if it’s not illegal, it ought to be–religious activism for prop 8

Another view on the matter of 501(c)(3) donations:

 

“They almost certainly have not violated their tax exemption,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the leading advocacy organization on the issue. “While the tax code has a zero tolerance for endorsements of candidates, the tax code gives wide latitude for churches to engage in discussions of policy matters and moral questions, including when posed as initiatives.”

Generally speaking, churches, schools, and nonprofits that are 501c(3) organizations are prohibited from spending more than 20 percent of their budgets on political activities, Lynn said, noting that his organization is held to the same standard.

The 20 percent threshold means that the Catholic or Mormon churches, whose organizations span the globe, would have had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars – if not billions – to violate their tax-exempt status.

. . . The issue was last debated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1970, according to Jesse Choper, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Choper said the court acknowledged that the history of tax exemption for churches stretches back to the nation’s beginnings. The court ruled that because tax exemption was a benefit not solely given to religious groups, but included groups like schools and nonprofits, it was fair.

. . . That doesn’t satisfy Negev, the Prop. 8 protester.

“Why are they even having these tax-exempt laws if churches can exert so much power on issues of civil rights,” said Negev, who attends Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, a reform synagogue that opposed the measure. “Why have these laws in the first place?”

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MILK

 

A.O. Scott:

 

“Milk” is accessible and instructive, an astute chronicle of big-city politics and the portrait of a warrior whose passion was equaled by his generosity and good humor. Mr. Penn, an actor of unmatched emotional intensity and physical discipline, outdoes himself here, playing a character different from any he has portrayed before.

. . . Dan White, Milk’s erstwhile colleague and eventual assassin, haunts the edges of the movie, representing both the banality and the enigma of evil. Mr. Brolin makes him seem at once pitiable and scary without making him look like a monster or a clown. Motives for White’s crime are suggested in the film, but too neat an accounting of them would distort the awful truth of the story and undermine the power of the movie.

That power lies in its uncanny balancing of nuance and scale, its ability to be about nearly everything — love, death, politics, sex, modernity — without losing sight of the intimate particulars of its story. Harvey Milk was an intriguing, inspiring figure. “Milk” is a marvel.

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the worst is yet to come: credit card debt

Joe Nocera posts an email he received from a banker on the looming collapse of credit card debt. Excellent piece on (more of) the banking industry’s indefensible practices; a disaster long in the making, poised to finally crash and burn. My biggest beef with them is the random raising of interest rates, not related to defaulting on payment or expiration of an initial offer. People would have a much better chance of paying off debt if the interest rates weren’t so prohibitive.

(By the way, since when do credit card companies not verify employment and income? The last time I got a card they called my employer to double-check. Perhaps these are newer developments in the slap-happy age of subprime mortages? Till they burst, that is. But then again, I’m still getting offers in the mailbox.)

 

Over my career, I have seen thousands of consumers that have credit card lines in excess of their annual salaries. Some are sinking under their burden. Some have been fiscally responsible and have minimal amounts outstanding. My 21-year-old daughter, who’s in college, gets pre-approved offers all the time. She has no ability to repay debt, yet the offers flow in just the same. We all know how these lines are accumulated. The banks, in their infinite stupidity, keep upping credit lines because the customer pays the minimum payments on time. My daughter’s credit line started at $1,000 and has been increased over the last two years to $4,400. She has no increased earnings to support this. But the banks do it without asking. And without being asked. The banks reel in the consumer, charge interest rates higher than those charged by the mob, increase lines without the consumer asking and without their consent, and lure them into overextending. And we can count on the banks to act surprised when they aren’t paid back. Shame on them.

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charles blow on the black women’s prop 8 vote

Very interesting NYT op-ed, worth the entire read here:

 

Proponents of gay marriage would do well to focus on these women if they want to win black votes. A major reason is that black women vote at a higher rate than black men. In the CNN national exit poll, there were 40 percent more black women than black men, and in California there were 50 percent more. But gay marriage advocates need to hone their strategy to reach them.

First, comparing the struggles of legalizing interracial marriage with those to legalize gay marriage is a bad idea. Many black women do not seem to be big fans of interracial marriage either. They’re the least likely of all groups to intermarry, and many don’t look kindly on the black men who intermarry at nearly three times the rate that they do, according to a 2005 study of black intermarriage rates in the Wisconsin Law Review. Wrong reference. Don’t even go there.

Second, don’t debate the Bible. You can’t win. Religious faith is not defined by logic, it defies it. Instead, decouple the legal right from the religious rite, and emphasize the idea of acceptance without endorsement.

Then, make it part of a broader discussion about the perils of rigidly applying yesterday’s sexual morality to today’s sexual mores. Show black women that it backfires. The stigma doesn’t erase the behavior, it pushes it into the shadows where, devoid of information and acceptance, it become more risky.

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director of LA film festival resigns over prop 8 support

While I repudiate those who engage in personal harrassment of Yes on 8 contributors (really, people, why can’t we lay off the personal emails and phone lines?), I can’t say I regret the blowback for figures who work with the gay community every day and saw fit to support a proposition that writes discrimination against them into the Constitution. What on earth did they think the reaction would be? It makes me sick that “Milk” is stuck with distribution by a heavy Yes on 8 supporter, who will make himself plenty of profit off the queers.

 

Richard Raddon, the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, who has been at the center of controversy since it was revealed almost two weeks ago that he had contributed $1,500 to the campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California, resigned from his post over the weekend.

The nonprofit arts organization Film Independent sponsors the Los Angeles Film Festival, held in May, and the popular Independent Spirit awards. Raddon is a member of the Mormon Church, which called on its congregants to work for the passage of Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman. It has been estimated that Mormons gave more than $20 million in support of the recently passed ballot measure.

. . . Ever since the passage of Proposition 8, liberal Hollywood has been debating whether and how to publicly punish those who supported the controversial amendment to the state Constitution. Scott Eckern, the director of the nonprofit California Musical Theatre in Sacramento, recently resigned amid a flurry of condemnation from prominent theater artists. There also have been calls for boycotts of the Cinemark theater chain, whose chief executive, Alan Stock, donated $9,999 to “Yes on 8.”

Activists have also called for pulling “Milk,” the film about slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, from Cinemark screens. A representative for “Milk” distributor Focus Features said that the studio had long ago committed to playing “Milk” in Cinemark houses in December, because of their successful exhibition of “Brokeback Mountain,” the 2005 Oscar-winning film about two cowboys in love.

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reaction to the citi bailout

Mssr Krugman:

A bailout was necessary — but this bailout is an outrage: a lousy deal for the taxpayers, no accountability for management, and just to make things perfect, quite possibly inadequate, so that Citi will be back for more.

Amazing how much damage the lame ducks can do in the time remaining.

For details and varied reaction, he pointed the way from his minimalist blog post to the Economist’s View. The details make my head hurt, but there it is all laid out for whatever you can make of it. Many commenters at Krugman’s blog suggested that Obama’s treasury man Geithner was variously in agreement with or the architect of this deal. I haven’t seen that confirmed elsewhere, but if true, it is deeply disturbing. The last thing we need is more free rides for Wall Street; the double standard between treatment of the banks and the Big Three auto companies is off the charts. Accountability should be expected across the board, and there’s little evidence of much beyond favouritism for Wall Street firms.

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study finds link between red wine, letting mother know what you really think

Dr. Zheng explained that the 100 women who participated in the study were split into two groups. One group was seated at the end of a long dinner table and subjected to backhanded compliments about their housekeeping abilities while steadily imbibing 8-ounce glasses of Turning Leaf Cabernet. The other group, a control group, was allowed to celebrate the holidays at home.

The positive effects of wine consumption were seen in as little as three hours, with 86 percent of participants showing greater resistance to unsolicited career advice, 77 percent displaying increased mental function in the area of the brain devoted to reminding you why Dad left you in the first place, and 60 percent demonstrating less concern to “play this little happy-happy game anymore.”

Subsequent tests revealed that, if the wine is consumed prior to dinner or on an empty stomach, the benefits are increased nearly tenfold.

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mudflats: would you rather freeze to death, or be a socialist?

Who knew? This is the first I’ve heard about Chavez’s largesse extending to the United States. Read the whole of AKM’s excellent post here:

 

For the past three years, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez has been donating free heating oil to Alaska villages, and economically depressed communities in 23 states across the country. This has the effect you might imagine in Alaska. Some are deeply grateful. Those are usually the cold people. Others are furious at the gesture from this unapologetic socialist, and either accept the gift begrudgingly, or have outright refused to take it. Those in the latter category are starting to rethink their position facing the hard reality of the coming winter, and the fact that some rural families will be spending in excess of 40% of their income on heating fuel.

I am unsure if the irony of the socialist free fuel dilemma is lost on Alaskans. While some state leaders are squawking that

a) Chavez is a Socialist

b) Socialists are evil

Therefore we should reject them and all they stand for.

They seem to be OK with the fact that

a) Sarah Palin also gave away money for free fuel to all Alaskans in the form of an energy rebate check.

b) This sounds awfully…..socialist

c) Sarah Palin was openly railing against socialism and all things socialist across the country on the campaign trail.

Many say, “We we shall forget this comparison because we don’t like cognitive dissonance and we shall not ever admit that a socialist idea has any merit at all, nor that any Alaskan might think we need to be doing the same thing as Hugo Chavez. Humph.”

The main difference, of course, is that Chavez is providing the fuel to rural communities that have at least a 70% Alaska Native population, and Sarah Palin gave it to everyone, including wealthy Anchorage residents who spent it on…whatever.

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NYT: new york democrats may skip gay marriage vote

Jesus. Politicking trumps previous promises yet again. So what if they wait and Paterson DOESN’T get reelected? The whole “playing it safe” argument will have been for naught, and a much larger setback could be at hand.

 

After a pledge from New York Democratic leaders that their party would legalize same-sex marriage if they won control of the State Senate this year, money from gay rights supporters poured in from across the country, helping cinch a Democratic victory.

But now, party leaders have sent strong signals that they may not take up the issue during the 2009 legislative session. Some of them suggest it may be wise to wait until 2011 before considering it, in hopes that Democrats can pick up more Senate seats and Gov. David A. Paterson, a strong backer of gay rights, would then be safely into a second term.

. . . Some Democrats are mulling whether the Senate should wait to hold a vote on the bill until after the 2010 elections. That would prevent Republicans from being able to use gay marriage as an issue against Mr. Paterson in socially conservative areas of the state or against Democratic Senate incumbents.

Those opposed to waiting pointed out that similar predictions of a backlash after the Assembly passed its gay marriage bill last year proved false. None of the Assembly members who voted for the bill and ran for re-election were defeated.

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le thanksgiving francais?

Another cherished myth debunked. Thanks to the Spaniards, these first colonizers met an ugly fate, wiping out the French Connection, and making way for the English story of the first Thanksgiving. Not that the violence was done with. “Religious freedom” came at the expense of many a religiously inspired death on our shores. Excerpted from the excellent NYT piece:

 

To commemorate the arrival of the first pilgrims to America’s shores, a June date would be far more appropriate, accompanied perhaps by coq au vin and a nice Bordeaux. After all, the first European arrivals seeking religious freedom in the “New World” were French. And they beat their English counterparts by 50 years. That French settlers bested the Mayflower Pilgrims may surprise Americans raised on our foundational myth, but the record is clear.

Long before the Pilgrims sailed in 1620, another group of dissident Christians sought a haven in which to worship freely. These French Calvinists, or Huguenots, hoped to escape the sectarian fighting between Catholics and Protestants that had bloodied France since 1560.

Landing in balmy Florida in June of 1564, at what a French explorer had earlier named the River of May (now the St. Johns River near Jacksonville), the French émigrés promptly held a service of “thanksgiving.” Carrying the seeds of a new colony, they also brought cannons to fortify the small, wooden enclosure they named Fort Caroline, in honor of their king, Charles IX.

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