Odd political escalations

A peculiar feature of contemporary politics is the strange rapid escalation that occurs. Take for example the recent issue over the Obama administration saying that all employers need to provide free contraceptive benefits to their employees. This applied to even religious institutions as long as they served the general public and employed nonbelievers. This practice had already been the law in some states and had been instituted in some Catholic universities and [Read more…]

The advantages of litigation

One can make the case that the US is a far too litigious a society.

But going to court does have one big advantage when it comes to highly charged issues. Its structure of rules requiring facts and evidence and arguments in support of a claim, and the requirement that people have to tell the truth and directly address questions that are posed to them by opponents, can be remarkably effective in brushing away a lot of the obfuscation that accompanies debates in other less formal venues.

This happened in the case of so-called intelligent design. As I discuss [Read more…]

The rates at which people pay taxes

The one-percenters and their lackeys often indignantly make the claim that since they are the ones who pay most of the taxes, they should be praised rather than vilified, since it is largely their tax dollars that enable the state to function. They point to the roughly 47% of the population who do not pay any federal income taxes as being essentially moochers, as if being so poor that you do not even qualify to pay income tax is somehow an ingenious dodge to live off the wealthy.

But this situation arises not because the current tax rates are [Read more…]

More on the birth control flap

The fuss over the rule that religious institutions that employ and serve the general public do not qualify for an exemption to providing free birth control services to their employees seems likely to go away, now that the Obama administration seems to have outmaneuvered opponents on this issue by saying that while the religious institutions do not have to pay for the cost of birth control, the health insurers must absorb the cost. While this can arguably be said to be a mere accounting trick, it does undermine the religious freedom argument considerably.

If they are smart, the Catholic Church and [Read more…]

Alan Moore on the influence of V for Vendetta

When the above film based on Moore’s 1988 graphic novel series came out in 2006, it immediately struck a chord with me. (See my review here and later reflections in the light of the Arab spring here.) I felt that it would become a cultural icon and so it has proved, with the Guy Fawkes mask becoming a ubiquitous symbol of popular uprising against an entrenched oligarchy.

Moore reflects on how the ideas for his book and [Read more…]

Matt Taibbi on the Republican race

In a piece written just after Newt Gingrich surprisingly won the South Carolina primary and before Rick Santorum even more surprisingly eclipsed him just a week later, Taibbi hits the mark, pointing out that the most entertaining part of the Republican party nomination race is not who wins eventually but to see the oligarchy desperately trying to reassert control of a system that is being threatened with an insurgency by the peasants.

They may be shit for choosing a good candidate for the presidency, but say this for the Republican primaries: They’re fast turning into the most luridly entertaining political [Read more…]