Sequestration and a Failure of Leadership | Capital Commentary

Sequestration and a Failure of Leadership | Capital Commentary by Aaron Korthuis.  MGB: From what I have heard during the Senate Budget Committee deliberations, the Appropriations Subcommittees will deal with the long term sequestration issues for next year.  It may be that an across the board cut, followed by supplemental appropriations if necessary, will take care of this year.  In the medium term, the big question is whether Obamacare will work - or more specifically if the subsidies for buying a policy are high enough for the uninsured to get health care or wait until they get sick.  If they are less risk averse than health insurance company investors, then this sector either march into a bankruptcy court which will set up a single-payer system out of the ashes or a deal will be made on a subsidized public option for the uninsurable, with the subsidy coming in the form of payroll taxes or some form of consumption tax, which will also take care of out year problems in Medicare and Medicaid.  The real long term problem is that we are constantly rolling over Net Interest on the Debt in order to have the dollar remain the defacto world currency.  We can't do that forever.  Either taxes have to be raised on wealthier citizens who hold the debt or our tax base needs to expand to include more of the world - which also means allowing them into our polity. Actually, I expect both to happen at some point.

Conservative Soul-Searching: The Time is Now | Capital Commentary

Conservative Soul-Searching: The Time is Now | Capital Commentary by Paul Brink.  MGB: I have actually offered the theory of how conservatives and libertarians can work together.  My proposal is to change the tax system to shift from personal taxation to a Net Business Receipts Tax (a Value Added Tax with offsets).  Under this tax, the employees of the firm would each get a vote on how to distribute the offsets to charities who provide social services.  While they could chose the government system, they could also choose their religious institution or a secular provider.  This will shrink the government sector, while still not abandoning the obligation to help those in need.  If everyone picked private institutions and individual retirement accounts holding employer voting stock (some of which is held in an insurance fund with all such companies), the actual tax collected would be zero, even as all needs are met.

Politics & Prose | Capital Commentary

Politics & Prose | Capital Commentary by Byron Borger.  About persecution.  I have two views on this.  One is that it is true that such persecution is awful.  The other view is that who are we to deny others the crown of holiness, freely chosen.

The Significance of the New Pope | Capital Commentary

The Significance of the New Pope | Capital Commentary by Michael Gerson

Disaster Relief, Climate Change and Fiscal Stewardship | Capital Commentary

Disaster Relief, Climate Change and Fiscal Stewardship | Capital Commentary by Ben Lowe.  MGB: While man does indeed affect climate change, sometimes it is a good thing. We are in a sun spot minimum where cooling would be predicted. Further, the US has actually become better and is leading the way in fighting warming. China, on the other hand, is a disaster - although we are supporting that disaster by making them our chief supplier of goods. Perhaps we can use that leverage to get them to clean up a bit. Christians should be involved in insisting that solutions be brought forward - indeed, Pope Emeritus Benedict was known as an environmentalist pope. Some of the solutions Christians should support can involve changing how companies are owned - moving them from stock ownership by investors to employee and retiree ownership. Such firms are less likely to foul the nest. Sadly, however, there is a point where we must realize that we cannot control the weather (at least not yet), and the best thing we can do, as both Christians and citizens, is move people out of low lying areas through better urban planning and give that land back to nature and God.

Christians Investing in Public Education | Capital Commentary

Christians Investing in Public Education | Capital Commentary by Stephanie Summers.  MGB: It is time for Christians in both the Evangelical, Mainline Protestant and Catholic worlds to rise up and abolish the Blaine Amendments to state constitutions which ban direct funding of religious schools.  While the Charter movement has been a good work-around, it would be better to deal with this anti-Catholic relic directly as a matter of justice.  Also, if we begin to fund more religious schools directly, we must also be ready to raise taxes to capture what would have been paid by higher income individuals for private schooling.

As to the question of community and family support.  In many households, parents are functionally illiterate and cannot help.  Justice demands that these be made whole.  Indeed, such individuals should be paid to become literate and receive full family support and health benefits while doing so.  The religious educational community should also focus on these students as well, rather than leaving it to the public system that failed them in the first place.  Additionally, vocational education should be taken on by such schools. There is no reason religion class need be left out of a culinary school.

Staying in the Political Game | Capital Commentary

Staying in the Political Game | Capital Commentary by Vincent Bacote.  MGB: I don't see a stronger, yet different, faith focus in politics evolving without some form of visible leadership.  Someone from the Christian Left or Christian Center will have to come forward eventually (whether he or she wants to or not - God has ways of bringing people forward).  If we do this, it must be with the entire Church, which means the Catholics must be involved too.

A New Season in Ideologically Driven Politics? | Capital Commentary

A New Season in Ideologically Driven Politics? | Capital Commentary by Timothy Sherratt.  MGB: It looks like the sequester is now built into the newest budget agreement.  Now the question will be whether it will have an effect on services to citizens, or will instead lead to buyouts of senior employees and a cut to the training and travel budgets.  I have noticed there is a sharp decline in government job announcements, so I think it may be absorbed.

As for the question of an identifiably Christian movement, I am entirely open to such discussions and have been having them with others.  If we insisted on proportional representation, we might even win a few seats in the majority coalition.  Without such a change, we would have to find some compromise between people who want to stop abortion with criminal law and others who would use economic incentives.  Perhaps we can come up with a marrying of both.  As long as the two parties have a duopoly, however, it is hard to see anything happening until the Republicans talk themselves out of existence on immigration and gender issues.

The Complexity and Urgency of the Problem of Gun Violence | Capital Commentary

The Complexity and Urgency of the Problem of Gun Violence | Capital Commentary by Ted Williams III.  MGB: As long as we treat gun violence as a crime, including possession, we leave it in the old and outdated Anglo-Saxon legal system.  Guns should be treated as a public health issue.  Quite simply, if an area is prone to gun violence, a state of emergency should be declared and every house searched for all firearms, legal or not. They should then be confiscated as a public health measure rather than a criminal one.  If a store consistently supplies the area, ATF agents should come in every week and buy out their entire stock, or just buy out the store and put in a monument to all the Chicago dead - something with their names.  Likewise, the mental health system needs to catch alcoholics, addicts and the mentally ill before they get to the point of criminality or suicide - although this should be done with better hospitals than Geraldo Rivera went after in the 70s.  I suggest contracting it out to Catholic Charities.  There will be plenty of money to do this once we transfer current prisoners whose main problem was mental or literacy.

Drone Strikes, ‘Imminence’ and the Need for Judgment, Part II | Capital Commentary

Drone Strikes, ‘Imminence’ and the Need for Judgment, Part II | Capital Commentary by Brad Littlejohn.  MGB:  I did not see anything in the text about internationality until the last paragraph, although I agree that a more unified allied government to bear the burden of dealing with terrorism would be helpful.  Be that as it may, there is no need for judgment in the face of continuing attacks or attempts at such things.  While in the US there seem to be a variety of people who were supposedly minding their own business or simply sharing their views who got caught in operations entirely made up in the Hoover Building, an American in an enemy camp which is the source of those attacks is committing treason.  If such a person returns and two witnesses can testify, he can be convicted.  If not, however, he or she mainly presents a danger to the United States and its citizens and should be treated like any other enemy combatant.  Thomas More argued that assassination is much more logical than full scale war.  He had a point.

The Reality of Our Debt Crisis: By the Numbers | Capital Commentary

The Reality of Our Debt Crisis: By the Numbers | Capital Commentary by Michael Gerson.  MGB: The reality is that the CBO report shows that the major driver in debt accumulation is letting net interest ride to meet the needs of the world's currencies and speculators.  Medicare and Medicaid as a percentage of the economy don't grow that much.  Indeed, as health care reform is implemented, it will require fixes that will also fix Medicare and Medicaid.  Getting Pentagon spending under control is vital, if only to remove all those obstacles to quick decisions on weapons that will help soldiers in the battlefield.  Sending the service department civilians to the Office of the Secretary of Defense while sending everyone in uniform back to the product commands, or better yet into active deployment or training will save money and end the war more quickly.

An important fact to note is that if net interest is not rolled over into borrowing, but instead paid down (especially the Social Security Trust Fund - which cannot be redeemed by cutting benefits already earned by those of my age), those doing the paying won't be the children and grandchildren of most citizens.  Truly, it is only the wealthier families who could be taxed enough to pay back debt without slowing the economy.  Indeed, removing these people from their money may actually result in growth for the economy, since the government will spend it or pay promised benefits.  If we ignore the problem, however, the people who are holding our debt and benefiting from our Pax Americana will start wanting a piece of the action in decision making.  The real argument, then, is not economic collapse but eventual political absorption.