News

Rick Santorum explains his support for “Don’t ask, don’t tell”

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Republican Rick Santorum explains his support Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell on Fox News Sunday.

Excerpt:

Someone’s race is not a factor in his ability to serve in the military because it’s a passive trait, but homosexuality requires active behavior and that makes it a potential barrier to unit cohesion in the military, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said Sunday, distinguishing between an earlier argument against integration in the Armed Forces.

Explaining his opposition to the repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell, the defunct military policy that prohibits gays from serving openly in the military, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate said the two situations are “very, very different.”

“I mean, we are talking about people who are, you know, simply different because of the color of their skin, not because of activities that would cause problems for people living in those close quarters,” said Santorum, considered one of the most socially conservative candidates in the race.

[…]”It’s not the same. And I know people try to make it the same, but it is not. It is a behavioral issue, as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that makes all the difference when it comes to serving in the military,” he added.

Santorum said members of the military live in close proximity to one another, and by necessity must shower together in the barracks or out in the field.

That makes some people uncomfortable, he said, and “it could hurt our ability to retain and recruit and to put the best fighting force in place.”

“You’re talking about the ability for people to be able to have that unit cohesion, to be able to work together in a efficient fighting way,” he said.

[…]”I know the whole gay community is trying to make this the new Civil Rights Act. It’s not. It’s not the same. You are black by the color of your skin. You are not homosexual necessarily by — obviously by the color of your skin or anything — it’s by a variety of things.”

Rick Santorum may be the only conservative running in this primary who understands these social issues enough to tell the truth about them. We’ve looked at the studies and seen that he’s right about sexual orientation being co-related with a variety of factors, some genetic and some environmental. But that’s not the view of people in the mainstream media, nor in the culture at large. Many people don’t take the time to look at the studies, such as the identical twin studies, which show that there is no genetically determined behavior called homosexuality – homosexuality is, at least in part, a choice. For those who haven’t looked at the actual research, that may come as a surprise, though. I think that for contentious issues like gay rights and same-sex marriage, it’s a good idea to hear both sides in a formal debate.

Podcasts

Jennifer Roback Morse debates same-sex marriage at SMU

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Description:

Southern Methodist University hosts a debate between Dr J (invited by the Federalist Society) and Dallas attorney (invited by OutLaw) on the legal definition of marriage.

The MP3 file is here.

Here is my snarky summary. Just bear in mind that Dr. J’s opponent is a lawyer, so I want to be clear that I am caricaturing and satirizing her speeches deliberately for humor, and these are not factual statements about what she said at all. So don’t sue me.

I do think you should listen to her actual words to see what factual arguments she makes, and whether her reasoning about what marriage is is compatible with polygamy, incestuous marriage, and anything else involving loving, committed consenting adults. And it you like this debate, you can find other debates on the Ruth Institute podcast. Jennifer Roback Morse is the William Lane Craig of the marriage issue.

Dr. Morse opening speech

No-Fault divorce as a case study:
– studies were produced to show that as long as divorced parents were happy, the divorced children would be fine
– but that research was wrong, children do suffer from divorce
– when you change the understanding of marriage, you change the way that generations relate
– you have to wait for one or more generations to see the effects of the change

The essential public purpose of marriage:
– to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another
– marriage exists in virtually every known society
– societies need marriage in order to allow children to develop over a period of time
– human babies have a long period of dependency, and we need parents to sick around for the duration
– there are many private reasons to get married, but we are insterested in the public purpose
– marriage identifies two people who made the child as having responsibility for the child

Marriage and the law
– currently there is the presumption of paternity – the woman’s husband is presumed to be the father
– the presumption of paternity is being changed to the presumption of the parent
– now, the other partner is presumed to be the other parent
– but if same-sex marriage were legal, the partner is never the child’s biological parent
– so, if you redefine marriage, then you are necessarily re-defining parenthood as well
– the children of same-sex unions are not being treated equally
– the children of same-sex unions are not going to have the same access to their biological parents

Children:
– children have a right to know who their mother and father are
– in general, children need a mother and father when they are growing up
– we have lots of data from single parents, divorced parents, divorced/remarried parents to show it

Biological parents and the state:
– in countries that redefine marriage, the state determines who the parents are
– the state creates criteria independent of biology to decide who parents are
– this is too much power for the state to have.

Opponent’s opening speech:

Marriage is about people having feelings of love, not the rights of children:
– marriage has no definition outside of what the state says it is
– there are lots of children being raised in same-sex households
– marriage is not necessarily about parenting, because old infertile people get married
– it doesn’t matter what children need or want, so long as adults feel happy
– lots of liberal organizations say that same-sex parents are BETTER than married bio-parents
– a family can be anything that we decide it is
– marriage has no basis biologically, marriage is assigned by the state with a civil license

Boohoohoo:
– there are lots of rights and responsibilities that married couples have that same-sex couples don’t
– for example bereavement leave, property inheritance, visitation rights, joint tax returns, etc.

Same-sex marriage is the same as multi-racial marriage:
– men and women are indistinguishable and interchangeable

Keep your morality off my selfishness:
– it’s nobody else’s business if children don’t grow up with their mothers and fathers

Dr. Morse’s rebuttal:

Rebuttal:
– your statistics on the number of children in same-sex households are false: here are the actual numbers
– interracial marriage IS marriage: it produces children and requires parents be attached to those children
– a better solution to same-sex couples with children is adoption, not redefining marriage

Opponent’s rebuttal:

You’re a meany!
– if you don’t like same-sex marriage, then you opposed desegregation
– if you don’t like same-sex marriage, then you opposed women getting the right to vote
– I believe in justice, equality and civil rights, you don’t
– Yay social justice! I’m on the right side of history!

News

Dodd-Frank causes Bank of America to cut 30,000 jobs and raise debit card fees

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From the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

What is the cost of overregulation? Bank of America appears to have provided part of the answer by announcing yesterday that the nation’s largest bank will cut 30,000 jobs between now and 2014. CEO Brian Moynihan said the bank’s plan is to slash $5 billion in annual expenses from its consumer businesses.

Mr. Moynihan didn’t say this, but we will: These layoffs are part of the bill for the last two years of Washington’s financial rule-writing. After loose monetary policy had combined with insane housing policy to create a financial crisis, the Democrats who ran Washington in 2009 and 2010 enacted myriad new rules that had nothing to do with easy money or housing.

Take the amendment that Illinois Democrat and Senator Dick Durbin (with the help of 17 Senate Republicans) attached to last year’s Dodd-Frank financial law. Mr. Durbin’s amendment instructed the Federal Reserve to limit the amount of “swipe fees” that banks can charge merchants when customers use debit cards.

How exactly does forcing banks to charge Wal-Mart less money for operating an electronic payment system prevent the next financial crisis? Readers may wait a long time for a satisfactory answer, but the cost of this Dodd-Frank directive is straightforward.

The Fed dutifully ordered banks to cut their fees almost in half. Bank of America disclosed in its most recent quarterly report that this change will reduce the bank’s debit-card revenues by $475 million in just the fourth quarter of this year. The new rules take effect on October 1, so BofA seems to have sensible timing as it begins to shed workers from a consumer business that has become suddenly less profitable by federal edict.

Make that the latest federal edict. In 2009, when a comprehensive overhaul of financial regulation was still a gleam in Barney Frank’s eye, President Obama signed the CARD Act into law. It limited the ability of banks to increase rates on delinquent borrowers and to charge fees on unprofitable customers. As Washington encouraged card issuers to be more selective in advancing credit and to demand higher rates when they do, interest rates on card customers predictably increased relative to other types of lending in the months after the law took effect.

Restricting bank profits on a particular product may have obvious populist appeal, but politicians shouldn’t be surprised if banks decide that such consumer credit operations aren’t good businesses and can function with fewer employees. Add in the various federal programs aimed at extracting penalties for this or that mortgage-foreclosure error and it’s understandable that a bank would have trouble forecasting growth to justify its current work force.

But that’s not all. The Dodd-Frank regulation also caused Bank of America to raise fees on debit cards to $5 a month ($60 a year).

Excerpt:

Throwing their weight around at the height of the banking crisis, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut vowed to stick it to banks. They blamed them for the mess to cover up the fact that they forced banks to lend to favored constituencies who could not repay.

The two Democrats pushed through the much-vaunted Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which President Obama signed and touted as one of the signature accomplishments of his presidency.

That act, which included a micromanaging amendment on fees, carried a $2.9 billion implementation cost for that alone over five years, according to the Government Accountability Office.

It was nothing but the same old pandering to special interests. Named after Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the amendment limited fees that banks can collect from sellers when their customers make debit card purchases — cutting 44 cent fees to 21 cents.

That little bomb is now why battered Bank of America has no choice but to impose a $5 monthly fee — $60 a year — to consumers to make up for lost revenue.

The “economics of offering a debit card have changed with recent regulations,” a bank spokeswoman told ABC News Friday.

BofA says it stands to lose $2 billion from the arbitrary Durbin price-fixing amendment and now has no choice but to make up for the lost revenue some other way.

Now that consumers will be stuck with that fee, they can thank Dodd, Frank and Obama for that special little spike in inflation tailored just for them.

Other banks, by the way, might follow. And like banks, consumers may respond in a way that is logical to their interests, too.

If there is one person who is to blame for this recession, it’s Barney Frank. Chris Dodd isn’t far behind. Who elected these people, and do they understand economics? I think not.

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