Story from the Washington Post. Senator Daniel Inouye (DEMOCRAT) intercedes to have TARP funds redirected to the floundering “Central Pacific” bank, which he owns.
In other words, Inouye interceded to get TARP funds to secure his personal assets. He used his political clout on Capitol Hill to get Treasury to approve a “marginal” application that had already been rejected once, in order to save his own bank from collapse. Central Pacific had already been in trouble with the FDIC even before the collapse in the lending and financial sector, thanks to bad management practices and undercapitalization. The FDIC had required a change in management and $40 million more in capitalization, which is why Treasury was reluctant to give CP a bailout check in the first place.
Inouye isn’t the first member of Congress to have used TARP to rescue personal fortunes. Maxine Waters did the same thing with OneUnited of Massachusetts, where she and her husband had significant investments. In that case, Waters arranged a meeting between OneUnited and regulators, while Barney Frank wrote legislation that required Treasury to grant special consideration to OneUnited’s TARP application.
Remember that last-minute, 300-page amendment to the cap-and-trade bill that hit the House just hours before the vote approving it? The one that Democrats insisted on putting up for a vote before anyone had the chance to read it? When one reads the contents of it, as the Washington Times’ Edward Felker did, it becomes apparent why Henry Waxman and Edward Markey pushed it through so quickly. It was a payoff for Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) to turn her back on coal-producing Ohio and vote to kill the economy in her state, and she wasn’t alone…
…The amendment itself got published in the wee hours of Friday morning. By the time the House came to order and began debate, it hadn’t yet been noted by the media.
In essence, Waxman and Markey bought Kaptur with our money. They spent $3.5 billion for a single vote in Congress, and Kaptur had willingly put herself up for sale. Never mind that Ohio will get [hit] hard by caps on the use of coal. Ohioans will lose jobs, their energy bills will skyrocket, and that will have an inflationary effect on all goods and services as the jobless rate escalates.
More Democrat corruption in Michigan
But this is not the only corruption going on with those sneaky Democrats.
Michigan Democrats are involved in yet another corruption scandal. I wonder if these Democrats keep their piles of cash in freezers like the Louisiana Democrats do.
Since the conviction of Monica, Riddle has been talking. What he said today raised many eyebrows throughout the state, now ensnaring the Michigan Democrat Party, Jennifer Granholm, Mark Brewer chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, and Bernard Kilpatrick father of disgraced felon ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. From The Detroit News: Riddle: FBI probed $50K deal with Dems.
People who trash the free exercise of religion, traditional morality, the rule of law and family should not be expected to act honestly. Morality requires certain metaphysical beliefs, which Democrats, being secular socialists, just don’t have grounded by their worldview.
We can’t elect people who believe that it’s OK to kill defenseless unborn children for convenience and then expect them to have integrity. It’s not rational for someone like that to act morally. If they are willing break the big moral laws, they’ll have no trouble breaking the small ones, too.
Matt and Madeleine Flanagan have a wonderful post up to answer this thorny question. These guys are professional apologists, not amateurs, like me! They have footnotes in their post!
Your strategy
If someone asks you a question like this, there are two responses you need to make:
Explain why the Bible does not condone slavery
Ask the challenger why slavery is wrong, on their worldview
Let’s start with number 1.
Does the Bible condone slavery?
MandM’s response is based on the writings of John Locke in his “Second Treatise on Civil Government”. Locke based his argument on a reading of Exodus 21, where the rules of “slavery” are defined.Locke’s argument is that the definition of slavery in the Bible is not the same as the slavery of modern times.
MandM quotes Locke’s argument. Then they summarize it:
[1] If a person is a slave then that person is “under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases.”
[2] The institution referred to in scripture that people could sell themselves into, was not one where they were “under an absolute, arbitrary, despotical power.”
Then they explain some reasons why the indentured servitude in the Bible is not the same as slavery in the last few hundred years.
there was no kidnapping of an indentured servant, they served voluntarily in order to get rid of a debt
there was no racial component to indentured servitude
killing an indentured servant was a capital offense, striking one was illegal
indentured servitude was for 6 years, not for a lifetime
if the indentured servant fled from an abusive master, it was illegal to return teh servant to his master
References are provided for each of these points.
So the Biblical concept of “slavery” wasn’t what we mean as slavery when we look at British, Arab, or American slavery in history. Instead, the Bible is talking about indentured servitude.
1) Objective moral values: where is the standard?
2) Objective moral duties: to whom are moral duties owed?
3) Moral accountability: will I get caught if I am immoral?
4) Free will: are humans capable of free choice?
5) Ultimate significance: does it matter ultimately?
NEVER let atheists get away with making any moral statements, because even though an individual atheist might get lucky and act morally based on the objective moral law that God actually made, their actions are not rationally grounded by their worldview. Call them out!
This actually came out in the comments for MandM’s post, where John W. Loftus, a prominent lay-atheist, chimed in.
I presume John Loftus is a born-again atheist? If this is so, then upon what grounds would he criticize slavery at all?
If atheism is true truth, then I fail to see any possible ground that could provide a basis for outrage against moral evil, since moral evil cannot exist.
Indeed, if the universe is material only, then at what time did atoms create morality?
So John Loftus has to assume a Biblical morality to attack Biblical morality, but he would then be rejecting the basis for his indignation at slavery in the South, or any other slavery for that matter. He cannot logically have his cake and eat it too.
I can’t recommend this post and the comments enough. This is a great post and the comments are totally awesome, although you may find them difficult to understand. You will learn a lot from this post and exchange.
ECM, Hot Air and Muddling alerted me this story in Runner’s World featuring Sarah Palin. I think Sarah Palin is getting a lot of interest from this article, and most because of the photos. But there is more to a political candidate than looks.
Introducing Michele Bachmann
Allow me to introduce you to someone who is even better than Sarah Palin: Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.
Congresswoman Bachmann is a leading advocate for tax reform, a staunch opponent of wasteful government spending, and a strong proponent of adherence to the Constitution, as intended by the Founding Fathers. She believes government has grown exponentially, with ObamaCare being the most recent example of its uninhibited growth. Congresswoman Bachmann wants government to make the kind of serious spending decisions that many families and small businesses have been forced to make. She is a champion of free markets and she believes in the vitality of the family as the first unit of government. She is also a defender of the unborn and staunchly stands for religious liberties.
Prior to serving in the U.S. Congress, Bachmann served in the Minnesota State Senate. She was elected to the Minnesota State Senate in 2000 where she championed the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Before that, she spent five years as a federal tax litigation attorney, working on hundreds of civil and criminal cases. That experience solidified her strong support for efforts to simplify the Tax Code and reduce tax burdens on family and small business budgets. Congresswoman Bachmann also led the charge on education issues in Minnesota calling for the abolishment of Goals 2000 and the Profiles of Learning in its school. She recognized the need for quality schools and subsequently started a charter school for at-risk kids in Minnesota.
Congresswoman Bachmann sits on the Financial Services Committee (FSC) and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The FSC is tasked with oversight of numerous financial sectors including housing, real estate and banking. This gave the Congresswoman keen insight into the housing crisis and credit crunch, leading her to be a staunch opponent of the taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street and the Dodd-Frank legislation. Serving on the Intelligence Committee was a welcomed opportunity for Congresswoman Bachmann as she has consistently advocated peace through strength to ensure America’s national security. As a mother of five children and 23 foster children, she has a deep appreciation for that portion of the Oath of Office in which members of Congress vow to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
In July 2010 Congresswoman Bachmann hosted the first Tea Party Caucus meeting because she saw the need for Tea Partiers to have a listening ear in Congress. She is seen as a champion of Tea Party values including the call for lower taxes, renewed focus on the Constitution and the need to shrink the size of government.
Michele Bachmann was a self-styled “education researcher” making a run for a Minnesota school board seat in 1999 when the question came up at a candidate forum: If elected, would she serve all four years?
Maybe not, she said.
Bachmann, now a three-term congresswoman and tea party favorite who may run for president in 2012, opened up about a confrontation she’d had with a state senator over Minnesota’s new school standards.
“I told him that if he’s not willing to be more responsive to the citizens, that I may have to run for his seat or find someone else who would do so,” she said, according to a newspaper account of the meeting.
Bachmann lost the school board race, but then knocked off the senator, a fellow Republican, just months later using the standards as her primary issue.
It was an early indicator of a recurring theme: Bachmann often wins by losing.
[…]The race would test her resilience because she would start far back. But as a little-known House member only a few years ago, Bachmann became hero of the conservative tea party movement in part by fighting losing battles with the GOP establishment. Her path to Congress was paved by failed efforts to pass a ban on gay marriage in the Minnesota Legislature.
“She is very good at turning lemons into lemonade all the time,” said Sal Russo, a California political consultant who came to know Bachmann through the tea party.
[…]From her first involvement in politics, the 55-year-old Bachmann has shown a determination to keep pressing forward and find opportunities, even when the way seemed blocked.
In the late 1990s, Bachmann was a stay-at-home mother of five in Stillwater, a scenic St. Croix River town east of St. Paul. Then she was drawn into a revolt over education standards.
[…]”People had been predicting her demise since Day One: ‘Oh, she’s a radical, she’s too far right, she’s too outspoken, she’s too inflammatory,'” Pulkrabek said. “The fact of the matter is, with the exception of the first race, she wins.”
Parlaying her school board defeat into a victorious legislative campaign, she moved to the state Senate and seized on a new issue.
Around Thanksgiving 2003, justices in Massachusetts ruled the commonwealth couldn’t prevent same-sex marriage. Bachmann hit the phones, reaching out to fellow conservatives about making sure gay marriage would stay illegal in Minnesota.
[…]Jeff Davis heard her public appeal through his car radio. Not politically involved at the time, Davis came to the Capitol and pledged to help Bachmann.
[…]”She’s an energizer. She influences people around her,” Davis said. The drive instantly elevated Bachmann’s political profile, he said. “It was a launch point.”
[…]Bachmann’s victory in that race brought her to the national stage and prompted a new focus on fiscal issues. She harnessed the outrage of the tea party, a fledgling political force inflamed by debates over government bailouts and a far-reaching health law pursued by President Barack Obama.
Her outspoken opposition did not stop the health law, but it got her much more television exposure and helped make her a face of the new resistance. In one Fox News interview, Bachmann urged viewers to flood Washington and “go up and down through the halls, find members of Congress, look at the whites of their eyes and say, ‘Don’t take away my health care.'”
Amy Kremer remembers seeing Bachmann’s television plea while on a Tea Party Express bus heading between rallies in Washington state. The next week, Kremer joined Bachmann in the nation’s capital for a big tea party protest.
“You can tell the ones who have the passion, the fire in the belly and are truly speaking from the heart. She’s one of those,” Kremer said. “That comes through.”
The article goes on to explain how Michele got to be a three-term Congresswoman in one of the most liberal states in the entire country.
As her politics changed, so did her faith. She attributes a turning point to watching Francis Schaeffer’s Christian worldview video series, How Should We Then Live? “In college I felt like in some ways my mind had been saved,” she said.
For Bachmann, who is a member of Salem Lutheran Church in Stillwater, Minn., being a Christian and a politician means fighting for compassion—individual compassion. “People confuse compassion with government being compassionate with other people’s money versus people being compassionate with their own money,” she said.
For the Bachmanns, opening their family’s home to teenage girls was a way to express their Christian faith and live out good economics. That didn’t mean it wasn’t challenging. At one point, Bachmann was nursing a newborn, juggling two toddlers, homeschooling two children, and overseeing four foster teenage girls. “I was so tired, I could hardly pick my head up off the pillow,” she admitted. These days, all of her foster children have moved on, but she still makes time for her mostly grown children, who range in age from 26 to 14.
…Bachmann says for her one thread ties all the day’s obligations together: “radical abandonment to God’s call.”
Bachmann: Right. We actually, this is a man-made, government-made disaster, this economic conundrum we’re in right now. We could see ourselves go forward next quarter already if we do a few things, if we would do this. If we would permanently zero out the capital gains tax for four years, so that we could let people know that for four years there would be zero capital gains tax. Take the business tax rate from the second highest in the world, 34%, and cut that down to 9% for a corporate tax rate, that would be bring in foreign investment and jobs back into the United States. Completely eliminate the death tax, completely eliminate the alternative minimum tax, and then I think that we need to bold on income tax. Scrap the income tax code, and put into place a tax system where everyone has to get in on the game.
Whether it’s through a national sales tax, or whether it’s through a flat tax, and my personal opinion, I’d love to see in our perfect world a flat tax rate that’s no more than 10% on any American on the federal level, and then that’s it. And then we would pull way back on our spending, including eliminating the federal department of education. We don’t need the federal department of education, that function needs to happen at the state level. And then we need to go through, dramatically change what government does, that we truly are a constitutional government acting under our enumerated powers, and then we do no more, because the number one duty of government is to protect the health and the safety of the American people, and we need to make sure that we focus on first things first.
And she is very pretty, just like Sarah Palin:
Rep. Michele Bachmann
Let’s look at how she does in interviews.
First, Bret Baier spends some time with Michele going over her pluses and minuses as a candidate: (MP3 version here – 3 Mb)
Second, here is another interview with popular social conservative Mike Huckabee: (MP3 version here – 3 Mb)
You can learn more about Michele in the links below.
WINTERY KNIGHT 