Month: December 2017

Shorts

Shorts:

* * * * *

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

 

Liars can figure

When the latest jobs report comes out Friday, look beyond the top-line number. For months now economists have suggested that the low unemployment rate—4.1% as of last month’s report—implies that America is at or near full employment. Yet the labor market is still below its prerecession peak, with about two million jobs missing. Many of those workers have joined the disability rolls. Others have simply dropped out of the workforce in favor of leisure time.

…

An[] indicator is the employment rate, defined as the proportion of Americans 16 and older who are working. It is always less than 100% because some people of working age are retired, in school, or in other nonmarket activity. Just before the 2007 recession, the employment rate peaked at 63.4%, meaning in that boom time over one-third of the working-age population wasn’t working. The rate reached a low of 58.2% in November 2010, and it has now recovered to 60.2%. Still, that’s more than 3 percentage points shy of the prerecession peak.

(Edward Lazear in the Wall Street Journal)

I have come to take “unemployment” rates not with a grain of salt, but with outright derision, because they don’t count those whose spirits got so crushed by a down economy that they stopped looking for work or hyped a minor disability (something they perhaps had been working through for years) into a successful disability benefits claim.

When the economy is strong, people work through their disabilities. When the economy weakens, people rationally decide to accommodate their disabilities, rather than continuing to work or to seek low-paying jobs.

(Lazear)

All Presidents manipulate numbers to make themselves look good. People dropping out of the job market during the recession Obama inherited made the recovery, through the lens of unemployment rates, look stronger than it really was. Trump is riding stock market indices, which may indicate something much more sinister than his mastery of the economic beast.

* * * * *

I would a thousand times rather have dinner with secular liberals of a certain temperament than with a group of religious conservatives who agreed with me about most things, but who have no sense of humor or irony.

(Rod Dreher)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

FrankenMoore

Mr. Franken is being run out of town by fellow Democrats in large part for their own political purposes. They want him banished so they can claim to have cleaned their own stables so they can attack Republicans who support Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore and Donald Trump. Mr. Franken is political ballast who had to go.

We’d even have a little sympathy for him had he not chosen the disingenuous exit of claiming innocence but resigning anyway.

(Wall Street Journal) I’d say “it’s expedient that one should die,” but that would conjure up typology of which guilty Franken isn’t worthy.

People speak of mixed motives and say it’s all brute politics. The Democrats are positioning themselves for the high ground should Republican Roy Moore be elected. They’re aligning themselves with the passions of their base, while clearing the way for a probe into sexual-harassment accusations against the president. New York’s Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who led the charge that forced Mr. Franken’s departure, hopes to run for president in 2020 as a champion of women, so the move was happily on-brand. I don’t doubt all of this is true. Little in politics comes from wholly clean hands.

(Peggy Noonan, Al Franken Departs Without Grace) Noonan goes on to sound yet another call for Alabama Republicans to think twice, or thrice, about voting for Roy Moore.

“ ‘All this will I give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’ ”

— Matthew 4:9

The prospect of Sen. Roy Moore has been both horrifying and clarifying. It would be difficult to design a more controlled, precise test of the moral gag reflex in politics.

(Michael Gerson) For someone who is Biblically literate, that’s a really potent epigram, isn’t it? More:

In this political lifeboat dilemma, Republicans are being asked what principles they are willing to throw overboard in the interest of power. A belief that character matters in politics? Splash. A commitment to religious and ethnic inclusion? Splash. Moral outrage at credible charges of sexual predation against teen girls? Splash.

Those remaining in this lightened boat display a kind of shocking clarity. They value certain political ends — tax cuts, a conservative judiciary — more than ethical considerations. When it comes to confirming judges who oppose Roe v. Wade, the vote of a statesman is no better than the vote of a sexual predator — or, presumably, of a drug dealer or a murderer. This type of calculation admits no limiting principle.

So, in this view, it does not really matter that there is (as Ivanka Trump put it) “no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts” in Moore’s case. It does not matter that Moore’s explanations have been shifting and slippery. It does not matter that Moore has said that homosexual behavior should be illegal, or that he compared resisting gay marriage to resisting the Holocaust, or that he referred to Asians as “yellows,” or that he doesn’t believe former president Barack Obama is a natural born citizen, or that he believes there are communities living under shariah law in Illinois and Indiana.

Those willing to swallow all this — all the ignorance, cruelty, creepiness and malice — have truly shown the strength of their partisan commitment. A purity indistinguishable from mania …

The basic argument here — that ethics can be ignored in the process of doing great work in the world — is precisely what brings institutions into disrepute. The Catholic Church covered up sexual predation on the justification that it was otherwise doing great work in the world. Some evangelical Christians are now publicly playing down credible charges of sexual predation for the same reason. And they are doing tremendous damage to the reputation of the Christian church in the process ….

* * * * *

I would a thousand times rather have dinner with secular liberals of a certain temperament than with a group of religious conservatives who agreed with me about most things, but who have no sense of humor or irony.

(Rod Dreher)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Bringing closure

In Hidalgo County, Texas, an 85-year-old ex-Priest has (finally) been convicted of murdering a beautiful and accomplished Latina, Irene Garza, in 1960. The Washington Post story ritually pronounces “closure” before probing “why so long?”

What is this “closure” that gets trotted out in news and commentary after every murder conviction?

It’s some relief that I’m not the only one asking, though until I Googled it, I feared I was. Here’s one exploration:

The idea of closure is powerful. It’s something Arkansas invoked in an April 15 motion that tried to fight a temporary restraining order that McKesson Medical Surgical, Inc., has used to block the use of its drug vecuronium bromide in state executions. (The drug is typically used as general anesthesia to relax muscles before surgery).

“The friends and family of those killed or injured by Jason McGehee, Stacey Johnson, Marcel Williams, Kenneth Williams, Bruce Ward, Ledell Lee, Jack Jones, Don Davis, and Terrick Nooner have waited decades to receive some closure for their pain,” it read.

But even when executions take place, a surviving family’s pain doesn’t disappear with the perpetrator’s pulse.

…

Death penalty advocates and politicians, including Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, argue that when the state executes a person who has committed a terrible crime, the act brings closure to victim’s family. But it’s not that simple.

If you ask murder victims’ families, “closure is the F-word,” said Marilyn Armour, who directs the Institute for Restorative Justice and Restorative Dialogue at the University of Texas at Austin. She’s researched homicide survivors for two decades. “They’ll tell you over and over and over again that there’s no such thing as closure.”

Hypothesis: “Closure” is something politicians and society generally invoke to mask revenge (maybe there’s a better word) as altruism.

Alternate hypothesis from Mrs. Tipsy: It brings closure only to journalists, who don’t have to report on this case any more. (I should solicit her thoughts more often.)

* * * * *

I would a thousand times rather have dinner with secular liberals of a certain temperament than with a group of religious conservatives who agreed with me about most things, but who have no sense of humor or irony.

(Rod Dreher)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Evangelicals and Jerusalem

I had a bunch of good items stacked up 8-high in a draft blog. I’m going to break them up today.

Critics of evangelicals’ advocacy on Jerusalem say that they aren’t interested in the welfare of Jews, but rather believe that the Book of Revelations says Jewish control of Jerusalem is necessary for Jesus to return.

“The last battle is going to be over Jerusalem…that is the holy city,” Pat Robertson, the famed televangelist, said on his TV show Tuesday. “You go in favor of breaking up Jerusalem, you’re going against the direct word of Jesus, and this is a prophecy that has stood for hundreds of years.”

(Ian Lovett in a Wall Street Journal news item)

I’m sympathetic with the critics, though I don’t think it’s as simple as Evangelicals faking concern for the welfare of Jews to cover up efforts to hasten Christ’s return (at Jews’ short-term expense).

Rather, if I believed, as many or most evangelicals seem to, in the novel eschatological view of dispensational premillennialism, as popularized by prophecy porn like Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind franchise, it would be virtually impossible to keep those views from coloring my politics.

I personally abandoned those views, which I’d held half-heartedly, for saner and more historic eschatology about forty years ago. Because I was half-hearted about them, I don’t think they tainted my politics (remember: “It doesn’t matter what you ‘believe’ so long as you’re insincere”), but I can empathize with the True Believers.

However, as my footer in each blog said until recently, there is no epistemological Switzerland. Everybody has a worldview. And as a person of serious Christian faith, I would not for a moment try to exclude Evangelical voices from the Public Square. I just wish the sincere dispensationalists weren’t so loud out there.

* * * * *

I would a thousand times rather have dinner with secular liberals of a certain temperament than with a group of religious conservatives who agreed with me about most things, but who have no sense of humor or irony.

(Rod Dreher)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

 

Masterpiece Cakes thoughts

The consensus, with a few dissenters, is that the oral arguments Tuesday portend victory for Jack Phillips, proprietor of Masterpiece Cakes. I’m going to assume that for purposes of this blog.

What worries me now is how he will win. There are a number of options, but I’ll just mention three.

  1. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission (or whatever they call it) was biased against Phillips and its decision can’t stand. This has the benefit of being true; the bigotry of one commissioner was manifest. But by the time a case gets to the Supreme Court, who wins this particular case is barely relevant; the case now is about principles that are going to govern cases nationwide. The court never would have taken the case if it was only about Jack Phillips and the Colorado commissioners. It would be terrible if the only result of this case was “commissioners shouldn’t utter their bigotries aloud.”
  2. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission has applied its facially “neutral law of general application” (terms of art) with “an evil eye and uneven hand” (anachronistic terms of art), so the law is unconstitutional as applied to Phillips’ bona fide religious scruples. In other words, he wins under the free exercise of religion clause. This result would be mildly surprising, but the evil eye and uneven hand appear to be there. A provocateur asked another baker for a bible-shaped cake with some of the “clobber passages” inscribed on it. The baker refused. The provocateur filed a discrimination complaint, which he lost, partly because the baker had served other Christians (proving he’s not anti-Christian), though the Commission ignored that Jack Phillips served other homosexuals. (Transcript of Oral Arguments 58-59) This tends de facto to negate “general application,” so a subtle escape route of Employment Division v. Smith opens for Jack Phillips (and presumably for others in Colorado). I’d still hope against this outcome, which would sort of be limited to Colorado, with a cautionary note to other states to enforce their law equally, across-the-board. It’s an invitation to lots more litigation and to set-ups like the Christian provocateur with his clobber passage cake.
  3. Jack Phillips reasonably believed that Craig and Mullins were seeking one of his custom-designed wedding cakes, and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission denied him discovery from Craig and Mullins to prove that. A wedding cake is primarily a festive, celebrative central ornament in wedding receptions, only secondarily food. An artist or artisan cannot constitutionally be compelled to create fruits of his artistry in celebration of something he chooses not to celebrate for any reason. In other words, he wins under the free speech clause (which protects against compelled artistic expression).  This has seemed Phillips best shot since I first learned of the case. It was in the first sentence out of Kristen Waggoner’s mouth on Phillips’ behalf (although she noted that his objection to speaking was religious). One of the little ironies is that free speech has become a powerful protector of dissident Christians who may have weak free exercise cases thanks to our brother, the late Justice Scalia, who took leave of his senses one day and penned Employment Division v. Smith (which turned out to have some escape routes, so it wasn’t as bad as initially feared). The “problem” here is Justices agonizing, some probably insincerely, about “where to draw the line.” That will be the interesting analysis if Phillips wins on free speech/freedom from compelled expression, which I think is the best analysis, but then I’d probably draw the line very, very protectively against compelled speech—maybe further than most of my readers.

Update: I regret rushing this blog, because it made me forget my favorite way Jack could win.

The court could decide that Jack did not refuse service to anyone because of their sexual orientation, but because they wanted him to adorn a same-sex wedding reception (with a custom creation, Jack believed).

Like Option 1, above, this has the virtue of being true. But Colorado equated that with discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation because same-sex marriage is really, really closely correlated to sexual orientation. Thus did it refuse categorically to recognize a vital distinction, thus extending the legislature’s law beyond what it may have intended and setting up this constitutional clash.

There’s some reason to think that may be where pivotal Justice Kennedy is headed.

MR. COLE: … the public accommodations law does not say you must treat everybody; it says you cannot discriminate on the basis of protected categories.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Well, but this whole concept of identity is a slightly — suppose he says: Look, I have nothing against — against gay people. He says but I just don’t think
they should have a marriage because that’s contrary to my beliefs. It’s not -­

MR. COLE: Yeah.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: It’s not their identity. It’s what they’re doing.

MR. COLE: Yeah.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: I think it’s – –  your identity thing is just too facile.

(Transcript of Oral Arguments 86-87)

I like this possibility because it seems to me that:

  • It leaves intact the core protection of persons against discrimination because of their sexual orientation. (I’ve never been convinced that’s more that a vanishingly rare problem in the realm of public accommodations, but if it is a problem, this covers it.)
  • It gets to the nub of Jack Phillips’ objection and validates it. Jack’s sincere professions of willingness to serve all people, and history of serving all people, got lost in the politics of this issue, with him getting branded just another Christianist homophobe. That was false and, yes, facile. Jack deserved better.
  • It avoids all the parade of horribles and slippery slopes that attend the “what’s artsy enough and what isn’t?” questions. Nobody, artist or not, is discriminating against persons as person if they decline to help provision an event they find objectionable.

Yes, in a few corners of the country, it may be hard for same-sex couples to get vendors for their celebrations, as an amicus argued. But custom cakes, floral arrangements, wedding invitations, photographers and such are “not goods or services like lodging or transportation necessary for full participation in public life,” as Rabbi Dovid Bressman argued in a friend of the court brief.

That gets us back to the heart of this case: the couple’s sense of entitlement. I don’t think that sense commands validation men and women of goodwill.

* * * * *

I would a thousand times rather have dinner with secular liberals of a certain temperament than with a group of religious conservatives who agreed with me about most things, but who have no sense of humor or irony.

(Rod Dreher)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

 

Monday, 12/4/17

1

Okay, I suppose. If you insist:

2

Caveat: David French is a skillful lawyer and an excellent pundit. So far as I know, his opinions on football rank right up there with some random guy sitting next to you at a bar.

3

4

5

6

7

8

* * * * *

I would a thousand times rather have dinner with secular liberals of a certain temperament than with a group of religious conservatives who agreed with me about most things, but who have no sense of humor or irony.

(Rod Dreher)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.