Early this week, disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich warned that “a commitment to religious freedom and God-given rights is being replaced by a secular oppression…”  Just hours after those words appeared on Human Events, Gingrich issued a statement forcefully opposing the construction of a community center and mosque in downtown Manhattan, two blocks from Ground Zero.

Gingrich’s affinity for religious freedom and his belief in God-given rights it would seem, doesn’t extend to Americans who are Muslim.  Such outright bigotry and blatant hypocrisy from Gingrich, an avid historian and former college professor, is even more repulsive when you consider his reasoning.

“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York,” he writes, “so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.”  Gingrich, who has been railing against the so-called secular socialist machine for trying to take religion out of the public square, and who, like most conservatives, decries the influence of foreign law, wants the U.S. to apply the same standards on Muslims that Saudi Arabia applies to those who are not Muslim.

That’s rich.

As the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen, after noting that conservatives continually justify despicable acts of torture on the premise that other nations and non-state actors employ such tactics, points out, “We’re not supposed to lower ourselves to the levels of those we find offensive.”

Gingrich’s clarion call continues: “Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for ‘religious toleration’ are arrogantly dishonest.”  What makes them Islamists, apologists or even dishonest? Gingrich doesn’t say but if you ask him, he’ll likely tell you about the Katusha rockets that Hamas has fired into Sderot or how Iran is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.  Anything and everything to take the subject away from the “religious freedom and God-given rights” to which American Muslims are entitled.

To understand Gingrich’s paranoia that “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization,” one must delve deeply into the polarizing, overzealous and paranoid minds of professional Muslim-baiters and the politicians who depend on their support and cater to their illiberal demands.

Many of them are monomaniacs who have made it their life’s mission to defeat Islam and “expose” all Muslims as radical Islamofascists.  If one asks them for evidence to support their claim that no Muslim can be trusted, they will likely mention a purported plot by Muslim Brotherhood operatives to destroy America from within.  The Council on American Islamic Relations and their intern/spies are routinely placed at the epicenter of the evil conspiracy.

Among these folks, any and all Muslims who “refudiate” such insane theories — who denounce violence and terror, profess their loyalty to the American system, take part in the democratic process and who have assimilated into the American landscape — are cleverly employing taqiyya, which, as any Muslim-baiter would tell you, is religiously sanctioned deception.  The same was said about Jews decades ago and anti-Semites once evoked the specter of “Judeo-Bolshevism” the way that Muslim-baiters and politicians like Gingrich today warn of “Islamofascism.” But none of those awful facts really matter, even to a historian such as Gingrich, because facts have long been accused of being part of the secular-socialist machine.

Gingrich’s stand against the mosque project and his attempt to smear its backers as “Islamists” and apologists earns him his anti-Jihad bona fides, and with that, the support of an increasingly mistrustful and hateful electorate which lives off of tying American Muslims to every heinous act that occurs anywhere that remotely sounds Islamic.  In this world, if the media fails to make the connection, they are clearly part of the soft-jihad.

Here is the key: The connection rarely has to be solid.  In fact, the more specious the connection, the more the Muslim-baiter will be seen by others as a patriot and an enterprising investigative reporter.  For instance, the New York Times‘ Robert Wright highlights one smear that has been contrived to defame the man leading the effort to bring the project to fruition.  The imam behind the project is not to be trusted because conservatives say that “[his] wife has an uncle who used to be ‘a leader’ of a mosque that now has a Web site that links to the Web site of an allegedly radical organization.”  If you can’t keep up with all of that nonsense, then you’re complacent about the Jihad.

Any and all statements against violence made by Muslims must always be placed in the right conservative context: scare quotes.  Gingrich does this masterfully.  That simple act in effect says that Muslims who preach peace are actually jihadists.

As Gingrich and his buddies believe, either you are with them or you are, through your dhimmitude, a proto-Jihadist.  No, you’re worse since you probably support a second genocide against Jews.  (Prominent Muslim-baiters have argued that Muslims instigated the Nazi holocaust!)  Now that you’ve learned all of these made up facts, you simply do not have an excuse to not fight! Wake up and oppose the “Ground Zero Mosque” the “Islamization of America” and prove to those who hate the freedom in America that those freedoms, as Newt argues, don’t actually apply to all Americans.

Cross-posted on Huffington Post.

Originally @ Huffington Post

Ergun Caner is one of the most prominent figures in the evangelical movement. He is also one of the most deceptive.

A self-professed Muslim convert to Christianity, Caner plays an important, and arguably dangerous, role in the community. After the 9/11 attacks, when many Americans were searching for answers, Caner stepped up with enthusiasm to present himself as an expert on Islam. He used his own “personal history” (much of it since demonstrated as bogus) to confirm his audience’s deeply-held suspicions about the faith that many of them blamed for the attacks.

Today, as president of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and a professor of apologetics, he exhibits tremendous influence in shaping the next generation of evangelical leaders.

A burly man with a charming smile, Caner is an eloquent speaker and an even better storyteller. He blends the Gospel with humor. He’s a big fan of Glenn Beck and NASCAR. He speaks about love. He tweets. And, he is well-liked by his students. In the five years that he’s been at Liberty, the school’s enrollment has nearly tripled.

Caner is a protégé of Paige Patterson, the controversial and successful leader of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who is perhaps best known for forcing the Southern Baptist Convention into the political right. Paterson spoke at the school’s commencement this year.

By the time he came to Liberty University, a Baptist school in Lynchburg, Virginia founded by the late Reverend Jerry Falwell, Caner had already become a prolific writer. He and his brother had written several books aimed at evangelical audiences. Many of the books recounted their paths to Christ. It’s hard not to be moved by the narrative — true or not.

Born in Turkey to a religious father, a muezzin (one who performs the call to prayer), Caner grew up detesting the United States and all it stood for. He learned bits and pieces about his future homeland from watching the Dukes of Hazzard. During his teenage years, his family immigrated to the United States. His father came here to spread the message of Islam and build mosques.

During his senior year in high school, his life changed. Caner found Christ. A friend, “a solitary Christian boy,” refused to take no for an answer and insisted that Caner learn about Christianity. He invited him to his tiny store-front church where Caner talked to the pastor, a man with a sixth grade education who questioned him about his firmly-held convictions. Caner was amazed to discover the true teachings of a faith he had been trained his whole life to hate. He accepted Christianity, as did his two brothers, Emir and Erdem.

When he told his father, he was disowned. It was, he writes, a difficult experience for young Ergun, who didn’t speak to his father for many years. In one of his books, he writes, “For the other 95 percent of the world’s population, conversion to Jesus Christ often means disowning, disinheritance, expulsion, arrest, and even death.” But he was resolute in his newfound faith and was willing to give it all up for eternal salvation. Caner and his younger brother Emir (president of Truett-McConnell College, a small Bible college in Cleveland, Georgia) became shining examples to evangelicals.

If a hardened and hidebound jihadist “trained to do that which was done on 11 September” could come around to accepting Christ, the logic went, it proved beyond doubt that the message of Christ was universal.

The main problem with Caner’s journey from Jihad to Jesus is that much of it is fiction, a complex lie made up to give his conversion more authenticity. He fabricated almost everything. For someone who allegedly fought jihad, Caner’s understanding of the very basic tenets of the faith he is a so-called expert in is rudimentary.

Caner does not know the difference between Islam’s article of faith and the first chapter of the Qur’an. He’s claimed that the lunar month of Ramadan lasts for 40 days. In his book, he writes that he performed all of the rakats (daily prayers). The actual word is salah. It’s not a difference most people would know, but he says he is an expert on Islam. Muslims, he once said, followed something he called the “tobaad.” He’s claimed to have debated Muslim scholars who’ve never heard of him. Court records from his parent’s divorce indicate that he was in Ohio when he was a young child, long before his alleged move from Turkey. On his books, his middle name is Mehmet (Muhammad in Turkish), yet it is listed as Michael on his concealed-weapons permit in Virginia. Before 9/11, he went by E. Michael Caner.

In one speech, Caner told a crowd that outside the mosque in Kabul there was a sign that read, “Do not teach the women to read and write.” The story may or may not be true, but Caner, to give authority to the tale, told the crowd what was written in the native tongue: “bahasha uwtara muwtara seeteeroh.” That’s neither Dari nor Arabic nor Urdu nor Turkish nor Pashtu. It is an entirely made up language.

To his audience, Caner’s tale of moving from darkness to light reaffirmed their convictions about the superiority of Christianity and the decadence of Islam. But the facts eventually caught up with Caner, thanks to a Muslim student in London who methodically went through his speeches and interviews, chronicling each and every one of his lies. Others quickly piled on, including some within the church.

Ironically, in 2005, Caner came to the defense of Florida-based preacher Jerry Vines who angered the Muslim community with his demonization of the Prophet Muhammad. A piece in the Florida Times-Union quoted Caner, who defended Vines by saying, “No one expected a Baptist preacher to actually research.”

That’s precisely why Caner’s duplicitous persona went unchallenged for so long. No one expected a preacher to so boldly fabricate his entire background. It was all a ruse, intended to play off the evangelical movement’s ignorance and fear of Islam.

For months, Liberty University refused to investigate Caner’s background. Now that local press and even the Associated Press have written about the controversy, the school has set up a committee to investigate the allegations. If they excuse his behavior, they risk tarnishing their credibility. If they punish him, they risk provoking the anger of the evangelical community.

An unrepentant Caner maintains his innocence, saying that he “never intentionally misled anyone.” He blames the campaign to discredit him on Calvinists and their Muslim interlocutors. At the same time, many of his duped followers are refusing to accept reality. They are taking their anger out on those who have exposed the fraud and not on the charlatan himself.

For consecutive weeks now, the City Council of University Place has been the target of TEA Party (my description – not necessarily theirs) protests and ploys.  These activist have at times filled the council chamber to capacity, dominated public comment, and – although I have not personally witnessed it – reportedly threatened elected members once the camera goes off.

Their aim is to derail possible attempts by the council to put levies on the ballot – levies that would provide for the maintenance of streets, to replenish a depleted police force, and to keep parks and recreations afloat.  Some have openly stated that they would like to see the Cirque/Bridgeport Skate Park closed and paved over with cement – suggesting that the park represents an undeserved luxury for local youth and promotes unlawful behavior.

These activists believe that by dominating the discussion at council, they can convince those council members who remain on the fence that they speak for the majority of their community.  This assertion is unlikely, given that University Place recently approved a school levy by a +60% majority.

Nevertheless, inside sources suggest that their weekly protests are proving effective, and that if more moderate members of the community don’t begin to attend and address the council immediately – UP residents could see a steep decline in terms of public services and general quality of life.

Key meetings will be held at City Hall on April 26, 27th and May 3rd to decide the fate of countless boards/commissions, parks and public services.  I urge anyone living in UP to check the city’s calendar and compare it with their own to see if they are available to attend one of these upcoming meetings and share their thoughts on these proposed actions in a calm and constructive way.  I also encourage anyone who is reading this to forward this article to their UP friends and spur a real debate: before it’s too late.

Last night I received the following email from Historic Tacoma.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation in partnership with American Express has chosen 25 historic properties in the Seattle-Puget Sound area to compete for  $1 million in preservation grants. Of those 25 properties, two are located in Tacoma, the Spanish Steps and westside’s Titlow Park Lodge.  Sites in Pierce County include the Anderson Island Historical Society’s Johnson Farm; the Orting Soldiers Home, Garfield Hall; and Skansie Brothers Net Shed in Gig Harbor.  How can you help assure that these funds come to Tacoma and Pierce County?  You can VOTE!  Just go to www.partnersinpreservation.org where you can vote for one project each day from April 15th through May 12.  Not only can you vote, you can forward this information to friends, family and co-workers or post it on your Facebook page and encourage them to vote.  Not only will your vote inform the overall grant making process, but the top vote recipient is guaranteed to have their project funded; a number of the other 25 properties will receive some level of funding.  You can learn more about the process on the Partners in Preservation Website….Historic Tacoma encourages you to VOTE for funding for these Pierce County projects and to help spread the word by encouraging others to vote too.

The criteria that determined how these historical sites were selected for this process is explained here.

Several hours after casting my first vote and I still find myself stuggling with the concept of assigning significance to a historic place based upon the contemporary sentiments of the modern majority.  Granted, that’s not what Partners In Preservation is advocating – all of these sites are already winners for having made it onto the ballot and this election will not, in itself, determine anything beyond a “grant” to the most popular place.  Nevertheless, it would certainly seem absurd if the National Parks Department, in the face of declining revenue, were to hold an online election asking citizens to vote for their favorite national treasure to ensure funding.

Imagine being asked to dissect and then appraise the historical significance of Pearl Harbor relative to Gettysburg. Then again, by offering this very analogy I betray my own message and reveal that in fact I have already placed greater value in Pearl Harbor and Gettysburg as historical landmarks than Tacoma’s Spanish Steps or the 5th Avenue Theatre.  In the end, perhaps I’m really just full of myself, and this whole article is just about me trying to fill space on The Melon.

Still, the fact that after two days of voting only one Pierce County historical site - the Skansie Brothers Net Shed – has climbed its way into a top-ten ranking suggest to me that something about this process is sacrilegious.

A variety of healthy options for your penis

On Wednesday, January 27, the Senate Healthcare Committee in Olympia heard six citizens opposed to Senate Bill 6452 and six in favor. Three of the opposition’s speakers were women who described bad abortion experiences. One particular woman testified against the bill by describing a traumatizing abortion she had had. The Committee chair gently interrupted her choked-up testimony to ask the question, “But what do you have to say about the bill?” The woman, though she pulled herself together, was clearly confused. She thought she was talking about the bill.

The Basics

SB 6452 (also introduced concurrently in the House as HB 2837) was introduced by Senator Rodney Tom of the 48th District. Its purpose is to regulate “limited service pregnancy centers (LSPCs),” also known as “pregnancy resource centers,” “crisis pregnancy centers” or “alternative pregnancy centers.” These organizations are usually listed in phone books under the heading “abortion alternatives.” The bill defines them as “an organization that advertises, offers, or provides pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, and information about abortion and adoption, whether for a fee or as a free service, but does not offer any of the following: Prenatal medical care, comprehensive birth control services, abortion or referrals for abortion.” The bill does not include Planned Parenthood or other family planning healthcare providers because these organizations are already heavily regulated by various laws as medical service providers, while LSPCs are currently classified as non-profits and have no medical oversight by law whatsoever.

The bill has several goals:

1. To require LSPCs to disclose immediately to patients that they do not provide abortion services, referrals for abortion, comprehensive birth control services, or medical care for pregnant women. That is, the LSPC can at no time lead clients to believe that they are in a medical clinic equivalent to a family planning clinic.

2. LSPCs must follow the same privacy laws protecting client information as all other medical providers. This includes giving clients all medical records in writing, including pregnancy test results. LSPCs generally refrain from doing this as a strategy to prevent low-income women from using the records to apply for state funding for abortions.

3. LSPCs must only give out medically accurate information. At this time, LSPCs often mislead or lie to clients about medical facts such as the way pregnancy tests function, the failure rates of condoms, the risks of sex and sexually transmitted infections, and even the psychological effects of abortion (which is, admittedly, controversial).

The bill recently died in committee due to a lack of support. No formal vote was taken, so there is no record of which senators supported the bill. However, it is currently under revision and will probably be introduced next legislative session.

The Survey

Planned Parenthood of the Greater Northwest (formerly Planned Parenthood of Western Washington), Legal Voice (formerly the Northwest Women’s Law Center), the National Organization for Women and other women’s rights organizations became concerned about the conduct of LSPCs in Washington after hearing stories of inappropriate behavior from women who had used LSPC services around the state. They were crucial in gathering more information about the common practices of LSPCs and bringing it to the attention of representatives in Olympia as an important healthcare issue. I was one volunteer who helped gather crucial information by using the services of two LSPCs, Care Net Tacoma and Care Net Gig Harbor.

The legal basis for doing this originates in part from the Fair Housing Act and its enforcement. There is no way to prove discrimination unless one has proof that identical applications were approved or rejected depending on the race of the applicant, and so it is a legitimate legal strategy for certain people to pose as applicants for a service and to see what happens. Lest you think that this is something only pro-choice organizations do, Lila Rose is a notorious pro-life activist who surveys Planned Parenthood clinics across the country, secretly and often illegally taping her phone calls or visits in an attempt to reveal misconduct. In some cases she has been successful. Or look at this survey by STOPP: “The data used in this survey come from a variety of sources, including, but not limited to, printed Planned Parenthood material, Planned Parenthood internet postings, and reports from individuals around the country [emphasis mine].” It is clear that a strategy that is appropriate for one side should be appropriate for the other.

Furthermore, myself and volunteers were given legal briefings about our rights and how to protect the rights of the organizations we surveyed. We were told several times, for instance, that taping people without their knowledge or consent is illegal in the state of Washington. As a result SB 6452 and HB 2837 are responses to the documented bad behavior of LSPCs rather than being based on unsubstantiated rumors.

The Opposition and Freedom of Speech

The primary and most robust argument against SB 6452 comes from the First Amendment right to free speech. In regulating what can and cannot be said – that is, in requiring LSPCs to disseminate only medical facts – isn’t this bill treading on the rights of people to say what they believe? Moreover, since they are not medical clinics, why should they be held to the same standard as healthcare providers? Isn’t this inappropriate state intrusion into the affairs of community organizations?

The main sticking point behind the freedom of speech objection comes from the provision to regulate the medical facts LSPCs give. Moral speech, religious speech, and personal opinions by staff will still be legal under this bill – when they are specified as such. But LSPCs push their religious/moral agendas by twisting medical facts. However, they don’t see it that way, as evidenced most strongly by this statement from LifeNews: “One woman who testified [in favor of SB 6452], Glynnis Kirchmeier, claimed a pregnancy center she visited withheld pregnancy test results and that it informed her of the problems with condoms [emphasis mine].”

Here, for the record, is what I was told about condoms: At Tacoma Care Net, I was told that “the AIDS virus goes through condoms like rice through a tennis racquet.” (This is incorrect, a rumor probably dating back to this 1992 controversy when the AIDS virus was still poorly understood. In any case, if condoms did not prevent AIDS then pretty much everyone would be infected already.) At Gig Harbor Care Net, I was told not only that condoms fail 50% of the time, but that the CDC says that condoms fail 50% of the time. “That’s not true in my experience,” I said. “Well, you must be really lucky then,” was the reply. (It is statistically unlikely that I would be so lucky. Think of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.) Though reports of condom failure rates differ between studies, they are highly effective at preventing disease transmission and pregnancy when used consistently and correctly.

And yet Care Net claims to offer “clear and medically accurate information.” It is clear that they think “medically accurate” is a matter of personal, not medical, opinion.

Here is what the CDC says about condoms, effectiveness, and the AIDS virus:

“Laboratory studies have demonstrated that latex condoms provide an essentially impermeable barrier to particles the size of HIV.

“Theoretical basis for protection. Latex condoms cover the penis and provide an effective barrier to exposure to secretions such as urethral and vaginal secretions, blocking the pathway of sexual transmission of HIV infection.

“Epidemiologic studies that are conducted in real-life settings, where one partner is infected with HIV and the other partner is not, demonstrate that the consistent use of latex condoms provides a high degree of protection.”

LSPCs and the pro-lifers who run them think that medical fact is not objective, but merely opinion. However, most of us believe that laboratory studies, carefully designed to control for outside variables, with clear methodologies and replicable results, published in peer-reviewed journals, have a level of objectivity that greater than the objectivity of personal opinion. Most of us know that epidemiologic studies, carefully designed to control for outside variables, guided by ethics committees, with clear methodologies and replicable results, published in peer-reviewed journals, qualify also as “fact” rather than “opinion.”

Medical fact can be objectively obtained by anyone following the same experimental standards, and as such it is not opinion. As such it is fundamentally different than the speech that the First Amendment was designed to protect. Therefore to require LSPCs to give out accepted medical fact (as they claim to do) only does not violate their rights to express their opinions. They can still make moral, religious, or philosophic statements about sex, abortion, and so forth. They can even give their own personal opinions about medical facts (e.g., “Well, the CDC says that condoms work, but I don’t believe that.”) And after all, they may refrain from mentioning particular medical facts – they just can’t misrepresent the ones they do give. Other healthcare providers are held to this same standard – why shouldn’t LSPCs?

I should also note that, under the Washington State Healthy Youth Act, it would be illegal for an LSPC to teach its “medically accurate information” to students in schools, because they are not, in fact, true.

Why Taxing Stock Trades Is a Really Bad Idea

Wall Street Journal – January 5, 2010

Everyday investors shouldn’t be punished for a subprime fiasco fueled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

By Donald L Luskin and Chris Hynes

You ever see an article and see the headline and think well, I don’t particularly care about that topic, but, the authors’ names catch your eye, so you read it anyway. This was that article. And then when I finished, I realized that the authors were total jackasses and completely fabricated their point of view and that instead of arguing coherently and bringing me around to their position, I was now resolutely against it. It made me so angry that I had to return to the The Melon after an extended sabbatical…

The Democrat-dominated Congress has come up with a new way for President Obama to violate his pledge to not raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 per year. It’s a tax on securities transactions—trading in stocks, options, futures and so on.

And why not single out trading for special taxation? We levy special taxes on tobacco, alcohol and other vices. Except that trading isn’t a vice. The exchange and hedging of business interests is a virtuous—and utterly essential—activity in a free economy.

Apparently Messers. Luskin and Hynes aren’t aware that we tax more than just vices. We often tax income, gasoline, services, food, hell, we even tax suntan beds. If you buy a cell phone, there is a specific tax just for buying that phone, if you fly, there’s a specific tax just for your ticket.

But you’d never know it from the angry anticapitalist rhetoric of the tax’s proponents.

I love when idiots from the right call moderates anti-capitalists. If they were anti-capitalists, they’d want to end the existence of the stock market, you twits. They don’t. They want to raise money from it, BECAUSE IT ABOUT BANKRUPTED THE ECONOMY. The day you see DeFazio writing a bill that says “The New York Stock Exchange shall no longer exist” then you can call him an anti-capitalist.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.), who introduced the House bill establishing the tax—positions it as retribution for “the Bush administration’s cowboy capitalism, markets know best, deregulation at all cost policies.” Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), who introduced a similar Senate bill, says, “We need a shift in priorities in this country to ask not what America can do for Wall Street, but ask what Wall Street can do for America.”

Right on DeFazio! You go … older Oregonian Gentleman … who occaisionally sports an alarmingly awkward mustache.

Are you just an ordinary American who trades stocks? You probably don’t think of yourself as having much to do with “Wall Street,” or of your trading as a vice that ought to be singled out for a special tax. And you surely don’t think of yourself as someone who caused the recent financial crisis, which was, as Rep. DeFazio says, “brought on by reckless speculation in the financial markets.”

The reason most people, like myself, or those people who read this article don’t think of themselves as having much to do with Wall Street is that because they don’t have much to do with wall street. Less than 21 million households own free standing stock (not in mutual funds), which is less than 20% of America. In fact its worse than that, “Only 17 percent of households in the bottom 60 percent of the income spectrum own stock in taxable accounts.  In contrast, 73 percent of the households in the top 10 percent of the income spectrum own stock in taxable accounts.  Among those at the very top of the income spectrum — the top one percent — 84 percent own stock in taxable accounts.” This tax wouldn’t hit those below $250,000 income. Very few of them own stocks.

If anything, you probably think of yourself as a casualty of the crisis, not its cause. Why should a stock market investor like you—or for that matter, even an investor literally on Wall Street—pay a tax as punishment for a crime of which you were the victim, not the perpetrator? The crisis was caused by excesses in the mortgage industry, led by government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How did stock transactions—or transactions in options or futures—have anything to do with this crisis?

It is interesting that Hynes and Luskin purposefully avoid the true target of these new tax hikes. They are not meant to go on the average consumer. But they are meant to go towards High Speed Trades or High Speed Transactions. These are stock market trades made by computers in blinks of seconds trying to arbitrage prices, guess price moves as other computers trade. For example, let’s say that you, average investor, making $50,000 a year, decide to buy $10,000 of Microsoft stock, your broker places that trade order. The computers of these high speed traders will actually buy the stock – and then turn around and resell that stock to your broker in a blink of an eye, perhaps making one quarter of a penny on each stock sold, maybe less. But they do this millions of times a day, and make millions of dollars. By adding absolutely no value to the transaction. In fact, they are removing value because you are paying for that extra penny. And yet, they are taxed free.

Let’s dig into the rest of the that paragraph. First off, those companies that made the most money off of the mortgage crisis were not Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the banks of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citi, AIG and other large financial institutions that repackaged loans and sold them on purposefully obtuse to the wretchedness of the investments they were selling. Those companies also dominate the trading on the stock market. They take orders from investors and execute the trades. They work with companies like Luskin’s and Hynes’ to sell and trade stocks using computers. They are making the profits, and the ridiculous horrible bets on mortgage companies. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac only insure debt.

The proposed tax would apply to commodity transactions as well. So here we find another class of victims being punished. When excesses in the mortgage market blew up the world economy in 2008, commodity investors were hammered as prices plunged in everything from crude oil to gold to corn. Many of them were ordinary businesses—far from Wall Street—trying to hedge themselves against the rising cost of energy.

Cry me a river for lamenting the unfair plight of those poor speculators who drove the cost of oil up to $140 a barrel, just because they could. Those companies that are using arbitrage to price out commodities for future delivery won’t think this tax is all that much. But how much is that tax you ask? Well, why don’t we let these partisan hacks tell us:  If you were to buy or sell $100,000 worth of any stock or commodity the tax would be $250. Lordy lord! There is no way that American Airlines, or your local grain coop will be able to afford that tax of $250! on a bet of $100,000. That is DEBILITATING!

To be fair, the tax would apply to credit default swaps, which were closely associated with the excesses in mortgage speculation. But if it’s going to apply to stocks—which had nothing to do with the crisis except to be its victim—then why does the tax, as proposed by Rep. DeFazio, not apply to bonds? It was the bond market, not the stock market, that was the conduit for hundreds of billions of dollars of dodgy subprime mortgages. Could this possibly be related to the need for the federal government to issue Treasury bonds from here to eternity to finance the looming deficits from the cornucopia of programs being cooked up in Congress?

I don’t have a problem with this. Why the hell would the government tax itself?

Setting aside the critical issue of why certain types of securities are singled out for tax, and others are not, the tax as currently proposed does not even succeed in fairly targeting speculators as opposed to investors. In fact, like most tax schemes, it is riddled with arbitrariness and capriciousness.

Now you are just flat out lying. The tax specifically applies to trades over $100,000 then you are fine. How often does anyone you know whistle around trades of IBM for that much?

Suppose you buy a stock, and you hold the position for 20 years. You’re an investor. Suppose the person who sold it to you was a day trader—who might end up buying the stock again 10 minutes later from someone else and then selling it after an hour. You both pay the same tax.

You’re a joke! You pay the $250 tax (on a $100,000) trade when you sell it. They pay for their tax each time they make the buy or sell. Good job lying…again.

As proposed, you wouldn’t have to pay a tax to buy or sell mutual funds. Yet mutual funds themselves would have to pay the tax on any trades they make in stocks. So as the owner of the mutual fund, you still end up paying the tax. According to the Investment Company Institute, the average turnover for stock-market mutual funds in 2008 was 60%, which would add up to a lot of taxes.

You must fail at reading the newspaper in which you published this article:  ”The law would provide a $250 tax credit, effectively exempting everyone from the first $100,000 of all stock trades. And purchase and sale of mutual-fund shares would be exempt no matter how large, as would trading of assets held within personal savings accounts such as a 401(k).”

Transactions in retirement accounts would be exempted. So a corporation that invests to provide pensions to retired workers won’t face higher costs. But a retired individual who has just sold his business and is living off the invested proceeds will pay the tax.

See above

And don’t believe the proponents of the tax when the say it’s so small you’ll never notice it. At one quarter of 1%, that would be a cost of $0.33 on a share of IBM. If you were to buy or sell $100,000 worth of IBM (or any stock), the tax would be $250. Single taxpayers would get an annual exemption of that amount. But trade again, and you’re taxed $250. Again, another $250. Over and over. Each time, that’s about 20 times the commission that a typical online broker would charge you to make that trade—yes, the greedy broker, the one on Wall Street.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Oh god, let me catch my breath.

HAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA

More fundamentally, the proponents of the tax seem not to have thought through what effects it might have on America’s global competitive position as the world’s pre-eminent stock market. They simply wave away any concern with a flourish of moral indignation. Last summer, when Britain’s Financial Services Authority Chairman Adair Turner proposed a trading tax for the United Kingdom, and set in motion a global movement toward such a tax, he called trading “socially useless.”

We shouldn’t have to “socially” justify any lawful activity. But surely it is “socially useful” to let free people transact freely, without regulators and legislators micromanaging them. If anything, given the spectacular failure of every regulatory authority and legislator to detect and deter the abuses in mortgage markets that led to a near-meltdown of the global economy, it is their activities that would appear to be “socially useless” and deserving of a special tax.

I have no problem with the stock market acting. However, when the stock market and those on it take risks, when financial services companies put the future of the nation’s economic growth at risk, then I think that the society that creates a framework for them to exist has the right to tax them so that society can continue to exist.

It’s Economics 101 that the free actions of market participants cause supply and demand to reach equilibrium. And isn’t that what investors—indeed, even speculators—do? Don’t they try to buy things they think are cheap and sell things they think are expensive? Can they do it as well when facing the dead-weight costs of a transaction tax?

Ahhh, the false assumption that there is an equilibrium in a market. Someone hasn’t been reading their Minsky lately. The search for an economic equilibrium is a false search. Where is the equal point? Where does labor demand = the number of workers. At what point do prices for shoes equal the demand? If there is an equilibrium point, why is different at the same stores in the same city, or at across the nation? The demand is greater in Arkansas for product X than in Washington?

And yes, they can do it as well with that dead weight cost:  ”Great Britain, he said, currently levies a transaction tax that his higher than the one he proposes. `No one has fled London (stock market) because they’re paying twice what we’re proposing.” DeFazio also offered the support of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, recently called for a global transaction tax.”

If not, then trading volume in our stock markets will fall. Beyond the tax, everyone—investor and speculator, great and small—who buys or sells stocks will pay more to transact in markets that are less liquid. And they will transact at prices that are not set as efficiently. In such a world, markets would necessarily be more risky, and the cost of capital for business would necessarily rise. The consequence of that is that innovation, growth and jobs would necessarily fall. That would be the full and true cost of the trading tax being proposed.

Oh shucks, some of the investment banks won’t be able to hire quite so many quants and they’ll be forced go into revolutionizing health care, or finding solutions to the carbon footprint. That is sooooo bad.

Mr. Luskin is chief investment officer at Trend Macrolytics LLC. Mr. Hynes is chief executive officer of Hynes Capital.

Ohhhh, that’s why you oppose this cost. Because YOUR taxes will go up. You are the idiots who will have to pay because your firms conduct thousands of these costs for your ridiculously rich clients daily. Tell the truth. This tax will never get anywhere near Main Street. This is a tax on the wealthy and your ridiculous friends.

Matt Stevens sells phones.

During the 2008 Presidential elections, the Obama campaign rightly identified queer people and their straight allies as a crucial liberal base to be pandered to. Upon taking office, however, the Obama Administration seems much more interested in expending a lot of effort claiming that it has policies that expand and entrench GLBT rights while not doing much in particular. Sure, the James Byrd/Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act was a great thing, and Obama took the opportunity of signing the bill to compare himself to another leader with dubious human rights claims, President Johnson. (However, the bill includes gender expression as a category of protection, an advancement that is hugely important for the transgender community, and one that the gay community is too often satisfied to leave out of other anti-discrimination legislation.) The HIV travel ban, which prevented HIV-positive foreigners from visiting the United States, has been finally lifted.

Yet these are merely tokens compared to what the Obama Administration could really do for queer rights, if they were actually an interest. Not even a priority – merely a sideline. Dan Savage, for instance, suggests that the president should order Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to not be enforced, an action that would free up important personnel and time from ridiculous investigations into gay soldiers’ personal lives. This has something that the President promised but has not gotten around to it. Lt. Dan Choi’s recent visit to University of Puget Sound has magnified that particular issue in local news, but there is a huge list of things the President could do – and isn’t. This inaction has not played well in the gay community, and the administration has been on the defensive, mostly to secure funding for Democrats from its liberal base. The gay community has become the fundamentalist Christians of the left: we get pandered to, but the deliverables are scanty.

Therefore, in order to promote the advancement of legal rights for the GLBT community, I am writing this open letter to Malia Obama.

To:

Malia Obama

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC 20006

RE: Your Future Sexual Orientation*

Dear Ms. Obama,

At eleven years old, you will soon begin to experience certain…changes. Aside from growing hair in weird places, you will soon have uncontrollable and frequent sexual thoughts and fantasies. As you begin to develop an adult understanding of your sexuality, I urge you to consider going gay.

Women have a lot to offer as sexual partners. Aside from the capacity for multiple orgasms, the huge and interesting variability in tastes between women, and our generally more attractive bodies (though men are okay, I guess), women have better communication skills and are more likely to take care of you if you become sick. Thus women offer great advantages for short- and long-term relationships.

As you explore your sexuality, I urge you to share your thoughts on the desirability of women with your parents, particularly your father, the President. One advantage that men can offer you in all states is spousal rights – insurance coverage, equal custody of children, medical decision-making, burial rights, inheritance rights, financial rights and protections, and so forth. You can change this. One hint that one or both of his daughters have the hots for ladies and your father President Obama will suddenly take a huge interest in the status of lesbians and other sexual minorities in this fine nation. I am sure that your parents have instilled in you the values of equality and justice for all, but there is nothing like the possibility of injustice to a family member to motivate those in power to rethink the status quo. This is the benefit and purpose of coming out: to change the hearts and minds of those that love you.

But, Ms. Obama, you only have a short window in which to do this: before Inauguration Day 2013, on the off-chance that your father does not get re-elected. Many people choose to come out in college, but you would be joining a new wave of young people exploring and discussing their minority sexual preference with their parents and communities. Even, after a short period of contemplation, you conclude that men rather than women tingle your clitoris, the good you could do for the queer community may be substantial. In one day, you could accomplish what your father would not do for ten months. Think about it: your adolescent bi-curiosity could produce the same number of rights for American queers as every gay rights activist since Stonewall. Isn’t that a fine goal for any right-thinking American daughter of the President?

Sincerely,

Glynnis Kirchmeier

Queer Citizen

*Note: I am not, other than posting this on the internet, actually sending this to Malia Obama in any way. Because she is a child.

Professor Michael Heller’s book about the problems of property ownership and intransegence is at times interesting, and at times a pointless book. Its an argument that needs to be made, but its book form is up for question, and without a doubt, Heller’s solutions are not all that convincingly.

The Gridlock Economy:  How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives

Michael Heller

Basic Books:  July 2008

Heller’s book is a detailing of the many issues that exist for broad ownership within today’s western society. Specifically, Heller targets pharmaceuticals, bio-engineered products, music, and landed property, and the property rights that have developed around these industries. His argument is that because ownership is so splinted around a product, or a path to a product, that incentives encourage groups to work against each other, to not product valuable goods.

His best example in my mind was the massive problem with commercial airlines in this country, the number

of planes delayed, the sometimes brutal nature of using airports. Yet he cites that no

new large airports besides Denver have been built since the 1970s. And that is because groups (citizens) around established airports have adapted NIMBY (not in my back yard) policies and refuse to allow expansion, new airports, or any sort of development.

Heller also has a very interesting take on the pharmaceutical industries, biotechnology and the innovations that is creating. His argument is that numerous university scientists and for profit companies are using each other ideas to create cures for cancer or disease, or whatever. However, they can’t bring their solutions to market because they don’t own all of the underlying science technology. They would have to buy the patents or pay usage rights to the owners, and because the trouble with getting that done, they often simply don’t go through the effort, depriving the world of cures. This is immensely tragic.

As I said before, Heller has good examples. However, I come away from the book wondering if the problems he cites can be solved, moreover, I very much doubt the world he envisions would be better than ours. Property rights in America are sacrosanct; we have seen this be upheld in reaction to the New London ruling.

In the end, Heller doesn’t succeed at convincing me his solutions will solve the problems he has found.

Two Melons out of Five.

In a park in Ankara, brides pose as wedding pictures are taken. I am struck not by how different a scene this appears, but how normal it appears. During my quick stroll through the park I saw three different brides having pictures taken, all in flowing white dresses, some sleeveless, and often with low backs. They were all beautiful dresses that would look entirely natural in an American wedding environment. Turkey is officially 98% Muslim, obviously, the actual level of practicing Muslims is likely much lower, but could it be that despite a host of rather radical religious, cultural, and historical differences that when a young Turkish woman imagines her ideal wedding she imagines something quite similar to that of a young American woman?

Western brands are very popular in Ankara, and a trip to the city center can yield a variety of fake La Coste, Nike, Adidas, and other apparel. I was approached at my language institute by a young Kazakhistani woman inquiring about whether I had any American music on my cell phone to give to her, and had a Jordanian teenager ask my advice regarding who the best rap artists are in the States. As an American, I know what’s cool… I guess… Clearly faulty logic somewhere in there… Regardless, the commonalities that globalization creates are incredible.

Globalization, the growing interconnectedness of individuals across the globe, has long been simultaneously praised and condemned. Praised for decreasing conflict, increasing international trade, and creating personal connections between those in the developed world and developing world possible: see kiva.org. Condemned for destroying local culture, creating a new wave of capitalist imperialism, and placing otherwise content locals into sweatshops for long hours and little pay. Many believe the story of globalization is one of opportunity, and many others the story of exploitation.

A classic political science argument on globalization is that no two countries both with McDonalds will ever go to war. While this particular example has been proven wrong, and was subsequently adapted to be more specific, the McDonalds are of course merely a symbol for globalization, and the actual argument is that no two countries that are fully integrated into the global economy would ever go to war because the economic repercussions would simply be too great. Of course, economics does not tell the entire story of globalization, if only there was a symbol of globalization that was not economic but rather a social symbol… but what?

I present to you, the Holderith Theory of Conflict and Globalization. No two states in which at least 20% of the population is married in strapless dresses will ever go to war.

A seemingly bold theory, but really not… To begin my theory is safe from the past due to the relatively recent emergence of strapless dresses, and I have already accounted for the future because none of the countries on the West’s To Do list have a significant quantity of marriages involving strapless dresses (sources pending). That’s right go ahead, attack Iran… Before NATO/UN/Coalition/Israeli/US forces even reach Tehran I will have begun my first lecture tour.

I jest, with this example. However, consider the realities of globalization, the reasons why globalization destroys local cultures is the same reason why globalization prevents war. Because women in Ankara want a wedding that would be immediately recognizable across the West is undoubtedly linked to the reason why Turkey’s integration into the European Union is possible. Turkey is poised to play a greater role in world politics then ever before and maybe, just maybe, it is because women in Turkey, Western Europe, the United States, close their eyes and picture one of the most important days of their lives with striking similarities…