A Facebook friend shared this statement from Indiana congress-critter Todd Rokita:
After many emails, phone calls and letters, as well as meetings with all involved, I’m pleased to announce a long-term solution to low-flow situations along the Tippecanoe River: Late last week, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service agreed that NIPSCO, operator of Oakdale Dam, should allow the river to flow more naturally.
My office continues to work on shorter-term ways to alleviate the situation on Lake Freeman — but we find ourselves in this situation due to the Endangered Species Act, which places endangered species, including six species of mussel along the Tippecanoe, ahead of the economic interests and safety of human beings. There is no economic balancing test under the law by design.
The Senate passed it unanimously, and the House passed it 355-4, in 1973. Only one Indiana Congressman, Earl Landgrebe, opposed the law.
Given the situation on Lake Freeman today, would you support repeal of the Endangered Species Act? When I posed that question at my Monticello Town Hall last week, several people raised their hands. Others said no.
What say you?
Well, Congressman, I say that the “economic interests and safety of human beings” is rather obviously connected to the health of the environment, and that protection of the ecosphere is a rather obvious element of environmental health.
I also say that, in sane times, comparing yourself to Earl Landgrebe (most famous quote, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind”) wouldn’t be seen as a particularly helpful career move.
One of the great benefits of teaching college is what you learn from your students. Sometimes the lessons are new, sometimes they appear as new ways of understanding information you already have.
Recently, I served on the doctoral committee of a student who was writing her dissertation on the “Lived Experience of Foreclosure.” Her research connected a number of insights, and highlighted a number of policy issues, in a way that illuminated the interdependence of economic stability and self-worth in American culture in a way I hadn’t previously appreciated.
There weren’t many people who were willing to share their experiences with her, and the reasons for that reluctance could be inferred from the painful insights of those who did respond. In America, after all, homeownership is a cultural marker, tangible evidence of solid and responsible citizenship. Home is more than a roof over ones head or a place to live; it’s a time-honored symbol of the American Dream—and its cultural symbolism makes foreclosure an American nightmare.
Research on the effects of the mortgage default epidemic that accompanied the Great Recession has confirmed foreclosure’s more “macro level” consequences: foreclosures are a threat to neighborhood stability and community well-being; they affect predominantly the low-income and minority populations most likely to be hard-hit by economic downturns; they create an environment conducive to criminal activity and lead to disinvestment.
Those consequences are bad enough, but it is the experience of real people caught up in an economic downturn not of their making—and the lessons that can be drawn from those experiences—that can help us shape policies to minimize a repeat of the recent epidemic.
Foreclosure, it turns out, is not just a legal process triggered by an inability to pay. It is equally the consequence of a profound disconnect between the borrower and lender. That disconnect is a function of dramatic changes in banking since the days when mortgage loans were the product of face to face agreements between an officer of the bank on the corner and a long-term, well-known customer.
The purchase of local banks by ever-bigger, national ones was driven by the bankers’ belief that bigger would be better, that consolidation would permit efficiencies that would ultimately benefit both their bottom lines and their consumers. Divorcing banks from their customers was an unanticipated consequence.
That initial disconnect was exacerbated by the practice of “flipping” mortgage loans. In some cases, the borrower was barely out the door when a letter arrived informing him that his loan had been sold and would henceforth be serviced by Bank B, with whom the borrower usually had no previous relationship.
It is no longer uncommon for a mortgage to be sold several times during its term. Among the consequences of flipping is the obvious one; when the bank extending the loan doesn’t intend to keep it, there is less incentive to ensure that the borrower can repay. The growth and prevalence of inadequate and unethical underwriting standards—a scandal widely discussed in the wake of the Great Recession—is largely attributable to flipping.
This distance between the borrower and the eventual owner of the mortgage emerged over and over in the conversations with the foreclosed homeowners. In one case, the delinquent homeowner found a buyer, but couldn’t reach anyone who had the authority to approve the short sale.
Consequential as it has been, the foreclosure epidemic illustrates a problem that is far larger and more pervasive than current banking practices: America’s growing power imbalance.
Free markets require willing buyers and willing sellers, each in possession of the relevant information, and each able to walk away from a transaction if they deem it too one-sided. People who enter into such agreements are expected to live up to their terms—an expectation that most of us agree is just. Increasingly, however, the transactions to which we are party are not the result of negotiation and unforced decision-making. Instead, they are “take it or leave it” arrangements in which one party has all the power and possesses most or all of the relevant information.
In an economic world characterized by such imbalances of power, it may be time to rethink policies that operate to penalize the powerless and reward the predatory.
Scott DesJarlais is a rabidly pro-life congressman from a reliably red district in Tennessee. He’s also a doctor who cheated on his wife with at least two of his patients, and was caught on tape encouraging one of them to have an abortion. In a rational world, you’d expect him to lose the primary election following those revelations. You’d be wrong.
“Rep. Scott DesJarlais, who pressured a woman—one of two patients he admitted having affairs with—to get an abortion in the 1990s, appears to have narrowly avoided becoming the fourth Republican incumbent to lose a primary this year. With 100 percent of precincts reporting on Thursday, he led state Sen. Jim Tracy by 35 votes—34,787 to 34,752. (The results are not official and a recount is possible, although the state has no law mandating one in such circumstances.) The abortion revelation emerged after DesJarlais’ 2012 primary, when the only thing standing between him and reelection in the deeply Republican district was a token Democratic candidate in the general election.
But after his reelection, the dominoes continued to fall. Divorce transcripts released two weeks after the race revealed that he and his first wife had decided to abort two pregnancies. That proved a problem for the congressman, who is adamantly pro-life: Per his website, “Congressman DesJarlais believes that all life should be cherished and protected. He has received a 100% score by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the oldest and the largest national pro-life organization in the United States.”
My favorite part of this was that his opponent put out an ad calling attention to DesJarlais’ hypocrisy and this was his response:
DesJarlais spokesman Robert Jameson called the piece “just the sort of disgusting gutter politics we’d expected from [U.S. House Democratic leader] Nancy Pelosi and her allies in Washington.”
Yeah, that’s disgusting. No, not the fact that he cheated on his wife multiple times despite his allegedly “pro-family” principles. Not the fact that he did it with his patients, which can get your medical license yanked and is probably the single biggest ethical breach a doctor can make. Not the fact that he encouraged one of his mistresses to get an abortion despite his self-declared opposition to abortion. No, it’s disgusting to point out that vile behavior. But remember, DesJarlais is exactly the kind of guy who lectures liberals about moral relativism and says his religious values guide him.
If those things don’t disqualify you from winning an election full of allegedly pro-family, pro-life voters, what the hell could possibly do so?
Crazy Republicans are making life miserable for the dwindling number of rational party members, and the same phenomenon (often involving the same people) is giving Christians a really bad name.
Loony tunes example number ten zillion:
Several news sites have reported on a rant by Christian Radio Host Rick Wiles, in which he shares his hope that the Ebola epidemic spreads to the US and “wipes out every last atheist and gay person in the country.”
“Now this Ebola epidemic can become a global pandemic and that’s another name for plague. It may be the great attitude adjustment that I believe is coming… Ebola could solve America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography and abortion.”
Leave aside the decidedly “unChristian” desire to see people with whom you don’t agree die in agony (what was that thing about “turning the other cheek”?), what leap of “logic” leads this zealot to believe that a horrific disease will be selective, and that its selectivity would be based upon his version of biblical “truth”?
Talk about creating God in one’s own image…
What’s really terrifying is that it is only a small step from this sort of faith-based delusion to a desire to help “God’s work” along, by bringing a pathogen to the U.S. and unleashing it. If you think that possibility is far-fetched, consider what the KKK, skinheads and other True Believers have been willing to do to protect their own racial or religious hegemony.
It’s time for the good Christians–and the good Republicans–to take their religion and their party back from the lunatics who are currently dominating the public face of both.
Earlier this year, Georgetown University Press published my monograph Talking Politics: What You Need to Know Before You Open Your Mouth as part of their new “digital shorts” series.
It is a brief (approximately 35 pages) description of basic legal, constitutional, economic and scientific information that I would argue is absolutely essential for anyone wishing to understand–or navigate– 21st Century America.
Here’s the flyer Georgetown recently issued, which includes an offer of a discount from the already very reasonable price.
