Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1562.2 | 6.3 | 0.40% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2651.8 | 27.7 | 1.06% |
| Oil (WTI) | 97.01 | -0.1 | -0.06% |
| LIBOR | 0.282 | -0.001 | -0.18% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 82.75 | 0.016 | 0.02% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 1.85% | 0.01% | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 104.6 | 0.0 | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 103.3 | -0.1 | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 189.5 | -1.1 | |
| BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 3.68 |
Markets are higher after Europe returned from a 4 day weekend. Italian sovereign yields are dropping, which is easing concerns about the Cyprus situation. Later this morning, we will get the ISM New York, factory orders and vehicle sales. Bonds and MBS are down small.
Fannie Mae just reported the largest net income in company history. Good thing they didn’t release this yesterday or nobody would have believed it. They reported net income of $17.2 billion for 2012 and $7.6 billion in the 4th quarter. The refi boom of 2012 has certainly helped them, along with a drop in delinquencies, increasing home prices, and higher sales of Fannie Mae-owned properties. They still owe Treasury $85 billion. Fannie Mae stock has rallied from 30 cents a share two weeks ago to 80 cents a share as of yesterday on reports they will be profitable. The stock is trading up a nickel on low volume pre-market. Every dime the stock increases is roughly half a billion dollars in the US government’s coffers.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a new one-stop shopping site for financial gripes. They do not verify the facts of the complaints, but they give the company a chance to respond before they put it on their site. If you had ever been mad at your bank and wanted to create a http://www.thiscompanysucks.com website, well, there ya go.
Mohammed El-Arian says that the Cyprus situation is not fixed, just temporarily stabilized. Even if it doesn’t become a systemic problem (read: spread to Italy and Spain) it still could create a systemic threat if enough peripheral countries have issues. The EU seems to be against an Iceland-style fix, where Cyprus leaves the EU and devalues its currency.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Gotta love NYC politics:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bribing_his_way_onto_the_ballot_3XFvV67oWZHFo7bVdoCkcO
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Old way — pass annual doc fix.
New way — do whatever you want.
CMS for the first time has assumed that Congress will override the scheduled cuts to Medicare providers due to the sustainable growth rate when setting Medicare Advantage plan rates, increasing Medicare Advantage rates by 3.3 percent in the final announcement after a wave of opposition from insurers and key lawmakers to the initially proposed 2.3 percent cuts.
The agency factored Medicare physician payment cuts caused by the SGR into their original proposed rates in February, as it has historically said CMS lacked the authority to assume a “doc fix” in advance of congressional action. But Monday the agency reversed its stance after over 150 lawmakers — including the chair and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee — and insurers heavily lobbied CMS to assume that Congress would avert the cuts as lawmakers have historically done.
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Wait, I thought the doc fix was made permanent during the fiscal cliff deal, or am I thinking of the AMT fix?
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” Fannie Mae stock has rallied from 30 cents a share two weeks ago to 80 cents a share as of yesterday on reports they will be profitable. ”
And right about now they can Ed DeMarco and it all goes bad.
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sorry — this is for 2014. CMS is in the process of rate setting for next year. so next year’s doc fix. current one runs through Dec. 2013. we’re just deeming the one for 2014 passed.
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For those who haven’t seen it, the Social Security Administration actually has a good online site with individual account access to PDF version of the old paper earnings statements that they ceased sending out.
http://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/
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Wait, if their just assuming a doc fix, doesn’t that make Obamacare a deficit generator? We were told, and it is seared, seared in my memory, much like John Kerry’s trip(s) into Cambodia, that it would not add to the deficit!
I remember arguing w/people over at the sewer that Obamacare would not be deficit neutral and found that many if not a majority of the denizens there sincerely believed it would.
But hey, let’s increase coverage by maybe 5%, it worked out so well for housing.
Jeebus we’re screwed.
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jnc4p: Thanks for that! That’s good info to have. I could probably live on $2073 (my estimated benefit) a month now, if I didn’t have children to support and whatnot. If I can hold on through the merger maelstrom here, and keep paying into the Tennessee Consolidate Retirement System, that’d be another $1000 (help with the inflation). Won’t be living in style, but I should be able to afford working plumbing and a tele-o-phone. Assuming the End Times don’t come between now and age 67.
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@Troll: Jeebus we’re screwed.
Depends on how you define “screwed”. If you view good healthcare (if you can pay for it) as an entitlement, then I think you’re probably right. I think good healthcare may well become to sole province of powerful politicians and the super wealthy (hopefully there will be enough of those to continue to encourage high quality for profit medical research). However, Obamacare isn’t likely to portend the zombie apocalypse, so if you could be reasonably satisfied with the sort of healthcare you might have gotten in the 60s, sans house calls, we’ll probably be all right.
Put another way, yes, getting healthcare is likely to become progressively more horrible. Not that our modern insurance system wasn’t pushing us in that direction, anyway; as soon as we started moving away from catastrophic insurance into 3rd party payer systems, we began the process of moving away from improving the quality of healthcare and smothering bedside manor with a pillow and turning medical care into a numbers game, etc. But we’re not doomed in the same way an actual nuclear war or something might doom us. 😉
I feel like we’re going to turn into Japan, though. Or America in the 1970s, only we’re going to stay that way for much, much longer. Bill Clinton will finally have defeated the business cycle, and instead of peaks and valleys, we’ll just have long valleys . . . and, even still, we’ll all be better off than American during the depression.
That’s my working theory, anyway.
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I liked this Chris Hedges piece. Some of you guys might like it as well as he takes a shot at the “liberal elite” and the cheerleaders of the Iraq War. The home page has the title of the piece, “America’s Sell Out Intellectuals and the Perks They Get”, with a picture of Thomas Friedman………heh
These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed “the political cesspool.” Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all.” He called the typical anti-war protester a “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.” The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war—shutting down public debate. Those of us who spoke out against the war, faced with the onslaught of right-wing “patriots” and their liberal apologists, became pariahs. In my case it did not matter that I was an Arabic speaker. It did not matter that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, including months in Iraq, as a foreign correspondent. It did not matter that I knew the instrument of war. The critique that I and other opponents of war delivered, no matter how well grounded in fact and experience, turned us into objects of scorn by a liberal elite that cravenly wanted to demonstrate its own “patriotism” and “realism” about national security. The liberal class fueled a rabid, irrational hatred of all war critics. Many of us received death threats and lost our jobs, for me one at The New York Times. These liberal warmongers, 10 years later, remain both clueless about their moral bankruptcy and cloyingly sanctimonious. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on their hands.
The power elite, especially the liberal elite, has always been willing to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status. They know what they need to say. They know which ideology they have to serve. They know what lies must be told—the biggest being that they take moral stances on issues that aren’t safe and anodyne. They have been at this game a long time. And they will, should their careers require it, happily sell us out again.
http://www.alternet.org/media/americas-sell-out-intellectuals-and-perks-they-get
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Kevin, Obamacare is designed to collapse. Where we’re screwed is that a majority of the electorate thinks healthcare is a right. Cancer Ward is a best case scenario. I want it chair the Death Panel. You might think I’m joking but I’m not. That will be the most powerful position in the Country.
Like I wrote, screwed.
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@Troll: “Kevin, Obamacare is designed to collapse.”
You think so? I dunno. If so, it was a crafty design. It’s not going to do what it’s supposed to do without huge expenses and a big mess . . . but I think that’s just government work for ya. 😉
” Where we’re screwed is that a majority of the electorate thinks healthcare is a right. ”
Ironically, I think healthcare will be less available, but a poor healthcare experience will be more common, thus at least making healthcare for many a more egalitarian experience. Of course, the super rich will still get superb care.
“I want it chair the Death Panel.”
The death panel is going to be the guy at the hospital looking over the compensation rules and deciding they won’t get paid so you don’t get treatment. I imagine there will be a body of appeal, and that will be the Death Panel, but they will probably try to decentralize the role of denying coverage just to keep it from being a single huge target. I think it will actually be hard to get people to take the job of Denial Czar, if one is created in perpetuity. 😉
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This is truly the kind of financial stuff that confuses me. It makes it really difficult to get a handle on the economy if you’re a small business owner and proves, to me at least, that there are fewer “facts” in financial jargon than I realized.
Markit’s commentary on US manufacturing was incredibly upbeat.
Chris Williamson, Chief Economist, Markit: – “Manufacturers enjoyed another month of strong output and order book growth in March, finishing off the best quarter for two years. The sector will have provided a firm boost to the economy in the first quarter, with output possibly growing by as much as 2% (roughly 8% annualised) compared to the final quarter of last year.
“It is encouraging to see the upturn generating more jobs, with the survey suggesting that approximately 15,000 extra employees were taken on in the sector in March.”
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) however published a rather different report.
LA Times: – Growth in the crucial manufacturing sector unexpectedly slowed in March as companies reported fewer new orders and less production compared with the previous month.
The Institute for Supply Management’s widely watched purchasing managers index dropped to 51.3 last month compared with 54.2 in February. The reading came in below analyst expectations of about 54.
A reading above 50 indicates growth in the sector, which covers a wide variety of industries.
…
Purchasing managers’ comments highlighted by ISM indicated that reduced government spending and uncertainty about federal regulations were among the reasons for the March slowdown.
http://soberlook.com/2013/04/complete-confusion-over-trajectory-of.html
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“I liked this Chris Hedges piece.”
It takes as given that Iraq was doomed to failure from the start and that therefore it’s obvious that it was a bad call. That’s just as much revisionism as anything he cites.
Also, just because Iraq ended badly doesn’t mean that Moore isn’t a conspiracy theorist. All the “Bush lied” arguments are still crap too.
One missing person from the rogue’s list was Michael Kelly, but perhaps he didn’t want to speak ill of the reporter who went to Iraq and died there ten years ago tomorrow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kelly_%28editor%29
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jnc:
One missing person from the rogue’s list was Michael Kelly…
Coincidentally, the WSJ had an op-ed about him just this morning.
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I almost left the Moore part of the quote out of my selection as I agree he is a conspiracy theorist but he is a sometimes necessary voice on the left. I totally get it that the right will never want him in the mix anywhere. I also agree that no one can truly claim the Iraq War was doomed to failure without hindsight, but I don’t believe that question was raised adequately by the press or other punditry. And IMO it’s true the voices that did raise doubts were thoroughly ostracized.
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“I think it will actually be hard to get people to take the job of Denial Czar, if one is created in perpetuity”
we’ll create a computer program or robot to do it. that will work, until it inevitably becomes self aware.
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@jnc4p: “It takes as given that Iraq was doomed to failure from the start”
Well, one could argue that human nature doomed it to failure. One could also argue that it was such a big challenge that everyone would have to be all in to make it work out well, and it was unwise not to factor in a great deal of homegrown propaganda and political games happening to, if not directly sabotage the effort, then to offer less-than-tepid support.
And “Bush lied” is a lot pithier than lots of people made poor decisions based on faith, bad advice, and bad data, but Occam’s razor would tend to indicate that incompetence (or excessive optimism) is a much more likely explanation that perfidy.
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@lmsinca: ” I totally get it that the right will never want him in the mix anywhere.”
Unless we get Ann Coulter to respond. 😉
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Heh, Kevin. She creeps me out pretty bad. Is it the same with Moore. We all have our crosses to bear.
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I don’t think it will be hard to get Denial Czars, at heart, all government controlled healthcare is about power, not health. I want to be the the flexer of power, not the recipient of said power. It’s the decision over life and death, there will be no shortage of people desiring that power.
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McWing:
It’s the decision over life and death, there will be no shortage of people desiring that power.
Totally agree. The craving to tell you how much soda you can drink is hardly the end-game. And far from being unique, Nurse Bloomberg is quite typical of a certain personality type that is all-too-attracted to government service.
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jnc: Bush lied. I guess you would have to argue whether or not one knows one is lying is where the rubber meets the road.
As an officer who, during the first gulf war, was giving the briefings on where Saddam Hussein had WMDs, what he had, how much he had, how he would deploy them, how to secure them when they were found, etc., etc., etc., I have never, ever understood how the lies about WMDs were perpetuated. It’s not like I had some super special security clearance or something–and I spent weeks during the run-up to the Iraq war trying to get people (staffers) to listen to me about his utter lack of them at that point.
But, yeah, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell and Rice all lied. Tenet lied. Some within the administration (LTC Lawrence Wilkerson, notably) have admitted that they lied based on lies told to them. Why–and which ones knew they were lying–I don’t know.
Moore is also a conspiracy theorist, but he never sent anybody to war. He hasn’t made a good documentary in years.
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Mich:
I guess you would have to argue whether or not one knows one is lying…
Actually “lying” requires a conscious intention to deceive. As George Costanza once said, it’s not a lie if you believe it.
But, yeah, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell and Rice all lied. Tenet lied.
Was Democrat Carl Levin lying when he said: “We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them.”
How about Democratic Vice President Al Gore, when he said: “We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”
Or Democrat Ted Kennedy when he said: “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”
Or Democrat Hillary Clinton: “In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members … It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
Or Democrat Bob Graham: “There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status.”
Liars all?
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“But, yeah, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell and Rice all lied. Tenet lied. Some within the administration (LTC Lawrence Wilkerson, notably) have admitted that they lied based on lies told to them. Why–and which ones knew they were lying–I don’t know.”
No they didn’t. They actually believed the WMD’s were there. If they were lying, the logical thing to do would have been to plant some to make the conspiracy complete. Lying about it and then letting the inspectors not find anything would be even more incompetent than anything done after the invasion.
Intelligence assessments are always judgement calls based on incomplete facts.
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“As an officer who, during the first gulf war, was giving the briefings on where Saddam Hussein had WMDs, what he had, how much he had, how he would deploy them, how to secure them when they were found, etc., etc., etc., I have never, ever understood how the lies about WMDs were perpetuated.”
As the joke went, the US knew how many chemical weapons Saddam had because we still had the receipts. With regards to how he would deploy them, that was based on his previous use.
And of course he actually did have WMD’s during the first Gulf War. The inspectors found them both initially and especially after his son in law, Hussein Kamel al-Majid defected in the 1990’s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_Kamel_al-Majid
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Scott:
Yep. Liars all. I’m not kidding–I could not believe that people who should have known better were saying this crap and I spent weeks trying to get someone to listen to me.
jnc: I’m not convinced they actually believed the WMDs were there. That they hoped they were there I have no doubt.
This was one of the shittiest intelligence “assessments” I’ve ever seen, jnc, and I’ve seen some questionable ones. Just never one that sent us to war before.
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Mich:
Liars all.
Why would Hillary, to take one example, lie about this?
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Michi, I’m not understanding your position. Everybody, including the D’s Scott cited knew there were no WMD’s? Were they expecting Bush to plant evidence and ended up being surprised when he didn’t? If they were not 100% convinced there were no WMD’s how could they be lying. Lying, as Scott cited, requires knowledge of the actual truth.
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Scott:
I don’t know.
All I know is that, based on the briefings I’d been giving 10 years earlier and open source documents I knew the whole WMD thing was bullshit. I could refer you to my family and friends, who almost all thought I’d gone crazy about this, or show you receipts for plane tickets and hotels for the trips I took to DC to cool my heels in congressional offices (Bob Bennett did talk to me, but I’m sure that was only out of politeness since his daughter-in-law worked for my husband). I don’t know why they lied, but they did, or they allowed themselves to be persuaded to something that was wrong. God knows Democrats have been trying to prove that they’ve got balls ever since Vietnam.
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Lying, as Scott cited, requires knowledge of the actual truth.
Or an unwillingness to harbor alternate evidence.
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“This was one of the shittiest intelligence “assessments” I’ve ever seen, jnc, and I’ve seen some questionable ones. Just never one that sent us to war before.”
Are you referring to the public one from 2003 or something you personally saw in 1991?
With regard to the 2003 assessment, the piece on nuclear weapons was unsubstantiated by the available facts. However, chemical was a known fact prior to the war as was biological based on the information uncovered by the inspectors after the defection of Hussein Kamel al-Majid.
On WMD’s, there were two fundamental questions that boiled down to judgement calls:
1. Saddam failed to account for the known stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that he destroyed in secret. Should he get the benefit of the doubt when there wasn’t conclusive evidence that they had either been destroyed or were still hidden in Iraq?
2. Was the possible retention of chemical and biological weapons in violation of the 1991 cease fire agreement a sufficient casus belli to justify a military invasion to force compliance with the cease fire agreement?
From a political timing standpoint, the best opportunity for a “clean” invasion was in 1998 when he expelled the inspectors and Clinton retaliated with the bombing campaign that was Desert Fox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Iraq_%28December_1998%29
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“Michigoose, on April 2, 2013 at 12:22 pm said:
Lying, as Scott cited, requires knowledge of the actual truth.
Or an unwillingness to harbor alternate evidence.”
Under that definition, every time CBO botches a budget estimate, they are lying.
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“Michigoose, on April 2, 2013 at 12:17 pm said:
Scott:
I don’t know.
All I know is that, based on the briefings I’d been giving 10 years earlier and open source documents I knew the whole WMD thing was bullshit.”
How? After 1991 the inspectors found real WMD’s in Iraq. Chemical and biological.
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The Bush administration didn’t “lie” about WMD’s. The truth is much more complicated and in some ways more dangerous.
After 9/11 all known threats were reevalauted under Cheney’s 1% doctrine. If there was even a 1% chance that Saddam had WMD’s, then it had to be treated as a certainty in terms of a US response.
The only reason this looks excessive/crazy in hindsight is that there hasn’t been a successful mass causality attack on the US since 9/11. People also tend to forget the role of the anthrax mailings to the Capitol right after 9/11 in causing a shift in how these attacks are viewed from an acceptable threat standpoint.
If there is ever another successful attack like this, the 1% doctrine will make a comeback.
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jnc: This is, as I’m sure you’ve noticed a very, very sore point with me. The 2002/2003 intelligence assessments on Iraq were very little more than political wet dreams. Based on what I personally saw when I was giving the intel briefings and what I saw reported in 2003 there was no there there.
Saddam Hussein, quite simply, had no WMDs when we invaded–and that had to be known at some level and the decision was made to go in anyway.
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Mich:
Based on what I personally saw when I was giving the intel briefings…
When was that? And what was the intel?
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“and that had to be known at some level and the decision was made to go in anyway.”
No it didn’t. You can’t prove a negative, especially when Saddam was trying to keep up appearances to avoid having Iran take advantage of his weakness.
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“People also tend to forget the role of the anthrax mailings to the Capitol right after 9/11 in causing a shift in how these attacks are viewed from an acceptable threat standpoint.”
that resulted in a huge pain in the ass. couldn’t hand deliver stuff letters and stuff. at least you couldn’t back when i was at the bottom of the pole and did such work.
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You can’t prove a negative
You’re right. And I’ve read/watched/listened to every interview and analysis I could get my hands on, and I’ve still never been convinced that we went to war with Iraq to get rid of their WMD.
We went to war with Iraq because, for whatever reason, it was the judgement of people within the Bush administration that we should. The fact that 10 years later they’re trying to change the reason we went to war is telling.
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To return to lmsinca’s linked piece, the entire idea of all of the writers that were listed supporting the war due to career concerns I find to be simply chest thumping by someone who believes he “got it right” and now wishes to disparage the others.
In Christopher Hitchens case, I believe the charge is pure crap. This is worth a reread:
I wish Hitchens was around today to pen a column in response.
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I love Hitchen’s writing here as a tribute to this young man’s bravery but I don’t believe it absolved him of his part in sending him there. My wish is that the voices that tried to put a stop to it, and IMO did have it right, would have been heard.
Look, I’ve seen bravery in the men I love who volunteered to do their duty to country with no reservation whatsoever. My own husband could have gotten a medical deferment and missed Vietnam, but he decided instead to just go. My father counted down the number of missions with great passion but unmistakable courage flying over Hitler’s Germany. They were both lucky and survived, but that doesn’t absolve the men and women who send these soldiers or support the war from having a stake in it.
I can’t tell what Hitchens really felt about himself in this piece other than immeasurably proud of Daily and his family, but his first instinct was guilt. That the family and Daily himself seemed to not countenance his feeling doesn’t mean it just vanishes.
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I’m sorry you don’t like the Hedge’s piece but I thought it was important to remind ourselves that our fearless leaders in government, as well as the press, don’t always have our best interests in their hearts, and also that a moving train is difficult to stop. As we may be facing the prospect of war again in my lifetime, I’d like to remember that and think that I would be true to my convictions at least, even if others aren’t.
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When was that? And what was the intel?
I would’ve thought this was obvious. Early 90s leading up to and including Desert Storm itself and a year or so afterwards.
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Mich:
Early 90s leading up to and including Desert Storm itself and a year or so afterwards.
Don’t we know definitively that, at that point, he did indeed have WMD? I thought the UN inspectors actually oversaw the destruction of WMD’s through the mid 90’s. If that is the case, I am trying to understand what kind of intel you could possibly have had from ’91 and ’92 that you could use to know beyond all doubt that he did not have them in 2003.
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Yes, but to return to your piece, I don’t believe this is a fair description of Hitchens:
“America’s Sell Out Intellectuals and the Perks They Get”
Hitchens didn’t advocate in favor of the war in Iraq because of his desire to get establishment approval. He believed it was the right thing to do.
My take on Hitchens from the Vanity Fair piece was that he was putting a face on the consequences of the policy he had been advocating for, but that’s ultimately a reflection of the premise that words matter, ideas are important, and that he should endeavor to go about his writing with a dose of humility which isn’t always his first instinct, not that he was wrong per se on Iraq.
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“I would’ve thought this was obvious. Early 90s leading up to and including Desert Storm itself and a year or so afterwards.”
Then if the intel said that they had WMD’s then it was correct. Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that were located and documented by the inspectors following the first Gulf War.
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jnc, but according to the piece he also held those with the opposing view as virtually less than human. The point is that people like him shut the debate down, the one we needed to have as a country.
I liked Hitchens as well, along with a number of others on the list. All it proves is that we’re human and need to be more careful next time, as there undoubtedly will be a next time. Humility is different than humanity. I wish he would have said he was wrong on Iraq, maybe he wanted to say so but couldn’t bring himself to. You’re more familiar with his ideas and writing than I am.
Anyway, I think there are problems with the Hedges piece, you’ve convinced me of that, but I still find a lot of value there. I rarely read something I agree with entirely and enjoyed our conversation dissecting it, except for the “pure crap” part…..hahaha
I’m trying to find my way back here at least in part, and you’re helping me out, so I appreciate it.
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“jnc, but according to the piece he also held those with the opposing view as virtually less than human.”
I didn’t see any evidence of that from any of Hitchens writings prior to the war. He mostly characterized them as being overly naive or blind to the moral cost of leaving Saddam in power. Here’s a good example:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/11/restating_the_case_for_war.html
Scott brought up before how Tony Blair made a similar case on why it was imperative for the members of the Labor party to support the war based on the principles on which Labor was founded:
To dismiss these people as hacks and liars is too glib and a cop out. It allows people, especially elected politicians, to avoid taking any responsibility for examining their own premises and simply say well Bush fooled us so there was nothing we could do and we aren’t responsible.
Blair today:
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“Anyway, I think there are problems with the Hedges piece, you’ve convinced me of that, but I still find a lot of value there. I rarely read something I agree with entirely and enjoyed our conversation dissecting it, except for the “pure crap” part…..hahaha
I’m trying to find my way back here at least in part, and you’re helping me out, so I appreciate it.”
No problem. The piece is definitely worth reading so thanks for linking it, and it’s a good summation of the current conventional wisdom on the left, but I simply disagree with the premise that every pundit or writer who supported the case for war in Iraq is automatically a dishonest hack who has sold out.
It’s a little too “Holier than thou”.
I will however happily concede that Thomas Friedman is a hack but that’s based on the entirety of his work and not Iraq specifically.
As a fair trade, I offer up this Matt Taibbi take on David Brooks:
“Same-Sex Marriage Makes David Brooks Crazy
POSTED: April 2, 11:02 AM ET”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/same-sex-marriage-makes-david-brooks-crazy-20130402
I think this observation is spot on:
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jnc:
You snipped off the most ironic line in that whole Taibbi piece:
What an asshole!
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I haven’t read “A Long Short War”, never thought I could take that many pages of Hitchens, but maybe you have? Here’s the conclusion of a review for what it’s worth. Tony Blair is a whole different story IMO. I don’t know enough about him but I do remember him saying that the idea all along was to depose Saddam Hussein but we would have to persuade the UN we were doing it for the right reasons, or something along those lines. Another “end justifies the means” character? I don’t know. but I do remember having more faith in him than Bush at the time so I was disappointed he went along with it. I also trusted Powell more than Bush and we all know how well that turned out. All different issues than the one at hand really.
That he makes a stirring case for regime change is undeniable, but he offers few, if any, concrete suggestions for its execution. Unfortunately, he, like Tony Blair, has relied too much on a glib “just you wait” line on WMDs, and may have overestimated the likelihood of arousing a different kind of righteous humanitarian anger from the “peaceniks.” He would have been better off courting the “blithering ex-flower children” than insulting their intelligence.
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hbr/issues/5.2summer03/articles/hitchens.shtml
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Thanks for the Taibbi piece, I hadn’t read that one yet. Better you than me……….hahaha
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On a related subject, I’m going to assume that most posters here would oppose intervening in Syria, especially with any ground troops.
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Heh, just realized you quoted the Blair statement a couple of comments ago, I guess I didn’t read the whole thing.
I’ll read Taibbi and then I’m done with politics for the day.
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Keep the Syrians fighting eachother
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Scott:
Anything he had we’d destroyed or had in our own possession. It ain’t that hard.
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Mich:
Anything he had we’d destroyed or had in our own possession. It ain’t that hard.
According to this PBS timeline, as late as 1994 UN inspectors were still destroying chemical weapons and production equipment, as well as Nuclear weapons facilities. So, of if I have your timeline right, we know definitively that WMD still existed in Iraq for at least 2 years after you were involved. And 3 years after you were involved, in 1995, Iraq admitted to having a “far more developed biological weapons program” than had been previously known, ie during your time.
So, given that we know for a fact that not everything was destroyed while you were still involved, and we also know for a fact that, during your time, we did not know the full extent of Iraqs biological weapons program, I remain baffled by your certainty that what happened during your time there is definitive, and anything contrary to what you “knew” during your time is therefore a “lie”.
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Scott, since it’s abundantly clear that I have never known shit as far as you’re concerned, go right ahead with your clear-headed analysis.
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Mich:
Scott, since it’s abundantly clear that I have never known shit as far as you’re concerned, go right ahead with your clear-headed analysis.
I’m not questioning what you know, I’m only questioning the rationale behind your judgement that most of the government was “lying” in the run up to the war. It just doesn’t make sense to me to assume that whatever determinations were made in ’91 or ’92 could not have been reasonably altered by subsequent information that you were not privy to after your departure.
In case it’s escaped you, I was right.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean that those who were wrong we’re lying, as jnc has already pointed out.
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Oh, and by the way.
In case it’s escaped you, I was right. Think about that. I was right.
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I think Taibbi’s point is valid. Trying to construe giving gays the right to get married as somehow a victory for restricting freedom is just absurd.
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jnc:
I think Taibbi’s point is valid.
Perhaps. I’ve got no brief for Brooks. But I still think seeing Taibbi call someone else an asshole over what that someone else wrote in a column is pretty ironic.
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JNC, did you read Brooks’ column? It stands on its own merits. Either you think marriage is a valid building block of our culture and society or you don’t, but marriage clearly is a voluntary relinquishment of individual liberty.
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mark:
Either you think marriage is a valid building block of our culture and society or you don’t, but marriage clearly is a voluntary relinquishment of individual liberty.
I think marriage, as traditionally understood, has undoubtedly been a valuable building block of our culture, but I am not at all sure that means that marriage re-formulated to include same-sex couples will prove equally valuable. Again, I am curious about what value accrues to society by having homosexual couples form “teams”, to use your characterization from earlier.
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mark:
BTW, I totally agree with you/Brooks that marriage is a voluntary relinquishment of liberty. Outside of any possible financial advantage or as a strategy for raising children, I remain baffled by the desire of anyone (gay or straight) to voluntarily give up this liberty. If one is genuinely committed to another person, then there is no need to be married. Marriage is neither sufficient nor necessary for such a commitment to exist.
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Scott:
I was right at the time. There is no reason to think that I knew something that others, with far more access and far more business than I had to know it, didn’t. There were a lot of people who decided to either lie or look the other way. Given the outcome I think they lied.
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Mich:
There is no reason to think that I knew something that others, with far more access and far more business than I had to know it, didn’t.
I agree. That is precisely what drives my conclusion.
What seems most likely to me is that all of the politically diverse people who were all saying the same thing in 2002 were basing their judgements on information that they had access to but which you did not. That information turned out to be wrong, and therefore their judgements turned out to be wrong. Since you did not have access to this (incorrect, as it turns out) information, your judgements were not influenced by it and therefore your judgements turned out to be right.
The alternative is that between 1992 and 2002 no new intelligence information was ever produced to alter conclusions drawn in 1992, and that for mysterious reasons that even you cannot explain dozens of people all along the political spectrum, from Bush and Tenet to Clinton and Levin, not to mention intelligence agencies across the globe, from the US to the UK, all decided to “lie” about what they knew. This alternative just does not seem at all plausible to me, not least because I can think of no sensible reason why all of these people would choose to lie about it.
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Kelley, in 2003 I had a friend [now deceased] who taught at the Army War College. He told me, with somewhat less certainty, approximately what you are saying. He was clear that there was no military intelligence that would lead one to conclude Saddam could not be completely controlled by the joint USAF-RAF overflights. He was surprised by the Admin’s insistence that Saddam had built up his chem-bio warfare capability, but conceded that it was possible. He was absolutely certain there had been no nuclear weapons development. Further, he said toppling Saddam would give rise to a shiite dominated state in southern Iraq that would align, eventually, with Iran.
I was attentive to what persons who presumably had shared the actual intelligence were saying, not to pundits. I was finally convinced it was the right course by Blair’s extraordinary speech to Parliament, which PBS carried. Powell’s UN presentation also was persuasive to me at the time.
Because of my friend I had been skeptical. But my skepticism was overcome by listening to Powell and Blair, who surely knew more than my friend. In Blair’s case, the emphasis was not as much on WMD, of course.
My friend had been specific enough on the absence of any nuclear capability that I discounted Rice’s “mushroom cloud” talk and much of what Cheney told us as hype. But I finally supported the war.
Then the occupation strategy proved to be amateurish, a nightmare, and unaware of the realities on the ground, with the exception of Petraeus’ strategy in the north. I then favored our withdrawing from central Iraq and permitting the Kurdish state to develop, with our assistance.
The Brits seemed to have had some success in pacifying the south. The civil war was in the central provinces. Seemed to me to be not our concern. But I guess the Powell prescription that “we broke it so we had to buy it” took hold.
Lms, the article you linked to is not, in the end, helpful. If the persons with the power to select from first hand information choose to filter it through a 1% chance of harm lens then everything follows from that. Even my friend said there was more than a 1% chance Saddam had bio-chem weapons; in fact he said it was less than a 10% chance, and that there was no chance he could deploy them more than once.
The Iraq invasion was a terrible mistake and the occupation was a worse one. My friend, and other military folks, were generally more sober in their assessments than were the politicians. The overflight containment policy was working. No aggression by Saddam was plausible. At the last minute, under threat, Saddam invited inspectors, but GWB ignored that, for fear of losing a climate advantage as summer approached, from what I recall. Canada had budgeted $2B for their initial involvement in the invasion, but when Saddam invited the inspections, Canada refused to join us, at that last week.
Sons of friends and two young men for whom I was Trustee served there honorably, and everyone I knew who was in ground combat did come home with at worst, minor wounds. One of my two beneficiaries survived Fallujah only to die in 2010 as a NH motorcycle cop. His brother wrote me in 2007 that “these people hate us”.
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I’m not very concerned with whether people thought the Hedges piece was helpful or not. It was just one man’s proposition that there wasn’t enough dialogue allowed against the invasion. The people reporting the news to those of us who didn’t have any sort of inside military or intelligence track available to us were really at the mercy of the war hawks. He also proposes that all of the people on his list should have known better. I don’t know if that’s true or not but it’s worth pondering as we face a still troubled Middle East. Who will we trust this time?
We were told about the so-called weapons of mass destruction and that there was some sort of nebulous link between Iraq and 9/11, neither of which ended up being true. People like me, who are out of the inside loop tend to look for people we trust to give us the news and convince us of what is the correct way forward in these kinds of weighty decisions. We were let down.
I am sure that if my husband or my son were at an age to enlist they both probably would have, and as such, I would have been a very unhappy and disillusioned wife or mother if something had happened to them knowing what I think I know now. I also would have been very proud of them because they served when they were asked, and believed they were doing the right thing. I think the two can co-exist as Hitchins discovered for himself.
I believe sending troops into hostile territory was taken too lightly in the case of Iraq and the costs in blood and treasure were too high, but like many people I was not sure if that was the case when we went in. I would have liked a much broader debate so I wouldn’t have been so swayed by the Powells and Blairs that it was necessary, and it makes me sad and sometimes angry that we were either lied to or mislead.
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“I am sure that if my husband or my son were at an age to enlist they both probably would have, and as such, I would have been a very unhappy and disillusioned wife or mother if something had happened to them knowing what I think I know now”
My knee jerk reaction after 9/11 (I was 23) was to go to USMC* officer candidates school. But the more I thought about it, joining the military out of anger seemed like a bad idea.
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unless you believe it’s a sacrament.
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nova:
unless you believe it’s a sacrament.
I don’t, but yes, that is another explanation for the desire, at least among Christian heterosexuals.
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Scott, I am simply assuming that SSM will generally have a stabilizing effect, extrapolating from OSM. There may be statistical studies but I have never looked for one. You could be right. It might be different for SS couples. I just would not assume that.
Lms, I will re-read Brooks’ column with a more critical eye for his condescension. He has certainly been guilty of it before.
Finally, something Scott wrote raises the potential of irony. Many years ago, D.P. Moynihan wrote a famous study that indicated that children born out of wedlock tended to have great problems as they matured, and were a problem for society. He warned against the trend away from marriage. By 1990, some significant % of white middle class kids were not born to married couples. Yet, society managed to hobble along. Now marriage in Scandinavia has become somewhat passe, yet their society hobbles along.
Perhaps just as we are entering a “post-marriage” culture homosexuals are entering a “marriage” culture.
Just speculating, like Brooks and Taibbi, without facts.
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mark:
Scott, I am simply assuming that SSM will generally have a stabilizing effect, extrapolating from OSM.
I understand, or at least think I do, the value to society of “stabie” family units, but that value derives from the raising of children. I really don’t understand what presumed or hoped-for benefits might be attached to “stable” couples without children.
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Scott- one of the drivers for SSM at the personal and not the “legal battle for our rights” level is the ability to raise a kid or two in a two parent committed family. That is what I see here in Austin with its demographically young population, anyway. Whether it is through a natural childbirth for a woman or an adoption for a man, there is as much recognition that two parents working together are a stronger basis for the child[ren] than one, all else equal, among homosexuals as among heterosexuals.
Justice Kennedy referred to 40K kids in CA who had a stake in whether their parents were considered “married”.
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mark:
one of the drivers for SSM at the personal and not the “legal battle for our rights” level is the ability to raise a kid or two in a two parent committed family.
There is nothing about SSM that enables people to do this. They can do it without being married. What marriage does, at least ostensibly (and why it is valuable to society), is that it makes it more difficult to stop raising a kid in a two parent family should those parents cease to be committed to each other. This is one way in which Brooks was right…marriage does not increase freedom, it restricts it.
It would be interesting to know the percentages of SSM couples who are raising children together. I have no idea whether it is high or low. Anecdotally, I have two personal friends who are each in (separate) long-term same sex relationships. Neither are married (only 1 lives in a SSM state) and neither has shown any interest, as far as I have seen, in raising children.
I’d also be interested in knowing the divorce rate among SSM couples, although it is perhaps too early in the process to draw any meaningful comparisons.
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mark:
Many years ago, D.P. Moynihan wrote a famous study that indicated that children born out of wedlock tended to have great problems as they matured, and were a problem for society. He warned against the trend away from marriage. By 1990, some significant % of white middle class kids were not born to married couples. Yet, society managed to hobble along. Now marriage in Scandinavia has become somewhat passe, yet their society hobbles along.
Something about this didn’t seem quite right to me when I first read it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Now I can.
I think the relevance of Moynihan’s study had do with kids raised in the absence of two parents, not kids raised by two parents who didn’t happen to have a marriage certificate. And while it may be true that marriage has become passé in Scandinavia, is it also true that two parent households have also become passé without any deleterious effects on the culture? I don’t know, but I doubt it.
I’m not sure how relevant this is to your point about a post-marriage culture, but to whatever extent you were suggesting that Moynihan was wrong (we’ve managed to “hobble along”), I think you would have a hard time actually establishing it. I think that the demise of two parent households, particularly among the less-than-wealthy, has been shown to be a real societal problem, just as Moynihan suggested it would be.
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Point taken.
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Personally, after reading Brooks’ piece I thought it was pretty condescending to gays and lesbians as well as a very shallow definition of freedom and marriage.
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Outside of any possible financial advantage
That’s a pretty big but. The entire financial structure of retirement and health care benefits is structured around marriage. Divorced spouses are able to lay claim to former spouses SS benefits. Try that under a roommate agreement.
Even outside actual cash, the implicit powers of attorney that a spouse has are very difficult if not impossible outside of marriage. It’s a very powerful institution.
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From a traditional standpoint, as a woman who gave up her own career to raise five children, I would be lost without the benefits of marriage. While I worked and volunteered I never was able to find that sweet spot some women seem to be able to find to have a fulfilling independent career and still provide the stability and allotment of time I felt was necessary to successfully raise our children. I suppose that’s pretty old fashioned of me.
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lms:
I suppose that’s pretty old fashioned of me.
Sounds sensible to me.
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Libertarians, Brooks is not on your side:
The way he describes marriage, why would straight men want it either?
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unless you believe it’s a sacrament.
Nobody is making The Church (or any of its brethren) recognize gay marriages. Yet. Sacramental marriages exist in this parallel bookkeeping already and there are plenty of civil marriages which aren’t recognized. It’s how serial adulterer Newt Gingrich can get married for his third time in a Church which doesn’t officially recognize divorce.
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why would straight men want it either?
b/c it’s a sacrament. 🙂
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The way he describes marriage, why would straight men want it either?
I thought the same thing and wondered what his wife, assuming he’s married, thought of his piece.
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@yellojkt: “The way he describes marriage, why would straight men want it either?”
I’ve been married for 20 years and I often ask myself the same question. 😉
I would figure straight folks would be all like: “Oh, totally, gay marriage, all the way. You guys will find out how awesome it is. Totally, you should all get married. It’s the best. Totally.”
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but yellow is right, brooks is no libertarian. statist to the core.
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@yellojkt: “Divorced spouses are able to lay claim to former spouses SS benefits. Try that under a roommate agreement.”
And a great many marriages are effectively operating at the level of legally bound roommates. Most divorces spring from marriages where the partners had been, essentially, legally (and morally) bound roommates for a long time. I certainly don’t see much argument against giving homosexuals, or even roommates, the ability to enter the same sort of legal contract via civil unions or some such thing.
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@novahockey: “brooks is no libertarian. statist to the core.”
Big government conservative, or moderate, except when he’s trying to find a contrarian angle.
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i’m glad you (Kevin) and LMS are back. off to a meeting
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@ScottC: ” I remain baffled by the desire of anyone (gay or straight) to voluntarily give up this liberty. If one is genuinely committed to another person, then there is no need to be married. Marriage is neither sufficient nor necessary for such a commitment to exist.”
It’s a formal recognition of the commitment, and most people get married at a young age when they aren’t really thinking through the commitment they are making. People who get married when they are mature are either “settling down”, how found the perfect partner, or are just incurable optimists, like Elizabeth Taylor.
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@lmsinca: “I believe sending troops into hostile territory was taken too lightly in the case of Iraq and the costs in blood and treasure were too high”
I don’t think it was taken too lightly, I think it was taken too optimistically. I think they knew what the costs would be in blood and treasure, but it was worth it to both project power in a way that would demonstrate our seriousness as regards to other countries sponsoring terrorism or creating their own weapons of mass destruction (looking at Libya, Iran), and in order to free the people of Iraq from tyranny and perhaps plan the seeds of Democracy in the middle east, out of both example and out of fear that other despots might be next.
I just think it was insanely optimistic to believe that any investment of blood and treasure would accomplish the goals, and also that the effort wouldn’t be fatally undermined at home.
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Our oldest daughter, 33, may never marry her boyfriend and I’m still not sure how I feel about that. She won’t have children so I can understand her position but I think she is being stubborn. Both our son and nephew are married, our son at age 31 and he adopted his wife’s six year old daughter at the time, and our nephew for the first time at age 38. My niece made it to 30 without marrying but wanted to someday, and of course she never had the chance.
The youngest, at 31, has finally fallen in love again after being engaged at 21. Her fiance was killed in a motorcycle accident two weeks before they graduated college. She went on to embark on a lot of education and a career and now is employed by the oil industry in Denver, making bank. She and her boyfriend seem to be developing a very unconventional relationship, where she will be the primary bread winner and his income will be secondary. At least that’s the way it stands now. She and I have been having some very interesting discussions lately, as you might imagine.
My husband and I have been happily married for 35 years next month (my first marriage only lasted two years), he was 30 and I was 28. We were just talking the other day about which one of us we wanted to die first……………..hahaha. For the first time I finally understood what my father meant when he said he wanted my mother to die first because he wanted to take care of her. We are attached at the hip and can’t imagine our lives any other way.
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Kevin
I don’t think it was taken too lightly, I think it was taken too optimistically
Even more reason then for the voices against the invasion to project a louder voice against the stupidity. Undermined at home how? Bush even got his surge.
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Kevin
I think they knew what the costs would be in blood and treasure
I don’t know if that’s true. I remember hearing at the time that it would be a quick event and the new oil revenues would virtually pay for the war. I can’t read their minds but their words and actions didn’t really indicate they were prepared for a long drawn out affair or the costs. Remember taxes were actually lowered rather than raised to pay for the war effort.
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NoVA
Thanks, kevin’s coming back has something to do with my attempt to come back. We’ll see.
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“She went on to embark on a lot of education and a career and now is employed by the oil industry in Denver, making bank.”
excellent. I’ve got family in the refinery business.
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Funny Nova, her boyfriend is a very well educated geo-physicist making about half of what she’ll make this year before year end bonuses. He’s been cooking dinner, running errands and walking the dog because her hours are longer…….hahahaha. She never imagined being in this position and I doubt he did either as she was still a poor grad student when they met. Luckily he’s not threatened by her success and teasingly calls her his “sugar baby”.
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With R. still working full time and me having cut way back, I am experiencing the “sugar baby” life, too. Now I want her to cut back, too. I think we can easily afford it, but R. is a CPA…
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nothing wrong with that. my wife got promoted and I told her i’d spend my days the the with the little guy, and working out at the gym to be her arm candy.
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“markinaustin, on April 3, 2013 at 6:46 am said:
JNC, did you read Brooks’ column? It stands on its own merits. Either you think marriage is a valid building block of our culture and society or you don’t, but marriage clearly is a voluntary relinquishment of individual liberty.”
I was agreeing with Taibbi’s point that giving gays the option of getting married doesn’t restrict their freedom.
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jnc:
I was agreeing with Taibbi’s point that giving gays the option of getting married doesn’t restrict their freedom.
Yesterday I didn’t bother reading Brooks’ column, so I couldn’t really comment on Taibbi other than to point out the irony of him calling someone, indeed anyone, else an asshole. But I have since read it and, unsurprisingly, it turns out Taibbi has completely misrepresented Brooks. In the first place the ironic “point” to which he reduces Brooks’ entire column was not at all the main gist of it. He then goes on to attack a strawman, pretending that Brooks’ point rested on the notion that gays and lesbians were being “forced” to get married, when of course Brooks neither said nor relied upon any such notion. He even pretends to read Brooks’ secret thoughts, pretending his words imply racial (if not racist) sentiments that simply do not exist in what was actually said.
As is his wont, Taibbi simply makes things up to make it easier for him to perform his schtick. And thereby deepens the enduring mystery of why a sensible person like yourself ever wastes a single minute of his day on this deceitful, ignorant, er, asshole.
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One great thing to come out of SSM will be if SSD (Same Sex Divorce) prompts a complete reevaluation of the laws governing who is expected to pay and how much when a marriage ends.
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“lmsinca, on April 3, 2013 at 9:24 am said:
Kevin
I think they knew what the costs would be in blood and treasure
I don’t know if that’s true. I remember hearing at the time that it would be a quick event and the new oil revenues would virtually pay for the war. I can’t read their minds but their words and actions didn’t really indicate they were prepared for a long drawn out affair or the costs. Remember taxes were actually lowered rather than raised to pay for the war effort.”
I’ll side with lmsinca on this one. The Wolfowitz testimony on the costs of the war coupled with the treatment of Shinseki when he presented a more sober assessment is the best argument for the idea that critics were being silenced, marginalized or retaliated against.
One of the big problems with trying to draw lessons from the Iraq war is the conflation of how we got into it with the way that the post invasion occupation was handled. The two are separate issues and one was not determined by the other.
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“lmsinca, on April 3, 2013 at 8:18 am said:
I never was able to find that sweet spot some women seem to be able to find to have a fulfilling independent career and still provide the stability and allotment of time I felt was necessary to successfully raise our children. I suppose that’s pretty old fashioned of me.”
No it’s not. It’s intelligent and wise. Life involves trade-offs and setting priorities, not “having it all”.
I still love Jack Welch’s advice:
“There is no such thing as work/life balance. There are work/life choices, you make them and they have consequences.”
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For about the first ten years we were married I was the bread winner, and it was fine.
I don’t think it’s nearly the big deal now that it was then (part of that time I was on active duty, and the officers’ wives club really didn’t know what to do with Brian).
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Michi, were you able to resolve the issue with the old car loan?
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I think Brooks was too cute by half to frame this as a “wonderful recent defeat for the cause of personal freedom.”
See the title of his piece:
“Freedom Loses One
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 1, 2013”
And this paragraph:
“But last week saw a setback for the forces of maximum freedom. A representative of millions of gays and lesbians went to the Supreme Court and asked the court to help put limits on their own freedom of choice. They asked for marriage.”
And this is just wrong:
“Whether they understood it or not, the gays and lesbians represented at the court committed themselves to a certain agenda. ”
No they didn’t. They just wanted the option that many of them may never exercise. I suspect in many ways it’s a symbolic issue about being treated equally before the law, not a burning desire to go out and get married.
I don’t think that is an accurate framing at all for the reason that Taibbi cited, in his own special way.
P.S. Also:
“The proponents of same-sex marriage used the language of equality and rights in promoting their cause, because that is the language we have floating around.”
Nope. They used that language because that’s what they believe the issue is about.
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jnc:
I think Brooks was too cute by half to frame this as a “wonderful recent defeat for the cause of personal freedom.”
I wouldn’t defend Brooks’ column in its entirety. But Taibbi was neither honest nor fair in his criticisms.
I also think you need to take Brooks’ use of the word “freedom” in the context that he explicitly presented it. He did not mean freedom in a strictly libertarian, absence of coercion sense. He meant, as he put it, ” at liberty…to follow their desires, unhampered by social convention, religious and ethnic traditions and legal restraints.”
I also think, as I have alluded to with Mark, there is little in the way of actual new freedom of action that comes with marriage. In point of fact, the institution exists precisely to act as a restraint on action that one is otherwise free to engage in, not to grant freedom of action that one is otherwise unable to engage in.
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jnc:
BTW, on this:
I suspect in many ways it’s a symbolic issue about being treated equally before the law, not a burning desire to go out and get married.
I suspect it is symbolic as well, but I think it has a lot more to do with social legitimacy and official acceptance of a particular sexual preference than it does with being treated equally before the law.
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To one and all:
I am curious….apart from government granted privileges, such as being exempt from the estate tax or with regard to Social Security payments, what “rights” will SSM bestow that are not already bestowed in the absence of SSM?
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jnc:
Yes, although it had nothing to do with a loan–it was that my name was still on the title. I got a call from the insurance company on Monday confirming that I had nothing to do with the accident or any claims on Brian’s estate.
Plus, I got news today that I may have landed a job. April might just have to become my favorite month–we’ll see!
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LMS — you posted a link about guns and liberty the other day. can you repost?
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I would Nova if I had a little more to go on. Do you remember anything else about it?
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it was basically “hey, some people really believe that owning a gun makes them free”
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I don’t think it was me Nova, I’ve pretty much stayed away from the gun debate other than putting a few statistics out there regarding women and gun violence and my own personal fear of guns. I think it was someone else’s link or I’ve completely forgotten it…………..sorry.
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“Michigoose, on April 3, 2013 at 2:15 pm said:
Plus, I got news today that I may have landed a job. April might just have to become my favorite month–we’ll see!”
Where at?
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hmm. okay. could have sworn it was you. no problem. thanks!
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Nova, okay I lied. After searching my comments from the PL for the past week or so, I found this one.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/28/america-under-the-gun/
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I just read it again and I think that’s the one you’re looking for.
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that’s the one! i thought it was a great link
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I don’t know if I’d consider it a good link but I think it’s realistic and highlights just why increased gun laws or regulation, or whatever you want to call it, is essentially doomed. I think I forgot it because it pretty much just confirmed what I already knew and have known for years. I let my hopes be slightly elevated and can’t even remember why now.
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The one sentence version of that is the right bear arms is what separates a citizen from a subject.
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“increased gun laws or regulation, or whatever you want to call it, is essentially doomed.”
They aren’t. You can draw a clean distinction between regulations to keep guns out of the wrong hands vs preventing the law abiding from owning weapons.
Expanding background checks has a reasonable chance. Assault weapons or magazine bans, not so much.
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Hmmmmm, as far as I know no one is trying to take that right away but it makes a great propaganda tool for the NRA. My roots go back to the wild west and the Revolutionary war so I get it.
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“I’m not sure how relevant this is to your point about a post-marriage culture, but to whatever extent you were suggesting that Moynihan was wrong (we’ve managed to “hobble along”), I think you would have a hard time actually establishing it. I think that the demise of two parent households, particularly among the less-than-wealthy, has been shown to be a real societal problem, just as Moynihan suggested it would be.”
Charles Murray adopted a similar thesis with Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. He specifically limited it to caucasians to avoid the race issue.
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“ScottC, on April 3, 2013 at 4:17 pm said:
To one and all:
I am curious….apart from government granted privileges, such as being exempt from the estate tax or with regard to Social Security payments, what “rights” will SSM bestow that are not already bestowed in the absence of SSM?”
De facto power of attorney, especially in regards to medical issues, but that may be the same thing that you mean by “government granted privileges”.
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jnc:
but that may be the same thing that you mean by “government granted privileges”.
It is. It seems to me that the government grants two kinds of privileges to married people. One is what I would call privileges of assumption or convenience. That is, they are privileges that one can grant to anyone, but which the state assumes have been granted to a spouse in the absence any contrary indications. De facto power of attorney over health issues would seem to be of this sort. You can assign power of attorney to pretty much anyone you want, but you’d have to go through the usual legal steps of doing so, whereas with a spouse you can conveniently skip the usual legal steps, as it is assumed.
The other kind of privilege is a special privilege granted only to married people, and which cannot be granted to anyone else. Exemption from the estate tax upon the death of a spouse is such a privilege.
I don’t think either of these types of government granted privileges can be construed to be discriminatory against same-sex couples in the absence of SSM. In the case of privileges of assumption, they are available to anyone including those who are not married, and it is simply a matter of the process by which the privilege is obtained. If I want to give my brother power of attorney with regard to my health decisions, I can, and it is not a matter of discrimination or equality that the government doesn’t allow me to do it via “marrying” him.
In the case of special privileges, the government is actually discriminating in favor of a small group of people, not against those that do not get the privilege. The government doesn’t allow me to pass my estate to my daughter without paying the estate tax. Nor does it let me pass it to my brother without paying. If the state can legitimately and justly prevent me from “marrying” my brother or my daughter and thus escape the estate tax, why is it somehow illegitimate or unjust for the state to prevent two homosexuals from “marrying” each other and thus escape the estate tax?
Again, just to be clear, I am not particularly fussed about the seeming inevitability of SSM. But I don’t think the issue can sensibly be portrayed as one of equality before the law or unjust discrimination. Lots of relationships are denied the privileges that the government grants to traditional marriage relationships. Why should anyone consider the fact that same-sex sexual relationships are among them to be somehow uniquely or especially unjust?
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Scott, there are such a litany of things that I wouldn’t even know where to begin; getting/giving information at a doctor’s office, credit reporting, car ownership. . . if you think of trying to unwind your and your wife’s lives from each other that would be a partial list. The simple fact that nobody questions whether or not your daughters are your daughters when you call the school.
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Also the benefit/obligation of community property in several states, most notably TX and CA.
However, the Family Code of each state defines a list of obligations and benefits of the relationship. For example, in most states, each spouse is responsible for the necessities of the other. This is one way the state tries to create joint economic units that will be viable even when an individual economic unit is in trouble. There are many conveniences and obligations that apply under state and even local law that could be tailored into “domestic partnerships”, but they haven’t been, as far as I know. One common convenience is that in many states a spouse can take possession and title to a deceased spouse’s car without going to probate.
Scott, in TX it is a real pain in the ass for SS couples who live like spouses but cannot be, even though one of them can adopt children. I do think there is a more pragmatic side to this than either the legal fight or the desire to be “accepted”.
—-
What most of us here recognize is that there is a distinction between sanctified marriage and legal marriage, and we are only talking about changing legal marriage. The churches and synagogues and mosques are on their own, as someone has already posted.
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Mark:
What most of us here recognize is that there is a distinction between sanctified marriage and legal marriage, and we are only talking about changing legal marriage. The churches and synagogues and mosques are on their own, as someone has already posted.
Perhaps for now, but for how long? Religious clergy must be authorized by the state in order to perform a legally recognized marriage. If the state can force a Catholic Charities adoption agency to shut down for refusing to provide adoption services to same-sex couples, it can certainly refuse to authorize a priest who refuses to perform marriages for same-sex couples. In fact I would rate it a dead certainty that such is precisely what will eventually happen. And when it does, there will be people here cheering it on, just as they cheer on the federal government as it tries to force Catholic institutions to pay for birth control to which the church objects.
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Scott: Cannot happen.
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jnc:
Any where. But I’m moving to your neck of the woods.
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Mark: spot on. I was flabbergasted when I watched a couple of gay friends try to stitch together the quilt that is married life; they had to do it piece-by-piece and it was an amazing list. And nothing is taken for granted, the way it is for “normal” marriage (i.e., one acceptance does not naturally lead to another in the eyes of the law).
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One of the big problems with trying to draw lessons from the Iraq war is the conflation of how we got into it with the way that the post invasion occupation was handled. The two are separate issues and one was not determined by the other.
Quick summary. Feel free dispute any of these assumptions:
1. Neocons were dedicated to taking us to war under any pretext and the 9/11 attacks fit the bill.
2. When it became inconvenient to blame Hussein for al Qaeda, the WMD issue was invented pretty much whole cloth. Not that mattered.
3. We took all the wrong lessons from Gulf War I and assumed it would be easy and cheap.
4. The mistakes of occupation were based on the fallacies of the invasion. We misread the political situation. We put into power the wrong people. We read our own lies and believed them.
5. Turning over the occupation to doctrinaire hacks rather than professionals was the final straw.
6. Our occupation was doomed the moment the photos of prisoners being abused were released. We lost all moral authority and were doomed from that point on.
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Why should same-sex sexual relationships be denied the privileges that the government grants to traditional marriage relationships??
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Mich:
Why should same-sex sexual relationships be denied the privileges that the government grants to traditional marriage relationships??
Why should any relationship be denied such privileges? Why shouldn’t I be able to pass my estate on to my daughter or brother without paying the estate tax, if two men who have sex together are able to do so?
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No real argument from me, Scott. 🙂
I was curious to see if you had one. I think this is the second time we’ve agreed on something in less than a month–good heavens!!
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Mich:
No real argument from me, Scott.
So, just to be clear, you think that the estate tax should be eliminated. And you think that all governmental privileges granted to married persons should actually be granted to any two people who wish to have them, regardless of their relationship?
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No, I don’t think the estate tax should be eliminated.
If two people want to declare that their relationship is as legally binding as marriage is–for good and for ill–sure, the same privileges should be applied. Why not? There’s bad and ugly as well as good, as almost anyone who’s been through a divorce could tell you.
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Mich:
No, I don’t think the estate tax should be eliminated.
Then I don't understand why you think you agree with me. I will ask again…Why shouldn’t I be able to pass my estate on to my daughter or brother without paying the estate tax, if two men who have sex together are able to do so?
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I think her point is that you should be able to declare any one person as your “spouse” for legal purposes, regardless of who it is.
With regards to the estate tax, eliminating it, along with the stepped up basis, is the correct policy (with in the confines of an income tax system).
The sale of the asset becomes the taxable event, not death.
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jnc:
I think her point is that you should be able to declare any one person as your “spouse” for legal purposes, regardless of who it is.
Is it? If so, it seems we are in agreement, then, that the logic behind SSM does indeed lead inexorably to the elimination of literally any restrictions at all on which two people may or may not get “married”. If a brother and a sister, or a father and a daughter want to take advantage of the legal privileges granted to spouses, they should be allowed to get legally married. Are we all agreed on this?
This inevitability, of course, was precisely one of the arguments made against SSM by SSM opponents, and was routinely dismissed and mocked by many SSM advocates.
With regards to the estate tax, eliminating it, along with the stepped up basis, is the correct policy (with in the confines of an income tax system).
We agree on this, too.
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Ah, now I see what you’re asking.
Because your daughter and/or brother haven’t incurred the same legal responsibilities that a spouse has. The gender of your spouse is meaningless,
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Mich:
Because your daughter and/or brother haven’t incurred the same legal responsibilities that a spouse has.
They are not allowed to, by law. So do you agree that a person should be able to legally “marry” their daughter or brother?
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Scott – a state legislature could theoretically allow any two or more persons to marry. That won’t happen, not even in CA, for minors, or incest, or polyandry.
As I have written here before, I do not think the Federal Constitution requires that SSM be permitted. If it does in the future, based on an equal rights argument that has yet to have been accepted by the Court, I do not see how that equal rights argument can be expanded beyond the suspect classifications.
But, sure, a state could allow incestuous marriage. We do have an old precedent on polygamy from the Supremes, of course.
Yes, I think the slippery slope arguments in this arena are vacuous.
As for the state defining what is, for instance, a RC marriage, the First Amendment bars that. Should a state lege tell RCs or Jews or any religious order that they cannot perform weddings according to their religion then the Supremes would erase that legislation.
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Mark:
a state legislature could theoretically allow any two or more persons to marry. That won’t happen, not even in CA, for minors, or incest, or polyandry.
Perhaps not, but my question is why shouldn’t it? If SSM is a matter of equality before the law, as it’s proponents argue, then anyone who is denied the same rights/privileges are also being treated unequally before the law.
I do not see how that equal rights argument can be expanded beyond the suspect classifications.
Why? Why should two men who are having sex together be provided more protection from the constitution, and be granted more government privileges with regard to each other, than two brothers who are not having sex together?
Yes, I think the slippery slope arguments in this arena are vacuous.
I do not think I am making a slippery slope argument, vacuous or otherwise. I am not arguing that legalized SSM will inevitably lead to legalized incestuous marriages. I am simply saying that the equality and justice arguments, as they pertain to legal privileges the state grants to marriage participants, are no less applicable to non-sexual relationships than they are to sexual relationships. The fact that Tom and John are not related to each other and are having some kind of sex with each other does not make their exclusion from the state-granted privileges of marriage any more of an outrage to justice or equality than is the exclusion of Jane and Bill because they are related and are not having sex together.
At its core, marriage is about sexual relations, not about state-granted financial privileges. That is why there is such a visceral reaction against the notion of a brother and a sister ever getting legally married, and why, as you say, it will never happen. It is also why I think the whole SSM movement actually has a lot less to do with equality and justice with regard to obtaining state-granted privileges than it has to do with obtaining official and social sanction for a certain kind of sexual lifestyle.
As for the state defining what is, for instance, a RC marriage, the First Amendment bars that.
The issue is not defining what a RC marriage is, but rather defining what a legal marriage is. Under the first amendment a state cannot prevent a catholic priest from performing a ceremony he and his church call a marriage ceremony, but that doesn’t mean the state must recognize it as a legal marriage. Again, clergy must be authorized by the state in order to perform a marriage that will be recognized as legal by the state. In some states they even have to obtain state licenses. And there is nothing in the first amendment or anywhere else in the constitution that would prevent a state from requiring that anyone authorized to perform a legal marriage must do so in a non-discriminatory manner. And I fully expect that, once SSM becomes common, some legislator somewhere, probably in CA, will propose legislation that does exactly that.
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To all:
I am curious…among those of you who are supporters of SSM, who here agrees with Mich’s proposal that everyone should be able to declare one person as your “spouse” for legal purposes, regardless of who that person is?
Within the context of the arguments being made by SSM proponents, I think this is a perfectly sensible proposal, but I wonder if most SSM proponents agree.
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who here agrees with Mich’s proposal that everyone should be able to declare one person as your “spouse” for legal purposes, regardless of who that person is?
Nay.
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If SSM is a matter of equality before the law, as it’s proponents argue, then anyone who is denied the same rights/privileges are also being treated unequally before the law.
No. The equal rights argument is based on suspect classifications. Good buddy is not a suspect classification. The suspect classifications are embodied in statutes that Congress has written under its mandate to enable the 14th A. Could Congress make “Good Buddy” a suspect classification? Sure.
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Mark:
As always, you revert to what the law says while I am talking about what it should say. Could Congress remove homosexual partnerships from the list of “suspect” classifications? Sure. But that wouldn’t change whether or not denying same-sex couples the ability to marry is denying them equality before the law.
Congress declaring that it is OK to deny privileges to this classification but not that classification does not change whether or not either classification is being treated equally before the law.
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And, as usual, jnc does a better job of explaining my point.
I still wouldn’t get rid of the estate tax.
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I so enjoy when you talk past me, Scott.
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Mich:
I so enjoy when you talk past me, Scott.
I am responding to things as I see them, and jnc’s response came before yours. I am not talking past you.
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Currently the working definitions of a marriage imply sexual congress. Not consummating a marriage is grounds for annulment which essentially states the marriage never existed. In green card marriages, the ICE evaluators ask all sorts of intimate questions aimed at discerning whether or not there is an ongoing sexual relationship.
I’ve always joked that a marriage license is really a fucking license in that it designates the one person the state (or church in the case of religious ceremonies) designates as your official sexual partner for the rest of your life. In modern culture this is honored more in the breach, particularly in regards to pre-marital sex.
Dan Savage notes that many marriages become what he calls companionate when one of partners no longer wants to have sex. In those cases, Savage insists that the partner who wants to stay sexually active be given a kitchen pass to find outside pleasure while remaining faithfully married in all other respects. So he is saying as well that marriage is something other than just sex.
He is also a fan of various degrees of polyamory as long as all parties consent but his flavor of it involves primary partners and less permanent secondary partners or ‘special guest stars’ as he calls them.
As for Scott’s ‘perfectly sensible proposal’ (he is too modest to call it ‘modest’), the only downside I see is when one member of a familial or non-sexual marriage seeks romantic partners. The negotiations for romantic favors could be quite complicated if and when property rights come into play.
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yello:
Currently the working definitions of a marriage imply sexual congress.
Indeed. And in all places until recently, and even in most places still, they imply sexual congress between a man and a woman. If those definitions are going to be altered on equality grounds so as to eliminate the man and a woman aspect, why shouldn’t the whole sexual congress part also be eliminated on the same grounds? What interest does the state have in granting special privileges to people just because they are having sex together?
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In essence the SSM movement isn’t asking for anything other than what OS couples now have. They’re asking the government, state and federal, to redefine marriage in the narrow terms as between OS couples and SS couples. There is no large movement to redefine marriage as a contract between multiple partners, parent child partners, sibling partners or other ill advised couplings as one of the parameters of marriage is a sexual relationship. The movement has always been to redefine marriage to include only same sex couples. They view it as a matter of justice.
They’re not trying to redefine the estate tax laws or the tax code or anything else. They only want to have their marriage recognized in the same way the rest of us do. They have lobbied and fought and won enough people over now that a very large percentage of the population wants the same thing for them.
We’re redefining marriage to include them, we’re not redefining marriage for the rest of us or some far out fantasy as a contract between any two people who want to enter a marriage agreement.
To the extent that OS couples game the system for convenience or reasons other than as a committed lifetime sexual partnership, SS couples will do the same. But we need to remember that along with the legal benefits of a marriage come the legal responsibilities of marriage and so for most of us it’s not just a game. SS couples are no different in their understanding of marriage than the rest of us, they just want to be included.
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First, it is estimated that 20% of the world population are gay/lesbian. Not as small a minority as most believe.
I am heterosexual but I don’t have a problem with SSM. I do believe there is no reason they should remain in the closet and I do believe they should have all the same marriage rights as heterosexual marriages. And wanting those same rights is in no way asking to allow anyone to marry anyone, meaning they aren’t attempting to allow incest or beastiality.
Gay/Lesbians are just as good at parenting as the rest of us. And how they obtain their children are no different than heterosexuals who use medical processes to become pregnant or adopt. The American Academy of Pediatrics just completed a 4 year study on parenting of gay/lesbians and have determined gay/lesbian parents are just as good at parenting as any other set of parents. They believe children who have 2 parents in their lives, regardless of sexual orientation, are just as well off as any other children, and in some cases, do even better in schools.
Being in favor of SSM DOES NOT mean I am in favor of “anyone marring anyone” as that statement would include incest.
There are 1,138 benefits, rights and protections provided to traditional marriages that are not provided to SSM marriages. Enough said.
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Geanie:
Being in favor of SSM DOES NOT mean I am in favor of “anyone marring anyone” as that statement would include incest.
The question I am raising is…why aren’t you in favor of anyone marrying anyone? I understand the objection to incestuous sexual relationships, but the argument for SSM is not about sex. It is instead about granting government-provided privileges. Why should anyone be denied those privileges just because they aren’t having sex with the other person? Or, conversely, why should homosexuals be granted those privileges just because they happen to have sex with each other?
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Scott,
Basically, you’re not asking why can’t anyone marry anyone…. you’re actually asking why is it that married couples receive government-provided privileges that non-married people do not get.
IMHO, they should not. IMHO, any government-provided privilege should be for ALL citizens. For example, I don’t believe anyone should have to pay an inheritance tax as long as what they are inheriting is from a direct family member or spouse, regardless of sexual orientation or any other orientation. I base that on the fact that (hopefully) taxes were already paid on that inheritance at the time it was “originally obtained” by the person who has now passed away.
But for the current times, the discussion has been concerned with SSM and thus, that is what I have stuck my comments to.
Once people wake up and realize the tax code should be changed so that we all have the same rights, benefits and privileges, you can bet I will be there voting for it, right along beside you.
But for the moment, let’s see if we can at least take the first step and resolve this for SSM. You know things work here in the U.S….. one step at a time…. but I’m there to stand up for equality for all as we take each and every step.
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Here is a link that provides a summary of just a few of the most important rights/benefits/protections heterosexual marriages receive but SSM do not.
hrc.org/resources/entry/an-overview-of-federal-rights-and-protections-granted-to-married-couples
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@ScottC: “I am curious…among those of you who are supporters of SSM, who here agrees with Mich’s proposal that everyone should be able to declare one person as your “spouse” for legal purposes, regardless of who that person is?”
Well . . . while it would likely lead to many distasteful or foolish declarations, I suppose any two people should be allowed to enter a contract, past the age of consent. Or declare themselves in a union, if we recognize such unions as distinct relationships, if we allow people to declare themselves in sole proprietorships or whatnot without consideration to gender or sexual orientation.
I guess. My sense is that there are good reasons for marriage to be a heterosexual union, as demonstrated by the longevity of the institution as an opposite sex union between two people, where has other historical arrangements that might have included polygamy or incestual marriages or homosexual marriages have not endured with the same tenacity. However, the boundaries of such time-tested institutions are always pushed (that’s how they become time-tested!), and I think we’ve arrived at a point where it’s going to be tested, and same-sex marriage and civil unions, etc., will come into existence and broad, though not universal, acceptance. I expect the net outcome will be little real benefit to homosexuals and little real detriment to heterosexual marriage.
. . . speaking of which, anybody catch Modern Family last night, where Lily declared herself to be gay (because if somebody had Italian parents, they were Italian, so she had gay parents, so she was gay) . . . the scene at the Vietnamese restaurant was priceless. The comedic timing in that show is just unparalleled. The way Mitch kept trying to explain to Lily that “she was just confused” and kept realizing he sounded quasi-hompobic. It was just awesome. Such a well-crafted show.
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Geanie: “First, it is estimated that 20% of the world population are gay/lesbian. Not as small a minority as most believe.”
I’ve heard 10%. 20% seems high, unless we’re going to count every intoxicated young woman whose made out with another girl to the urging of one or numerous males. I went to art school, where being out and proud was a status symbol, and I don’t think more than 10% of that population was gay/lesbian.
“There are 1,138 benefits, rights and protections provided to traditional marriages”
Are you married? Also, have you seen Private Benjamin? Because irrespective of the issue of SSM, that just reminds me of the recruiter explaining to Goldie Hawn how joining the army was a lot like a spa and a vacation, all rolled into one. Turned out, not so much.
The primary benefit of legal marriage are rights of survivorship for SS and pensions. Automatic inheritance and power of attorney are also useful, but outside of specific spousal benefits that will not occur absent legal marriage, most of that can be solved with a living will and a last will an testament, joint accounts, etc. Which is not an argument against SSM . . . just sayin’ it ain’t the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or anything. The 1,138 benefits, right and protections (really? 1,138? Isn’t that stretching it a bit?) don’t add up to all that, IMO.
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Kevin, the 10% you are referring to are those who have come out of the closet, it is estimated that just as many have not, and we all know why they stay in the closet at this time. So I still stand by the estimated 20%.
Yes, I am married to a wonderful man.
I guess you are unaware that even Cobra does nothing for SSM but does for OSM.
I guess you are unaware that 179 Federal Tax Law benefits for OSM but do not apply to SSM.
I guess you are unaware that the Family and Medical Leave Act also does nothing for SSM.
I guess you are unaware that our immigration law does not allow lesbian and gay citizens or permanent residents to petition for their same-sex partners to immigrate
I guess you are unaware that marital status affects over 270 provisions dealing with current and retired federal employees, members of the Armed Forces, elected officials, and judges. Most significantly, under current law, domestic partners of federal employees are excluded from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).
I could go on and on, but how about you pull up the url I provided. Yes, there are literally more than 1,000 laws which provide benefits, rights and protections to OSM that SSM are ineligible for.
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@ScottC: “Perhaps not, but my question is why shouldn’t it? If SSM is a matter of equality before the law, as it’s proponents argue, then anyone who is denied the same rights/privileges are also being treated unequally before the law.”
Well, minors are by definition below the age of consent, thus I don’t think it’s unequal treatment to say they can’t be married, any more than it is unequal treatment to say they can’t buy alcohol or vote.
As for the rest, it is unequal treatment, but as a practical matter there simply aren’t enough people demanding polygamous marriages (for themselves or others) or incestual marriages to make the fact of such unions unequal treatment before the law matter. How many brother and sisters want to marry each other? 2 out of 10 million? Might be more, I don’t know, but the number has to be nearly a statistical zero. How many people want to be polygamists? 1% of the population? And legal recognition of polygamy would have to include the right of women to have multiple husbands, probably without the consent of her other spouses, which might actually make legal recognition distasteful to some polygamists.
I’m surprised there aren’t more lawyers arguing for legalization of polygamous marriage. Divorces and survivorship rights in such situations could potentially lead to a lot of legal business.
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Kevin:
How many brother and sisters want to marry each other?
I think the relevant question is how many people would like to have the government privileges that are granted to married people with someone whom they are not allowed to legally marry. I don’t know the answer, but I suspect it is a lot higher than the number of brothers and sisters who want to marry each other.
If you aren’t arguing that all marriage benefits be done away with, and taxes cut for everybody (or, at the very least, that taxes be cut for everybody, period), then I don’t believe you actually consider disparity in tax benefits for same sex couples to be a problem.
I agree.
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BTW: marriage tax benefits. If you aren’t arguing that all marriage benefits be done away with, and taxes cut for everybody (or, at the very least, that taxes be cut for everybody, period), then I don’t believe you actually consider disparity in tax benefits for same sex couples to be a problem. 😉
Just my opinion, of course.
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@ScottC: “I don’t know the answer, but I suspect it is a lot higher than the number of brothers and sisters who want to marry each other.”
Agreed. This ain’t Game of Thrones.
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Thanks for the discussion everyone, but I must go for now. My hands are really starting to ache thus making typing difficult now.
Have a great day and great debates!
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Geanie: “So I still stand by the estimated 20%.”
Okee-dokee. I’ll still think that’s kind of high, but I don’t really think it makes a difference in either case.
“I guess you are unaware that even Cobra does nothing for SSM but does for OSM.”
Employers who choose to extend domestic partnership benefits to their employees can (and, I suspect, do) extend the same benefits via Cobra, so though the law does not mandate it, it’s possible. Given that the law doesn’t mandate companies extend domestic partner benefits now, I don’t think that really counts.
“I guess you are unaware that 179 Federal Tax Law benefits for OSM but do not apply to SSM.”
Which is tax law, generally, the benefits of which would all amount to the government allowing you to keep more of your money based on marriage status, so that’s really 1 thing. 😉
“I guess you are unaware that the Family and Medical Leave Act also does nothing for SSM.”
The FMLA also doesn’t apply to companies of less than 50 employees, so it does nothing for people who work in small businesses. Also, given that only 13% of workers eligible to use the FMLA used it, anyway, one would have to surmise that the lack of FMLA benefits for SS couples is vanishingly small. So, aded to tax law, that’s 2 things. Survivorship benefits for SS and pensions and IRA rollovers makes 3.
“I guess you are unaware that our immigration law does not allow lesbian and gay citizens or permanent residents to petition for their same-sex partners to immigrate”
I don’t think it should allow permanent residents to petition for opposite-sex partners to immigrate! I think we should have a standardized immigration process for everybody. No cutting in line. But, okay, that’s 4.
“Most significantly, under current law, domestic partners of federal employees are excluded from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).”
Okay, that’s 5. Went to the link . . . I’m counting about 15 altogether. 😉
More to the point, I don’t think the idea that married folks enjoy a specific, overly-large number of perks for being married makes for a persuasive argument. By the same token, one could add there are thousands of additional obligations, expenses, opportunity costs, and burdens of marriage . . . thus, nobody should ever get married. The same argument could be made, from the opposite end, to suggest we’re doing homosexual couples a favor. “No, trust me, you really don’t want this.” 😉
Put another way: I am not married because of tax breaks, or the FMLA, and certainly not rights that accrue to Federal Employees or members of the Armed Services, as I am already denied all those benefits and always will be, just because I happen not to be a Federal employee or member of the armed services. Given that I can take advantage of very few of the special rights that accrue to married folks, apparently, that just does not make a persuasive argument to me, regarding SSM. They aren’t missing much, and you don’t get married for those things, anyway.
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“The question I am raising is…why aren’t you in favor of anyone marrying anyone?”
I’ll revert to libertarian orthodoxy with a dose of libertine:
What two or more consenting adults chose to do should be no business of the state as long as it doesn’t directly harm someone else.
Mental anguish because it offends your morals is insufficient.
So sure. I’m fine with adult incest, polygamy, etc. Or to be more precise, I don’t think the state should be in the business of putting people in jail for it.
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jnc:
I don’t think the state should be in the business of putting people in jail for it.
Or, I presume, granting privileges because of it, either.
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Did I just out-Libertarian Scott on something???
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Mich:
Did I just out-Libertarian Scott on something???
I don’t think so. jnc’s position is the true libertarian position, and i agree with him. The state shouldn’t be in the privileges-for-being-married granting business. But you are surprisingly (to me) both out of step with most of your fellow SSM advocates and willing to follow your premises to their logical conclusion. So kudos for that are in order.
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I’ll take that.
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Before SSM was even a gleam in Andrew Sullivan’s eye, a very common legal dodge between gay partners was for one to legally adopt the other thus making their relationship technically incestuous. This was mostly to game the inheritance and medical power of attorney rules. At least SSM is more palatable in that respect.
The lesbian couple I know have done all the legal maneuvering you have to do to replicate the financial interlocking of actual marriage. They claim they don’t care to actually get ‘married’ but I suspect that has a taste of sour grapes since North Carolina is unlikely to legalize SSM any time soon.
The Kinsey studies placed the percentage of people who have ever had any homosexual activity at 10% but that perhaps understates it as it pre-dates modern phenomena such as “lesbian until graduation” and drunken frat-house experimentation. The most reliable numbers I have seen place the actual self-identified gay and lesbian population (excluding closeted Republican congressmen) at 3-5% of the population which puts them at par with either Jewish-Americans or Asian-Americans.
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Getting married is so quaint. It’s a wonder gays want to bother when so few straight couples bother.
The article goes on to quote women living in sin as seeing marriage as an unaffordable luxury good.
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yello:
The article goes on to quote women living in sin as seeing marriage as an unaffordable luxury good.
Oddly, the article barely mentions children, and then only to make the unexplored (and counterintuitive) claim that women draw a distinction between marriage and childbearing. I would actually have surmised that one reason more women are delaying getting married (and thus cohabitating in the interim) is that they are also delaying having children. Which suggests to me not a distinction between childrearing and marriage, but rather an equation of the two.
Which makes sense to me. The benefits of marriage, both for women specifically and more generally for the culture, revolve around the process of having and raising children. As women pursue careers and either become less likely to have children or delay the point at which they do, it makes perfect sense to me that they will also become either less likely to get married or delay doing so.
It’s a wonder gays want to bother when so few straight couples bother.
It is a wonder, unless one views the whole SSM movement as less about the benefits of marriage and more about social acceptance of their sexual preferences.
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Tell that to the old woman who just had to pay well over $300,000 in inheritance tax for what SHE and her legally married partner BUILT together over a 43 year period. I don’t think she was all that concerned about social acceptance when she had to write that check.
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The article talks quite a bit about having children. There is even a subhead called “Having Children”
Education is the best birth control device.
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yello:
The article talks quite a bit about having children. There is even a subhead called “Having Children”
Yeah, I saw the subhead and read what was underneath it, which is what I discussed. I somehow missed the stuff that was (oddly) placed above the subhead. But I think my point remains.
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