The Conservative Papers

Gay Marriage and the Golden Rule

kalel — Fri, 18 May 2012 01:57:18 +0000

In his May 9 announcement that he supports same-sex marriage, President Obama linked his stance to the Christian faith. In particular, he cast his view as being consistent with the Bible by quoting Jesus’ words from Matthew 7:12, known as the “Golden Rule.” Obama said:

[The First Lady and I] are both practicing Christians and…when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated…and that’s what motivates me as President.

Since the President’s announcement, the largest Christian churches in America—including the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention—have reiterated that they don’t share the President’s interpretation of Scripture on this issue.

Others have pointed out that the President’s appeal to the Golden Rule is problematic as a guide for complex ethical decisions, including whether or not to support same-sex marriage.

Baylor University professor Francis Beckwith notes that if the Golden Rule simply means giving your neighbor what you happen to want, it would lead to all sorts of immoral conclusions. For instance, a masochist could claim that the Golden Rule means it’s acceptable to inflict pain on others.

To avoid this kind of warped reasoning, Beckwith argues that one would have to situate the Golden Rule within the larger canon of Scripture and the Church’s “moral theology including its understanding of marriage and the common good.”

Moreover, Beckwith wonders to what extent President Obama is willing to apply his interpretation of the Golden Rule more generously:

Will he extend it to the unborn or even the survivors of abortion?

Or church-affiliated and private businesses that cannot in good conscience provide contraception and abortifacient coverage under his [contraception] mandate?

Or private citizens, businesses, and charitable organizations whose moral theology forbids them from blessing or supporting same-sex unions?

Or what about those Americans whose representatives in Congress listened to their voices in passing the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996? Did those citizens not in essence say that one of the ways they want to be treated is to have traditional marriage defended at the national level? Yet Obama has instructed the Justice Department not to defend this law in court, a point he made in the very same interview in which he appealed to the Golden Rule.

In short, church bodies and individuals alike have pointed out that the Golden Rule, stripped of any relationship to an objective moral standard, isn’t helpful on the question of same-sex marriage—or many other ethical matters. To employ the Golden Rule to help guide ethical reflection on this issue, one would have to first answer the basic question “What is marriage?”

Obama bypassed this substantive question, putting forth instead a simplistic and inadequate model of ethical decision-making from a biblical viewpoint.

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Arizona Gov. Brewer Expands USA’s Most Innovative School Choice Model

kalel — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:55:49 +0000

Imagine being a child trapped in a failing school in Arizona. Prior to 2011, being trapped in a failing school in Arizona meant being trapped in a failing school in a state that ranks among the worst performing in the country.

But during 2011—the “Year of School Choice”—Arizona led the way in expanding educational options for children outside of the public system. And the Grand Canyon State did so in a major way: by enacting groundbreaking, first-in-the-nation education savings accounts.

Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) enable parents of special needs children to leave their assigned public schools, taking with them 90 percent of the state dollars that the schools would have received for their children. That money, deposited into ESAs, can then be used to access a multitude of education options that better met their children’s needs. Funds can be used to pay for private school tuition, online learning, special education services, transportation, and a variety of other education-related expenditures.

Notably, unused ESA funds can be “rolled over” from year to year and can even be invested into 529 college savings accounts. The introduction of ESAs in Arizona has been a tremendous step toward educational customization.

Earlier this week, thanks to the leadership of Governor Jan Brewer (R), the pioneering ESAs were expanded to thousands of additional children throughout the state. Children trapped in schools rated “D” or “F,” children of active-duty military parents, and foster children now have access to ESAs. Thanks to this week’s expansion, 11,500 children of active-duty military families and more than 94,000 students in failing public schools will be eligible for ESAs.

Education researcher Matthew Ladner notes:

The law also moves to a system of formula funding, making it one of the largest private choice laws in the nation with funded eligibility, behind only the new Indiana and Louisiana voucher laws on a percentage basis. The Arizona program now resembles an expanded combination of the Florida McKay and Opportunity Scholarship programs with the 21st Century twist of broadening the options of parents and requiring the consideration of opportunity costs (what you spend now cannot be saved for later).

In the not so distant future, we will be able to…identify Governor Brewer’s term and a half as a turning point for the better.

Brewer’s ESA expansion is another milestone in the ongoing effort among states to provide children educational options outside of their assigned public schools. Years from now, Arizona will be heralded as the state that led the way on truly customizable education that is structured in a way that empowers parents and designed to meet the unique learning needs of individual students.

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U.K. Commitment to Joint Strike Fighter Vital for the Special Relationship

kalel — Thu, 17 May 2012 01:55:10 +0000

Last week, the British government made a decision to change from the Carrier Variant of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) back to the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant of the JSF—as was originally planned before its 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. While this move was politically challenging for the coalition government in the U.K., it was the right decision. The assumed cost of equipping the U.K.’s new generation of aircraft carriers with catapults and arrestor gear that are required for the Carrier Variant of the JSF increased from £500 million to £2 billion in only 12 months. To place these figures in context, the U.K.’s Foreign Office budget for this year is only £1.6 billion.

So what does this mean from an American perspective? It doesn’t matter to the Pentagon what variant of the JSF the U.K. chooses, as long as the U.K. stays committed to the JSF program. The U.S. should be concerned about the position of the Labour Party, which currently forms the U.K.’s official opposition.

The Labour Party is polling at its highest level since the May 2010 general election, when it was kicked out of government after 13 years. So far, it is unclear whether it would commit to continuing and funding the U.K.’s involvement in the Joint Strike Fighter program if Labour were to form the next U.K. government. This lack of clarity on such an important aspect of the Special Relationship should be a concern for the Department of Defense and Capitol Hill.

As previous Heritage analysis has pointed out, the Joint Strike Fighter program was one of only four areas the U.S. wanted the U.K. to protect from defense cuts. (The other three areas were U.K. Special Forces, the Royal Navy’s Mine Counter Measure Vessels, and Britain’s nuclear deterrent.) An important part of the Special Relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. is close collaboration on, and joint procurement of, military equipment. Since the U.K. is the JSF program’s only Level 1 partner, the JSF program demonstrates how the Special Relationship works in practice.

Flying a fifth-generation fighter, regardless of what variant it might be, will place the U.K. in the premier league of air power capability—ahead of both Russia and China. It is important that, as the program’s only Level 1 partner and for the sake of the Special Relationship, the U.K. stays committed to the JSF program.Popular Posts:

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Gallup State Numbers Predict Huge Obama Loss

alpineski — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:24:01 +0000

Gallup released their annual state-by-state presidential approval numbers, and the results should have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue very worried. If President Obama carries only those states where he had a net positive approval rating in 2011 (e.g. Michigan where he is up 48 percent to 44 percent), Obama would lose the 2012 election to the Republican nominee 323 electoral votes to 215.

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Islamic Suicide Bomber Auction in Saudia Arabia

alpineski — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:17:13 +0000

An unbelievable leaked video of an auction for a Islamic suicide bomber against Syria. This takes place in a hotel conference room in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The atmosphere is festive, and the audience has children in it. The merchandise auctioned is human flesh and blood!

The video:

Shows the father, Abu-Salah, attending the auction and offering his son Khaled as a sacrifice (2nd son to “sacrifice” his life) .The father receives 1.5 million Riyals ($400,000) as future compensation for his son’s demise in Syria. At one point in the video, the father is elated at the high bids.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

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‘I Cannot Be Silent’: Chen Guangcheng Speaks on Abuse, Forced Abortion

kalel — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:38:24 +0000

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng called into a congressional hearing again yesterday, detailing reported abuse of his relatives and friends in the wake of his escape.

When lauded for his courage and tireless advocacy for victims of forced abortion and involuntary sterilization, Chen simply remarked, through translation: “I am not a hero. I’m just doing what my conscience asks me to do. I cannot be silent when facing these evils against women and children.”

Chen described to the committee how, shortly after his escape from house arrest last month, local government officials allegedly stormed a family member’s house, beating relatives and arresting Chen’s brother. When Chen’s nephew attempted to defend himself and his family, officials arrested him on what Chen calls “trumped up” charges of “homicide with intent.”

Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, testified on the status of He Peirong, the woman who drove the rescue car for Chen. He, also known as “Pearl,” endured a week of confinement and interrogation in a hotel room by Chinese officials because of her involvement in Chen’s escape. Likewise, Jiang Tianyong, a human rights lawyer in China, was beaten to the point of possibly losing hearing in one ear after attempting to see Chen at the Beijing hospital, according to Littlejohn.

The actions reportedly taken against Chen’s supporters and family are just an extension of the coercive tactics used to enforce the country’s one-child policy. As panelists at yesterday’s hearing detailed, forced abortions, coerced sterilizations, and fines or physical abuse for neighbors and family members of women with unauthorized pregnancies remain a daily reality in China.

Mei Shunping, a victim of five forced abortions, described her time as a factory worker in China, where routine checkups for women were used to guard against unlawful pregnancy: “When discovered, pregnant women would be dragged to undergo forced abortions—there was no other choice. We had no dignity as potential child-bearers.”

Chai Ling, founder of All Girls Allowed, detailed just a few horrific stories of child abandonment, bride trafficking and prostitution, and forced abortions that have occurred because of the one-child policy. Just this past October, explained Ling, a woman reportedly died after a late-term, forced abortion procedure when she was discovered to be pregnant with an unauthorized child. Similar atrocities have been documented in U.S. congressional reports as well.

“I wish I could tell you that these stories were rare, but they are not,” remarked Ling. “They are mere glimpses into the dark environment that the One-Child Policy creates for women. This is the darkness into which Chen Guangcheng tried to shine a light.”

That light of respect for human dignity and individual liberty should be supported by the U.S. and other international leaders who claim to defend human rights. As Heritage’s director of domestic policy Jennifer Marshall writes in commentary this week:

U.S. policymakers have long expressed concern over China’s security and economic challenges to global stability. They ought to be equally concerned about the chilling long-term consequences of gross abuse of human dignity and the destruction of civil society. It’s time for China to end the barbarism of its One-Child Policy.

Denouncing the unjust treatment of Chen Guangcheng, his family, and fellow activists is important. But so too is condemning the coercive population control policies that strip women and men of fundamental rights and prohibit China from becoming a truly free and flourishing society.Popular Posts:

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U.S. Free Trade Agreement with Colombia Enters into Force Today — Finally!

kalel — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:35:09 +0000

Following through on President Obama’s announcement last month in Cartagena that the U.S.–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement will take effect on May 15, 2012, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack made the following statement:

Beginning today, U.S. agricultural exporters receive duty-free access on more than half of the products we currently export to Colombia, and virtually all remaining tariffs will be eliminated within 15 years. Estimates show that the tariff reductions in the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (FTA) will expand total U.S. exports by more than $1.1 billion, supporting thousands of additional American jobs while increasing U.S. GDP by $2.5 billion.

While this is good news for American workers and the U.S. economy, what the Obama Administration failed to mention was that it had joined with its allies in Congress to block approval of the FTA with Colombia for nearly half a decade. House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Brady (R–TX) noted that fact in his congratulatory announcement last fall that passage had been “nearly five years in the making.” In that time, the U.S. lost its competitive advantage on billions of dollars of sales to Colombia that U.S. competitors were happy to make up.

The U.S.-based Latin America Trade Coalition reported in September 2011 that, in the years after the U.S.–Colombia agreement was signed in November 2006 until it was finally approved in October 2011, U.S. exporters had to pay over $6 billion in tariffs to the Colombian government that would have been eliminated upon full implementation of the FTA.

In any case, the FTA has finally been implemented, and that must be a good thing, since the far-left guerillas in Colombia chose to “celebrate” the occasion by trying to kill one of former President Alvaro Uribe’s ministers today in a deadly car bombing in Bogotá.

With the FTA now in place, Colombia and the U.S. can look together to ever stronger ties and greater certainty that open markets and freer movements of goods, services, and investments will cement the two democratic nations together. That is reason to celebrate.Popular Posts:

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What if everything we’ve been told about the financial crisis is wrong?

alpineski — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:58:44 +0000

Stop me if you’ve heard any of the following before:

Exploding ARMs to subprime borrowers kicked off the nation’s housing and ensuing financial crisis.
Mortgages during the boom era were designed to fail, and everyone making the loans knew it.

Financial innovation ran amok in U.S. mortgage markets in the 2000s, driving unsafe lending.
Government policies, or lack of them, enabled overheated and unsafe lending.

The originate-to-distribute model enabled bad lending decisions, and securitization is solely to blame.
Investors buying mortgage-backed securities were fleeced by industry insiders, and never understood the risks of what they were buying.

But what if all of what we think we know about the financial crisis and housing meltdown isn’t true?

That’s the seemingly astonishing assertion from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, in a paper published last week. That this paper, penned by three Federal Reserve Bank economists, hasn’t become a hot-burner discussion item thus far is perhaps even more astonishing.

Reading the paper – titled Why Did So Many People Make So Many Ex Post Bad Decisions? The Causes of the Foreclosure Crisis – in some ways felt like my own personal version of The Matrix, one of my favorite movies from the late 1990s. In the movie, lead character Neo is “unplugged” from what he thought was reality and presented with an alternate reality.

Fed economists Christopher Foote, Kristopher Gerardi, and Paul Willen apparently decided the time has come to try to unplug at least some people from a financial markets version of The Matrix: that is, common knowledge about the financial crisis and associated housing collapse. And their paper makes for gripping reading to anyone who has spent the majority of their professional life in the financial markets.

In various turns, the authors end up arguing that much of what we think we know about the financial crisis is, in fact, not actually rooted in fact at all.

For example, the authors find little evidence that payment shocks to subprime borrowers had anything to do with the lead-in to the housing meltdown during 2007. “The overwhelming majority of foreclosed borrowers—84 percent—were making the same payment at the time they first defaulted as when they originated their loans,” Foote et al write.

So much for so-called “exploding ARMs,” then?

Foote, Gerardi and Willen argue the problem wasn’t that loans were inherently built to fail: instead, they say, it’s that the lending market and consumers alike were ill-prepared to withstand a stunning drop in home prices.

Another bombshell in this paper takes aim at those who claim varying government policies in the 1990s and early 2000s enabled the crisis: the authors instead detail how the GI Bill of 1944 led to a world where by the late 1960s, the average down payment on a VA loan was around 2 percent at a time when FHA and VA loans were as dominant in the loan marketplace as they are today. Foote et al argue that government policy was remarkably stable towards housing during the 1990 to 2005 period, in contrast to prior periods, and contrary to popular narrative.

What, me worry?

Perhaps the most interesting discussion in the paper is saved for the middle, however, where the authors tackle what has become a legal minefield as of late: investors. Investors putting money into RMBS deals had plenty of information and knew exactly what the risks of their investment were, Foote et al argue — certainly a far cry from the investor-lawsuit headlines many in the financial press have been running with.

“Investors knowingly bought low-doc/no-doc loans,” according to the paper. “In fact, we now know that lenders provided loans to borrowers with damaged credit without documenting their incomes not because of any after-the-fact forensic investigation, but rather because lenders broadcasted this information to prospective investors.”

The authors go even further, saying that beyond having access to the information and having the tools necessary to model credit risk, investors also understood the risks inherent in their investments when they made them.

“[I]nvestors were able to predict with a fair degree of accuracy how mortgages and related securities would perform under various macroeconomic scenarios,” the authors argue. Whether they chose to perform the analysis – or more importantly, believe their analysis, as the authors argue – is another matter. Which begs the question: if investors knew what could happen if home prices dropped, why did they then still buy?

For Foote et al, it comes down to one very simple but powerful insight: during the boom, adverse home price scenarios that saw home prices drop 5% or more received very little weight, either from the buy-side or the sell-side.

In the home buying mania that pervaded the early 2000s, investors and home buyers alike believed home prices could only go in one direction: up. (We know how that story ended, of course.)

While the authors make a number of policy recommendations relative to preventing future instabliity in financial markets, perhaps the best of the paper’s suggestion is ultimately also the most obvious: inform home buyers that prices might, you know, actually go down.

“If we are going to invest in financial education, we need to teach everyone—from first-time homebuyers to Wall Street CEOs—that asset prices move in ways we do not yet understand,” Foote et al write. “Unfortunately, none of the new disclosure forms proposed by regulators includes the critical piece of information borrowers need to know: there is a chance that the house they are buying will soon be worth substantially less than the outstanding balance on the mortgage.”

Would that have stopped a soon-to-be overextended borrower in their tracks? Eh, probably not.

But in a Matrix-like world where financial reality increasingly isn’t always what we tend to think it is, a little jolt of reality might have helped at least some people find a way to unplug themselves from the bubble.

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Protect America, Not New START

kalel — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:33:40 +0000

Recently, Daryl Kimball and Tom Collina, both of the Arms Control Association, criticized the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) for taking hostage the implementations of the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) in order to provide necessary funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The article misrepresents facts.

New START mandates U.S. unilateral reductions and does not serve U.S. interests. Both authors assert that if the National Defense Authorization Act passes in its entirety—that is, including provisions tying the treaty’s implementation funding with funding for the nuclear weapons complex—Russia would be allowed to rebuild “its nuclear forces above the treaty ceiling of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and increase the number of nuclear weapons aimed at the U.S.” This is just not so.

The State Department’s own data exchanges indicate that Russia was under New START’s limits when the treaty entered into force and built above its limits while the U.S. keeps unilaterally reducing its nuclear arsenal. Russia intends to build up to New START’s limits regardless how much the U.S. spends on modernization of its nuclear weapons complex. The treaty’s degraded verification regime does not provide for the strategic insight that the U.S. needs, given that Moscow launched the most robust nuclear modernization program since the end of the Cold War after the treaty entered into force.

Kimball and Collina complain about levels of spending for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. In fact, this complex has been under-funded for years. Even the Obama Administration acknowledged the importance of this funding. It committed to request funding for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility, the very facility Kimball and Collina criticize as too expensive and of little value. Indeed, the Administration’s enduring commitment has not endured for a year since the treaty entered into force.

Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. nuclear weapons have contributed to global stability and prevented attacks on the U.S. homeland, forward-deployed troops, and U.S. allies. It is essential that the U.S. provides funding for its nuclear weapons complex and avoids “disarmament by atrophy.” As the numbers of U.S. nuclear weapons go down, other countries will be incentivized to develop their own capabilities or build up nuclear weapons to achieve “parity” with the U.S.

Instead of unilaterally disarming, the U.S. should move toward a “protect and defend” strategy combining offensive, defensive, conventional, and nuclear weapons. This is the best way the U.S. could respond to the challenges of today’s environment.

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Anti-Israel GOP Candidate Ron Paul Prepares to Bow Out; Votes Against Israel Again

kalel — Tue, 15 May 2012 04:30:35 +0000

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has announced he is cutting spending and preparing to wind down his campaign.

US Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)

The GOP candidate said in a statement Monday that he would continue his drive to gather delegates to take a “strong message” to the Republican national convention.

However, “we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted,” he said. “Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have.”

The Texas Congressman is lagging far behind the man most likely to win the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Mitt Romney.

Paul was one of only two U.S. Representatives who opposed the nearly unanimous vote of approval by Congress last Wednesday on the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012. The measure tightens America’s security ties with the Jewish State.

Paul currently has only 104 delegates to his credit, while Romney has 966. Neither has enough to win the convention, however, if the vote were to be held today. Romney is still short the 1,144 delegates he needs to win the nomination at the present time – but the voting is not finished.

There are 11 primaries and caucuses that have yet to vote, among them Nebraska, Oregon and Utah, before the polls close on June 26.Popular Posts:

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