The Case for the Crime Victims’ Rights Amendment | Capital Commentary

The Case for the Crime Victims’ Rights Amendment | Capital Commentary by Mark D. Jansen.  MGB: A VRA seems like a good idea, which I support.  I wouild also add, however, an advocate for the well-being (rather than the victory) of the offender and the option to include a response (not defense) of guilty by reason of insanity (to include drunkenness), where the offender is sentenced to treatment for the same period as the minimum sentence for the crime or until recovery is in place (whichever comes last).  Under such a schema, most cases would never actually come to trial and the tort and criminal proceedings could be negotiated and concurrent.

Campaign Outreach to Religious Voters | Capital Commentary

Campaign Outreach to Religious Voters | Capital Commentary by Kimberly H. Conger.  MGB: The interesting aspect of religious outreach this year is that it points to a fault line between what religious leaders and people in the pews think about both contraception and marriage equality.  I suspect that Chicago has decided that picking a fight with leaders would be counter-productive, so past voters are being targeted as such rather than with a religious angle.  Bishops and pastors would be wise to not stress these issues this time, because they may have more to lose than Obama, who seems likely to win given the Electoral College math.  Of course, such a discussion may actually do some sects some good if they create a vocal prophetic response on these issues.

Accommodating Faith-Based Organizations in HIV/AIDS Services | Capital Commentary

Accommodating Faith-Based Organizations in HIV/AIDS Services | Capital Commentary by Stanley Carlson-Thies.  MGB: One other fact is important.  Condoms in Africa are often bad - meaning that they are allowed to sit on docks awaiting customs clearance in the hot sun until they lose their effectiveness.  The objection can be made on practical grounds without picking a fight over religious freedom.  The real answer in Africa is to provide economic opportunity and education to young girls so they no longer have to resort to prostitution.

Addressing the Opportunity Gap | Capital Commentary

Addressing the Opportunity Gap | Capital Commentary by Michael Gerson.  MGB: I very much agree.  Sadly, policies on crime and welfare have sent many working class fathers to jail and mothers to low wage jobs.  Even paying welfare mothers to stay home, as long as they keep their kids out of trouble, is better than letting adolescents lose on the streets.

The Chicago Teachers’ Strike: A Just Conflict? | Capital Commentary

The Chicago Teachers’ Strike: A Just Conflict? | Capital Commentary by Brian Dijkema.  MGB: I completely disagree about the justice of the Chicago teachers' strike.  It is all about justice - as the Chicago teachers are being held to account for the poor performance of students when such performance is highly correlated with the family economics of the students.   To put in plainly, unless we also teach the parents and pay them for their educational time (to cover their opportunity costs) it is certainly possible to train the children, but it is most difficult.  There is also some question as to how such standardized tests are conducted.  For example, in Virginia, the learning objectives for the math test were not released until March.  The Reading objectives for the May test for next year will not be released until next March.  These are hardly fair tests and some of us believe that this is done to sabotage union pay to make up for budget shortfalls.  Such subterfuge is not worthy of either a free society or an ostensibly Christian one, especially if the goal is to move people to for-profit charter schools.

Hope in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict | Capital Commentary

Hope in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict | Capital Commentary by Stephen B. Monsma  MGB: Unity of the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians must indeed be part of the solution, although I find it hard to imagine that a just God would allow the Ark of the Covenant (which the Ethiopian Coptic Church claims is in their possession in Axum) will ever be returned or the temple restored until justice is granted to the Arabs.  Further, unless we can find history of a massive Arab migration, it is likely that today's Palestinian Arabs are yesterdays Palestinian Christians who were both Jew and Samaritan before they accepted Christ, and before that they were people of the Northern Kingdom and were originally Canaanite.  Once this common ancestry is realized, peace should be easy to achieve.

Waiting for Superman—and Self-Sacrifice—in Public Education | Capital Commentary

Waiting for Superman—and Self-Sacrifice—in Public Education | Capital Commentary by Ron Larsen.  MGB: I am struck by the need not so much for self-sacrifice as justice.  Many teachers don't want to be held accountable for test scores which are highly correlated with family poverty, especially when that family poverty makes their entire school district poorer.  We must always remember that justice is not charity and that doing justice cannot be left to volunteerism.

Wrapping Opportunity in the Flag | Capital Commentary

Wrapping Opportunity in the Flag | Capital Commentary by Michael Sherratt.  MGB: There are many who consider the Democrats and Republicans part of a well funded duopoly, with cosmetic differences on issues like abortion put forward to make sure that a hidden oligarchy is in real control of the country.  Whether this is true or not depends on how the system responds to fundamental change from either side.  So far, it does not look good.

Justice for the Cyborg: The Policy Implications of Robotic Prosthetics | Capital Commentary

Justice for the Cyborg: The Policy Implications of Robotic Prosthetics | Capital Commentary by Jason Summers.  MGB: I don't think the level of enhancement in technology is relevant to whether someone who is dependent on the technology is owed some level of protection for their condition - if only because most technologies are prone to occasional failure, as biological systems are as well.  The important factor is what is good for the person, even from a community perspective.  We should all have the desire to ameliorate human suffering, even if it takes unconventional forms.

The Question is Government, Not Personalities | Capital Commentary

The Question is Government, Not Personalities | Capital Commentary by James Skillen.  MGB: Proportional representation is particularly good at combating apathy, which is very much a problem at local levels and a bit less so at the national level - and it would empower better congressional district boundary drawing so that no party may maintain their majorities by gerrymandering, as both attempt to do. I suspect that this year, the idea of a party running together, at least on the one side, is about to fall apart as it will be every candidate for himself or herself.  While candidate personalities are important, so is the team they surround themselves with - and I cannot foresee trusting the trailing candidates staff to govern, especially in the Patriot Act era.  Indeed, how a candidate staffs says a lot about the candidate himself, which goes back to their personality.

Individuality or Community: A False Choice | Capital Commentary

Individuality or Community: A False Choice | Capital Commentary by Harold Heie. MGB: While the Democrats clearly are not as bad at pursuing community, they also bow to Mammon a bit too much than is good for the polity at large.  It is why we need a Christian Democratic or Christian Libertarian - or maybe a Christian Democratic Libertarian - alternative that honors all of human dignity.

Rights, Regulation and Human Dignity | Capital Commentary

Rights, Regulation and Human Dignity | Capital Commentary by Paul Brink.  MGB: In the cases cited, the instigator of the violence was clearly mentally unbalanced - not in such a way that removed culpability or made the person entirely dysfunctional - but enough to be seen as dangerous.  Likewise, many who die in gun violence do so because of suicide or because they are either drinking and kill loved ones while enraged or are committing crimes in relation to either the drug trade or to obtain money to buy drugs.  Looking toward gun regulation is not nearly as fruitful as looking at how difficult it has made to intervene on people having mental health crises or addiction issues - which often demand criminality, surrender or complete dysfunction for any action to occur.  I submit we need to make it easier to provide care against one's wishes if we want to make any progress in these areas.  This is where the paradox of freedom is starkest - how free can anyone be if they are locked in mental dysfunction?

Should We Jump Off the Fiscal Cliff? | Capital Commentary

Should We Jump Off the Fiscal Cliff? | Capital Commentary by Prof. Todd Steen.  MGB: The automatic spending cuts and the already booked defense cuts resulting from the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were meant to be offsets for making a portion of the Bush tax cuts permanent for the middle and working classes.  The problem is that one party refused to do so.  It was never intended to let all the tax cuts expire and do spending cuts as well.  While some entitlement cuts may be made, they are mostly designed to preserve the Medicare Part B and D programs by raising premiums or paying for increases by booking cost savings implicit in health care reform but which were not able to be estimated when the Law was passed.  This leaves the question of increased revenues from either a consumption tax, higher taxes on the wealthy or some combination of the two (possibly with working class families not having to file taxes at all in the future while still getting a child tax cut as a benefit through employers).

The question of who is really responsible for paying back future debt is crucial to answering the question.  As it stands now, the debt is backed by the ability to do an income tax - with the payment of those taxes being skewed to the rich.  Therefore, temporary tax cuts in a deficit environment can be seen as a future income tax increase.  Using a consumption tax to pay down debt is self-defeating, because it shrinks the economy where income taxes do not - especially on dividends and capital gains.  Indeed, the current low levels of these taxes give an implicit incentive to cut labor costs and have corporate management be rewarded with either stock or wage bonuses to pocket some (if not most) of the savings (as it can be argued that labor costs savings have no impact on the need to pay normal dividend returns).  If you buy the logic of these statements, the way forward is clear - even to wealthier taxpayers - since it is not all of our children who bear the burden of the debt, but primarily the children of the debt.  It is all of us who work or want to work, however, who bear the burden of tax cuts on the rich.

By the way, the answer is that, yes, we should jump.  Employers will make up the income loss to taxes for most working families and the rich will simply pay.

First Principles and the Election | Capital Commentary

First Principles and the Election | Capital Commentary by Prof. William Edgar.  MGB: Missing from the sphere sovereignty discussion is economics and the workplace, which is where the interesting discussions about both control and property occur. That is why the birth control question is hard.  The question of gay marriage is where the spheres of religion, family and the government meet.  Ultimately, the right to marry is the right to form a family - and if individuals are sovereign in making families, then they can certainly call those families marriages and insist the other spheres do so as well.  To treat some families as legitimate and some as not is a problem - as the rights of the spouse in dealing with the family of origin of their partner should know no gender distinction - they are absolute whether it is a wife in dealing with her husband's family, a husband dealing with his wife's family, a husband dealing with his husband's family and a wife dealing with her wife's family.  I can't lay it out any more simply than that.  The teachings in both testaments about spouses being of one flesh apply equally here - even though that was not contemplated when that particular passage was written in Genesis during the exile, or by the Gospel writers in the first century.  The underlying truth still remains and we can claim it as coming from God.  It had nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with spousal rights - and still does.

The Deep Divide | Capital Commentary

The Deep Divide | Capital Commentary by Aaron Belz.  MGB: How poetry is ultimately subversive.  That is why prophets often write in verse.  Possibly they simply started as poets.

The Failure of Partisan Approaches to Economic Opportunity | Capital Commentary

The Failure of Partisan Approaches to Economic Opportunity | Capital Commentary by Michael Gerson.  MGB: Tax policy is the nexus of the problems in the labor market. When taxes on the return on investment (dividends and capital gains) are too low, as they are now, determined efforts are made to cut labor costs to reward investors - leading to personal rewards for CEOs (either through stock, dividend or wage compensation).  The higher the tax, the less the incentive.  Given anemic wage growth since the Bush tax cuts, reversing these is the first step in recovery, especially at the higher end.  The second is to increase tax benefits for families (the one thing Bush did well).  We need to consolidate such tax benefits into one place (including the mortgage interest deduction) so there is an explicit incentive to do more in terms of family support (which also solves our demographic issues in Social Security in the long term).  Such tax reform could also be used to channel money directly to private accredited schools and health care - so that available public services increase without increasing government.