a generous dad to his secret African-American daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, who had revealed her paternity six months after the senator died in 2003. “Her mother had worked for Thurmond’s parents” was how the Journal’s writer blandly described the circumstances of Washington-Williams’s birth.
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