Mitt Romney's reaction to J.P. Morgan Chase's mounting losses from reckless trades is "the market will take care of it." His spokesman says "no taxpayer money was at risk" so we don't need more financial regulation. Romney has even promised to repeal Dodd-Frank if he's elected president.
Yet at the same time, Romney has come out strongly against same-sex marriage. He's also against abortion. He has no problem with government intruding on the most intimate of decisions a person makes.
He's got private and public morality upside down. He doesn't want to regulate where regulation is necessary -- at the highest reaches of the economy, where public immorality has cost us dearly, and will cost even more unless boardroom behavior is constrained. Yet he wants to regulate where regulation is least appropriate -- at the level of the individual, in bedrooms and other intimate spaces, where private morality should govern.
This is a dangerous confusion. It should be a matter of personal choice whom to marry and when to have children. But it is undoubtedly a matter of public choice whether big banks should be allowed to take the kind of risky bets that plunged the economy into the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and whether people with great wealth and should be able to buy our democracy with huge campaign contributions.
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The only one of O's crowning achievements (there are only two) he wants to talk about these days, Dood-Frank, was just revealed to be a . . . bag of hooey!
O's favorite Too-Big-To-Fail poster boy Jamie Dimon, the head of the bank O called very well run, and where he keeps his personal accoutn, just lost a zillion billion doing EXACTLY what O promised couldn't happen again!
Oooooooooops! And during an election year too.
Axelrod is marshalling all all his disinformation forces:
- Sure O knows Dimon but never really liked him,
- Dodd-Frank was just a Pub-Bagger law that fails to regulate the evil banks, and
- We need REAL regulation - so just re-elect O and he PROMISES to pass a good bill that will actually prevent insane gambling this time because the last time the sun was in his eyes and he hasd a sticker in his foot.
But most importantly of all, the overarching tactic is "Blame Romney."
See Romney wanted this to happen so that it would wreck the economy that Obama has been working so hard to repair even if after three and a half years we are just now seeing the largest food stamp rolls ever and the rate of employment still is not below what it was when Obama strolled into office.
The only one of O's two crowning achievements he wants to talk about these days, Dodd-Frank, was just revealed to be a . . . bag of hooey!
O's favorite Too-Big-To-Fail poster boy Jamie Dimon, the head of the bank O called very well run, and where he keeps his personal account, just lost a zillion billion doing EXACTLY what O promised couldn't happen again!
Oooooooooops! And during an election year too.
Axelrod is marshaling all his disinformation forces:
- Sure O knows Dimon but never really liked him,
- Dodd-Frank was just a Pub-Bagger law that fails to regulate the evil banks, and
- We need REAL regulation - so just re-elect O and he PROMISES to pass a good bill that will actually prevent insane gambling this time because the last time the sun was in his eyes and he has a sticker in his foot.
But most importantly of all, the overarching tactic is "Blame Romney."
See Romney wanted this to happen so that it would wreck the economy that Obama has been working so hard to repair even if after three and a half years we are just now seeing the largest food stamp rolls ever and the rate of employment still is not below what it was when Obama strolled into office.
The GOP prefers to moralize the physiological and de-moralize the social. That which is natural (brain-directed, complete beings governing the functions and future of their own bodies) is "unnatural" - and that which is unnatural (corporate manipulation of collectively generated economies) is "natural".
Organ functions are separate members of society, while people are disenfranchised as expendable parts of and for the alternate extreme definition of a person - the jet set corporation with a "natural right" to exploit the globe.
It's not the inconsistency, but the degree of contradiction that frustrates. One could say that our moral health lies somewhere "between" -- where contradictions meet or might begin....
But their religious politics pulls us down both slippery slopes - Humanity is holy in the making AND consumable object or resource. Society has no moral obligation to those subject to its own contrived systems, yet somehow it has total right to separate us from our own naturally constructed bodies and brains.
The GOP tries to covet both domains, flip-flopping moral premises or using a certain moral premise in the wrong domain, under the guise of obeying the bipolar demands of a deity, who shows "his glory and favor" through the holy dollar...Hmmm.
And how, exactly, does love between two adults and the formation of a stable and registered family unit between them turn out to be bad for society? How would recognition of this type of partnership by each of our 52 states as a "civil union" be bad for society?
Sexual orientation is not contagious. I have had many gay or lesbian friends over my 70 years, and I haven't caught it yet! A gay or lesbian civil union has NO adverse effect on my marriage.
On the other hand, the denial of rights to the gay or lesbian couple can have severe adverse consequences for each of them and is therefore BAD FOR SOCIETY, because it robs a specific category of citizens of rights that should be available to all. Like slavery, this is intolerable under our constitution.
The legitimate goal of government is to maximize individual choices and initiative while mediating or protecting us from substantially harming each other. For example, if the fate of a bank or other financial organization proves capable of damaging the fortunes of folks who did not consent to that risk, that condition justifies regulation.
We are chartered to be a government of the people. Those who urge you to turn your back on the levers of power are generally eager to seize them for themselves.
Tax the rich, cut the Pentagon, and tax churches that get political. Easy-peasy, Gablueski.
If only more (like millions more) Americans had access to his articles and could get informed.