Kansas and sharia law

In this week's column, Ben and I tackle Kansas' new law banning sharia law. My take:

Sam Brownback and Kansas Republicans are hypocrites, through and through. In 2008, then-U.S. Sen. Brownback introduced a resolution in the Senate that designated the first weekend of May as "Ten Commandments Weekend." A few years before that, Brownback was out front urging that the Pledge of Allegiance retain its mention of "one nation under God," saying: "There is nothing more American than the Pledge of Allegiance and an acknowledgement of God is at the heart of our founding principles and is our nation's motto." The examples don't end there. Along with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Brownback has been one of America's most aggressive and unapologetic politicians in advocating for religion's role in America's public and governmental life. Islam is the exception to this rule. Brownback and Kansas Republicans are vigorous defenders of the separation of church and state only when non-Christians are involved. Supporters of the law point to places like Europe, where "hate speech" codes can make it illegal -- or, at least, inadvisable -- to criticize Islam. "That could happen here!" they cry, but no, it probably couldn't: Europe doesn't have America's First Amendment traditions or law that vigorously defend freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The bill's supporters never showed that Islamic law actually was distorting or affecting Kansas jurisprudence. They never had evidence on their side, only demagoguery and fear. So the law is a solution in search of a problem -- the kind of thing conservatives disdain, unless Muslims are involved. All the law really does, then, is signal to the state's Muslims that they are second-class citizens. Kansas has a proud civil rights history. It fought to be a free state before the Civil War; it was where the Brown v. Board of Education ruling delivered the first stunning blow against desegregation. The new law betrays that heritage. But it does highlight Sam Brownback's hypocrisy.

Ben, on the other hand, warns of the dangers of "creeping sharia":

Examples of "creeping Shariah" abound. A few years ago, Muslim cabbies in Minneapolis refused to pick up passengers carrying alcohol or dogs, even service dogs for the disabled. Islamic law says dogs and booze are unclean and forbidden, anti-discrimination laws notwithstanding. A judge in New Jersey in 2010 accepted a Muslim man's defense against sexual assault, saying his supposed religious beliefs mitigated his crime. (That ruling was later overturned.)

The second example shows how weak the "threat" is: A bad court decision was overturned, after all. And the former example is very interesting. Conservatives fight all the time for pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control in the name of "religious freedom." I'm not sure how it's different from cabbies refusing to carry alcohol, except for simple chauvinism. Which is, really, what the Kansas' new law is all about.

The debate over the Bush tax cuts is over. The tax cuts won.

Today's New York Times:

It is a maxim in Congress these days: If high-profile legislation affecting millions of Americans is about to expire, deal with it at the last possible second, preferably with rancor. 

But a major exception is in the offing with the Bush-era tax cuts, which are set to lapse on Jan 1. Both parties in the House and the Senate are eager, perhaps even giddy, at the prospect of voting for their respective versions of an extension of the cuts this summer, well before the due date.

Now, the piece goes on to say that the Democratic package would drop the cuts for high earners and keep them for the middle class. But with a divided Congress and this president in charge, does anybody expect the Democratic preference will become law? Anybody?

(Crickets.)

Right. We've already seen this movie before. So maybe it's time to end the debate, make the tax rates permanent rather than dickering with them every two years, and start planning for a budget within those revenue limits. Politicians of every stripe and party should be clear with the public: You're going to keep your current tax rates, but you're not going to keep your current services. Something has to give.

The debate over the revenue side is over, and Democrats have lost. The sooner they and their allies admit it, the sooner they can prepare to shape the government that results from the revenue limitations. And the sooner they can decide what, exactly, they can live without.

Michael Barone's cocoon: Just for liberals?

Michael Barone says that liberals only listen to liberal arguments, but conservatives have a more varied diet of ideas because they're forced to be exposed to liberal media culture. The result is that liberals only know how to preach to the choir.

Liberals can protect themselves better against assaults from outside their cocoon. They can stay out of megachurches and make sure their remote controls never click on Fox News. They can stay off the AM radio dial so they will never hear Rush Limbaugh. 

The problem is that this leaves them unprepared to make the best case for their side in public debate. They are too often not aware of holes in arguments that sound plausible when bandied between confreres entirely disposed to agree.

I'm not sure that liberals are uniquely vulnerable to the malady of ideological isolation. Conor Friedersdorf notes the topics that dominate conservative media these days:

In addition to taxes and spending, the rank and file currently spends a lot of time obsessing over trivial nonsense: for example, an imaginary race war against white people; The New Black Panther Party; and a liberal schoolteacher abusing her position somewhere in America. Those are but three stories in conservative news right now, alongside the constant obsessions with liberal media bias, anything involving "God, guns, and gays," statements by Janeane Garofalo-style celebrities, and ginned-up kerfuffles we can't even presently imagine.

 I'm not sure this really helps conservatives make better arguments than liberals, but if Barone wants to think so, perhaps he's indulging in a little cocooning himself.

Politics makes hypocrites of us all

In this week's Scripps column, I argue that Mitt Romney's religious beliefs have some bearing on the presidential campaign—and Ben argues that the issues are more important. Four years ago, we staked out almost precisely the opposite territory:

Ben then:

Yet Obama still insists that what he heard from Wright this week was unlike anything he heard over the past two decades. That simply defies belief. Obama chose Wright. His choice was unwise. His choice should tell voters something important about Obama that his position papers on the Iraq war and health care cannot.

Me then:

But the job of the next president will not be to pick a national clergyman. Instead, the president will have to decide what to do about Iraq, health care and the economy, among other issues. Barack Obama has an argument to make that he'll end the war, extend care to more Americans and save a few of their homes from foreclosure. Given the mood of Americans these days, that could well be a winning argument.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this; I'm really not interested in being a hack—but there's some evidence here that maybe I am. The only way I can mitigate it is to acknowledge it.

Does Mitt Romney's Mormonism matter?

That's the the topic of my column with Ben Boychuk for Scripps Howard this week. I answer in the kind-of-affirmative:

Let's give thanks for progress: A black man and a Mormon will compete for the presidency this November. More people from more backgrounds than ever can fully participate in our politics -- thanks largely to the efforts of American liberals. 

Romney doesn't get a free pass for his faith, however. 

Don't misunderstand: If you vote for a candidate based on the Nicene Creed, say, then you're being silly and maybe a little un-American. We're electing a president, not a pope. 

But a candidate's policies are fair game, as is the worldview that shapes those policies. Faith often shapes a candidate's worldview. Romney's opposition to abortion reportedly springs from the teachings of his church: That's a topic that can't and shouldn't be avoided in a presidential campaign. 

Other issues in which Romney's faith may be a factor: 

-- Race: Until 1978, the Mormon church refused to ordain black men into the priesthood. Romney was a 31-year-old adviser to the leader of the Boston church when the policy changed: What was his view of it, and how might it affect how he governs a multiracial America? 

-- Feminism: The church long discouraged mothers from working outside the home -- and Romney reportedly refused to help a couple adopt a child until the mother was able to quit her job. How would that viewpoint affect Romney policies on workplace discrimination or child-care tax credits? 

-- Same-sex marriage: Romney's opposition to marriage equality reportedly springs from his faith, and Mormons were big contributors to the campaign for California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriages. Now there are questions about whether Romney would even permit gays to adopt. 

Church membership isn't an immutable characteristic. It's a choice. 

Certainly, Republicans feel that way when the church is led by Jeremiah Wright. The election isn't about Romney's theology -- but it is about his beliefs. Americans deserve a chance to understand them.

Ben, in his response, says that presidents don't set adoption policies, which are the province of the state. True, but only so true: The federal government offers adoption tax credits that gay couples already have a hard time claiming. For better or worse, the feds have a role in the issue—which makes Romney's recent waffling all the more troubling.

This is the song in my head today

Ah, early 1980s country music.....

What's wrong with private equity? Debt. What Mitt Romney and Sam Zell have in common.

A lot of the debate over Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital has been focused on how many jobs he did or didn't create, did or didn't destroy. That's understandable, given that we're in a time of sustained high unemployment, but I'm not sure that tallying lost jobs really gets to the heart of what might be objectionable about Romney's business practices.

The problem is debt.

In the case of the shuttered Kansas City steel mill at the center of the debate, the chain of events is pretty clear:

• Bain Capital bought the steel mill in October 1993, putting up just $8 million of its own money to gain majority control—even though the total purchase price was $75 million. 

• The next year, Bain had the company issue $125 million in bonds—debt used to pay Bain itself a dividend of $36 million in 1994. Understand again: Bain made a quick profit on its investment, but it wasn't by helping the steel mill earn greater profits—but by having the mill take on a chunk of debt.  

• Now: It's true that Bain used $16 million to buy another steel mill the next year—it's not as though executives were using all the cash to light cigars with $100 bills—but this is also true: The Kansas City mill took on another $125 million in debt to pay for the acquisition and merger. 

• All of which means that the Kansas City steel mill in 1995 had $378 million in debt. Its profit that year was $32 million. You can see where this is headed.  

• When it finally filed for bankruptcy in 2001, the combined company had debts exceeding $500 million. The plant's workers lost their jobs, and ended up with reduced pensions because the retirement funds had been under-funded.

In the wake of the bank bailout, there was a lot of talk about our economy privatizing profit and socializing risk. The problem here is just a bit different: Bain Capital kept the profits to itself, but largely externalized the risks of its business practices. That's smart, on one level, but it certainly belies talk of investors being "risk-takers" and "job creators."

I think I'm a little sensitive on this topic because journalists have been hurt by this kind of activity. Sam Zell bought the Tribune Company a few years back by investing $315 million of his own money—not chump change, I suppose, but a pittance compared to the overall $8 billion purchase price, most of the money borrowed from the employee pension fund. The company went into bankruptcy soon after, and the workers were screwed.

It's a little bit like me buying from you the car your son uses to get around, forcing your son to lend me the money to make the purchase, crashing the car, and getting to keep the insurance check without repaying your son the money he lent in the first place.

The steel industry in America has been dying for years. But Bain's practices hastened the Kansas City mill's demise—and it wasn't Mitt Romney nor Bain Capital that got stuck with the fallout from those practices.

Romney is running for office based largely on his business acumen. So let's be clear: Finance is a necessary component of a market economy, and while a market economy isn't necessarily utopia, it's often the best way of raising the living standards of the most people. Not everything done in the name of the market economy is wise or even good, however, and criticism of those bad acts and bad actors isn't—as some would have you believe—socialist.

There's a problem—for society, for morality—when a company can profit from its bad decisions while sticking the little guy with the consequences. It's wrong, plain and simple.